Sandscape Spectator Mode and Treasure Cards

[Mudskipper]

NOTE: The ideas in this post are very rough, so feel free to voice any complaints you may have

I was looking through some articles on MTG pro players to get an idea of how top-level tcg play works, when I came across this:

Even though there is more money that can be made in professional poker than in professional Magic, Williams has said he will continue to play both games, although poker will take precedence. Like many who play both, he has asserted that the two are for different purposes: he plays Magic to have fun, and poker to make money.

Meanwhile, a college basketball player named Gordon Hayward had quit a career playing basketball to pursue what he said was a more lucrative job: streaming Starcraft II. You can check it out in this (totally condescending) article from cbs sports.

http://www.cbssports.com/mcc/blogs/entr ... 4/31802184

So if people can make big bucks streaming Starcraft, why aren't people making more money streaming MTG?

The truth is, while video games have developed new and innovative ways to stream and vidcast live matches, online card games and events have stagnated in terms of keeping up with current competitive gaming trends. Obviously you can't treat it like starcraft, but you'd figure there would be SOME WAY people could make a little dough streaming TCG gameplay.

Well, what if our project offered that feature? What if people could make a bit of money via crowdfunded livestreams on Sandscape?

Basically, here's how it would work, assuming you added a feature like this. Let's say you have two kinds of members logged in to the WT community: your free and premium members. Free members get all cards, ranked gameplay, and access to online tournaments via event tickets they can buy. Premium members however, can access online tournaments for free, save replays and have acess to "dynamic payouts" during matches.

Here's the cool part: Basically, a "dynamic payout" is essentially a cash donation given to a player by people currently spectating his game. For example, let's say you have a popular youtuber who invites people to his sandscape lobby to spectate a live match. Now suppose you have upwards of 1,500 people spectating this thing, and many of them make a 1-10 buck donation. That could potentially be a HUGE draw for people in the MTG/WoW TCG scene who feel the game isn't lucrative enough. But you might be asking yourself, "why would people donate?"

Well, to get Treasure Cards!

Imagine if you had your normal WT cards, and "Treasure Cards", rare variants of the normal cards tiered in Bronze, Silver Gold and Diamond rarities. donating 1 dollar might get you a common bronze, but donating 15-20 dollars would get you a gold or diamond rare. These cards would be playable online and printable, while retaining their value by being "imprinted" with the donator's online username and the event or stream they were attending also printed on the card.

So for example, let's say Don ("Smileyman") is spectating MTGPro128, and donates 15 bucks to his stream. he gets a Diamond Rare ogre with that says Smileyman- Spectated [MTGPro128]
for his collection. If someone else were to print and use his card, it would still be valid, but considered a "dirty rare", since the person using it isn't "Smileyman"

The biggest potential problem with WT is the fact that, while you're eliminating the biggest balance issue in TCGS (high prices and card rarity), you're also getting rid of a huge draw for them (collecting, rarity). With this system, you could have both your balance, and a sense of collecting for those who want to do so. It also offers streamers and pro players a reason to go premium and hopfully make a little cash on the side as well

Now, I have no clue how you would implement something like that (Paypal?), but if it were a possibility, it would pretty much put WT above very other competitor out there currently.

[snowdrop]

NOTE: The ideas in this post are very rough, so feel free to voice any complaints you may have

I don't think people are entitled to really "complain" It's a public forum and you voice your thoughts and ideas of how we could potentially work. Criticism however is another thing (and always good when it is creative or otherwise anchored in facts) and the same goes for a dialogue.

I was looking through some articles on MTG pro players to get an idea of how top-level tcg play works,

I got curious about what parts of the top-level play you were researching: Was it the money part and how to earn of a CCG as a player, or other aspects? I haven't paid much attention to this myself eithe . Would be nice to get more research on it written up properly. Some kind of paper on top ccg culture, who the players are, why they play, from where, what background class wise etc etc.

My own understanding is that it's usually 17 to 27 year olds that partake in pro ccg competition, usually white, middle class, almost only male, and with of course a really good understanding of the meta game. That's key.

what he said was a more lucrative job: streaming Starcraft II.

Didn't read the article, but if it's true he can quit a normal job by just streaming/commenting while other people work/play then creds to him. Usually you can't get away with that if you don't already happen to have a huge company backing you with exposure OR a name in the community OR happen to "famous" already for some other lame reason like getting puke in your face on some docu-show.

So if people can make big bucks streaming Starcraft, why aren't people making more money streaming MTG?

Because of the form of presentation:

1. Tempo: SC is fast and furious.
2. Visuals: SC is constantly moving and has nice animations etc.
3. Audio: SC has relevant sound effects that enchant what happens, which seldom makes sense in any CCG I have ever seen due to the otherwise static nature of the visuals and the synergy visual-audio.
4. Excitement: Due to mainly tempo paragraph it is hard to comment a game of chess, or MtG, Poker or Monopoly for that matter, in a way that stimulates excitement. Compare that with most other sports, including e-sports like RTS:s and FPS:s.

The truth is, while video games have developed new and innovative ways to stream and vidcast live matches, online card games and events have stagnated in terms of keeping up with current competitive gaming trends.

I don't follow: You don't need anything to screencast anything. You can record any game you want and just edit it and then slap it on youtube or equivalent. Obviously this isn't as cool as the real time thing, but what does the real time thing ADD to the viewer (other than the eco issue you present later)?

We could make an experiment. I could play a game of something, and ask you to watch. 50% of the times I would stream live. 50% of the time you'd see a pre-recorded game. In all cases you would never know what you were looking at, if it was pre-rec or live. How would it matter for your perception? It would be identical games played. (Given spectators don't chat or interact with players, which would be a disaster if they did in any competitive game anyhow)

but you'd figure there would be SOME WAY people could make a little dough streaming TCG gameplay.

