Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Superdad]

Just some quick questions...

Is there a competitive scene for Dominion?
Are there national/international championships?
Any large tournaments, such as at GenCon in Indianapolis?
If so, what is the prize structure like?

I.e. What is the competitive Dominion scene like? Is it just ranking boards on isotropic, or are there serious competitive tournaments with real cash prizes, and crowned world champions, etc?

[Donald X.]

Is there a competitive scene for Dominion?
Are there national/international championships?
Any large tournaments, such as at GenCon in Indianapolis?
If so, what is the prize structure like?

I.e. What is the competitive Dominion scene like? Is it just ranking boards on isotropic, or are there serious competitive tournaments with real cash prizes, and crowned world champions, etc?

There really isn't anything. There will be a world champion this year, but that event is struggling to be more fun than serious. The WBC no doubt crowns a champion; that is probably as serious as it gets.

[ImperialStout]

Is this something you would like to see develop, either with the game as it is or with future variations designed to accentuate the strategic element?

[Superdad]

Absolutely.

I've just been introduced to the game. I come from a long history of competitive gaming. When I do something, I do it to be the best in the world at it. I don't really just casually do something.

Right now, Dominion (isotropic) is something that I'll play when I only have 15 minutes of free time (kids do that to your life), or when we're at the cottage and I want to play a board game with non-gamers that has more strategy than monopoly.

If Dominion were supported competitively, I would probably get into it bigtime. It would probably be my game of choice.

I'd love to see weekly dominion tournaments at my local card store (which btw, would probably love to support it), and yearly state/provincial championships, which seed players into national championships, which seed players into the world championship tournament at Gencon (suggestion).

I'm actually very surprised that there is little to no competitive support for the game. I've found that making "idols" (i.e. stars, world champions) is amazing for the growth of a game. For example, look at the poster-child of MtG. I played that game since beta. My friend and I used to collect black lotuses, because our local group thought they were junk (we did too btw). My friends mother threw his collection into the trash, because she hated him playing it. He had over 100 black lotuses in that box she dumped (ya, I know, holy smokes).

Before MtG had a competitive scene, it was a game that you may see kids playing in the caffeteria, or stairwell at the school. It was played on kitchen tables, but you never really heard about the game. Once they started supporting it competitively, you had pros, you had names to look up to, you had articles to read, you had entire websites open up, devoted to strategy for the game. Card stores started holding local tournaments, you got to meet more people in your community that played - that you would have never met otherwise. This led to more games being played, more product being purchased, etc.

My local card store also does a Saturday intro-day, where they will demo card games all day long. It's normally stuff like Pokemon, MtG, World of Warcraft TCG. I've asked him why he doesn't demo dominion, and his response was that he generates more sales from the other games, because once he gets people playing the game, they come to the supported tournaments and buy more product. There is very little in it for him to hold a Saturday all-day Dominion demo event.

Once you make stars of the game for peiople to look up to, and tournaments for people to go compete at, you really start to take the game to the next level. Sure MtG and Dominion are different (in terms of collectable card game vs boxed game), but that doesn't stop chess from being supported competitively.

I (personally) think that any game that isn't supported competitively can only grow so far, then it hits a glass ceiling. Even games like scrabble are supported with world championships.

I go to Gencon every year, and having world championships for your game really makes it stand out. Just the signage and volume/buzz that is generated serves to infect nearby spectators, and people go and buy the game. They then play it at their local card stores in the supported tournaments, and before you know it, your game is growing exponentially.

[Axe Knight]

The game would lend itself extremely well to intense competition.  It would be far easier for an audience to follow the finals of, given its simple mechanics, than other board/card games with championships.  The interest in Dominion has far from peaked IMO, and I think Superdad has some interesting points on generating interest by making "stars", and the prospect of a reward should you win.  It wouldn't happen overnight, but it could happen.  This is especially due to the fact that it's a non-collectible game that you can easily acquire, and it's not bogged down with too many things happening at once. 

One rough idea I had was a tournament with two parts: first, you play many different people, and have to make a cut, based on how many games you win, who you played, and perhaps your difference in score as a tie-breaker. You are then seeded in a bracket where you play one person per round in a Best of 3 series.  Starting at the quarter finals, it'd be Best of 5, and the finals, Best of 7.  You could generate some more interest ahead of time by making one of the sets of 10 in the finals known, one with a ton of different possible strategies. 

I had a pipe dream of organizing/financing such a tournament, I just have no idea how to gain the permission or even legitimacy to do something like it.

There really isn't anything. There will be a world champion this year, but that event is struggling to be more fun than serious. The WBC no doubt crowns a champion; that is probably as serious as it gets.

