Magic creator Richard Garfield on why he put a paper game on the blockchain • TechCrunch

Richard Garfield is a name familiar to many in the board game world, especially as one of the creators of Magic: The Gathering, the most prominent trading card game out there. But Garfield is dipping its toes into the world of digital and specifically blockchain-adjacent games, and TechCrunch took the opportunity to ask the veteran game maker about the pros and cons of this and other new approaches to gaming.

It should be noted at the outset that unlike the dubious profit-focused gameplay of your Axie Infinity and the like, Garfield’s new game, technically a “mode” of Blockchain Brawlers, is not focused on speculation, but more of an experiment in deploying a full card-based game outside of traditional publishing methods.

It should probably also be noted that the game platform is full of the usual NFT and income chatter, but the core game itself, a 1v1 bluff style match, is capable of being played with regular playing cards or for that matter numbered slips of paper. I played a few rounds with him that way and it’s actually pretty fun and okay (I’d like to say for the record that I was in a decent way to win, but we had to stop early). A follow-up game unrelated to Garfield’s design that uses more rarity/stat/token-focused mechanics is in the works for a separate release in 2023.

TC: Why is it worth it to introduce blockchains, tokens and things in game design? When you have consumer fear of things like FTX…I know they are very different, but why is why is the asset worth the risk?

Garfield: There are some advantages to not being tied to paper, and there are some advantages to not being digital. In the digital space, the ability to sell people games that are digital but can be owned has a certain appeal. Especially when you kind of contrast what’s developed in other digital spaces, where there’s so much free-to-play, that has a lot of negative baggage along with the positives it brings to the table.

TC: Of course FTX can crash and it has nothing to do with, you know, a tracking mechanism for ownership of a card or whatever. But in the minds of consumers, they can be mixed up. Is it just a consumer education thing? Or is it a branding thing?

Garfield: It is all of the above and more. There is also a designer and a publisher choice. I think there’s a certain natural caution in this space because so much of the design has been in an area that I don’t think is healthy for games, trying to mix it up with speculation – which I have a lot of experience with. with, because this was the environment that Magic: The Gathering began in. And it was very toxic to the game to have people buy just to see their money grow. Because it got in the way of the game as a game.

Image credit: Blockchain Brawlers

A lot of designers and publishers these days are embracing it and saying, “get in this game now, make a lot of money.” It’s not healthy for game design, but isn’t inherently part of player ownership of digital assets anymore. The negative qualities of free to play, for example, are not in themselves part of free to play. There are just some things that are hard to avoid because of the way the revenue model works. And players these days, with digital ownership, it is natural for them to mix it with the speculation bubble, just like a player who engages for free to play, there will always be a danger for them to think that it is profitable to win, or it’s some kind of hustle. But there is some confusion, and some reasons for that confusion.

TC: At the beginning of Magic, I’m curious what kind of backlash you got at the time regarding both the business model and the unexpected hoarding of valuable cards, taking them out of play. Was there skepticism that this was a valid game model, and a valid business model? And do you think that kind of reaction is also happening now?

Garfield: Yes, there was some skepticism. And, and it actually took a lot of effort to get past that. And it was quite divisive within Wizards of the Coast itself. The problem was that as prices went up with speculation, everyone compared it to the comic book market or Cabbage Patch Kids or whatever people came up with and became very popular and then always got busted.

I wasn’t very educated in that area when I started, because I didn’t pay much attention to collectibles. But very quickly I adopted the idea that this speculation was just terrible for the gameplay, that there was no upside for the players.

We really had to work to break that cycle – intentionally overprinted, for example, because we had to make it so that it wasn’t attractive to collect. When we finally did it, some people in the company thought we had sunk the product. And some players did, because they saw the value of their collection decrease. But the game was just booming at that point. And in the end, that’s what it was all about: it was a game. It became very clear that those who played the game did so because they loved the gameplay, not because of any investment.

TC: Do you think something similar needs to happen now with digital ownership? How do you prove that model? Because I know people will people will be skeptical like, “how do I know I’m not going to have the rug pulled out on me once I invest a couple of $100 into this game?”

