LOL … my colour combination was inspired by Pantone’s “Unignorable” colour (https://www.pantone.com/articles/case-studies/unignorable-pantone-color-institute-x-united-way-canada) … and I added the complementary colour for my personal “unignorable” combo 
and often, when I do a screenshot (or something else) that I want to get (unignorably) noticed, I use that 
… but for y’all’s brains’ and eyes’ sake I made it a little smaller now 
Thanks for noticing!
Neither do I – but I seriously hope that he makes a good living off it, for himself and his family, for giving us this awesome Go server for free – and Ad-free!
Don’t you have any other ideas to work on, that aren’t DOA?
I agree with @benjito and would add that the opportunity to learn and gain experience is a big incentive for aspiring devs to contribute in open source projects. It helps that OGS has well defined and documented work-flows for devs, and there are maintainers who are willing to have a conversation and show newcomers the ropes. Having mentors is very valueable, and my personal experience is that OGS’s dev team is welcoming.
I wonder if a designer could have a similar experience - I don’t know of established work-flows for contributing designs, or senior-designers who can guide a newcomer.
There’s too many wrong assumptions with this statement alone that it’s becoming less worth my time to discuss my ideas in this thread. From the start, I made an effort to not reveal any of my best ideas in these forums because other competitors are likely to be snooping around.
But to be brief, “DOA” is one of the incorrect assumptions – just because anoek doesn’t possess the skills to monetize the relatively small Go community, doesn’t mean everyone else does. There are people who make a living off teaching Go alone and there are probably 1000s of Go teachers. And why do you think there are at least 2 startups who are seriously aiming to be the chess.com of Go? Most of you are not only weak at design but also at marketing, business, and understanding the game of Go itself. From a game design perspective alone I know why Go is less popular than Chess and what it would take to popularize it (and it’s more than simple gamification), let alone from a pedagogical perspective, UX, and others.
Another incorrect assumption is that a project being “DOA” or not is a concern for me. This is yet another practice and hobby project just like last year’s, for me. I genuinely and thoroughly enjoy Go, and that by itself already puts me ahead of anoek and company.
ANOTHER incorrect assumption is that I’m making a Go server to begin with 
. I said I’m making a Go platform, I don’t remember uttering the words “Go server” as far as what I’m making this year. But 1-2 years down the line if I’m still adding features to the platform, a Go server would be on the list, similar to GoMagic’s roadmap.
If I have to correct each and every one of your assumptions in every thread I talk in, I’d run out of time to get anything done.
You are undoubtedly your own greatest enemy.
I didn’t say I was starting with a Go server or that I’m working on it this year first. Though this is an example of my bad habit again – conflating ideas and not defining terms clearly. but good job digging through receipts to be pedantic.
Vast majority of startups fail so I don’t think that’s a good comparison. Just because someone has an idea, doesn’t mean it’s a good or practical idea.
I do think vibe coding has lowered the barrier of entry to tech significantly though and hence that’s why there’s a tech startup for everything now; it’s not specific to Go. But even with the lower barrier of entry, developers will realize that certain ideas can’t actually make money and will eventually be dropped.
Marketing costs money. Even if you’re an expert at marketing and know exactly what it takes to market the game, you still need to invest money upfront in order to market. And with the Western Go market size being so small, that’s money you’ll likely never get back. Going back to the chess.com comparison, because chess has 1000 times more players, you can be 10x more effective at marketing Go compared to chess and your marketing cost for acquiring a single player will still be 100x higher when compared to chess. If you’re running a business, you need to at least breakeven on your marketing costs before you can begin to market at all.
So understandably, OGS isn’t going to spend resources marketing Go at all (nor should they since it’s effectively the same as burning money).
I agree that there’s some money to be made in teaching Go, which is why GoMagic is doing ok. But there feels to be no money to be made in hosting a Go Server so there’s no way to expect the same quality of design.
There’s a lot of baseline assumptions in here too, which I can’t say are completely wrong because some of them are objective facts which need data to prove or disprove, but I don’t fully agree with them. And the type of marketing you’re referring to might not be what I’m referring to. It feels like you’re describing advertising, which is a subset of marketing.
As far as my own goals, it never even occurred to me to compete for the existing Western Go market. There’s also the Eastern Go market as well as the entire human population who don’t know anything about Go. Currently, Go is not a game I can recommend to any friends or family because there are no very good learning resources, easily accessible environments to study it, or platforms with a great user experience. This community is the best part of OGS (as has been said by many others), but even here beginners are not guaranteed to have a good time learning about and improving at Go. The game itself is inferior to Chess as a casual spectator sport which can be fully understood by a beginner with simple terminology, as a mobile board game which can be played at parks, on trains, etc., but that’s a separate discussion.
What type of marketing are you thinking that doesn’t cost money and is able to pull enough new players in?
I’m not just referring to advertising. Almost anything you do to market at scale isn’t free. Yeah, some of the points I mentioned are debatable. But based on raw numbers, Go looks to be significantly harder to market than chess (perhaps not 1000x harder, but still significantly harder). And that’s not something marketing skills alone can fix
Yes, it’s significantly harder to market than chess. That I can agree with. I did say Go is “inferior” to Chess in several aspects. but it’s significantly hard to improve at Go too, and I was able to do it better than all of you, was I not? Jokes aside, the kind of marketing I’m relatively confident in is simply convincing people to play my game by virtue of it looking really freaking fun. The couple of Go variants I posted on these forums aren’t even 1% of what I’ve been secretly cooking. I don’t know the corporate name for this type of marketing.
