How Mafia Wars can fix the media

    For example, Kabam had a very successful program around Mother's Day where they awarded game credits to players for buying flowers. "It was the most popular offer, by far, that's been done for any event this year or any year," says Carvalho.

    It also locks players — or in the case of publishers, readers — into a proprietary virtual currency that Live Gamer says is more effective than using real world denominations. Using their own economies, online game platforms from Xbox Live to Mafia Wars have realized more pricing flexibility and better customer retention with virtual currency. "Those are the core monetization models that are highly effective and that are proven across multiple market segments and demographics," says Schneider.

    This year and next is when publishing payment models will finally become a game-changer for print media, says Schneider. Lets hope so. It only took millions of web users buying billions of dollars in virtual garden gnomes over a span of ten years for the Internet to finally become comfortable paying small, online fees. Ask any gamer — that's a long time to be stuck on the same level.