Garfield: You really have to trust your publisher. When you make a game with tradable objects, the publisher can always mess it up.

Image credit: Blockchain Brawlers

On the other hand, people don’t buy Settlers of Catan and worry if the publisher is going to screw it up by making their game weaker; they have the game and they can play it. And that, to me, is the potential appeal of digital ownership, is that people don’t necessarily have to trust the publisher. They just need to trust the publisher to be fair when in charge of an ongoing environment.

TC: How do we advance the ownership part to a point where people can say, ‘Hey, I paid $50, I have the digital copy.’ People will rely on Steam for a PC game. But if it gets more complicated with, you know, NFT-based instances of cards and things like that.

Garfield: Well, the thing is, if you get your game engine delivered by someone, you have to trust them. That’s the end of the story. Here you have other ways. Whether they will evolve or not depends on society and, you know, whether there are people interested enough to pursue it.

I should point out that with the game that I’ve been working on here, I was very firmly in the board game category, in the sense that the game delivered is one where there’s no distinction between what the players own – it’s a completely fair game. Actually, that was the only reason I became interested in the project, because the publisher said they supported me on it.

[Note: Players can own different “moves” and cosmetics but the gameplay elements, essentially the numbers 1-8 and some other minor things, are functionally the same for all even though they are treated as NFTs or some other owned digital item. These items may serve different purposes in other modes or games.]

That part of the game is always there for people, like they can play it themselves, or someone can code a new framework for it. And it’s simple enough that it’s not difficult. This is really a very close to a traditional game, in the sense that you buy a box and you can play.

TC: I feel like my readers are going to ask, well, why don’t I just buy this game on Steam? Or what’s really the improvement over a free-play situation where, you know, if it’s 50 cards, I pay $50. And now I’ve got all the cards. What exactly are the advantages you see in this approach versus traditional publishing or a free-to-play model?

Garfield: Honestly, I think the benefits have been overrated by a lot of people. And in fact, that’s what kept me away from it for so long, that I really didn’t see the advantage over a server-based system for a long time. The main thing that engaged me is how difficult it is to get certain games made in the digital space, because of this free-to-play expectation.

Like there’s a lot of games that in theory, yeah, you could just put it on Steam, or put it on iOS and have people download it and play it. But you can’t actually do that, because you can’t charge for it. And if you put it up for free, you have to pay for it. And if you start adding free monetization to that, you have ads or, you know, you have to fill a bar, or do cosmetics, or something that might not be of interest to designers or players.

So the game being made here, for example, that could done on Steam, or it can be done on iOS. But the games I’ve done in the past, which are in this description, have been very difficult to get started because of this, because you have to do it for free. And then you have to put in ads or something. So I’m drawn to that in the same way that I like working with paper publishers, because I can say, “here’s a card game,” and they can print it, put it in a box, sell it to people. And no one complains about it as a revenue model.

TC: It is obvious that there has been a huge renaissance of table gaming. Everyone loves it, everyone plays with paper, everyone plays with cardboard and wood, and it’s great. But then you also have crossover successes, like Gloomhaven, which has a great digital version and paper version. I’m curious how you think that will play out over the next few years as both analog and digital gaming become more popular and continue to cross-pollinate each other.

Garfield: It is a very exciting area. I could talk about it for a long time. I have been very interested in that space. I only started thinking about it in the late 90s, where I was just struck by how I liked computer games, I like board games. And then I would play anything, TF [Team Fortress]. I’d play a digital shooter or something, and then I’d play Scrabble.

And I want to think, how are these in the same place? They are just such different experiences and why aren’t there more games that are similar to the board games that I love but take advantage of all the things that digital has to offer.

So to see more and more examples of that, including, like, Slay the Spire, these games, that have this sensibility really rooted in traditional gaming, but that take full advantage of what the computer has to offer, and don’t make you just playing twitch games or something like that… It’s a very exciting area, I’m very excited to see where it goes, and happy to contribute anything I can.