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Author Topic: Interview with Donald X.  (Read 2127572 times)

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LastFootnote

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2375 on: June 09, 2015, 09:46:49 pm »
0

I played Kingdom Builder quite a few times a couple years ago. This article reminded me how much I loved it, so I'm gonna pick it up for myself now. I, uh, guess my visit gave him ad revenue?

I don't see any ads on that page.
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Dsell

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2376 on: June 09, 2015, 11:31:59 pm »
0

I played Kingdom Builder quite a few times a couple years ago. This article reminded me how much I loved it, so I'm gonna pick it up for myself now. I, uh, guess my visit gave him ad revenue?

I don't see any ads on that page.

In that case his blog is doing less than nothing for him.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2377 on: June 09, 2015, 11:57:43 pm »
+2

I played Kingdom Builder quite a few times a couple years ago. This article reminded me how much I loved it, so I'm gonna pick it up for myself now. I, uh, guess my visit gave him ad revenue?

I don't see any ads on that page.

In that case his blog is doing less than nothing for him.

Well he's a web developer, so probably it was good practice to create it. And he seems to enjoy writing reviews of things. I have to assume he feels he's getting his money's worth.
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werothegreat

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2378 on: June 10, 2015, 09:10:10 am »
0

Would you ever playtest a new expansion through MF's Dominion Online?  Or would you stick to isotropic?
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GendoIkari

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2379 on: June 10, 2015, 10:31:35 am »
+4

Would you ever playtest a new expansion through MF's Dominion Online?  Or would you stick to isotropic?

It's tough to playtest a new expansion online when you have to wait until it's already been published for several months before it's available to play online...
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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2380 on: June 10, 2015, 12:16:37 pm »
0

Would you ever playtest a new expansion through MF's Dominion Online?  Or would you stick to isotropic?

It's tough to playtest a new expansion online when you have to wait until it's already been published for several months before it's available to play online...

Hey, Guilds released online at the same time it released physically.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2381 on: June 10, 2015, 09:47:38 pm »
0

Would you ever playtest a new expansion through MF's Dominion Online?  Or would you stick to isotropic?
I would test on either platform, provided MF / Doug were willing to do the programming.
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SCSN

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2382 on: June 12, 2015, 11:21:12 am »
+16

Many people fear that on some not-too-distant day their job will be threatened by robots and/or computers.

With the recent developments in the area of algorithmic Dominion-card generation, how worried are you?
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Seprix

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2383 on: June 12, 2015, 11:26:19 am »
+3

Many people fear that on some not-too-distant day their job will be threatened by robots and/or computers.

With the recent developments in the area of algorithmic Dominion-card generation, how worried are you?

Considering the recent developments in Dominion game simulators, I don't think he'll be too worried.
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werothegreat

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2384 on: June 12, 2015, 03:38:42 pm »
+2

Why do Treasures say "When you play this" before listing their on play effects?
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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2385 on: June 12, 2015, 03:48:02 pm »
0

How do you feel about the open beta release?
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   Quote from: sudgy on June 31, 2011, 11:47:46 pm

GendoIkari

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2386 on: June 12, 2015, 03:53:03 pm »
+7

How do you feel about the open beta release?

I don't think this is a good question. Lots of people asked similar things back when Goko was first coming out, and there's not a good way for Donald to answer it. Though not directly, these people are his business partners. It would be bad business and unprofessional to criticize them.
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LastFootnote

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2387 on: June 12, 2015, 03:55:18 pm »
+4

If it were me, I would be sad that things weren't going better, but happy that they weren't going worse.
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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2388 on: June 12, 2015, 03:59:08 pm »
+7

If it were me, I would be sad that things weren't going better, but happy that they weren't going worse.

Sad when compared to happier times anyway, but happy when compared to times not as good.
« Last Edit: June 12, 2015, 05:11:53 pm by Cuzz »
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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2389 on: June 12, 2015, 05:06:24 pm »
0

If it were me, I would be sad that things weren't going better, but happy that they weren't going worse.

Sad when compared to happier times anyway, but happy when compared to times not as bad.

