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Author Topic: Creating Dominion  (Read 207004 times)

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chrisjwmartin

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #500 on: August 26, 2016, 06:17:18 pm »
0

Again I'm at one of these points where I can't tell if this is trolling or a serious conversation.
I'm not sure if you're a troll or just a raging asshole.
Oh of course, anyone who disagrees with you is "trolling". Because your opinions are so perfect, pre-ordained by the gods, that the only conceivable reason anyone could have for disagreeing with them is malice.
Someone creates a new account expressly for the purpose of posting an inflammatory complaint in a thread.  They fail to understand the purpose of the thread, fail to understand why many people think their opinion is wrong, and then accuse Donald of greed when he has said--possibly in this thread!--that he makes so little off the online version that he sometimes wishes it didn't exist.

Then when called out for trolling or being an asshole, they respond with an even more inflammatory post?  Yeah, that's trolling, dude.  And now I shall disengage entirely.
Typical forumite thinking: oh no, somebody new has joined - and they don't agree with our groupthink! SHUN THE UNBELIEVER! SHUN!

What the frak was I supposed to do - hijack someone else's account so that I wouldn't be using a new one? I just found out about this fraud and wanted to find out more. I came to the forum and found out that it was as bad as I had feared. I signed up and complained. Until there is a ban on new members, deal with it.

You literally have no understanding of what "trolling" is. Sincere disagreement =/= trolling. Blunt, uncompromising language =/= trolling. Pretending to hold an extreme position purely for the amusement of winding others up = trolling. I am sincerely, bluntly pissed off that I am being charged a third time for the privilege of playing Dominion. No pretence, no amusement: I am really angry. And so until there is a ban on people disagreeing with you - something which it sounds like you'd love to enact - deal with it.
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Jacob marley

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #501 on: August 26, 2016, 06:19:19 pm »
+5

That was not my point. My point was that if the subscription model fails, and your subsequent proxy goes back to selling expansions as at present, will you and they honour the purchases that have already been made and then cast aside? If not, I don't see what's stopping you from switching back and forth between purchases and subscriptions on an annual basis. Take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money for subscriptions. Wipe subscriptions and take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money...

Ok, if RGG does, in fact, repeatedly switch between those two models every year (or even every few years) then you would have a 100% legitimate complaint, and I think that everyone on this board would agree with you.  I also think that online dominion would die pretty quickly.  However, I think that Jay is a better businessman than that and would know that doing what you suggest would be terrible business. 

But that is not what happened.  Goko/MF have had the license for over 4 years.  In that time, neither company was able to provide a product that was satisfactory.  There have been complaints about Goko/MF as long as they have existed.  As far as I'm concerned, Jay gave them an ample chance to provide the product that Jay, Donald, and the Dominion community would be happy with, and they couldn't manage it.  I don't feel for a minute that the change was an attempt to gouge the customers, but at some point, Jay simply had to cut his losses with MF and bear the displeasure of existing customers in order to get the online product he wanted. 

You have a right to be upset, and to decide whether you will support the new service, and certainly ShuffleIT has no right to expect you to buy their subscription, but I feel that you do a disservice to all involved to accuse them of being motivated by greed.
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Haddock

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #502 on: August 26, 2016, 06:22:43 pm »
0

Again I'm at one of these points where I can't tell if this is trolling or a serious conversation.
I'm not sure if you're a troll or just a raging asshole.
Oh of course, anyone who disagrees with you is "trolling". Because your opinions are so perfect, pre-ordained by the gods, that the only conceivable reason anyone could have for disagreeing with them is malice.
Someone creates a new account expressly for the purpose of posting an inflammatory complaint in a thread.  They fail to understand the purpose of the thread, fail to understand why many people think their opinion is wrong, and then accuse Donald of greed when he has said--possibly in this thread!--that he makes so little off the online version that he sometimes wishes it didn't exist.

Then when called out for trolling or being an asshole, they respond with an even more inflammatory post?  Yeah, that's trolling, dude.  And now I shall disengage entirely.
Typical forumite thinking: oh no, somebody new has joined - and they don't agree with our groupthink! SHUN THE UNBELIEVER! SHUN!

What the frak was I supposed to do - hijack someone else's account so that I wouldn't be using a new one? I just found out about this fraud and wanted to find out more. I came to the forum and found out that it was as bad as I had feared. I signed up and complained. Until there is a ban on new members, deal with it.

