A Go Advent Calendar!

[Devin_Fraze]

I have a gift for you all!
Happy Holidays
https://baduk.club/advent
If you enjoy, please share with friends

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For those skeptical about clicking on links without knowing where it will take them: I created a fun advent calendar with Go related prizes for all 25 days of Christmas.! Every day there will be a new box you can open with some sort of fun Go related “gift”.

Is is a tsumego? Is is a piece of history? Is it a game? You’ll have to discover for yourself. But wait, there is more!

For those who open enough gifts something secret will happen, oooo. Plus, this is all tying into an end of the month tournament that you’re a part of just by opening boxes! (and perhaps more)

[yebellz]

I noticed that it said that one would not be able to open past gifts. It is seems a bit of waste to hide the old information, as it would be a nice resource to let people view this content afterwards.

[Devin_Fraze]

Ahh, good point, I’ll fix that wording. You’ll be allowed to open them if you already opened them once. But I just want to incentive folks to open gifts together, so you won’t be able to open passed gifts if you missed it. Some healthy fomo essentially, haha.

[ArsenLapin1]

Hi!

I think it’s a great idea, thank you for making this calendar!

I do have a bit of criticism regarding the first three days.

Day 1

I missed day 1 because I only learned about the calendar on december 2. I don’t understand the reason for forbidding opening past days. I don’t think there is such a thing as “healthy fomo”. It just looks like it’s been designed specifically to be frustrating.

In addition, it’s possible to open today while not being logged in; but if I do, then Baduk.club won’t remember that I opened it, and so I will no longer be able to reopen it in the future. Again, I see no reason for this “feature”. It’s just annoying for no reason.

Day 2

Very pretty go position!!

However, the text contains a link to a corresponding OGS puzzle, and the solution of this OGS puzzle appears to be wrong.

The OGS puzzle says this is the correct answer:

Black looks killable. White is going to win the semeai of the 6 Black stones against the 4 White stones, and so Black can only get one eye at K9.

I think move 13 should be at K8 instead, removing a liberty on the four white stones.

Day 3

This is just advertisement. In another context I would have enjoyed hearing about European handmade gobans, but in the context of the Advent calendar it just feels like a dirty trick.

If this advertisement had been below the calendar, or if it had been a thread on a go forum I would have enjoyed it, and depending on the price I might even have considered purchasing the mini-goban to offer to a friend for christmas; but being tricked like this leaves such a bad taste in my mouth, I’m sure to not want to buy this goban now.

[yebellz]

@ArsenLapin1

I missed day 1 because I only learned about the calendar on december 2. I don’t understand the reason for forbidding opening past days. I don’t think there is such a thing as “healthy fomo”. It just looks like it’s been designed specifically to be frustrating.

Day one was just a link to this video

💥🪜Blue Moves & Broken Dreams - Round 9 (semi) | NAGF Pro Qualifiers

and it also mentioned this related Sensei’s library article: Eric Yoder / Broken Ladder Game at Sensei's Library

@ArsenLapin1

In addition, it’s possible to open today while not being logged in; but if I do, then Baduk.club won’t remember that I opened it, and so I will no longer be able to reopen it in the future. Again, I see no reason for this “feature”. It’s just annoying for no reason.

Frankly, it just seems like all of the bad design is intentional as the whole thing is meant to encourage new people to sign up for accounts (i.e., essentially an advertisement rather than a gift). That and day 3 being just an advertisement makes the whole thing seem unpleasant.

[Devin_Fraze]

@ArsenLapin1 and @yebellz
Thanks for your feedback.

In regards to Day 2, I indeed messed up using a Go problem without a possible solution. I’ll be correcting that shortly.

In regards to Day 3, I have ZERO affiliation with that store. I didn’t intend for it to be an ad, I just scoured the web for xmas discounts and wanted to make folks aware of them. My store is https://store.baduk.club

In regards to Day 1, or rather in regards to the fact that you can’t open a present if you miss a day or the fact you need to be logged in for it to remember…

• There is something special planned for those who check-in daily and open the gifts. I can’t tell if you showed up to open the gifts of the day of if you aren’t logged in.

