Print

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

[ragingduckd]

Goko doesn't directly reveal when players purchase new expansion sets, but presumably people don't buy expansions and then immediately quit Goko without ever playing them.  So you can pretty much tell when a player buys an expansion by looking at when they first host a game with it.

I didn't bother to break down the game data to determine exactly which expansions were used in each game, but I've already been tracking whether Shelters or Estates were used.  So I can at least say when a player first hosts with Dark Ages cards, which is probably also when they first bought a DA expansion.  Unless people are way more or less likely to buy DA than any other expansion, this gives a decent proxy for Goko's overall expansion-based revenue:



As far as evaluating trends and predicting Goko's future, we really should throw out everything from the Aug 2012 "launch" through Isotropic's demise:



So that's where Goko's been going these last 8 months.  No real surprises here, except perhaps for the fact that Guilds (June) didn't bring in any new customers.  I like to think that the mysterious spike in late August was the release of Salvager's auto-Automatch.

Even more remarkable than the trend is simply how few paying customers Goko has brought in.  If every single new DA player is purchasing the full $40 complete expansion pack, then Goko has grossed about $150k in the past 8 months, and currently brings in about $350/day.  That's a pretty generous assumption, so I'd bet it's really more like $200/day and $100k in the past 8 months.

[Ozle]

Goko staff must read threads like this and weep.....thats if there were any Goko staff that is.

[Polk5440]

To survive, they need to release more (working) games, plain and simple. Their business model never relied exclusively on Dominion, even after it was clear they were unable to build a new HTML5 gaming platform. I can't imagine the two original games they have live bring in much money, at all.

[Awaclus]

To survive, they need to release more (working) games, plain and simple.

Considering what usually happens when a game in a Goko lobby says "(playing)", Goko probably thinks their Dominion is "(working)", too.

[qmech]

Considering what usually happens when a game in a Goko lobby says "(playing)", Goko probably thinks their Dominion is "(working)", too.

We could call it the "Goko bracket", or "racket" for short.

[DStu]

In case anyone is interested in the old stuff with little datapoints, number of sets I analyzed in April with more or less the same method...
Edit: link to the thread

[serakfalcon]

Ok that actually gives us a good idea of the company financials in general. Assuming best-case scenarios $350 / day is just barely enough to pay for three staff and a content production team in Vietnam. IF they can get the team in Vietnam for $1000-$2000 a month (depending on the deal it could be up to $5k but if it's more than that for the amount of development that seems to be happening they're being ripped off), each of the staff are being paid $40k/year that means expenses are around $150k for staff and development. RGG's cut is probably in the ballpark of 20% which means that their revenue is about $100k, meaning they are losing ~$50k per year plus rental of whatever office space they are using, and other expenses.

So basically they are still losing money, somewhere between almost breaking even to $75k a year.
However if they even have $200k left of however many millions they (actually) started with they will be around for at least 2 more years. If they are working on developing a new game, that actually could take them to break even/minorly profitable, and if they are paying the Vietnamese team $2k and managing them well they should be able to crank out at least 1-2 games a year, which gives them okay prospects in the medium term.
 Short of a minor miracle the initial investors will probably never recoup their money, which will scare away new equity so any future funding will have to come from existing revenue or loans. Since they're a software company that is not currently profitable they probably won't be able to get great rates on loans either, which means, the only option they have is to keep going on the float they have until they run out of money or turn around the business.

The shut down of their customer support etc. makes sense from a financial standpoint since they only have ~2 years before they burn out, and need to be profitable before then or they'll be toast- so that means any extra expenses like customer support and site maintenance have to go out the window. Of course, that also hurts their revenue but not as badly as if they don't launch a new product in the next year. To be fair, the Vietnamese team is probably also doing maintenance but between language problems, lack of training and how horrible the code is it's super easy to break something and not know what went wrong. Which is also probably what happened recently. Either that or they scaled down their servers to save costs / prepare for the new game launch. Or both.

[blueblimp]

Goko is located in Redwood City (in the SF Bay Area), and there's no way they could retain a software engineer with a $40k salary in that area.

[serakfalcon]

Goko is located in Redwood City (in the SF Bay Area), and there's no way they could retain a software engineer with a $40k salary in that area.

