Dominion Strategy Forum
Dominion => Dominion Online at Shuffle iT => Dominion General Discussion => Goko Dominion Online => Topic started by: cactus on October 22, 2013, 06:05:59 am
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... thy name is Goko.
When I finally get an evening free to play some dominion... and I end up spending the evening watching the Goko website trying to load... I get bored and start whiney anti-Goko threads...
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Tried to post this at GetSatisfaction but just to put some icing on the cake GetSatisfaction wasn't working properly either:
"So I can't log in a play a game and I see by checking this site and the dominion strategy forums that plenty of other people seem to be having the same problem...
but there doesn't seem to be any comment / updates / replies from Goko anywhere as to what the problem is.... why can't someone from the company post something saying what is wrong and how long they expect to make the game playable again...?
It is really hard to feel positively towards Goko when their communication is all but non existent....
Couldn't they put a little note on their website or something saying something like "sorry guys, down for routine maintenance, should be back up in four hours" or something like that.
Having your website down and offering no communication to your customers just seems so contemptuous."
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Probably they did a deployment on Friday and went on vacation afterwards.
That sometimes happened in my company. :)
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At some point, everyone who is going to pay for Goko Dominion will have already done so. It's likely we're near enough to that point that Goko is losing money by keeping the server running and maintained, and without any actual obligation in law to the people who paid for it, it's hard to imagine that they'd keep the server up for much longer. I can't say for sure that it happened yet, but when it does happen, it probably won't look much different to this. Actually confirming it officially wouldn't realistically be much better for their PR.
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At some point, everyone who is going to pay for Goko Dominion will have already done so. It's likely we're near enough to that point that Goko is losing money by keeping the server running and maintained, and without any actual obligation in law to the people who paid for it, it's hard to imagine that they'd keep the server up for much longer. I can't say for sure that it happened yet, but when it does happen, it probably won't look much different to this. Actually confirming it officially wouldn't realistically be much better for their PR.
I have to imagine that they are banking on the iOS/Android apps to reignite revenue.
Hilariously, I tried to buy all the cards via the site, had trouble getting it to work (a blessing in disguise?), and then when I contacted customer support about how to pay them money they never responded.
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At some point, everyone who is going to pay for Goko Dominion will have already done so. It's likely we're near enough to that point that Goko is losing money by keeping the server running and maintained, and without any actual obligation in law to the people who paid for it, it's hard to imagine that they'd keep the server up for much longer. I can't say for sure that it happened yet, but when it does happen, it probably won't look much different to this. Actually confirming it officially wouldn't realistically be much better for their PR.
Dat business model.
I would be kinda sad if the mobile versions of the game did sell because I feel Dominion should be a sit-down kind of game where you have time to think without pressure. Am I, as a desktop goko user, going to play against people on a mobile device that might have to leave at a moment's notice? And asynchronous play? Call me old fashioned, but I would probably stop playing dominion online if it became asynchronous.
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At some point, everyone who is going to pay for Goko Dominion will have already done so. It's likely we're near enough to that point that Goko is losing money by keeping the server running and maintained, and without any actual obligation in law to the people who paid for it, it's hard to imagine that they'd keep the server up for much longer. I can't say for sure that it happened yet, but when it does happen, it probably won't look much different to this. Actually confirming it officially wouldn't realistically be much better for their PR.
Dat business model.
I would be kinda sad if the mobile versions of the game did sell because I feel Dominion should be a sit-down kind of game where you have time to think without pressure. Am I, as a desktop goko user, going to play against people on a mobile device that might have to leave at a moment's notice? And asynchronous play? Call me old fashioned, but I would probably stop playing dominion online if it became asynchronous.
Asynch would be terrible. Terrible. I think playing on an iPad on a bus isn't worse than sitting at a desktop, though.
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At some point, everyone who is going to pay for Goko Dominion will have already done so. It's likely we're near enough to that point that Goko is losing money by keeping the server running and maintained, and without any actual obligation in law to the people who paid for it, it's hard to imagine that they'd keep the server up for much longer. I can't say for sure that it happened yet, but when it does happen, it probably won't look much different to this. Actually confirming it officially wouldn't realistically be much better for their PR.
Dat business model.
I would be kinda sad if the mobile versions of the game did sell because I feel Dominion should be a sit-down kind of game where you have time to think without pressure. Am I, as a desktop goko user, going to play against people on a mobile device that might have to leave at a moment's notice? And asynchronous play? Call me old fashioned, but I would probably stop playing dominion online if it became asynchronous.
Asynch would be terrible. Terrible. I think playing on an iPad on a bus isn't worse than sitting at a desktop, though.
So long as you're responsible about making sure you have time to finish a game, or are playing single player, it's fine to play on Goko with a mobile device or something. Actually, mobile single player can be pretty cool, even if it's not for me personally.
Also...
Asynch would be terrible. Terrible.
Edit:Asynch would be terrible. Terrible.
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At some point, everyone who is going to pay for Goko Dominion will have already done so. It's likely we're near enough to that point that Goko is losing money by keeping the server running and maintained
How much can be the cost of maintaining such server? I think the only tme when such game can be profitable is exactly when everything is already coded and there are just low maintenance costs. And there will be new customers all the time - every day many potential ones are born. The question is how many of them will be attracted to online Dominion.
During September 525 people added base set to their BGG collection. So I guess in total there were way more copies sold - a few thousands perhaps. Dominion is one of the more popular games, often bought by people not much into boardgaming. Some of those people will look for an online version. And as I don't see a reason for Dominion to stop selling anytime soon (Catan or Carcassone are selling great despite nearly 20 or over 10 years on the market), if it is easy enough to find out about Goko, it can have enough new customers to pay for server maintenance and give some profit more or less indefinitely.
