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[werothegreat]

A few people have expressed the opinion that Goko's, and now MF's, payment model just doesn't really work for Dominion.  What do you think it should be?

[theright555J]

Well, for a version that actually works, if we could get that without changing anything then why do so? If the issue is that at the end of the day the reason the program has some shortcomings is that there just isn't enough revenue then a subscription service would probably work better.

[Schneau]

Do you mean "which model would you prefer", or "which model would better serve MF"? Those are very different questions.

[werothegreat]

Do you mean "which model would you prefer", or "which model would better serve MF"? Those are very different questions.

Bear in mind that a model that doesn't suit MF very well is going to be a model that runs all hope of a working Dominion Online into the ground, in all likelihood.

[LastFootnote]

Geez, more private polls!

Anyway, I prefer a model where you pay once for each expansion and you pay monthly. The caveat there is that the monthly cost should be cheap. I'm talking $1 per month. The expansions should also be no costlier than they were under Goko.

[werothegreat]

Geez, more private polls!

Anyway, I prefer a model where you pay once for each expansion and you pay monthly. The caveat there is that the monthly cost should be cheap. I'm talking $1 per month. The expansions should also be no costlier than they were under Goko.

How is this private?  There is literally a button that says "view results".  Unless you mean a poll that lets you see who voted for what, in which case, that's not something I'm ever going to do, ever.

[pubby]

MF wants to attract more casual players and I don't see a subscription-based model being friendly to that.

[Triumph44]

MF wants to attract more casual players and I don't see a subscription-based model being friendly to that.

Sure it is.  What if you have to pay after playing 100 games per 6 months, or something like that?   Leaves plenty of room for weekend players to get in a game with friends (or strangers, or bots), but if you're going to play a lot, you're going to have to cough up some $.  The model MF has been running under only makes sense if you think Dominion is a fad and people will get bored and the game will die off.  I don't think it's a fad - I think it's a half-step below the Great Games (Chess, Poker, Go, etc.) in terms of perceived simplicity but actual complexity, with enough variation to make gameplay enjoyable even after several thousand games.  I won't always be as passionate about the game as I am now, and I've had some lulls in my passion since finding it in early 2013, but it's a game I anticipate playing for the rest of my life.  I don't expect I'll get much resistance to that idea around here.  They should be making a site that is both welcoming to the new gamer while recognizing that this game has a loyal fanbase willing to pay for a site that honors the game.     

[jaketheyak]

I think the problem with any kind of subscription model is that it's very hard to avoid an expectation of new content.
The issue is that there comes a point at which you have paid more than you would have paid if there was instead a single up-front cost.

Okay, if they charge only $1/month you don't reach that point for about 4 years (based on current prices).
However, if the current model isn't sustainable, charging nothing up front and only $1/month is not going to save it.

So, instead I'm paying, say, $3 a month to play Dominion online.
In a little over a year I have paid more than I would have paid if I had just bought all the cards up front.
Except I don't get anything more for my money because Donald X. isn't spending his day coming up with new cards.

At what point do you think I become angry that I have to make a recurring payment just to keep playing a game that has no new content on any foreseeable horizon?
Is it after I have paid $50?
$100?
When do I decide that my money is better spent on new games or on a subscription game that actually brings out new content on a regular basis?

Honestly, the best way to improve revenue is to get the game working and then get it up on Steam for $20.

[Triumph44]

I think the problem with any kind of subscription model is that it's very hard to avoid an expectation of new content.
The issue is that there comes a point at which you have paid more than you would have paid if there was instead a single up-front cost.

Okay, if they charge only $1/month you don't reach that point for about 4 years (based on current prices).
However, if the current model isn't sustainable, charging nothing up front and only $1/month is not going to save it.

So, instead I'm paying, say, $3 a month to play Dominion online.
In a little over a year I have paid more than I would have paid if I had just bought all the cards up front.
Except I don't get anything more for my money because Donald X. isn't spending his day coming up with new cards.

At what point do you think I become angry that I have to make a recurring payment just to keep playing a game that has no new content on any foreseeable horizon?
Is it after I have paid $50?
$100?
When do I decide that my money is better spent on new games or on a subscription game that actually brings out new content on a regular basis?

Honestly, the best way to improve revenue is to get the game working and then get it up on Steam for $20.

You get the ability to play the game online.  If you don't play it, then go ahead and cancel, because again, under my theoretical model, you're still permitted to play X number of games over Y period of time without paying.  I'm also not saying they should abandon the present model of paying for expansions, as I think this is also a fine idea (I think I really enjoyed ramping up the sets slowly, purchasing only the ones I or friends had purchased IRL, until we got them all - the notion of paying a lump sum and getting 8-9 expansions out of the gate just seems nuts to me).  Regardless, they should just leave the prices for those as is (or make it lower) and add this in as well.  Doubling the prices for the game seems like a bad idea, but who knows, lots of things I think are bad ideas work.

I have to confess I don't really know much about the economics of online games or things of this nature, but it just doesn't seem to make sense that the only time you pay is when you pay for the sets and then that's it, for the rest of your life, even though they're running servers and sussing out bugs and whatnot.  Your post implies, given the model you've laid out, that this is like any other game, you play it for a while, and then you stop, probably, and you move on to something else.  I just don't think of this game that way.

(I must note that this may just be Stockholm Syndrome based on the unbearably awful Goko site, that I pray that my captors fare well)

[jaketheyak]

under my theoretical model, you're still permitted to play X number of games over Y period of time without paying

I didn't really examine your model that closely, but if you only pay once you reach a certain capped number of games most casual gamers will simply stop playing when they reach that cap.
There is something quite off-putting about a model that was free yesterday, free today, then oops... you're over an arbitrary cap and now we want you to pay.
Even though it can be quite generous and you are getting a lot for nothing, it really feels like you're being tricked or swindled into paying for something that, until that point, you were used to getting for free.

I have to confess I don't really know much about the economics of online games or things of this nature, but it just doesn't seem to make sense that the only time you pay is when you pay for the sets and then that's it, for the rest of your life, even though they're running servers and sussing out bugs and whatnot.  Your post implies, given the model you've laid out, that this is like any other game, you play it for a while, and then you stop, probably, and you move on to something else.  I just don't think of this game that way.

Well, the issue is that whilst it isn't like buying a single-player game, it's not anything like buying an MMO either.

Have a look at the list of all the multiplayer games available on Steam.
Apart from any MMOs, how many require you to pay a monthly subscription?
What do you think would happen to the player base if Blizzard announced that you have to start paying a monthly subscription to continue playing Star Craft 2 online?

People have been willing to pay monthly subscriptions for games like WoW largely because there is an understanding that server costs are high, but also because new content is released on an ongoing basis.
Server costs for an online card game should be relatively low (especially once they sort out using local storage for game artifacts) and, like I said, new content is going to be pretty damn scarce for Dominion.
And, ultimately, fewer and fewer people are willing to pay monthly fees for even games like WoW as, for better or worse, more and more of these games move to a F2P model.

Doubling the prices for the game seems like a bad idea, but who knows, lots of things I think are bad ideas work.

The current lowest price for all the expansions is $45.
So, putting it on Steam for $20 is not doubling the price.

My point is that if they can get the game out to a larger audience via Steam, they can charge a fraction of what they currently charge and still make a lot more money.
But the game needs to work first.

[blueblimp]

Like jaketheyak says, a subscription model simply wouldn't generate much revenue at prices people say they would pay. Imagine if a subscription really did cost $1 per month. Then a player would need to subscribe for 90 months (7 and a half years!) to equal the price of buying all expansions (if they indeed cost $90 total now).

If the Dominion Online client quality weren't crap, I think Goko could have got away with charging a lot more than they did. There's a lot of content among all the expansions. $200+ would not be crazy for everything. Compare to Hearthstone, which costs more than that if you want everything, and although that game has more cards (566 collectible cards vs Dominion's 236 kingdom cards), a lot of them are uninteresting, so subjectively Dominion may actually have more content. Hearthstone definitely has higher production values though, which makes it feel like it should cost more, but my uninformed guess is that the bling (voice acting, good animations, etc.) actually doesn't add all that much onto the game production cost.

Kinda interesting to imagine a parallel universe where Dominion got a Hearthstone-level computer treatment, with the higher price that goes along with that. Maybe there's still an opportunity there for someone to do a computer-native deckbuilder at that price point.

[Beyond Awesome]

Like jaketheyak says, a subscription model simply wouldn't generate much revenue at prices people say they would pay. Imagine if a subscription really did cost $1 per month. Then a player would need to subscribe for 90 months (7 and a half years!) to equal the price of buying all expansions (if they indeed cost $90 total now).

Actually, I don't this statement is true. $1 seems like less than $90 to most people and if they get 10X people to subscribe rather than buy expansions then they have actually made more money than just selling the sets for $90. A subscription service would work if you can get a good amount of people to sign up. $90 is a huge deterrent for a lot of people. Your average PS4 game costs $60 and that has better graphics, and well everything pretty much.

[GendoIkari]

I think the current payment model would be fine IF they had a fully completed product before asking for money. After all, what they have is exactly the same as IRL Dominion, which works fine. The difference is that IRL Dominion was feature complete and bug free before it went on sale. Here the problem is that people are paying for something that they hope will improve over time. And that doesn't work because then they've already got your money, so no incentive to improve. So I say use the current model, but make it free (call it beta, beta should be free anyway!) until the program is actually fully complete, so people aren't paying now for something they hope to have someday.

[Awaclus]

I think they should most certainly keep the base game completely free. People tend to lose interest in stuff as soon as they have to pay for it, even if it's just $1/month or something. Instead, they could have ads at least for the base-only players, but possibly for everyone else as well — not during the game because that would be annoying, but people wouldn't mind them too much in the lobby and while the game is loading. I mean, we would complain for sure, but it wouldn't stop anyone from playing. And the game does seem to have a lot of non-paying players, so that would be a pretty good way of profiting from them.

[Chris is me]

Why not both? $10 a month to play all the expansions, or $90 to buy all the expansions. Let people try out the "full" game without having to fork over so much money, *and* let people own the game without a recurring monthly fee. Who loses here?

[Awaclus]

Also, I think they could start having tournaments with entry fees and rewards for the best performing players. For example, it costs 20 Gokoins (because I forgot what the new currency was called) to enter a 8-player tournament, winner gets 100 Gokoins and second place gets 50 Gokoins or something like that — so that some Gokoins are removed from the system with every tournament and the rewards are appealing enough for the winners. There should be some incentive for people who already have all of the expansions to enter these tournaments as well; maybe just more stuff (i.e. stuff that looks cool but doesn't actually do anything) being purchasable with Gokoins, or maybe they could come up with something else if that doesn't seem to be enough.

[LastFootnote]

Why not both? $10 a month to play all the expansions, or $90 to buy all the expansions. Let people try out the "full" game without having to fork over so much money, *and* let people own the game without a recurring monthly fee. Who loses here?

I love Dominion, but I will not pay $10 per month to play it online. I'll just play it IRL when I get the chance. $10 is what you might pay for access to a whole slew of games, and even then I'd balk.

[Kirian]

under my theoretical model, you're still permitted to play X number of games over Y period of time without paying

I didn't really examine your model that closely, but if you only pay once you reach a certain capped number of games most casual gamers will simply stop playing when they reach that cap.
There is something quite off-putting about a model that was free yesterday, free today, then oops... you're over an arbitrary cap and now we want you to pay.

This is the model that Candy Crush and similar games use.  CC alone rakes in something like a million bucks a day.

[Triumph44]

Addressing 2 points made above: 

A:  I think the ideal model is where you have to buy the expansions (for the prices they were at before the Beta or possibly lower than that) and also have to pay a nominal yearly fee once you reach a certain games played threshold.  This keeps the active players funding the site.

