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The Dutch called it tulpenwoede. In 1635, as Dutch society was enjoying its golden age, a craze for tulips swept the country. At the height of the fad, a single tulip bulb was reported as costing ten times the average annual wage. "Many individuals grew suddenly rich," wrote Scottish journalist Charle Mackay in his 1841 book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. "A golden bait hung temptingly out before the people, and, one after the other, they rushed to the tulip marts, like flies around a honey-pot."Many have found the flaws in Mackay's colourful reporting over the centuries, but he identified at least one persistent cultural truth: the more sudden and explosive the fad, the more devastating the aftermath for those who see it as a quick route to riches.
There's a tulip craze happening right now, and us gamers are in the thick of it. We call it free-to-play. It's the future, we're told. While the likes of Tomb Raider sell over three million copies and still disappoint accountants, games you've never heard of earn sums every month that dwarf the so-called blockbusters we obsess over. This isn't the semantic split between hardcore and casual, a simple tidal shift in favour of a different section of the market. This is a completely new market, a fundamental change not only in the way games are sold, but how they're designed.
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