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Author Topic: The Future of Isotropic  (Read 49440 times)

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jsh357

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #100 on: March 13, 2013, 08:34:50 pm »
0

I made it to the top 10 (and I know at least two of the users above me use the disconnect exploit, one doing so every time we have started a game), so I'm confident the skill level is lower presently.  :P  Some of the players on there are really good, but I'd say maybe only 5 or 6 Level 40+ players who play regularly.
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Powerman

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #101 on: March 13, 2013, 08:43:28 pm »
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I think the skill level on Goko is a bit lower than on Iso. That might have to do with lots of experienced players still playing on iso. There are some people whose iso level i'd estimate to 40+ there who never played on Iso though.

From what I can tell, quite a bit lower.  Of course, on Iso I am easily able to discern if the system thinks they're good while on Goko I have no idea if the people I play are supposed to be good.  But in the last 4 days I'm like 30-3... so I think they're a bit worse.
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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #102 on: March 13, 2013, 08:44:27 pm »
+1

Also remember that levels have had a good amount of time to "settle" on Iso, whereas even the longest-term Goko users probably still have higher uncertainties than they do on Goko.
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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #103 on: March 13, 2013, 09:23:40 pm »
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Also remember that levels have had a good amount of time to "settle" on Iso, whereas even the longest-term Goko users probably still have higher uncertainties than they do on Goko.

True, but that will change with time, obviously.

I think a lot of the resistance is because of a change in interface - iso players coming in to Goko have no idea where anything is supposed to be.  But once you're used to the interface, it's fine.  Remember, iso's interface takes a bit of getting used to itself.
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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #104 on: March 13, 2013, 09:52:51 pm »
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Some people here make it sound like we're at a funeral mourning Dominion's death.

For all we know, the transition to Goko could spell the beginning of the death of Dominion, as many elite players have expressed that they no longer wish to continue playing. Or it could be the opposite. I'm inclined to believe that it will more likely be the latter, but that is all contingent on Goko continuing to display a shred of competence as a company.

If the so-called "elite" players have bought Dominion already for the tabletop, I'm sure RGG and Donald X. couldn't care less if they keep playing online or keep playing at all.  The game's publisher and designer already have their money.  If those so-called "elite" players never spent any money on Dominion anyway, still no skin off of Donald X.'s or Jay Tummelson's noses.  They didn't spend money before, and made it quite clear they are not going to.

I don't consider myself "elite" by any stretch of the imagination.  I spent money on Dominion before, and will continue to when Guilds comes out.  I will also continue to patronize whatever games are hosted by DougZ at Isotropic.  I will not be spending money at Goko for the foreseeable future.

Do I sound unreasonable?  Stupid?  I sure hope not.  Emotions around here run pretty high considering Dominion is just a game.
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dondon151

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #105 on: March 14, 2013, 12:59:21 am »
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I'm not sure what you are agreeing or disagreeing with.

I did not intend to come off as elitist in my post. If the current elites depart, then inevitably, others will just take their place. Consider the following, which is what I was getting at:

1. Dominion is entering its twilight years. The last big expansion has been released and Donald X. has repeatedly stated his intention to not design further Dominion expansions.
2. The development of Dominion strategy has stagnated in the period between the release of Dark Ages and the shutdown on Isotropic. This is obviously because there were too few players on Goko during its beta stage.
3. We are well aware of the number of people who played on Iso and the effect that it had on the development of the online Dominion-playing community. We can only be cautiously optimistic that Goko is capable of continuing this trend, although it so far has not shown any indication at successfully doing so.
4. A lot of players, especially some of the more prominent ones, are leaving on March 15.

I'm not trying to be Nietzsche, declaring "Dominion is dead" (it is in fact, far from dead), but with all of the recent events going on, we have to consider the future of Dominion.
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Gherald

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #106 on: March 14, 2013, 02:28:47 am »
+1

It will go back to what it was before -- a really great actual cards game.

With plenty of expansions.
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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #107 on: March 14, 2013, 11:54:43 am »
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Also remember that levels have had a good amount of time to "settle" on Iso, whereas even the longest-term Goko users probably still have higher uncertainties than they do on Goko.

True, but that will change with time, obviously.

I think a lot of the resistance is because of a change in interface - iso players coming in to Goko have no idea where anything is supposed to be.  But once you're used to the interface, it's fine.  Remember, iso's interface takes a bit of getting used to itself.
That's where my resistance mainly comes from at least.

