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Author Topic: Interview with Donald X.  (Read 2127183 times)

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Ozle

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #550 on: January 28, 2013, 06:07:12 pm »
0

Would you give up creative control and ownership of Dominion if someone came in with an offer?
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eHalcyon

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #551 on: January 28, 2013, 06:10:58 pm »
+2

Would you give up creative control and ownership of Dominion if someone came in with an offer?

Clearly Ozle wants to buy Dominion so that he can retheme it as Oland!
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Ozle

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #552 on: January 28, 2013, 06:11:31 pm »
+1

Would you give up creative control and ownership of Dominion if someone came in with an offer?

Clearly Ozle wants to buy Dominion so that he can retheme it as Oland!

Not Oland! Thats where O lives!
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soulnet

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #553 on: January 28, 2013, 06:13:17 pm »
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Would you give up creative control and ownership of Dominion if someone came in with an offer?

Probably it depends on the offer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeldwfOwuL8.
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Ozle

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #554 on: January 28, 2013, 06:15:07 pm »
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Would you give up creative control and ownership of Dominion if someone came in with an offer?

Probably it depends on the offer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeldwfOwuL8.

Obviously. But I mean an offer that somebody would reasonably make rather than say £1,000,000 and a date with Halle Berry (Is Halle Berry still considered hot? I'm a little out of touch)
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SirPeebles

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #555 on: January 28, 2013, 06:18:10 pm »
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I feel that cards like Harvest already effectively have random number built into them.  But since the randomness comes from your deck, you can actually plan your strategy around increasing your expected value, which is neat.

There is nothing random about Harvest, it just uses the randomness the shuffling provides. And it could be totally or partially non-random with some inspection or top-decking.

In any case, you can still think about expected value with a card that says "roll a dice, +$ equal to half of the rolled number, rounded up". This card in particular does not seem interesting, but I think some extra random may be nice. Especially for 2nd player :).

How on Earth is there nothing random about Harvest?  Yes, it uses the randomness from the shuffling.  Why not use that randomness, since it's already there?  Sure, you can use strategy to manipulate the probability distribution, but that's precisely what I said was cool about it.  Or you can just use it to cycle or clear Rabble junk.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #556 on: January 28, 2013, 06:19:15 pm »
+1

Would you give up creative control and ownership of Dominion if someone came in with an offer?
Possibly; it would need to be a pretty fantastic offer though. Dominion is still raking in cash, and I already get to design games for a living.
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eHalcyon

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #557 on: January 28, 2013, 06:20:46 pm »
+1

Would you give up creative control and ownership of Dominion if someone came in with an offer?

Clearly Ozle wants to buy Dominion so that he can retheme it as Oland!

Not Oland! Thats where O lives!

Oops, you are correct.  My bad!
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Insomniac

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #558 on: January 28, 2013, 06:25:06 pm »
+3

Would you give up creative control and ownership of Dominion if someone came in with an offer?
Possibly; it would need to be a pretty fantastic offer though. Dominion is still raking in cash, and I already get to design games for a living.

Strong opening to negotiations!
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GigaKnight

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #559 on: January 28, 2013, 06:36:11 pm »
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This last sentence surprises me.  Do you truly see "no real point in simulating cards on a computer"?  Maybe I'm being too literal, but assuming I want to make a game that would, IRL, be a card game, I see a few benefits of doing that on a computer:
Blueblimp has it right. There's no point to limiting yourself to what cards can do if you're making a computer game. You can do it to cash in on something - you make a CCG that's digital only and you make it cards so people know it's a CCG. Players know what to expect from cards, and cards are a familiar way to display certain information. But you don't have to do cards.

Instead of cards we can consider "rules components." These are things in a game that have rules associated with them. They are typically cards for physical games, but don't have to be. For a computer game you can think of them as cards, but they aren't cards at all. For example there's no uh Medusa card in Heroes of Might and Magic III. There's a creature with associated rules, but it's not card-like. When I get a particular perk in Fallout 3, that's like a card in a tableau, but it's not doing anything to imitate a card. For a physical game you couldn't deal with making sure all your perks happened when they were supposed to. For a computer game it's no trouble.

Yes, I agree you don't have to do cards.  I didn't mean to suggest that video games *should* limit themselves to cards but, just as there is no point in limiting yourself to that, I also see no point in dismissing the design space.

