Project Description

The basic idea of the project is to make use of the popularity of online roleplay games to propagate the game of Go and also to help beginners on their way to ~10k. Any financial profit that might be generated will be used to support other Go projects as a recreational sport, especially in the youth sector.

In the beginning every player will go through an interview which will determine their character (student, fighter/warrior, adventurer/archaeologist, storyteller/guy with amnesia) and their starting point. Each character has an own story line, own game object and specific options to style their character (appearance). The characters' paths will intersect (and there might be the possibility to change to another character at some points, it is probably the easiest to transform to student).

The Go content is the same for all characters on the respective level, although the "wrapping" might vary. To reach the next level the player needs to solve certain quests, puzzles and/or tests whereas on the lower levels there are level up points or tests which enable the player to skip almost entire levels (for players who possess prior knowledge of Go).

Upon reaching a new level the possibilities increase, e.g. new board sizes, rule sets and time systems, Go variants, items/equipment and activation of new areas.

There are two currencies (to be designated). Currency A can be earned by solving Go problems and currency B by solving quests/riddles and exploring the online world etc.

The currencies can be used to pay for accessories, equipment, housing and furniture, Go material, information, club membership, tournament entrance fees etc.

Players can form clubs which can compete with each other and the like. From the club funds they can rent rooms or buildings, hire Go tutors, organize tournaments and finance other activities.

The different realms may take place in different dimensions and ages - such as Asia at Shusaku's time, an alien planet somewhere in the universe, a parallel Fantasy dimension and so on.

As many aspects of Go as possible will be included, such as rules, lore, Go terms/foreign languages, philosophy, Go problems (life & death, shapes, best move), theories to each aspect of the game, standard sequences, tools such as counting liberties in semeai, pro games.

Objectives

Every time I gave courses for beginners over several weeks or months I encountered the same problems:

- Playing once a week isn't really enough to improve ones Go-skills and there are often longer breaks due to holiday etc.

- Most participants don't like solving Go-problems all too much.

- Some participants join the course later and miss therefore the subjects of the previous lessons.

- The level and the pace of improvement varies significantly from person to person, which makes compromises necessary in the teaching content, methods and speed.

In order to enable beginners to make best use of their skills and talents, we want to create an interactive platform where beginners can learn and train Go to their heart's content and at their one pace.

It is not our goal to replace e. g. Go clubs and teachers in schools, but rather to support them and motivate the beginners to solve Go problems and learn more about Go than one does normally on Go servers.

Realisation

So far we framed the rough direction in which the game will develop. We founded the association "AdYouKi Go" which will help to handle administrative issues such as copyright, sponsors and finances in general.

Now we need skilled programmers and motivated Go players who help to amass tens of thousands of Go problems, background information on history, philosophies, etiquette, professional players as well as stories/ legends, actual news and of course Go theory to all game aspects.

Resources

For now we need a lot of people, especially programmers but also graphic artists, musicians, translators, Go teachers and so on.

In a while we will also need servers to run the game and sponsors to handle thereby incurring costs.

Possibilities of copying this project

So far we want to run the game in German and English, but other languages shall follow. The game will probably be licensed under GNU (open source) so that there is the possibility to copy and improve it later e.g. by changing the graphic from 2D to 3D.