[mdnahas]

Valve has some great talks on monetizing free games. People will pay for social features that don’t change the game mechanics. E.g., make every donor’s avatar visually different, so people acknowledge they’re good people. E.g., wear a gold chain around their avatar’s neck or a feather in their hat. Or render them with more polygons! Larger donation = more polygons?! Makes sense to me. Or sell weapons that are the same as regular weapons but trigger fancy death scenes when they kill.