You literally have no understanding of what "trolling" is. Sincere disagreement =/= trolling. Blunt, uncompromising language =/= trolling. Pretending to hold an extreme position purely for the amusement of winding others up = trolling. I am sincerely, bluntly pissed off that I am being charged a third time for the privilege of playing Dominion. No pretence, no amusement: I am really angry. And so until there is a ban on people disagreeing with you - something which it sounds like you'd love to enact - deal with it.
No service of this type can run indefinitely for a finite cost.  Online servers cost money and must be maintained. To expect to pay once and be able to play forever at no further cost to yourself is, at best, incredibly naive.

That was not my point. My point was that if the subscription model fails, and your subsequent proxy goes back to selling expansions as at present, will you and they honour the purchases that have already been made and then cast aside? If not, I don't see what's stopping you from switching back and forth between purchases and subscriptions on an annual basis. Take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money for subscriptions. Wipe subscriptions and take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money...

Ok, if RGG does, in fact, repeatedly switch between those two models every year (or even every few years) then you would have a 100% legitimate complaint, and I think that everyone on this board would agree with you.  I also think that online dominion would die pretty quickly.  However, I think that Jay is a better businessman than that and would know that doing what you suggest would be terrible business. 

But that is not what happened.  Goko/MF have had the license for over 4 years.  In that time, neither company was able to provide a product that was satisfactory.  There have been complaints about Goko/MF as long as they have existed.  As far as I'm concerned, Jay gave them an ample chance to provide the product that Jay, Donald, and the Dominion community would be happy with, and they couldn't manage it.  I don't feel for a minute that the change was an attempt to gouge the customers, but at some point, Jay simply had to cut his losses with MF and bear the displeasure of existing customers in order to get the online product he wanted. 

You have a right to be upset, and to decide whether you will support the new service, and certainly ShuffleIT has no right to expect you to buy their subscription, but I feel that you do a disservice to all involved to accuse them of being motivated by greed.
This. All of this.
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chrisjwmartin

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #503 on: August 26, 2016, 06:27:20 pm »
0

But that is not what happened.  Goko/MF have had the license for over 4 years.  In that time, neither company was able to provide a product that was satisfactory.  There have been complaints about Goko/MF as long as they have existed.  As far as I'm concerned, Jay gave them an ample chance to provide the product that Jay, Donald, and the Dominion community would be happy with, and they couldn't manage it.  I don't feel for a minute that the change was an attempt to gouge the customers, but at some point, Jay simply had to cut his losses with MF and bear the displeasure of existing customers in order to get the online product he wanted.
Satisfactory for whom? For the thousands of people who have a good time playing it every day? Or for a handful of vocal elite players who were never going to be satisfied? The MF interface was doing just fine. No one's going to pretend it was the perfect implementation, but it was fine and we had paid for it and we were able to play to our heart's content. And now that is being taken away from us.

You have a right to be upset, and to decide whether you will support the new service, and certainly ShuffleIT has no right to expect you to buy their subscription, but I feel that you do a disservice to all involved to accuse them of being motivated by greed.
You're misrepresenting me. I said that DXV and RGG are motivated by greed. I don't know the first thing about the ShuffleIT guys. Someone up-thread said that they are forumites, which I guess helps to explain the insular, Panglossian groupthink. Personally I don't know them from Adam.
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chrisjwmartin

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #504 on: August 26, 2016, 06:35:55 pm »
0

No service of this type can run indefinitely for a finite cost.  Online servers cost money and must be maintained. To expect to pay once and be able to play forever at no further cost to yourself is, at best, incredibly naive.
Then why did DXV-RGG encourage Goko-MF to use that model? Unless you believe DXV's frankly not-credible claims that neither he nor RGG ever read the contracts, then you must believe that they knew that the product they were promoting was impossible to maintain. Perhaps they were "incredibly naïve" as well?

But of course they were not naïve. Many online games run a purchase model. It was perfectly reasonable and the product being provided was fine. What is naïve is believing that DXV-RGG are "saints", as someone ludicrously described them on VGG.
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Jacob marley

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #505 on: August 26, 2016, 06:36:27 pm »
0

I didn't mean to imply that you were accusing ShuffleIT (the new company making Dominion online) in your accusations of greed.  I just pointed out that you are free to say no to what they are selling.  What I did say that I feel that your accusation of greed as the motivation for Jay's* actions is off base.  I hope we can agree to disagree on that point. 

