The most common question: what is your business model?

Development is going well - the game is now fully playable with the new UI on the development server, so I'm confident for a first beta in January. I take the opportunity to address a question I have been asked often (the second most, after "what is your game about"): how will you make money?

I won't go into details on the various business models there are around. You can find many websites that do it, and for French-speaking readers, a fellow friend game developer has written a nice summary here.

Having played quite a few of so-called "free" online games (from Zynga games on Facebook to your average resource-and-empire-building game on the browser), I have always been frustrated by the gap that always exists between people who pay, and people who don't. While it may seem logical (after all, if I invest money, I should reap some benefits), it feels very unjust to the vast majority of your players - the ones who don't pay.

I thus told myself that when I would make a game, I would not allow players to use real money to gain competitive advantages. Especially in The Five Orbs, which is geared towards one-on-one matches, every player will be able to have a fair fight with anyone.

This being said, I still need to earn money if I don't want my game to turn into a hobby alongside another day job. The main alternatives I have are :

• Advertising. I'm generally against ads on game sites, because it pollutes the immersion and the overall experience. In-game ads, however, could be something feasible depending on the circumstances (you could have a "Coca-cola" object that grants you temporary bonuses for instance), but I'll keep them as a last resort.
  
• Selling "confort". Meaning selling things that make the game more fun to play, or make the controls more convenient. Travian does this for instance: you can buy a "pack" that gives you more detailed combat reports or that allows you to automate constructions. While I like the fact that it does not give any real game advantage to a paying player, I still think something is not right: you could do a great UI, but you purposefully give players more cumbersome controls so that they will want to buy your pack.
  
• Selling cosmetic items. In other words, items whose sole effect is to look nice. This includes additional skins (in my case, new avatars), clothing, house decorations, etc. depending on what your game offers. This is the point I will concentrate on at first. Ideally, I would like to never sell anything else. But depending on how things go, I may look deeper into the "confort" and "advertising" zones. The only thing I will not do is sell gameplay-changing items or bonuses.
  
• Lastly, the subscription model may still be in. One of the things players don't like with free-to-play (apart from the "if you don't pay, you can't compete" side that I mentioned before) is that they have a hard time evaluating how much the game will cost them (per month, per year, etc.) Subscription-based games have the benefit that you know exactly how much they will cost you, and can then rationalize the cost against the time you spend on them. An option I strongly consider is to allow players to pay (e.g. for a week) to get access to everything that is on sale in the game. When the subscription is over (and not renewed), they still keep access to the items they have bought individually.
  

Of course, all that is still theoritical. The game is not live yet, and the harsh reality may prove that all these ideas are but a dream, and insufficient to make a game make enough money. But I'll try hard, and hope everything will turn allright :)

As usual, any feedback is welcome. Have fun :)

PS: here is a list of articles I found interesting that relate to game monetization:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MichaelFergusson/20100830/5853/Game_Design_Virtual_Goods_and_Social_Games.php
http://chronicgamedesigner.blogspot.com/2011/08/rising-cost-of-free-to-play.html
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6457/the_fwords_of_mmos_freetoplay.php
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/TylerYork/20111111/8869/Game_Monetization_Lessons_from_Magic_The_Gathering.php