FunSockets Q&A
A direct response to
this post. All answers pulled from the Q&A transcript recorded
here. Wording may not be exact. Edited for easier reading.
If you have any advice on formatting this better please let me know.
Will you be implementing the ability to rejoin a game in the event of a disconnection? - So, the answer is yes, which is great. Though that is going to have to be implemented after the site is up and the games are stable so you might not see it right away. But we're definitely on the path and you should see that very soon.
There have been reports of many security holes in your app. // Even if they are fixed, how can I be confident that other flaws aren't compromising my user information? - So the security issues that we had were in our beta program, and we're really sorry about that but they have been addressed in our production systems. None of the the issues that we have in the beta were actually in our production so I just wanna make that clear that things were safe. We have fixed the javascript and password in plain text issues and we're definitely reviewing the security practices to make sure that they are over and above the industry standards. So we are addressing that and things are safe.
Do you plan to implement a point counter yourselves? What is your policy regarding 3rd-party extensions (including but not limited to point counters)? Are custom AI's on the horizon? If so, how will they work? - Well, I will try to answer all those questions. So, one of things that we do here at Goko is that we're very excited about our platform as well as the games. So we're really happy to be able to produce the tools that are going to allow people to make extensions such as the point counter. We ourselves are not actually going to do this but we are very happy to work with people who do. People will be able to make their own custom AI's as well as things like the point counter. We don't have this right now but it should be very soon.
How are ratings calculated? - Each player gets a rating between zero and ten thousand. All registered players are rated the same way, including the bots. The system for calculating ratings is pretty complicated and dependent on quite a few factors, so I'm going to kind of go through some of those factors. First the ratings are just based on what place you came in rather than how many victory points you won by. If the game is resigned it's viewed as a loss. It doesn't matter if you came in at a hundred points or two points, its all rated the same. Ratings are also adjusted based on the ratings of your opponents, so beating a higher rated opponent will help ratings much more than beating a lower rated opponent. The system is conservative in it's calculations, so it is reasonably sure you deserve the rating work before it awards it. In other words, your rating may be low when you haven't played many games and rise as the system gains more confidence that you deserve the higher rating. Your rating will fluctuate more when the system has little data about how skillful you are. So the first couple games you play your ratings are going to be all over the place. As you play more games your rating is only going to slowly move up and down. Unexpected results, such as a win over a higher rated opponent, affects the rating most, so play someone that's much better than you and win and your rating might go pretty high. Your rating will fluctuate more with results against players with more established ratings. So pretty much the more you play, the more established your rating is going to get, and playing against the other players with established ratings is going to be the best way to improve your score.
Would it be possible to get a relative timetable of when the expansions will be released on Goko? - Right now all our focus is on fixing the back end issues and in getting the games up and working. So once were done with that we're going to put all our efforts back on things like the expansions. Right now I can't give you a really good timetable but as soon as we kind of fix everything and we're back on track I'll start letting people know as we get close when those are going to be available.
Do you want us beta testers to continue beta testing? If so, what version should we be using? Where should we post feedback/bugs? - I definitely want people to continue beta testing. We will be sending out invites to our current beta testers to move you onto our new system that we're going to be using which is going to expand a lot of things we are going to be testing and a lot of new features. You'll find out more in an email that I should be sending within the next couple of days about the information I'm going to need to transfer you over. As far as where to post feedback and (-?-), continue both emails on the forums and not on (get satisfaction -?-). We're gonna be using that for the live site once we go live but not for the beta testing right now.
How many people work on funsockets? - So we have about thirty people here that actually work in the office. We're creating several different things. Not only are we creating games like dominion but we also have a gaming platform and also a kind of developer ecosystem that we're trying to work on. So it's a lot for thirty people to work on. Then of course not all of us are our programmers, so we are also bringing in a lot of outside help. As a lot of you who have seen the site know, we will be putting out Race For The Gallaxy soon, and we actually brought Keldon in to help us with that.
Any plans of allowing players to tweak how the cards are laid out on screen? - We don't have any plans to allow people to tweak, however, like most features if you ask for it and enough people ask for it we will definitely look at it for future things down the road.