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At some point, everyone who is going to pay for Goko Dominion will have already done so. It's likely we're near enough to that point that Goko is losing money by keeping the server running and maintained, and without any actual obligation in law to the people who paid for it, it's hard to imagine that they'd keep the server up for much longer. I can't say for sure that it happened yet, but when it does happen, it probably won't look much different to this. Actually confirming it officially wouldn't realistically be much better for their PR.
Dat business model.
I would be kinda sad if the mobile versions of the game did sell because I feel Dominion should be a sit-down kind of game where you have time to think without pressure. Am I, as a desktop goko user, going to play against people on a mobile device that might have to leave at a moment's notice? And asynchronous play? Call me old fashioned, but I would probably stop playing dominion online if it became asynchronous.
Asynch would be terrible. Terrible. I think playing on an iPad on a bus isn't worse than sitting at a desktop, though.
Asynchronous full Dominion would be a disaster, yes, but a limited-to-certain-cards and/or tweaked version of the game could work. I did a post about this a while ago (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=4235.0 (http://forum.dominionstrategy.com/index.php?topic=4235.0)), and part of the conclusion is that it's actually a small minority of cards that require your opponent to make a decision during your turn. They tend to be the most interesting cards, but still, there are other interesting cards too. There's also a lot of opportunity to do some mild variants of existing cards to make them work better asynchronously.
My overall point is that it's possible to make asynchronous Dominion viable with some imagination.
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I don't see a reason for Dominion to stop selling anytime soon
I can think of a few reasons that Goko Dominion might stop selling; rolling blackouts is the newest one.
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I think a better business plan would have been say 3 bucks a month or 5 or some year fee or lifetime. Then you keep getting new players and continuous cash to fix these CONTINOUS problems.
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last week for days couldn't get into the lobbys...now I can get in lobby but games won't start...i guess it's baby steps
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last week for days couldn't get into the lobbys...now I can get in lobby but games won't start...i guess it's baby steps
Over half my games aren't starting. Really, really, really annoying.
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last week for days couldn't get into the lobbys...now I can get in lobby but games won't start...i guess it's baby steps
Next week you can start games, but can't play.
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Over halfAll my games aren't starting. Really, really, really annoying.
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How much would it cost to buy out Goko so we can have Isotropic back? I for one would be willing to pay again as much as I've paid Goko in order for them to release the rights. Holding Dominion for ransom might be their best way to make money at this point.
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Over halfAll my games aren't starting. Really, really, really annoying.
I came here to kick ass and play Dominion... and I'm all out of Dominion.
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How much would it cost to buy out Goko so we can have Isotropic back? I for one would be willing to pay again as much as I've paid Goko in order for them to release the rights. Holding Dominion for ransom might be their best way to make money at this point.
Unless you own a VC firm and have a spare $10M laying around, I don't think that's an option.
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Last recorded game finished 42 min, 8 seconds ago
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How much would it cost to buy out Goko so we can have Isotropic back? I for one would be willing to pay again as much as I've paid Goko in order for them to release the rights. Holding Dominion for ransom might be their best way to make money at this point.
Unless you own a VC firm and have a spare $10M laying around, I don't think that's an option.
Why $10M? I can't imagine that they've made that much on it; it only costs about $40 to get all the cards, so they'd have to have 250,000 players to get there. And the prospect for future sales seems much less than what they've already made, given the state of their site.
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How much would it cost to buy out Goko so we can have Isotropic back? I for one would be willing to pay again as much as I've paid Goko in order for them to release the rights. Holding Dominion for ransom might be their best way to make money at this point.
Unless you own a VC firm and have a spare $10M laying around, I don't think that's an option.
Why $10M? I can't imagine that they've made that much on it; it only costs about $40 to get all the cards, so they'd have to have 250,000 players to get there. And the prospect for future sales seems much less than what they've already made, given the state of their site.
Well, ransoming a license is really worse than plain old patent trolling, and I don't think Goko is aiming for that sort of reputation. So you're basically talking about buying and liquidating the company, which is going to require at least paying back the original VCs.
Meanwhile, Goko has a new CEO as of August... whose name isn't listed on the About page despite it being October already. I don't think they're going to have to ransom the license, because I suspect that Goko has maybe two years before it disappears.
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@Zephyrinius
Welcome to the forum!
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Why $10M? I can't imagine that they've made that much on it; it only costs about $40 to get all the cards, so they'd have to have 250,000 players to get there. And the prospect for future sales seems much less than what they've already made, given the state of their site.
The problem is that they already have oodles of venture capital funding, and the existing investors are going to want a decent return.
Goko's goal as I understand it is to continually create new games so that they can keep taking money off people. Unfortunately "HTML5" turned out not to be a strong enough magic word to make that as easy as they'd hoped.
Perhaps it's because I'm not playing in peak US periods, but I've usually been able to get into games, although they've been toffee-slow at times.
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Either that or "let's use <canvas> as the only way to display anything" isn't really what HTML5 is about
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Meanwhile, Goko has a new CEO as of August... whose name isn't listed on the About page despite it being October already. I don't think they're going to have to ransom the license, because I suspect that Goko has maybe two years before it disappears.
I found it pretty ridiculous for a company whose only product is a website to have this kind of old information on their site so I checked it out for myself.
On Goko's "About" page, of the 7 members of their "Fearless Crew" listed, one still works at Goko. ONE. OF SEVEN.
Edit: and several of them left in 2012! So they haven't just not updated it since August, they haven't updated it since last year. Pathetic.