I bring it up because, if Dominion were online-only, it'd be the core game we all love, but you'd be able to make all those changes you wanted and include all the cards you wanted.  Maybe Dominion makes more money and is more popular with IRL publishing, but that's sort of besides my point.  I see those online advantages as very compelling potential reasons to "simulate cards" instead of publishing IRL and I was just wondering if you agree.  And, if not, why not?
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #560 on: January 28, 2013, 07:19:23 pm »
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Yes, I agree you don't have to do cards.  I didn't mean to suggest that video games *should* limit themselves to cards but, just as there is no point in limiting yourself to that, I also see no point in dismissing the design space.

I bring it up because, if Dominion were online-only, it'd be the core game we all love, but you'd be able to make all those changes you wanted and include all the cards you wanted.  Maybe Dominion makes more money and is more popular with IRL publishing, but that's sort of besides my point.  I see those online advantages as very compelling potential reasons to "simulate cards" instead of publishing IRL and I was just wondering if you agree.  And, if not, why not?
I'm not limiting myself by not doing cards - it's the opposite. Cards are strictly a limitation.

I have already made two physical games that started out with deckbuilding and lost it. I doubt if I would find deckbuilding compelling for a digital-only game. I can build something more complex and the computer can handle it.
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ConMan

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #561 on: January 28, 2013, 07:35:57 pm »
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You mentioned far back in the thread that you're not exactly well-recognised in the sense that people don't usually link your face (and sometimes even your name) to your games. Have you ever considered having your face show up in your games, possibly even on the cover (Copycat-style)?
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #562 on: January 28, 2013, 08:03:14 pm »
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You mentioned far back in the thread that you're not exactly well-recognised in the sense that people don't usually link your face (and sometimes even your name) to your games. Have you ever considered having your face show up in your games, possibly even on the cover (Copycat-style)?
I have not.

Friedemann Friese explained once that the green hair and games that start with F made him more of a person, making him more of a brand. You know, you want people to buy your games because you made them, and it helps with that. That logic seems sound; probably I should go for D and blue. What can I say, I'm lazy.
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Watno

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #563 on: January 28, 2013, 08:16:50 pm »
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Dingdom Duilder?
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GigaKnight

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #564 on: January 28, 2013, 08:24:26 pm »
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Sorry, Donald, I don't feel like my questions are being understood.  Let me try one more time. If this doesn't work, I'll drop it.

1) If you could retroactively change, remove, and add Dominion cards at will, would you want to? For example, you could magically change the text on every printed copy of Throne Room.
2) Given that this is impossible with physical games, but possible in video games: Do you agree that this ability could be a valid reason to implement a card game exclusively as a video game? (Even if it doesn't appeal to you, personally). If not, I'm curious why not.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #565 on: January 28, 2013, 08:48:11 pm »
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Sorry, Donald, I don't feel like my questions are being understood.  Let me try one more time. If this doesn't work, I'll drop it.

1) If you could retroactively change, remove, and add Dominion cards at will, would you want to? For example, you could magically change the text on every printed copy of Throne Room.
2) Given that this is impossible with physical games, but possible in video games: Do you agree that this ability could be a valid reason to implement a card game exclusively as a video game? (Even if it doesn't appeal to you, personally). If not, I'm curious why not.
Being able to tweak cards later would be nice, sure. That's no reason to make a video card game. I can make Starcraft and tweak units later, or whatever; I'm not giving up the ability to tweak things by not confining myself to cards.

If I made a card game, and decided it could only be done as a digital game, then the digital game could probably be further improved by making it even less like a card game. The only reason to make it a digital card game is to also sell the physical card game, in which case the cards at some point are set in stone by what's printed (although if the digital game was first there might be a window for tweaking them) (or like I said before, you might make it cards to cash in on the recognition people have of the CCG format).

Let's say you came up with Galaxy Trucker. Only you thought of it as a computer game. Maybe the spaceships are built in 3-D. Why confine them to tiles? If 3-D is too hard, they still don't need to be 2-D tiles all the same shape. Or a given spaceship piece might vary in size/shape depending on where you put it. The physical limitations don't apply to you, and there's no reason to cling to them (same caveats as before).
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GigaKnight

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #566 on: January 28, 2013, 09:23:42 pm »
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Sorry, Donald, I don't feel like my questions are being understood.  Let me try one more time. If this doesn't work, I'll drop it.

1) If you could retroactively change, remove, and add Dominion cards at will, would you want to? For example, you could magically change the text on every printed copy of Throne Room.
2) Given that this is impossible with physical games, but possible in video games: Do you agree that this ability could be a valid reason to implement a card game exclusively as a video game? (Even if it doesn't appeal to you, personally). If not, I'm curious why not.
Being able to tweak cards later would be nice, sure. That's no reason to make a video card game. I can make Starcraft and tweak units later, or whatever; I'm not giving up the ability to tweak things by not confining myself to cards.

