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[GendoIkari]

Got an email from Goko:


Hello everyone,

Well, this obviously wasn't how we wanted to launch Goko or Dominion. As of this email we're still having problems keeping the game website up and running. We cannot apologize enough.
 
Our engineering team has been here all night working on the problem and will continue to be here until it's fixed. We'll let you know as soon as the games are up and ready to play.
 
Our sincerest apologies,
Community Team

[ftl]

Yep, got that.

Our engineering team has been here all night working on the problem and will continue to be here until it's fixed. We'll let you know as soon as the games are up and ready to play.

This is a terrible, terrible idea. Every hour spent "working" late at night under pressure in a crunch will take two hours of real work later to fix/undo.

It might get the product out the door faster, but at what cost in quality?

[Insomniac]

I haven't seen that email yet and I was in the beta :S

[Robz888]

I got the e-mail. I just keep thinking: Did they seriously expect the launch to go smoothly, after all the problems people were finding up until minutes before release?

[ftl]

It probably wasn't sent out to the people in the beta, it was sent out to the people who signed up to get notified about their launch on their main site. That's my guess.

[Insomniac]

It probably wasn't sent out to the people in the beta, it was sent out to the people who signed up to get notified about their launch on their main site. That's my guess.

I signed up for that too

[Dsell]

It probably wasn't sent out to the people in the beta, it was sent out to the people who signed up to get notified about their launch on their main site. That's my guess.

I signed up for those email updates and I've never gotten anything from them, ever.

[Kirian]

Yep, got that.

Our engineering team has been here all night working on the problem and will continue to be here until it's fixed. We'll let you know as soon as the games are up and ready to play.

This is a terrible, terrible idea. Every hour spent "working" late at night under pressure in a crunch will take two hours of real work later to fix/undo.

It might get the product out the door faster, but at what cost in quality?

It's actually a bit worse than that.  Crunch-time productivity tends to drop off rapidly, especially if it's overtime.  At about the 16-hour mark, chances are the coders and engineers are making zero useful progress.  Send them home, bring them in fresh in the morning.

[Captain_Frisk]

I got it.  I wonder how the other 140ish game licensees are feeling today?

[Cave-o-sapien]

I got it.  I wonder how the other 140ish game licensees are feeling today?

What do they care?  They have their money.

[Captain_Frisk]

I got it.  I wonder how the other 140ish game licensees are feeling today?

What do they care?  They have their money.

Depends on the amount of money - and how much they care about their customers. 

[Captain_Frisk]

I got it.  I wonder how the other 140ish game licensees are feeling today?

What do they care?  They have their money.

Depends on the amount of money - and how much they care about their customers.

And the structure of the commercial arrangement.  DXV has hinted that he doesn't know whether or not he'll see any money from online dominion.  That kindof implies that its a revenue / profit sharing model - rather than an upfront 1 time license.

[Davio]

Hard targets are so useless in the field of software development.

I'm in this field myself and more often than not it's an order of magnitude thing.
When I say something will take about a week, it may take a few days or even 10 days, but certainly not a month.
When it's going to take a few months that's give or take a few weeks.

But of course the people paying me want to know exactly how long it's going to take so they know how much it's going to cost. Unfortunately I am not a painter who can just multiply the number of square feet by the time it takes him to paint a square foot.

If they would have said: It will be due mid August, I don't think anyone would have had a problem with that.
In the end, it's about whether the game is good or not and you really don't need those overhyped launch days.
In fact, overhyped launch days are often what causes problems, because the servers are not ready for that kind of capacity.

[Cave-o-sapien]

I got it.  I wonder how the other 140ish game licensees are feeling today?

What do they care?  They have their money.

Depends on the amount of money - and how much they care about their customers.

And the structure of the commercial arrangement.  DXV has hinted that he doesn't know whether or not he'll see any money from online dominion.  That kindof implies that its a revenue / profit sharing model - rather than an upfront 1 time license.

Could be.  Or maybe DXV said that because he didn't deal directly with Funsockets.  They licensed the game from RGG, right?

[jamuspsi]

What is it about this game that attracts so many programmers?

[polonkus]

What is it about this game that attracts so many programmers?

It superficially resembles a logically designed, extensible play system which can easily be analogized to a computer program.
Of course if you look a little closer you see a hodgepodge of ad-hoc behaviors. (Again like a computer program?)

[Cave-o-sapien]

What is it about this game that attracts so many programmers?

The opportunities for monetization, of course!

I think there's a more general intersection of boardgames/card games and programmers.  In other words, I don't think it's specific to Dominion.  But I also think you're more likely to see programmers hanging around a forum discussing dominion strategies and statistics than non-programmers.

[blueblimp]

But of course the people paying me want to know exactly how long it's going to take so they know how much it's going to cost. Unfortunately I am not a painter who can just multiply the number of square feet by the time it takes him to paint a square foot.

And the flip-side is, if there is a specific date you want to meet, you may need to sacrifice something to make it. If it's not features, then it's quality.

(Edit: I will now proceed to speculate wildly.)