Ultimately, Jay was dissatisfied with MF's product.  I don't know what his reasons were, or how much opinions on this board influenced that, but it was his call and he made it based on what he felt was best for the game.  You can disagree that it was the right decision, that is your right, but I doubt that you have the full information that Jay was basing the decision on any more than I do.

*As I understand it, Jay, not Danald, has the right to make decisions regarding licensing Dominion online.  Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
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Donald X.

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #506 on: August 26, 2016, 07:00:06 pm »
+27

The key problem was that the amount we were paid was a small fraction of the amount taken in. We somehow did not realize this until we'd already told MF we were done with them.
Did no one read the contracts, not even RGG's lawyers? Honestly, it stretches the bounds of credulity to ask us to believe that you and one of the biggest designer board games companies blithely signed the contracts without reading them, never mind without getting a lawyer to look them over.
Feel free to be incredulous about what I'm saying; I am not lying, neither am I in error.

I am one guy. RGG is also one guy. As Jay says, "I also do the windows." My contract with Jay gives me 50% of what he takes in from digital versions and so much for that; I read it and re-read it, man, it is clear there. I do not feel bad for not getting a lawyer; that contract (and subsequent ones) has been pretty good to me (it's based on the Knizia contract - a contract Reiner Knizia wrote up some years back, that's very pro-designer). I never saw his contract with Goko, which for sure involved zero lawyers on RGG's side. I could be more specific as to what was wrong with the contract, but that would just be to placate you; I'd prefer being just slightly friendlier to RGG and keeping it private.

When very little money came in, we figured it was just not doing well. It seems clear with hindsight that I should have looked into it, done the math; I did not. I repeatedly told people how it was making no money; no-one said, that can't be right, you should look into this.

That was not my point. My point was that if the subscription model fails, and your subsequent proxy goes back to selling expansions as at present, will you and they honour the purchases that have already been made and then cast aside? If not, I don't see what's stopping you from switching back and forth between purchases and subscriptions on an annual basis. Take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money for subscriptions. Wipe subscriptions and take money for purchases. Wipe purchases and take money...
Your question makes no sense. If the subscription model fails, everyone's subscription will be 100% honored, they will get exactly what they paid for. If you buy a year of subscription, you will get a year of subscription; the company selling the subscriptions will not sell subscriptions past when their contract expires, and it's as easy as that. If we sever ties with them, you will get the rest of your subscription, and when it expires you will be owed nothing. You will have gotten all the time you paid for.

Going back and forth makes no sense whatsoever. If subscriptions didn't work, why will they work next time? And we already know that if someone wants to offer "online Dominion forever," we don't want to do business with them.

There is no secret plan here that you've cleverly uncovered, to make money by switching how we sell online Dominion. For years we just had free online Dominion; RGG actually paid for BSW to be up, it was promotional. RGG finally got a company to make an official online Dominion, Goko. They stopped existing and were, I can only guess, bought out by a woman who had previously not been part of the picture. She contracted with MF to make online Dominion - we didn't pick them. We were not happy with them - separate from the money issue, which would have made us pretty unhappy, but again we did not know how bad it was when we decided we were done with them - and so dropped them the first chance we could, which is the end of this year. We have new people already working on the new version, because we don't want downtime.

Goko wanted to sell sets. It wasn't our idea but we didn't fight it (while I never had a contract with them or any technical say in this, it's fair to note that they cared a nonzero amount about my opinion). I didn't think it through to "what happens when they're gone." Man it wasn't their only bad idea; they thought they would make money selling "Zaps" to let you beat otherwise impossible campaign levels (I did fight that and was unsuccessful). They got tons of game contracts and then only made Dominion (they worked on Settlers but I don't know how playable it ever was).

MF continued the Goko system. At some point they said they could try selling subscriptions. We turned them down. [Later, scum that I am, I said hey uh, people are being mislead that they are getting Dominion forever when they buy the sets, could you fix that, and they said, compromise, let's sell subscriptions, and we said okay.]

ShuffleIT wanted a subscription system. Since MF was going down, it was clear that a subscription - which honestly sells you what you actually get - was better than what we had. And anyway it was what the new guys thought would work. So we agreed and that's how it's going.

My preference would be for people to connect directly to other people, without requiring a company providing servers. Our new guys did not think that was feasible for most people.

