I want to talk about Richard Garfield and how he created the best TCG game ever!!!
A lot of people on this site do not know that
MAGIC THE GATHERING is so far the number 1 TCG game on the market.
I'm trying to follow in his foot steps and create my own game but so far I dont even know what type of program to use I just wanted to say this I dont need any replies later.
Richard Garfield
Thu, 07/08/2004 - 18:55
Thu, 07/08/2004 - 19:17
#1
Richard Garfield
I bet that almost everyone here knows that Richard Garfield designed Magic: The Gathering.
Are you familiar with Garfield's other games, like Robo Rally, The Great Dalmuti, Filthy Rich, and Twitch?
-- Matthew
Thu, 07/08/2004 - 20:00
#3
Richard Garfield
He designed several other CCGs as well, though none were as successful: Battletech CCG, Netrunner, Star Wars: Trading Card Game, and Vampire: The Eternal Struggle.
Definitely a very clever guy. His first game, Robo Rally, while suffering somewhat from randomness and sometimes game length, requires a lot of fun spatial visualization and outguessing your opponents. Few people have ever played Filthy Rich, but it's really ingenious: it uses 9-up clear plastic CCG sheets in a binder, and players play cards in an attempt to cover up each others' while revealing their own. A die determines which page is currently on top. Wacky fun.
And needless to say, whether you like the CCG format or not, Magic is fricking brilliant;
-- Matthew
Fri, 07/09/2004 - 03:16
#6
Richard Garfield
I actually saw Richard Garfield once at a Pro Tour I visited as a tourist (NY 2000, I just happened to be there at the same time) and exchanged a few words with him about a deck he had built and was gunslinging with. Pleasant guy. He didn't look like a multimillionaire! :D
Yeah, MtG is friggin' brilliant. It's one of those marketing miracles in the gaming industry that happen every ten years or so.
- René Wiersma
Fri, 07/09/2004 - 09:35
#7
Richard Garfield
Richard_Huzzey wrote:
While its 2-player nature and theme undermined Netrunner, I actually think it's the greatest CCG he did, and probably the best game. Like many others, its a CCG where you think "why couldn't this have just been a standalone board/card game".
I'm with you here Richard. Netrunner is the best game Garfield designed, and nothing since has come close. What let it down ultimately was that the conception was too ambitious and although the execution was sound, it probably needed a chunk more playtesting time. And the fact that it was a two-player only game (most CCGs at least work in a multi-player environment, some better than others.)
Having said that, of course, it would be churlish to deny that Magic deserves its place in the Games Hall of Fame: the fact that it is still going after more than a decade is testament to the strength of the original concept, whereas Netrunner, whilst it doesn't deserve the ignomony of being forgotten, probably only belongs in one of those "ten best CCGs" lists...
Fri, 07/09/2004 - 12:28
#9
Richard Garfield
TBF, Magic in its current incarnation is astonishingly smooth, with very few examples of "counter-intuitive" thinking. Where it suffers is that a large proportion of cards (although decreasing rapidly) were produced before the most recent iteration of the rules and thus sometimes work in a completely contradictory fashion.
And one of the attractions of Magic has always been the complexity of those interactions and the joy of exploiting them in an unexpected way.
(After all, they have tried streamlining Magic twice now: in Portal, and later in the Starter set, and it didn't work!)
Fri, 07/09/2004 - 15:52
#10
Richard Garfield
Without getting into the pros and cons of MTG I would say that Illuminati NWO is the best I have played in the world of CCG’s. Why? Because it defies the one thing that most other CCG’s are built around. That is power gaming, or to put it simply he who spends the most money has the best cards and the best odds of winning. This is why I stopped playing. it becomes more about getting card X than buying a game and playing it for fun. The point is that INWO has common, uncommon and rare cards but in the end that’s not what determines the cards strength. In INWO you can make a deck out of all common cards that can take over the world. Then there is all the back stabbing, double dealing and lying but then again that’s just how my friends are.
