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[JW]

"Just as Roadrunner, lovable though he is, has a ridiculously inflated opinion of the card scout, so also is the lovable DavidTheDavid ridiculously positive about MakingFun."

Scout is Roadrunner's employer!

[cactus]

Charging more that the competition is not problematic to me in and of itself. The problem is if you charge a premium and then deliver a sub-premium product ...

Take Slitherine (the war-game app developer) as an analogy instead of the always-cited Ascension:
Slitherine charges a high price for their games (both initial purchase and expansions). Even when they discount they're still double the price of most other war-games that look similar in the App Store. But I bought and played one of the Slitherine games when it was on special (Battle Acadamy 1) when it was on special and I was really delighted by it. The interface worked - there were no glitches - the art and effects were nice and understated - nothing about the design got in the way of enjoying the game. The game felt premium and I felt I'd got value for money. Slitherine I think must be doing OK financially because they release new products fairly frequently.

Now compare Slitherine to MF. MF would like to charge a premium (fine by me) but they make a whole lot of decisions that align themselves with lowest common denominator developers in the App Store. They put google ads in their games. They play funny b*ggers with their in app currency. So now el cheapo purchases won't buy from them because they're charging so much. And people who are happy to spend for a good product don't want to touch them because their product feels low end and crappy.

[Roadrunner7671]

I'm about 12 hours late to the party (so still fashionably late).

But YESSSSS! WAHOOOOOO!

[Roadrunner7671]

Oh, and it looks like I'm a joke now. Cool, I'm famous.

[Roadrunner7671]

So, well, I got to play Dominion on my iPad for free without a problem.  That's gotta be a win, right?

MF Dominion is like Scout - fine in isolation,  but fails miserably when compared to anything else.

I'm bidding my time...you just wait until I post my giant master plan on Scout. You just wait...

[ashersky]

As for the pricing, seems steep.  I say seems, because really it isn't, right?  I mean, compared to the physical game, of which I own Seaside and Intrigue, the prices are fine.  It's just IAP sticker shock (which I probably won't get over, to be honest).

Thing is, though, people won't be comparing it to the physical game, they'll be comparing it to other game apps they can get, particularly other board game apps, at which point the price is absolutely hilariously high.  I could literally buy ALL of the board game apps and IAPs I've bought to date on my phone (admittedly not THAT many) twice over and still afford to order pizza with what it would cost to get all the Dominion Online IAPs.

I was sort of admitting that by mentioning sticker shock.  I'm not buying the sets because they are too expensive for what I expect/want to pay for an app version of anything.  I think that's what most people are saying will happen, so we all agree there.

I'm trying to give them the benefit of a thought out reason for why the pricing is what it is, even if that "reason" is flawed when it comes to viability on the market.  I think they fear that everyone will just do what I did -- log in and play with someone else's cards -- so they are trying to make up for it.

We can all list the better ways of doing this (and have): lower prices for one-time unlocks, ongoing monthly subscriptions for access to all cards, etc.  Those, to me (and others), seem like better ways to get and keep a fanbase AND tackle the phantom fear of freeloader players.

[Throwaway_bicycling]

My question is if MF Dominion fails, then what?

What have you got?

Fun fact: I only joined f.ds last January to raise pretty much exactly this question, but the hope then was that everything would be fixed by now. I have to say, then I was expecting the company to fail imminently, so that the rights could potentially be available at very modest cost, and since there was/is a working competing version of at least the underlying game engine that something anyway was possible. Not clear whether any of that is on the table now. It was also clear that there was some need for additional capital, but, again, not very clear how much. Today, same question.

Probably should be a new thread for this if it's worth having a thread at a all.

[Infthitbox]

Played a few games on the android app just now. Its reasonable; works exactly the same as the desktop client for me, except slower (not sure what the bottleneck was, but I played while on sketchy wireless vs. my usual wired internet for the desktop client). I found myself deliberately slowing down to avoid misclicks because of the screen size and touch interface. I only played bots because I didn't want to subject a human to the necessarily slower play that the tablet demands. Playing a 25-30 turn all-action "Bishop all the cards" deck took almost 40 minutes against ConquererBot. It didn't crash, I had no trouble logging in, and playing with the log up didn't make the screen prohibitively small.

For reference, I played on a 10.1 inch Samsung Galaxy Tab III. If I have some time later, I might be able to test on an iPad mini, which I expect to go... not as well.

[Beyond Awesome]

Two star rating on iOS and Three Stars on Droid.

[Limetime]

I played some more games with it. Worked a lot better!

[Kirian]

Two star rating on iOS and Three Stars on Droid.

Ouch.  2 stars on iOS is a death knell.

[LastFootnote]

Two star rating on iOS and Three Stars on Droid.

Ouch.  2 stars on iOS is a death knell.

Well, they have only themselves to blame, I guess. Seems like they bit off more than their outsourced dev team could chew.

At this point it's hard to care. I can still play on my laptop, and if Making Fun does someday go bankrupt or stop supporting Dominion, I think I've gotten my money's worth over the years.

[ben_king]

Does MF even go to BGG? Are they even aware of what the people are saying over there? I mean, these are the customers they really need to target. If they can't win over the casual audience, then they are screwed. Implementing Adventures will only get them so far, financially speaking.

My question is if MF Dominion fails, then what?

