The setting
of any game is possibly the most important factor. The setting can define your
atmosphere, how your mechanics interact, who your characters are and how many
people are attracted to your game.
This
article is going to talk about what universe – and therefore the setting – that
we’re going to use in our game. We’re going to talk about what works and what
doesn’t. Then we’re going to talk about what we want to see, what the setting
is, who the characters are and how that setting translates to different
mechanics and functions in the game.
A fair
warning for the folks with short attention spans; this is a long article. It’s
about twice as long as my first post. I try to move through each thing fairly
quickly, though. My apologies in advance.
What Works?
There are a
lot of card games that can be considered “successful”, so I’m going to define
here what works, and what doesn’t. You could say that that successful games are
only ones that make a lot of money. While making a lot of money does make you
successful, that’s not necessarily the exclusive factor. Games like Kaijudo might not exactly make a lot of money, but they’re still pretty popular and have their
own cult following. For a while, Decipher’s Lord
of the Rings had several sets and even won some awards – but it’s
tournaments could’ve been better. The game peaked in 2002 with a record
attendance of 212.
Lord of the Rings
rode out the success of the movies, but in 2007 Decipher stopped production of
the physical game. Though it was succeeded by an online TCG with the same
rules, that run only lasted another three years. But I would still say that the
Lord of the Rings
was pretty successful.
Other games
like Call of Cthulhu,
which is one of Fantasy Flight’s LCG’s, have more of a cult appeal. The
Lovecraft mythos isn’t wildly popular – but it is something that a lot of
people know about. It’s very prominent in literary circles and horror circles.
That being said, Cthulhu isn’t nearly as widely known as Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.
The most successful card games,
like Magic: The
Gathering and Yu
Gi Oh! Seem to be based on new and unique IPs (intellectual properties).
Does that make new franchises the most popular? I don’t think so, but it
certainly does help in the back-of-the-house workings of the game.
When basing
games on existing properties, many characters and settings have to be portrayed
in a certain way. This sometimes can be an obstacle in design.
Other
times, financing can become a problem. For existing franchises, especially as
one as large as Lord
of the Rings or Star
Wars, the amount of money a card game needs can be overwhelming. This
creates licensing issues. While the Lord
of the Rings game by Decipher was great and brought in quite a bit of
profit it ended in 2007 when the license ran up. It’s unclear whether the
license for the product became too high or if Decipher had other plans, but the
license wasn’t renewed and the last expansion was released in June.
But let’s
look at Magic
for a minute. Magic
was a new IP, based on very traditional Western Fantasy themes. It was very
obviously inspired by the tales of Tolkein and the designs of Gary Gygax and
Dave Arneson. Magic
has even gone through several flavor changes since its publication in 1993.
But Magic works. It’s
such a broad category that it appeals to a lot of different types of people.
People who enjoyed Dungeons
& Dragons obviously enjoy it, and people who read Lord of the Rings
will enjoy it. But now, with things like World
of Warcraft being as mainstream as it is and the Lord of the Rings movies being as
popular as they are it’s hard for someone not to know what an elf is, or how to
identify a dwarf.
The common
ground here is that they know
their audience. Magic
has a pretty wide audience now, but it was originally intended for young adult
to middle age. Those are the people who, originally, identified with Magic and it’s
setting. They were also the people who would be most willing to spend the money
on Magic and
dedicate time to play it.
So, what
works? Fantasy seems to be a common theme. And of all the above successful
games another theme is existing IPs. Despite political and marketing disputes,
making a game on an existing universe has great impact on a card game.
What Doesn’t Work?
I’m going to start
referencing some other games now that might not be as mainstream or as well-known
as the above. That’s why this segment is titled What
Doesn’t Work? But I will try to link as many examples as I can.
One of
Decipher’s down falls is that it tried to be too random. While that’s not
innately a negative trait of the setting(s), it does put quite the pressure on
the setting. Decipher constantly used a mechanic called “Destiny” which
revolved around revealing a random card and using a number that has nothing
else to do with the game to some effect.
While this
might be an interesting mechanic in the right situation, Decipher forced it
into several of its smaller product lines including .hack//ENEMY, MegaMan NT Warrior, Star Wars CCG, and Fight Klub. While
the flavor behind the “Destiny” mechanic is generic enough to fit in all of
those, it doesn’t exactly bring anything special to the flavor either.