B:  I imagine Blizzard already has servers devoted to their MMOs and can just use that infrastructure for StarCraft, so there's less cost associated with running servers for SC because they already have to run them for other stuff.  StarCraft is like Dominion in that it's a game that has taken on a very competitive life of its own, and to take that away for a cash grab would be sort of silly.  The thing is that Blizzard makes other games that they can promote this way through StarCraft.  I don't think MakingFun does.

[SwitchedFromStarcraft]

Do you mean "which model would you prefer", or "which model would better serve MF"? Those are very different questions.

Bear in mind that a model that doesn't suit MF very well is going to be a model that runs all hope of a working Dominion Online into the ground, in all likelihood.

Based on the available data, it's not a stretch to think all hope is already lost, as it regards MF anyway.
I hold out hope that a contract will expire, or something else will occur to trigger a mechanism that gives Jay a chance to license it to somebody else, and we are able to convince Doug that he should change his mind.  His system works.

[theright555J]

I think they should most certainly keep the base game completely free. People tend to lose interest in stuff as soon as they have to pay for it, even if it's just $1/month or something. Instead, they could have ads at least for the base-only players, but possibly for everyone else as well — not during the game because that would be annoying, but people wouldn't mind them too much in the lobby and while the game is loading. I mean, we would complain for sure, but it wouldn't stop anyone from playing. And the game does seem to have a lot of non-paying players, so that would be a pretty good way of profiting from them.

Yeah you need a way to tap into the player base that doesn't pay anything.  I own all the sets (physical and online) but it should be pretty easy to get a game with someone who owns all the sets if you yourself don't.  Maybe add a feature that you can only be matched with players owning the same sets you do or something...so if you don't buy in, you're literally just playing base only games.

[Triumph44]

I think they should most certainly keep the base game completely free. People tend to lose interest in stuff as soon as they have to pay for it, even if it's just $1/month or something. Instead, they could have ads at least for the base-only players, but possibly for everyone else as well — not during the game because that would be annoying, but people wouldn't mind them too much in the lobby and while the game is loading. I mean, we would complain for sure, but it wouldn't stop anyone from playing. And the game does seem to have a lot of non-paying players, so that would be a pretty good way of profiting from them.

Yeah you need a way to tap into the player base that doesn't pay anything.  I own all the sets (physical and online) but it should be pretty easy to get a game with someone who owns all the sets if you yourself don't.  Maybe add a feature that you can only be matched with players owning the same sets you do or something...so if you don't buy in, you're literally just playing base only games.

I think Goko was right to allow people to match up with players who don't own all the sets, because A:  this is how real life works, you don't have to own a copy of Dominion: Intrigue to play it with your friend, he or she could own it and B:  if you don't own all the sets online, you are probably going to be at a large disadvantage against people who do.  One of the few things I like about the Beta is the presence of matchups based on sets owned.  I know people would name their room like Seaside + Base or whatever back on Goko, but I think it helps the game long-term to be able to play with people who are both near your skill level in terms of rating and in terms of cards known.

[blueblimp]

I think they should most certainly keep the base game completely free. People tend to lose interest in stuff as soon as they have to pay for it, even if it's just $1/month or something. Instead, they could have ads at least for the base-only players, but possibly for everyone else as well — not during the game because that would be annoying, but people wouldn't mind them too much in the lobby and while the game is loading. I mean, we would complain for sure, but it wouldn't stop anyone from playing. And the game does seem to have a lot of non-paying players, so that would be a pretty good way of profiting from them.

Yeah you need a way to tap into the player base that doesn't pay anything.  I own all the sets (physical and online) but it should be pretty easy to get a game with someone who owns all the sets if you yourself don't.  Maybe add a feature that you can only be matched with players owning the same sets you do or something...so if you don't buy in, you're literally just playing base only games.

One of the business purposes of having non-paying players is to provide somebody for the paying players to play against, so I don't think this would be wise.

[jaketheyak]

A:  I think the ideal model is where you have to buy the expansions (for the prices they were at before the Beta or possibly lower than that) and also have to pay a nominal yearly fee once you reach a certain games played threshold.  This keeps the active players funding the site.

You have to pay for the game, pay for the expansions and pay an ongoing subscription.

Man, I feel like I'm flogging a dead horse here, but you're describing the payment model of WoW.
A payment model that WoW itself is increasingly shifting away from as more players reject it.

You seriously think this payment model would work for an online card game?
I am seriously struggling to find words to describe just how effective this model would be at driving away potential players.

B:  I imagine Blizzard already has servers devoted to their MMOs and can just use that infrastructure for StarCraft, so there's less cost associated with running servers for SC because they already have to run them for other stuff.  StarCraft is like Dominion in that it's a game that has taken on a very competitive life of its own, and to take that away for a cash grab would be sort of silly.  The thing is that Blizzard makes other games that they can promote this way through StarCraft.  I don't think MakingFun does.

Okay, I need to stop using megolithic companies like Blizzard as a comparison.

Seriously, look through this list of multiplayer games on Steam.
There's a huge number of multiplayer games from developers big, small and tiny.
How many of them require a monthly or yearly subscription to play multiplayer?
Aside from maybe a handful in the MMO category, the answer is basically none of them.

This is the space in which Dominion is competing.

You have to put aside your own love of Dominion.
Obviously most people on this forum would be willing to pay a monthly fee to play a game they all love.
But we're a captive audience.

If MF actually want to make money, I say again, the way to do it is to fix the game, slash the price and sell a million copies on Steam.

[LastFootnote]

The problem is that digital Dominion has two (potential) audiences. There's some overlap—people who would play both—but mostly it's pretty clean cut.

The first audience is casual mobile gamers. If you're trying to cater to that audience, you want an application that runs natively on iOS and Android. For this audience:

• Production values are important, including graphics, sound, animations, and other interface details.
• The expansions don't need to be released all at once.
• It's not important to have post-game logs (or even an always-visible side log), though a leaderboard might be nice.
• Offline play against an AI is a must.

The payment model that makes sense here would be a very cheap app ($0 to $5), and very cheap expansions ($1 for Guilds, $2 for Prosperity, $3 for Dark Ages). No subscription fee.

The second audience (that's us!) treats Dominion like chess. If you're trying to cater to that audience, you want a web-based application. For this audience:

• Production values are a very low priority.
• The expansions should all be available.
• Post-game logs and the ability to collect statistics is paramount.
• An AI need not exist at all.

The payment model that makes sense here is a monthly or yearly subscription that gives you access to all published cards.

Goko tried to satisfy both camps, but they couldn't get their app into the mobile marketplace and their payment system was the wrong one for the audience they did get. In a baffling turn of events, Making Fun is now attempting the same thing.

If I were Jay, I would partner with a company like Playdek to make the mobile version for casual players. Then I would partner with Doug to set up a subscription for isotropic Dominion ($1 or $2 per month). Or if that's too much hassle, just let isotropic be free again, financed by donations. It really poses zero financial threat when it comes to the audience that Dominion Online should be pursuing, which is casual gamers on mobile devices.

[Donald X.]

If I were Jay, I would partner with a company like Playdek to make the mobile version for casual players. Then I would partner with Doug to set up a subscription for isotropic Dominion ($1 or $2 per month). Or if that's too much hassle, just let isotropic be free again, financed by donations. It really poses zero financial threat when it comes to the audience that Dominion Online should be pursuing, which is casual gamers on mobile devices.

Well we will be interested in this advice if things don't work out with MF, however 1) Someone just like Playdek, I forget if it was them, didn't get the job back when because they wanted to do Farmville Dominion, and 2) I find it hard to believe that there aren't a bunch of people who want to casually play Dominion on a full-on computer. I am okay with calling it three audiences: casual device, casual PC, serious.

MF ultimately has to pay for their work and servers. I don't know what their costs are but I know what online Dominion has made through 2014, because I get a % of the take. It has not made anywhere near enough to pay for one guy's salary for the time period they've been working on it. So: it's all a gamble so far, all the hope that they will actually make real money in the future.

To make that money it seems to me, not a businessman, that they need subscriptions. If they sell expansions flat-out I think that has to be for enough that most people are getting the subscription instead. I don't know what reasonable prices would be for anything, I am not in that world. I buy console games. I don't know what servers actually cost to run; maybe they are so cheap that no, you can just sell expansions.

So anyway, I expect they plan to sell subscriptions. And I happen to know they were interested in that path when we talked about this man whenever that was, a year ago? I don't know what full form that will take, what the set of options will be or anything. I think whatever they have now is the random output of putting out a public beta without being ready. Edit: I should be clear, I mean the lack of options; they totally may be planning on those prices for non-subscriptions. If those are no good for you (in a hypothetical world where the program is finished), that is all stuff to complain to them directly about.

[SwitchedFromStarcraft]

...It has not made anywhere near enough to pay for one guy's salary for the time period they've been working on it.

That is not a good sign.  At some point, someone will take a look at the burn rate for cash, and decide to quit throwing good money after bad.  I wonder by what internal metric they are measuring what they might view as progress.

[LastFootnote]

Well we will be interested in this advice if things don't work out with MF, however 1) Someone just like Playdek, I forget if it was them, didn't get the job back when because they wanted to do Farmville Dominion

"Someone just like Playdek"? I do not currently own any Playdek apps, but from what I can see, the only in-app purchases available for their games are expansions. I seriously doubt that "someone just like Playdek" wanted to turn Dominion into Farmville. And even if they did, clearly they are willing and able to make card game adaptations that are not Farmville, having made lots of them and—as far as I can tell—zero Farmvilles. They have done lots and lots of adaptations of Dominion "clones" (Ascension, Nightfall, Tanto Cuore), which you can count as a point for or against them. Or both.

[Donald X.]

"Someone just like Playdek"? I do not currently own any Playdek apps, but from what I can see, the only in-app purchases available for their games are expansions. I seriously doubt that "someone just like Playdek" wanted to turn Dominion into Farmville. And even if they did, clearly they are willing and able to make card game adaptations that are not Farmville, having made lots of them and—as far as I can tell—zero Farmvilles. They have done lots and lots of adaptations of Dominion "clones" (Ascension, Nightfall, Tanto Cuore), which you can count as a point for or against them. Or both.

We are just headed into "what bad things can I think to say about companies I might end up working with" territory. At the time Jay signed with Funsockets, the competition was some people who'd said "Farmville" and then "oh okay not that" when we said no to that, according to what I was told. I never spoke with them directly, whoever they were, and I'm not checking who they were. Of course then Funsockets turned out to secretly also want Farmville.

[werothegreat]

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that they need to first off, make a functioning product, then throw it up on Steam for a set price.  People prefer to pay for something once, rather than once a month, even if that single payment would be equivalent to more than a year of subscription.  And in that case, MF would get more money anyway.

And I'm just gonna say right now, $90 is not that price.  Great PC games with far more replay value than even Dominion sell for usually at most $50, and even that is pushing it.  Dominion, expansions and all, is worth ~$20.  Throw that up on Steam, get free advertising from competent players who support your fully functioning product, and they should be fine.  And if future expansions come along, throw them up as $1 DLC's.  Adventures could be the first of those.

[Donald X.]

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that they need to first off, make a functioning product, then throw it up on Steam for a set price.  People prefer to pay for something once, rather than once a month, even if that single payment would be equivalent to more than a year of subscription.  And in that case, MF would get more money anyway.

And I'm just gonna say right now, $90 is not that price.  Great PC games with far more replay value than even Dominion sell for usually at most $50, and even that is pushing it.  Dominion, expansions and all, is worth ~$20.  Throw that up on Steam, get free advertising from competent players who support your fully functioning product, and they should be fine.  And if future expansions come along, throw them up as $1 DLC's.  Adventures could be the first of those.

