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[barsooma]

Eh, so many software projects always end up behind schedule. That's normal, sadly.

I have no doubt that doing an app like this RIGHT is pretty difficult.

True, but let's not blame the programmers. Usually it's those sales guys who have no idea what the situations of programming are, because they don't know how to program, and they don't ask how long things will take, and still they are like 'yeah, we can do that in 2 weeks, no problem'. When it takes 2 months at least.
Not that I have any reason to think that happened here, really. Just seems to happen a lot.

Yeah, I think we can all agree that this situation is primarily the fault of sales/marketing guys falling down on the job.

That is specifically not what I'm saying. I don't know what the deal is here, because nobody's telling us anything.

Wouldn't it seem like that should be the marketing guys job though?
Informing customers, drumming up interest, managing expectations?

[Kirian]

Yeah, I think we can all agree that this situation is primarily the fault of sales/marketing guys falling down on the job.

That is specifically not what I'm saying. I don't know what the deal is here, because nobody's telling us anything.

While I generally don't like to agree much with barsooma, he's correct here I think.

The very fact that no one's saying anything is the PR/marketing falling down on the job.

Look... if RGG had never announced anything until, say, a month before an official release date, everyone here would basically be all <salivate...>  The complaints would be entirely about lack of features, if any features were lacking as compared with isotropic.  No one would be complaining about lack of information.

Instead, we've dealt with nebulous rumors for over a year, I think, at this point.  We've had official PR from RGG (click the PDF links at the bottom) that has gone from "late 2011" to "early 2012," and I think it's reasonable to suggest that Early 2012 ends at the end of this month.  We have a shadowy figure, or figures, or possibly androids or lizard people, programming the game; they won't let their names be released, they won't let a date be released, they won't let any information about the programs be released, and they insist they alone be arbiters of this information.

The blame here does not lie with Donald; he has been extremely frank in basically saying "Look, I can't tell you guys anything."  I've never even seen Donald suggest a date; that's all been straight from RGG!  The problem here is squarely with Jay and RGG, for contracting with such secretive programmers in the first place (I really think this was the most serious mistake), and then for lousy PR management--i.e., telling us that it's coming but that they can't say anything else.

This is a serious PR disaster.  I don't know about anyone else, but RGG has already lost money from me due to this fiasco.

At this point, I'm going to move forward assuming this thing is vaporware.  And if it does come out, they're going to have to seriously impress me to get me to buy it.

[Papa Luigi]

Yeah, I think we can all agree that this situation is primarily the fault of sales/marketing guys falling down on the job.

That is specifically not what I'm saying. I don't know what the deal is here, because nobody's telling us anything.

While I generally don't like to agree much with barsooma, he's correct here I think.

The very fact that no one's saying anything is the PR/marketing falling down on the job.

Look... if RGG had never announced anything until, say, a month before an official release date, everyone here would basically be all <salivate...>  The complaints would be entirely about lack of features, if any features were lacking as compared with isotropic.  No one would be complaining about lack of information.

Instead, we've dealt with nebulous rumors for over a year, I think, at this point.  We've had official PR from RGG (click the PDF links at the bottom) that has gone from "late 2011" to "early 2012," and I think it's reasonable to suggest that Early 2012 ends at the end of this month.  We have a shadowy figure, or figures, or possibly androids or lizard people, programming the game; they won't let their names be released, they won't let a date be released, they won't let any information about the programs be released, and they insist they alone be arbiters of this information.

The blame here does not lie with Donald; he has been extremely frank in basically saying "Look, I can't tell you guys anything."  I've never even seen Donald suggest a date; that's all been straight from RGG!  The problem here is squarely with Jay and RGG, for contracting with such secretive programmers in the first place (I really think this was the most serious mistake), and then for lousy PR management--i.e., telling us that it's coming but that they can't say anything else.

This is a serious PR disaster.  I don't know about anyone else, but RGG has already lost money from me due to this fiasco.

At this point, I'm going to move forward assuming this thing is vaporware.  And if it does come out, they're going to have to seriously impress me to get me to buy it.

Vaporware? Seriously? When was the last time a piece of software was released on schedule?

That said, you do raise some valid points - you'd think that with RGG being fully aware of how much we love Dominion, they'd at least try to placate us in a way other than "it's coming." If you don't give people anything to talk about, they'll assume the worst.

[ecq]

As my 9 month old says, "Blah blah blah."

My original post wasn't meant to be a complaint but an inquiry, and certainly didn't need to start a flame war.  I'm glad that Donald X. chimed in, even if it was to say that we're getting no more info.  I understand that he's not the right person to ask, but as far as I'm aware, he's the only one who visits this forum who even knows who the developers are, so naturally we do plead with him to be the liaison.

