One of the features that players really want in this game is the ability to build custom decks, especially since you unlock cards as you progress in the game. Why did you guys not include this feature? Is it going to be added in a future update?
Worth: Well, I can't say a whole lot about it, but it was a distinct design decision to do it the way we did it. On the flip side, many people on our "Duel with Developers" event that we ran a few weeks ago -- a few of the people I played specifically told me that they were happy not to be able to have to mess with that kind of thing.
Like Mark alluded to earlier, the audience for this game is lapsed players and new players mostly. We figured our hardcore players would buy it just because of the brand of Magic, but really we were trying to target some new players.
"I would never expect that we are going to go full deck customization, full deck manager, and all that kind of thing." |
As I was giving a demo for my execs a couple of weeks ago, I was online playing a live match with a deck against another guy who was quite clearly pretty bad at Magic, but he was kicking my butt. I mean he was crushing me. That is because the decks are pretty fairly matched. So a lot of it is just deck on deck stuff rather than player on player. Really, the fun of Magic is being able to play a game and not get blown out, right? A lot of times people don't care if they lose. They just want to be able to cast stuff and attack and have fun.
Mark: As a consumer of the game, because I have been playing it as I demoed it, I think there is still ... the fact that you can customize the cards that you unlock and still choose which deck you pilot through the campaign, there are still a lot of choices to be made in how you customize your experience in it, and I think that is definitely one of the appealing things to a franchised player.
Worth: And as far as would we think about changing our mind later on, we have talked about it. I think there might be room for a little bit of slack. I would never expect that we are going to go full deck customization, full deck manager, and all that kind of thing. But I think we realize that maybe we could let people mess around with the sideboard a little bit more than we do. None of that stuff is set in stone or anything like that. But that is one of the main complaints on the threads and we definitely see that, and we take it into account when we are talking about future expansions and such.
Xbox Live is perfect for features like tournaments and leaderboards. Have you guys thought about having any Planeswalkers tournaments? They are such a big part of the paper card game.
Worth: We have definitely thought about it. The infrastructure is not quite there to do what we want to do from our standpoint with Duels of the Planeswalkers. But there are third party sites. I have seen a couple of threads that are setting up tournaments and their own ladders and things like that. I can't remember the names of the top of my head, but there are threads, front page probably, even on the Xbox forums where they talk about tournaments and such.
Why can't you play Two-Headed Giant on two different Xbox consoles?
Worth: Yeah. It is a question we have been getting a lot. It was really kind of a design decision. When you are designing software, I am not sure how familiar you are with it, there is some stuff that you would like to have, and then at the end of the day you realize, "We could have this now or we could have the thing we want six months from now." The conscious choice was to say, "We don't want this. We need to ship this. We feel like it is a good product without it. And if enough people say they want it, we can revisit on down the line."
There is always this give and take with how much you put in to ship versus how much you put in later, you know what I mean? You could theoretically be on the drawing board forever.
Has there ever been any sort of talk, on the paper side, about putting in unique online only cards? Like a token to unlock cards in Planeswalkers?
Mark: I would say that from time to time we have discussions about that sort of thing, specifically with Magic Online, but it is not something that we have in the works at this time for paper Magic doing a direct crossover. We have been really excited about the way the community has embraced Duels of the Planeswalkers and the success of the game just in the couple of weeks that it has been launched. So we are talking about ways to tie that in more with the paper product, but nothing concrete at this time.
Was the idea always, from the beginning, to make Planeswalkers simple in order to bring in people who had probably not played Magic before, but also to bring back old, paper players?
Worth: I would say that is a fair statement. Magic Online lacks a sort of place where a new player can go and feel comfortable and not overwhelmed. Like I said, we knew that the penetration level amongst console owners was so high amongst our target audience, for the folks who haven't played before, they would have the same kind of comments, like "surprisingly addictive" and "a really good game."
Magic has been around for fifteen years and we know it is a great game. It is one of the best strategy games ever and probably the best TCG ever. So we just wanted to make sure we delivered it in a way that was relevant to today's gaming consumer.
What is happening on the paper end? What are you guys gearing up for?
Mark: Well we are coming to the end of the Shards of Alara block, which has been a really successful. The last set of that was Alara Reborn where every single card, if you are a Magic player this will mean something to you, every single card in the entire set is gold. But as far as things on the horizon, we are just around the corner from the launch of our Magic 2010 core set. This is one of the reasons why I think it is such an exciting time to be a Magic player.