What is that event?

[Superdad]

You could also introduce a collectable aspect to the game. For example, what if you included attendance-handout promo cards for international tournaments.

For example, at the north american championship tournament, you have a promo card that all attendees get.

Similarly, you could have a promo card that is handed out by tournament organizers for weekly tournaments at local stores. Imagine the new walled villiage promo card... imagine if that was handed out every week at a local card store. Someone may want to attend 10 of these tournaments so that they could obtain 10-copies of the card for their collection.

The world championship could give out promo cards for competitors. These would be highly sought-after cards that collectors would pursue.

These could be legal (or not) for tournament settings, based on the availability of the cards.

There's a lot of room for promotion of the game in this sort of setting.

[rrenaud]

WBC is the so called "World Boardgaming Championships" in Lancaster, PA.  They held a Dominion tournament the last two years.  They also hold tournaments for about 100 other games.  It's a good time.

http://www.boardgamers.org/yearbook/dompge.htm - I was 2nd last year
http://www.boardgamers.org/yearbook09/dompge.htm - theory was 2nd in 2009

[Jack Rudd]

If it develops anything like competitive chess has, I predict that some form of the Swiss system will end up being the usual format for Dominion tournaments. Possibly something like the one-day rapidplays that you see a lot of.

[Axe Knight]

WBC is the so called "World Boardgaming Championships" in Lancaster, PA.  They held a Dominion tournament the last two years.  They also hold tournaments for about 100 other games.  It's a good time.

http://www.boardgamers.org/yearbook/dompge.htm - I was 2nd last year
http://www.boardgamers.org/yearbook09/dompge.htm - theory was 2nd in 2009

Is it invitational, or open?  That's only 2 hours from me and I'd love to participate, just to see how I'd do.

[Razzishi]

As mentioned, CCGs are able to work well with a competitive scene because of the increased demand for more product that trying to build a competitive deck creates.  Having Dominion get really popular with competitive players really doesn't sell any more Dominion sets in the way that having Magic get popular sells Magic cards.  The best you can do is keep putting out new expansions, but not only is the average purchase per expansion going to be far less, I also believe the designer has pretty much said he has a limited number in mind after which the game will cease to officially expand.

There likely are other aspects to the game that I think make it difficult to work competitively, but everything I can think of has been handled by other competitive games in some way.  The major issue is the above.  The only traditional games that competitive scenes have sprung up for have had to first become extremely popular.  Holding a World Championship and GenCon is something it seems almost every game does, and hardly distinguishes oneself.  While Dominion is extremely popular with competitive-minded card players looking for a game deep in internal interactions, I find it quite amusing that among the Magic playing crowd I run with Ascension got a ton of buzz while I've only heard talk about Dominion amongst the most intellectual-minded and have not seen anyone actually playing it.  Ascension is a much easier game to get to run casually at a moment's notice, and is a much "better" casual game for certain definitions of "better".  I find it somewhat similar to Magic and the Vs. System card game, the latter of which had a competitive circuit created for it when it was first published and in most people's opinions was superior to the former as a skill-testing game; the problem was that it was so hard to beat good players that people weren't really interested in playing it casually. 

In my opinion, the only reason that chess survives as a competitive game is its extremely long history and surface simplicity.  Dominion with just the base set is far more complex on the surface; imagine chess where the rules for how the pieces move are so complex and varied they have to be directly printed on the pieces for people to remember them!  Sure, most of the cards we sorta just know by now, but the details are such that they could easily become confused if we didn't have them printed directly on them.  Also, compare them both to Go, which has in some sense simpler rules (one piece, one move, one outcome evaluation) and even a longer history, and for which tournament quality AI has not become a reality (to my knowledge). 

Dominion might be an amazingly deep and skill-testing game, but to get a competitive scene you need it to become very, very popular.  There's just no incentive for people to aggressively market it so it spreads by word-of-mouth - much too slow to get anyone but the board-game-geek crowd interested.   At least, that's my take on it.

[Superdad]

Tournament support may not get new product purchased by the tournament regulars, but it gets more new people interested in the game. They will buy sets.

Similar to chess, once you have a chess board, you have the game. Tournament support has been shown to generate sales of chess sets due to the increased exposure of the game. I'm not sure where I saw that posted, but it came with a link of some analysis that was done. I'll see if I can dig it up.


As far as marketing the game...

The fact that I have only recently heard of the game is testament to the fact that it's marketing can improve. I've been playing competitive card games for almost 20 years now, and I've only heard of dominion's existence some 3-months ago?