I feel like Goko had more ambition for this launch than they could actually manage. There are a lot of non-essential features that could have been delayed until after launch, including some things requested here. Text logs, for example, maybe should have been left for later; what good are they if people can't play at all?

There was also some mis-identifying of use cases, I feel. The big one is offline play, which apparently is vital to many people and was completely overlooked, maybe because of overemphasis on listening to the f.DS crowd, which obviously wouldn't care much. But also small things like how awkward it is to use the Deck Builder.

[polonkus]

But of course the people paying me want to know exactly how long it's going to take so they know how much it's going to cost. Unfortunately I am not a painter who can just multiply the number of square feet by the time it takes him to paint a square foot.

And the flip-side is, if there is a specific date you want to meet, you may need to sacrifice something to make it. If it's not features, then it's quality.

I feel like Goko had more ambition for this launch than they could actually manage. There are a lot of non-essential features that could have been delayed until after launch, including some things requested here. Text logs, for example, maybe should have been left for later; what good are they if people can't play at all?

Well, text logs are pretty trivial and also a pretty useful debugging tool, I don't see any reason not to put them in.
This ridiculous adventure mode could certainly have been scrapped though.

[Cave-o-sapien]

But of course the people paying me want to know exactly how long it's going to take so they know how much it's going to cost. Unfortunately I am not a painter who can just multiply the number of square feet by the time it takes him to paint a square foot.

And the flip-side is, if there is a specific date you want to meet, you may need to sacrifice something to make it. If it's not features, then it's quality.

I feel like Goko had more ambition for this launch than they could actually manage. There are a lot of non-essential features that could have been delayed until after launch, including some things requested here. Text logs, for example, maybe should have been left for later; what good are they if people can't play at all?

Well, text logs are pretty trivial and also a pretty useful debugging tool, I don't see any reason not to put them in.
This ridiculous adventure mode could certainly have been scrapped though.

But then people wouldn't have any incentive to buy "zaps" with real money!

[blueblimp]

But of course the people paying me want to know exactly how long it's going to take so they know how much it's going to cost. Unfortunately I am not a painter who can just multiply the number of square feet by the time it takes him to paint a square foot.

And the flip-side is, if there is a specific date you want to meet, you may need to sacrifice something to make it. If it's not features, then it's quality.

I feel like Goko had more ambition for this launch than they could actually manage. There are a lot of non-essential features that could have been delayed until after launch, including some things requested here. Text logs, for example, maybe should have been left for later; what good are they if people can't play at all?

Well, text logs are pretty trivial and also a pretty useful debugging tool, I don't see any reason not to put them in.
This ridiculous adventure mode could certainly have been scrapped though.

It needed a UI button and window (both of which are pretty buggy), along with somewhere to put the logs after the game is done, and so on. I agree it's not a big feature, but still, it can take some time.

Edit: And I realize I'm in a position where I have no idea how long anything actually takes to implement in their framework, but hey, this is an internet forum. Internet forums are for wild speculation.

[Captain_Frisk]

But of course the people paying me want to know exactly how long it's going to take so they know how much it's going to cost. Unfortunately I am not a painter who can just multiply the number of square feet by the time it takes him to paint a square foot.

And the flip-side is, if there is a specific date you want to meet, you may need to sacrifice something to make it. If it's not features, then it's quality.

(Edit: I will now proceed to speculate wildly.)

I feel like Goko had more ambition for this launch than they could actually manage. There are a lot of non-essential features that could have been delayed until after launch, including some things requested here. Text logs, for example, maybe should have been left for later; what good are they if people can't play at all?

There was also some mis-identifying of use cases, I feel. The big one is offline play, which apparently is vital to many people and was completely overlooked, maybe because of overemphasis on listening to the f.DS crowd, which obviously wouldn't care much. But also small things like how awkward it is to use the Deck Builder.

We weren't involved (unless someone else here cares to speak up) until very late in the process - well past the point of "should we do offline mode".  I agree that most of us don't care - but clearly its a big deal elsewhere.

There are plenty of things that should have been prioritized - things that vocal players are going to gripe about:
1. Security and performance testing on anything that you expect a significant number of public - non trustworthy clients on.
2. Correct implementation of game rules
3. Tutorial for new players
4. Offline play
5. Better phone support (if androminion can it - then so can goko) - I don't think its clear to folks yet that iOS in this case really just means ipad -
6. Undo feature / better interface design

And several things that could have been de-prioritized:
1. Avatars
2. Adventure mode
3. Deckbuilding (entirely) - you could have launched with a trivial text one like isos - with a help page to explain how it worked while they work on a better one.
4. Excess flash and sparkle
5. Music (is there anyone who keeps this on for more than 1 game?)

Of course - different resources do different things - so its not like the dude who located some classical tunes was really going to be fixing king's court duration bugs - but it does seem that there are different priorities at play here.

[blueblimp]

The full array of AI's doesn't really need to exist either. It's okay to have just one AI, and have it be kinda stupid. That'll keep people busy until you have better ones.

[Cave-o-sapien]

Where is the VP of Prioritization when you need him?

[cactus]

What is it about this game that attracts so many programmers?

The opportunities for monetization, of course!

Funny! True.