I see you like the angle of viewing the years I've poured into expansions as worthless. Super Mario Galaxy costs $60 or whatever; Super Mario Galaxy 2, that's a $1 DLC. I guess people must never make expansions for online things, since the public sees them as things owed to them rather than actual new products. We just need to call Adventures "Dominion 10" and then suddenly it can be worth buying.

When Magic online showed up, it was big news to everyone that it would in fact cost 100% as much for online nonexistent cards as for real cards. 100%! I am not making this up. In fact of course the digital booster packs cost more than real ones, because you could get a discount on real ones, but not on the digital ones. People said how insane this was, then bought them anyway. To this day that's what they cost.

The viewpoint Wizards of the Coast had, as I understand it, was that they couldn't risk hurting the physical product. If it were cheaper to play online, maybe people would stop supporting their incredible money machine. And well things worked out for them. It's an interesting story and I hope you enjoyed it.

Anyway where were we. $1 for Adventures? lol. It's not worth anyone's time to provide it at that price. It's not possibly selling enough copies to pay for the work, even if the work is easy and cheap. From my end, I'd much rather protect the physical product and just not have an online version.

[Kirian]

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that they need to first off, make a functioning product, then throw it up on Steam for a set price.  People prefer to pay for something once, rather than once a month, even if that single payment would be equivalent to more than a year of subscription.  And in that case, MF would get more money anyway.

And I'm just gonna say right now, $90 is not that price.  Great PC games with far more replay value than even Dominion sell for usually at most $50, and even that is pushing it.  Dominion, expansions and all, is worth ~$20.  Throw that up on Steam, get free advertising from competent players who support your fully functioning product, and they should be fine.  And if future expansions come along, throw them up as $1 DLC's.  Adventures could be the first of those.

$1 DLC?  Geez, man, Map Packs for Civ V have less content than a Dominion expansion, and those run for more than a buck even during the Steam ultra-sale.  I don't think anyone thinks $5-7 is an unreasonable price point for a standard-size Dominion expansion.  The question is whether $11.50 is a reasonable price point... and that's a matter of marketing.

When Magic online showed up, it was big news to everyone that it would in fact cost 100% as much for online nonexistent cards as for real cards. 100%! I am not making this up. In fact of course the digital booster packs cost more than real ones, because you could get a discount on real ones, but not on the digital ones. People said how insane this was, then bought them anyway. To this day that's what they cost.

The viewpoint Wizards of the Coast had, as I understand it, was that they couldn't risk hurting the physical product. If it were cheaper to play online, maybe people would stop supporting their incredible money machine. And well things worked out for them. It's an interesting story and I hope you enjoyed it.

I'm going to be absolutely honest and say that I cannot understand how this was even a thing that happened.  I mean, I know it happened, that's not in doubt, I just don't get it.  Then again, I can't imagine spending a hundred bucks on 36 boosters that might not even have enough cards to play a meaningful two-player game.

Now that I think about it, I can start to understand:  By the time MTGO came online, there were more hardcore players of MTG than there are current total (including casual) players of Dominion and other deckbuilders.  MTGO was also not competing with any other products, where Dominion Online most definitely is.  The "hardcore" base of Dominion consists of maybe, maybe a couple thousand people worldwide.  That's not enough to sustain a digital product, so Dominion Online has to be priced lower than physical retail.

MTG has a ridiculously outsized base to draw from.  Dominion--and Eurogames in general--don't.  Wizards could afford to gamble on that outsized base; RGG (and Mayfair, TMG, AEG, FFG, etc.) can't.

[Beyond Awesome]

FWIW, Magic also has a Steam game that costs $10 with lots of cards aimed at casual players. So, they are tapping both the casual market and hardcore market. I do think LF was 100% right with everything he said in his earlier post. The casual market is where the money is to be made and that is going to be through app purchases. iOS is a big thing these days with a huge, huge market, but people are used to paying a certain price point and that ain't $90.

[jaketheyak]

FTW, Magic also has a Steam game that costs $10 with lots of cards aimed at casual players. So, they are tapping both the casual market and hardcore market. I do think LF was 100% right with everything he said in his earlier post. The casual market is where the money is to be made and that is going to be through app purchases. iOS is a big thing these days with a huge, huge market, but people are used to paying a certain price point and that ain't $90.

I think going after the "app" market is probably where the biggest pitfall lies in coming up with a working payment model.
As LF said, the app market is used to paying less than $10 for a game and certainly less than that for add-ons.
And for a truly casual iOS or Android gamer, Dominion won't hold a lot more appeal than any other momentary diversion on their morning train.
So they aren't going to be willing to pay double figure amounts for expansions.

And, frankly, as a multiplayer game it's never going to work very well on mobile devices.
The intermittent nature of mobile coverage and the pick-up and put-down nature of playing on mobile devices mean that it has to be asynchronous multiplayer.
And, for Dominion, that is going to make games take an eternity.

So, really, as I and others have said, the focus really should be on getting the game working on Steam.
That's a platform where gamers are going to be more serious and much more used to paying a reasonable amount for a game.
$10-$20 per expansion would not be excessive and, if the game works well, you could end up selling huge volumes.

[blueblimp]

For a casual player, isn't base Dominion already pretty good? Add in, say, Seaside+Prosperity, and that's a lot of content, for about $20. The $90 number is irrelevant for casual players. For that matter, I (as with many people here) played 1000s of games on isotropic, which only had up to Hinterlands. That's proof that someone who plays a lot doesn't really need to spend $90 to get every expansion.

I think an appropriate comparison for price is to expandable card games like Hearthstone, even though it's a CCG and Dominion isn't. If you think all Dominion content ever made should cost $20 total, you will be blown away by how much Hearthstone content costs. A single random legendary card costs at least $4 on average--getting a specific one you want costs more like $16. Yep, getting one card you want costs more than an entire Dominion expansion under MF's new pricing model. (Hearthstone compensates for this by having generous rewards for daily play, so you can still accumulate a decent amount of content without paying.)

That's why I think $10-per-expansion (a more accurate way to present the price) is too low a price, not too high.

[jaketheyak]

Comparing to a freemium model like Hearthstone is problematic though.
Getting one specific card costs $16?
Well, sure, if you just want to pony up the cash.
On the other hand, if you play often enough (and are good enough) you can get that card for free.

Freemium games have a really perverse economy where only a tiny fraction of the player base ever actually pays anything.
According to an article from a couple of years ago, it was estimated that 70% of the players who had made it to (what was then) the final level of Candy Crush Saga had never paid a cent.
So, you're probably looking at maybe 10% of the total player base who ever put any cash into it.

These games make money only because 10% of 93 million daily Candy Crush players is still nearly 10 million people.
Hearthstone has 20 million players.

Anyway, my point is that you just can't compare Dominion to Hearthstone, because I just can't see a Hearthstone-style freemium model working for Dominion and you can't compare any fixed-price model to a freemium one.

[LastFootnote]

We are just headed into "what bad things can I think to say about companies I might end up working with" territory. At the time Jay signed with Funsockets, the competition was some people who'd said "Farmville" and then "oh okay not that" when we said no to that, according to what I was told. I never spoke with them directly, whoever they were, and I'm not checking who they were. Of course then Funsockets turned out to secretly also want Farmville.

If we are headed into "what bad things can you think to say about companies you might end up working with" territory, it's only because you're steering us there. I care not one whit which company/companies Jay talked to about an online version. Maybe he did talk to Playdek and maybe they did want a Farmville version. That 100% doesn't matter. My entire point is that there are good, native, non-Farmvile app versions of every popular board game that isn't Dominion. Clearly there are companies that are willing and able to make these adaptations.

It seems like your opinions about how much an online version should cost are based on some gut feeling about how much your work is worth. I can't speak for everyone here, but when I argue that Dominion Online should be cheaper, I'm not saying that because I'm undervaluing your work. I'm saying it because I believe it would be far more profitable at a lower price point. Obviously not enough people were willing to pay Goko's prices for the expansions. Why Making Fun thinks that hiking the price will increase their revenues is beyond me.

Is it idiotic that some people complain about the total price of all expansions? Yes, it is. But sticker shock is a real thing, and you can't fight human nature. One solution is to simply not offer all the expansions on the mobile version. Catan takes this route; the iOS version has Seafarers, Cities and Knights, some Scenarios thing, and then a bundle with all of them. I'm pretty sure there are more expansions for Catan, but that's all the mobile version has. If you do offer all expansions, don't have a big bundle for everything; nobody wants to see "$90" on the app store.

Here for your reference are some examples of the mobile board game market, taken from Apple's app store:

Catan: $4.99
  Seafarers: $4.99
  Cities and Knights: $4.99
  The new scenarios: $1.99
  All-expansions Bundle: $9.99

Carcassonne: $9.99
  River: $0.99
  Inns & Cathedrals: $1.99
  Traders & Builders: $1.99
  Princess & Dragon: $1.99
  Phantom: $0.99
  Double Base Tile Set: $0.99
  Winter: $1.99
  5th Anniversary Bundle: $4.99


Ticket to Ride: $1.99
  Ticket to Ride USA - 1910 Expansion: $0.99

Ticket to Ride Europe: $1.99
  Ticket to Ride - Switzerland: $0.99

Ascension: Free
  Return of the Fallen expansion: $1.99
  Storm of Souls expansion: $2.99
  Immortal Heroes expansion: $2.99
  Promo Pack 1: $0.99
  Promo Pack 2: $0.99
  Promo Pack 3: $0.99
  Bundle (contains the 6 things above): $6.99
  Rise of Vigil: $3.99
  Darkness Unleashed expansion: $2.99
  Realms Unraveled expansion: $2.99
  Promo Pack 4: $0.99

Ascension's payment model is closest to Dominoin's. Notice that no one thing costs more than $4 and the bundle costs $7. Each of Ascension's expansions costs at most 10% of its physical counterpart's MSRP.

[Polk5440]

To clarify the pricing, for Carcassonne, the Anniversary Bundle is all of the expansions together. So it's $15 for everything the game offers. Ticket to Ride also has bundles on various platforms.

[Polk5440]

I see you like the angle of viewing the years I've poured into expansions as worthless.

From a consumer's perspective, the years you pour into an expansion ARE worthless. What matters is the end demand for your product, not how much time and effort it took you personally to get there. Unless what you are selling is art and your personal story, not a game.

And this demand for your stuff absolutely depends on what other similar products are in the market and their price. You as a creator can choose not to create, or create something higher or lower quality, but you do not get to decide how much someone else values or demands what you do create.

Besides, as LF says, if you care about getting the maximal value and monetary recognition for your work, then you should care about maximizing profits, not price.

[werothegreat]

I'm willing to pay $40+ for physical expansions because I'm getting actual *stuff*.  Cards and tokens and mats and whatnot.  I understand that these are physical commodities and they have an expense on their own, and I also understand that your own effort means a lot.  But for a computer program, I'm paying for a few lines of code, some graphics, and some server space.  There's no physical anything involved, and if the internet goes down or the power goes out, I don't have anything.

As to your jibe that I don't care about all the effort you've put into it, I'm a writer.  I've spent the past year and a half writing almost two books now.  I'd love it if I could sell a novel for $10 or $20 a pop, but it's a buyers market out there for publishers, and I don't have the luxury of traditional publishing.  So I sell my book for $2.99 on Amazon because I know most people aren't going to be willing to pay much more than that for something intangible, even if I think I did a really good job writing it.  And even then it's hard to convince people to buy an e-book from an unknown author.  You are a known name with a hotly desired product.  I really don't think you have anything to complain about here.

[Donald X.]

It seems like your opinions about how much an online version should cost are based on some gut feeling about how much your work is worth.