There are literally thousands of competitive card game players that have no idea that dominion even exists. If it had a world championship at a larger venue (Gencon for example), I'm sure thousands and thousands of people would gain exposure to the game. These people all have friends with similar mindsets.

For example, ever since I learned of the existence of the game, I've introduced at least 20 people to it. These are all people that know other friends that play card games. They all had no idea this game existed.

The exposure that this game would get from being supported competitively - both at large scale events like a world championship at a larger venue (gencon instead of BGC) as well as locally at stores.. is immense.

Also, the appeal of dominion is that it introduces non-gamers to the game. It is MUCH more friendly to introduce a non-gamer to than Ascension. I picked up Ascension at Gencon last year (due to the buzz surrounding it), and only learned about dominion because someone playing it said "hey this is a lot like dominion, you should check it out".

I tried teaching people Ascension, but non-gamers didn't like the themeing of Ascension, but LOVED the themeing of Dominion. These non-gamers now ask me to play games of Dominion regularly, and have since bought their own sets.

The reason for this very local expanse of dominion players is entirely due to me - exposure of the game to a competitive card player, who then infects his friends.

Without a doubt, tournament support would get this sort of local infection (that happened in my area due to my exposure to the game) to happen all over the place, and would exponentially grow the game.

I'm extremely surprised that this game couldn't build more exposure off of "best game of the year" award that it received. It seems that the game got some accolades, and those accolades were not capitalized upon. This is a shame, but one that can be rectified.

[Razzishi]

This is especially due to the fact that it's a non-collectible game that you can easily acquire, and it's not bogged down with too many things happening at once. 

Dominion suffers from the problem that it does not have a good way of extracting from the consumer exactly how much money they are willing to spend on it.  If I could buy a base set for $20 I probably would, but I don't want to spend $40 to get something playable when I have a friend with every set and can play online.  If I had $600 I was willing to spend on Dominion, both I and RGG would be sad because I can only spend around $300.  Magic has a very good sales model in this sense, as do movies: you can see a film as many times as you can afford on the big screen, and then buy the blu-Ray, then the special edition, and then the collectibles, etc, or you can just rent it for $1 two years later, each depending on how much you are willing to spend on it.

Chess has been around for hundreds of years, and there are massive numbers of books available on strategy.  The rules haven't changed in the last 300 years at least.  Nearly everyone intellectually minded at all in developed countries knows how to play.  The rules are so simple and in the public domain that you make sets of varying quality so that people can spend however much they want on one.

[rrenaud]

The WBC is open to everyone who pays the entrance fee.  It's a month away.

http://boardgamers.org

[Arya Stark]

There is a tourney 1ce a month at my local gamers store. I've won all the promo cards and a dominion treasure box for the tokens. It was only 5 bucks to play then they up'd it to 10 to give out bigger prizes and now a lot less people show up to play. Im afraid the same thing is going to happen when iso goes down...

[Superdad]

Exactly and if dominion was supported more, you could extract more money from these people.

People would enter weekly local tournaments to obtain the promo cards for their collection. This may be a weekly $10 entry fee that is money for the local retailer. This local retailer then does Dominion promo-days to help get more exposure to his local tournament. These Promo days get more new people playing the game.

The weekly tournaments would award rating to top players. The rating could be used to automatically qualify someone for the state championship tournament. Therefore there is incentive for these regulars to routinely join sanctioned events.

The state-championships could be decent revenue generators for the makers of dominion, and would grow the game further.

New set sales would certainly be higher with an increased community of people playing the game. Not only that, but it would ensure the game does not die off... i.e. it enables the potential for many many expansions, and the sales from all those expansions.


Without tournament support, the game will grow extremely slowly (as it has been), and likely will eventually die out (say in 10 years or so).

I dunno, it seems pretty clear-cut and obvious to me. Competitive support is win-win... there's literally no downside to it.

Heck, they could even GIVE local retailers a copy of the game and ask them to demo it every weekend for a month (as a "price" for being given free product). Without a doubt, the sales generated from "seeding" their product throughout the country would pay back multiple-fold the "investment" of giving thousands and thousands of retailers a free copy of the game.


For example, at Gencon last year, the owner of the local card store (my friend) went to the retailer of Ascension. He said:

My friend:  "I'll either buy this game for the $50 that you want to charge me, or you can give me the game for free"
Retailer: "Funny-guy, that'll be $50 (or whatever it cost)"
My friend: "No I'm serious. I own a store. If you give me this game for free, I will demo it every weekend for a month. If these demos even sell only 2 copies of the game through this method, you win instantly, not to mention future sales from those people's friends".
Retailer: "No thanks, $50 please"
His boss overhearing this then procedes to walk over to my friend, ask for verification that he owns a store, ask some details about how many people frequent the store, then walks to his retailer, fist-pounds him on the top of the head and says: "what are you retarded or something. Give this man a complimentary copy of the game to demo for us".