While the .hack//ENEMY and MegaMan NT Warrior
were based on existing properties, neither lasted for longer than two years
even though .hack//ENEMY
won the Origins Award for Best
Tradeable Card Game in 2003.
These were
both cancelled, though it’s unclear why. Call
of Cthulhu is in a similar boat. It’s based on a property that isn’t very popular.
However, the LCG format makes it more cost effective for a smaller audience. Call of Cthulhu, in
my opinion, is the blurred line between What
Works and What
Doesn’t.
However,
there’s another way to approach What
Doesn’t Work? Let’s look at the Star
Wars franchise. When Decipher first published the Star Wars CCG in
1995 it was the beginning of a beautiful relationship between the sci-fi mega
franchise and table-top gaming. Four years later they published a different Star Wars
card game called Young
Jedi. Then in 2001, they printed yet
another Star Wars card game called Jedi
Knight which was only in print for that year – until Decipher lost the
Star Wars license at the end of 2001.
In 2001
Wizards of the Coast gained the license to Star Wars and started the Star Wars TCG,
which was widely accepted as a great game. In 2005, though, Star Wars TCG was
put on an indefinite hold, though Wizards retained the license for Star Wars
games until 2010.
Another,
smaller, game was published in 2007 called Star
Wars Pocketmodel TCG. While a little different than the traditional TCG,
Pocketmodel was published by WizKids. At the time, WizKids was owned by The
Topps Company. In 2008 WizKids eliminated all of its existing brand product
lines, including Star Wars.
At GenCon
2011 Fantasy Flight Games demoed it’s new Star
Wars: The Card Game which followed it’s LCG format – because of huge
complaints at those demos the game went through a major overhaul and was
released in December of 2012.
That means
that in the last 18 years Star Wars, in card board form, has been in the hand
of four different publishers. Does that mean Star Wars doesn’t work? Maybe.
Most importantly, though, it’s a big red flag to the longevity in the eyes of a
designer. The Wizards of the Coast Star
Wars Trading Card Game and Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars: The Card Game both seem to
have done (or are doing) really well. While Young
Jedi, Jedi
Knight and Star
Wars CCG all had a decent following, the games never really took off
like the others.
The problem
with a lot of new games is that they don’t target the right audience. MegaMan NT Warrior,
for example, is based on an anime that is originally intended for younger kids.
Yes, the MegaMan franchise might induce a sense of nostalgia, but that’s not
enough to warrant a whole game over.
The Star
Wars franchise is obviously going to reach a lot more people than Mega Man.
Having a bigger franchise will, innately, bring more players – that’s a simple
fact.
What Are You Trying to Say?
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| Image property of Decipher |
If you’re
making a new world, plan it out. Make sure that you know the world inside and
out before you approach making the game. Knowing the world will help you
approach the mechanics. Game building in general is often more top-down then it
is bottom up.
That being
said, there is some lee-way. If you plan on making a game that works a certain
way, you should create your world with that in mind – but not necessarily around that
mechanic.
What am
trying to say is that, whatever you choose, your world needs to be rich,
fleshed out and the world and mechanics need to blend together seamlessly. New
IP’s and existing properties both have pros and cons.
Now that
we’ve taken a look at what works and what doesn’t, let’s dive in to what we
want our game to look like.
Genre
From a
creative stand point the easiest genre to make into almost any medium is
Fantasy. Fantasy is surreal and almost every form of fantasy has almost no ties
to any mode of reality or resemblance of our world. This gives designers,
writers, producers, etc. the most valuable commodity in design; creative
license. They can say that something works the way they want it to – even if it
wouldn’t work like that in real life.
The same is
sort of true
for sci-fi, with the exception that future is a dominant factor and so we have
to say that it’s the future of something
and the easiest something
is our world. Let’s explore some sci-fi properties that do this.
The easiest
and foremost sci-fi properties that come to mind are Star Trek and the Mass Effect games.
Star Trek is set in our
future. Even though it’s grounded in reality, Gene Roddenberry envisioned a
future in which mankind’s most prominent goal is to explore and learn.
While
nowadays people sure do like learning and exploring there are a lot more goals
to aim for. Star Trek is a utopian future, where we’ve learned from our past
mistakes and are trying to maintain healthy relationships with alien species.