Ultimately the problem with reconstructing their financials given a reasonable estimate of their revenues is that it's certain that they are not making money, it's just a question of how much they are losing per annum and how much they have left in their pockets. So sure, we could double or even triple the salary estimate, but all that tells us is that they probably have less than 2 years before they go bankrupt, assuming that they have $200kish left. They could have more money left, and will last a little longer or they could have less money and will go belly-up if their next game flops. Its all a matter of reasonable conjecture with the amount of information that we have

[pst]

Goko doesn't directly reveal when players purchase new expansion sets, but presumably people don't buy expansions and then immediately quit Goko without ever playing them.  So you can pretty much tell when a player buys an expansion by looking at when they first host a game with it.

Interesting! Are all games included in this or only those from the lobby? I wonder because I know people who never play people there. They have bought cards and play adventures and robots. I wonder how common that is.

[ragingduckd]

Goko doesn't directly reveal when players purchase new expansion sets, but presumably people don't buy expansions and then immediately quit Goko without ever playing them.  So you can pretty much tell when a player buys an expansion by looking at when they first host a game with it.

Interesting! Are all games included in this or only those from the lobby? I wonder because I know people who never play people there. They have bought cards and play adventures and robots. I wonder how common that is.

Yes, this includes all games.  And yes, there seems to be a fair-sized contingent that buys DA and then only plays Adventures and Bot games.

[SCSN]

Goko doesn't directly reveal when players purchase new expansion sets, but presumably people don't buy expansions and then immediately quit Goko without ever playing them.  So you can pretty much tell when a player buys an expansion by looking at when they first host a game with it.

Interesting! Are all games included in this or only those from the lobby? I wonder because I know people who never play people there. They have bought cards and play adventures and robots. I wonder how common that is.

Yes, this includes all games.  And yes, there seems to be a fair-sized contingent that buys DA and then only plays Adventures and Bot games.

Man, that's like spending 10k on a sick home-cinema setup and then only using it to watch cellphone-recorded camrips with barely intelligible audio.

[pst]

Unless people are way more or less likely to buy DA than any other expansion, this gives a decent proxy for Goko's overall expansion-based revenue:

I don't at all think this can explain away everything, but it makes sense to me to believe that people were more likely to buy DA over some other expansion in the beginning, because of "Shiny New", whereis in later data DA is not more likely than other sets.

[SCSN]

Unless people are way more or less likely to buy DA than any other expansion, this gives a decent proxy for Goko's overall expansion-based revenue:

I don't at all think this can explain away everything, but it makes sense to me to believe that people were more likely to buy DA over some other expansion in the beginning, because of "Shiny New", whereis in later data DA is not more likely than other sets.

I agree, though this makes DA a good candidate to extrapolate an upper-bound from, and it makes Goko's prospects even worse, because the problem is not the downward trend, but the general low level of sales.

I really don't understand why they didn't go for a subscription-based model (though "dude, it's Goko!" is a fair explanation). If I were to design a payment model it would be something like:

- All cards, including the promos, are available to everyone, no expansion buying bs or adventure unlocking.
- Each account (no guests allowed) can play a limited number (say, 20) of unrated games/month for free, if you want to play more you have to subscribe. $10 or maybe at a later stage even $15/month doesn't sound unreasonable IF you can provide isotropic-level speed, functionality and reliability.
- Only users with an active subscription can play rated games or solitaire, and only users with an active subscription appear on the leaderboard.

[Ozle]

Surely the better method would be, Base for Free.

 If you want to host a game with new cards and play further adventures other than base, Premium.

People will pay, after all they pay at the moment for expansion when they could just play someone who has them.

[soulnet]

- Each account (no guests allowed) can play a limited number (say, 20) of unrated games/month for free, if you want to play more you have to subscribe. $10 or maybe at a later stage even $15/month doesn't sound unreasonable IF you can provide isotropic-level speed, functionality and reliability.

Basically, you are charging just for the leaderboard, because I can set up many accounts. And reset my ip or use a tunnel or proxy if you want to track my ip. I don't think that many people is willing to spend $15 a month for appearing on the leaderboard. Maybe have useful things like automatch available only for them, or run some sort of entertaining league or tournaments. Then it would be like paying a board-game club, which I would certainly do in real life if there was one.

[Tables]

So, who wants to start arranging the funeral for Goko?

[popsofctown]

- Each account (no guests allowed) can play a limited number (say, 20) of unrated games/month for free, if you want to play more you have to subscribe. $10 or maybe at a later stage even $15/month doesn't sound unreasonable IF you can provide isotropic-level speed, functionality and reliability.

Basically, you are charging just for the leaderboard, because I can set up many accounts. And reset my ip or use a tunnel or proxy if you want to track my ip. I don't think that many people is willing to spend $15 a month for appearing on the leaderboard. Maybe have useful things like automatch available only for them, or run some sort of entertaining league or tournaments. Then it would be like paying a board-game club, which I would certainly do in real life if there was one.