We then went to the Dominion booth. The dominion booth took the "pay me $50 please" route. Not smart.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that the Ascension booth was smarter to give the free product, as my friend probably sold close to 50 boxes of Ascension in the demo days alone. Not only that, but the sales eclipsed the minimum required amount to get picked up by his distributor, and therefore it got distribution support to many other local stores. The dominion booth lost out on this exposure.

It seems to me that it could be possible that poor decisions like this could keep the game down, lower than what it's potential could be.


IMO, dominion needs to hire me as a product marketer LOL.

[Axe Knight]

The WBC is open to everyone who pays the entrance fee.  It's a month away.

http://boardgamers.org

I will most likely be there.  Thanks.

[WanderingWinder]

Nearly everyone intellectually minded at all in developed countries knows how to play. 

Except a large number in the U.S.
If you want to go to the comparison for chess, first of all our IM, Mr. Rudd, is probably the person to ask. But from what I know, there are actually huge problems getting tournament chess up and running. There were basically no tournaments before ~150 years ago, and more or less no professional players, as we think of them today, before the mid 20th century.
The basic problem is finding people to pay for the stuff. In the U.S. it's all based on entry fees to the events, similar I think to poker. But elsewhere they can *sometimes* (for very high level events) find rich donors interested in chess (also some tournaments in the states, too, including the past few US championships). This is how, basically the current FIDE president keeps getting reelected.

[Donald X.]

There really isn't anything. There will be a world champion this year, but that event is struggling to be more fun than serious. The WBC no doubt crowns a champion; that is probably as serious as it gets.

What is that event?

All I know about "that event" (as opposed to the WBC, which is something else), is from the RGG site:

Please visit our booth (925) and gaming rooms (140-141) at Gencon this year. We have a new promo card for Dominion. Also, we will host the US qualifying event for the Dominion World
Master Tournament (to be held in Essen, Germany in October). The winner of this event will win a trip to the convention in Essen to particpate in the Tournament. Preliminary rounds will be held on Thursday and Friday; finals on Saturday. Visit us in rooms 140 & 141 to enter and play.

[Donald X.]

You could also introduce a collectable aspect to the game.

We are never making cards that only people who go to x / do x etc. can get. Any promos have to be available to everyone some basic way, such as via the BGG store. This is RGG's philosophy and I do not see it changing.

[Donald X.]

Dominion suffers from the problem that it does not have a good way of extracting from the consumer exactly how much money they are willing to spend on it.

We do not see this as a problem! Yes, the way to extract maximum utility from customers is to charge different people different amounts for essentially the same thing, such as via bonus tracks, or Magic's scheme. But it isn't necessary to bleed customers dry in order to be successful and make more games.

[Kuildeous]

Dominion suffers from the problem that it does not have a good way of extracting from the consumer exactly how much money they are willing to spend on it.

We do not see this as a problem! Yes, the way to extract maximum utility from customers is to charge different people different amounts for essentially the same thing, such as via bonus tracks, or Magic's scheme. But it isn't necessary to bleed customers dry in order to be successful and make more games.

I've never wanted to find a "Like" button more than I do now.

The comparison of Ascension's willingness to give a demo copy to RGG's refusal to give a demo copy isn't really that compelling.

In the case of Ascension, the company pays the cost of one game in order to gain X revenue.

But, for Dominion, the company pays $0 and still gains X revenue.

The main difference is that Dominion is currently the reigning champion in this genre of gaming. Ascension (and Thunderstone, etc.) is doing well, but it doesn't have nearly the market that Dominion has right now. Is it a shame that other fine games are being eclipsed by Dominion's popularity? Sure, but that's the way of things. Somebody has to win out, and Dominion has the simplicity and accessibility to hold that title.

If I were running the RGG booth, I'd have asked for the $50 too. Why give away a demo copy when the customers will do all the work for the company? I personally bring Dominion to many gatherings and introduce many new players to the game. From a business standpoint, why would RGG put forth money to pay for something that I'm willing to do? Hell, not only willing, but I paid for the right to do it.

Ascension is not as popular as Dominion. It may be a great game, but greatness doesn't sell itself without someone willing to put forth the effort. Dominion has those people in spades. Other games may have to work at it more, and that means that the smarter move for those companies is to give demo copies.

That being said, I know that RGG is not above giving demo copies. A friend of mine routinely demos RGG games, and quite a few of his boxes are labeled as demo copies. Dominion is not one of those boxes, and there's a good reason for that.