I have not expressed an opinion there other than "not $1 for Adventures" and "I'm not in that world and don't know what prices are reasonable."

Obv. the online version can be looked at from my perspective as just extra money on top of the rest, provided that it doesn't lower demand for the physical product; except, work is put into it too, and that work has to be paid for or it isn't worth doing (except of course for the love of doing that work).

Why Making Fun thinks that hiking the price will increase their revenues is beyond me.

I don't know that they do. They may for example be hoping people will subscribe but preserving a non-subscription option, while not actually having added the ability to subscribe yet.

Funsockets initially had prices twice as high. That was their guess, based on who knows what. And f.ds said no and they cut the prices in half. Then died. Dunno how related that is. The point was that MF isn't the first entity to arrive at these prices.

Catan: $4.99

We are talking about intellectual property. As opposed to, say, chairs. A chair has a particular cost to producing it - materials, work, shipping. You have to pay at least that much or it isn't worth it to sell you the chair. If we can produce in volume we can get the cost down but only to a point. I am not trying to be patronizing, I'm just saying all the words that make the point.

Intellectual property is much different. The costs are almost all just the up-front cost of time spent making the thing. The cost of one-time bandwidth use is very small. At some point it's worth selling someone, who won't pay more, access to that intellectual property for almost nothing. This is in the sans-servers situation; I don't know what servers cost but that's a continual cost, such that the sensible thing to an outsider like me is to charge for it continually. In practice maybe the cost is so small that you don't have to, I don't know.

So then, a big thing about intellectual property is, how popular is it. The base cost of a copy of Super Mario Galaxy is small; they are charging for the huge amount of work that went into it, the people who put in the hours. At some point that work is paid for and the rest is profit. But it all depends on popularity. If no-one wants Super Mario Galaxy, it has no way to recoup its costs. At some point it's expensive and breaks even. But if it's massively popular it can be cheap and still rake in cash.

I always think of being a songwriter in the Star Wars universe. Instead of an audience of millions or billions of people, it's, you know, some larger number. You put in just as much work but there's this huge audience and it's intellectual property.

Intellectual property should not work like this. Just an aside.

So anyway, you want to compare Settlers to Dominion, well Settlers is massively more popular and so can be cheaper. You also aren't showing me there if they are losing money on these products but using them as promotion or what.

From my perspective, I am seeing the hours that went into the product, the hours that aren't mine (though I have sure wasted some time on the online versions) and the low demand for the product. And when someone says "they should cost $1" and I say "no" that's not me saying "therefore $10 is the perfect price" or any such thing. The internet isn't good at seeing that but there it is.

[Donald X.]

Besides, as LF says, if you care about getting the maximal value and monetary recognition for your work, then you should care about maximizing profits, not price.

From my perspective, the best value, recognizing that money isn't the only thing worth having, would have been for there never to have been any online versions. The money has been a joke but it would need to be amazing to matter. The interactions with the community have sucked utterly. The work spent on the online versions has been extremely unrewarding. If I had it to do again I would have zero to do with it and my answer to questions about it would be "nothing to do with me."

[Donald X.]

I really don't think you have anything to complain about here.

You, werothegreat, are the thing I have to complain about. I can solve that problem of course; I can just not look. It's a proven solution and everything.

[-Stef-]

Dominion is a great game. I'm convinced that if half the love that went into designing Dominion could be put into building an online version that would be very popular and therefore also could be quite cheap. Instead we're stuck with a horrible thing that has to be super expensive to make up for being so bad.

[LastFootnote]

I agree with "not $1 for Adventures". If it were me (and of course I am not a buisnessman) I would probably set these prices:

Dominion: $5
  Intrigue: $3
  Seaside: $3
  Prosperity: $3
  Hinterlands: $3
  Alchemy: $2
  Cornucopia: $2
  Guilds: $2
  Mini-expansion Bundle (Alchemy, Cornucpia, and Guilds): $5
  Dark Ages: $4
  Adventures Kingdom Cards: $4
  Adventures Events Pack 1: $1
  Adventures Events Pack 2: $1
  Adventures Bundle: $5

Again, this is for a theoretical mobile-only version, not for a PC-based version, which you could somehow charge more for despite an equivalent amount of work (probably because there's less demand for it).

The assumption I am making is that a good mobile version, available on the Apple app store and whatever Android's equivalent is, would sell far, far better than the web-based game we currently have. I have no data, but it seems trivially true. When Goko first came out lo these many years ago, I heard nothing from BGG other than, "Where's my offline app!?" Those people still want their offline app.

So anyway, you want to compare Settlers to Dominion, well Settlers is massively more popular and so can be cheaper.

I think that's backwards. Settlers is a pretty expensive app. Ascension is less popular than Dominion and cheaper. You can charge more for popularity/quality.

[Donald X.]

I would probably set these prices:

And how much for Super Mario Galaxy 2?

To me that's the crux of this comparison between expansions and the main set. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is just more Super Mario Galaxy. It's the same game with a few polishes and new levels. But it's billed as a game, a full-on game to be charged for. It cost $60 or whatever just like Super Mario Galaxy. You could bill it as DLC instead and then you'd have to charge way less. I can see why they didn't do that.

Seaside isn't somehow less of a product than Dominion. In fact it's more of a product than Dominion. It's better really across the board. And more work went into it. To me Seaside isn't DLC for Dominion; it's Super Mario Galaxy 2. You want it to be cheaper and well that makes no sense to me. All I can be convinced of there is that they should all be billed as spin-offs.

So anyway, you want to compare Settlers to Dominion, well Settlers is massively more popular and so can be cheaper.

I think that's backwards. Settlers is a pretty expensive app. Ascension is less popular than Dominion and cheaper. You can charge more for popularity/quality.

Ascension schmension. You are not swaying me with any argument about Ascension, find a different game to harp on.

It's intellectual property; the more popular it is the less you have to charge. Look around in the world for endless examples of popular cheap things and expensive niche items. The popularity and being intellectual property lets you charge less; popularity can also let you charge more and people charge what they can but that's the wrong lesson here. The entire board game industry is an example; board games would be much cheaper if they were much more popular. Compare pricing on Monopoly and a euro with similar components; Monopoly is the more popular game but is much cheaper.

[GendoIkari]

Seaside isn't somehow less of a product than Dominion. In fact it's more of a product than Dominion. It's better really across the board. And more work went into it. To me Seaside isn't DLC for Dominion; it's Super Mario Galaxy 2. You want it to be cheaper and well that makes no sense to me.

Does the fact that you must own the base set in order to use Seaside not come into play?

[werothegreat]

I really don't think you have anything to complain about here.

You, werothegreat, are the thing I have to complain about. I can solve that problem of course; I can just not look. It's a proven solution and everything.

There's no need to be antagonistic here.

Okay, $1 may have been a bit low.  This is why I'm not setting these prices, and why I go with Amazon's recommended pricing for my book.  But I can at least tell when something is more expensive than it should be.  Effort =/= cost.  Product = cost.  George R. R. Martin may spend 5 years each on his books, but that doesn't mean he can charge more per page than Stephen King, who pumps those babies out twice a year or some nonsense like that.  If you're worried about Dominion not being popular enough, and thus needing to be more expensive to recoup the cost, I think you're looking at it the wrong way.  A higher price is not the way to get someone who doesn't know about your game to buy it.  A competitive price is.  MF needs to scale their prices to similar products, or they're not going to sell anything.  isotropic didn't get so many players just because it was a good product - being free helped a lot.  And before you spew the whole "people like free pizza" argument again, you have to realize that what you think people should want does not reflect what they actually want.  If you don't cater to what your intended audience wants, they're not going to buy your product.  I think the fact that pretty much everyone on here and on MF's forums have balked at the $90 price tag is evidence enough of that.

[JW]

Does the fact that you must own the base set in order to use Seaside not come into play?

That's true IRL, but for electronic versions the sets could be purchased in any order and would all "come with the base cards" (assuming that the base set is not given away for free).

[LastFootnote]

I would probably set these prices:

And how much for Super Mario Galaxy 2?

To me that's the crux of this comparison between expansions and the main set. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is just more Super Mario Galaxy. It's the same game with a few polishes and new levels. But it's billed as a game, a full-on game to be charged for. It cost $60 or whatever just like Super Mario Galaxy. You could bill it as DLC instead and then you'd have to charge way less. I can see why they didn't do that.

They didn't do it because the Wii doesn't support DLC. But the WiiU does support DLC, so they did do it with New Super Luigi U. Crazy!

Seaside isn't somehow less of a product than Dominion. In fact it's more of a product than Dominion. It's better really across the board.

Yes, you're right. The base game should be at most $3. Maybe free.

Ascension schmension. You are not swaying me with any argument about Ascension, find a different game to harp on.

You can't fool me; I am not convincing you any which way! I might as well use Ascension as my example because it's the best example available. It's the closest analog to Dominion on the app store in terms of the structure of expansions, etc. Actually, I found out in my research that any Ascension expansion (not counting promo packs) can be played as a standalone. So their pricing model makes even less sense, and yet it seems to be working for them. If it wasn't working, they wouldn't keep adapting the expansions.

It's intellectual property; the more popular it is the less you have to charge. Look around in the world for endless examples of popular cheap things and expensive niche items. The popularity and being intellectual property lets you charge less; popularity can also let you charge more and people charge what they can but that's the wrong lesson here. The entire board game industry is an example; board games would be much cheaper if they were much more popular. Compare pricing on Monopoly and a euro with similar components; Monopoly is the more popular game but is much cheaper.

Man, you can argue all you want about how you think things are or should be. The examples I showed you are the reality of the mobile market. Those were not cherry-picked examples, either. I just thought of some famous games and searched for them. Each expansion wants to be in the "impulse buy" price range, not ever so slightly above it in the "I need to budget for this" price range.

I'm really confused about why you think Dominion needs to be more expensive than these other games. The good news is that if you're gauging Dominion's potential sales on the app store by Goko's sales, you're underestimating its appeal by a factor of at least 100.

[pacovf]

I am not entirely sure of why you are trying to convince Donald though. He has no say on MF's pricing strategy, as far as I can tell.

[LastFootnote]

I am not entirely sure of why you are trying to convince Donald though. He has no say on MF's pricing strategy, as far as I can tell.

Just having a conversation. But you're right, it's not a conversation we really need to have. I think I just have a certain amount of compulsion to post opinions.

[Donald X.]

Seaside isn't somehow less of a product than Dominion. In fact it's more of a product than Dominion. It's better really across the board. And more work went into it. To me Seaside isn't DLC for Dominion; it's Super Mario Galaxy 2. You want it to be cheaper and well that makes no sense to me.

Does the fact that you must own the base set in order to use Seaside not come into play?

Once they were all going to be standalones. BGG didn't like it so only Intrigue is. Of course if you know the rules the large sets all stand alone provided you have Base Cards - and were designed to stand alone - and online we give you the base cards.

[Donald X.]

I really don't think you have anything to complain about here.

You, werothegreat, are the thing I have to complain about. I can solve that problem of course; I can just not look. It's a proven solution and everything.

There's no need to be antagonistic here.

Okay, $1 may have been a bit low.  This is why I'm not setting these prices, and why I go with Amazon's recommended pricing for my book.  But I can at least tell when something is more expensive than it should be.  Effort =/= cost.  Product = cost.  George R. R. Martin may spend 5 years each on his books, but that doesn't mean he can charge more per page than Stephen King, who pumps those babies out twice a year or some nonsense like that.  If you're worried about Dominion not being popular enough, and thus needing to be more expensive to recoup the cost, I think you're looking at it the wrong way.  A higher price is not the way to get someone who doesn't know about your game to buy it.  A competitive price is.  MF needs to scale their prices to similar products, or they're not going to sell anything.  isotropic didn't get so many players just because it was a good product - being free helped a lot.  And before you spew the whole "people like free pizza" argument again, you have to realize that what you think people should want does not reflect what they actually want.  If you don't cater to what your intended audience wants, they're not going to buy your product.  I think the fact that pretty much everyone on here and on MF's forums have balked at the $90 price tag is evidence enough of that.