If I made a card game, and decided it could only be done as a digital game, then the digital game could probably be further improved by making it even less like a card game. The only reason to make it a digital card game is to also sell the physical card game, in which case the cards at some point are set in stone by what's printed (although if the digital game was first there might be a window for tweaking them) (or like I said before, you might make it cards to cash in on the recognition people have of the CCG format).

Let's say you came up with Galaxy Trucker. Only you thought of it as a computer game. Maybe the spaceships are built in 3-D. Why confine them to tiles? If 3-D is too hard, they still don't need to be 2-D tiles all the same shape. Or a given spaceship piece might vary in size/shape depending on where you put it. The physical limitations don't apply to you, and there's no reason to cling to them (same caveats as before).

Ok, thanks, I appreciate the answer.  For sure, you're "not giving up the ability to tweak things by not confining myself to cards".  Totally agree with this.  I'm thinking about the issue that you do give up some ability to tweak things by publishing a physical copy.  The cat's out of the bag, as they say.  CCGs aside, yes, you could print a new version of the same game, but that's complicated for consumers.

In other words, I'm not saying there's a reason to constrain your video game to cards.  I'm saying I see reasons to constrain your card game to being virtual.  Being virtual confers properties that are totally orthogonal to whether it's a card game or not.

Hopefully that clears up my point, even we don't see eye-to-eye.  Again, appreciate your thoughts!
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #567 on: January 28, 2013, 10:53:12 pm »
+1

In other words, I'm not saying there's a reason to constrain your video game to cards.  I'm saying I see reasons to constrain your card game to being virtual.  Being virtual confers properties that are totally orthogonal to whether it's a card game or not.
But once I constrain a card game to being virtual, I'm unlikely to keep it cards. Being cards is no longer relevant.

I make physical games instead of digital ones because it's so much easier. I can make a game over a weekend by myself and try it on Tuesday. I can make changes easily. Playtesting involves - I am not making this up - playing games. If a publisher wants one it's low-risk for them, even though most games don't sell well. If a publisher doesn't I've still got something, we still have fun playing the game.

Computer games cost millions of dollars, involve teams of people. People are less interested in taking risks, more interested in repeating previous successes. Richard Garfield got interested in doing computer games, and has spent years seeing them not get made. These days there are iPad etc. games, which one guy can program, but they are still way more work than a card game.

If Nintendo says, hey Donald X., give us some ideas for a new Mario game, man, I will think of some stuff. But I'm happy making physical games. It's not so bad that I can't tweak the cards once they're published.
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RD

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #568 on: January 28, 2013, 11:34:32 pm »
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I'm not limiting myself by not doing cards - it's the opposite. Cards are strictly a limitation.

I don't mean to beat on this dead horse but this brings up a more abstract question about your game design philosophy.

Orson Welles had it that "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations." And to me Dominion absolutely exemplifies this. Take Treasury, which as you mentioned earlier, is sort of like a permanent Duration card. Instead of writing up new rules for a new card type, you shoehorned it into the rules framework you had. And from this you get depth: it develops interesting interactions with discard attacks, it's a guaranteed target for Thrones or Graverobbers or whatever, all kinds of stuff. I think it's reasonable to say that a lot of the nuance in Dominion comes from stuff like this.

So this isn't a criticism of course; obviously however you think about game design, it works! And of course it's not like deckbuilders are the only game format that provides some basic structure to work from. But I'm surprised to hear that after your Dominion experience you find "limitations" to be a dirty word. Do you feel like pushing against boundaries is a major part of your design process? Or is it the sort of thing where like, your game mechanics are ultimately going to limit you no matter what you do, so you might as well carve out as big of a design space as you can?
« Last Edit: January 28, 2013, 11:51:13 pm by RD »
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #569 on: January 29, 2013, 12:22:01 am »
+2

Orson Welles had it that "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations." And to me Dominion absolutely exemplifies this. Take Treasury, which as you mentioned earlier, is sort of like a permanent Duration card. Instead of writing up new rules for a new card type, you shoehorned it into the rules framework you had. And from this you get depth: it develops interesting interactions with discard attacks, it's a guaranteed target for Thrones or Graverobbers or whatever, all kinds of stuff. I think it's reasonable to say that a lot of the nuance in Dominion comes from stuff like this, and of course you've been making Dominion cards long enough to appreciate it (though maybe long enough to get sick of it).

