. . . You might just get it
April 7th 2009 00:44
"So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
Blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?"
-- Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"
There is no group better at keeping track of advances in computing technology than gamers. Once it became physically possible to have 3D-rendered graphics and over ten hours of voice-acted lines in a game, people came out of the woodwork to hope and ask and demand that new games – or indeed, every new game – have exactly that. And in a twist of history too strange to be fictional, gamers’ capacity to dream up wish lists has now exceeded Silicon Valley’s capacity to improve processors, meaning that some new games are too advanced to be played on the computers released in the same quarter.
This illustrates perfectly the dilemma facing marketers: you know that you must offer a product that people want, but you also know that some people simply don’t know what they want. It’s for this reason that Magic design goes in cycles. The mechanical theme of the next set is determined partly by what the developers want it to be, partly by what their market research indicates players like, and partly how long it’s been since the last set with a similar theme.
(The flavor theme, by contrast, is determined by the creative department, which is separate from card design, and manages to dream up more interesting worlds than most of the fantasy writers out there. In less than half the time, no less.)
Just like PC gamers, Magic fans always know what they want - but not always what they need. A relatively recent resurrection of a long-neglected theme, in the Mirrodin set, resulted in an extremely centralized, overpowered, and unbalanced competitive scene. The public mood went from welcoming to praying for the rotation to come early; by the time it did, seven cards had been banned in Standard and Wizards of the Coast would have to spend the next two years restoring faith in Research and Development. (The job became significantly harder when the nearly-bannable Umezawa’s Jitte was printed in Betrayers of Kamigawa.) More recently, Shards of Alara’s multicolored theme was the cause of some consternation, considering that Ravnica was only a few months out of Standard.
Now, this is not entirely fair, considering that the two sets play quite differently, and Alara is in fact superior in many ways. It is more impressive visually and more balanced in terms of power. The prominent characters are much more interesting, and its flavor is much deeper – Naya and Bant’s respective Aztec and Camelot influences have the same impact as many large sets’ flavor in fewer cards, and all five worlds are full of meaningful callbacks to Magic’s roots in Dungeons and Dragons and European mythology.
But it should always be considered that Magic cards have appeal and utility beyond the bare mechanics of gameplay. You might not like that Ardent Plea is yet another multicolored card, and you might not like how it plays (though if you know that right now, you’re either a time traveller or Mark Rosewater). But maybe Princess Elspeth of Valeron is your favorite planeswalker, and you need one of every card where she's in the art; or it might have an inspirational quote in its flavor text (but copy and paste that time traveller thing). There's almost certain to be something you like even in a set you don't; whereas one technical or conceptual problem with a PC game can make it basically unplayable.
Blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?"
-- Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here"
There is no group better at keeping track of advances in computing technology than gamers. Once it became physically possible to have 3D-rendered graphics and over ten hours of voice-acted lines in a game, people came out of the woodwork to hope and ask and demand that new games – or indeed, every new game – have exactly that. And in a twist of history too strange to be fictional, gamers’ capacity to dream up wish lists has now exceeded Silicon Valley’s capacity to improve processors, meaning that some new games are too advanced to be played on the computers released in the same quarter.
This illustrates perfectly the dilemma facing marketers: you know that you must offer a product that people want, but you also know that some people simply don’t know what they want. It’s for this reason that Magic design goes in cycles. The mechanical theme of the next set is determined partly by what the developers want it to be, partly by what their market research indicates players like, and partly how long it’s been since the last set with a similar theme.
(The flavor theme, by contrast, is determined by the creative department, which is separate from card design, and manages to dream up more interesting worlds than most of the fantasy writers out there. In less than half the time, no less.)
Not only does Eddings think he’s entitled to publish lectures on how to write, he does it by copying that History of Middle-Earth thing Tolkien’s son made.
Just like PC gamers, Magic fans always know what they want - but not always what they need. A relatively recent resurrection of a long-neglected theme, in the Mirrodin set, resulted in an extremely centralized, overpowered, and unbalanced competitive scene. The public mood went from welcoming to praying for the rotation to come early; by the time it did, seven cards had been banned in Standard and Wizards of the Coast would have to spend the next two years restoring faith in Research and Development. (The job became significantly harder when the nearly-bannable Umezawa’s Jitte was printed in Betrayers of Kamigawa.) More recently, Shards of Alara’s multicolored theme was the cause of some consternation, considering that Ravnica was only a few months out of Standard.
Now, this is not entirely fair, considering that the two sets play quite differently, and Alara is in fact superior in many ways. It is more impressive visually and more balanced in terms of power. The prominent characters are much more interesting, and its flavor is much deeper – Naya and Bant’s respective Aztec and Camelot influences have the same impact as many large sets’ flavor in fewer cards, and all five worlds are full of meaningful callbacks to Magic’s roots in Dungeons and Dragons and European mythology.
Yeah, I went there. Come get me, Ravnica fanboys.
But it should always be considered that Magic cards have appeal and utility beyond the bare mechanics of gameplay. You might not like that Ardent Plea is yet another multicolored card, and you might not like how it plays (though if you know that right now, you’re either a time traveller or Mark Rosewater). But maybe Princess Elspeth of Valeron is your favorite planeswalker, and you need one of every card where she's in the art; or it might have an inspirational quote in its flavor text (but copy and paste that time traveller thing). There's almost certain to be something you like even in a set you don't; whereas one technical or conceptual problem with a PC game can make it basically unplayable.
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