The key to not being trolled is to make sure your posts are shorter than the other person's. Here my post is quite short; phew, safe. Say whatever you want dude, even crazy stuff; for sure I don't need to argue about it with you.

[pacovf]

The key to not being trolled is to make sure your posts are shorter than the other person's. Here my post is quite short; phew, safe. Say whatever you want dude, even crazy stuff; for sure I don't need to argue about it with you.

I am sure you are aware of that fact, but accusing someone of trolling is in itself a form of trolling.

...Does this make me a meta-meta-troll? Now my head is hurting.

[Donald X.]

They didn't do it because the Wii doesn't support DLC. But the WiiU does support DLC, so they did do it with New Super Luigi U. Crazy!

You've got nothing here. Yes they have done DLC now. The DLC is much less work than the games they attach to. New Super Luigi U is not as much work-put-in/content as New Super Mario Bros U. And we don't know how that went for them, if they feel like they should have made it a separate game or what.

You can't fool me; I am not convincing you any which way! I might as well use Ascension as my example because it's the best example available.

In fact when you start talking about Dominion-inspired games, I just ignore everything you say about them. I don't want to hear it and don't have to. So, whether you can convince me of anything or not, you really can't that way. If I'm missing out on great arguments as a result I am cool with that.

Man, you can argue all you want about how you think things are or should be. The examples I showed you are the reality of the mobile market. Those were not cherry-picked examples, either. I just thought of some famous games and searched for them. Each expansion wants to be in the "impulse buy" price range, not ever so slightly above it in the "I need to budget for this" price range.

I don't understand why you say this. Monopoly isn't cherry-picking. Board games really actually truly are so expensive because they are so unpopular. And if I were talking about how I think things should be, it would be no relation to any of this; again intellectual property is handled very poorly by humanity at the moment. Income from intellectual property should not be proportional to the size of the population.

Sure all products want to be impulse-buy trick-people-into-getting-it-who-don't-want-it. I don't care about that and just try to make things I like but sure. These are "expansions" but really they're full-game-size full games. I have not convinced you of that and oh well.

I'm really confused about why you think Dominion needs to be more expensive than these other games. The good news is that if you're gauging Dominion's potential sales on the app store by Goko's sales, you're underestimating its appeal by a factor of at least 100.

Here you are again acting as if I have said what price online Dominion should cost, despite only saying "not $1 for Adventures" and those other things I said that weren't numbers. If you are just keying off of my comments on Settlers, well Settlers can afford to be cheaper-than-otherwise due to much-more-massive popularity, that was the point there.

Your numbers just don't tell me anything. If you want to say "they say what people will pay for online board games" well I can be convinced that really no-one should be making these products, that no-one can make money from them, that at best they're promotional money sinks. There's a Kingdom Builder app; let me tell you, it doesn't pay the rent. Making Fun has to pay people who live in the Bay Area; I can believe that's impossible with online versions of board games. It's sure not possible at what they've been pulling in.

[Donald X.]

The key to not being trolled is to make sure your posts are shorter than the other person's. Here my post is quite short; phew, safe. Say whatever you want dude, even crazy stuff; for sure I don't need to argue about it with you.

I am sure you are aware of that fact, but accusing someone of trolling is in itself a form of trolling.

...Does this make me a meta-meta-troll? Now my head is hurting.

At some point though, you can't make your post shorter than theirs, and so you become the trolled. me safe now tho

[Donald X.]

Just having a conversation. But you're right, it's not a conversation we really need to have. I think I just have a certain amount of compulsion to post opinions.

And by "certain" you mean gigantic. But it's a star attribute for forum posters. Or playtesters.

[Donald X.]

I'm here to look at some of your delightful numbers. Maybe they meant something after all; let's check 'em out.

Catan: $4.99
  Seafarers: $4.99
  Cities and Knights: $4.99
  The new scenarios: $1.99
  All-expansions Bundle: $9.99

Seafarers and Cities & Knights are both expansions full of content. They cost just as much as the main game; I approve. The main game is $5 and well Catan is a huge hit irl, dunno if you knew that.

Carcassonne: $9.99
  River: $0.99
  Inns & Cathedrals: $1.99
  Traders & Builders: $1.99
  Princess & Dragon: $1.99
  Phantom: $0.99
  Double Base Tile Set: $0.99
  Winter: $1.99
  5th Anniversary Bundle: $4.99

Carcassonne is really successful but still a pale shadow of Settlers, almost as if that explains it costing more. I don't know how Dominion compares to it these days - Carcassonne is older for one thing - but this is getting in the ballpark of Dominion's level of popularity. The expansions are very low-content tiny things, perhaps explaining why they priced them at 1/5 of the game's cost. Except Winter, I think that's just new art. And, from the title, "Double Base Tile Set" is well nothing. Man, no Catapult?

Ticket to Ride: $1.99
  Ticket to Ride USA - 1910 Expansion: $0.99

Ticket to Ride Europe: $1.99
  Ticket to Ride - Switzerland: $0.99

Here I don't know much. I don't have Ticket to Ride; I've played various traveling salesman games of Alan Moon's but not this game. I think the expansions are just a different board? And the game does not have a lot to it. However good it may be, it's not, from a real-life viewpoint, endless playtested cards, or, from a programming viewpoint, endless programmed cards. It is not those things, it is simple rules and cards with no functionality and a map of connections you can replace with a different map.

If I had to go by this data - which of course I don't and won't - then Carcassonne was the closest benchmark, although not its expansions, they are tiny, you heard it here. However Carcasonne and its expansions would be way faster to program than Dominion and its expansions.

[Cave-o-sapien]

The problem is that digital Dominion has two (potential) audiences. There's some overlap—people who would play both—but mostly it's pretty clean cut.

The first audience is casual mobile gamers. If you're trying to cater to that audience, you want an application that runs natively on iOS and Android. For this audience:

• Production values are important, including graphics, sound, animations, and other interface details.
• The expansions don't need to be released all at once.
• It's not important to have post-game logs (or even an always-visible side log), though a leaderboard might be nice.
• Offline play against an AI is a must.

The payment model that makes sense here would be a very cheap app ($0 to $5), and very cheap expansions ($1 for Guilds, $2 for Prosperity, $3 for Dark Ages). No subscription fee.

The second audience (that's us!) treats Dominion like chess. If you're trying to cater to that audience, you want a web-based application. For this audience:

• Production values are a very low priority.
• The expansions should all be available.
• Post-game logs and the ability to collect statistics is paramount.
• An AI need not exist at all.

The payment model that makes sense here is a monthly or yearly subscription that gives you access to all published cards.

Goko tried to satisfy both camps, but they couldn't get their app into the mobile marketplace and their payment system was the wrong one for the audience they did get. In a baffling turn of events, Making Fun is now attempting the same thing.

If I were Jay, I would partner with a company like Playdek to make the mobile version for casual players. Then I would partner with Doug to set up a subscription for isotropic Dominion ($1 or $2 per month). Or if that's too much hassle, just let isotropic be free again, financed by donations. It really poses zero financial threat when it comes to the audience that Dominion Online should be pursuing, which is casual gamers on mobile devices.

I'm sort of in both categories you describe. While I once played Dominion online like it was Chess, I'm not sure I can devote that much time to it any more. But I would certainly like to play it more than I'm currently able to face-to-face with my friends.

I would love to be able to squeeze in an offline game here or there on my phone, if for no other reason than to explore the card combination space.

It's frustrating and quite honestly baffling that no one seems to believe enough in the untapped mobile market to develop a version of Dominion for it.

[LastFootnote]

Man, you can argue all you want about how you think things are or should be. The examples I showed you are the reality of the mobile market. Those were not cherry-picked examples, either. I just thought of some famous games and searched for them. Each expansion wants to be in the "impulse buy" price range, not ever so slightly above it in the "I need to budget for this" price range.

I don't understand why you say this. Monopoly isn't cherry-picking.

I was not implying or even thinking that you were cherry-picking your examples. I'm not sure why I said it other than to confirm that no, I was not in fact intentionally messing with data in order to prove my own point.

I'm really confused about why you think Dominion needs to be more expensive than these other games. The good news is that if you're gauging Dominion's potential sales on the app store by Goko's sales, you're underestimating its appeal by a factor of at least 100.

Here you are again acting as if I have said what price online Dominion should cost, despite only saying "not $1 for Adventures" and those other things I said that weren't numbers. If you are just keying off of my comments on Settlers, well Settlers can afford to be cheaper-than-otherwise due to much-more-massive popularity, that was the point there.

Your numbers just don't tell me anything. If you want to say "they say what people will pay for online board games" well I can be convinced that really no-one should be making these products, that no-one can make money from them, that at best they're promotional money sinks. There's a Kingdom Builder app; let me tell you, it doesn't pay the rent. Making Fun has to pay people who live in the Bay Area; I can believe that's impossible with online versions of board games. It's sure not possible at what they've been pulling in.

Well I have no numbers on how whether these board game apps are profitable. It seems reasonable to assume that they are or there wouldn't be so many of them (there are a ton). But maybe they don't break even and are somehow used primarily to drive physical board game sales. That would imply that the board game publisher is paying the software company, which doesn't seem likely.

Physical board games would be cheaper if they were more popular, true. But a large part of that would be economies of scale. Economies of scale don't exist for digitally distributed software; there is effectively zero cost involved in "making" each copy. If halving the price of a digital thing more than doubles the number of buyers, then the price should be halved.

Just having a conversation. But you're right, it's not a conversation we really need to have. I think I just have a certain amount of compulsion to post opinions.

And by "certain" you mean gigantic. But it's a star attribute for forum posters. Or playtesters.

Believe it or not, I have, on more than one occasion, wanted to post a thing and then not posted that thing.

[pacovf]

Well I have no numbers on how whether these board game apps are profitable. It seems reasonable to assume that they are or there wouldn't be so many of them (there are a ton). But maybe they don't break even and are somehow used primarily to drive physical board game sales. That would imply that the board game publisher is paying the software company, which doesn't seem likely.

I remember reading an interview about Days of Wonder game apps (I think it was in the PA report? Shame that thing ended). They mentioned that they don't really make that much money out of the apps, but that it does drive up the sales of the physical copies. Days of Wonder are both editors and publishers of their games, IIRC, so that might change their approach.

Believe it or not, I have, on more than one occasion, wanted to post a thing and then not posted that thing.

but it burrrrrrnnnnnnsssss

[Donald X.]

Well I have no numbers on how whether these board game apps are profitable. It seems reasonable to assume that they are or there wouldn't be so many of them (there are a ton). But maybe they don't break even and are somehow used primarily to drive physical board game sales. That would imply that the board game publisher is paying the software company, which doesn't seem likely.

BSW was paid to program and host Dominion. They were fast too, I mean they had it up in weeks. People always contrast Doug with the Funsockets / Goko / MakingFun, and well I understand that, but make no mistake: BSW, also fast.

If halving the price of a digital thing more than doubles the number of buyers, then the price should be halved.

Yes, ignoring bandwidth costs which we normally can and barring potential negative effects on physical products which I have no data on; and if it won't, then it shouldn't be halved.

However this isn't actually just a digital thing; I don't know if server costs are "essentially nothing" or "man, something, they occupy space in a place with valuable real estate and require a guy to maintain them who rents an expensive apartment and eats out a lot." The formula isn't X times Y, that's the point; if servers are not free then double the buyers at half the price is in fact less money. Well unless they just buy it and never use it.