I think you're talking about better times in both parts of this sentence. Is there something you want to tell us?
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Cuzz

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2390 on: June 12, 2015, 05:12:44 pm »
0

If it were me, I would be sad that things weren't going better, but happy that they weren't going worse.

Sad when compared to happier times anyway, but happy when compared to times not as bad.

I think you're talking about better times in both parts of this sentence. Is there something you want to tell us?

Ah yes
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2391 on: June 12, 2015, 06:17:22 pm »
+8

Many people fear that on some not-too-distant day their job will be threatened by robots and/or computers.

With the recent developments in the area of algorithmic Dominion-card generation, how worried are you?
I went through this in the 80s and 90s. I talked a bit about card generation in the thread on the Magic cards thing.

At one point it seemed like you could have a program that wrote programs. So much for programmers! The problem is that so much of your program is the part you have to pick out yourself, the logic that you want. The best you can do is have big libraries of commonly used things, which we have and so much for that.

For card generation, the first issue is, that anything you want it to come up with, you have to come up with. The acceptable complexity is so low that it's not like it can build some amazing new thing out of small parts. As soon as you start assembling parts, you've got too many. So, again, you think of all the basic stuff, and then it combines it, and well you could just do that yourself, the hard part was figuring out all the basic stuff.

And the second issue is poetry. Go to that Magic card generator I linked. Card after card is just meaningless babble. It's meaningless babble that makes sense in Magic, that tells you just what some creature ability is or whatever, but it's still just babble. What you really need is a poetry generator. And well that's not to say that the problem is impossible. Probably there are strides to be made there. It's an interesting problem, but I am always too busy figuring out basic stuff and writing poems to look at it.

Finally we could note that, in terms of actual income, my job is collecting royalties on Dominion. I can do that just fine no matter what computer advances are made. If anything they might make it slightly easier.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2392 on: June 12, 2015, 06:21:09 pm »
+3

Why do Treasures say "When you play this" before listing their on play effects?
It's kind of a bummer that they do - it adds all that text to those cards, and they already use a bunch of space on the giant coin.

They say it because it seemed important for clarity when special treasures first appeared. The first one was Philosopher's Stone (due to Alchemy sneaking ahead of Prosperity) and it had to be clear, when does the number of cards in your deck matter. It matters right when you play the treasure; you count the cards then and only then.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2393 on: June 12, 2015, 07:01:20 pm »
+7

How do you feel about the open beta release?

I don't think this is a good question. Lots of people asked similar things back when Goko was first coming out, and there's not a good way for Donald to answer it. Though not directly, these people are his business partners. It would be bad business and unprofessional to criticize them.
Well yes and no. Sometimes people want me to say bad things about a publisher for them, and well man, who would I rather be friends with, some guy on BGG or the publisher, think think.

I am not actually any kind of a partner with MF. I license the game to RGG, they have whatever deal with, man, whoever they have a deal with, I don't know if that deal is even direct with MF. Still it behooves me to behave in a way a disinterested third party would think was reasonable.

At the same time I would just as soon everyone knew I was going to be honest. It's an advantage sometimes, it pays off when you-the-company want someone honest. If it hurts you other times well you can decide for yourself if that leaves interacting with me worth it or not.

FFG's contract forbids you from speaking ill of either your game with them or them, for the duration. I didn't talk much about Infiltration because I didn't want to feel like I was being dishonest via omission. They were sad about that but well. If you want me to promote my game with you you have to let me be honest. Now that the contract has expired, I haven't posted some tell-all or anything; I know they still don't want me bad-mouthing them. And well. Everyone always thinks they know best, that they know better than you, whether you're the game designer or whoever; it's no surprise that FFG thought they knew better than me. I knew going into the deal that they would change the game and there would be nothing that I could do. And they made changes I didn't like but to their credit included game variants that get a ways back towards the original. I would still work with them again, depending on the project. And I mean, they may have that clause in their contract, but they seem pretty honest. They don't make a Dominion rip-off, look at that.

So anyway, this company that I'm only indirectly doing business with, they might as well know that I will be honest. I have been pretty supportive so far I think? I mean we are talking about a game that I expected to be looking good in 2011 or 2012.

