Chess has to be one of the easier games to scale up, no?
PVP probably yes. PvE? Not really. The algorithms for a competent engine are fairly CPU heavy.
and can trivially run client side
Chess is booming and our servers are struggling
51–60 of 132 posts
Re: Chess is booming and our servers are struggling
#52Chess.com has the somewhat unique property of being a chess server run by people who aren't good at chess and aren't good at technology. I think they used to hire devs off Fiverr. However they are somewhat good at business as they've convinced thousands of people to pay $17.00 per month for something that can be found for free at Lichess.org. They do pay a ton of money to streamers to use their site exclusively, whic…
Chess.com strikes me as a domain squatter who decided to try to make something of their site instead of selling it off once it was popular. Kudos to them, but at the end of the day they’re still domain squatters.
Re: Chess is booming and our servers are struggling
#53I was going to post that I suspected this was due to some sort of automated or bot activity... a couple months seems like way too short a time for that much organic growth.
However, Google Trends also indicates a doubling of interest in chess as a search term over the past three months. Interesting!
Re: Chess is booming and our servers are struggling
#54Chess found its way into my YouTube feed and that got me back into it. I wonder if this is just some bizarre case of the outcome of some thing like that. “Oops we accidentally put chess in front of everyone for a week and now they’re all playing it.”
Me too. I read a couple of articles about the Niemann/Carlssen debate, then I saw a guy talking about chess on youtube, and eventually I created a chess.com account.
Re: Chess is booming and our servers are struggling
#55Chess.com has the somewhat unique property of being a chess server run by people who aren't good at chess and aren't good at technology. I think they used to hire devs off Fiverr. However they are somewhat good at business as they've convinced thousands of people to pay $17.00 per month for something that can be found for free at Lichess.org. They do pay a ton of money to streamers to use their site exclusively, whic…
Lichess is better in every way except one: their push notifications are unreliable.
Re: Chess is booming and our servers are struggling
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
>..focus on hiring people that are capable of hacking things together. Based on my daily frustrations with basically every piece of software, that already appears to be the status quo.
> Based on my daily frustrations with basically every piece of software, that already appears to be the status quo. That’s the kind of elitist thinking that leads to Byzantine tech interviews and poor collaboration.
That was more a commentary on hate-the-game not the playa. Lots of smart and talented people in the field, yet software coming out the door routinely has egregious usability and performance defects. Bizarre prioritization of features that are dictated by anything other than end-user needs.
Edit: remove the dig at management which is too easy a scapegoat to explain all ills
Re: Chess is booming and our servers are struggling
#57Doubled since December, and held there? Unreal.
The Google Trends graphs support it: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=... https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=... None of their explanations sounds at all plausible though.
Probably laid-off devs playing chess all day
Re: Chess is booming and our servers are struggling
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
The game reviews are really nice to quickly see the key points of the game. Plus the UI all over is better than Lichess. That and network effects explain the rest.
I'm curious, as someone who appreciates the simple and intuitive Lichess UI, what makes the Chess.com UI better than Lichess'?
Yeah, I am with you on this. It isn't even the case that Lichess UI is simple because it lacks advanced features, it just straight up feels more intuitive and way more pleasant to interact with. Chess.com UI reminds me of overcluttered websites from late 2000s/early 2010s.
Pure anecdata, but I only know one person irl who prefers chess.com, and I never managed to get a straight answer from him as to why, other than "i just play there and like it more, maybe i will check out Lichess at some point, idk."
Re: Chess is booming and our servers are struggling
#59Everybody wants to play against Mittens?
I don't really get the whole mittens thing. Chess engines have been better than humans for a long time, and they've been on chess.com forever. I guess the joke of giving it rating of 1 when it is playing at a very high level and a cute picture is good marketing. But getting beaten by an engine isn't particularly fun. It isn't really educational either when it is so much better than you.
Re: Chess is booming and our servers are struggling
#60Chess.com has the somewhat unique property of being a chess server run by people who aren't good at chess and aren't good at technology. I think they used to hire devs off Fiverr. However they are somewhat good at business as they've convinced thousands of people to pay $17.00 per month for something that can be found for free at Lichess.org. They do pay a ton of money to streamers to use their site exclusively, whic…
Bad at the game, bad at engineering, but good at marketing. There's a lesson in here. Similar to how most of the software that runs the internet is poorly written and has bad fundamentals.
The domain name doesn't hurt either. Though I guess you can wrap that up under Marketing.