Well I suppose one positive of a large user base is when you are more likely or can nearly guarantee to be able to play with a person of your level.
A lot of people prefer even and competitive games, and while you can achieve that to an extent with handicap in Go, I think people can also get a bit tired of playing a similar handicap over and over, or having a one sided game over and over.
I think in small go clubs or small friend groups it can be the case there can be large rating/skill differences, or even if it starts off close, one person can improve faster than another.
I agree though with @pwsiegel that Chess thrived online, particularly during and since the pandemic from a lot of online streaming, marketing, broadcasting and from other aspects of media attention and media (tv show).
They had a couple of articles talking about it
and how they needed to upgrade their servers to keep up with it
There was also a history video they put up (I haven’t watched it but I’m considering watching it)
I think Go Magic are doing a lot of things right,
- they’re very visible with ads and with social media posts,
- they’re making some content from their courses free so that you can decide to purchase it or a membership,
- they have a discord server to encourage a community,
- they post blogs/articles to keep people interested at all levels of engagement (not everyone wants to be the best player in the world, and some people are happy with more casual stuff. I’m like that with chess news and things)
- I think they also co-run/took over/host a podcast now, the All things Go podcast.
I think the gamification they have (the skill tree and XP) isn’t a bad kind of gamification unlike what @martin3141 is alluding to. I think generally there’s good and bad gamification and it partly depends on the purpose of it. If it’s to help you learn and stay engaged it can be good, if it’s to exploit you and to exploit money out of you it can be bad. I think that’s generally the kind people have objected to like lootboxes in other console games.