Ha, I remember switching from BSW to Iso thinking "where is all the fancy stuff?" But I got used to the lightweight interface and loved it ever since. Iso's text mode is just great for playing quick games and when I play online, that's exactly what I like to do.

Heck, I veto Ambassador or Scrying Pool just because they make the games soooo looooong sometimes. I have nothing against engine building or 30-line turns, but no need for 40 turn games.
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ednever

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #108 on: March 14, 2013, 12:00:39 pm »
+20

I've stayed pretty "mum" (am I spelling that right?) on the whole goko/ISP debate.

I guess if I leave a few comments here on just one of the thousand threads it will slip by relatively unnoticed. For those who care:

(FWIW by background is Marketing. Trained at P&G, then completed an MBA and joined a global consulting firm (doing more marketing - mainly in telecom), then switched to online to run loyalty and database marketing for one of the big online travel companies. Left there about two years ago and now I run on- and off-line marketing for a company that helps people find homes/care for their aging parents. I know a lot of you have complained about marketing tactics designed to make more money... Well, in done cases, that's what I do. You know how hard it is to cancel your phone service? Depending what country you live in, I designed that system... I also help segment custter bases, so if you don't have money, I can still get you to pay something (while not taking away my profit on the people willing to spend more)

With that as a lead-in...

My opinion is Jay is not trying to maximize revenue at all. I met the guy, and I think he couldn't care less about the money. RGG is just him and his wife - there are no shareholders. They live in New Mexico where his most expensive hobby is volunteering to help people fly other people's air balloons. When I spoke with him about revenue oppornunities for his brand portfolio (just casually, as it's something I tend to naturally go to when I meet someone... I think I did the same thing when I came here and saw Theory's website - my first instinct is increasing monetization...) he wasn't very interested.

What he was interested in was getting people to play more games in casual settings. (he also has very little interest in competitive play: he thinks it takes the fun out of gaming. He understands that some people like it, and he's willing to do done stuff in it - like the championship he sponsored the last couple of years, but he definitely doesn't want to encourage it)

He liked Goko for one key reason:
They promised to allow Dominion to be played on a graphical interface across all browsers (html5). And they weren't going to do a zynga-style monetization (ie pay to win). A lot of companies asked him to make online dominion, but they were either iPad-only or trying to do something Zynga-like.

His choice of Goko had nothing to do with money and whether elite players had already purchased the physical game, etc.


From Goko's side:
I've worked at Venture-backed companies (well, one. And I know guys on the VC side, and others working for these companies). If I understand it right (and I have done zero research to verify this), goko received about $8m in funding. Which is what is called "Series A" funding. It likely means the investors took about 25% of the company with that check. Which means the company is valued at about $24m. The VC guys generally want a 4x return on their capital for a "successful" exit (at this point I'll bet they would be happy to get their money back. I say that not aggressively, just that enough had gone wrong, and VCs are used to 90% of their Series A companies not making it). So an original goal was likely about a $100M valuation. And the timing for that is (hoped) to be about 5 years.

There are four ways to get a $100M valuation:
1- have about $50m in revenue, $5m in profit. Be growing fast. Say ~20%/year
2- same as above, but $10m in profit, growing slowly.
3- have no profit, but say $100m in revenue, and a path to showing profit in the future
4- have no profit or revenue (!), but have millions of users (this is how companies like Instagram or Facebook in thr old days got their valuations)

The other reason Goko needs revenue is what is called "the runway". They have $8m in cash. Then they start spending it. Say they hire a bunch of developers at $100k per year, and they hire 10 of them. Then throw on an executive team of 5 people (CEO, CIO, CFO, CMO, maybe one other guy) each making say $150k (real upside is in stock of the company dies well). Then throw in a physical office, equipment, and hosting, etc. say it all comes to $2.5m/year.

So if they bring in zero revenue (going for plan 4 above say- just get users!), then they have a little over three years before they run out of cash.
If they can get some revenue in the meantime, that lets them extend their runway.

As a start-up you want a long runway, because things will not work. Your initial plan for making money will almost definitely fail- and you will have to come up with something else. It's why most VCs say they (at least in Series A) bet on the people, not the product - since their is a good chance the product won't make it...

Goko has been going for about two years now (I think? They tried to launch last summer. I think they made pitches to the game companies the year before?) and they likely kept spend low before they signed with the game companies. So they likely have another year or so of runway left - unless they can extend it.