I'm not particularly eager for Isotropic to shut down for a pay option, but I will almost certainly buy the game and I'm eager for details about the game and when I can expect it.  Dominion eats up a lot of my spare time, so I want to know what the future holds.  Further, there was a post mentioning about player-made AIs.  As a nerd, this excites me.

I write software for a living.  I understand that deadlines are pretty fluid with this stuff, but we always have a general sense of what the target date is and how far along we are (even if we're proven to be way off).  I've liked the very few details I've seen, and I wish we had many more details, but barring concrete details it'd be nice to have a general sense of how far along the game is.  Is it several months away?  Is it coming out tomorrow?

I'm personally just a fan wanting some information on the game, or at least an explanation of why there's no information or why previous information has proved unreliable.  I'm not trying to complain.  I am a little frustrated, though, that a simple inquiry is greeted by essentially "Tough luck" followed by a flame war.

[WanderingWinder]

As my 9 month old says, "Blah blah blah."

My original post wasn't meant to be a complaint but an inquiry, and certainly didn't need to start a flame war.  I'm glad that Donald X. chimed in, even if it was to say that we're getting no more info.  I understand that he's not the right person to ask, but as far as I'm aware, he's the only one who visits this forum who even knows who the developers are, so naturally we do plead with him to be the liaison.

I'm not particularly eager for Isotropic to shut down for a pay option, but I will almost certainly buy the game and I'm eager for details about the game and when I can expect it.  Dominion eats up a lot of my spare time, so I want to know what the future holds.  Further, there was a post mentioning about player-made AIs.  As a nerd, this excites me.

I write software for a living.  I understand that deadlines are pretty fluid with this stuff, but we always have a general sense of what the target date is and how far along we are (even if we're proven to be way off).  I've liked the very few details I've seen, and I wish we had many more details, but barring concrete details it'd be nice to have a general sense of how far along the game is.  Is it several months away?  Is it coming out tomorrow?

I'm personally just a fan wanting some information on the game, or at least an explanation of why there's no information or why previous information has proved unreliable.  I'm not trying to complain.  I am a little frustrated, though, that a simple inquiry is greeted by essentially "Tough luck" followed by a flame war.

Mostly agree with this. But I don't think there was ever a post about player-made AIs. There was a post about AIs, but I got the impression that it was going to be a built-in AI.

[ecq]

...

Mostly agree with this. But I don't think there was ever a post about player-made AIs. There was a post about AIs, but I got the impression that it was going to be a built-in AI.

I was referring to this: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/8421729#8421729.  Given the wording and knowing the practical aspects of implementing such a thing, the feature probably won't make it into the game, but it would be very cool if it did.

[rrenaud]

Do you think it's really that hard to make user AIs possible?  rspeer basically did it in his hobby time in a few days.

If you design the system well, a human player is just some thing that takes a (rendered) game state and makes a decision.  A user AI is a thing that takes an (encoded) game state and makes a decision.

[Toskk]

Do you think it's really that hard to make user AIs possible?  rspeer basically did it in his hobby time in a few days.

If you design the system well, a human player is just some thing that takes a (rendered) game state and makes a decision.  A user AI is a thing that takes an (encoded) game state and makes a decision.

I agree *very* strongly with this.. it's a feature I'd love to see, and it's really not that hard to code.

[WanderingWinder]

Yeah, I think we can all agree that this situation is primarily the fault of sales/marketing guys falling down on the job.

That is specifically not what I'm saying. I don't know what the deal is here, because nobody's telling us anything.

While I generally don't like to agree much with barsooma, he's correct here I think.

The very fact that no one's saying anything is the PR/marketing falling down on the job.

Look... if RGG had never announced anything until, say, a month before an official release date, everyone here would basically be all <salivate...>  The complaints would be entirely about lack of features, if any features were lacking as compared with isotropic.  No one would be complaining about lack of information.

Instead, we've dealt with nebulous rumors for over a year, I think, at this point.  We've had official PR from RGG (click the PDF links at the bottom) that has gone from "late 2011" to "early 2012," and I think it's reasonable to suggest that Early 2012 ends at the end of this month.  We have a shadowy figure, or figures, or possibly androids or lizard people, programming the game; they won't let their names be released, they won't let a date be released, they won't let any information about the programs be released, and they insist they alone be arbiters of this information.

The blame here does not lie with Donald; he has been extremely frank in basically saying "Look, I can't tell you guys anything."  I've never even seen Donald suggest a date; that's all been straight from RGG!  The problem here is squarely with Jay and RGG, for contracting with such secretive programmers in the first place (I really think this was the most serious mistake), and then for lousy PR management--i.e., telling us that it's coming but that they can't say anything else.

This is a serious PR disaster.  I don't know about anyone else, but RGG has already lost money from me due to this fiasco.

