Flavien Aubelle announced this on Facebook:
(Go (Baduk, Weiqi) Players on Facebook | Hello everyone! | Facebook)
Facebook page:
Web site:
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I think it’s great that motivated actors are creating new content for Baduk.
One thing that sticks out to me though is that his “Rank-Based Insights” seem to completely miss the point why OGS isn’t more popular. So it’s hard to imagine that this dude will attract a larger player base than OGS.
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So many people were sharing that xkcd comic
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It’s apt to so many situations
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Honestly I think there could be grounds for someone to make an alternate front end for OGS, but writing a whole standalone server seems counter productive…
our biggest problem is our player base is way smaller than the asian servers, so splitting it again fixes nothing
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Well, this is not the only such project, a friend of mine is also creating a Go server … when he told me about it I first was a little sad that he (and his co-coders) didn’t just offer their support for MY favourite server but then realized that sometimes people just want to do THEIR OWN thing 
So I unfriended him and then printed out his profile and burned it.
<jk> ofc 
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Wanting to write the software for your own enjoyment is fine, just don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s going to somehow fix western online go.
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Great news, hope the best for the birth of one more go server.
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I honestly wasn’t sure exactly what the proposed solution was, but whether it’s an independent Go server, a front end to OGS, a place dedicated to providing the best teaching experience possible, a set of tutorials for learning Go, or some combination of the above, I signed up to the newsletter to learn more from the horse’s mouth and wish him the best
Whatever it is, I’ll at least check it out
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The one thing that would make me excited about a new go server is if it were open source and/or federated 
Also yeah no go server is gonna “fix” western Go no matter how awesome
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I disagree. The biggest potential that a modern Baduk webapp has is to acquire a large global user base by attracting a considerable share of players from the main Baduk countries.
OGS already attracts most of the “western” Baduk players. But out of the estimated 25 million Baduk players worldwide only less than 5% come from places outside of the far east (the Chinas, the Koreas and Japan). If you have any better numbers please feel free to correct me, but the general direction of these numbers will be true even if they might not be exact.
What OGS (and all the other Baduk webapps for that matter) fails to achieve is to attract a significant share of the main player base.
These players will not move away from their core tools (Foxwq, Tygem, Cyberoro, Netmarble, IGS, etc.) if the new app won’t offer them a considerably better experience.
The issue that OGS has is that the project fails to understand what features attract far eastern Baduk players, and does not implement them.
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Well, I’m certainly open to another server attempting to offer what they believe to be a better experience. The network effect is a big hurdle, but it has been overcome before
I’m all for those motivated guys giving it a shot. But from looking at their analysis, I believe that this new project will be a failure from the start. They’re trying to become a better OGS, but we don’t need a better OGS, we need a better Foxwq.
What defines a better experience I guess?
If it’s those apps have more players and you get a game quicker at normal times of the day in UTC+8/9 and that is the experience, then I’m not sure you can provide a better experience. (That’s the usual thing stronger players mention for example - I get a game quicker there so I go there)
You rather need something that’s missing there, or something to go wrong there, and then the player base has a reason to move.
That or you target an entirely new demographic, that isn’t covered by current servers. Often that can be the next generation of players, as current generations might already be happy with the experience they have.
(Some servers like color go server, try to provide something new, but you’d really have to nail something really important to move a core userbase)
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I mean yeah obviously this is a venn diagram. There are features that OGS has that Fox doesn’t have and there are features that Fox has that OGS doesn’t have.
OGS already has the features that Fox is missing. OGS is a webapp and therefore cross-platform. Afaik Linux is on the rise in China as the government pushes to replace Windows machines with it. Fox does not run on Linux.
Then the ranking system on OGS is much better and the translations for non-chinese speaking people is better (which is relevant for foreigners playing on Fox, which also includes Koreans, and of course players from other far eastern servers as well).
Therefore I would presume that OGS could have a shot to attract some of those players if it gets the missing part of the venn diagram right. I mean this has worked in the past. Korean people for example mostly abandoned Cyworld and moved to Facebook. And there are many other examples like this as well.
That’s fair, I guess if someone managed to pull in a broad player base as you’re saying, it would be pretty great.
Whether it’s plausible that a server would be able to pull in East Asian users and still cares about providing a decent experience for Western/English speaking users… I’d say slim-to-none. I guess Pandanet comes the closest in that respect.
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It could also be marketing that’s needed. Maybe you need some big influencers or schools or tournaments to let users know that OGS exists, and is worth using or an alternative.
Probably just word of mouth is also a good reason to play on a server, especially for new players. “I play on X and it’s good” probably gets most people to most servers 
That said hopefully the matchmaking is improving somewhat on OGS recently.
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I think this is big too. I’m pretty sure OGS works behinds-the-scenes to be a viable server for AGA/NAGF purposes. Not sure how much similar collaboration is done with, for example, the KBA or NHK.
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If they can pull the boardgame players and mobile games players, they would have the highest undiscovered potential user base.
And there are many examples of the opposite as well.
More and more “stores” competing for the same market, usually leads to saturation and most of them end up being non-viable.
What we need for that “ecosystem improval” is, well, what it says. An actual improvement to the ecosystem. E.g.:
a) More online tournaments from clubs and countries, with the help of EGF, for a wider range of players, in the online Go servers we already have.
b) If you want something unique on the programming side of things, then collaborate with the existing servers and create a true cross-platform tool. An “over-server” that would allow people to access playerbases from all servers and allow for example a player to log in your platform and play a game in different servers. Think of it like a Discord server, but for Go games, which will consolidate the playerbases in various “discord rooms” for each server and you can go in each one with a single click and cross-play from anywhere.
c) The AGA, FIG (Federation Iberoamericana de Go - most of us do not know it even exists and hosts Go Congresses in the Latin America) and EGF, coordinate to create cross-country tournaments, with the Go associations of the countries in the east (Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan etc). Also for all levels of players. That would be wonderful since we’d all be able to experience the different styles of Go in each region.
d) Organise an online “Global Go Congress”
The vast majority of Go players are amateurs. The same goes for chess. You can make however many pro leagues you like, if you do not promote the game on the grassroots level and generate interest, the pro leagues will fail for lack of funding.
If the sport has no people, it has no money. If it has no money, it has no “professionals”, be those professional players or professional creators of Go platforms.
The boardgame players seem to me to have a fondamental issue with moving to Go or chess or any other game that demands long term commitment in learning it. They lack patience.
They are more consumers of games in for the thrill of finding “the next new game”, than sticking with one game.
Go hasn’t got enough graphics for that 
Maybe if each stone made an explosion and piles of money dropped from the sides with each move?
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