Their first shot at doing that is getting people to pay for Dominion.
The problem is that they only take money from Goko Dominion. They have no incentive to get more people buying the physical copies. So any strategy effects of getting people playing online are irrelivant to them.

Right now they ate hoping beyond hope that when iso goes down tomorrow they see a huge jump in sales. The entire exec team will be looking at sales on an hour-by-hour basis. If its not a HUGE jump, they will continue to hope for a week or two (some sort of delayed impact as people build up to the idea of paying). Even if they just get a jump in users that will help them sleep a little more at night. They have models that try to calculate what % of free users will eventually buy.

They will start crunching the "new" numbers to see how far it extends their runway.

When the runway runs out. (and it almost always does) one of four things happen:
1- they launch a Series B - they have proven out enough of their model that someone (sometimes the original investors) is willing to give turn more money. Usually at a higher valuation (say $50m), since there is less risk at this point
2- they have enough cash coming in that they never hit the end of the runway (maybe they have to cut costs to do this - my understanding is goko did one round of cuts already, do they saw this coming
3- they sell the company for what they can get for it and return some $s to the investors
4- they close up shop

---
So. Enough with the economics lesson.

My opinion is that Jay made a mistake. Not a terrible one, but a mistake non the less. By splitting the incentives between the online and offline businesses it decreases the size of the entire pie.

This is a great article to read about a game company that tried to maximize COMBINED on and offline sales: http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/days-of-wonder-ceo-explains-how-ipad-ticket-to-ride-boosted-sales-of-the-re

The key learning there is that by under-pricing online (which has a zero marginal cost) you can dramatically drive offline sales. It makes sense with games. People hate learning the rules of games- except when a friend (an evangelist) teaches them or they learn easily online.

The one part of goko that will work for RGG is that base Dominon is free, and there are tutorials, and that it's graphical and pretty for the casual user. That will help get people introduced to the game.

The bad parts is that by reducing, even slightly, the rabid fans that this site+isotropic produced it will reduce the number of evangelists that introduce the game to others.

To use my own experience:
Since I started playing on Iso and reading stuff here (about a year ago) I've spoken (and my girlfriend who indulges me in my hobby has shared widely with others) to hundreds of people about Dominion, why it's different than other games (since until Innovation I don't really play games), etc.
Of those people I know at least a dozen have gone out and purchased all of the expansions (most don't play online at all). And I know at least three of those (since they told me) have shared the game with friends who have gone on to buy all the expansions.

If a complete Dominion collection costs about $250, that's at least $5000 in revenue I've indirectly generated for RGG in the past year (well, less than that because the retailer/distributor has a mark-up, but you get the idea).

Like a lot of top players, I won't be playing on Goko.
Andvits definitely not due to price (I bought the entire Dominion collection after playing one afternoon of the base set , then finding isotropic and playing some solo games in a different afternoon).

I won't be there because:
1- I tried it and I don't like the interface. Funny as I'm not a UI guy at all, but it doesn't have the "oh. One more game." feeling that I get on iso. Each game is just a little bit longer, and feels like its a little bit more of a "decision" to play
2- the other top players aren't there. I tend to do things in extremes (hense buy all the expansions at once. I flew to Detroit with a weeks notice for a chance to qualify for the US Championships, etc. someday I can tell you what I did after I saw the movie 8-Mile...)
A big reason I play on Iso is to challenge myself against the best in the world. For a number of reasons (including the two I have, but likely others, like the ridiculously high price point) most of the top players aren't on there. And won't be.


I will definitely buy Guilds when it comes out. And I'll still introduce friends to the game. But I know myself and my level of interest will sag.

It's unlikely that I will make RGG $5000 next year like I did this year.

That said, I'm very interested how this all plays out.
The hard part is measuring what didn't happen - what would offline sales have been if Goko hadn't come along? Or if RGG had developed a $2 iPad version?

Really hard to say.

I think Dominion sales will continue to increase (it's a viral product that you need to teach other people, so it's still early in it's life cycle). I think Goko is going to have a very hard time getting to $1m in sales let alone the $5m in profit they need. But I think they can avoid going under.

It wouldn't surprise me if they shifted their focus (a year from now I think their games will be offered as subscriptions at $5 a month or less).

I'll even bet RGG extends their licence at the renewal point (since revenue will be >$0 and there in nothing else to compare it to)


Ok. My one and only (if extremely long) post on the topic.

