Hi all,

I'm new to this game but love it so far.

I just want to make a few comments on the pricing structure of this game and what it potentially means for the longevity of the game and future updates. Right now, the game is free to play with a one time fee of 10 dollars which allows you to play multiple games at once. Seems like a steal, and it is. This basically means that once you buy this feature, you will no longer provide any additional revenue no matter how many games you play. The problem with this is that this is a niche game with a limited fan base. Even if initial sales are good, sales will eventually dry up because they are completely dependent on new users rather than loyal fans. This will create a revenue problem and completely take away the ability/incentive for further updates.

I saw this happen with the game "outwitters" (great game, go play). It is a great, strategy based game with a loyal but small fan base. They allowed people to play without paying but it limited your number of games and the races you could use. However, they offered a one time 10 dollar payment which gave you every add on, in addition to every future update! What happened is that all of the serious players paid the 10 dollars, and got every future update. When new players stopped joining after a few. On this, revenue dried up and the devs had to move onto new games and stopped investing time no resources into outwitters. Loyal fans were begging to buy updates but could not due to the situation the devs had unknowingly created.

I implore the devs to look into this and not allow subterfuge to take this route. Find a way to extract a small amount of money from loyal players with updates or other features.

-connor

I'm having the same concerns. Maybe make the L2 pass time-based, i.e. 3€ for a month?
3€ would get a lot more impulse buys, and making it a time-based purchase would guarantee a steady revenue-stream for the game. Give everyone who already bought the game 5 months of L2 time to ease their pain

Yeah, part of the problem with outwitters was that the devs didn't want to go back on their word. They realized they needed more revenue after a year or so but the new user base had dwindled significantly. Even if they grandfathered everyone into the 10 dollar l2 pass right now they'd be okay because there are still a lot of potential new users.

Maybe there'll be expansion packs of specialists? But would everyone have to have bought the expansion to be able to play in those games? Or just whoever starts the game?

Also, outwitters is awesome. I think the artwork made a lot of people discredit it. I especially like 2v2 games. Definitely the game I've been playing the longest on iOS.

I think everyone would need the same specialists for a fair battle.

Yeah I loved outwitters. The character skins seems a little childish but the game was like a high level chess. I got used to the skins in the end. They are actually talking about coming out with a second one.

Sorry to talk about another game on this forum -I actually got the link to this game from outwitters forum

I personally wouldn't mind throwing more money at these devs. The game is great and I really want them to be able to keep working on it!

One possible extra revenue model is official tournaments with a small pay-to-enter fees (with prizes perhaps to justify that)?
Or perhaps work on a desktop (browser or steam) version and have that be a monthly "L3" feature?

I don't know. Even if these devs set up a monthly funding thing on Patreon I would certainly subscribe to them.

Outwitters is the one game that I have played where I have burnt out. So simple, yet so brilliant!

I agree that Subterfuge needs to be careful that they don't fall into the same trap as Outwitters. I made the following post on a thread about it a few months ago. Interesting that rickyjj just mentioned tournaments too.

This was the part of my post talking about possible future IAP:

Champinoman wrote:Automated tournaments similar to what we are running at the moment. Either an elimination tournament or a round robin style format.
A one off payment that allows you to name outposts in future games as you acquire them. After 1 name change this outposts name would be locked to avoid constant renaming and confusion.
The ability to change your username. I know the arguments against this but realistically people could just buy a new version of the game for another $5 to get around it anyway so why not offer the option at say 50% of the app price so people can retain their statistics and other IAP’s.
The ability to play more than 1 game simultaneously.
Ability to choose colour (out of available remaining colours) when joining a game.
Pre-set novelty maps.
Or even a choice of a generator or factory heavy map. (all of this would be visible to anybody wanting to join so no advantage gained)

Those were just some random ideas back then. For the full post and the relevant thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=245

I love the ideas for economic growth. I agree, the one time pay-to-play will only last so long. Other than the virtual ideas for IAPs, the retail part of Subterfuge has yet to be tapped. I saw a thread asking for t-shirts, and it was a brilliant idea. I see people wearing other App Store game t-shirts and a Subterfuge one would look just as good.

Or the devs could license the idea to another company and get royalties to fund the app if retail isn't a big concern at this time.

Well for me as a non working student, I love this game so far since I love being a diplomat(it's usually my job in mmorpgs in guilds anyways) so this is a nice game for me.
However, I really wouldn't want to throw 10 dollars at this game that I might not even play that much since there are more appealing things that I could do sometimes other than this.
$1 will grab a lot of people not a lot of revenue so eh
$2-$3 is where you can get a decent chunk of revenue and a good amount of people like me
$4-$5 is where it may start topping off a bit and people like me may or may not buy
Anything above $5 will literally scare a lot of us away. Even $4-$5 scares a bunch of us away especially comparing to other games. This isn't a matter of quality for me. It's quantity. Don't get me wrong I think it's a great game, but if I could play this for free and buy 2-4 other games with this 10$, why use it here?