Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield on 35 years of making games | Hacker News Reader

Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield on 35 years of making games

dicebreaker.com

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Garfield, and M:tG in general, has been a huge inspiration for me over the years. Magic is such a creative system of constraints, story, card complexity, competitive ecosystems, strategy and metagaming. It also allows a really personal approach to deckbuilding, play style and fun in general. Not to mention the financial aspect of the secondary market, which is an entire field in and of itself... A lot of the lessons learned from studying the game's strategy have helped me cultivate new mental models in my approach to problem solving.

At one point I even took a career break and designed a game, like Garfield says, that I wanted to play that couldn't find. The game is called Sin Rummy - a variant on Rummy based on Gandhi's seven social sins. It was tough to develop, design and produce but I was able to use a lot of intuition from playing Magic all those years to balance it. My starting design constraints: a complex game with tons of replayability that would be easy to pick up and learn, all printed within a single deck of cards. I was super happy with the end result (even if the Kickstarter didn't go nuclear as I had hoped) and still play it all the time. If anyone wants a copy, send me your address (email is on the site in my profile) and I'll mail it to you.

Looked at your kickstarter. Very cool game! Was your plan to keep this game a single-run production? I know a friend who is in the intersection of {plays magic} and {likes game design}. I might hit you up on your offer once COVID-19 shenanigans calm down a little.

Thanks for the note!

I'm hoping to do a larger run at some point in the future if I can get distribution but I'm not in a hurry. Card quality is super important to me so I would rather stick to printing with USPCC, which is more expensive.

Let me know if your friend is interested - I shipped 16 decks yesterday from that comment alone.

Garfield is the great-great grandson of President Garfield (known for his novel proof the Pythagorean theorem, as well as his purported ability to write with both hands simultaneously... in different languages).

Also, his great uncle supposedly invented the paper clip.

It's too bad Valve didn't properly support or listen to players of Garfield's digital card game Artifact (which he developed for Valve). It was a huge leap forward in digital card games, involving high-level strategic play not present in Magic. The 3-lane system inspired by DOTA and the Initiative system were great innovations in the genre.

It appears that Artifact is not dead:

> "We ran an experiment, we got a negative result, and now we need to see if we’ve learned anything from that, so let’s try again. And that’s what [the Artifact team] have been doing and that’s what they’re getting ready to release. Based on the reaction to it, what was wrong with the product? How did we get there? Let’s fix those things and take another run at it."

https://www.pcgamer.com/a-surprise-message-from-valve-hints-...

It is dead in the sense that it failed miserably on release, has very few active players, and the upcoming changes have been reported as being called Artifact 2.0 internally

https://playartifact.com/news/1821083382556531528

Valve is working on it still.

the high complexity is exactly why I and many other players did not play. compared to hearthstone and mtg the game mechanics felt forced and over complicated, not fun at all. I REALLY wanted to like it too.

And it's funny, because in this article he says that he doesn't like making digital card games because they end up being overly complicated, but that's exactly what he designed Artifact as, and even bragged about how it was going to be the most complex card game people ever played.

> compared to [...] mtg the game mechanics felt forced and over complicated

I honestly have never heard someone suggest any game was more complicated than mtg!

Funny, that's exactly why I don't play Hearthstone. I'm getting tired if games based more on owning top tier cards and following deck lists than actual strategy.

I'm sad that Android: Netrunner (also by Garfield) has been discontinued, since I'd really like something like that with a nice digital client since it's fairly easy to get a complete collection.

Have you seen https://www.jinteki.net/

I play with my dad at least once a week!

Valve listened to Garfield, who was telling them that the players not liking it were wrong because he had data to show that the game was fine. He treated players like computers and ignored that the game had a lot of feelsbad mechanics, but he ignored the feedback because statistically it was very balanced, therefore he thought the players shouldn't dislike it. A Star Wars TCG he made failed for the same reason, but apparently he didn't learn.

The Star Wars TCG failed so spectacularly and the original CCG from decipher is still going today....despite not having a release in almost 20 years.

