I really agree that the visual appeal of the game is absolutely critical. The beauty of the Peggle game and many similar makes people want to play more to see what special effect they will get and they feel rewarded for good play, even though most of the time it's pure luck!

I have been thinking about your tournament idea and I am wondering whether something like the Razoo Speedgranting system might be a way of linking your game to NGO projects. Basically, the tournament winner would have an opportunity to select which project from a list of suggested projects would receive a $1000 grant. You could have an entry fee or rely on advertising or even have a tournament annual membership system.

Perhaps by competing outside the tournament you might gain "credit" for participating in the tournament - perhaps slightly better pieces (perhaps otherwise a bishop might be restricted to moving 4 squares) or gain more time to make your moves.

You need some positive PR opportunity and you might well find that charities themselves advertise your game/web-site, if they see that there is a chance for them to gain $1000 on a semi-regular basis from their devoted supporters.

If you don't want the big charities to swamp things, you could target some of the tournaments to NGOs with less than £50k per annum turnover, perhaps. Or even have "Start-up projects" as one category. So you would therefore expose the smaller projects to some of the big charity contributors.

Obviously, how you find the prize money is a key issue, but there are a few ways that this could perhaps be generated:

1. Advertising revenue - charity donors are quite an interesting market for advertising buyers
2. Email list sales
3. Grant funding - I wouldn't rule this out for perhaps the first year's prizes. It seems a good deal, if the money is going to NGOs anyway.
4. Tournament/Membership fees - this one I'm most dubious about, but see below how the on-line cardgames do it.
5. Maybe Razoo would work with you in partnership to add variety and extra PR to their offering? If you can get some large charities on board through your innovation, then this would be more likely.

Having said all of the above, the game needs to really sparkle, as you suggest. I also feel you need a "Game development plan", where it is launched as is, but with clear vision for longevity.

Take, for instance, the Fluxx card game. It was launched as a single card game, but they now have an Eco version. They are even selling blank cards for people to fill in with their own ideas. The on-line card game of the moment is Legends of Norrath http://legendsofnorrath.station. sony.com/ You can play it for free, but it's not very long before you'll want to part company with £10, if you enjoy the game.

Recent analysis of the games industry has advised that games producers should not launch their product with everything available to a player on Day 1. They need to incentivise continuing play. In some ways even NED does this by saying until you have 10 feedback you can't start a new thread! So my recommendation would be to not offer tournament play until perhaps a customer had earned a new playing piece. You would then not allow that customer to use that piece (or gain any future more powerful pieces) without committing a small fee for this additional service.

Appreciating that this might require a game rule adjustment, which requires research and balancing, but this is worth it if you can extract $10 from someone that could start the prize fund.