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While I agree with just about everything in your post, I wanted to specifically comment on the above quote.

Even in the days of retail this was primarily how either myself or my friends and friends of friends found out about games. One person would either try the demo or buy the game and then eventually if they found it fun and exciting, they would tell their friends. The friends would pick it up so that they could play with the friend that first tried the demo / bought the game. What sells a video game, even though the sales have moved from brick and mortar to digital, ultimately is still the same. People have to like it and then in turn tell their friends to buy it because it is nothing but awesome-sauce. 

I miss Computer Games Magazine.  

So, how to apply that realization to non-onlinegames?

I don't think this model works for everything, and it definitely doesn't work for me.

Since I'm generally smart with my game purchasing, but I tend to go all-in on what I purchase, this is a horrible model for me, and FTP pretty much means an instant no sale.

I also suspect the model has a saturation point when it comes to potential revenue.

I sense that f2p Demigod 2 will be a hit. 

See, here's the one thing with a f2p game that might be a real challenge for you folks at SD:  scope.  And you'll note I'm only talking about games here.  Just to make an example, let's say you folks decided to take a really small approach with free to play.  And for a second, lets just say that Demigod has no connectivity issues, etc, and is being released as a brand new game tomorrow.  A simple implementation of the f2p model would be to left folks use 2 of the characters for free every week and then rotate characters.  The customer can buy any character to own for like $5 a pop.  Then, you could sell boosts for X dollars for favor points.  Anyway, if you built the infrastructure to support those things, well, that would work and more than likely generate quite a bit of money (more than the traditional just buying the pc game method).

Ok, but that said, scope becomes an issue as, depending on the implementation, you'd need staff to support the game, you'd need to regularly patch it, if you are making money on characters and favor points, you'd need to add new characters and new items, etc.  And to that, I wonder if you really want to create a dedicated team or have a few folks that they only thing they'd do is handle the f2p game.  I'm pretty sure you could find a way to make it cost effective, but is that something you want to be involved in?

Anyway, I'd be thrilled to see you guys get into the f2p (GAMING) side of things.

Chris and I talk about a demigod 2 occasionally. An awesome game.

heh - you love toying with my emotions. 

Whatever works to continue making games I want to play.  I tell you this, if it's free, I will try it out.  I may pass on a thousand games that I am interested in because of price, but if I love it, I may spend $100 bucks on crap over time that is offered to enhance my enjoyment of that game.  I have yet to do this, as the system isn't implemented in games I like yet, but I could easily see myself doing it.  

The only thing I wonder about it Modding.  Are companies going to be likely to have mod friendly F2P games when they make their money on small addition transactions?  

I don't like having elements of games locked out on me period.  FTP games tend to cost hundreds to unlock the full game.

If you had a dual-track model, where one could pay for the full game as a pre-order and get everything guaranteed up-front, but FTP otherwise, that would be more appealing.

I think that would be far less appealing, because I would pass on 90% of games in the genres I love due to cost.  I don't want to gamble with my money.  The idea is that tons more people will play and give the game a chance, and if they like it, they will then start spending money on it, and if they don't no loss.  But you are going to get more people playing your game, and even if the average person who plays only spends $1, you might have 1000x more people paying that $1 than you would have had pay $50.  

Free to Play works really well in MMO games, like LOTRO for example.  It's far superior to the paid subscription model if you don't feel that your subscription gives you enough new content to justify staying on.  However a lot of the things that you unlocked while on subscription stay unlocked.

Please note that I am not an expert on this part, but typically in most F2P games that I have seen, outside of custom character skins / banners, and the occasional custom map, modding is locked down. The reason for this I can only assume is that with a mod, there is no need to purchase in game items from the developer and therefore they are not getting any money for the increased server load of players that are playing a mod (that have no potential to purchase an item, versus players that are playing the vanilla game which would).

... maybe I just made things confusing.

But the issue is that most F2P games are of the social or MMO type.  If a games like Skyrim, Elemental, Civ were to be F2P, then would they continue to allow modding?  I would think that they wouldn't be able to, or to a much lesser degree, if their prime revenue came from minor transactions of mostly cosmetic content.  

Even if the content purchased is more than cosmetic (like weapons that are unnecessary to win, but do make your virtual life much easier), I see two problems with modding.

One is the ability to make objects which are equal or better than what they offer. While they're concerned with balance, you're concerned with winning. Did anyone get an item in Open BattleNet playing Diablo 2? I could grab one sword and then make one hit kills on Baal or Diablo. So why would I want to offer up cash when I can just trade for these crazy ass items?

Two is that it would open their servers to a lot of chaos. They can either allow you to directly add content or to play on mod servers. Mod servers, as mentioned above, are operational costs without income and having someone tinker directly with your programming, or even leaving open windows for hackers, is bad for overall function.

The next best thing I've seen to modding was through Neopets back when. You couldn't mod in new objects, but you could propose new objects and their attributes for a little reward. For example, when they started offering paint brushes, I noticed there was no black. I suggested a black paint brush called 'shadow' because I wanted a 'shadow shoyru'. They not only implemented the idea, but they gave me the very brush of my own conception for free, a little reward for the effort. This allowed the community to constantly feed in new ideas and we were rewarded for it.