Agreed! I think it kind of goes to show that a game often needs a nice cocktail of interesting game state changes (eg: "mechanics") mixed with nice feelings. Audiences vary in how they like the two (eg: Chess compared to Mario Kart), but the right fit is really important to a successful product.

Valve had a nice way of describing "player acknowledgement" [1][2] for cosmetic things like bullet holes or lighting affecting our lizard brains. On the other hand, a close friend of mine really enjoys the "Star Wars: Rebellion" board game. [3] The decisions and mechanics gives the sense of excitement he feels when he watches a Star Wars movie.

I don't blame Garfield for making the kinds of games he likes though. His clout probably helps makes new trails for other ideas to take shape and be improved on.

[1] https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131815/the_cabal_valv...

[2] https://youtu.be/Td_PGkfIdIQ?t=1634

[3] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/187645/star-wars-rebelli...

The feelsbad mechanics (like random creep placement) could be accounted for and the randomness mitigated, but it was highly skill-based and thus frustrating for beginners. The fact that the same guy won almost all the tournaments in the beta shows how skill-based the game was. Closer to Chess than to Magic in some ways, despite the elements of randomness. I think Garfield was right, but there were very real concerns about the player experience that still needed to be addressed. It also needed frequent new card releases imo.

There was a great Mark Rosewater blog ages and ages ago about how important it was for him to look holistically at a mechanic/theme/set/whatever and ask the most important question - is it fun.

Obviously different things are fun for different people, but some large segment of players need to find a thing fun or it shouldn't go in. Regardless of any other consideration (elegance, purity, cleverness etc etc)

The problem is that the more people you adhere to the more washed out the game-play will become. So you have to ask yourself if you want the game to be super fun for a few people, or a little fun for many people. An easy mistake new developers do is that they take something that is very fun, and make it less fun in order to attract more people.

What do you call a super fun game for few people?

A dead game.

Whether its online or physical. Game that doesn't have player-base is doomed to be forgotten.

Artifact didn't even took off and the playerbase tanked to 200-300 people weekly. Who is going to wait 30mins to find a match? And what are the chances of even match-up?

I was not referring to any game in particular. Once you have a very good solution to a real problem, or a game that a few people think is really fun, it's no longer a design/engineering problem it's a selling/marketing problem.

When you have few users it's not the time to water it down to suit the general public, you should only do that once you have the ship in motion. eg. million of users.

> What do you call a super fun game for few people

a niche game?

> What do you call a super fun game for few people? A dead game.

RIP tribes:ascend. Not fun for most people because not being able to move across the map properly for literal hours of learning the gameplay makes it incredibly unapproachable.

Fun as hell once you learn, but still a dead game very fast.

This is the problem I have with some cards and mechanics in MTG (particularly Arena). The white Ajani's Pridemate coupled with life-givers e.g. healing hawk/enchantments - you see it once, you shrug, say OK, but then every second or third match is Ajani and it's suddenly NOT FUN. You find yourself playing decks you don't like (like super-aggressive mono red, or decks tailored against Ajani) just to win a few matches. And eventually I wander off and play something else instead.

Statistics != fun.

Magic itself has a lot feelsbad mechanics, the biggest being land draw. I doubt if MTG was released today it would be anywhere close to as popular.

IDK, Magic Arena is quite popular, and I know a lot of people who got into it somewhat recently, so it's still a good game. Mana screw/flood is annoying, but it infrequent enough that it's not super frustrating.

I quit because I just don't have the time to keep up with the pace of expansions, and if you don't have top tier cards, you'll probably lose. I like the gameplay, but not the collection aspect, especially since the trading aspect is dead online.

The biggest for me was that everyone felt like they were all drinking the same coolaid, as in 95% of the player I met played type 2.

As a student at the time I couldn't afford to continue buying the new expansions to follow the meta and quickly saw type 2 as a brilliant mechanism to keep everyone buying new cards. As a person who'd played and collected cards from all sets for close to 10 years it felt like I had enough, duals lands, amazingly powerful cards that I couldn't use with anyone else I met... No one wanted to play their new modern competitive deck of the month VS my type 1 powerhouse.

