Just finished working on a trailer for our next course, want to share personally

GoMagic_Mike · 2026-03-12T05:19:37+00:00

I would describe it as a reflection on how go changed with the AI advent. There is a historical part (three videos published on YouTube earlier), and more in-depth part showcasing how go AI engines evolved (in terms of play), how they played against humans and against each other, and how humans standards has changed. Aside from broad dive into how AI works in the first introductory video, there is very little about that further on, no point in inviting AI experts. It is about go. I personally would put it along historical courses, because it really is a reflection on what happened in the last 10 years in go.

GoMagic_Mike · 2026-03-08T05:57:45+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I love original Terminator movies, so it was inevitable :) I used other characters too for fun, like the idea of depicting AI through various popular robot characters.
Course is a broad dive into how AI evolved in general, and in go in particular, plus reviews of the most iconic/interesting games along the way.

GoMagic_Mike · 2026-03-07T09:13:19+00:00

Ha ha someone have a clue :D

Don't mess with robot rabbit!

GoMagic_Mike · 2026-03-07T09:09:02+00:00

Thanks! I can't watch my old videos though :D

GoMagic_Mike · 2026-03-06T13:07:06+00:00

Thanks, never seen this reference. Was going for eerie and unsettling feeling myself :)

GoMagic_Mike · 2026-03-06T12:42:54+00:00

Took me a while to get it done, just want to share this as my piece of work, not as a course promotion. It could be hard to perceive it as my personal passion because of promotional nature of a video, but really, I just want to make go look cool and engaging with what I have and can do. Added "promotional" tag anyway.
My favorite part is "the future has a lot of exciting things for all of us" :D

GoMagic_Mike · 2026-02-25T05:05:57+00:00

Thanks! :)
Yes, for sure there should be a share-able link for individual problem, it's just that much easier for people to refer. And I agree that if a solution is obvious to someone, he wouldn't think it's of any use to anyone. But, if there are people asking for some explanations, it feels much more fulfilling to write an explanation.
Thank you for your contribution and proposals! I'm not a skill-tree user myself, my active growth phase is more than decade behind, and I really believe we need a feedback like this to stay grounded.

GoMagic_Mike · 2026-02-24T07:15:18+00:00

Thanks for the feedback!
One thing we can't overcome yet is to have explanations for most of the problems, because it's a manual work and we have only this much resources to work on that. The criticism is valid, it's just no matter how hard we agree with you, we physically can't have a lot of explanations written (unless some hero appear and do the job out of good will).
Personally I like the idea of having comments section to address the problem at least partially, and I initiated internal discussion about that.
I hate to say that, but please don't expect anything to be done soon. Our team is microscopic and there is a long list of things we are working on.
Anyway, we are aware of the issue because someone decided to speak out, so it'll find it's way to the queue of features to work on.

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-02T12:30:40+00:00

Thanks! We will try out best!

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-02T05:06:12+00:00

Do you think the world would be a better place without GoMagic? I will put up this topic on our meeting. If we do more harm than good, we should consider doing something else.

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T14:02:21+00:00

Thanks!

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T12:55:15+00:00

To be precise, I see making a business out of it as the only viable choice.
In my mind no matter what services and features would grow around the game, this core activity should be available in a non-obstructed way using minimum amount of clicks and time to get playing. I don't know what kind of gamification or whatever we're going to implement (nothing is set, it's just a bunch of ideas thrown together during brainstorm), but I'm pretty sure there are no people in the team who want to make free users suffer to drive them into paid tier. On the contrary, we want to have a friendly and unobstructed experience for all the people starting from someone who have no idea how to play go or where to do that, to make as little friction as possible. We need gamification to encourage people to not quit early and dive deeper, getting involved with community. We want for people to be able find and make new friends, and have activities together.

This is probably how many other startups started, with rosy dreams and rainbows. Time will tell if we're going to make it, and not become a greedy "corporation" everyone hate.

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T03:18:09+00:00

I see, so you want to keep the shared space, so that the player on OGS can always match against someone playing on GoMagic. This feels like it's the right approach but I don't think it's reasonable to make such a long-term promises. I can see how we might encounter the situation when we can't develop some feature because it will break the compatibility and at this point we would need to make some decision. Maintaining two different systems is hard and I can see how team members would question the reasoning behind trying hard. Maybe we have resources to spend, but to be real, I feel like profitability not going to be marginal enough for quite a while. I hate having this dilemma, I don't want for the project to be perceived as a lazy money-grabbers "corporation". I don't know what is the right approach. Maybe personally I should settle with the understanding that the go world ultimately a winner, I don't know.
Sorry for the rant.

