TCGs are for fun, not pain
I’m really enjoying the preview material for the upcoming Marvel Superstars TCG. They sound like my kind of guys.
…I’d like to lay down two rules everyone should try and follow:
#1: TCGs are for fun, not pain. Throw elbows at will and play to win, but remember this is a community. This is not the place [...]
Alternative Inspiration
Most of what I’ve learned about trading card games (outside of playing them) has come from reading the fantastic “Making Magic” and “Latest Developments” columns at Magic: The Gathering Online. However, I’ve recently found the writing for the upcoming Marvel Superstars trading card game to be a nice addition.
Magic is no doubt the granddaddy of [...]
Why Zynga Is Unstoppable, and Why It Doesn’t Matter
Everyone making games right now knows about Zynga. In a couple of years they’ve grown to hundreds of millions in annual revenue, hundreds of millions of monthly active users and a billion dollar valuation. They’ve followed a consistent pattern of taking an idea, quickly developing a prototype of it, testing lots of new features and [...]
Do Any “Social Games” Actually Have Good Gameplay?
Just read about this on Inside Social Games – a soccer RPG. Sounds pretty cool, until this bomb that dooms every social game:
This leads to annoyance #2. Each game is simulated in real-time. Sounds cool on paper, but there isn’t much to really see except some pictures moving about a soccer ball and scrolling text. [...]
Evolutionary Root of Games: Natural Funativity
The essence of intelligence is the perception and manipulation of patterns. Tetris excels in letting us exercise this ability. In fact it was the observation of game designer Brian Moriarty (designer of Beyond Zork and Loom) that people love to find patterns in things which led me to this realization. Other games that excel at [...]
What Are CCG’s Really About?
David Sirlin (one of my top inspirations for game design) recently wrote a great article about subtractive design and cutting down to the essence of what a given game really is about. He make lots of great points, one of which is that cutting out part of a game offends those who were attached to [...]
Finally! An Interesting Endgame Condition
I have spent the last week making lists of gameplay elements, diagramming resource flows, and knitting my brows about the flow of a GeekStack game, but every time, the last slot was still blank. How do you win? What’s the scienfitic equivalent of killing your opponent? What endgame goal makes sense with this theme?
I tried [...]
Why I’m Not Grouping By Scientific Field
One thing I specifically wanted to avoid for the card grouping was to group them by scientific field. There are couple of reasons why I didn’t want to have Physics, Chemistry, Geology, Genomics, etc.
First, let me share an experience from the Rebooting Computing conference I attended a couple weeks ago. Many of the attendees were [...]
Player Roles
Yesterday I discussed a two tiered card grouping idea, with a broad division into Science and Context, and then subcategories underneath each. I mentioned that it would mesh well with today’s ideas about player roles, so without further ado:
An important part of the theme and balance is the role each player takes.
Here’s the obligatory comparison [...]
Alternate WoW Style Card Groups
After thinking about the five group Magic-style division of cards I proposed yesterday, I didn’t really like them. They were a sensible way to divide the different items, but there was no way I could think of (not even a bad way) to make gameplay out of it. I doodled some more on the train [...]
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