Ask me in a few months about subscriptions, I'm only a few weeks into having this thing be something even remotely playable. It's more or less the nytimes model and they seem to make it work. Right now, my girlfriend is very helpfully finding very obvious bugs in it most nights that I am fixing, and then after that I hope to get English in there.

I have also read that thread previously and disagree with ads being the only way to go. I think if the game is good enough and, for three emojis in particular, people learn more about their target language, that they will happily pay for it. I know I would at least, and I personally don't think I'm so weird. Friends have surprised me by signing up as soon as I sent it to them, specifically on the language learning value proposition, so I think there's something there. But, if it was just a puzzle game for fun only, then I might agree that the model doesn't work. We will just have to see!