Why Spending Money on Free-to-Play Games?

Free-to-play (or "freemium") games are the Marmite of the games industry.

Well, they would be if Marmite was an industry worth billions of dollars, which provoked long, angry arguments on the internet about why it's an inherently exploitative condiment preying on casual toast-eaters' gullibility.

Maybe the Marmite analogy doesn't really work.

But still, free-to-play games: you either love them or loathe them. The former group is much bigger, but the latter tends to be louder online. Freemium can be a very touchy subject.

We may soon arrive at a point, though, where the discussion of freemium gaming focuses on good games and bad games, rather than trying to judge the entire business model in a broad sweep of goodness or badness.

Freemium games are certainly lucrative. Three of the key companies making these games – King, Supercell and GungHo Online – reported collective revenues of $4.4bn in 2013 alone.

The upper reaches of the top grossing charts on Apple and Google's app stores, meanwhile, are dominated by freemium games, with Minecraft seemingly the only paid game able to maintain a consistent presence in the top 50.

Critics of free-to-play as a model argue that many freemium games are designed for monetisation rather than fun, meanwhile, with countless psychological tricks designed to elicit as many payments as possible from their players.

The comments section on any piece about free-to-play here is usually bustling, but I thought this may be a good time for a proper open thread, to share your experiences of why you have made in-app purchases within mobile games, and how you felt about it.

If you're a Candy Crush Saga or Clash of Clans player, how much have you spent – or if you've spent nothing at all, how tough did you find it?What have you bought, in which games, and why? Are you more inclined to spend money if a game is less aggressive about nudging you to pay? Have you ever spent money and swiftly regretted it?

If you're a committed free-to-play critic, what forms of in-app purchases (if any) do you think are acceptable? What freemium games have you seen that you thought handled their business model gracefully and without exploitation?

The comments section is open for your views, and it's not just for fun: your views will help influence The Guardian's coverage of this area, as we talk to more developers about this space in the months ahead.