Believe it or not, I have, on more than one occasion, wanted to post a thing and then not posted that thing.

I've lapped you dude. I have written so many posts I then didn't post, where saying my thing about whatever fun topic didn't sound like fun if I had to then argue about it. I've deleted a paragraph from this very post (it was about economies of scale not being the whole story for board games being expensive but it's just not important).

[Ratsia]

From my perspective, the best value, recognizing that money isn't the only thing worth having, would have been for there never to have been any online versions.

Do you mean literally no online version for the public (that is, excluding playtesting), or no commercial online version?

The comment regarding the interaction with the community sucking can be interpreted in rather different ways depending on the answer. This community (which I hope you see as net positive thing despite some faults) would largely not exist without some online version, whereas I fully understand that the interaction regarding the commercial versions largely evolves around negative things that the small profit indeed could not compensate for.

[Cuzz]

It seems only reasonable that the online expansions should cost <10% of the physical sets. After all, I've only played several hundred times as many games and gotten several hundred times as much enjoyment from playing online as I have with the physical cards.

[GendoIkari]

The key to not being trolled is to make sure your posts are shorter than the other person's. Here my post is quite short; phew, safe. Say whatever you want dude, even crazy stuff; for sure I don't need to argue about it with you.

I am sure you are aware of that fact, but accusing someone of trolling is in itself a form of trolling.

...Does this make me a meta-meta-troll? Now my head is hurting.

At some point though, you can't make your post shorter than theirs, and so you become the trolled. me safe now tho

.

[pacovf]

The key to not being trolled is to make sure your posts are shorter than the other person's. Here my post is quite short; phew, safe. Say whatever you want dude, even crazy stuff; for sure I don't need to argue about it with you.

I am sure you are aware of that fact, but accusing someone of trolling is in itself a form of trolling.

...Does this make me a meta-meta-troll? Now my head is hurting.

At some point though, you can't make your post shorter than theirs, and so you become the trolled. me safe now tho

.

[SCSN]

I kind of like the "Arcade model", where you buy a bunch of credits and pay a (very) small amount per game, with the cost depending on how many/which expansions you want to use and possibly other factors.

It eliminates the fatal flaw of the current model that forces new players who want the full experience into going long on MF's DO lifespan, and it's more welcoming to players who play irregularly than a subscription model.

It also gives MF a clear incentive to improve the experience of existing players (better experience = more plays = more $), and to compensate the people who already paid they could give them more than their money's worth in playing credits, which I think most would accept given that it might well be the difference between a long-term healthy project and something that's going to die within a year or 2-3.

[GendoIkari]

I kind of like the "Arcade model", where you buy a bunch of credits and pay a (very) small amount per game, with the cost depending on how many/which expansions you want to use and possibly other factors.

It eliminates the fatal flaw of the current model that forces new players who want the full experience into going long on MF's DO lifespan, and it's more welcoming to players who play irregularly than a subscription model.

It also gives MF a clear incentive to improve the experience of existing players (better experience = more plays = more $), and to compensate the people who already paid they could give them more than their money's worth in playing credits, which I think most would accept given that it might well be the difference between a long-term healthy project and something that's going to die within a year or 2-3.

That sounds really bad. Some players have well over 12,000 games of online Dominion under their belt. To make this not insanely expensive, you'd have to charge less than $0.01 per game. And if you're charging less than a cent per game, you're not getting anything at all out of players who just want to try it out and only play once. Then in the competitive scene, it becomes almost a "pay to win" like MTG; players who can only afford to play a few games per week will have a huge disadvantage over players who can afford to play hundreds of games per week.

[SCSN]

I kind of like the "Arcade model", where you buy a bunch of credits and pay a (very) small amount per game, with the cost depending on how many/which expansions you want to use and possibly other factors.

It eliminates the fatal flaw of the current model that forces new players who want the full experience into going long on MF's DO lifespan, and it's more welcoming to players who play irregularly than a subscription model.

It also gives MF a clear incentive to improve the experience of existing players (better experience = more plays = more $), and to compensate the people who already paid they could give them more than their money's worth in playing credits, which I think most would accept given that it might well be the difference between a long-term healthy project and something that's going to die within a year or 2-3.

That sounds really bad. Some players have well over 12,000 games of online Dominion under their belt. To make this not insanely expensive, you'd have to charge less than $0.01 per game. And if you're charging less than a cent per game, you're not getting anything at all out of players who just want to try it out and only play once. Then in the competitive scene, it becomes almost a "pay to win" like MTG; players who can only afford to play a few games per week will have a huge disadvantage over players who can afford to play hundreds of games per week.

Why not find some ways to address these issues within the proposed model before outright dismissing it? You're a smart guy, I'm sure you can think something up.

[drsteelhammer]

I'm not sure if an arcade model is the right thing, since it discourages playing in a way. But I fully agree that people should get to experience the game properly before paying 90$.

My proposition would be that you can acitivate all the expansions for a few days to test them out. The only problem with that would be that it might be exploitable by creating new accounts over and over, but I'm sure you could circumvent that.

[LastFootnote]

I'm not sure if an arcade model is the right thing, since it discourages playing in a way. But I fully agree that people should get to experience the game properly before paying 90$.

My proposition would be that you can acitivate all the expansions for a few days to test them out. The only problem with that would be that it might be exploitable by creating new accounts over and over, but I'm sure you could circumvent that.

Another idea that avoids exploitation is just to have a certain number of expansion cards that are "free", and they cycle every day or week. Today Horse Traders, Menagerie, and Jester are publicly available. Tomorrow it's Graverobber, Poor House, and Sage.

[tailred]

I'm not sure if an arcade model is the right thing, since it discourages playing in a way. But I fully agree that people should get to experience the game properly before paying 90$.

My proposition would be that you can acitivate all the expansions for a few days to test them out. The only problem with that would be that it might be exploitable by creating new accounts over and over, but I'm sure you could circumvent that.

Another idea that avoids exploitation is just to have a certain number of expansion cards that are "free", and they cycle every day or week. Today Horse Traders, Menagerie, and Jester are publicly available. Tomorrow it's Graverobber, Poor House, and Sage.

Almost sounds League-of-Legends-ish.

[werothegreat]

I'm not sure if an arcade model is the right thing, since it discourages playing in a way. But I fully agree that people should get to experience the game properly before paying 90$.

My proposition would be that you can acitivate all the expansions for a few days to test them out. The only problem with that would be that it might be exploitable by creating new accounts over and over, but I'm sure you could circumvent that.

Another idea that avoids exploitation is just to have a certain number of expansion cards that are "free", and they cycle every day or week. Today Horse Traders, Menagerie, and Jester are publicly available. Tomorrow it's Graverobber, Poor House, and Sage.

Kind of like what Smite does with Gods.  Maybe MF could have expansions unlockable either through real money or some currency accrued through playing?  So you have the option to either grind however many hours before unlocking Seaside or whatever, or just say "fuck it" and pull out your wallet?

[Voltaire]

Kind of like what Smite does with Gods.  Maybe MF could have expansions unlockable either through real money or some currency accrued through playing?  So you have the option to either grind however many hours before unlocking Seaside or whatever, or just say "fuck it" and pull out your wallet?

I think this is a non-starter. Most people wouldn't pay, I suspect.

[Seprix]

Kind of like what Smite does with Gods.  Maybe MF could have expansions unlockable either through real money or some currency accrued through playing?  So you have the option to either grind however many hours before unlocking Seaside or whatever, or just say "fuck it" and pull out your wallet?

I think this is a non-starter. Most people wouldn't pay, I suspect.

I play enough Dominion to where I wouldn't do this.

[Awaclus]

Kind of like what Smite does with Gods.  Maybe MF could have expansions unlockable either through real money or some currency accrued through playing?  So you have the option to either grind however many hours before unlocking Seaside or whatever, or just say "fuck it" and pull out your wallet?

I think this is a non-starter. Most people wouldn't pay, I suspect.

Yeah, I don't think that would work. It works for the games that do this because those games are pay-to-win, and people pay because they want to win.

[LastFootnote]

Kind of like what Smite does with Gods.  Maybe MF could have expansions unlockable either through real money or some currency accrued through playing?  So you have the option to either grind however many hours before unlocking Seaside or whatever, or just say "fuck it" and pull out your wallet?

I think this is a non-starter. Most people wouldn't pay, I suspect.

Yeah, I don't think that would work. It works for the games that do this because those games are pay-to-win, and people pay because they want to win.

This isn't always true, but I agree that this model doesn't seem appropriate for Dominion.

[blueblimp]

Kind of like what Smite does with Gods.  Maybe MF could have expansions unlockable either through real money or some currency accrued through playing?  So you have the option to either grind however many hours before unlocking Seaside or whatever, or just say "fuck it" and pull out your wallet?

I think this is a non-starter. Most people wouldn't pay, I suspect.

Yeah, I don't think that would work. It works for the games that do this because those games are pay-to-win, and people pay because they want to win.

This is an over-simplified way of putting it. Yes some games are pay-to-win, but sometimes it's more like pay-for-variety. In Hearthstone for example, there are top-tier decks you can play at low cost, but most decks (strong or not) require a significant investment of either play time or money. Granted, there is an inherent advantage to having higher variety available to you, just because the maximum of n random numbers is greater than one random number. I still think it's misleading to call that pay-to-win, though.

I don't know whether a similar model of pay-for-variety could work for Dominion. I don't see why not though.

[funkdoc]

no way in hell would an arcade system work. i learned this from my background in fighting games - american arcades pretty much died in the late 90s-early 2000s.  they've lasted a lot longer in japan due to various geographical & cultural factors, but even there it's reaching the same point the US was at in the mid-90s.  pretty much the only american arcades that make money these days are the dave & buster's types (all casual carnival-esque games where you can win prizes, full restaurant & bar) and the "barcades" (actual good retro arcades that serve overpriced drinks & nostalgia).

it's just not an attractive prospect with a game you plan on playing a lot, which is why so many top players in fighting games now prefer to get their practice online and deal with the game-killing input lag that offers.  notice that the places i mentioned are meant to be one-time or occasional experiences, not stuff you grind on the regular.  for a while arcades could survive with games that offered an experience you couldn't get at home.  dance dance revolution was a big deal for a while...then guitar hero & rock band happened. gg arcades~

tl;dr i would compare it to renting movies/games as a fundamentally outdated model

[Donald X.]

From my perspective, the best value, recognizing that money isn't the only thing worth having, would have been for there never to have been any online versions.

Do you mean literally no online version for the public (that is, excluding playtesting), or no commercial online version?

The comment regarding the interaction with the community sucking can be interpreted in rather different ways depending on the answer. This community (which I hope you see as net positive thing despite some faults) would largely not exist without some online version, whereas I fully understand that the interaction regarding the commercial versions largely evolves around negative things that the small profit indeed could not compensate for.

I was referring to negative interactions over Goko etc. I wouldn't hang out here if it wasn't fun; then again I didn't have an f.ds-shaped hole in my life prior to these forums existing.

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it. He was happy to have people have it for a while, but not at that price. That is why you can't have nice things.

You can't realistically just stop online versions from existing though. Man, did Wizards ever get Apprentice shut down? It certainly was around for years, letting people somewhat play online Magic for free.

[Donald X.]

Another idea that avoids exploitation is just to have a certain number of expansion cards that are "free", and they cycle every day or week. Today Horse Traders, Menagerie, and Jester are publicly available. Tomorrow it's Graverobber, Poor House, and Sage.

We once talked about promoting expansions with a card-of-the-day or something. Of course they are already promoted by being able to play with someone else's cards. And I sprinkled in expansion cards into the main set campaign.

[blueblimp]

no way in hell would an arcade system work.