[painted_cow]

Please visit our booth (925) and gaming rooms (140-141) at Gencon this year. We have a new promo card for Dominion. Also, we will host the US qualifying event for the Dominion World
Master Tournament (to be held in Essen, Germany in October). The winner of this event will win a trip to the convention in Essen to particpate in the Tournament. Preliminary rounds will be held on Thursday and Friday; finals on Saturday. Visit us in rooms 140 & 141 to enter and play.

Here is a link to the actual tournament. But it is in German language only :-(

http://www.spielezentrum.de/Turniere/Dominion/Dominion2011/DOM11/DOM11-Startseite.html

[skrotkanon]

I don't know how much this will add but I'll write it anyway.

I think I've played Dominion for a year, a friend of mine introduced me and a
couple of others, since that day we have barely played anything else when
meeting up. I've bought a set of my own and we have showed it to a few
people who have then bought sets and so on. Suddenly I see people
everywhere playing Dominion. I have actually yet to meet a person who
didn't love Dominion after a game or two. So, I don't really see the point of
upping the marketing since it seems to spread like wildfire once it takes hold.

And I honestly don't think tournaments would be that popular, I even
prefer playing on Isotropic for dueling since it's so much faster.
Tourneys would be like SSBM ones, the difference in skill between the
casual players and the Isotropic addicts is rather staggering.

[Superdad]

Sorry but having a solid product that will sell itself (word of mouth marketing) is *not* a reason to not market it!!

Lets take the example of giving the free product to the retailer to demo vs not. Lets say a box is $50 with a profit of $40 (probably in the ballpark).

Case A: Do not give free product
Result: $50 immediate revenue, $10 cost.
NET PROFIT: $40

Case B: Give free product to retailer
Result: $0 immediate profit, $10 cost.
Retailer demos the product and you get 20 sales on those demo weekends. Net profit = 20x40 - 10 = $790. Note, you only need to get a SINGLE sale for this to be the correct decision.

Now take into account the fact that you have 20 new players to the game that would have otherwise not known/tried your product, and each of them may buy expansions, or get friends to play.

Non-quantifyable arguments such as "the game is good enough to sell on it's own" are just absolute lunacy. There is absolutely ZERO reason to make the decision for Case A, unless you suspect that the store will just take their copy and not demo it like they said they would (i.e. they are scamming you). If that's the case, sure, go ahead and choose Case A. But don't even pretend for a second that "it'll sell itself" is a sound business strategy. It's absolute rubbish.


/that being said, this is a tiny single-case example of a story that happened, and certianly (i would suspect) does not represent their marketing strategy. It was just one doofus at a convention table making the obviously incorrect decision. But please, do not try to defend that terrible business decision.

If the game will sell itself by selling a single copy, imagine how it will sell itself by flipping that 1 copy into 20, and all the exposure that it gains as well.

[Kuildeous]

/that being said, this is a tiny single-case example of a story that happened, and certianly (i would suspect) does not represent their marketing strategy. It was just one doofus at a convention table making the obviously incorrect decision. But please, do not try to defend that terrible business decision.

And is it considered a good business decision to give away product to anyone who asks? I'm willing to bet that RGG has channels to go through if you want demo copies. Randomly walking up to a booth at a convention is not the correct channel. For a smaller distributor, that works great. Hey, not only does Ascension get some exposure, but they also have one less box to haul back home should they not sell out at the convention.

Sorry, but if I had a successful venture going and some schlep walks up to me and asks for free product without an introduction, I'd tell him to hit the bricks. I'd need to contact the gaming store directly. Some guy asking for free product and is able to produce "proof" that he owns a store? I'd be suspicious of a scam artist. What proof did he provide? A business card? Anyone can make a set of 50 for cheap. Stationery?  Also cheap to produce.

Now, I would admit that the booth retailer should have said, "I'm sorry, but I am not authorized to give out copies here. If you would contact our office, you can explain more about your proposal."

Then again, if the first words out of your friend's mouth were, "I'll either buy this game for the $50 that you want to charge me, or you can give me the game for free," then his marketing failed right there. Of course RGG isn't going to bother to listen to anything else he has to say. They're too busy making real money selling to legitimate customers. Hell, that line is pretty boneheaded, even at the Ascension booth, but dealing with the owners of an underdog does have its benefits.

As I've said, RGG does engage in demos. I still remember Jay teaching Ricochet Robots many years back. But c'mon, you expect them to take some yahoo seriously when he flat-out says, "Gimme"? Like they don't get enough requests for handouts/playtests/etc. Introduce yourself first, prove your intentions, and then ask for the free stuff. The only bad marketing I see belongs to your friend.