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Author Topic: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model  (Read 5182 times)

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Schneau

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The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« on: May 17, 2013, 11:43:27 am »
+3

The following quote prompted me to post something I've been thinking for a while about Goko's business model:

I mostly join other players' games with more cards, and by getting the cards myself and then starting to host, I would quite likely get a lower quality of game because in general the players with cards are better than those without.

One of the problems with Goko's lobby system is that it only encourages about half of the active players to buy the cards. The other half can play for free and just find others who have bought the cards. If more than half of the player base buys the cards, there will be an abundance of people hosting "all cards" games, which will mean new players will have even less incentive to buy the cards.

Anyone who has played recently can tell that the percent of players who have bought the cards is probably much lower -- maybe around 1/3 -- which is obvious by the scarcity of "all cards" games, and the scramble to join such games when they're started.

If Goko wants to encourage more people to buy the cards, they should make it a top priority to change the lobby / matchmaking system to add more incentive to buy them. One way to do this would be to have some sort of automatch system where you are paired with someone with similar cards purchased. Then, if you want to play with all the cards, you probably will have to buy them all. I think this would both be nice for players, and would also greatly boost their sales.

I know I'm not planning on buying the cards until they improve the lobby system.
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pst

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #1 on: May 17, 2013, 12:57:56 pm »
+4

This is how I would do it.

Don't have one player host a game – have players search each other out and find a neutral virtual table. You can suggest a game with a friend, but the usual way of getting a game is with automatch. You state how many players you want in the game (as an interval). There could be other stuff you could specify as well, like point-counter allowed or not, if special modes like veto mode should be used if it will be implemented, etc.

The automatch facility sets players on a table matching them according to rating. How near each other they have to be depends on what players are available right then.

When the players are seated a random kingdom is created out of the union of all cards the players have. (Like they could do if they met afk and combined what they had.) All three players having Smithy doesn't mean that it gets a higher probability of appearing than Governor that only one player has – every possible card gets the same probability.

You wouldn't have to bring all your cards to the game. If you hate that Possession, move it to the cards-I-keep-at-home pile. (Avoid people not buying a set because there's one card there they don't want to get in their games as often.) You're not safe though – someone else might have brought it.  Probably only few players will bother taking away cards they've bought like that, but it can be very useful for some.

You would get a game a lot quicker than now, where players have to run around among all ongoing games trying to find someone else who wants to play. I think players getting a game a lot quicker would be good. I understand that they might think that it's good if it's annoying to be there before you buy cards. "This sucks. I'd better buy some cards so it stops sucking." But my sincere guess is that it would work better with "Hey, this is great! I'll buy some cards so it becomes even better." Because the only way to surely avoid all-basic games is to get some cards yourself. As a beginner you would meet other beginners. Often this will be all-basic games. Then now and then you'll see other cards appearing, and you might get favorites among them. "Hey, I want Colony and Platina in my games more often!" This gradual introduction of cards will be better than how Isotropic was, where it was a bit daunting to get everything at once as a beginner.

During or after a game you can tell the server that you don't like to play that player and automatch will avoid matching you. They don't get to know that. They aren't put on a list of players to avoid for anyone. It's just your decision, and could be for any reason. There are some drawbacks with this, but it needs to be done. You shouldn't be forced to play games you don't like. Maybe it is because they are rude, or too slow for you, or maybe it's your ex-boyfriend that you don't want to interact with. It doesn't matter. Yes, people without cards can and will use that to avoid other players without cards as well. So let them. That won't be worse than it is now.
« Last Edit: May 18, 2013, 12:04:56 am by pst »
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Schlippy

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2013, 02:05:32 pm »
0

If Goko wants to encourage more people to buy the cards, they should make it a top priority to change the lobby / matchmaking system to add more incentive to buy them.
I am sure they are well aware that they need a matchmaking system.
If I had to make the choice (of buying the cards) again I simply wouldn't buy them because I don't like to pay for a promised but not-implemented matchmaking system. When I bought them it certainly looked like 'matchmaking coming soon' tough.
I guess most of the non-buying 'old-time-players' are not buying the cards because they do not want to pay for an inferior product that even misses the basic functionality of a matchmaking system.
Finding players who are roughly at your point level is a joke, even when you host "all cards" games, because most of the time it involves 10 minutes of kicking people who are a few thousand points below you. They could at least throw people into different lobbies, like 2000-2500 points go into Gardens, 2500-3000 go into Great Hall etc. until they implemented the matchmaking system.

Oh, and I am completely against a matchmaking system that allows you to softban certain cards or avoid certain players. Both will lead to certain ways to abuse the system. If someone does not like how someone else talks he should just be able to ignore him or hide the chat. If someone does not like certain cards he should just play casual mode.
Actually those two things would be very good reasons for me not to pay any money. (Yeah, it is too late for that, but I am quite sure that applies for other potential customers too.)
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bedlam

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #3 on: May 17, 2013, 05:03:20 pm »
0

There are other benefits of buying cards. You can play more of the adventures, and you can play against the Bots with more than just base. So there is a little incentive for people to buy the sets rather than just looking for games against other players.
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itchiko

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #4 on: May 17, 2013, 05:23:10 pm »
+1

My biggest problem with Goko business model is that it doesn't make any sense in term of business >_>

To make money you need to make benefit so you sell a product such that you sell it at an higher price that what it costs you.

In case of board/card game, your cost are:
- investment costs to create the game/expansion
- production cost to print and assemble the boxes
- structural costs (sales, IT, administration)

In that case your structural costs are negligible towards the production cost:
That make you do a business decision based on risks: you published a game at risks and get your money back each time a box is sold. Your are winning money when a certian number of boxes have been sold.