Have fun on Goko tomorrow!
I'll check in and see when someone shares the number of players in the lobby!

Ed
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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #109 on: March 14, 2013, 01:06:39 pm »
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Thank you for the long and informative article.

I'll check in and see when someone shares the number of players in the lobby!

Well, the lobbies cap at 50...
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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #110 on: March 14, 2013, 01:48:47 pm »
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Thanks for the very interesting article ed!

It's nice to see somebody with some experience and education backing up some of my feelings about Goko.

Missing Top players and competitive, fast games.
Missing incentives/tie ins with the physical board game.

But ultimately my decision not to play is that with out the text interface and snappy matchmaking it's not fun.
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Fabian

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #111 on: March 14, 2013, 01:51:45 pm »
+2

ednever,

Good stuff.

doug,

Thanks for providing a lot of entertainment over the past 2 years (well, not so much in the last 6 months). Good stuff.

Goko,

bleh
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hsiale

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #112 on: March 14, 2013, 02:04:18 pm »
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I'll check in and see when someone shares the number of players in the lobby!
I logged in to both sites now and:
- there's a bit over 200 people in Goko multiplayer rooms (and I guess some more playing single player or adventures),
- there's around 70 people in Iso lobby and 110 games in progress.

So it seems there are more people at Isotropic, but not way more.
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WanderingWinder

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #113 on: March 14, 2013, 02:33:17 pm »
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I'll check in and see when someone shares the number of players in the lobby!
I logged in to both sites now and:
- there's a bit over 200 people in Goko multiplayer rooms (and I guess some more playing single player or adventures),
- there's around 70 people in Iso lobby and 110 games in progress.

So it seems there are more people at Isotropic, but not way more.

Did you check all the lobbies? A quick count from me just now had ~62 people in the lobbies (people move in and out all the time, makes it hard to be 100% accurate) and 129 games involving 264 players (those are exact) in progress. I would say that 326 is 'way more' than 'a bit over 200', but of course this could just be a semantic difference.

Anyway, another iso count for those interested.

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #114 on: March 14, 2013, 02:53:35 pm »
0

I forgot to check Secret Chamber, but there's not many people there.

In Goko I opened the dropdown list of lobbies, there were 4 nearly full and a few people in the others so I went with 200. In Iso I estimated number of people in Great Hall and checked number of games assuming there's on average two people per game, giving me around 300 people on Iso. This is 50% more on the last day of Iso, when for sure more people than usually go there (for example I play on Iso today while I played only on Goko for last few weeks). I guess a week from now we will have around 250-300 people on Goko in the evening. I wonder how many they need to break even.
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ednever

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #115 on: March 14, 2013, 03:37:06 pm »
+1

I forgot to check Secret Chamber, but there's not many people there.

In Goko I opened the dropdown list of lobbies, there were 4 nearly full and a few people in the others so I went with 200. In Iso I estimated number of people in Great Hall and checked number of games assuming there's on average two people per game, giving me around 300 people on Iso. This is 50% more on the last day of Iso, when for sure more people than usually go there (for example I play on Iso today while I played only on Goko for last few weeks). I guess a week from now we will have around 250-300 people on Goko in the evening. I wonder how many they need to break even.

One last thing.

It's not about Breaking Even for Goko. It's about developing a model with Dominion that they can take to the next round of finders and say:
"hey. Look at what we did with Dominion. Our growth will come from two things: (1) growing this thing we did with Dominion, (2) duplicating this thing we did with Dominion for other games. By the way we already have licenses for xx top games"

Effectively they sell the first VCs on the sizzle (we have this great team and this great idea) and thr second VCs on the steak (we proved we could build the product, sign the licence, and get the revenue. Now we just need to scale. We have two ways to scale (see above))

Eventually they will likely go to a third group of VCs (assuming they haven't sold or failed in the meantime) and sell them on really scaling up (we've done x and y, and now we need funding to really market this and grow...)


Usually in freedium models you only get <10% to pay. There were 14,000 games played on Iso yesterday. Say each player played 2 games, and goko gets 10% of them to pay. That's 1,400 sales: nowhere close to what they need.

Another way: say million copy of Dominion sold. If 10% buy a $50 goko product, that's $5M in sales. That's still nowhere close to the valuation they need.

Dominion NEEDS to be their first step, not their last.