So this isn't a criticism of course; obviously you know more about game design than I do. And obviously it's not like deckbuilders are the only game format that provides some basic structure to work from. But I'm surprised to hear that after your Dominion experience you find "limitations" to be a dirty word. Do you feel like pushing against boundaries is a major part of your design process? Or is it the sort of thing where like, your game mechanics are ultimately going to limit you no matter what you do, so you might as well carve out as big of a design space as you can?
Mark Rosewater says, man how does he put it. Restrictions breed creativity. If you need inspiration, man, order some up. One way to be inspired is to box in your possibilities and that's fine. Sometimes you get inspiration some other way; that's fine too. It can be hard staring at a blank page, and in the end you will have something very specific on it; we can view the task as entirely one of cutting down the possibilities. And if you can get part of the way there that's better than uh not getting anywhere. Anyway you know, that's all well and good although it doesn't mean you constantly need restrictions. Sometimes you've just got good ideas, you leap right to some good stuff on that page. Restrictions in this sense are a tool but not the only one. I mean you're always restricting things but that's not always the clearest way to look at it.

My games tend to work with as little as possible; they are heavily restricted in that sense. In Dominion your VP go in your deck, your money is in your deck, your actions are in your deck. The reason I went that route was simply to try the most extreme version of the idea. In Kingdom Builder you place 3 pieces on your terrain, adjacent to you if possible, gain abilities when you play by them, can't use them the turn you get them, and draw a new card at end of turn. Most of my games are low on rules and can be taught very quickly. It's a trick because there are rules on cards, but you know, the framework is minimal. If there was something I didn't need, it's not there. And I see how much I can do with what little I've got.

In some of my games there will be this real question of, can you make enough cards for this. The number of cards you can make depends on the complexity of the cards and the amount of rules you have. When you don't have many rules, the pressure is on the card text, which tends to want to be simple too. I have tackled this so many times that I know a lot of basic things you can do with almost nothing. Let's say you have points of some kind, monkey points. Well you can gain monkey points. You can make the other players lose them. You can do both at once, always satisfying. If there are lots of ways to gain them, I can make a way to increase how many you gain, and if there are lots of ways to lose them, I can make a way to avoid losing as many. There aren't a lot of things you can do with just monkey points, but you know, a game without many rules can have more card variety than you might think.

But none of this has anything to do with "should I make a purely digital card game." That restriction isn't interesting or new or anything. There is better territory to stake out. Like, when you are trying to fill that blank page, deciding not to use the letter e is not a great start. It's a restriction but it's not doing good things for you. Someone already wrote something with no e's, and man no-one needs to read it.
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GigaKnight

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #570 on: January 29, 2013, 02:47:27 am »
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In other words, I'm not saying there's a reason to constrain your video game to cards.  I'm saying I see reasons to constrain your card game to being virtual.  Being virtual confers properties that are totally orthogonal to whether it's a card game or not.
But once I constrain a card game to being virtual, I'm unlikely to keep it cards. Being cards is no longer relevant.

That makes sense and I totally respect it.  I just also see an opportunity for somebody to make virtual card games because they like card games and they like virtual things.  It isn't likely to be you and I didn't mean to imply you should, but it does seem that there's valid design space there with some specific benefits (if a designer seeks those).  The hurdles, complexity, cost, and risk you bring up all make a lot of sense to me, too.

But I'm happy making physical games. It's not so bad that I can't tweak the cards once they're published.

This is the essence of what I was looking for in my original question, btw.  As somebody who probably values flexibility more than normal people, the draw of virtual is strong for me and it's probably why I'm a software engineer as opposed another type of engineer.  I was hoping to get some insight into how you value that stuff and I did, so thanks!
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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #571 on: January 29, 2013, 03:34:53 am »
0

Quote
made him more of a person, making him more of a brand
These two are entirely different things.
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Donald X.

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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #572 on: January 29, 2013, 03:42:30 am »
+3

Quote
made him more of a person, making him more of a brand
These two are entirely different things.
And I mentioned both of them. And this is a post and it quotes your post.
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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #573 on: January 29, 2013, 03:52:12 am »
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Computer games cost millions of dollars, involve teams of people. People are less interested in taking risks, more interested in repeating previous successes. Richard Garfield got interested in doing computer games, and has spent years seeing them not get made. These days there are iPad etc. games, which one guy can program, but they are still way more work than a card game.
The millions of dollars plus team is only really for publishing the game, though. For prototyping many types of games, a single full-time expert programmer can do the job. Of course, you probably know that already, given that isotropic exists.
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Re: Interview with Donald X.
« Reply #574 on: January 29, 2013, 04:46:08 am »
+3

Magnets? How do they work?
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