The Mass Effect games
are also in our future, but they paint a similar yet different picture. In Mass Effect
humanity is still the newest member of the galactic culture, and therefore is
often overlooked or undervalued. Mass
Effect puts a small juxtaposition on the idea of xenophobia because many
races are afraid of humans and this casts them in a pretty interesting light.
However,
many of the characters in Mass
Effect are trying to build towards a culture of exploration and research
instead of its current path.
The
similarity is that, while grounded on Earth, both stories have fairly unique
worlds, species, characters and settings. Even though Earth is a hard anchor
for the viewers, beautiful and inspiring aliens and planets are created to
juxtapose Earth and make the viewer feel distant from home.
Now let’s
look at another sci-fi property that does the exact opposite. Many of you might
think I’m going to talk about Star
Wars, and you’d be close. But instead, let’s take a look at Battlestar Galactica.
In the
opening scenes of Battlestar
Galactica we learn that people live on a planet that is much like Earth,
though in the not-so-distant future. Science has been expedited and space
travel is common place. And not only is space travel regular, it has been
around for quite some time.
Then we
learn that the show takes place, not on Earth but, a planet called Caprica that
is one of twelve other planets in the system that are all inhabited by these
humans. These twelve colonies are a reflection of twelve of our constellations.
It’s a strange and eerie feeling to think that this universe is part of our
universe in the same way as Star Trek, but it’s much different.
Over the
course of the show we learn that there was a thirteenth colony that was lost
when first settled. That thirteenth colony was Earth. So while BSG was not
initially part of our universe, we find out that these people are aliens coming
to Earth. Is BSG
an invasion story? No, not at all. But it allowed the creators to design the
world, legitimately, from the ground up in a similar fashion to the fantasy
genre.
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| Image property of SyFy |
So now that
we’ve established the two major genres, let’s talk about niche sub-genres. The
biggest sub-genre at the moment seems to be post-apocalyptic. With movies like Book of Eli having
as much success as it did, coupled with the infinite popularity of The Walking Dead in
comics, video games and television it seems this genre has a bright future.
On the
other hand, steampunk is a small genre that grew for the last several years and
seems to have plateaued. What is steampunk? If you don’t know, steampunk is a
sub-genre of alternate history or Victorian that poses what would have happened
had steam become a dominate form of energy. Video games like Dishonored are
steam punk with a mix of fantasy. It’s very artsy, but usually can’t hold the
weight of a whole franchise on its own.
What Do All These Have to
Offer?
This is a list of raw ideas
and concepts for each genre. Keep in mind that these, obviously, aren’t full
products or ideas and need tons and tons of work. They’re rough outlines at
best.
Fantasy
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| Image property of Decipher |
And these
are just some mainstream examples off the top of my head. Fantasy seems to have
oversaturated the industry. Not that fantasy is bad, mind you. Fantasy has its place,
but there’s a lot of design space in other genres that haven’t been tapped.
Steampunk
Steampunk
still has some room to grow, there’s no doubt about that. But right now it has
a pretty small cult following. Is that really where we want to be? And to be
honest, the answer is no. As a small design group – of about three – planning
on going on Kickstarter, we need to appeal to as many people as possible.
While
Steampunk has room to grow, and is definitely a flourish of flavor and
mechanics, it just doesn’t have the right audience or tone that we’re looking
for. But Steampunk seems so limited right now that, not only would we have a
smaller target audience, but where would we go? How do make something like
Steampunk bigger without introducing other elements (like fantasy)?
Sci-Fi
This is a
very broad genre that can span several worthy sub-genres. So this is going to
be tackled with many different of those sub-genres.
Sci-Fi: Cyberpunk
If you’ve
never heard of cyberpunk, I’m not shocked. It’s a very cool setting, usually in
a dystopian future where people are augmented or upgraded with cybernetics. In
video games there is a large interest in the Deus
Ex franchise. But on tabletop this is a mostly unexplored territory.
However, one property does exist and it does have quite a large following as of
now. Android:
Netrunner is set in a cyberpunk world where large corporations own the
majority of governments and ruling bodies. Netrunner
isn’t as popular as Magic
or anything, but it is one of Fantasy Flights most competitively popular games.
Sci-Fi: Alien Invasion
As far as
design goes, this is largely untapped. In my years of gaming, I have never come
across a game in this type of setting. It might because, largely, it initially
seems very narrow. It also leads to some questions. What role do the players
play? Are they the aliens, or are they the survivors? Or both?
