Over the weekend, NameBio released a new app to put your domain name valuation knowledge to the test. The game is called The Domain Game, and it is available in the Apple app store for all iOS devices (iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch). The way the game works is that it shows a random domain name sale with the name, date, and venue, and the player has to guess the correct sale price range (three, four, five, or six figures).
One of the most interesting aspects of the game is that you need to factor in the date and venue in order to accurately peg the sale price range. For instance, a LLL.com sale on DomainNameSales.com in 2015 will almost certainly be 5 or even 6 figures but a LLL.com sale on Afternic in 2002 will likely be just three or four figures. There will also be those random head scratching sales that will leave you guessing.
To make this game more fun, NameBio set up a leaderboard so people can compete against other users. In addition to showing the number of correct answers, the leaderboard also shows each player’s top “streak,” in which they got answers correctly in a row. As of right now, the leaderboard shows only the top 10 players, but NameBio Co-Founder Michael Sumner told me that this might expand as more users come on board.
The app is free to download, and registration is not required to play. If a player plays and later decides to register, I am told that the points accumulated as an unregistered user will carry over to the registered account.
Michael also shared with me that prizes will be incorporated into the game: “We’re going to be giving away a free week-long featured listing each week in a random drawing,” he told me. “Each correct answer during that week gets you one entry into the drawing. But to be eligible you have to be registered, otherwise we have no way to contact the winner,” he said. I was also told that in the future, NameBio may work with other domain industry companies to offer additional prizes.
With hundreds of thousands of archived sales in its database and new sales added regularly, The Domain Game probably won’t run out of queries for players.
I plan to download the game for my iPhone soon.
No Android? That’s – at least – 50% of the market. Fun idea though.
Maybe in the works?
Not at the moment. I wanted to learn iOS development and this seemed like a fun project to cut my teeth on. If it gets enough traction we’d be open to paying to have it ported over to Android. It’s off to a solid start so far, already 7,420 questions served and climbing.
I hope you guys like it!
Michael,
I love this idea! What a cool and fun way for domainers to build their knowledge and skills in determining the possible value of domain names.
Thanks for making it.
Fun idea.
Thanks Daniel and Joseph! We’ve served up 21,369 questions and climbing now, hopefully people are having fun. I’ve definitely gotten noticeably better the more I played so I think it is serving its purpose as a learning tool.