Startups and Passion

So, I am going to take a random dive off to left field this week, and discuss some of the challenges that our company has faced throughout its existence and thank the solid team that has forded ahead regardless.

I have had people ask me, "How are you surviving?"  I work.  Connor works.  Adam works. Amy works.  This company is our passion.  We are all pouring time and energy into it on the side of our self-supporting careers.  So, that alone shows you the dedication of our team.

It has always been like this though.

Starting new companies is always a precarious endeavour.  We are always teetering on the precipice of going under and only by sheer force of will and magnitude of talent have we survived and continue to survive.

This is a tribute post to our development team, Amy, Connor, and Adam.

These individuals have made this project possible so far, and I wanted to stop for a moment in the developer's blog and say thanks.  Because without their dedication this game would not even be a shade of what it is already.

á na márië,
gumshoe, out.

Monetisation: How we plan on monetising FATES: Carpe Moerae

Another question that I have received frequently that I would like to address here is: "How are you going to monetise your game?"

Our current monetisation model is "free to win", implying that if you are willing to spend adequate amounts of time playing this game, then you will be able to win this game without paying any money.

The fundamental idea behind this model is that gamers, and really people in general, have only one of two resources available to them to spend: time or money.  It has been an overriding design goal in FATES to maintain a healthy balance between people who have abundant time to spend and people who have abundant money to spend in order to prevent one type from gaining an unfair advantage over the other in our game.

Our present plan, which is currently unimplemented, is to have "Archons" available for purchase, which are little more than advanced artificial intelligences that will allow you to orchestrate your empire with a significantly smaller time investment of actual playtime.  The types of Archons that are presently planned to be available for purchase in the final game include: Military, Defense, Trade, Finance, Logistics, Intelligence, Diplomatic, Expansion, and Federation.  We may very well add other Archons or subdivide some of these into more precise tasks, but this is a starter list.  Each of the Archons is presently planned to cost anywhere from three to ten US dollars per month, and you will be able to purchase as many or as few as you want.

• The Military Archon will manage offensive campaigns, scheduled attacks, retaliatory strikes, and other aggressive military actions.
• The Defense Archon will manage defense fleet shuffling, attack response, construction and maintenance of planetary or orbital defensive facilities.
• The Trade Archon will  manage buying and selling of resources on the Galactic Exchange, making every effort to buy low and sell high.
• The Finance Archon will manage imperial finances including creation of currency, issuance of sovereign debt, as well as interest and repayments.
• The Logistics Archon will manage constructions and development of existing colonies according to player-defined templates.
• The Intelligence Archon will manage espionage, sabotage, subversion, assassination, and defensive special agents.
• The Diplomatic Archon will help manage relations with other players and with the Galactic Council.
• The Expansion Archon will manage scouting, discovery, deployment, and colonisation of new colonies to expand your empire.
• The Federation Archon will be specifically tuned for Federation leaders and officers with tools such as attack coordination, federation-wide resource management, Moira construction and deployment, and other federation tasks.

We are hoping that this model will allow you to purchase services that will save you from having to spend actual playtime and allow you to take a more hands-off approach to managing your empire.

We will not be adding the Archons until the Closed Beta testing phase, and they will all be available freely to closed beta testers, so there is a lot of time to fully flesh out the free to win model further.

At least this gives you some idea of our currently planned monetisation scheme and a glimpse into the philosophy behind our design decisions.

á na márië,
gumshoe, out.