Here's a simple question that doesn't need you to speak for anyone but yourself. You have already taken your share of my money for purchasing the online expansions once. If a subsequent proxy reverts to expansion-purchasing, will you agree to forego your personal cut for any expansions purchased by those of us who'd already bought them from Goko-MF?
I see how you feel like you're being all reasonable and hard-hitting. You aren't though.

Let's just be clear, once again, that in negotiating for existing customers to get what they're getting, we're already giving up what will surely be more than we ever got. We did not go for "Existing customers get nothing, since that's more money for us." Somehow.

If the subscriptions fail, I bet there will be no official online Dominion product at all. That would be my vote, and RGG would be unlikely to want to try again (I'm not saying isotropic would go back up or anything - I don't know what RGG would want, and anyway I don't control Doug Z.). If RGG did want to, the contract just gives them the right to do it; I would need to renegotiate it to stop them. There's no way to forego my cut without renegotiating, and if we're renegotiating it can just be "okay there's no more of this nightmare." We can pare it down to, would I give my share to charity. That would actually be possible without a new contract.

But whatever. I would prefer everyone who felt like they were buying online Dominion for forever (again, someone else's idea that they could never truthfully promise, and who I didn't have a contract with) to have it for forever, in their conception of what forever means; if against all odds it went from subscription back to "buy sets" I would prefer everyone to just get it. But when you ask me to promise whatever thing about the future, you're asking me to lie, no matter how strongly I believe that I would do whatever. Maybe I will so desperately need money, for my dying aunt's operation, that I will be eager to rip people off. I have never been in that situation but I don't see how to rule it out.

If you want promises about crazy unlikely possible futures, find a politician.

Man. Something else for you, chrisjwmartin. If you want to accuse people of being greedy fucks, maybe look outside the board game industry? Board games tend to make no money. People make them because they love games. In terms of money per hour, my worst paycheck, for something actually published, will probably be for the Temporum expansion. I spent months on it and expect to make less than $500 (an easy estimate - 500 copies initial print run, probably never any more, less than $1 per copy). And RGG decided to publish it even though it was clear that 500 copies was generous. It is fantastic that we got lucky and have a hit and are raking in cash, that I don't have to work for a living. But you don't get there by being greedy.
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Donald X.

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #507 on: August 26, 2016, 07:05:48 pm »
+5

Then why did DXV-RGG encourage Goko-MF to use that model? Unless you believe DXV's frankly not-credible claims that neither he nor RGG ever read the contracts, then you must believe that they knew that the product they were promoting was impossible to maintain. Perhaps they were "incredibly naïve" as well?
We did not encourage Goko to use that model; why would you think we did? I couldn't have controlled it, other than by threatening them with cutting off my contract with RGG in a few years in order to get rid of them.

I never said I didn't read my contracts; don't say I claimed that, that's flat-out lying, besides being obviously nonsense. I never said RGG didn't read his contracts either, just that he blew it on one of them. I didn't read RGG's contract with Goko, but I didn't sign it either, it wasn't my contract.

In general you will find these conversations easier if you avoid lies. That's my advice. It's one thing to be upset that you feel like a company promised you Dominion forever and now you hate other people because of it; it's another to be that lying guy.
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Limetime

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #508 on: August 26, 2016, 10:21:58 pm »
+1

Man, people don't live forever.
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Seprix

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #509 on: August 28, 2016, 12:06:54 pm »
+2

I think there are some Grecian bankers in here, because I see lots of drachma.
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Seprix

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #510 on: August 28, 2016, 12:09:59 pm »
0

$3/month ($36 a year, probably cheaper if you buy in bulk) online doesn't sound that bad to me. Why are so many people complaining?
Okay, how about you go buy a house from someone, pay off your mortgage ... and then the seller announces that you have to pay rent.

We have already paid. We have already paid a LOT of money. And now we have to pay more? Screw that.

You're free to not pay. No one is forcing you. You don't have to play Dominion. Don't like it? Tough.
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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #511 on: August 28, 2016, 02:52:58 pm »
+1

Man, people don't live forever.

That's just what they want you to believe.
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chrisjwmartin

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #512 on: August 28, 2016, 05:11:47 pm »
0

We did not encourage Goko to use that model; why would you think we did? I couldn't have controlled it, other than by threatening them with cutting off my contract with RGG in a few years in order to get rid of them.
Perhaps it was comments like this: "Goko is the official implementation of Dominion. I support it." that made me think that you supported Goko. How silly of me to so carelessly misinterpret those ambiguous words.