One of the
most interesting ideas that comes up in this genre is the idea of a
game-controlled enemy. One of the reasons that Fantasy Flights’ Lord of the Rings
is so compelling and successful is that it’s a cooperative games. The players
play against a “scenario” where they quest to progress. It would be simple to
take this idea and morph it. Players play as survivors, fill their decks with
equipment and resources and try to escape the aliens. Think Falling Skies.
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| Image property of Upper Deck Entertainment |
While
they’re have been many moderately successful card games based on existing
superheroes like VS
System there has yet to be a game that introduces new super heroes or a
new super hero world. That’s because making new super heroes is difficult in
any medium.
Other than
DC or Marvel, it is incredibly hard to break in to the world of comic books –
which are locked in with the concept of super heroes. While VS System was a
great game, it too was discontinued. This seems like something we want to stay
away from.
Sci-Fi: Space
This is in
the same vein as Star Wars or Star Trek. This is what most people think of when
you talk about traditional sci-fi, and there have obviously been a few of
these.
When I
envision a game like this, the first thing I think of is a game like Magic but instead
of elves and dwarves, there are different types of aliens. On the other hand, a different way to
approach this might be for different cards to represent different pieces of a
ship. Different systems, equipment and crew members.
Paranormal
The
paranormal idea is based loosely on the show Supernatural
and would feature different Hunters fighting different supernatural beings like
ghosts, werewolves, vampires, etc. Players would bring two decks to the table –
a Hunter deck and a Supernatural deck. Each player would fight their opponents
Supernatural cards.
Players
take advantage of specific weaknesses of different species. For example,
werewolves and other changelings are weak to silver, while ghosts might take
considerably less damage from physical weapons. This idea has a lot of unique
design space due to the sheer volume of American or “Urban” legends.
So… What Are We Gonna Make?
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| Image property of The CW |
One thing
to keep in mind is that our goal is to be both competitive and casual. In order
to do this one of the things we need to focus on is interactivity, fun and
awareness.
Using the
brief examples above, it’s obvious that both games can be interactive – but this
brings us to a sort of hurdle in the original idea for the Paranormal game. If
players bring two decks – they play with their Hunters against the enemies
Monsters this sort of limits the amount of interactivity.
An obvious
work around is that Hunter cards can also hinder your opponents Hunter cards.
But let’s think about the flavor behind that. Would two groups of Hunters
usually try to sabotage one another? Probably not. Going off our original idea
of Supernatural
this is actually the opposite of the “family” bonding that typically happens.
In the Space idea we build
ships and let those ships dogfight with one another. This also has a small
problem – how do we separate the “building” and the “fighting” part? It doesn’t
make a lot of sense to have a ship being built and then immediately go in to
combat, but by playing the cards it also allows you to totally customize how
you want to play.
The Invasion idea is
both competitive, with an element of cooperation. By having a game-controlled
enemy, both players have to work against that. But they’re also working against
one another to be the first safe team. The goal would be to set up some kind of
“questing” feature, similar to in Lord
of the Rings that is static between all games (instead of unique to a
scenario).
There is
one detail that we’ve over looked. Other than what is popular, or sounds most
exciting whenever you design a game you have to do something you love. And I
know that might something you hear a lot – but it’s true. Taking on a task like
making a game takes a lot of time, dedication and commitment. If you don’t love
what you’re making you’re doing it a disservice.
Here’s a
quick recap of what we learned:
-
World design and rule design need to be integrated
together. A game shouldn’t feel like an add-on to an existing universe.
-
The mechanics and rules of the game also need to
have an appropriate place in the way the world feels.
-
Your world and your game should be an equal
representation of one another, especially if you’re using an existing universe.
-
Don’t pull a “Decipher” and try to force a
mechanic that has no place in your world.
-
Some ideas, like Steampunk, don’t have enough
steam to carry a whole game by itself.
-
Some ideas, like Fantasy, are tried and true –
but largely overdone.
With all
that in mind we’re going to make the Paranormal
style game. While it’s one of the ones the needs a lot of work, it’s clear what
needs to be done to it. Once we flesh out the rules and start making the
necessary changes, I have faith that it will open up a number of different
avenues for a great and varied future.
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