And yes I get that type one was prohibitively expensive for new players to try, it's that disconnect between me and everyone else led me to quit. Sell all my cards on ebay for a grand at least and regret it later and the cards seems to only have skyrocketed in value since.

Three lane strategy card games in that genre existed for quite awhile. There was a somewhat popular series called Dixie from the 90s which did civil war battles using three lanes (and I assume other Tom Dalgliesh games did similar).

I always assumed DotA/etc got that idea from elsewhere, but of course I have no idea.

This is such a great excuse to post this for MTG fans https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/season/24/phoenix-az/appra...

Black Lotus, Mox jewels... and the person had no idea of the value. Just an enjoyable watch that isn't worth a separate submission.

I'm a bit less positive with regards to MtG. Though I have not played it for a long time (mainly did in 90s). IMO they innovated the combination of loot boxes and pay to win, which with regards to children I find especially cruel (I was a kid in 90s).

The only good card game I played in recent years is Slay The Spire. Inspired by Netrunner it has a static, one time fee less than 20 EUR (buy to play), rogue like elements, unique characters with unique playstyle, and a balance between RNG/adaptation/skill. It also has a unique, simple art style which is I guess indy like. I find it daring and refreshing.

Hearthstone I was enthusiastic about during beta. I quickly figured it was pay to win (or a massive grind which is IMO an excuse).

Garfield and Blizzard might have made good games, and perhaps they still do. But it's also big business.

I've seen a myriad of other card games on Steam. If anyone has any recommendations, I'm interested (solo or multi-player).

> I quickly figured it was pay to win (or a massive grind which is IMO an excuse).

A grindy system basically -is- pay to win for anyone who has a fulltime job and responsibilities. Good luck grinding for what you need if you only play ~30-60 mins every other day or so.

I've always disliked league due to this. On top of cosmetics, I also have to purchase heroes...? I guess, or I can just play dota (which is a better game, no bias here :-)).

> IMO they innovated pay to win

With MTG it was entirely too expensive for our group, so we used Cockatrice to play it for free online. Commander/EDH is fun with friends. More so when you can play decks where the only limit is your creativity.

However, one fun and relatively inexpensive format is booster drafts for mtg. I used to play this every once in a while at my local card shop.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_formats#B...

> Hearthstone

At least you can sell MtG cards. Hearthstone was manageable when it first came out, but I took a break for a while and was overwhelmed when I came back. That devolved into a soulless grind of a game unless one started spending some money on opening packs (... for each expansion).

Hearthstone also made me realize I dislike trading card games in a competitive environment. I like fooling around in EDH with wonky decks with a few friends, but trying to climb the hearthstone ladder was terrible.

Hearthstone battlegrounds is truly free (well still beta) and quite fun. No prizes other than ranking and gold to feed back into HS normal play.

In the solo category, I've heard that the Lord of the Ring card game is fun, but it might just be the licence appeal (I haven't played it yet).

I just re-discovered MTG a week or two ago. I was wondering with a few friends what we could do to socialize, and as none of us are big video game guys, we decided to try playing via Cockatrice. I was able to quickly set up a server and get everyone playing; lots of fun. In case any Cockatrice developer sees this, thank you!

One of the things that made me stop playing MtG is that WotC bought TSR and they killed Spellfire. I do understand that it wasn't raking £€¥$ like MtG was, but still I loved Spellfire, I still keep all my cards in dossiers in plastic sleeves and taking good care of them.

WoTC effectively killing Netrunner made me sad too. It was a really fun game.

Yeah. The new NESI cards look great, but my local community dried up shortly after official FFG support ended.

alasdair_ might be referring to WotC's lack of support for the 1996 Netrunner. One major expansion that really did fix a lot of things, then the poorly-distributed Classic (which had mechanics that showed great promise; facedown runner cards could have been a huge boon for bluffing complexity on that end of the board), and that was pretty much it.

That was 1997, you hold a pretty serious grudge...?

This is both really funny and really true.

