Collectible Card Game Headquarters

So, I was reading this old post from mtgrares, where he says he'd like to create his own TCG:
http://mtgrares.blogspot.com/2011/02/fo ... g-tcg.html

Ideally I could create my own TCG so I could "computerize" it and sell it for $5 or $10. Obviously I have no idea how to really create my own TCG. Wizards says that only publish 1% of all of the cards created for a set, which means that many cards never see the light of day. I think it would be cool to mash together Magic's and Marvel/DC VS rules into one game. I don't really know would this be legal but if I stole the same ideas from both games, the resulting TCG would be vastly different from either game.

So I did some thinking. Er, quite a bit of it actually, so let me summarise it in bullet-point style to get right to the point(s).

• 1. I think it's possible to create a game with rules fully compatible with Magic, ie, a Magic clone. That way your players wouldn't have to learn a whole ruleset from the start. The problem would be to avoid litigation. Three ways I can think to do this:
  
  
  • 1a. Stay off the IP (intellectual property, ie mana symbols, character names etc).
    
  • 1b. Keep your central server on European ground ('cause you can't trademark rules in the EU).
    
  • 1c. Release for free and as open-source. That would be a bit like the open-source folks do, where they create free versions of proprietary software (say, Open Office). Being free I think makes it easier to claim fair use (I may be very wrong on that!).
    
  • 1d. Create a radically different format, ie something that isn't really a collectible card game but something else altogether. This really is the bit that can take most of the wind out of the patent lawyers' sails.
• 2. As to this radical new format, here's my Big Idea. Instead of publishing cards for players to collect, you could let them create the cards themselves. That would be a lot like scripting cards to add to Forge. Or of course some projects here, like mine, have parsers that let you add a card automatically to their engine using only its Oracle text. The more artsy types could also add their own illustrations.
  
  The players could create their own cards, then upload them to the game's server for verification (to make sure they're compatible with the game's rules etc) then they could put their cards in a deck and play that deck against others online. Or they could play against an AI opponent of course.
  
  A central body, like the DCI, could maintain the ruleset and add new mechanics, so the game could keep growing. They could also enforce some power-level constraints (so there would be no 20-damage-for-0-mana spells ^_^). And create some "base" sets also, to get things started.
  
  So basically, I'm talking about a free and open source Magic clone that can be played only with virtual cards, created by the players themselves. Sound like fun?

Super necropost, but I randomly saw this post and thought I would reply.

Ye Goblyn Queenne wrote:
[*]1b. Keep your central server on European ground ('cause you can't trademark rules in the EU).

Believe it or not, I asked a lawyer about that about a year ago. Bottom line: don't do this, this is extremely risky. Simply put, if they want to, a big company can easily cause you trouble independently of the location of your server, if they feel like it. The fact that rares is american adds a lot to the danger.

[*]1c. Release for free and as open-source. That would be a bit like the open-source folks do, where they create free versions of proprietary software (say, Open Office). Being free I think makes it easier to claim fair use (I may be very wrong on that!).

Open sourcing is a good idea to avoid legal trouble, as you basically make the whole project a project without a clear leader. However, Rare's point was to monetize his hard work, not to create yet another free game.

My 2 cents

frwololo wrote:Super necropost, but I randomly saw this post and thought I would reply.

Necro posts are allowed here at the CCGHQ.

Umm... I don't think we really need an actual Magic clone game; an open-source Magic engine with customizable cards and a way to automatically reject connections where someone wants purely official cards and someone doesn't would probably work well enough.

Similarly, the card-creation-based new game is similar in non-necessity to the Magic clone game.

Also, FOSS is probably a bad idea for an indie free-development-OS (i.e. Windows, Android) commercial project's base. I'm thinking it'd be easy enough to copy the non-free game assets and plug them into the free game code. It'd work fine on, say, Xbox Live Indie Games, since it's harder to take a game and compile it and get it to work in such a way that people are going to prefer that path to just paying the $1-5 for it. But XBLIG isn't exactly good for a TCG with its 150MB game size limit. (And I don't think mtgrares is a C# programmer.)

All that said, mtgrares's entire point was to combine two different game concepts together, not just clone one of them. I'm not sure it'd work right; I think if you combined VS and Magic, you'd get mostly one or the other, not something entirely new. But it'd be a very interesting experiment. (Then again on the "not working right" point, I'm trying to combine the JRPG, such as Final Fantasy, with the TCG concept, in digital form. That's not supposed to work right, but I think I managed it in the rules, albeit not yet the cards.)
Actually... now that I think about it, you combine VS and M:tG and maybe you end up with something similar to The Spoils. (Or I could be remembering VS wrong.) (Oh, and speaking of The Spoils, could someone make a simulator for that? Not me, I haven't got the time.)

PRE-SUBMIT APPEND: Forge's latest DMCA takedown notice may just push mtgrares to move to his next project. Then again, this isn't the first notice, is it?

Honestly I catch myself spending a bit on open source and indy games and if somebody made a good virtual CCG I would probably drop $5, especially if you can unlock cards through play rather than just pay. I'm not even saying for a magic clone, just any fun homebrew, pretty looking CCG. I don't care if it is about cyborgs, aliens or the French revolution, so long as it is cool.