I'm also interested in the familiarity the developers had with Dominion before starting their work. // Given that Goko is simultaneously developing at least 4 games ...how much attention is it really getting? Are the "best guys" on it? Will updates be frequent? - To give you an overall of the people that work here...As you can see we have quite a few collection of games. pretty much everyone here plays board games in one way or another. You know we dont all like the same games but we definitely are a company that focuses on gaming as a hobby. So, many of us owned and played dominion long before we came here. Our CEO ted loved dominion and that's one reason he really you know wanted to bring it in. So dominion has definitely been the primary focus of our company and it definitely is right now. We have the other games but a lot of the other games that we are developing were developed by external people, unlike dominion that we brought in. And really it's all internal and we have focused on making it as good as we can. you know at the point of course, we're still in development so it's not perfect yet. But we also, internally, have been working with Donald X, who is the developer of Dominion, so that we're getting it right from that angle too. So let me see if I answered that question. As far as our best guys on it, yep. We definitely have some of the best people we have here working on dominion.
Will there be a package deal to purchase all of the current and coming expansions in one go? - So we will have a package deal where you will be able to purchase all the current extensions that we have so far. And we will continually put out package deals as we have the expansions available.
Are any translations (especially into German) planned in the near future? Will you publish a roadmap of upcoming features? - German is the next language that we really want to put out as we know it's pretty popular. I don't have the timing for that right now just because there are lots of factors involved in that. As far as a road map, one of the few things that i can tell you that's going on right now is that we are working really hard on getting an iOS app for the iPad and iPhone out there. Also we are hoping to integrate with (-?-) something like this that you'd be able to play to your friend and talk to them while you are playing Dominion. A couple things after that are working on...Facebook and Windows 8 versions. We're going to do our best to make sure that we keep the community informed on what we're working on and what we're trying to do with the near future.
How do you feel about comparisons between your company and Zynga in the mainstream press? - So we feel that the type of games that we're trying to do are very different than Zynga. We're very different in the way we're trying to approach games. We want games that are at their core are really fun, and that's one of the reasons that we started with Dominion, because it's already proven to be fun. And so we wanted to continue to build on that. We never want to take that away and make it into something that it's not. So we definitely are very different in the way that we're approaching things here. Not only are we trying to have games that are really fun, but we're also doing something that's very different in that we are providing the tools to make those games. So for those that are looking to make their own games as well, we will have a platform for you to make the type of game that you want to make.
Will automatch be implemented? Can I filter opponents based on rating? - Yes, we're going to be implementing automatch. So the original way we tried to implement it, some of the very early beta testers might kind of remember this. We didn't quite work out just because of the number of people we had in. And it doesn't feel right so we went ahead and took that out and now we are going to try to make something that is a quick match play in the game. We're still working on the UI and the -?- for that. So once we get that right we're hoping to turn that on again and have a better quick-match program. Hopefully you know before too long we will have that.
Will there be any deal for getting price-cuts by buying physical copies of existing/future expansions? - Right now we can't do that just because it's hard to keep track of who bought what and things like that because we really aren't Rio Grande so it's hard to do that. The one thing we do have of course, that I'm sure some of you have seen, is the little cards that came in the Base set and came in Dark Ages. So you will be able to use those touch cards very soon and that will get you a nice little sampler pack that you can redeem. But as far as getting a discount on the type of things, we can't do that right now.
What kind of achievements will there be? Can you tell us more about this campaign mode? Any possibility of a fast, lightweight mod of play for player that do not want fancy graphics? - Ok, so these are kind of three separate questions so I will answer them one at a time. The first question, about achievements, is that a lot of the achievements we are going to be implementing were actually designed by Donald X himself. So we're really excited about that. A lot of them will be per card, so you may have a special achievement for doing something like playing a certain number of Villages or something like that. Exactly what those are I cant say yet. But they'll be up there. The campaign mode is going to be called Adventures. so there will be for each full set there will be three different adventures that you can play through. It will be kind of like what you are used to but the differences will be the starting hands, as well as just some other little tweaks. There will be a storyline through it so we are really excited about that and hoping that it will be interesting to people. Just to be something different than what people are playing with now but will complement the fact that you can still play just a plain game with your friends or with the bots. So the last part of the question was about the fancy graphics is kind of like some of the other stuff. We don't have it in our plans to make a lightweight mode but if a lot of people ask for it who knows down the road.