I remember being incredibly upset that all my friends were abandoning Spellfire to play MtG – I ultimately realized the latter was the better (more complex, strategic) of the two games, but playing 3v3 Spellfire games was absolute chaotic fun and I don't think MtG was ever able to be as much casual fun as that, despite also being very good

I don't lose sleep over it, but every time I look at my (5) dossiers I remember how much I enjoyed playing with friends. It would be great to build a Spellfire community..

I just discovered Nvidia's cloud gaming platform [1] as a way to play MTG Arena on a Mac. Works great, without having to partition my already thin hardrive...

Limited booster drafts are one of my favorite things to play since forever ago. Finally found a way after a bunch of years (had tried Cockatrice, etc..)

[1] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/

I play on Linux using Lutris. Worked out of the box, is pretty great.

You can also stream with Steam Link or Steam. Virtually the same though you do need your own hardware, you are entirely free to decide what run on it (in contrast to Nvidia's platform where several large companies have removed their games).

I still have old Magic 2013 iOS app in my OG iPad and it's one of the most fun things I can do in my spare time. I've probably spent more hours than I should playing this game over the course of the last ~20 years but I still can't get enough of it...

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magic-2013/id502588466

Don't mean to hijack the thread, but since virtually all of us are in quarantine, I thought this might be an opportune time to ask for recommendations on family-friendly (think 3 generations...) board games to play while stuck at home. I really don't want to play Scrabble, Monopoly, Risk, Game of Life or Clue... but have no idea if I should go with Jaws: The Game, Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride

EDIT: Thank you all for the great responses!

Depending on the age groups, my family has had fun with the following various games:

    Settlers of Catan  
    Carcassonne  
    Clash of the Cards  
    Codebreakers (Mastermind)  
    Codenames  
    Cards against humanity  
    Chess  
    Gin Rummy  
    Dice games (10k, etc)  
    Dominoes and variations

codenames (especially the pictures variant) is _always_ popular, with almost everyone. period. they're quick 10-15 minute games, and you can usually go about 3-4 games in a session before people's interest starts to wane. the rules can fit into about three sentences. lots of team collaboration.

not a lot of game theory or strategy or tactics involved, it's all wordplay. which is nice for multi-generational family game night. i've even played with people who don't speak a lot of english (with a bit of translating back and forth) and we all had a blast.

best with 5-7 people, though; 3 minimum but it's not very fun unless you have at least 5.

I've had great success introducing my family to Sagrada. We have a high variance of skill levels and it still keeps everyone well entertained.

For a party style game, I'd recommend "A Fake Artist Goes to New York"

Modern Art is a lot of fun, and it helps kids learn about value being a product of the situation around it in some ways.

I’ve found that quick games are way more popular with my kids - easy to set up and take down. Games like Coup, Love Letter, and Exploding Kittens only take a moment to get ready so you can get in a few rounds before dinner.

Settlers of Catan and Ticket To Ride are both good intros to so-called European style board games, that tend to lack player-elimination and track win progress abstractly in terms Victory Points rather than money or army strength.

Play time of either of the two is 60-90 minutes, Catan seats 4 and TTR seats 5.

Of the two, I prefer TTR, and if you can find it I recommend Ticket To Ride: Europe over the original American one as it has nicer full size cards, adds a nice friendly track-sharing "station" rule that can get you out of a jam, and has a random-chance "tunnel" rule that can add a bit of excitement to your turn if you succeed or fail to dig a tunnel.

I also suggest watching play-throughs or reviews on YouTube. Geek and Sundry has Tabletop playthroughs with Will Wheaton, and Shut Up And Sit Down has reviews done by a British group.

Settlers of Catan also have a 1vs1 card game spin-off that I like very much. The game was ported online https://catanuniverse.com/en/rivals-for-catan/

Hanabi is another good one (there's online versions and a bunch of fun theory)

Shut Up and Sit Down is a good resource for this sort of thing. https://www.shutupandsitdown.com/videos/15-great-games-to-fi...

If you'd like far more information than you need to know, https://boardgamegeek.com/ is the definitive online board game community.

