Worlds apart
February 9th 2011 06:32
There are two schools of game design which you can observe at work in recent product offerings. The first is exemplified by the Assassin’s Creed series on PlayStation and XBox. Most assassinations can be completed with any weapon or combination thereof, and the number of routes to B from A puts most cities in our world to shame. There are other examples. Batman: Arkham Asylum, although it requires the player to visit certain areas of the island and use specific skills and gadgets to advance the story, gives freedom in between these set pieces to explore the asylum and find bonuses and easter eggs. Even a game like Marvel vs. Capcom 3 involves a surprising amount of customization for a game that only involves fighting and only then in a 2D plane; there are no limits on which characters can be on the same team, and team composition does impact performance (in addition to amusing players who might like to create an elaborate backstory explaining how Chris Redfield, Viewtiful Joe, and Ryu could even meet in the first place).
And for the second one . . . for the second one, well, you have Mark Rosewater:
"I want to give my child a candy bar and I want to maximize happiness. What works better, giving the one candy bar I believe the child will enjoy most or offering thirty candy bars to choose from? I know the child is going to be happy in the first outcome. I've chosen a proven candy bar and the child won't know that there were twenty-nine other options so enjoyment ensues."
An awful lot of recent decisions made by Research and Development and the DCI make a lot more sense after reading that quote. The Extended format being cut from Magic’s last seven years to its last four years reduces the card pool to an unprecedented small size – one which allows the DCI to make sure that everyone is playing a deck that they know about and approve of. A Standard format dominated by Jace the Mind Sculptor and Primeval Titan may be a repetitious nightmare for anyone who attends multi-round tournaments, but there’s no need for them to break out the banhammer, because it’s made up entirely of known quantities.
I’m not sure what research or feedback Rosewater bases his statement on. It certainly wasn’t true of the people who voted for Oblivion as 2006’s game of the year, or of the ones who made Arkham Asylum 2009’s. Wizards of the Coast could well find that it’s not true of quite a few Magic players. There may be no competition from other companies who print their worlds on illustrated cards, but that doesn’t mean people are incapable of finding alternatives to their product.
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