Hearthstone uses an arcade-style pay-per-play system for its arena mode. The way they make it playable for skilled players is that winning in arena gives you in-game currency that can be used to pay arena entrance fees. Players who are skilled enough can play forever without paying anything, but the rewards are calibrated so that not everyone can do that. (With a 50% win rate, you are refunded about 1/3rd of your entrance fee. 70% win rate gets you roughly a full refund, but the later games in one run are matched against players with similar win-loss records, so the games get harder.)

That said, I don't think anyone knows how much money Blizzard makes off of arena vs people buying card packs. My speculation is that they make more off of the card packs, simply because it's really simple for someone to spend $200+ on card packs if they have the money and want a sizeable collection quickly, but it would take a huge number of hours playing to spend nearly that much on arena.

[markusin]

On the topic of Hearthstone, it's worth mentioning that Hearthstone sells it's ~35 card expansions at $20 along with a campaign where you fight ~25 bosses to earn those cards. There is no way to get the expansion cards without buying the full expansion. You can also buy the expansions with 2-3 months of daily play worth of in-game gold, but the in-game gold to dollar ratio is significantly higher for those expansions than for packs.

Players fork over their money/time for those expansions just so they are not put at a disadvantage when it comes to the competitive scene.

BTW, I really appreciate that Donald had Goko/MF include cards from other expansions in the campaigns besides the expansion associated with the campaign section. Even V1.0 had cards from other expansions in the Hinterlands campaign.

[jaketheyak]

no way in hell would an arcade system work. i learned this from my background in fighting games - american arcades pretty much died in the late 90s-early 2000s.  they've lasted a lot longer in japan due to various geographical & cultural factors, but even there it's reaching the same point the US was at in the mid-90s.  pretty much the only american arcades that make money these days are the dave & buster's types (all casual carnival-esque games where you can win prizes, full restaurant & bar) and the "barcades" (actual good retro arcades that serve overpriced drinks & nostalgia).

it's just not an attractive prospect with a game you plan on playing a lot, which is why so many top players in fighting games now prefer to get their practice online and deal with the game-killing input lag that offers.  notice that the places i mentioned are meant to be one-time or occasional experiences, not stuff you grind on the regular.  for a while arcades could survive with games that offered an experience you couldn't get at home.  dance dance revolution was a big deal for a while...then guitar hero & rock band happened. gg arcades~

tl;dr i would compare it to renting movies/games as a fundamentally outdated model

Are you trying to tell me that Noah's Arcade is not still going strong in Aurora, Illinois?

[DStu]

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it. He was happy to have people have it for a while, but not at that price. That is why you can't have nice things.

And that is why we only get online versions that no one complains about if we lost them? scnr

[SwitchedFromStarcraft]

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it. He was happy to have people have it for a while, but not at that price. That is why you can't have nice things.

Then Jay needs to read the tea leaves differently, or not take things personally.  We are not upset that we lost Isotropic - we should be grateful Jay (and you) allowed it to begin with (though not as grateful as we are to Doug, who made it work). We should understand that this was a business decision.  No problem there.

So let's look at the business side of it.  Here we are some 3 years later, with a system that, even when functioning, is not as "nice" as the one that was shut down, despite the application of what we can assume is MANY more resources than Doug ever had (except perhaps brainpower). So I would argue that any "price" that Jay is paying is attached to a bad business decision regarding what would stand in for Isotropic.  I would further argue that said price is much higher (in terms of a missed opportunity to expand the Dominion brand and collect the associated revenue) than the monetary value of any company goodwill that RGG lost when Isotropic was shut down.

That "price" continues to escalate, as the lack of progress gets continued attention.  It also doesn't help the PR side of the problem to know that Isotropic was used to playtest the latest expansion, because Doug was willing and able to code the cards, yet MF can't even fix their ________ issues (fill in the blank: log-in, lobby capacity, automatch, etc.).  Of course, they haven't had much time, and they were starting from scratch, so we shouldn't be overly harsh.

[Awaclus]

yet MF can't even fix their ________ issues (fill in the blank: log-in, lobby capacity, automatch, etc.)

At first, I thought the blank was supposed to be a censored obscenity. Would've been pretty appropriate too.

[DStu]

yet MF can't even fix their ________ issues (fill in the blank: log-in, lobby capacity, automatch, etc.)

At first, I thought the blank was supposed to be a censored obscenity. Would've been pretty appropriate too.

that's under "etc."

[Donald X.]

Then Jay needs to read the tea leaves differently, or not take things personally.  We are not upset that we lost Isotropic - we should be grateful Jay (and you) allowed it to begin with (though not as grateful as we are to Doug, who made it work). We should understand that this was a business decision.  No problem there.

It makes no sense for Jay to interpret people screaming at him as gratitude. For that matter people could just email him the word "yellow" and he could get plenty sick of that.

It's not a business thing. It's strictly personal happiness. It doesn't need to be a business thing either.

[blueblimp]

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it.

I gotta say, if this is Jay's takeaway from the Dominion Online saga, then as someone who got hooked on online Dominion by isotropic and paid for Goko later on, this is the first time I've really regretted spending that money.

[Donald X.]

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it.

I gotta say, if this is Jay's takeaway from the Dominion Online saga, then as someone who got hooked on online Dominion by isotropic and paid for Goko later on, this is the first time I've really regretted spending that money.

He wasn't worth paying if he couldn't take the screams and just be glad to have done good. And you weren't worth giving isotropic to, if you were willing to pay the price of other people being screamed at when it went away. See that just keeps going. You can't get any moral high ground with spite.

I don't regret isotropic being public. And I don't need to punish people for not being happy with a gift that's only so big. They suck to hang around though.

[Kirian]

Then Jay needs to read the tea leaves differently, or not take things personally.  We are not upset that we lost Isotropic - we should be grateful Jay (and you) allowed it to begin with (though not as grateful as we are to Doug, who made it work). We should understand that this was a business decision.  No problem there.

It makes no sense for Jay to interpret people screaming at him as gratitude. For that matter people could just email him the word "yellow" and he could get plenty sick of that.

It's not a business thing. It's strictly personal happiness. It doesn't need to be a business thing either.

I had a really long post written up, but I've abandoned it in favor of simplicity, because I don't think I actually need to lay out the logic, it's easy enough.

Believing that these various things have not, all along, been business decisions, is ludicrous.

[funkdoc]

no way in hell would an arcade system work. i learned this from my background in fighting games - american arcades pretty much died in the late 90s-early 2000s.  they've lasted a lot longer in japan due to various geographical & cultural factors, but even there it's reaching the same point the US was at in the mid-90s.  pretty much the only american arcades that make money these days are the dave & buster's types (all casual carnival-esque games where you can win prizes, full restaurant & bar) and the "barcades" (actual good retro arcades that serve overpriced drinks & nostalgia).

it's just not an attractive prospect with a game you plan on playing a lot, which is why so many top players in fighting games now prefer to get their practice online and deal with the game-killing input lag that offers.  notice that the places i mentioned are meant to be one-time or occasional experiences, not stuff you grind on the regular.  for a while arcades could survive with games that offered an experience you couldn't get at home.  dance dance revolution was a big deal for a while...then guitar hero & rock band happened. gg arcades~

tl;dr i would compare it to renting movies/games as a fundamentally outdated model

Are you trying to tell me that Noah's Arcade is not still going strong in Aurora, Illinois?

n0ice

actually it's "ironic" that you mention illinois...chicago has one of the only great arcades left in the US.  galloping ghost arcade...sooooo many classics and hidden gems you've never heard of.  heck, they even had the crappy arcade castlevania (yes, there is one)!  they also have one of the strongest competitive scenes for mortal kombat, with weekly tournaments there and an entire team representing them at major events.

to bring this a bit closer to the thread topic, they use a different model from traditional arcades.  you pay a one-time fee ($10 or something) that lets you play all day there.  the machines are all set on free play.  a little while back there were some other arcades that were similar, except you paid less up front and all the games cost a nickel per play; those all seem to be gone now.

so a few traditional arcades can still get by - they just have to be located in a huge metro area and not charge per game, it seems!

[blueblimp]

Jay regrets allowing isotropic, because of all the people complaining about losing it.

I gotta say, if this is Jay's takeaway from the Dominion Online saga, then as someone who got hooked on online Dominion by isotropic and paid for Goko later on, this is the first time I've really regretted spending that money.

He wasn't worth paying if he couldn't take the screams and just be glad to have done good. And you weren't worth giving isotropic to, if you were willing to pay the price of other people being screamed at when it went away. See that just keeps going. You can't get any moral high ground with spite.

I didn't mean out of spite, although I see how my post can be read that way, sorry. It's more like frustration. Although I got enjoyment out of Goko, I also felt like in some small way, being a paying isotropic->Goko conversion put me in a data set that supports the decision to allow isotropic in the first place. After all, if "# of people who paid for Goko because isotropic existed" exceeds "# of people who didn't pay for Goko because isotropic existed", then it's a correct business decision to have authorized isotropic, all other things being equal. For Dominion in particular, being a game that rewards repeat play so well, my intuition is that isotropic acted better as a promotion than the opposite (conmotion?). It's frustrating then to think that random people complaining on the internet holds greater weight when deciding what to do in the future.

[pacovf]

Jay doesn't like getting screamed at. He doesn't get screamed at when publishing board games (his main business). He gets screamed at when getting involved in online gaming. Hence he regrets isotropic. I think it's fairly easy to understand.

[Donald X.]

Believing that these various things have not, all along, been business decisions, is ludicrous.

"It's not a business thing" is me referring to Jay's being sick of people complaining; if that position motivated his behavior in the future (more on that in a moment) that would not be a "business decision." He can decide he doesn't want something because he expects future pain, even if it works out to not being the best business decision. You don't win at life by maximizing money and in any case you're only human.

I wasn't saying that "allowing isotropic" or "isotropic going down" (actually one event, since it was allowed with the requirement that it would go down) weren't "business." That's an awful way to look at them though. Jay let fans put up fan-made versions to please fans. Calling it business is like saying that it was a cold calculation that it wasn't. The cold calculation was putting up BSW, a paid-for promotion. Jay didn't let online versions stay up forever because whoever made online Dominion would demand exclusive rights. That was just a reality of the world to be lived with; it was passive.

[Donald X.]

It's frustrating then to think that random people complaining on the internet holds greater weight when deciding what to do in the future.

Well if it's any consolation, as it happens I know this position of Jay's specifically because someone wanted to do online Temporum (a 2nd person besides Gendo; last I heard was http://www.reddit.com/r/temporum/comments/2x2jze/anyone_want_to_make_a_bot/). Jay didn't want to allow it. I argued that we needed the promotion; that there was no downside unless the game was a huge hit and that that wouldn't so much be a downside situation would it; that the Kingdom Builder app was making roughly no money so probably it wouldn't be worth pursuing an official version anyway. Hey those are all business arguments. He said something like "let me sleep on it and find a way to say yes." Of course there was a big 4th argument, which was me, me presenting the other 3 arguments.

[SwitchedFromStarcraft]

Jay didn't let online versions stay up forever because whoever made online Dominion would demand exclusive rights.

That's what I mean when I say this was a business decision.  Jay could not let Isotropic continue, it would compete with the for-pay version.

But I will point out that the data suggest that the two entities that (we can assume) demanded exclusive rights (Goko, then MF) haven't actually made online Dominion - they've put up unreliable pieces of the game that sometimes work and sometimes don't.  The only entity that hasn't (we can assume) demanded exclusive rights (Doug Z) is the only one that has truly made online Dominion. (I'm leaving out BSW because I know nothing of that situation).

The notion of "exclusive rights" is one that exists entirely and only in the business world. It may be that Jay's personal happiness is reduced because people yell at him for "shutting down" Isotropic.  I'm not arguing that. But you have given me some hope.  If Jay really wishes he could revisit a business decision and take a different path, perhaps that will happen with MF.  We may still have a working online Dominion one day.

