"Well, how do you keep a game moving? How do you keep the pacing of a game alive when you’re not sitting around a table together drinking beers, but all over the world in different time zones? We can create turn timers if we have to, or incentivise people to check their turns, make it easy for people to check their turns of Catan. That type of innovation."
That doesn't take innovation. That takes a single chime when someone needs to make a play. If people want to play, they're going to play; why do you need to "keep the game alive?" What the hell does this even mean?
"I haven’t spent a lot of time with Playdek, but it seems to me that they’re going deeper into pure board game, pure strategy side. We’re more focused on emphasising the social features — and we’re just starting to introduce the new social features that Goko stands for."
Oh, I cannot wait for this. If there's anything board gamers want, it's to de-emphasize strategy in favor of "social features."
Let's face it, we aren't Goko's target audience. We're a good chunk of their customer base, but we're not their intended audience. I'm not sure who their audience is, though.
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Other things I'd like to know:
Is Wei-Hwa Huang (onigame) still working for/with them? He was doing a lot of the on-gain/on-buy design, then disappeared from the forums around the same time as Donald. His fiancee left Goko about a month later.
Is Keldon still working on their RFTG app/site/whatever?