At this point, I'm going to move forward assuming this thing is vaporware.  And if it does come out, they're going to have to seriously impress me to get me to buy it.

Oh, this all seems very likely. I just don't want it to seem that I'm actually pointing the blame here at someone, because I don't know what's really going on. It's possible that someone else actually promised the stuff and didn't deliver. And so while it seems like a sales/marketing/PR problem, because I don't actually know the issue, I can't say that's the case 100%. It does seem that way though, yes.

[DG]

Do you think it's really that hard to make user AIs possible?

It could be that part of the AI process is passed to a customized user script, just because it is easier to do that than put everything under AI control. The simulators currently have their own play rules and let users determine purchasing. It also might break some logic loops where card play depends on purchasing and purchasing depends on card play, for example.

[ecq]

Do you think it's really that hard to make user AIs possible?  rspeer basically did it in his hobby time in a few days.

If you design the system well, a human player is just some thing that takes a (rendered) game state and makes a decision.  A user AI is a thing that takes an (encoded) game state and makes a decision.

I'm aware of that (and have contributed code to that).  I think there are a lot of practical aspects that make it tricky for the official game, though.  First of all, the official game supposedly runs on every platform under the sun, so you have to expose something that allows user-created AIs to run on every platform as well (possibly including web, which is a big headache).  The user-created AI language needs to be a real programming language, but it needs to be isolated from the rest of the system for security reasons.  You can't just let users run arbitrary code on each others' machines.   It also needs to be isolated from the game's internal API so people can't cheat or monkey with leaderboards or anything.  You probably also care a little about enforcing performance so your app doesn't gain a reputation for being slow or a battery drain because of user-created content.  Then you need some interface for allowing users to publish and find the content.

You could accomplish all of that by carefully embedding a scripting language (Lua or whatever), being careful about which APIs you expose, and ensuring said scripting language works consistently on all available platforms.  It's absolutely doable, but it's a question of cost and time balanced against benefits of the feature.  Is it something that's worth delaying the release for?  Would enough people care to use it?

The AIs themselves would be a lot different than the Dominiate AIs as well, since I assume they couldn't be specific to a couple of key cards.  Writing one would therefore be a lot more work, and the best ones would probably still be pretty bad at the game.

[tlloyd]

This:

I don't know what the deal is here, because nobody's telling us anything.

Wouldn't it seem like that should be the marketing guys job though?
Informing customers, drumming up interest, managing expectations?

And this:

The very fact that no one's saying anything is the PR/marketing falling down on the job. ... Instead, we've dealt with nebulous rumors for over a year, I think, at this point. 

And most of all this:

I'm personally just a fan wanting some information on the game, or at least an explanation of why there's no information or why previous information has proved unreliable.  I'm not trying to complain.  I am a little frustrated, though, that a simple inquiry is greeted by essentially "Tough luck" followed by a flame war.

[paddyodoors]

It's nothing but a cheap rhetorical trick to marginalize complaints by linking them with a political hot-button which has been programmed into us by our corporate overlord media.

+1 for reference to corporate overlord media.

[Davio]

Maybe they're just waiting for the rest of the expansions to come out...but they could have at least told us that.

[ftl]

That seems unlikely. We'd heard 'late 2011' and 'early 2012' before, and it would have been clear to everyone that all the expansions wouldn't be out by then.

[toaster]

Vaporware? Seriously? When was the last time a piece of software was released on schedule?

The vaporware comment is, I'm sure, not simply because the release date has slipped, but because there has been zero communication from the developers about the project. Is could be ready for release next week, but for all the evidence we have it's possible they don't even have a working alpha yet.  The fact that we don't have the faintest idea about what's happening is a major PR screw-up.

[ftl]

I think somebody - maybe Donald, maybe Jay, maybe someone else posting in an official capacity - once said that they got a chance to play it. I think it's at working alpha stage at least? But I don't have the quote on hand, and I could always be misremembering it.

Well, all we have is rumors anyway.

[Kirian]

I think somebody - maybe Donald, maybe Jay, maybe someone else posting in an official capacity - once said that they got a chance to play it. I think it's at working alpha stage at least? But I don't have the quote on hand, and I could always be misremembering it.

Well, all we have is rumors anyway.

Jay, in January:

http://boardgamegeek.com/article/8303649#8303649

"To update you all, we are now (including me) testing the Dominion app and I have been very pleased with the product the licensee has produced. I have played it using Safari, Firefox, iPad, and iPhone and it works well on all these platforms. I am told it works on others, but that is all I have at my immediate disposal. The IA is simple, but will certainly serve to help a new player learn the game and get started. We expect it to be available in the VERY near future and will announce a date as soon as we have one. Thanks!!"