[Donald X.]

But I will point out that the data suggest that the two entities that (we can assume) demanded exclusive rights (Goko, then MF) haven't actually made online Dominion - they've put up unreliable pieces of the game that sometimes work and sometimes don't.  The only entity that hasn't (we can assume) demanded exclusive rights (Doug Z) is the only one that has truly made online Dominion. (I'm leaving out BSW because I know nothing of that situation).

This is crazy talk, crazy person. Anyone making online Dominion for a living was going to want exclusive rights; there just haven't been many entities given a shot at it. Anyone making online Dominion for the joy of it (Board Game Arena for example) was not possibly going to expect rights.

The notion of "exclusive rights" is one that exists entirely and only in the business world.

are you married to this idea

[jaketheyak]

Sorry, Donald. You can't feed your kids, because Isotropic. :p

Man, this is exactly the kind of thing he's talking about.
Donald is here in this community giving up his time to discuss the game we love that he created.
He doesn't deserve to get sassed out.

[GendoIkari]

It's frustrating then to think that random people complaining on the internet holds greater weight when deciding what to do in the future.

Well if it's any consolation, as it happens I know this position of Jay's specifically because someone wanted to do online Temporum (a 2nd person besides Gendo; last I heard was http://www.reddit.com/r/temporum/comments/2x2jze/anyone_want_to_make_a_bot/). Jay didn't want to allow it. I argued that we needed the promotion; that there was no downside unless the game was a huge hit and that that wouldn't so much be a downside situation would it; that the Kingdom Builder app was making roughly no money so probably it wouldn't be worth pursuing an official version anyway. Hey those are all business arguments. He said something like "let me sleep on it and find a way to say yes." Of course there was a big 4th argument, which was me, me presenting the other 3 arguments.

What was Jay's eventual decision there? Would it be an issue if JD and I make a full featured multiplayer version like Isotropic? Because we've been working on that, though very slowly lately.

[LastFootnote]

Sorry, Donald. You can't feed your kids, because Isotropic. :p

Man, this is exactly the kind of thing he's talking about.
Donald is here in this community giving up his time to discuss the game we love that he created.
He doesn't deserve to get sassed out.

I was making a joke based off of what has transpired. I was just reiterating the argument made by Starcraft in terms that would make it absurd, because it is.

When you do this in the future, you might consider quoting the post you're parodying.

[Seprix]

I'm just going to remove all the comments I made. I can't help, all I end up doing is stirring up trouble.

[markusin]

Sorry, Donald. You can't feed your kids, because Isotropic. :p

Man, this is exactly the kind of thing he's talking about.
Donald is here in this community giving up his time to discuss the game we love that he created.
He doesn't deserve to get sassed out.

I was making a joke based off of what has transpired. I was just reiterating the argument made by Starcraft in terms that would make it absurd, because it is.

When you do this in the future, you might consider quoting the post you're parodying.

I still don't see what I said that is confusing you at all. It's pretty obvious to me, especially with the emoticon. I guess Poe's Law really is in effect.

In all seriousness, I'm sick of seeing people whine about how much better Isotropic was, and giving the developers at MF and now even Donald grief about it. I've seen people on the MF forum say the worst things to the developers down there, and I feel bad for them, just reading some of the stuff said. I don't like the beta so far either, but I'm going to try and be the better person, and help if I can.

It's a shame they were rushed to make the Beta open because of the loss of their old payment service. If they were given a month to iron out the worse bugs, the first impressiona they received wouldn't have been this bad. Probably. The Beta tester testimony wasn't too reassuring.

[Donald X.]

What was Jay's eventual decision there? Would it be an issue if JD and I make a full featured multiplayer version like Isotropic? Because we've been working on that, though very slowly lately.

I thought the link made it clear that he okay'd it. Go for it guys.

[pst]

From my perspective, the best value, recognizing that money isn't the only thing worth having, would have been for there never to have been any online versions. The money has been a joke but it would need to be amazing to matter.

From what you are writing it sounds like you (and Jay) don't understand what money online versions have yielded. I have bought all physical cards except Adventures for myself, as well as three sets as gifts. That simply wouldn't have happened if it weren't for Isotropic, so in my case it is twelve sets instead of zero sets. I see no reason to believe that I'm unusual about that. OK, so money isn't the only thing worth having and you didn't want my money, but still it might be good to understand why you have it.

[Donald X.]

From what you are writing it sounds like you (and Jay) don't understand what money online versions have yielded. I have bought all physical cards except Adventures for myself, as well as three sets as gifts. That simply wouldn't have happened if it weren't for Isotropic, so in my case it is twelve sets instead of zero sets. I see no reason to believe that I'm unusual about that. OK, so money isn't the only thing worth having and you didn't want my money, but still it might be good to understand why you have it.

For the general case, as opposed to you specifically, you aren't informing me at all here; you're just finding areas not yet covered in depth by this delightful conversation.

[blueblimp]

OK, even bringing up "money" and "online versions" together was maybe a bad way to go. For me at least, even though I first played Dominion offline/IRL, finding online Dominion was part of having the complete Dominion experience. My IRL games were (and are) typically 3-player or 4-player and fairly casual. For online games, I prefer 2-player and fairly competitive. Both are fun in their own way. Online, engines are lots of fun to play, whereas IRL the shuffling can get a bit tedious. But there are also cards that are more fun to play IRL, particularly the non-attack interactions like Masquerade and Council Room.

So, I think it's nice for the game to be available in multiple formats. I'm not trying to claim that "good for players of Dominion" is the same as "good for Donald X", but, I guess I'm just trying to say that there is some value there that has nothing to do with business. It's a shame that the internet tends to attract negative people and negativity from otherwise positive people, but it's also a great way to connect with others who are also interested in playing and studying the game in a way maybe they can't IRL for whatever reason.

[jsh357]

I am actually in the same boat as pst.  I was invited to play Dominion on isotropic, really enjoyed it, and played hundreds of games before purchasing all of the sets.  However, I had three or four friends who started playing with me at the same time, and none of them bought sets, so I'm not sure you could say isotropic was a definite seller.

[dudeabides]

The key, of course, for those parties interested in making money with Online Dominion lies not in what they charge the consumers to play the game, but instead in corporate sponsorship. So many other online gaming companies rely on advertising to make money.  Dominion has a superior way to receive money from companies.  It involves slight modifications of the card names and images in order to work, but I've taken the first steps with two cards. Introducing (drum roll) the Citi Bank and the Whole Foods Market Market.

 

There are plenty of other synergies between corporate entities and Dominion cards.  For example, the Check Into Cash Moneylender, the Busch Gardens, and the Courtyard by Marriott.  Prince might be willing to sponsor a card:



Corporate sponsorship is always the answer to the question of "How do I make money at this?"  Just look at every major sport. 

[Seprix]

Yes, but who lets corporations name the teams? If they did, it would be like "The Cleveland Post-it Notes" and "The Chicago Jiff". Corporations tie their stuff to things people love, things people love do not tie themselves to corporations.

[michaeljb]

Yes, but who lets corporations name the teams? If they did, it would be like "The Cleveland Post-it Notes" and "The Chicago Jiff". Corporations tie their stuff to things people love, things people love do not tie themselves to corporations.

There are a few Red Bull teams out there, including New York Red Bulls in MLS.

edit: The Anaheim Ducks (NHL) were originally named after Disney's movie The Mighty Ducks.

[Seprix]

Yes, but who lets corporations name the teams? If they did, it would be like "The Cleveland Post-it Notes" and "The Chicago Jiff". Corporations tie their stuff to things people love, things people love do not tie themselves to corporations.

There are a few Red Bull teams out there, including New York Red Bulls in MLS.

edit: The Anaheim Ducks (NHL) were originally named after Disney's movie The Mighty Ducks.

Racecars are people with corporate sponsors. MLS Red Bulls is an exception, but it sounds cool anyways, so I guess it works. :p I dunno, I wouldn't name my team after a company.

[michaeljb]

The racers part was just the first subsection of the section I linked. There are also 2 hockey teams and 5 football/soccer teams total owned by Red Bull. Only one of them doesn't have "Red Bull" in the team's full name, "RasenBallsport Leipzig e.V.", but they are commonly known as "RB Leipzig."

Anyway, the real key to a team being named after a corporation is for the team to be owned by that corporation, or someone with close ties to them; then it probably won't matter what the fans want. (another example: the Green Bay Packers were originally named after the Indian Packing Company, in exchange for them providing equipment funding)

[Kirian]

There are plenty of other synergies between corporate entities and Dominion cards.  For example, the Check Into Cash Moneylender, the Busch Gardens, and the Courtyard by Marriott.

Amusingly, the Courtyard by Marriott joke was done back when Walled Village was only available to Google Plus subscribers.

[werothegreat]

There are plenty of other synergies between corporate entities and Dominion cards.  For example, the Check Into Cash Moneylender, the Busch Gardens, and the Courtyard by Marriott.

Amusingly, the Courtyard by Marriott joke was done back when Walled Village was only available to Google Plus subscribers.

There's literally a theme park in Virginia called King's Dominion.

[Kirian]

There are plenty of other synergies between corporate entities and Dominion cards.  For example, the Check Into Cash Moneylender, the Busch Gardens, and the Courtyard by Marriott.

Amusingly, the Courtyard by Marriott joke was done back when Walled Village was only available to Google Plus subscribers.

There's literally a theme park in Virginia called King's Dominion.

Yep.  Although wasn't it bought by Busch Gardens?

(The last time I was there was... thirtyish years ago.)

[Seprix]

There's literally a theme park in Virginia called King's Dominion.

King's Courtyard Marriott Dominion

[GendoIkari]

There are plenty of other synergies between corporate entities and Dominion cards.  For example, the Check Into Cash Moneylender, the Busch Gardens, and the Courtyard by Marriott.

Amusingly, the Courtyard by Marriott joke was done back when Walled Village was only available to Google Plus subscribers.

There's literally a theme park in Virginia called King's Dominion.

Yep.  Although wasn't it bought by Busch Gardens?

(The last time I was there was... thirtyish years ago.)

Nope... It was owned by Paramount for a long time, recently bought by CBS / Cedar Fair.

I used to go to King's Dominion often.

[werothegreat]

Dude.  The joke was basically handed to you on a platter.

"The card formerly known as 'Prince'"

[Kirian]

There are plenty of other synergies between corporate entities and Dominion cards.  For example, the Check Into Cash Moneylender, the Busch Gardens, and the Courtyard by Marriott.

Amusingly, the Courtyard by Marriott joke was done back when Walled Village was only available to Google Plus subscribers.

There's literally a theme park in Virginia called King's Dominion.

Yep.  Although wasn't it bought by Busch Gardens?

(The last time I was there was... thirtyish years ago.)

Nope... It was owned by Paramount for a long time, recently bought by CBS / Cedar Fair.

I used to go to King's Dominion often.

Cedar Point is my local park, but having kids put a real damper on riding roller coasters.

[dudeabides]

...It has not made anywhere near enough to pay for one guy's salary for the time period they've been working on it.

That is not a good sign.  At some point, someone will take a look at the burn rate for cash, and decide to quit throwing good money after bad.  I wonder by what internal metric they are measuring what they might view as progress.

Goko's metric was the average number people in the King's Court lobby.  Making Fun has destroyed Goko in that regard.

[dudeabides]

Dude.  The joke was basically handed to you on a platter.

"The card formerly known as 'Prince'"

Freaking funny.  I did a version with the "Prince" text in the title of the card replaced with the symbol,

 but technically Prince is now "Prince" again, aka "the artist formerly known as that funky symbol."