A couple recentish, quick games I quite like:

Just One: word game kind of like Taboo, but it's cooperative and there's no time pressure.

Kingdomino: quick tile placement strategy game with a fantasy theme.

... Also Euchre: A card game like bridge, but way simpler, that's popular in the Midwest and Canada (Ontario anyway). My sister and I learned to play with my grandparents when we were in kindergarten.

King of Tokyo by Richard Garfield is an easy to learn family game.

You just reminded me that I was actually gifted this game (with the additional Cthulhu piece!) and it's buried in this house somewhere. I have to go find it!

Evolution is a really good game that stays true to its name and creates really fun situations at the table

It’s also reasonably confrontational but not curt-throat, so you won’t be ruining relationships over it, but won’t be playing multiplayer solitaire either

For the age range that appreciates strategic games, March of the Ants is a pretty fun 4X-like board game where several ant colonies compete to colonize a meadow. A deck system with random draws of ant species customizations and randomized events give a ton of replayability.

I backed his new game Half Truth (made with Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame) and it arrived just before social distancing kicked in. It's a fun take on a trivia game, because it's set up so that it's not so much of a binary "do you know it or not". You can definitely use some strategy in how you play. Of course, folks who do know a lot of trivia will still win. It's just that other players can still make progress, too.

I probably don't have all the facts but it's always bugged by that MTG has patented (or some rights) on similar card games and has effectively strong armed any similar and popular game into paying them a license. My understanding is that game mechanics can't be copyright protected so I don't get what they are suing over and how they have been so successful in getting fees

There's a large story/case study on Garfield in the book Game Design Workshop. Great resource for anyone interested in designing new games.

https://www.amazon.com/Game-Design-Workshop-Playcentric-Inno...

I started playing MtG multiple times and hung on for 1-2 years until I needed a pause, haha.

It always felt like "an old game" to me, even when I started the first time in 1996.

I'm still a bit sad that I sold my cards from that time for 30€ at eBay.

Artifact might've been a flop but Keyforge has been plenty fun.

Slightly off-topic, but if you're in quarantine and wondering how to play wondorous games of Magic, say no more:

https://cockatrice.github.io/

http://xmage.de/

(the latter is way more buggy but has actual rule enforcement, the first is very polished but you have to do everything by hand as though it were a physical board game)

For people who are interested in playing MTG, their "new" windows game (MTG Arena) is a pretty decent, modern client, that lets you play for free. Supposedly it is coming to the mac soon, and rumor has it that iOS and Android are planned, but based on how the UI has evolved recently, I wouldn't hold out hope for that.

Totally my personal opinion, but I much prefer MTGO (Magic the Gathering Online, windows only also) as it better emulates table-top Magic. I can't handle all the animations and noises of Arena. Also, much better card/draft selection on MTGO. Not free though, but not nearly as expensive as paper Magic.

I am an old fuddy-duddy.

its still quite expensive though. it's great if you are looking to play the older formats. getting into legacy for 500 dollars is really nice. that said it's hard to justify buying into standard or pioneer on there. the prices are quite volatile and some of the cards are just ridiculously expensive due to the fact that everyone went over to arena. teferi, time raveler for example. it also feels bad to buy a playset of them because it's only a matter of time until they reprint them and the card tanks to 20 dollars or whatever.

arena is nice because you don't have to worry about the secondary market. i would also suggest that if you turn off the sound in game that arena isn't actually all that bad. i say that as a person who's played mtgo since 2012. i agree that draft is bad on arena, but if you want to play standard I actually think it's better.

Are any of these better than Forge?

There's also https://untap.in/ - fair warning that the mechanics of the game are up to you, just like with paper cards.

I learned Usenet and www to buy and sell magic cards in the 90s. My first web site was to sell magic cards and selling my collection let me buy a car to drive to proper startups with W2s.

In fact, I think the reason why I sought out the internet at college in 1994 was because a friend said any magic card could be bought online for $5.

It’s interesting how the early magic community was so focused on the net.

Big fan of Garfield and his games in general, but shout out to SpyNet which is fun and underrated.

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