Now you have Goko a web server based installation, your cost structure become:
- Investment costs to create the implementation
- On going development (Debug, new expansion)
- IT infrastructure

Now the last items the cost of maintenance of the IT infrastructure become the main concerns because it will be very expensive to keep several thousands connections at the same time.

So now you have your costs that are out of your control and mainly time based. so you have to compensate by having regular gain. basically keeping higher revenues than costs during the life time of your server.

And what do you chose to do as a business model:
You take the same model as the Board/Card game industry !!!!!!

But that means you have revenues that are now unrelated to your costs.

So that after a certain time when most of the initial buy are done it will now cost you some money to keep the server alive because the revenue are already done and all you see in your future are maintenance cost.
So that the optimal business strategy is to shut down the server at this point.

So you basically ask your client to take the business risk for you >_> and that they will still buy your product hoping that you will be honest even if it is not in your business interest.

That still could work but that's clearly very ill thought. It just demonstrate very short business vision and a non versatile behavior to new business environments.
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Lekkit

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #5 on: May 17, 2013, 05:35:17 pm »
+2

You have to remember that Goko is supposed to turn into this awesome gaming platform and meeting site for gamers. Just like a FLGS. This business model seems really weird if it was only one game, but it's not. Or is not supposed to be.
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DG

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #6 on: May 17, 2013, 05:40:35 pm »
0

Hopefully Goko will not provide a bad (pricing) service to customers and then hope the customers will pay more to solve the problems. An automatch should be providing opponents for players based on enjoyable play rather than financial criteria.
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Schneau

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #7 on: May 17, 2013, 05:50:05 pm »
0

Hopefully Goko will not provide a bad (pricing) service to customers and then hope the customers will pay more to solve the problems. An automatch should be providing opponents for players based on enjoyable play rather than financial criteria.

This is definitely true. BUT! I wanted to show that they don't even have a financial reason to keep the current system - an automatch system would benefit all parties, including themselves.
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Beyond Awesome

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #8 on: May 17, 2013, 06:59:15 pm »
+4

Honestly, I'm surprised Goko is still in business.
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gman314

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #9 on: May 17, 2013, 07:08:29 pm »
0

All three players having Smithy doesn't mean that it gets a higher probability of appearing than Governor that only one player have – every possible card gets the same probability.

If I were Goko, I would actually give Smithy a higher chance of appearing. That way people have more incentive to buy for themselves rather than just freeloading.
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heron

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #10 on: May 17, 2013, 07:13:03 pm »
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All three players having Smithy doesn't mean that it gets a higher probability of appearing than Governor that only one player have – every possible card gets the same probability.

If I were Goko, I would actually give Smithy a higher chance of appearing. That way people have more incentive to buy for themselves rather than just freeloading.

Except then even if you did buy cards, you would see smithy more often when you're playing with freeloaders.
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Kirian

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #11 on: May 17, 2013, 07:59:09 pm »
0

You have to remember that Goko is supposed to turn into this awesome gaming platform and meeting site for gamers. Just like a FLGS. This business model seems really weird if it was only one game, but it's not. Or is not supposed to be.

Indeed.  Among their many problems, of course, is the fact that they still haven't released a second game.
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blueblimp

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #12 on: May 18, 2013, 04:47:18 am »
0

Honestly, I'm surprised Goko is still in business.
Didn't they receive some amount of money from VCs? They'll need to burn through that before dying, even if they don't make much money from sales.
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yudantaiteki

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #13 on: May 18, 2013, 11:35:52 am »
0

What happens to the license if Goko goes out of business?
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blueblimp

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #14 on: May 18, 2013, 08:36:21 pm »
0

What happens to the license if Goko goes out of business?
I expect they'd sell the licenses to some other company (provided they are transferrable...).
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yudantaiteki

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #15 on: May 19, 2013, 12:04:12 pm »
+2

I would like to see Goko do well -- their implementation is certainly adequate and at least for me, only a relatively small number of things need to be added or improved in order for me to consider it good.

At the moment the lack of automatch is the only thing I consider absolutely unacceptable, and it's the sole reason why I haven't paid for Goko yet.
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pst

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #16 on: May 20, 2013, 11:01:48 am »
+1

Oh, and I am completely against a matchmaking system that allows you to softban certain cards or avoid certain players. Both will lead to certain ways to abuse the system.

I hope you don't really mean that there should be no way of avoiding playing against players you don't want to play against. That would be totally baroque for something you're supposed to do for fun. (But in a tournament that can happen of course.)

What we had with the Isotropic matchup was that often it would pair players together where one of the players would repeatedly refuse to play. A couple of seconds later the system would suggest exactly the same pair. I have often left autoplay for a while when there was someone who refused me, hoping that they would get paired with someone they accepted so I could play again. That would have worked much better if the refusal stuck like I suggested. That's all.

BTW, my suggestions on how to do it may seem centered around how I as a player would like a server, but actually that was not my thinking. Instead I was really going from the viewpoint on how to get people to pay. That's why it's important to get rid of the hoster/non-hoster dichotomy. With my system there would be an incentive to buy your first set, since you immediately would see a positive effect of it. You would get no more only-base games but at least base+X.

As Goko now is I see no point at all in buying one set. I would still seek out games hosted by others instead of hosting games myself, so I would never use those cards.
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yudantaiteki

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #17 on: May 20, 2013, 11:18:50 am »
0

I agree that there should be a way to code the automatch to encourage people to buy the sets; even just something as simple as biasing automatch towards people with the same sets as you might work.
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Watno

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Re: The Problem with Goko's Dominion Business Model
« Reply #18 on: May 20, 2013, 05:33:56 pm »
+2

Using the union of sets both players have would do that. Buying the sets would be the only way to guarantee getting all cards.
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