Before I begin, I didn’t read every single response in here, but I read enough to make me want to respond with my own thoughts and opinions.
The first thing I want to touch on…Why is Go not as popular as chess in the West?
There are various reasons for this, and they span from a variety of different logical sources. There are the cultural roots of the game to consider, the length of the game, and the abstract nature of the game itself when compared to chess (in that each piece in chess has a different function by virtue of its type and opening placement on the board).
Which leads on to another point…How can we grow the game of Go in the West?
We, we already are. Having these discussions is an important part of growing the community, as we all learn to get a better sense of what it is we seek to grow within that community. We all want to see OGS flourish and for more super-strong players to populate OGS so that it becomes a competitor for the other Go servers out there, which routinely pull in tens of thousands of players daily.
And yet here we are… It’s not that the go community is stagnant… far from it in my opinion. I see new players come to OGS all the time, and engage with the community and then quickly go on to spend rather a lot of money on things they probably are never going to get much use out of (Super fancy go boards with the best stones).
Next question…Who should be responsible, or carry the burden of growing the game outside of the avenues that already exist?
It has been mentioned that money is needed to grow go…and…. There is merit in that. There has also been the question of who is paying that money, and it has been answered that it’s us… the community… from which the money must eventually come, but we can’t get more money without first investing, and it all becomes a rather cyclical stream of thoughts that eventually leads nowhere.
We have talked in the past about official organisations that already exist that should carry that responsibility…and by and large… they are. They are doing their level best with the membership costs they get to put events on, and make them worth the time it takes to travel to events, and even try to make them accessible… I speak here of the BGA (British Go Association), which, while I’m no ardent fan, I do not mind paying the small cost every year to remain a member, even if I cannot attend any of the events.
Most notably, in my opinion, is their pushing of youth go tournaments, and international cooperation of go schools in Europe, and indeed with youth international tournaments as well, I think ( may need to be fact checked on some of this).
The organisations that exist can only do what they can do.
Which neatly brings me to my final thoughts and conclusions, ideas and opinions.
Go isn’t dead. But the burden of growing GO belongs not to an organisation, a business, or a single person… it belongs to all of us, globally, to grow the game. It depends on acts of goodwill and patience. It depends on taking the time out of our day to help a new player come to terms with the game and repeating the same advice over and over again to all the different players of all the different skill levels, as we all help each other grow and motivate each other.
Ultimately, we are collectively responsible for growing Go. Some people want to make a business of it because that is a proven way to drive interest. People follow money, and so do interests. Be it in the making of a business or the prizes in a tournament. And rightly so that money has to come from somewhere… and it has to, ultimately, come from us… the community.
Yet, as a disabled person who isn’t really able to financially invest in things, even the things I want most… sometimes even the things I need as I live close to the line of poverty (I don’t say this for sympathy, I say it as a matter of fact).
But there are other ways to drive interest in something… to make it more public, to force it into the mainstream in even small ways…. and it’s already happening. But it’s slow.
My main evidence for this is simple… Twitch. The Twitch Go community has been thriving in the last year or so, with regular and new streamers picking up streaming and playing go, pulling in audiences, and very, very often we see people say, “What is this game, looks like checkers”.
So if you want the game to grow and have the time, money and ability to do so, perhaps you should make content. Making content is often a thankless job but it works, and often, you will never make enough money to make a living, from from this you create mini satellite communities that root for you… that want you to do well… and from that you create online steaming events that you can advertise in forums and in other spaces that will get the word out, draw larger audiences and eventially draw more people in.
This is, of course, one avenue. And it’s even theoretically possible to make a living from it, as we know one streamer who does… they also teach and supplement their income in other ways… but they stream and bring people into the community all the time. And actively introduce the game to various new communities.
But it all comes back to community, and the burden of growing that community doesn’t belong to any single thing or person but rather the community to which that thing belongs. Yes… Chess.com has grown the chess community, but why? Because they loved the game, loved the community and saw an opportunity to make money…while actively growing the community. I cannot say that I begrudge Go Magic for attempting to do something similar, even if I do think it’s something of a doomed operation (though I hope I’m wrong).
Anyways… that’s my ramble on this topic done.
Edit:
As an addition to the idea that the growth of the go community belongs to us…the members of the community, and we should all do as much as we reasons can to grow the community, there are few people I can think of that have done as much as @JethOrensin for their writing and creating a go book for beginners, and starting a project to introduce Go to as many people as possible by having this book translated into as many languages as they can.
The above is a link to their website. Jeth has been diligently working on this project for years, some of you may know this project well. But I point this out specifically because this is exactly the kind of thing we need to be doing more of, if we are able… Jeth remains a bastion of hope for growing the Go community and deserves far more recognition than they probable have received.