Or perhaps it was comments like this: "Jay turned down the people who wanted to do everything in micropayments. We went for, you can just buy expansions and play them" that made me think that you and Jay ("We") explicitly chose ("went for") the "buy expansions" model. You are on record that you explicitly chose this model, Donald. It wasn't that Goko were a fait accompli and poor little you had no control over what they did. You and Jay chose them and their model.

Maybe it was when you said "If you want to pay a monthly fee, just buy one large expansion per month. That's $12 a month, and hey then it's free once you have them all." that I thought you were promoting the "buy expansions" model as better than the subscriptions model. Perhaps I somehow thought you were telling me it'd be free once I had them all. Man oh man, however did I misinterpret your statements so badly? What a dumb-dumb I must be.

Perhaps it was comments like this: "You seem to be under the impression that you are paying to play Dominion on a per-game basis. That's not what's going on. You can play the main set endlessly for free. If you buy Intrigue then you can play the main set and Intrigue endlessly after paying for Intrigue once ever." that made me think I was going to play the main set and the expansions I bought endlessly for free. "ENDLESSLY FOR FREE". Those were YOUR words, Donald, made when it was convenient for you to make us believe that that was what we were getting. Now that it is convenient for you to make us believe otherwise, you're claiming that that was never your promise, but you wrote those exact words. ENDLESSLY FOR FREE. Those were your words. All of the quotes above were your words, words that you used to cajole us into giving you money, words that now maybe were or were not true.

The fact is Donald that what you claimed when Goko was released is not what you are claiming now. The things you claimed back then and the things you claim now cannot both be true. There's a word for that, one which you seem quite happy to bandy about (see below) but which I will not use.

I never said I didn't read my contracts; don't say I claimed that, that's flat-out lying, besides being obviously nonsense. I never said RGG didn't read his contracts either, just that he blew it on one of them. I didn't read RGG's contract with Goko, but I didn't sign it either, it wasn't my contract.

In general you will find these conversations easier if you avoid lies. That's my advice. It's one thing to be upset that you feel like a company promised you Dominion forever and now you hate other people because of it; it's another to be that lying guy.
So if RGG did read the contracts then they did know why they weren't getting any money. It's not complicated: either they knew how much money they were getting or they didn't read the contracts. This was not their first rodeo.

Did they know and not tell you the truth? I don't know. Given what I've proved above about how the truth value of your public statements varies with your self-interest at the time, I'm not sure who I would feel most inclined to believe.

And as for "you feel like a company promised you Dominion forever", no, I feel like a person promised me Dominion "endlessly for free" once I had bought it. Wherever did I get that idea?
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AdrianHealey

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #513 on: August 28, 2016, 05:28:53 pm »
+7

The amount of time spend arguing over this by you could probably be betrer spend earning money to buy dominion.

Mistakes were made, it seems. What do you want, btw? An apology?
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ConMan

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #514 on: August 28, 2016, 08:42:44 pm »
+4

If you're really keen on the house analogy, then my understanding is that it went something like this:

Donald owned a block of land, and he had an agreement that said that RGG was responsible for making sure the land gets used. Goko came along with an artist's rendition of a giant condominium and a stack of venture capital, and RGG and Donald were sufficiently impressed by the shininess that they gave Goko a permit (that needed to be renewed every, let's say, five years, and there were a few clauses about how much say Donald and RGG had about how the condos were managed but most of the responsibility was in Goko's hands). There were some details in the permit about how much of the rent being charged would go to Donald and RGG, but they accepted that especially at first they wouldn't be seeing a lot, and were just happy to see the land being used.

Goko built a bunch of hovels, and told people that for $40 they could live there in perpetuity. People complained to Donald and RGG, and they in turn tried to instruct Goko on how to fix the hovels to make them livable, but not a lot happened. Then, somehow, the people running Goko vanished into the shadows with a note saying that Making Fun was now responsible for fixing things. At this point, Donald and Jay were concerned that maybe Goko hadn't been giving them the right share of the rent, but since things were in new hands they were giving Making Fun the benefit of the doubt, and they even helped advertise the hovels since at the time it wasn't really in their best interests to publically complain about this stuff.

To Making Fun's credit, despite not having a lot of money to work with (because Goko had taken most of it and run off), they managed to put some scaffolding over the hovels and put a bit of work in and built a somewhat livable apartment block. Sure the electricity didn't work and the elevator was manually operated and you didn't want to look too closely at how the plumbing was set up, but it was a lot better than the hovels (although if you looked closely enough you could still see some of the planks being used to hold up the structure).