Eh.  Most people that would bother doing that wouldn't pay anyway.  Getting the free ride is always as much about convenience as cost.

[SCSN]

- Each account (no guests allowed) can play a limited number (say, 20) of unrated games/month for free, if you want to play more you have to subscribe. $10 or maybe at a later stage even $15/month doesn't sound unreasonable IF you can provide isotropic-level speed, functionality and reliability.

Basically, you are charging just for the leaderboard, because I can set up many accounts. And reset my ip or use a tunnel or proxy if you want to track my ip. I don't think that many people is willing to spend $15 a month for appearing on the leaderboard. Maybe have useful things like automatch available only for them, or run some sort of entertaining league or tournaments. Then it would be like paying a board-game club, which I would certainly do in real life if there was one.

I have more than enough pity for someone willing to go through so much trouble just to save $10/month that I'd be happy to let him do his thing.

Also, you can't play rated games (and thus not get a rating) without paying so you'd be playing mainly bad players or people with questionable morals (which you can't separate because they have different names each time), neither of which make pleasant company.

And yeah, there are lots of other possible incentives, like you mentioned. I was only sketching a basic outline, not an exhaustive business plan.

[cactus]

Surely the better method would be, Base for Free.

 If you want to host a game with new cards and play further adventures other than base, Premium.

People will pay, after all they pay at the moment for expansion when they could just play someone who has them.

Well if we're talking better ways to go…

1/ Create iOS app
2/ Design it competently and play test it properly
3/ Release it to some positive buzz from current fans and garner a couple of nice reviews
4/ If the word of mouth isn't going strong enough drop the price of the base set for a weekend to generate some word-of-mouth
5/ Sit somewhere in the top 100 strategy games list in the iOS app store
6/ Start winning over legions of new fans to Dominion because it is awesome fun
7/ Profit

[Kirian]

Surely the better method would be, Base for Free.

 If you want to host a game with new cards and play further adventures other than base, Premium.

People will pay, after all they pay at the moment for expansion when they could just play someone who has them.

Well if we're talking better ways to go…

1/ Create iOS app
2/ Design it competently and play test it properly
3/ Release it to some positive buzz from current fans and garner a couple of nice reviews
4/ If the word of mouth isn't going strong enough drop the price of the base set for a weekend to generate some word-of-mouth
5/ Sit somewhere in the top 100 strategy games list in the iOS app store
6/ Start winning over legions of new fans to Dominion because it is awesome fun
7/ Profit

On the flip side of that, alienating a rabid fanbase by making something iOS exclusive would likely also be major trouble, unless non-iOS implementations were allowed to continue.

[Davio]

Weren't they planning on adding a host of different games once they got going?

[SirPeebles]

- Each account (no guests allowed) can play a limited number (say, 20) of unrated games/month for free, if you want to play more you have to subscribe. $10 or maybe at a later stage even $15/month doesn't sound unreasonable IF you can provide isotropic-level speed, functionality and reliability.

Basically, you are charging just for the leaderboard, because I can set up many accounts. And reset my ip or use a tunnel or proxy if you want to track my ip. I don't think that many people is willing to spend $15 a month for appearing on the leaderboard. Maybe have useful things like automatch available only for them, or run some sort of entertaining league or tournaments. Then it would be like paying a board-game club, which I would certainly do in real life if there was one.

I have more than enough pity for someone willing to go through so much trouble just to save $10/month that I'd be happy to let him do his thing.

Also, you can't play rated games (and thus not get a rating) without paying so you'd be playing mainly bad players or people with questionable morals (which you can't separate because they have different names each time), neither of which make pleasant company.

And yeah, there are lots of other possible incentives, like you mentioned. I was only sketching a basic outline, not an exhaustive business plan.

A lot of people don't care about playing with some elite tier of international players.  As long as they can play online with their friends, that's good enough.  Especially once Goko has more games worth playing than just Dominion.

[Kirian]

http://gamemakerblog.com/2013/11/25/gamemaker-studio-standard-edition-is-currently-free-50-value/

Apparently this is HTML5-based.

Think I should post this link on GetSatisfaction?  Maybe it'll help them.

[Beyond Awesome]

Weren't they planning on adding a host of different games once they got going?

They have a Catan game that was being playtested. I have no idea what happened to that. Plus, a couple of months ago, Dominion iOs was supposed to launch. Again, I have no idea what happened to that.