Ed
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Kirian

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #116 on: March 14, 2013, 04:09:14 pm »
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Usually in freedium models you only get <10% to pay. There were 14,000 games played on Iso yesterday. Say each player played 2 games, and goko gets 10% of them to pay. That's 1,400 sales: nowhere close to what they need.

Another way: say million copy of Dominion sold. If 10% buy a $50 goko product, that's $5M in sales. That's still nowhere close to the valuation they need.

I hadn't really thought of things that way.

Yeah, just to break even on $8M they have to sell 180k $45 units.  That's simply not going to happen.  I mean... that's at least double the number of people who have played on isotropic, ever.
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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #117 on: March 14, 2013, 04:10:21 pm »
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You also have to remember that there's more than just Dominion out there for them.

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #118 on: March 14, 2013, 04:17:18 pm »
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You also have to remember that there's more than just Dominion out there for them.

By "them," do you mean Goko?  Cause if so, yeah, there's also the other two games they have on the site in addition to however many they thought they were going to have at launch and didn't.  What happened to all those other hot properties, anyway?  Flushed down the memory hole?
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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #119 on: March 14, 2013, 04:18:55 pm »
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You also have to remember that there's more than just Dominion out there for them.

By "them," do you mean Goko?  Cause if so, yeah, there's also the other two games they have on the site in addition to however many they thought they were going to have at launch and didn't.  What happened to all those other hot properties, anyway?  Flushed down the memory hole?
I do mean Goko. And they still have a lot of other properties, more than just the three. If you want to know what's going on with those, I am not the person to ask.

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #120 on: March 14, 2013, 04:20:55 pm »
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You also have to remember that there's more than just Dominion out there for them.

By "them," do you mean Goko?  Cause if so, yeah, there's also the other two games they have on the site in addition to however many they thought they were going to have at launch and didn't.  What happened to all those other hot properties, anyway?  Flushed down the memory hole?
I do mean Goko. And they still have a lot of other properties, more than just the three. If you want to know what's going on with those, I am not the person to ask.

And we won't know until such time as they decide to roll them out, which they haven't, because they don't have their crap together.  Of all the promises Goko has welched on so far, "License us exclusive rights to your games so we can do wonderful things to them with HTML 5!" has been a big one.  I personally think that each and every license was sold a HUGE bill of goods on just what HTML 5 is/isn't capable of.  YMMV.
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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #121 on: March 14, 2013, 04:35:59 pm »
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Wow ednever, amazing post!

Quote
The key learning there is that by under-pricing online (which has a zero marginal cost) you can dramatically drive offline sales. It makes sense with games. People hate learning the rules of games- except when a friend (an evangelist) teaches them or they learn easily online.

The one part of goko that will work for RGG is that base Dominon is free, and there are tutorials, and that it's graphical and pretty for the casual user. That will help get people introduced to the game.

One note here. If both Goko and RGG understand that underpricing helps both of them, the optimal underpricing can still be achieved by tweaking the licensing agreement. If RGG benefits most from people playing online Dominion, they should accept less money from Goko to develop the license (or even pay them to do it!) with an agreement to keep prices lower.

The fact that RGG outsourced while Days of Wonders hired their own employees doesn't have to impact pricing. But there are other reasons why you might want to hire your own team rather than outsource. 

And looking at the prices, Ticket to Ride base game is $10 and $4 for each expansion, so Goko Dominion is pretty close to this model, actually. 

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I do think the do or die Goko business evaluation will revolve around the viability of an HTML5 gaming platform rather than whether Dominion can justify the VC money on its own.
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LastFootnote

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #122 on: March 14, 2013, 04:39:53 pm »
0

And looking at the prices, Ticket to Ride base game is $10 and $4 for each expansion, so Goko Dominion is pretty close to this model, actually. 

Where are you seeing that? On iOS, it's $2 for the base game and $2 for the one expansion I saw.
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Beyond Awesome

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #123 on: March 14, 2013, 04:40:42 pm »
+2

What's funny to think is if the other games never get rolled out, this entire venture would have essentially been an $8M investment to develop Dominion Online.
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Polk5440

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Re: The Future of Isotropic
« Reply #124 on: March 14, 2013, 04:44:59 pm »
0

And looking at the prices, Ticket to Ride base game is $10 and $4 for each expansion, so Goko Dominion is pretty close to this model, actually. 

Where are you seeing that? On iOS, it's $2 for the base game and $2 for the one expansion I saw.

Amazon for the PC version. The different versions are priced differently. I think the penny arcade article mentioned the iPad version is $7?
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