Perhaps vaporware was too strong a word.  Maybe I should have said "I'm going to continue living as if this will never come out."

[WanderingWinder]

...I should have said "I'm going to continue living as if this will never come out."

THIS

[Tejayes]

When Jay Tummelson came to Gamicon in February, his laptop had a working version on it. I even got to play it for a few seconds, but I must say that I was underwhelmed. For what I got to experience of the interface, it didn't feel as intuitive as Isotropic. You had to drag the cards into the play area, which was hard to determine at first play. The presentation was nice (anything with the official artwork is going to be nicer than Isotropic, but that's not especially the point of Iso), but I was expecting something more awesome.

Jay also mentioned that they were trying to make the mechanics of each card as literal as possible, especially in regards to Thief. That means that Treasure cards will indeed be put in the Trash before they can be gained. When I asked about the point of this, Jay hinted that it had something to do with the mechanics of future cards. For those of you who like to speculate about what Dark Ages and The Guilds will have to offer, you're welcome.

I think I mentioned something about how this official app needs to be miles beyond what you can get on Isotropic, and that what I saw wasn't anywhere close. I could be mistaken, though, as I often am. Besides, like I said, I only got a taste of the current product at the time. If that taste is any indication, it'll be a while yet before the official app is anywhere near palatable for us Isotropic addicts.

[LastFootnote]

Jay also mentioned that they were trying to make the mechanics of each card as literal as possible, especially in regards to Thief. That means that Treasure cards will indeed be put in the Trash before they can be gained. When I asked about the point of this, Jay hinted that it had something to do with the mechanics of future cards. For those of you who like to speculate about what Dark Ages and The Guilds will have to offer, you're welcome.

Even for existing cards (e.g. Trader), this should work as it is written on the card.

EDIT: Also, I'm fine with having to drag cards into the play area. That's how it works on the unofficial iOS app and it's not onerous. However, the official version should have a 'play all your basic Treasure cards' button like there is in isotropic. The unofficial app basically just has your (publicly viewable) coin value for the turn fluctuate as Treasures come and go from your hand, which obviously won't fly for the official app.

[Forge!!!]

The worse the official app is, the less likely it is that I'll keep my interest in Dominion, and the less likely I'll be to buy Dark Ages/Guilds/the app itself. RGG may not owe anything to us, but I personally feel very strongly that they owe a lot to Isotropic and similar sites in terms of game popularity and sales. I have nothing but anecdotal evidence and theories to back this up, of course. I know a decent amount of people in the same vein as me who went out and bought expansions after they became addicted to the game through Isotropic. I don't think the regional qualifier event I just went to would have had enough people (4? 5 maybe?) without it. I understand the need to appeal to the casual player, but especially for an online app and especially because it will be replacing Isotropic, there has to be an appeal to the committed player as well. It doesn't need super-difficult AI, but I think the online should have everything the more committed player wants. I'm not saying this is in any way what we are "owed", I just think it makes good business sense, and is important to keep up the large popularity Dominion currently has.

[ftl]

Eh, I'm pretty hooked, I'll probably end up getting all the remaining expansions even if the app isn't good.

But, come on guys. We don't need to assume the app is bad. The only thing we know so far about the app is it's got secretive and vague and annoying PR. And, I guess, draggable cards? But I bet the interface wasn't finalized at the time, so we don't really know that either.

[Forge!!!]

Eh, I'm pretty hooked, I'll probably end up getting all the remaining expansions even if the app isn't good.

But, come on guys. We don't need to assume the app is bad. The only thing we know so far about the app is it's got secretive and vague and annoying PR. And, I guess, draggable cards? But I bet the interface wasn't finalized at the time, so we don't really know that either.

Oh I agree, and I think I'll be perfectly happy with the app, but I also think there's been somewhat an attitude of "you should be happy with what you get, you aren't owed anything", and I think that's a silly attitude. It stems from the idea that Isotropic never had to come out in the first place (could have never been created or RGG/Donald could have said to take it down), and then we wouldn't be worried about this app being up to par to anything and it wouldn't have all these expectations it has now. I'm saying Dominion has gotten to the popularity it has gotten to because of the quality of Isotropic and similar sites, and if the official app isn't up to par I think the popularity is going to slowly slip back down, and that isn't going to be because of a bunch of entitled players yelling boo-urns.

 (as a disclaimer I'd like to point out that the game is fantastic and was going to be wonderfully successful no matter what. Online play has just given it an even bigger boost)

[blueblimp]

I'm fine with having to drag cards into the play area. That's how it works on the unofficial iOS app and it's not onerous.

On a touchscreen, maybe it'd be okay, but dragging with mouse is pretty annoying. It seems pointless since it's not like there's any reason you'd click/tap a card except to play it. (Excepting, of course, as yet unreleased reactions.)