F2P, Premium, or Ads: Choosing Your First Game's Model

Every first-time developer asks which model earns more. That is the wrong first question, because the honest answer is that any of the three can earn and all three can fail. The question that actually decides the outcome is which model your game, your platform, and your capacity can support — and that answer is knowable before you write a line of logic.

The model is not a coat of paint applied after the game works. It shapes the core loop, the content plan, the update schedule, and what you spend your first hundred hours building. Choose it the way you choose a genre: deliberately, before production.

The framework below reduces the decision to three questions about the game and one honest question about yourself. It covers the three dominant models — free-to-play, premium, and ad-supported — as starting points, not hybrids. The general catalog of models, storefront cuts, and what indie games actually earn is covered in our guide to monetizing indie games; this piece is the decision procedure for the specific case of a first game.

The model decides design, not just revenue#

The mistake is thinking of monetization as a switch you flip near release. Each model forces structural decisions long before then.

Free-to-play means the loop never ends. There is always a next thing to grind, the difficulty curve doubles as a spending curve, and the economy — sources, sinks, currencies, pacing — is a design discipline of its own. None of that is optional, because a game with nothing to return for has no revenue.

Premium means the loop closes. You are selling a complete experience at a known price, which puts the entire burden on finishing: a game that ends, a satisfying arc, and enough polish that the purchase feels fair. Premium also means your store page carries the whole pitch — wishlists, trailer, screenshots — because there is no free version to try.

Ad-supported means the loop is short and repeatable, and interruptions are part of the contract the player accepted by not paying. The design work moves from the economy to retention: every session has to end in a way that makes the next one start.

This is why retrofitting fails. A premium design with a definitive ending has nothing for a returning player to spend on; a free-to-play design gutted of its economy has no reason to be free. The model is upstream of the design, so it comes first in this framework — and it comes first in your schedule too.

Three questions about the game#

Work through these in order. Each one eliminates at least one model.

1. Is the game finishable?#

Describe the ending to yourself. If the game has an arc — final level, final boss, story conclusion — and a player who finishes it feels done, it is finishable. If the honest description is "levels keep coming" or "you keep improving a number," it is endless.

Finishable points to premium. An endless game cannot be sold as complete without disappointing the buyer. Endless points to free-to-play or ad-supported, because an endless game has nothing to sell upfront — the value exists in the returning, not the purchase.

2. How long is a session, and what brings players back?#

Time a real session on your prototype. Under five minutes, interrupted constantly, playable with one hand while waiting for a bus — that is short-session design. Thirty-plus focused minutes at a desk — that is long-session design.

Short sessions reward the ad model, because the natural break points between sessions are exactly where rewarded ads live, and casual players tolerate them as the price of free. Long sessions fight the ad model: nobody deep in a flow state forgives an interstitial, and a premium purchase is the cleaner transaction for an experience that resembles a book or a film.

Session length also predicts your revenue shape. Ads and microtransactions accumulate across many short sessions, so they demand retention work — daily rewards, streaks, events. Premium collects once, at the moment of intent, so it demands visibility work — wishlists, trailers, press — before launch. Know which of those jobs you are signing up for.

3. Where does your audience already shop for games like this?#

Each platform has a default contract with its users, and fighting it costs more than using it.

Mobile stores default to free. Most charting games there are free-to-play or ad-supported, and a paid game fights the discovery mechanics built around free. If your game is a one-thumb arcade or puzzle piece, the audience expects it free with monetization inside.

Steam and itch.io default to paid. Their discovery runs on wishlists, demos, festivals, and reviews — machinery built to sell finished games at a price. Free-to-play exists there but competes against a decade of live-service games with content budgets a first game cannot match.

The web is the quiet third channel. A browser build of a short-session game spreads by link, monetizes through ads or a storefront later, and functions as a playable demo everywhere at once. For a first game it is also the fastest honesty check: strangers play it or they do not, and it costs nothing to find out.

One honest question about yourself#

The three questions above are about the game. This one is about you: what will you still be doing with this game six months after release?

Free-to-play is a commitment to operate. It needs an economy that survives contact with real players, offers that refresh, content drops that justify returning, and usually paid user acquisition to feed the funnel that in-app purchases pay from. Studios run this as a service because it is one. A first game that gets three reviews will not convert.

Ads are a commitment to volume. Revenue accumulates from many short sessions, so everything depends on retention and installs — which is marketing again, though the bar per player is lower than in free-to-play. The upside is that ad revenue starts with the first hundred players, not the first ten thousand.

Premium is a commitment to finish and then to sell. No live-ops treadmill and no economy to balance, but no passive discovery either: launch visibility is your job, built from a demo, a trailer, a Steam page open for wishlists months early, and posts where your players already gather. For a first game, that is a real, learnable skill — and unlike a live-service economy, it is the same skill every future launch needs.

The pattern worth copying from experienced solo developers: ship finishable, premium-feeling games repeatedly, and let the audience compound. First games average meaningfully less than the ones after them, which argues for a model you can execute now and learn from, not the one with the highest theoretical ceiling.

A worked example#

Two realistic first games, pushed through the framework.

A puzzle platformer with forty levels and a definite ending. It is finishable, sessions run long, and its natural home is Steam. The framework outputs premium: a price around the familiar indie band, a demo with the first chapters, a store page collecting wishlists during development, and later DLC only if the level design has more to say. On mobile the same game could appear as a free chapter-one with a single unlock purchase — a hybrid, but one where the premium spine stays intact.

An endless one-thumb arcade game about dodging falling crates. It is endless, sessions run under three minutes, and it lives on phones. The framework outputs ad-supported: a rewarded ad that doubles the run's coins, an interstitial only between runs with a close button that is actually tappable, no purchase pressure in week one. If the game holds retention, a no-ads purchase and a cosmetic shop follow — the same model, deepened, not changed.

Notice what neither example does: start free-to-play with an economy of three currencies and a battle pass. That is a second-or-third-game shape, after you have felt players churn.

Where Egmatic fits#

The model and the platform decide each other, which makes export range a monetization feature. Egmatic is a no-code 2D editor with a ship layer: you build the game once and publish it to web, desktop, and mobile stores, so a premium desktop release, a free web build that markets it, and a mobile version with a different model are variations of one project instead of three ports. If the framework above has you leaning premium, start with our complete guide to publishing without coding; if ads on mobile won, the breakdown of monetization platforms covers the mediation and analytics side.

Conclusion#

The choice is a decision tree, not a preference. Finishable game, long sessions, PC audience — premium. Endless game, short sessions, mobile or web audience — ad-supported, with free-to-play purchases added only once real players are returning without being asked. Free-to-play as a first game's primary model is usually a deferred failure: it monetizes crowds, and a first game has none yet.

Answer the three questions before prototyping, answer the honest one about your own six-month commitment, and accept that the model constrains the design rather than decorating it. Every model on the list has funded solo developers. The ones that fail are usually the games that picked a model for its ceiling while their design pointed at a different one.

Sources#

1. Apple — App Review Guidelines (guideline 3.1.1: unlocking features or content in an app requires in-app purchase; guidelines 1.3 and 5.1.4: apps for children should not include third-party advertising; guideline 2.5.18: interstitial ads must carry clear ad labeling and easily accessible close buttons)
2. Google — Play Developer Policy Center (Monetization and Ads and Families policy sections: supported monetization models and requirements for apps that target children)