E-mail from Decipher CEO about Wars TCG

[mtgrares]

I e-mailed the CEO of Decipher about making a Wars videogame. Basically it all comes down to this "I'm not against development of the property, but I'm not sure your desire fits with the level of coverage of the license at it's present stage." I guess that is business-ese for saying "no thanks." At least I tried.

Below that message is another message about the pros and con's of Forge that the CEO has someone write up.

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You have a new message from dCEO:

Re: Wars videogame

No. It's not that. I've simply been swamped with work on the website development for our How To Host A Murder line.

That said, I'm not sure WARS would support the level of development you are considering. We have some ideas for the WARS property as a whole and we have licenses for content in the comic book and novella area. It's also being pitched around Hollywood. But, that happens a lot and the chances of a major development are long shots. Even when we launched WARS (with all our internal excitement about the property, a larger staff, and a much larger budget), it didn't reach the level passion in the real world that we hoped.

I'm not against development of the property, but I'm not sure your desire fits with the level of coverage of the license at it's present stage.

Warren

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I've spent a couple sessions with the Forge software and wanted to tell you what I've learned.

Forge Card Game is a solo version of Magic The Gathering. It currently supports no internet or network features. It is primarily the work of one person (the author) in his spare time over a 3 year period, and as such, it is an impressive effort that shows dedication, focus, and hard work, all for no remuneration. As an experienced Magic player, I had fun. I ran a couple constructed deck games and booster draft. I'm looking forward to try the Quest (single-player campaign experience).

What Forge has:
• Platform for game rules
• Platform for card rules
• Platform for AI opponents
• Platform for different game configurations (sealed deck, constructed, etc.)
• Elegant game interface and game flow
• End-to-end playable experience
• Simple & effective short campaign experience

What Forge does not have:
• Any sort of graphics to support that game interface
• Player vs player support (game lobby, matchmaking, leaderboards, etc.)
• Player database and player account support
• Commercial website
• Monetization support
• Adequate community features
• Customer service support
• Advanced AI
• Long-term single player campaign mode
• Some bugs with game windows and focus I've seen in other Java apps (I ran this on Windows XP)
• I don't know Forge's level of internet security, but getting this up to snuff could be big effort.

I basically believe that this person will need lots of help to make a commercial version of WARS. He shows a requisite level of commitment, but that's not going to make up for a lack of money. If he has no help, I would not expect his efforts with WARS to be much more than a free novelty for players.

Feel free to share my thoughts with this person, maybe they want to address these points. Hope this helps.

[Huggybaby]

I disagree with some of those.

• Any sort of graphics to support that game interface (he missed the themes, or maybe he was looking for something else. The new DOTP doesn't really have "graphics" either. It's a card game.)
• Player database and player account support (trivial to add.)
• Customer service support (look at the forum!)
• Long-term single player campaign mode (it could easily be made as long as necessary.)

[Rob Cashwalker]

I disagree on a lot of that too.

Graphics seem to be improving over the last few releases.

They didn't seem to notice the other devs either... no biggie.

We're not looking for "monetization" because that would be illegal.

[frwololo]

I think their point was that, "based on the program 'forge', can you imagine that the team behind it could be the development team for a commercial project (WARS), if they had close to no support from 'us' (i.e. as an outsourcing project)". The answer was no and they explained why, from both a business and technical point of view.
I think this is very valuable input, and these guys are really nice to let rares share it with the community.

BTW Forge's graphics, last time I checked, are nowhere close to a commercial project. That's not an insult, that's a fact. This is why there are people paid to do "design" in the industry. You can't replace a team of designers with a few tricks such as a skin system. Customers don't get tricked that easily.

(People's reaction to a software project change a LOT once they start paying for it... I think that's a point the people from Decipher are trying to make)