Anyway, the time came for the permit to be renewed, and Donald and RGG appreciated the work put in to fix the situation, but despite that and despite Making Fun doubling the rent, they were still not looking at something that was really up to the building code, they still weren't seeing much in the way of money coming their way, and they were still getting a lot of complaints about how things worked (it was nearly a year after the announcement of high-speed broadband internet being available in the area for Making Fun to connect it to the apartments, and the residents were subject to random disconnections for months afterwards). So Donald and RGG agreed that they would not renew the permit at the end of the year. What's more, they found a couple of the residents who demonstrated actual architectural and engineering knowledge who wanted to set up the condos in a way that would make the residents happy.

Unfortunately, since Goko and Making Fun had claimed that anyone paying for an apartment would get to live there in perpetuity, and made the bit about "as long as our permit keeps getting renewed and we don't decide to knock the building down of our own accord" hidden halfway down the fine print of the contract, many of the residents are now upset. ShuffleIT have agreed to offer a year of free rent in the new condos for anyone who was living in a Making Fun apartment, but people are still claiming that Donald and RGG have pocketed all the Goko and Making Fun money and are now trying to double-dip.
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Jimmmmm

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #515 on: August 28, 2016, 09:08:04 pm »
+13

Dear Donald,

When I bought my set of Base Dominion, you promised me that I could play Dominion forever. But now my Coppers are too worn out to use, and you expect me to pay again for new base cards?

Greedy.
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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #516 on: August 28, 2016, 09:57:10 pm »
+2

Personally I don't know them from Adam.

If you've been talking to Adam, of course you don't like Stef and SCSN  8)

Seprix

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #517 on: August 28, 2016, 10:00:39 pm »
+3

Personally I don't know them from Adam.

If you've been talking to Adam, of course you don't like Stef and SCSN  8)

Come on, dude.  :-[ Let's not bring that up, whether it is true or not. I don't even think it is.
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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #518 on: August 28, 2016, 10:12:55 pm »
+1

Personally I don't know them from Adam.

If you've been talking to Adam, of course you don't like Stef and SCSN  8)

Come on, dude.  :-[ Let's not bring that up, whether it is true or not. I don't even think it is.

It was a joke. I know that "knowing someone from Adam" is a turn of phrase.

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #519 on: August 28, 2016, 10:16:21 pm »
+4

Hi chris

I have one question for you. How would you feel if Donald X. decided f it and after the contract expired, no one got to make online Dominion. Done. Finished. The end.

That was a path he could have taken but didn't. I know you're upset, but consider the alternative.
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Donald X.

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #520 on: August 29, 2016, 01:31:47 am »
+11

We did not encourage Goko to use that model; why would you think we did? I couldn't have controlled it, other than by threatening them with cutting off my contract with RGG in a few years in order to get rid of them.
Perhaps it was comments like this: "Goko is the official implementation of Dominion. I support it." that made me think that you supported Goko. How silly of me to so carelessly misinterpret those ambiguous words.
Jay said, I'm going with these guys I'm talking to at this con (Funsockets, they changed their name to Goko later). It was his call. They talked big. I had zero information about them other than that they agreed to not make Farmville.

Later, I did not say "These no doubt awful people do not have my support in any way." I said, "they're the guys, I'm on their side." Would you have behaved differently? Until they had demonstrated incompetence, anyone, even someone so poor at customer relations as me, would know to say, yes, they're the guys.

Me saying "I support it" was not me saying "we encouraged them to use that model" or "this was under my control." I never had any control; at best I could threaten, which I never did, to get RGG to not renew his contract with them (or if that failed, to cut off my contract with RGG in order for their contract to mean nothing). In all cases Funsockets/Goko and MF were interested in my opinion, but that doesn't mean they always did what I wanted.

I have always preferred a system where once you buy something it's yours. As a multiplayer game you need a server or direct connections but could just have your offline version (again ShuffleIT did not think direct connections would work for most people). I imagine it as just like buying Heroes of Might and Magic II or whatever; it's a disc with some software, when you buy a new computer you can hope it still runs on that operating system.

