Monetization - What I've got planned

Hey everyone,

Ok, after a refreshing 7 hour dose of sleep I'm back with another topic: Monetization!

Basicly, there are a few ways to monetize your game:

1.) Through Ads

Generally, ads are annoying, and nobody likes them. If they are annoying enough, most people will quit, and the rest will spends hard money to buy a premium version, or add free version of your game. A good example for this is the early "Angry Birds", before they came up with all the different IAP (see 2.)

2.) Through in app products that you CAN buy

Again, Angry Birds (at the current state) is a good example for this. Every level can be done without having to purchase anything, but in some cases, you just want to go the easy way, so you'll pay for some extra abilities to continue the game.

3.) Through in app products that you must buy aka "Pay to win"

Ah, the horror. I despise every developer that does this. Quite frankly, I'm pretty certain games like these aren't created by actual game developers but rather by accountants in disguise. One good example for this is the current "Family Guy" "game". Sorry, but if you have to pay not to wait for !24! hours after playing for about 3 minutes, something is wrong. That's not a game at all. That's like the uber-fast delivery service from amazon. What the fuck? Am I supposed to enjoy this? There are some cases where I think "Pay to win" could work, but not this way.

Ok, now here's what I want to do:

Every race has one starting hero, that can be played without paying anything. Also, they have one spell each that is included for free. However, to give you a wider variety of tactics, you can buy other heros. These won't be stronger than the first one per se, but they will give you the ability to change your tactics. The same goes for the spells. This way you'll be able to beat others without paying, but it also gives you the chance to change and adapt your style of play to beat players that you wouldn't have beaten before.

Also, since running server's is expensive, each online game will cost 1 diamond. If you win you can earn up to 3 diamonds back, depending on how devastating your victory was.

There'll be also some products that you don't really need, but you might like, like other skin sets for the gui.

You will be able to earn a decent amount of diamonds by playing the campaign, so there'll be no need to buy diamonds if you are good enough, or play long enough.

Does that sound fair? Give me your thoughts in the comment box or on twitter (@sensegames), I'm happy for every input!

Thanks for reading, have a good one1