One thing you can consider is that it's all risk to them; Dominion has to be successful enough to rake in cash, or they have just thrown away money on it. The take so far does not remotely cover the man-hours. So I mean 1) if some of their available man-hours are going to other projects instead, that's why, they need to stay afloat while they pursue this, and 2) they sure are going to try to get a hit out of it. If they fail to fix things and it sucks then they made a really poor investment. So you can take a completely pragmatic, everyone is selfish take on this, and what you come up with is, they are going to try to make online Dominion fantastic. The worst I can say is, they will be trying to make it fantastic for normal people rather than hardcore players.

Anyway on to sudgy's question. For sure I personally would have just turned off the store and kept the beta small-scale until it was in better shape. There are really basic things not working or not working well, and there's no point adding people until you are outpacing the ability of your testers to find things to fix. Not having revenue from it meanwhile sounds bad but I don't think we're talking about much revenue. And you don't want bad PR from a more public unfinished program.
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werothegreat

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2394 on: June 12, 2015, 07:13:20 pm »
0

I don't think anyone's doubting that they want to make money with an online implementation of Dominion and that they want it to be successful.  I think the problem is that the developers so far have seemed to have an idea in their head of what Dominion should look like online, and when actual competitive players of Dominion say "no, that's not what we want", they, at best, meet us begrudgingly halfway with a flabby compromise, and, at worst, ignore us completely.  MF has made statements to try to assert they want Dominion Online to be the best it can be for all players, but so far it's mainly just words.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2395 on: June 12, 2015, 07:15:10 pm »
+16

I don't think anyone's doubting that they want to make money with an online implementation of Dominion and that they want it to be successful.  I think the problem is that the developers so far have seemed to have an idea in their head of what Dominion should look like online, and when actual competitive players of Dominion say "no, that's not what we want", they, at best, meet us begrudgingly halfway with a flabby compromise, and, at worst, ignore us completely.  MF has made statements to try to assert they want Dominion Online to be the best it can be for all players, but so far it's mainly just words.
Meh, take it outside bub. It's not the Tell Donald X. thread.
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pubby

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2396 on: June 13, 2015, 01:17:15 am »
+1

Speaking of poetry, what aspects of Dominion do you find to be particularly poetic? It doesn't have to only cards; rules can be poetic too.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2397 on: June 14, 2015, 02:14:47 am »
+4

Speaking of poetry, what aspects of Dominion do you find to be particularly poetic? It doesn't have to only cards; rules can be poetic too.
Well most of the rules are on cards. The main rules are minimalist. Which has a poetry to it too, but well, it's minimalism.

The way I normally use the term with respect to games, I'm talking about cards that have some symmetry or other connection going on in the text, rather than just being arrangements of the simple things you can do. The connection can be to outside the card (i.e. flavor) or can be subtle.

I am looking through the visual spoilers and well most Dominion cards are just trying to be good versions of the simpler things you can do. They have whatever idea, or combination, and there's nothing else to them. These would fall under the category of, the computer program could generate them, but you have to give it all those basic things and so it's not actually getting you anywhere.

There are cards here and there that have satisfying symmetries and connections though. For example Followers has you draw 2 and them discard 2, you gain Estate and they gain Curse. Jack of All Trades is an example of something much more subtle; you might never realize that the four things defend against the different kinds of attacks.
« Last Edit: June 15, 2015, 05:09:47 am by Donald X. »
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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2398 on: June 15, 2015, 04:54:24 am »
+2

Jack of All Trades is an example of something much more subtle; you might never realize that the four things defend against the different kinds of attacks.

Uh, I thought it was common wisdom.

I like how Mercenary is complementary to Steward.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #2399 on: June 15, 2015, 05:24:29 am »
+2

Jack of All Trades is an example of something much more subtle; you might never realize that the four things defend against the different kinds of attacks.

Uh, I thought it was common wisdom.
Well I blabbed about it right away, in the secret history. I have had the experience though of people not seeing the connection between the abilities, asking me what the deal is.
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