This system wasn't that and I don't know how early I knew that. I have all my old emails with Funsockets and it's clear from the start that they'll be selling expansions (with a free base game, and we approved of that, we wanted a free base game and to sell expansions), but it wasn't clear for a while that that didn't mean, you download a program and it's in your computer and yours even if the company dies.

Or perhaps it was comments like this: "Jay turned down the people who wanted to do everything in micropayments. We went for, you can just buy expansions and play them" that made me think that you and Jay ("We") explicitly chose ("went for") the "buy expansions" model. You are on record that you explicitly chose this model, Donald. It wasn't that Goko were a fait accompli and poor little you had no control over what they did. You and Jay chose them and their model.
Poor little me! The poor little me part is having these conversations.

We ruled out micropayments. Most people wanted to make Farmville. When I say "we" I mean Jay and I didn't want that and it was Jay's call but he's friendly.

Jay and I have always preferred people to buy things and then have them. That is not what the Goko model actually is. All Jay knew day one was that they agreed to not do Farmville (then they tried to anyway with Zaps), and that they thought they could handle every platform at once, with one system that played a zillion games.

Again "buy expansions" does not automatically tell you "but they'll stop working when the company stops existing or stops having the project."

Maybe it was when you said "If you want to pay a monthly fee, just buy one large expansion per month. That's $12 a month, and hey then it's free once you have them all." that I thought you were promoting the "buy expansions" model as better than the subscriptions model. Perhaps I somehow thought you were telling me it'd be free once I had them all. Man oh man, however did I misinterpret your statements so badly? What a dumb-dumb I must be.
That's what the system was. There you have me describing the system as it existed. I was not trying to mislead people by not working out situations in which the service would go down.

I certainly had no reason to believe that Goko would die, that Dominion would be sub-licensed to a new company that we didn't pick, and that (though we hadn't been happy with Goko) we would not be happy with the new company. In that eventuality that I didn't consider, I didn't further consider that the new company would want a different payment model, that we would initially propose just paying for all existing customers not realizing we didn't have their money to hand over, and would thus be in a bad bargaining position.

However it was clear when we negotiated for "offline sets, or a year online" that some people would be unhappy. We did not see how to do better. To date my best approach is, we could have said, "sorry ShuffleIT, we started bargaining from a bad position since we thought just paying back the money we'd made would cover everyone on the new system; since it won't, I don't see how we can get everyone onto your system, so we will just find some other company, where we can start bargaining from a more informed position."

Another helpful trick is: to everything I ever say, please automatically append, "to the best of my knowledge at this time." To the best of my knowledge at the time, the system was going to keep going. If I had stopped to consider, what if we switch companies, I would have thought, people will just get the system on the new service.

Perhaps it was comments like this: "You seem to be under the impression that you are paying to play Dominion on a per-game basis. That's not what's going on. You can play the main set endlessly for free. If you buy Intrigue then you can play the main set and Intrigue endlessly after paying for Intrigue once ever." that made me think I was going to play the main set and the expansions I bought endlessly for free. "ENDLESSLY FOR FREE". Those were YOUR words, Donald, made when it was convenient for you to make us believe that that was what we were getting. Now that it is convenient for you to make us believe otherwise, you're claiming that that was never your promise, but you wrote those exact words. ENDLESSLY FOR FREE. Those were your words. All of the quotes above were your words, words that you used to cajole us into giving you money, words that now maybe were or were not true.
Again that was to the best of my knowledge at that time. I was responding to whatever thing that was someone misunderstanding whatever it was; I'm not checking. I wasn't saying "now everyone be quiet I want to sell them online Dominion with this pitch."

I do not wish to cajole anyone into anything. I don't try to sell tickets to myself. When I post a Secret History, it's not a designer diary on the front page of BGG; I figure the people who care will find it. I don't go to cons to promote my games (though I also don't like to travel). If you don't want my stuff I do not want you to buy it.

You did not find - and you would have been pretty pleased too - where I said on BGG, yes, when Making Fun loses the contract and new guys take over, of course everyone who had the old system will have the new system for free. I honestly thought that was what would happen and did not know to never be sure about the future.

The fact is Donald that what you claimed when Goko was released is not what you are claiming now. The things you claimed back then and the things you claim now cannot both be true. There's a word for that, one which you seem quite happy to bandy about (see below) but which I will not use.
I haven't lied about anything. I am ridiculously honest. I feel like I have a great track record there too. I don't say true statements that intentionally mislead people either; I consider that lying.