In the worst case, if Making Fun fails and DougZ doesn't want to re-open Isotropic, I've been working the last few months on building my own client (which will never see the light of day otherwise for copyright reasons).  It's still a ways from being ready, but if worst comes to worst, I'd happily open source it for the community.

[Beyond Awesome]

That looks really nice.

[GendoIkari]

Does MF even go to BGG? Are they even aware of what the people are saying over there? I mean, these are the customers they really need to target. If they can't win over the casual audience, then they are screwed. Implementing Adventures will only get them so far, financially speaking.

My question is if MF Dominion fails, then what?

In the worst case, if Making Fun fails and DougZ doesn't want to re-open Isotropic, I've been working the last few months on building my own client (which will never see the light of day otherwise for copyright reasons).  It's still a ways from being ready, but if worst comes to worst, I'd happily open source it for the community.

One thing I'll say is that the only thing I didn't like about Isotropic was the fact that it used a separate list of cards from your hand when asking things like "what do you want to pass". You already have the cards in your hand, you should be able to click them instead of clicking on a card name in another list.

[werothegreat]

grsbmd: I've uploaded better versions of most of those cards up onto the wiki.  Feel free to use them.

[Cave-o-sapien]

I've played a few games now on my iPad 4, and it's not bad, but it feels laggy, and that's with all animations turned off and the speed set to maximum. A few notable problems:

-- It doesn't always register "taps", which is problematic with some cards.
-- It's virtually impossible to play with the log visible. Enabling the log shrinks the remainder of the screen dramatically (including the button to re-hide the log)
-- It can't display an 11th Kingdom card on the first page. I was half way through one game with Young Witch before I realized that Prince was on the second page.

I give it 2.5/5 stars.

[GendoIkari]

-- It can't display an 11th Kingdom card on the first page. I was half way through one game with Young Witch before I realized that Prince was on the second page.

I... WHAT?? Um, wasn't this FINALLY fixed after YEARS of complaining about it? And now in their newest product they've reverted back to the old, terrible way?

[funkdoc]

interesting to see how often the BGG thread brings up the concern that games won't stay online in the long run, re: why offline play is so important to them.  that isn't something i recall seeing on here, but a salient point given MF's business "plan".

and another game designer called out donald on his sticking to overinflated prices for the mobile market.  we had that whole argument here, but hey it isn't just us!

more and more it feels like the endgame of all this is going to be some sort of unofficial port with P2P netplay, probably after all the expansions are done (if that ever happens lol)

[Deadlock39]

-- It can't display an 11th Kingdom card on the first page. I was half way through one game with Young Witch before I realized that Prince was on the second page.

I... WHAT?? Um, wasn't this FINALLY fixed after YEARS of complaining about it? And now in their newest product they've reverted back to the old, terrible way?

This is only fixed for wide screen resolutions in the new client. If you select a 4:3 resolution it still maxes out at 10 cards on the first page.

[Kirian]

and another game designer called out donald on his sticking to overinflated prices for the mobile market.  we had that whole argument here, but hey it isn't just us!

Eh, it appears that anyone at BGG can put a "Game Designer" tag on their profile, whether or not they've had anything published.  I wouldn't consider that opinion more useful than any one of us.  But it's not just him, it's just a ton of people unhappy with the price.

Edit:  Not to mention that Donald didn't set the online prices.

[GendoIkari]

-- It can't display an 11th Kingdom card on the first page. I was half way through one game with Young Witch before I realized that Prince was on the second page.

I... WHAT?? Um, wasn't this FINALLY fixed after YEARS of complaining about it? And now in their newest product they've reverted back to the old, terrible way?

This is only fixed for wide screen resolutions in the new client. If you select a 4:3 resolution it still maxes out at 10 cards on the first page.

Ugh. That's just terrible. Then again, so is having to set the client to a specific resolution that you can't change while in a game.

[Accatitippi]

and another game designer called out donald on his sticking to overinflated prices for the mobile market.  we had that whole argument here, but hey it isn't just us!

Eh, it appears that anyone at BGG can put a "Game Designer" tag on their profile, whether or not they've had anything published.  I wouldn't consider that opinion more useful than any one of us.  But it's not just him, it's just a ton of people unhappy with the price.

Edit:  Not to mention that Donald didn't set the online prices.

Actually, I believe you have to be listed as a designer for a game in BGG's database. Of course it can be a web-published unplaytested abandoned pile of giraffe dung, but if you click their banner it's pretty easy to find out. (hint: the smell)

[LastFootnote]

and another game designer called out donald on his sticking to overinflated prices for the mobile market.  we had that whole argument here, but hey it isn't just us!

Eh, it appears that anyone at BGG can put a "Game Designer" tag on their profile, whether or not they've had anything published.  I wouldn't consider that opinion more useful than any one of us.  But it's not just him, it's just a ton of people unhappy with the price.

Edit:  Not to mention that Donald didn't set the online prices.

Actually, I believe you have to be listed as a designer for a game in BGG's database. Of course it can be a web-published unplaytested abandoned pile of giraffe dung, but if you click their banner it's pretty easy to find out. (hint: the smell)

In this particular case, the guy doesn't even have games in the BGG database. He's just created a makeshift "Game Designr [sic]" badge out of a normal one.

[GendoIkari]

So one thing I'm unclear about... they're working on the website version at the same time, right? Will this website version be playable on a tablet? If so, then it just seems silly to have both options; when they both should be basically the same experience. If not, then why not? It's not like it's in Flash, so it should work...