wizards of the coast is entering the realm of online role-playing, or perhaps simply online-gaming with a an MMORPG-version of magic: the gathering. and the gimmick is this: you play online with virtual decks of cards that you purchase online for the same price as actual physical cards. a pack of 15 cards is about $3 or so at your local hobby shop, and it will be so online for a “pack” of 15 “cards” that you can use in the game. a premade deck of 60 cards costs $9 in the real world, and a ready-built “deck” will cost $9 on the ‘net. and the manufacturer’s response to cries that the user will be paying actual money for virtual property? from their press release: “will include an innovative feature that will enable players who have collected full sets of online cards to redeem them for full sets of physical Magic cards.” in other words, you have to compete until you have the full run of a set of cards, and then you can get the real things. and a full set of cards can mean anywhere from 75 to 300 or more. the purpose, they claim, is to give players the option to play online or actually. but really, if you have spent all of this online energy mastering the game in a virtual setting, are you even going to want to play with a real opponent with your hard won cards? it would be like placing the champion of a fishing video game in the middle of a real lake in a real boat and expecting him to enjoy the experience of catching real fish.
you need a little background information and perhaps an introduction to some concepts. you’ve got role-playing games, like dungeons & dragons and vampire: the masquerade and the like. (actually, those two are only alike in the most basic sense, as comparing the execution of each is like comparing painting in oils to sculpting in clay — both are artistic endeavors, yet the product of one is nothing like the product of the other.) anyway, role-playing games are social activities, regardless of whether you’re sitting around a basement table or skulking around a rented warehouse. they require the participation and cooperation of more than one person, usually a group. descended from role-playing games are card-based role-playing games, pokemon being the most well-known these days. prior to the introduction of pokemon, the be-all end-all of card-based role-playing games was magic: the gathering. and while magic: the gathering can be played in a group setting, it works best and is geared for head-to-head play between two people. unlike pencil-and-paper role playing games (like dungeons & dragons) magic: the gathering required no dice rolls, no referreeing dungeonmaster and almost no setup time. if you had a deck of cards, you could play. it also required no character-immersion, no play acting — a key component in live-action role-playing games like vampire. known as a trading card game, the original intent was for players to purchase and acquire cards to build individual decks to employ against other players, the prize of any game being an ante’d card from each player’s deck. but still, even with two people, it is a social activity. the mid-90s advertisements (carried on MTV) claimed that all you needed to play magic: the gathering was a deck… and a friend.
the other spawn of old school role-playing games was the computer-based adventure game. the earliest incarnations in my memory were the text-based games produced by infocom. they gave you a simple description of your surroundings and offered limited interaction with that environment through one- or two-letter directions (N, SW, NE) or two word commands (look box, get fish, kill grue), most of which were ignored or impossible. gradually, graphics were integrated into the games, usually pushing the text to the bottom of the screen. and as personal computers became more powerful and more affordable, the games became more and more realistic and immersive. the internet gave the added option of playing online against another player, or even in cooperation with another player, someone across town or around on the other side of the globe. but despite this development of an online community, the computer-based role-playing game is not a social activity. it is a single-player game being approached from many different first-person points of view, and it lacks the reality of any interaction with another physical human being. this is not to disparage the games or the players, only to make the point that the computer-based adventure game is an outlet for the individual and the social role-playing game is a group activity.
will this succeed? based on the track record and sordid history of wizards of the coast, it is hard to say. they will have to please two disparate camps that often intersect but rarely at the same predictable points. and if they are as truly out-of-touch with their target market as they seem, now that they are blinded by their allegiance to pokemon and the ease of selling to a pre-pubescent demographic, this venture might be a straw that breaks the camel. or the dragon, so to speak.
by the way, i have a couple of boxes full of neglected magic cards that a fair price could win… anyone? anyone?