The core sets are generally sets that we release very couple of years that are full of reprints. This time around we really reinvented the wheel with this core set. It harkens back to the very beginnings of Magic where every single card is very based in fantasy. The set is full of dragons, and vampires, and angels, and elves, and a lot of things that general fans of fantasy will be familiar with.
The other big change throughout this core set is that it is not entirely reprints. Half the cards in the set are brand new cards. We are excited about all the people that are being re-exposed or exposed for the first time for Magic through Duels, and it is a great time for them to come over and take a look at paper Magic because of this core set that comes out on July 17.
We completely changed how we are naming the editions. This, under the old naming convention, would be the eleventh edition. But because there are so many changes going on with this core set, we have completely re-titled the core set, so it is the Magic 2010 core set.
Concerning the EA-Hasbro agreement: I'm guessing Planeswalkers falls outside since it is not published by Electronic Arts. Are you guys not under that umbrella agreement?
We are. This game was specifically carved out when they were discussing that. It was certainly in development when that deal was being talked about.
Given that Planeswalkers targets new players and people who haven't played in a while, how do you go about marketing the game? There's the simple presence of being on Xbox Live, but that doesn't hit everyone. What are you guys doing on your end? Do you advertise in magazines? Are you on the web virally? What is your strategy?
Worth: It is a couple different pronged approaches. Mark alluded to the free Planeswalker promo cards, the codes that come with all the purchases. So there was that bit. It certainly was plastered all over our website. We have our product detail pages and games pages on Xbox.com on the threads in forums there.
As far as external marketing from Wizards point of view, I don't have a site list in front of me, but I did see a PR plan that included some other sites. I can't think of them off the top of my head. But I know there has been marketing for Duels on external sites.
Mark: And while we know that this game is bringing a lot of people into the brand or bringing them back into the brand, we also know that our enfranchised players are enjoying this game a lot and spreading the word and really evangelizing this game. So that has really helped in making us the number one game the first week it was released.
Worth: First two weeks.
Mark: Was it the first two weeks? That is awesome. It helps get the word out and spread the word when you have a game that is that successful. I think that the success right out of the gates is, in large part, owed to our enfranchised player base.
Worth: For sure.
Would you ever expand the single-player component? That's been a good way to jump in, especially for new players.
Worth: Definitely in the works. It probably will come with any DLC announcement like an expansion announcement or whatever. It is nothing that I can talk about right now. I do want to mention something that I forgot to earlier, that the single player experience includes a bunch of puzzles which we have gotten tons of great feedback on, on both enfranchised players and new players alike. Some of the puzzles are fairly simple. As you get up the ladder they get pretty complex. I am not sure if you have played any of them.
I have. Those are great -- and very frustrating when you get higher up the ladder.
Worth: They all have solutions. I did them all last night.
I would hope they all have solutions, or you guys would have some angry fans. So, if there was an announcement about DLC, do you think it would be something that would be coming this year, or would we look for it sometime in 2010?
Worth: Definitely this year. You guys will have an announcement of what is coming up.
Not to use Battlegrounds as a bad example, but it wasn't a game that was universally beloved. Planeswalkers has just really impressed.
Worth: I should throw a shout out to our developer. They really did a great job. Stainless Games based over in the UK. They really hit the ball out of the park on this one. They live and breathe Magic, and that was obvious from their submission when we were looking for vendors. We chose the right vendor, no question.
You mentioned Shandalar earlier. Would you guys ever do another game like that?
Worth: It is a good question. There were a lot of things that were good about Shandalar, and there were some things I think that we, as a company, considered not so good. I don't know. I think the answer is maybe. That is not a very good answer, I know.
We are definitely reevaluating how we take Magic into the digital space nowadays. That was a long time ago. There were some new learnings in the last 10 years and stuff still about that game that people love and was good.
Is Magic Online fairly active or is it still in a stasis state right now?
Worth: A lot of the people that are playing Duels are jumping into Magic Online, and we are looking into some ways that we can make that experience as smooth as possible for them as they get into Duels and they play through all of the content and they are looking for more. They can find it in Magic Online now and we are seeing that.
