It will be very interesting to see how often/well Tabletopia is updated, compared to OCTGN. When I snarked that Tabletopia's advantage is a subscription fee, I wasn't really kidding. Money is possibly the second greatest motivator in product updates.
The first, though, is passion for the product, and sIKE and ACG do amazing work that I'm frankly unsure Tabletopia will be able to match.
On the third hand, if OCTGN got more serious about marketing and monitization, the platform might be in substantially better shape.
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The subscription payment model for Tabletopia is an interesting choice, actually, because
1. It competes with AW's physical retail program. If I'm paying $60 a year for the digital, I may forgo the additional $80 a year for the cardstock.
2. AW only gets a fraction of that subscription fee, related to #of plays of AW product.
3. No microtransactions. I know a lot of people hate being nickle-and-dime'd by their hobbies (hence Mage Wars' and Net Runner's success vs CCGs) but there's a reason sites like Kongregate have gone to micropayments instead of subscriptions and microtransactions.
At least the lack of microtransactions forbears designers to chase Whales, the 10% of addicts from whom 80% of revenue comes.
(In a subscription model, loss aversion works against you: you're asking the customer to lose money to gain the service. In a purchase model, it's neutral: you lose money but you gain a product. In microtransactions (insidious things that they are) since playing is free there's no encouragement to quit, but if you do stop you lose the experience that you've been paying for (because there's always more things to buy, and gamers are neophiles).)
If Scott hasn't talked to someone like Kongregate's (Gamestop's) Emily Greer, I'd encourage him to do so.