• Your browser should actually remember that you came the day before without being logged in… but I forget how long I store those cookies on non-logged in users, so I don’t want to make promises. If you login after you open a gift, I think it should add the record.

• This is sincerely meant to be a gift to the community. If you don’t want to sign up, you can still open gifts. If you don’t want to register for the event at the end of the month, you can still follow along and watch for free on twitch.

• (Not for ArsenLapin1) Fun fact, web traffic and databases cost money. Also my time is worth something and yet this is free. Other fun fact, I host/create a lot of other Go services for free. So again, THIS IS A GIFT. It’s fine if you don’t like my gift, but don’t call me a scrouge.

• Toward that end, @yebellz , if you’d like to post everything in the gifts here, you can, you have my permission. Just please wait a day or two after. People can come here and see what was in the gifts and they don’t have to play the game I am constructing on the Advent page.

[ArsenLapin1]

Fun fact, I did not call you a scrouge, whatever that might mean. I also did not say that I didn’t like your caIendar. What I actually said was:

I think it’s a great idea, thank you for making this calendar!

I actually already had a baduk.club account because I think baduk.club is a great way to list go clubs.

Congratulations to you for doing things for free. Other fun fact, if you think making things for free entitles you to speak to strangers the way you did in your last post: it doesn’t.

Have a great day.

[Devin_Fraze]

I wrote “Not for ArsenLapin1” as it this next comment is not directed at you. I was responding specifically to yebellz who seemed to be suggesting I was doing this all merely for personally gain.

I was very grateful to read your supportive comment and I took your following points as constructive feedback. Like I said at the start of the comment, thank you!!

[shinuito]

I guess my take on it would be that generally I would think if you want people to enjoy whatever’s in the daily gifts, it’s better to let people open them at their leisure.

Sometimes life gets in the way, you forgot to eat the chocolate in your calendar on December 2nd and so you eat two chocolates on December 3rd, no harm done.

If you want people to participate in the special event, my feeling is that hyping that without appealing to fomo would be better, and potentially work better. I think it’s easy to be dissuaded, if you missed out on the announcement and missed two or three posts to just give up on the whole thing. If you know however that maybe you only missed out on some bonus, and if the first few days were good, and you didn’t maybe miss out too much by missing a few days - my guess would be engagement could be more incentivised that way.

Relevant examples of this kind of thing elsewhere

Example 1: BoardGame Arena’s Winter of Games

If you click the newly released game EACH day on this calendar, you will unlock achievements to beautify your account. Unique. Beautiful.
Will you be able to collect them ALL if you miss a single of the 31 days? Nope.
That’s a challenge.
It’s all up to you.

What’s that you missed day 1, or you missed a single day because you didn’t realise the website goes off the French timezone and you have work or school or whichever? Tough luck.

Basically maybe the first time I saw this it sounded cool, it’s very cool to release so many games, one game a day (though a large number were probably “released” - in beta, playable, not going to be changed except in name), but the gimmick of fomo and getting a badge or something for a month of checking something and clicking a button every day just doesn’t really appeal.

Example 2: Age of Empires 2 timed events

When they made the definitive edition of the 90s game AOE2 they started adding all of these events to keep interest in the game (pretty sure they still do it) but initially they’d give you challenges, do such and such against the computer or in a campaign or in multiplayer and you’ll unlock some mods for the game, a new in game menu, a new skin for a unit, some gimmick to do with the event.

Except again the problem is that it’s a really silly idea to time lock these things -

Please, stop locking stuff other than profile images behind timed events - II - Discussion - Age of Empires Forum

I think a number of people in the community also felt it was a terrible idea, to varying degrees, and people would just publish the mods to the steam workshop anyway to make sure you didn’t miss out because of the arbitrary time limits.

Event Unlocks :: Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition General Discussions

Overall it’s kind of a poor attempt to inflate numbers and traffic to the game, making you wait a certain number of hours between challenges so you have to play spaced out rather than all in one go and so on.