And things only cost money if you can’t do them yourself. Like I already felt OGS was doomed the moment someone mentioned that it would cost money to make better puzzle collections:
Sure bro. I look forward to your go platform and the billions of players it will attract.
I’m stepping away from this thread because I find it deeply unpleasant in general, but this is an extremely bad-faith misinterpretation of what I said.
I didn’t mean to throw you under the bus – only what you said as an example of things costing money that really shouldn’t cost money. Do step away from the unplesant-ness though.
yet another bad guess and misrepresentation here. While I can attract billions of players, I don’t even want to because I would feel compelled to sacrifice quality for scale. And because I’m not good enough as a backend developer to support that kind of scale (at least not yet). I’ll be happy even with 20 customers – you don’t know whether I live a monk lifestyle or an expensive one.
It sounds like you want the children’s version.
Personally I think the OGS interface and business model are amazing. Not perfect, but certainly (a) superior to most websites I interact with, and (b) highly conducive to playing Go online.
Before the internet was around people had to learn the game with the board, the stones, and hopefully someone who already knows how to play. They developed a desire to learn the game. For some people it still happens this way.
It would be a shame if OGS were to sacrifice the elegance and functionality that it currently has, in order to market something to potential users who don’t play if they don’t like the window dressing.
This is an incredibly bad faith take on design and simplicity.
To have something visually appealing and easily navigated does not make it a children’s version by any means. It makes it accessible.
A “pretty” front does not remove the option for a complex background. It simply allows people to choose what level they interact with. That is how a larger player base is grown. Saying “this is how it used to be, people should do better” is not a productive way forward.
I am not providing a guide for how to achieve this, and it clear this whole thread has been a waste of time for most people. It seems to have mainly caused a huge, and extremely out of proportion, upset for most. But the attention garnered in such a short time also speaks volumes for the importance the community as a whole places on this subject.
Wether my contribution for “how and what" was productive matters a lot less than the simple fact people seem to agree with the core incentives.
I am quite surprised by peoples general lack of ability to create decent connection and productive exchanges in this thread. Text is certainly not the best medium to circumvent misunderstandings, but there is a highly discouraging way of communication and (conscious) passive aggressiveness being thrown around wildly, throughout this whole thread. Although that should be expected online, it was still sad to see.
I’m directly engaging with what you wrote, you said there are too many options, I disagree.
You literally described the difference between history books for adults and history books for children and said OGS needs to be more like the ones for children, which exchange precision and depth for entertainment value.
I am not saying that there’s no room for design improvement, not that it interests me particularly. I’m expressing that said design improvement should not come at the expense of the present functionality of the website and simplicity of the way it is operated.
To be perfectly honest and with all due respect, I think you need to look in the mirror before accusing all of your interlocutors of bad faith and passive aggression.
I have not made a single conscious effort to be passive aggressive. It has been quite the opposite, by principle. Which also proves there has been a genuine breakdown of communication throughout this whole thread, with a projected lens of intention and meaning due to the general “vibe” that grew. But I have felt frustration, and understand why my writing could come across as passive aggressiveness. Not the intention. I’m sorry for any misunderstanding
Also, a book can contain all those things and still be catered to adults. Wether or not it caters to all adults is not the same thing. And to have a history book that’s written in a more engaging exposition does not make a rigorous one less available.
Perhaps the analogy of a pop-sci book Vs and genuine science book is a better example. The rigorous book will be more precise and contain more content, but for most people a pop-sci book could be the first step to dive deeper. And at the very least they might casually engage with the subject more often. It doesn’t take away from a dedicated base.
But any analogy is only that, to extrapolate too far only create misunderstanding. What I’m trying to get across is that there has to be a better way to catch newcomers and occasional casual players. For example those who might end up mainly doing a few Tsumego a day and try to progress in that, and then they play like one game a week for the sake of it. But once again, an example, not some structured analysis of what the players want.
If you find the site well structured I can’t take that away from you, and I’m not trying to. But I would guess a lot of people don’t agree to the same amount as you (I don’t, even if I don’t find it terrible either. It’s just sort of meh). I just believe there should be a way to create something for a broader group, without removing what works for people like you
It doesn’t have to be one or the other, it should be something new that doesn’t screw things up
Improving on design, marketing, teaching methods, etc. and maintaining whatever degree of elegance and functionality that already exists are not mutually exclusive. And this elitist mindset of “we did it the hard way so beginners should too” definitely doesn’t help attract newcomers to Go. And I’ve shared other similarly disdainful comments like this earlier. Seeing as this is what the OGS community stands for, anoek is only held back by you guys in terms of improving OGS’ flaws. But only for what you said in your latest posts. I agreed with all of your takes in other parts of the forums.
Right, like @JethOrensin ‘s example with Dwarf Fortress, people loved ASCII art as much as users like @garlicsoup love the current state of OGS. Yet polls comparing ASCII art style and the modern art style are overwhelmingly in favor of the modern art style, with 812 vs. 77 votes (source: https://www.reddit.com/r/dwarffortress/comments/11vibnq/do_you_prefer_ascii_graphics_or_modern_graphics/).
It’s partly my fault for saying some things in other threads that started some conflicts and grudges against me (especially Regenwasser), but yeah this thread’s negative vibe is coming from a lot of people and not what I usually experience on this website. I’m also surprised they continue to hold those grudges and remain as closed-minded as they are about things they don’t understand. I myself strive to learn from the people who continue to say I’m doomed to fail and dismiss anything I say, I assumed they would do the same, but they only have doubled down. But now I understand why OGS has not progressed in 15 years in certain departments.
