Artifact, the next game from Half-Life developer Valve, is decidedly bucking digital card game trends. Not only is it not free-to-play, it’s not going to have any kind of free in-game currency to spend on cards -- a decision Valve tells me is to avoid the grind that can make other CCGs feel like a job instead of a game.
“At its core, we want you to play the game because you enjoy playing the game,” programmer Brandon Reinhart told me when I visited Valve last week. They don’t want you to feel obligated to do daily quests just so you have enough gold to get a pack that might have the card you want. They want you to just play the game.
So instead of the usual digital model, Artifact is following a physical one like that of Magic: The Gathering -- whose creator, Richard Garfield, is also the lead designer of Artifact. It will have a $20 price tag that gets you two full decks and 10 card packs, and all card packs after that cost $2 each.
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“At its core, we want you to play the game because you enjoy playing the game,” programmer Brandon Reinhart told me when I visited Valve last week. They don’t want you to feel obligated to do daily quests just so you have enough gold to get a pack that might have the card you want. They want you to just play the game.
So instead of the usual digital model, Artifact is following a physical one like that of Magic: The Gathering -- whose creator, Richard Garfield, is also the lead designer of Artifact. It will have a $20 price tag that gets you two full decks and 10 card packs, and all card packs after that cost $2 each.
Continue reading…
Continue reading...