How will Artifact change the card game scene?

It's hard to overestimate the impact of Magic: the Gathering when it was released in 1993. Its publisher, Wizards of the Coast, printed 2.5 million cards, hoping to keep them all year long. They sold in less than a week. And this success was contagious, with many competitors and spin-offs already announced when the first articles appeared.

One of those comments was published in Dragon Magazine No. 201 and is an interesting time capsule – a set of first impressions that foreshadows clairvoyance, like saying that Magic is "the pioneer in what could become a entire category of the industry ", a comment that has turned out to be topical. l & # 39; money. He also praised Magic's "low entry price, simplicity and fast play", which seem less profitable, but it should be remembered at the beginning that "casual" was the only gaming style that existed and that we could really do without it. platform.

Once trading card games have become digital, Hearthstone has set a new standard for speed, simplicity and above all low entry fees, because you only need one Internet connection and all your free time.

Artifact will not be free. The new Valve card game, designed by Magic's creator, Richard Garfield, will incur an initial cost of $ 20 US for the 280 card + base game, but you will have to pay extra for the boosters and individual cards. your choice. Steam market. Artifact also targets a little more complexity and longer playing times, but that's the cost that seems to be the most obvious challenge for the current status quo of online card games.

Money for mana

Artifact is not the first digital card game to have a right of entry, of course. For example, just this year, Faeria, a free card game from the independent studio Abrakam, began to pay 25 US dollars. Jean-Michel Vilain, founder of Abrakam and CCO, says that in this case, it is to return to its roots. "Faeria was conceived as a single purchase in 2010, when we started the development of the project," he explains. "We have moved away from this model to align more with the new wave of digital GCCs and make the payment model more mobile-friendly.In short, we have experimented with it and we have not not satisfied with the results It's a classic lesson that you hear a lot, that we've learned the hard way: stay true to yourself and what you believe in. "

The benefits of free games are obvious, but the benefits of an upfront cost have been harder to explain to customers. Or, as Vilain puts it, "not everyone seems to have the choice between grinding for thousands of hours, or paying for a package of boosters."

Vilain explains: "After what we've heard, Artifact will cost $ 20 initially, but will charge you $ 2 for a recall.That means Faeria will remain the only GCC to offer a one-time purchase.We are very proud To be the only ones offering a card game in which you can unlock the collection of 300 cards in less than 50 hours of play. It's time to come up with an alternative to the binary choice between a) Grind for thousands of hours, b) Pay for a bunch of reminder cards. "

A person as big as Valve associating a price tag with a card game could help normalize this situation, making players less inclined to be reluctant to other games doing the same thing. "We hope that Artifact will help change this perception regarding the payment model of card games.The F2P model is only there for essentially historical reasons.Magic: the Gathering literally invented the a global model based on the micro-transaction of the game, and this has never been seriously questioned, a digital GCC is likely to change that. "

I'm not sure to agree that Magic's business model has never been questioned – I remember that the overpacks were almost as controversial as the day's loot boxes, for the same reasons – but the fact is that a company as big as Valve does things differently, it's influencing those who follow. And card games are a genre where many developers are always eager to get started and stand out despite the risks.

Degenerational War

Andrey & # 39; Reynad & # 39; Yanyuk, a former Hearthstone pro who runs the Tempo Storm sports organization, is working on his own card game called The Bazaar, which has raised more than $ 100,000 on indiegogo. He thinks that the biggest impact of Artifact is not its cost, but its trading system, which will allow players to buy, sell and trade cards in the Steam market.

"Games like Hearthstone have closed savings, which means players can not swap their cards between accounts," he said. "In Artifact, players will open packs for which they have drafted and will be able to play with or sell all the cards in their collection, and I think that in the end it will look a lot like Magic: the Gathering The Online Economy: high-demand cards for level 1 decks become expensive, while weaker cards have no value, the free market decides the value of a competitive deck.This type of economy will have a significant effect on the metagame Because decks with the best cost / viability become overrepresented simply because a game is decent and cheap, people will play it much more than an objectively better and more expensive game to acquire. "

The idea of ​​decent and affordable card games being far more prevalent than what the writers feel is best, it's interesting. This goes back to the beginning of Magic: The Gathering, when no one had seen every card in the game and that combinations that seemed great because no one in your area had the specific chips that were intended for him flourished. Combined with the amateur trade in the days leading up to the understanding of scarcity and before there was a rule limiting the number of copies of nonland cards you may have, this led to a lot of what the players called "degenerate" decks, stuffed with dozens of copies. from the same map. This review of the first edition of Magic in Dragon Magazine ended with a takeover bid against Plague Rats to enrich what must have been a degenerate game.

You might think that this kind of thing could discourage professionals, but far from it. Many of them like this level of unpredictability. "Artifact is a game that addresses professional players and degenerates like me much more than other card games," Yanyuk said. "I think this will attract a big pro scene, and I will definitely be a Tempo Storm team for that."

Brian Kibler, professional card game streamer, and World of Warcraft trading card game, predecessor of Chief Designer Hearthstone, get along. "Most of the games released in recent years have mainly tried to imitate Hearthstone, both with their free model and their gameplay aimed at an occasional audience," he said. "Artifact, I think, has done the opposite and is not aiming to fight Hearthstone on his own ground, but by offering a shameless complicated experience that is trying to attract very competitive players."

The artifact may not be as impenetrable as it sounds, but it clearly remains a step ahead of Hearthstone. Naughty is excited about this, suggesting that this could result in "more concentration on the depth of card games from the stage" if that happens. So many card games have struggled to differentiate themselves significantly from the market leader and yet, when they do, players are wary of differences. It is by opening players to new ideas that Artifact could be the most influential.

Vilain thinks that Valve has some work to do. "Artifact will clearly raise the bar in terms of complexity compared to Hearthstone, and there is a big challenge for them," he says. "After years of development on an innovative card game like Faeria where we tried to push the limits of depth, it's clear to us that complexity can be a good friend, but I can tell you that it's a great beast very difficult to tame. "

The simple fact that Artifact is a Valve game gives it an advantage, an added advantage that does not necessarily have other card games experienced with the formula. To put it bluntly, there is much more money behind all the smaller CCG studios. "I think the buy-to-play model would probably be dead in the water for just about every business, with the exception of Valve," says Kibler. "Steam – and the promise of trading / selling, thanks to the Steam market – gives Valve a unique position to make Artifact a paid game with a legitimate secondary market." I think it's a bold move to era of free -play, but I understand the goal of trying to capture the players who love the auction house experience and stand out from other games like Hearthstone .

"I really think card games could be upset," he continues, "and I can not wait to see the life that Artifact is injecting into the scene, and it's clear that Valve brings a ton of support behind her. huge to PAX, where I have tried it for the first time and already announced a tournament of a first prize of a million dollars early next year. How not to sting my interest?