What is the peak number of unique users who are attempting to access the servers. How many did you performance test for? - This question is essentially "What happened when we opened on the first day of GenCon?" Our service really started exhibiting some unknown networking issues and some of these issues hadn't really been seen on our beta machines before, and not really during our loading tests either. So we were pretty surprised by what happened. At some point we pretty much worked two days straight. Some of the engineers were left here to try and fix it, and we finally realized its best that we stand back, pullout, and re-evaluate what's going on instead of trying to put a band-aid on it. We know that was super painful for everyone in the community because everybody wants to play and we all felt horrible about that. You know, we're really sorry. We wanted to do the best thing for the players at the time as well. So we're kind of standing back, fixing the thing that really needs to be fixed and then going for it again. And hopefully during this time we are also making some good changes to dominion to really improve the user experience.
Then I hereby clamor at the top of my lungs not only for a simple point counter, but also for an official full deck counter at least as extensive as Dr Held's Chrome extension. - So we would love to work with Dr. Held. If he wants to contact us you can contact us through
help@goko.com and we'll see what we can do. Maybe we can work with him to use that same one.
How will we be able to get the Base Cards with new art? Will we have to pay for it? Unlock it? - There is probably going to be two ways to get the base card set. One, through what we called victory tokens, which you can earn in the campaigns, as well as some various other ways to earn. Or you can also just purchase them.
How can I download a batch of play logs for analysis? - So, I will go ahead and put this address out there but i will say it as well. it's going to be dominionlogs.goko.com. so they are organized by day. If you'd like to go ahead and take a look you can look through all the logs for analysis. (missing a line)
I think security is one of the top concerns right now. During the time the production server was up all the bugs identified were identified in the production server. So how do you plan to rebuild user trust in the platform? - We are looking into quite a few different processes and other things. I can't really give you a great answer for all the things that we're doing to do that right now. I will answer this question once i have that list.
Can you describe funsockets primary intended market for its games? How do you balance the wants of the various communities? - I think to start, what we're really trying to do with...well it really depends on the game. But with Dominion we are really trying to focus on people that already play the game, people who enjoy Dominion. Once we get it strong for those people we know that we can then open it up to people who haven't been introduced yet. So, along with you know, starting to have a good -?- for our game for the people who play it the most. Then we're adding things like tutorials, How-To's, and other strategy guides for people who don't play it as often. Wwe're doing our best first to get it strong for the people there who will play it the most and then bring in the people who are also wanting to learn it and might become huge fans.
Offline play is a hugely requested feature. are there actual plans and timeframes to put it up, or is it just up in the air for now? - We don't have actual time lines on this right now. We're quite aware that it's a hugely requested feature and we're definitely looking in to different ways to implement something like this. Though I'm really not sure exactly when that is going to happen.
Can you describe the best pricing plan you have in mind for dominion and other games? How would you justify the pricing when compared to other online games? - As far as pricing, you know there's a lot of things being discussed on how to make it the best thing for the players. So I can't answer, you know justification for anything right now because there are a lot of things that are still being developed behind the scenes. So hold on, we will have more information on pricing.
How do you plan to improve communication between FunSockets and the board gaming community in the future? One of the primary community complaints is that there has been very little communication from Funsockets. - We're definitely trying to improve communication. I think the problem, of course, with a community as big as this is there's lots of places where people are and its hard to get to all those places and inform people of what we're doing. Some of that is definitely my fault as community manager and I'm gonna do my best to make sure that the community knows the direction we're going and decisions we make and and why we are making them. Because like you said, communication is such an important thing and we really do know that it it's really important for you guys to know what we're doing. It helps, you know, both the exciting things that we are having and to keep the expectations right. So I definitely will continue to try to have things like this video that hopefully will improve communication on what we're trying to do it.
Other than Dominion, Catan, and RFTG, what are some of the other 150 games who signed up to develop? - Unfortunately i can't quite say right now which games we have. We have some exciting ones and I wish I could. So I'm going to kind of hold off on that question. I'm going to ask what games I can talk about, and so I will probably answer that question by text later.