When I first saw Magic: the Gathering at the game store, I thought it was silly, desperate, and pre-failed for your convenience.
“So it’s a card game. But you don’t get all the cards? And you have to buy packs of cards, hoping to get the ones you want, to make your own deck to play with?”
I couldn’t imagine gamers who would jump through so many hoops before they could even play the game.
Six month later, I knew better. Some folks like that sort of thing.
The Pre-Game Game
Trading card games, with their emphasis on deck-building, tapped into something that miniatures gamers had known for years: It can be fun to fiddle with your play set before the game begins.
Whether it’s choosing what cards to put in your deck or picking which troops to put in your army, this “solo game” can keep you pleasantly occupied for hours. It takes creativity and strategy. You’re solving problems and puzzles and discovering new ways to use your playing pieces. (“This unit gets a bonus when attacking with a Flaming Lemur, but I don’t have any Lemurs, only Tofu Monkeys. But if I add a wizard, it can transform Monkeys to Lemurs — and then set them on fire with its Lava Fondle spell.”)
If you like that sort of thing.
For every gamer who loves to sit with his collection spread before him, painstakingly handpicking each piece like a TV chef choosing produce at the farmers’ market, there’s another gamer who just doesn’t care.
Let’s call him Carl.
“I want to play,” says Carl. “Deck-building is boring busywork. Army-building is a painful exercise in sourcebooks and spreadsheets. I don’t want to do those things. I just want to play the game.”
Carl’s not wrong. He’s just the wrong audience.
It’s your audience. Know it.
Think twice about adding these pre-game “fiddling” bits to your game design. Then think a third time, with your audience firmly in mind.
“It’s a trading card game!” I may snort defensively. “Of course it’s got deck-building!”
Of course. But if the trading card game has an audience of 7 year-olds, let’s make that deck-building as easy as possible. Or if the audience is a harried 43 year-old mother of two (Farmville TCG anyone? Add loot cards, we all get rich!), deck-building could be purely optional.
On the other hand, if you’re making a hardcore game aimed straight for the geek demographic… You could inject a liquid ton of strategy by adding some fiddly elements. Maybe you build your own tech tree before the board game begins? Craft your own talent tree in an MMO? Build a “deck” of units for that RTS? My inner fiddler is drooling at all the possibilities.
Insert Fiddle Pun Here
This all might seem like a no-brainer, but it’s something that needs to be considered with each game design. Even if it’s just a quick, “We aiming for minis players? Okay, then, normal point-based army-building rules!”
If you don’t ask the question, you can never be surprised by the answer.
I’ll quickly dispense with the… you seem angry, jealous, bitter… etc. That being said, you’re one of the finest gaming minds in the industry and a fantastic story teller. I’ve recently begun playing Shadowrun 4th edition. Wow… wonderful system and setting. If you’re looking for a potential MMO where you could literally craft your own talent tree, this is the system to do it in. You know as well as I do that Shadowrun is big enough and detailed enough that it could easily (with a lot of work and $$$) be as good as World of Warcraft. Something on talent trees in the MMO genre. Crafting your own must come from a pool of 100’s of choices. Why? Because before too long, players discover the “key” to powerful talent combos, publish them, and before too long every class is a created with a cookie cutter.
I love the card game mechanic. I love playing MTG (which I do once every 10 years or so), but I hate the deck building and the card collecting. I would be happy buying some pre-built decks and playing that way. That’s why I think I would love the FFG LCGs like Game of Thrones and Call of Cthulhu because there isn’t the whole random cards issue. Now if only people played those games…
Steve, there’s actually a pretty good-sized player base for the LCGs — though apparently not in our neck of the woods. I wonder if shop owners could do okay if they took the loose commons and uncommon, built decks out of them, and sold them as decks? No, the hardcore MtG players wouldn’t touch them, but they might pick a couple up for recruiting purposes, and the casuals might appreciate a cheap, playable entry-point.
Wizards already sells cheap playable preconstructed decks. In fact, they are even marketed as “intro packs” because the old randomized “starter decks” were virtually unplayable for new players. That said, very few games don’t incorporate some of this “pre-game” aspect you talk about. I mean, when does a game of Magic start? Does it start when you sit down in front of your opponent, or is it when you start building your deck? What about an RPG? Some games give you lots of feedback as you “fiddle” by incorporating it into the formal game time (Stud poker), while others focus more on solo play/”strategy session” (Chess, Magic).
Mostly, what you call fiddling, I call making choices. And that’s a definitional aspect of a game.
I’ve been waiting for that all inclusive game that caters to the FPS call of duty person all the way through pilots and space fleet sims up to the CIV V Empire builder. I like to call it the 6X game which would include heft collectible pieces that come from playing any aspect of the game and a fiddlers dream of being able to work at all levels of the metagame in metaturns that take other people to help resolve the Empire Scale actions.
Oh and 6X 6x explore, exploit, expand , exterminate, experience, excitement. as you get the excitement of live action combat and you get the role of experience like in MMORPGs
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