It’s just divisive and not really caring about their actual community in this specific aspect (the aoe stuff above) - of course they are providing them actively with content, I can’t criticise that that’s a different kind of caring in a way.

^Two examples for the moment that’ve stuck in my mind anyway.

[Devin_Fraze]

Thanks for the thoughtful message @shinuito ! and thanks for those relevant examples. I like learning from other examples of stuff a lot!

@shinuito

Sometimes life gets in the way, you forgot to eat the chocolate in your calendar on December 2nd and so you eat two chocolates on December 3rd, no harm done.

Obviously missing a day or missing even a few days is not fun, but at the end of the day, is it a big deal? I mean, you still get a chocolate… you just don’t get two. Although you are entitled to 100% of the chocolates in a real world advent calendar that you paid for.

My other big question would be what’s the point of it being an calendar at all? Why not just wait till the event is over and then open them all? Or why even time-lock the future gifts? Again, if you buy an advent calendar at the store you can just open it all at once! Isn’t offering a time component the fundamental thing that makes it a 1-a-day advent calendar?

All of that being said, my plan is to let those who participate in the special event open them all as an incentive to participate. (Because yes, obviously if someone misses one, that makes someone sad, so I want to give people the chance to open them all.)

@shinuito

If you want people to participate in the special event, my feeling is that hyping that without appealing to fomo would be better, and potentially work better.

It’s not all about that. Honestly, I wrote the fomo thing as my wife was yelling at me to get to bed because we’d be moving houses all day and I wanted to reply asap. My core feeling is that something isn’t a game if it doesn’t have stakes. The idea for the advent calendar/event is it’s all a big game. If everyone can just equally win without having to do anything… that’s not a good game.

That being said… I think for next year, I’m may just make a advent calendar you have to pay for and if you pay for it you can open whatever you want whenever you want! It’s a better because then people don’t get angry at me for doing all this work for free and people can have freedom!

Currently I’m just working my ass off day-by-day to build and put this on. I don’t even know all the details myself because I’m figuring it out as I go. If I had a team of like 4 highly competent people who could help me engineer all this… then sure you could expect a much better much more thought out experience. But currently I wake up each day and “fix” the previous days gift and plan tomorrows gift.

One last consideration, I haven’t announced the details yet, but essentially, you get points when you open a gift. If I allow everyone to open all the gifts whenever they want… then I can’t track who gets the special points. As I mentioned, the points effect the tournament at the end of the month. So that whole dynamic would be ruined. And sure, maybe no one cares about that. I’m honestly learning a lot by doing this, so regardless of anything else in my reply, thank you for providing your thougths!

[Groin]

A simple suggestion would be to let open the missed days only after the end of time of the calendar (or after the tournament which seems now involved) (but i guess it’s maybe too late for this time).
Anyway it’s a cool initiative, thanks for your creativity!

[Devin_Fraze]

Ahh, that’s not a bad idea! I’ll consider that as it wouldn’t be too much extra work to do. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Aumpa]

I’ve been opening them daily and appreciate them. Sometimes I share them with others! The Hanukkah one and 3x3 goban got some laughs.

[Devin_Fraze]

@yebellz I wanted to reach back out and apologize, I had forgotten exactly who you are and the amazing work you do in the open source software community. Even though I build and run a Go site I am not a programmer by trade. I use a WYSIWYG software to build badukclub and so honestly, I don’t know how to implement cookies and track other user behaviors without asking people to log in.

Anyway, I was reflecting on what might have been feeling icky to you about what I’d done and this was my best guess, that you’d assumed I had built something only as a gimmick to get more users (which to be clear people do often do). But honestly, just having more accounts on badukclub means nothing to me as I could have a million users all with fake names and who never log in and this would be an epic failure. So I thought it worthwhile to explain to you why I was asking people to sign up… in short, I’m a shitty programmer, haha. And I know very well you are a skilled one, so you may not realize how the unskilled mind thinks.

Anyway, as someone else mentioned, all the boxes are free to open now. Also, you and your work is featured in one of the boxes (which is how I realized you aren’t just some angry guy on the forums, haha). So check it out and if you have any more feedback I’m more than happy to hear it. Thanks!