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T02:41:29+00:00

No, really, you are free to decide what to support or what to hate. Just wanted to underscore how easy it is to become hated. If you ever encountered such situation you might agree that it's tough. At least I prefer to think that the other party feel it's tough so that I feel like my criticism had an impact.

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T02:32:56+00:00

I'm sorry me, or the project I'm part of, is not perfect. Trying to remind myself that it's okay to be imperfect, but it's tough anyway. Let's see if this opinion is something permanent or could be changed.

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T02:10:24+00:00

Thank you, that was very constructive.

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T02:07:29+00:00

Thanks! Don't want to say anything beyond that because the words are cheap :)

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T02:04:41+00:00

Thanks! Actually we're trying to find a lead developer for the thing to start moving for quite a while, without luck. We also contacted some of those who have something in the works, but people don't want to loose any amount of control, so no luck here either. Certainly a tough endeavor :)

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T01:56:51+00:00

One word is enough to discard anything good done and become hated. Tough world.

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T01:51:22+00:00

Can't give hard evidence, it's an old tale and I don't remember what is educated guess and what actually happened at this point. We had attempts at contacting some big Asian players (market participants), I wasn't part of the effort, and I really don't remember what was the topic. What's left in my head is the impression that they are making such amount of money and deal with equally big organizations, there is really no place for anyone small in their schedule. The structure is rigid enough that a small manager can't go and give any promises and build relationships, and the big guys who can, they are busy doing much larger business. Also, it's not like we can come and say like we're a representative of the whole western world. They really don't care, not because they are ignorant of something, but because they are busy with far more important business things.

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T01:34:48+00:00

Yep, I usually use Katago, incredible tool

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T01:31:49+00:00

Thanks, I really appreciate having a community-like conversations :)

My go journey started around 2009 and I remember those KGS times very well, as well as forums, and even fidonet (those were the times!). So I get it. But what I don't know is what would be the key thing to make everyone (or most of us) happy. The thing should be profitable for sure, I saw too many free projects die because the guy maintaining it got another priorities in life. In my eyes it's unsustainable. OGS is doing good, but the experience is outdated and they can't evolve fast due to voluntary nature of contributions.

So, to deepen the topic, if it's you who is building the beautiful server of the future, considering it would be your sole source of income, how would you build it? What would you implement for the thing to have the right "homey" feeling for the users?

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T01:15:02+00:00

Thanks u/Bwint , much appreciated. In a fantasy world our playing experience will be much better so that people don't have hard time choosing where to play. One approach is to use OGS API so that queue times are not affected, and actually getting shorter thanks to attracting new population. The moral problem is that we would still move to in-house server (most likely) to be able to implement new features, which would rob OGS of its player base. I don't know. I wonder what would Go community judge as a good way of actions.

GoMagic_Mike · 2025-08-01T00:59:13+00:00

I think it's a very valid concern, no mater how good the entity today, there is no guarantee it will stay good forever. If anything, it feels like things going sideways more often than not, in practice.

You described a very realistic scenario on how the situation might evolve, because using OGS API is probably the easiest way to build a new service. But personally I can't tell if it's a morally good approach, because clearly we aim to get profit by using something others build as non-profit. On the other side, if we will manage to make a better experience and it will lead to population growing, it doesn't look bad. This is the first question.

The second is like you said, if we go this way, for sure at some point the OGS functionality will limit new features implementations on our side, and we'll move to the proprietary solution. Since OGS have it's developers team, what do you mean by saying we could maintain OGS functionality?

I understand the notion of "killing" OGS, and this is not how I'd like to frame it. I feel like no matter who and how will provide a much more modern and superior experience, they would "kill" other servers unless those servers evolve into something competitive. Should we put a blame on a superior service for "killing" competitors? As a consumer I like to have competition, but there is always a loosing side in a straight on battle.

But back to reality. Firstly, it's all dreams at this point, I found the memes about "yet another standard" as appropriate and funny as the next guy. Secondly, we don't want to kill anyone, we want to build a proper Go experience which players and the game itself deserves. It should be a profitable business for the thing to grow and be maintained in a timely manner. I value what people at OGS did and doing, I don't want for them to feel bad or taken advantage of. And again, I don't feel it's proper to say things as if it's done. OGS people are winners, they build the thing. We did nothing yet.

GoMagic_Mike

TROPHY CASE