Tag - game design

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Tuesday, 23 February 2021

Lessons learned working on my card game

[This is part 5 of my Study of Digital Card Games series.]

As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, I have been working on a digital CCG for several years now. As a lover of the genre — I've been playing Magic for about 20 years, and I tried as many other CCGs as I could — I want to create a game that is truly special, and different from its competition. Time will tell if I can succeed at that! Until then, here are some lessons that I've learned working on my game.

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Tuesday, 9 February 2021

History of a genre, part 2: 2017 - 2020

[This is part 3 of my Study of Digital Card Games series.]

Last time we explored the rise of the digital CCG genre. Let's now go over the end of its golden years, to get a good picture of all the major card games as of today.

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Tuesday, 2 February 2021

History of a genre, part 1: 2002 - 2016

[This is part 2 of my Study of Digital Card Games series.]

The first notable CCG that made it to the digital space was, guess who, Magic! There have been several software allowing to play the game on a computer, but the first to embrace online play was Magic: The Gathering Online, shortened as MTGO and released in 2002. The pitch is simple: it is exactly the same game, but playable on a computer with folks from all around the globe. It is still active today.

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Tuesday, 26 January 2021

It's a Kind of Magic

[This is part 1 of my Study of Digital Card Games series.]

In my intro to this series, I said I was going to focus on card games that were digital-first. Let's start with a mandatory exception to that rule: when Magic: The Gathering was released in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast, it was not (yet) a digital card game. It is, however, the Holy Father of CCGs. It is the starting point of the genre, and thus we need to start this journey with it.

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A Study of Digital Card Games

Collectible Card Games, shortened as CCGs, are a kind of card games that I have been playing for a pretty long time. I started with the Pokémon CCG when I was about 10, then got into Magic: The Gathering a few years later. I'm still playing Magic regularly today, about 20 years after I got into it. But as soon as I started playing them, I also started creating card games. I remember working on a card game on my family's computer back when I was, what, 11 years old? Since then, the idea of creating games, and creating a card game especially, never left me.

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Thursday, 22 January 2009

LesForges.org - Tutoriels sur le Game Design et le Graphisme

Si vous vous intéressez à la création de jeux vidéos, vous avez du voir qu'il existe de nombreux sites traitant du sujet, certains très généralistes, d'autres plus axés sur un aspect particulier. Sur Les Forges, on vous propose d'apprendre ou d'approfondir vos connaissances dans deux "matières" importantes du jeu vidéo : le graphisme et le game design.

Lancé en aout 2008, Les Forges se démarque des autres sites par la qualité du contenu qu'il propose. Beaucoup d'articles sont traduits de l'anglais, notamment des articles de Ernest Adams, un Game Designer reconnu. Mais les auteurs du site nous fournissent aussi quelques tutoriels de leur cru. 

Dans la section Graphisme, vous découvrirez entre autres un gros ensemble de tutoriels portant sur le Pixel Art, ainsi que la (parait-il, moi j'étais pas au courant) célèbre leçon de Arne sur le dessin, article traduit de l'anglais et qui vous donnera beaucoup de clés pour réussir vos œuvres ! 

La section Game Design s'est vue agrémentée de pas mal d'articles portant sur des points particuliers de l'art de la création de jeux vidéos, et qui sont à mon avis utiles même pour des non game designer. A lire notamment : Rendons sa magie à la magie, 14 erreurs classiques et énervantes, et Comment aller à l'essentiel et donner aux joueurs ce qu'ils veulent.

On notera également une petite fonctionnalité marrante, intitulée A la loupe (en bas du menu de gauche), et qui vous permet de zoomer sur des images en pixel art afin d'admirer la réalisation, ou bien d'en prendre de la graine pour vos futures création. Plutôt original.

Ce site souffre en revanche d'une communauté qui ne s'est pas encore suffisamment développée, malgré son bon potentiel. Certainement à cause des fonctions communautaires qui ne sont pas encore adaptées à l'accueil efficace d'une vraie communauté, mais espérons que tout ceci se règlera au fil des versions du site !