Freemium is not a bad thing. Dungeon Keeper for iPad is just a bad game. But why it sholdn't be? Who remebers the disaster Master of Orion 3 was? It wasn't freemium. It supposed to be good because it was master of orion, but it wasn't.
There are a lot of horrible games that are basically pay to play at any fun pace. They have one of two or three very stupid mechanics that proved to be most efficient extortion schemes dressed in some graphics and story.
Good thing is you can just install them, play ten minutes, recognize what kind of beast you are dealing with, uninstall and forget.
Bad thing is, thers no one place where you can go to check if the game is pay or wait scheme. Gamers basically get nohelp from noone when they try to decide what to play next.
Good freemium is when you pay for game to be easier. Pay or wait is insane but pay or play some more on the current level before advancing is reasonable enough if it's balanced so that you can advance faster if you are more skilled.
The problem I see with your proposed model is that game developers will then make games harder to encourage you to pay. Or the game will be grindier, so you have to farm for XP or items or whatever to advance. But for only 99 cents...
IAP hurt game design and result is less-fun games. The only use I can swallow is in cosmetic-only IAP, and even then I'm iffy.
Forcing player to farm things already happens even without IAP. It happens because average player wants this. I have no idea why. I suspect it's US cultural thing. Getting better just by putting more hours into crappy job. Cosmetic only IAP are holy grail but I can accept well balanced IAP that makes the game easier. I don't mind that my game is hard. What I don't want is waiting or doing easy thing over and over again. If a game makes me do one of those two things or pay I abandon it.
I don't even mind that such games exist. But I do mind that I can't know if a game is like that before I try it out myself.
There are a lot of horrible games that are basically pay to play at any fun pace. They have one of two or three very stupid mechanics that proved to be most efficient extortion schemes dressed in some graphics and story.
Good thing is you can just install them, play ten minutes, recognize what kind of beast you are dealing with, uninstall and forget.
Bad thing is, thers no one place where you can go to check if the game is pay or wait scheme. Gamers basically get nohelp from noone when they try to decide what to play next.
Good freemium is when you pay for game to be easier. Pay or wait is insane but pay or play some more on the current level before advancing is reasonable enough if it's balanced so that you can advance faster if you are more skilled.