Sun, 07/11/2004 - 16:34
#13
Richard Garfield
bitraven wrote:
Technically, being able to spend real life money to buy the cards you want could be considered part of the game - a 'mechanic' of the ccg. It's not like anyone who plays the game couldn't figure that bit out on their own, so they should know that part going in (or at least not be surprised by it). So why is that not a valid mechanic from your collective point of view?
Because the playing field isn't level. Let's say we have three fans of a CCG that gives a clear advantage to the player who spends more. We'll say that Player A is objectively smarter than Player B, and Player B is objectively smarter than Player C. However, Player A is a janitor who is only able to scrape together occasional change to buy the occasional booster pack. Player B is a preteen with rich parents, and therefore buys a lot of booster packs. Player C has a spouse who works at a comic book store, and therefore has every card ever made, even though Player C really isn't all that interested in the game.
Therefore, Player C will be better at the game than Player B, even though s/he is objectively stupider, and doesn't even care about the game. Player B will be better than Player A, even though Player A can beat the others in any "normal" CCG.
Truth be told, this won't be a very satisfying game, and most people will avoid it.
Quote:
If you take the real life money out of the equation, and put it in-game ... in games where money is present, players can usually outspend their opponents (if they want) to gain some advantage (even if only temporary). but those same considerations are present using real money too, it's just that all the advantages/disadvantages of doing so are not necessarily represented in the game itself (ie: you can't pay the rent, because you just bought an expensive card(s), etc.).
Any game that includes money as a mechanic will either have players start with the same amount of money, or give players with less money a tangible advantage.
Any other way makes for, quite frankly, a lousy game. :)
Hey, if I play devil's advocate for a devil's advocate, does that make me an angelic advocate? Or just someone with too much time on his hands?
Sun, 07/11/2004 - 17:15
#14
Let me also say
That I think the Internet also played a major role in the demise of the playability of Magic. You didn't have to think about the best deck to use, you simply had to logon to the Internet, browse a few sites (even worse was IRC), and find the current, best, unbeatable decks. Then all you had to do was grab some cash and construct said decks. It got so there was very little skill involved in actually playing the game itself. A lot of these killer decks pretty much played themselves. So any person with an internet connection and some cash could win tournaments. Not a very good game in my eyes. I do however, see the value in draft and sealed deck tournaments. With them, you can really see the skill of the players shine through.
My 2 pence,
-Darke
Sun, 07/11/2004 - 18:42
#15
Re: Let me also say
Darkehorse wrote:
It got so there was very little skill involved in actually playing the game itself. A lot of these killer decks pretty much played themselves. So any person with an internet connection and some cash could win tournaments. Not a very good game in my eyes.
With respect* this has never been the case with Magic. Sure there have been occasions when there have been decks that "played themselves" but these were rarely "killer decks" - indeed, they have a tendency to roll over and die if you think you can treat them that way. Instead, it is the players who practise with their decks, tune them and understand what to do and when to do it who are the ones that win - and win consistently.
On the other hand, you are quite correct about draft and sealed, which tests a different skillset, and is what truly separates Magic from the rest of the CCG world which has rarely produced a game that provides such a satisfying experience purely from sealed product.
(*"with respect" meaning "with no respect whatsoever". :-))
Mon, 07/12/2004 - 12:31
#17
Richard Garfield
bitraven wrote:
IngredientX wrote:
Therefore, Player C will be better at the game than Player B, even though s/he is objectively stupider, and doesn't even care about the game. Player B will be better than Player A, even though Player A can beat the others in any "normal" CCG.
I disagree. Having more money to spend on the game does not make you a better player. It provides a player with more resources. Not better resources necessarilly, because Player A has pulled some good cards from his boosters too, but more resources. Having more resources doesn't mean you know how to use them, or will even get the opportunity to do so, so an intelligent player will not automatically lose such a game I think.
That's fair enough, and I understand that in a well-designed CCG, a smart player with a small number of cards will beat a (forgive me for being blunt) stupid player with a large number of cards.