I don't remember all of my posts from years ago, but for sure I stood by Goko, longer than was reasonable, then stood by Making Fun (who Jay hadn't even picked), longer than was reasonable. I don't see what else to do in that situation.

So if RGG did read the contracts then they did know why they weren't getting any money. It's not complicated: either they knew how much money they were getting or they didn't read the contracts. This was not their first rodeo.
Jay (RGG is one person) misunderstood the contract. He read it; he misunderstood it.

This is probably not something worth pursuing; maybe you want to say, it's semantics, if he misunderstood it he didn't really read it. Man whatever. It's not that he signs random pieces of paper without looking at them. It was a mistake and so much for that.

The ShuffleIT contract is also just between Jay and them, but I proofread this one.

And as for "you feel like a company promised you Dominion forever", no, I feel like a person promised me Dominion "endlessly for free" once I had bought it. Wherever did I get that idea?
I have labored to be good to my fans; sorry you don't feel like I'm there for you. You're so mad at not having Dominion for forever that you won't even enjoy the year we got you.

Or, the offline version; if you prefer to play offline then you can take that instead of the year and then you've still got Dominion, just like I never let you down, assuming you like the new version and well here's hoping.
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Donald X.

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #521 on: August 29, 2016, 01:51:27 am »
+13

When I bought my set of Base Dominion, you promised me that I could play Dominion forever. But now my Coppers are too worn out to use, and you expect me to pay again for new base cards?

Greedy.
Watch out; in the future maybe companies won't sell cards, just the right to use the cards for a while, with limitations. Man, no-one bought online Dominion; they bought e.g. Gokoins, and then played at buying online Dominion with them. Really it's all about the joy of spending Gokoins.

At some point I thought, man I'm sick of MF, and then instead of telling Jay we had to do something, I waited, and immediately I felt (legal phrasing) let down over and over. And then I started talking about it. And I asked my playtesters what they thought about ditching MF.

And then I asked 16 people on these forums. I picked them for posting then-recently in the online subforums, and for not having next to no posts. I went through some threads, jotted down the names. I sent them all a form letter asking what they thought about the possibility of finding someone else (of course not knowing yet that that would turn out to mean people wouldn't just have the new system for free, but noting that we couldn't guarantee it). [It was mainly viewed as positive, with no faith in MF, but some worried about potential downtime with no online Dominion.]

Why did I ask these people this? Because I'm so driven by greed! I mean that's the only logical explanation.
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Donald X.

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #522 on: August 29, 2016, 04:31:15 am »
+12

Here's something else, chrisjwmartin. See what you think.

People are great believers of false things. They are experts. If you're interested in this topic, you can read up on Cognitive Biases on wikipedia. I am looking at this stuff, here's a nice one: "The tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures." Makes you think.

So I mean, I know about the cognitive biases, I know they must affect me. In fact one of the cognitive biases is to feel like, because you know about the cognitive biases, they have less of an effect on you. Isn't that sweet. Anyway I know about them, and well I do what I can, I try to recognize when maybe I'm blind about something. For example one thing this has taught me to do is to go to other people, see what they think. Am I really nuts here? I'll ask someone. They'll have different relevant biases for the situation, you see. They aren't me.

Anyway the point is, man, maybe I'm lying to myself, maybe I'm trying to avoid blame here so I don't feel like the worst scum ever and kill myself. I mean I can't rule it out. I feel like I've done my due diligence, like I've spotted the places where I could have done something different, where I personally blew it, but you know. I can't be trusted here. I'm me; of course I think well of myself.

So if you really want to know how credible I am, how much you've been lied to, how much I deserve the blame for your misfortunes, well obviously you should ask Someone Else. Anyone but me! Which is perfect for me also, so, there you go.
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werothegreat

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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #523 on: August 29, 2016, 09:25:18 am »
+7

Dear Donald,

When I bought my set of Base Dominion, you promised me that I could play Dominion forever. But now my Coppers are too worn out to use, and you expect me to pay again for new base cards?

Greedy.

Should have bought the card sleeves DLC.
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Re: Creating Dominion
« Reply #524 on: August 29, 2016, 09:51:52 am »
+4

...

Sadly, you're wasting your time trying to reason with him. He's made up his mind already. It's not that he can't see it your way; he doesn't want to. You've explained it a million different ways and they all made sense to me at least. In the famous words of Saint xkcd:

« Last Edit: August 29, 2016, 09:53:41 am by Seprix »
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