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In Light of Recent Discussion of Hearthstone, an Illuminating Presentation by Mark Rosewater
Hey guys,
As we have all experienced, there has been a lot of discussion around the design of card games, the design choices of the Hearthstone team in particular, and of fundamental concepts of design of card games in general.
Recently, I've been trying out other games and thinking a lot about what I want in a card game, and I happened across this video on youtube:
Magic: the Gathering: 20 Years, 20 Lessons Learned
It's a recent presentation by Mark Rosewater (Head Designer of Magic: the Gathering) and it's really terrific. If you're at all interested in this stuff, I highly recommend giving it a watch. It's an hour long, but it is great and educational all the way through.
If you don't have as much time, I'd like to emphasize points 8, 10, 13, 15, 16, and 19 as being very closely related to recent discussions about Hearthstone on this reddit and elsewhere.
And finally, I'd like to invite discussion on the game design philosophies presented by Mark Rosewater but specifically in the context of Hearthstone. What are Hearthstone's strengths? What are it's weaknesses? I hope that, by starting the discussion from a more designer-based perspective, we can generate some really great and educational discussion that will be beneficial to all.
Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the video at least. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and just thought I'd share it. I have the utmost respect for Mark Rosewater and the entire M:tG team. They do a really terrific job, and I've always considered Mark a brilliant mind we can all learn from.
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EDIT: Thanks so much to Pas2 for pointing out the articles. In case you can't / don't want to watch the video, here they are:
Mike Donais
I used to sit beside Mark 17 years ago when I was working on Magic with him. He is great to work with. We would talk for hours about these topics.
Mike Donais
This is a great video.
Mark is a great designer. Everyone who designs games, even non-card games should watch this a few times.
Iksar
This video was excellent. Different games are always going to have different goals based on their audience, life cycle, or a large number of other factors, but I think a lot of this video does a pretty great job of talking about best practices for game designers in any genre.