However, the example I gave was for a hypothetical CCG. My original sentence was "Let's say we have three fans of a CCG that gives a clear advantage to the player who spends more." In this fictional game, more resources WOULD make you a better player, simply for argument's sake.
Maybe I misunderstood your original post, but I thought you were playing devil's advocate, and arguing that perhaps spending more actual money on booster packs would itself be a valid mechanic. Forgive me if I misunderstood.
I still don't know if I'm an angelic advocate, but I suddenly have the urge for some devil's food cake.
Quote:
I don't deny that there is an advantage to spending more money on the game, but I think there are some caveats that go along with that when you are judging an entire game to be bad as a result:
1) all the players know that going in
2) setting aside the 'buying booster packs' part of the game, if you like it, and you play it for fun, what does it matter if you play some joker who has 4 of every card to play with?
3) If you want to play tournament, then there is sealed deck style to play
At this point, I think we're down to subjective opinions. Personally, I wouldn't want to touch this kind of game. I have better things to spend my money on. And sealed-deck CCG games never appealed to me anyway. Maybe there are people who would enjoy it, but I'm afraid I wouldn't be one of them.
Quote:
I wonder if people (including myself) complain about this aspect of magic because it involves us spending (maybe lots) of our own money on it. If you think of sports teams, nascar, battlebots, heck - even the military, spending more money tends to provide an advantage, that's capitalism really.
That's true... but I guess it all boils down to: does it make it a fun game? If I knew that the person sitting across from me works at a comic book store and blows half his paycheck on buying booster packs at cost rather than full retail, then unless I'm a rabid fan of the game, I'm probably not going to enjoy it. Maybe this speaks about me as a gamer, but I want all players to begin their positions equally, or close enough that the difference is negligible.
Disclaimer: I played Magic about 10 years ago for a few months, and then stopped when I realized that I couldn't spend enough money to stay competitive. I haven't touched it since.
It's a good topic... keep it coming!
Mon, 07/12/2004 - 16:33
#20
Richard Garfield
I played Magic for a long time and spent way too much money on it. But I still play it today and that's why I still rate it really high. With all the other collectable games, I rate them based on the game, not on how they sell it, UNLESS the way they sell it makes the game suffer some.
I personally think it's great when games have expansions made for them. Seafarers of Catan was an ok expansion, but it gave you a different way to play it (although I admit, I only tried it a few times with the original and just took the gold hexes and the rest of the added tiles and kept the original rules.) Carcassonne is a better game because of it's expansions.
I am designing a game that will add a lot of customizability with the expansions. In fact, it will be similar to Magic and other collectable games, where there will be tournaments and players will customize their tilebag before they play. The only difference is that there will be a small amount of tiles (100 total) and it will not be collectable, all players will have access to the same amount of tiles.
The reason I bring this up is because this game was originally made as a ccg. In fact since I played a lot of ccg's in the past, I started creating ccg's before I did board games. I'm glad I did, it helped me to learn the importance of making sure a game is balanced for all players.
Reiner Knizia has just came out with a game a lot of people are familiar with, Blue Moon which is a customizable card game, designed similar to a collectable card game, but it is non-collectable. I think this is a great idea.
I don't think collectable games are bad, in fact I love having a lot of resources to build your deck (or army, since I played Mageknight too) with. I agree with the fact that it's too much money to play them however, with just my collection of Mageknight, I could have bought between 15 to 20 games. I love Mageknight, but I wonder what my collection of games would look like If I spent the money (and knew about the german games) on designer games. (I am not even thinking about Magic or the other CCG's I owned, I probably could have hundred's of other games with the money i spent on them.)
On the subject of Richard Garfield, I think he is more than the creator of Magic. To have played that and Roborally, you can tell how much he loves games and how much he loved to design them. He is definately one of my favorite designers of the 90's.
-Steve
(Now that I've hijacked this thread, I will return it back to it's owners. Sorry if somewhat off topic.)
He created the first TCG to be precise. Magic was the first TCG and is still around selling the most.