Economics

You know, I kind of wish I studied more economics. I haven't even taken the basic 101. Well I did take MM's Game theory courses, but outside of game theory, and outside of the literature reviews I've read for my research in auctions, I kind of wish I had more economics background.

Now as I'm developing for a small game company, I regret not taking classes even more. Every decision we make, and resource we spend, we always have the underlying question, are we going to make money from this?

And for online games, this typically leads to a few different interesting paradigms:

1) A Subscription model
2) A RMT (Real Money Transacation/Trade) model where the basic game is free, but you pay for perks
3) Expansion based model - where online play is free, but new content is only acceissble via buying expansions
4) Free online play
5) Any Hybrid of those 4 (e.g., hgl is a hybrid free online but has subscription options)

So which model should games use?

They all have various pros and cons, and if anyone is curious, see
http://www.digra.org/dl/order_by_author?publication=Situated%20Play
for some good analysis, (and other various videogame conferences, just too tired to find them)

I also think a model based on CCGs (like Magic) can be a good model for videogames too. Needs to be done right though. (I really want to know how much Magic Online makes.)