I'm not sure why anyone would pay for watching others play computer games. Unless of course they happen to be players themselves and want to improve their technique etc. Paradoxically this can be done in SC partly by just giving people the summary at the end of the game, 3 screenshots of it, where your build order shows, and with 2 lines of text describing what each player did. Showing actual microing isn't necessary. It's suffcient to know "he microd casters half the game" to understand what the deal was. Same can be said about a ccg by looking at deck build lists. Usually I can tell you who will win a game before it even starts by just looking at the decks. (And that's a good thing, else it would be zero-skill)

Wouldn't be easier to get people to pay for premium crap that isn't really functional in a relevant way (for example: bigger avatar in forum, nickname in colour x, created games are listed first in lists, etc etc)? It seems it's easier to get an active persons money than a passive viewers, even if the two are probably the same in most gaming communities.

Basically, a "dynamic payout" is essentially a cash donation given to a player by people currently spectating his game.

What would happen more often than not is that people join games that they dont really intend to watch or are interested in, donate whatever, and split. "Spectator" mode becomes more like "entering the shop" kind of thing. I don't see it working, even if I think it would indeed be nice if people could donate to other players should they want to (but what's keeping them from doing that? Hey, my paypal is whatever@mail.com - gimme all your cash! )

Now suppose you have upwards of 1,500 people spectating this thing, and many of them make a 1-10 buck donation. That could potentially be a HUGE draw for people in the MTG/WoW TCG scene who feel the game isn't lucrative enough. But you might be asking yourself, "why would people donate?"

To have 1 500 spectators you would have to have at least 15 000 players in the community, more or less active. Sufficient to say, this won't happen the coming 3-5 years for us. But hey, who knows, I actually hope I'm wrong about our growth once we have a release.

What I think is your goal here is to make WT a lucrative game to play in the sense that you can earn money by playing it. I don't think that can be done in a way that makes it more lucrative than, say, Poker, for obvious reasons.. one being that poker was designed for that purpose. Nor would we be able to compete with MtG on that front. The payouts are huge, and they have Hasbro backing them, and you can't beat those guys in those regards.

Question is what the point would be to do so in the first place? What is the objective? I assume, maybe wrongly, that you want WT to be economically interesting for players since you believe that it will get us more players(?). So if you can win a million dollars by being the WT champ, then we will get more players.

I agree with that notion, but if you compare the trouble and efforts we would have to go through with how many new players that will come to us that wouldn't have come otherwise if the money-winning wasn't around, then I think it won't be worth it. At least not if you consider what this implies: Would we really want to build people's interest in the game on the basis of them earning cash of it? I'd say no.

People that come to a community, no matter if it's sports or e-sports or boardgames, for the sole purpose of earning cash, will more often than not really contribute to the community in ways that people that are a part of it for the fun and loving of it probably do. I don't think "i'm here to grab cash"-attitude empowers a community. Maybe that's also why I haven't heard of the great solidarity or "tightness" of the poker community?

Communities and player bases should in my opinion be built on the quality of the game. That is the center of a game. Cash prizes etc are merely artificial stimulators that the community could in some cases benefit from, but that in the long run doesn't really matter much - once the cash crop is emptied they are gone.

If we want more chess players in the world we could stimulate growth of interest in chess with huge cash prizes, as if they aren't enough already. But would those that seek out chess really be in it for the game? For the fun of it? For the liking of it? Or did it become just another dayjob, much like some pokerplayers try to earn a living by playing poker online 24/7? What groups do we want to attract and why?

I think those are all relevant community building questions and that it paves way for an interesting discussion. Again, research and better understanding of community building would be required, as I'm not stating it is like I suggest. I just point out what I fear and see as probable.

Besides - WT people that want to earn cash can do so of each other. Say we arrange a championship and it costs 10 bucks to partake. Say we keep 10% for arranging it all, and that the what we keep goes into creating new cards for the world (no profit), and that the rest is divided by the top x players depending on rank.

So... say 100 players sign up. That's realistic and modest and easily achieved.

100 players x 10 dollars = 1000 dollars - 100 to us (yay, one new card!) = 900 dollars total prize pot

Rank / cash prize

1. 500 dollars
2. 300 dollars
3. 100 dollars

... all just an example. You can arrange any torunament you want with any entry fee you want, like for example one for adults only that can probably afford higher fees in ranges of 100 dollars per person.

Sure, it's not the 40k the top mtg player gets, but keep in mind how and why he can get those money: A certain company has tricked thousands of other people into buying useless cards from booster packs etc, kept most of the profit, and now hand out some of the crumbs back to the community as a "thank you for making us richer". It's kind of ironic.

Well, to get Treasure Cards!

We will allow faked rarity in whatever system WT will run, but, and this is a huge but: No real rarity will exist in WT. All cards will always be free and easily obtainable from the site. That however, doesn't mean they have to be the same within system x.

Example: I code an app that runs on crap-phone (no brands mentioned, they just have labour that rather commit mass suicide of the factory roof than work in their sweatshops..). It's a single player WT app that allows you duel the phone. You can if you are stupid enough pay me to unlock new better cards that will improve your decks, since you, in the app, won't start with all cards in the first place.

Above just shows one way of somehow implementing fake restrictions within a framework/system, while it in reality affects nothing of our open nature as a project: WT will still be free for all to play on whatever system somebody ported it to and made it runable for free. Today that would be gCCG, lackeyCCG and maybe OTCGN3. All would allow you to play for free, always, with any cards you want, and zero rarity. Then again, gCCG allows faked rarity in addition, and also a market for cards etc, should you want to "collect". And other systems can easily be devised - it's a just a matter of programming. And "somebody" doing it.

All is in accordance with the GPL. Officially though, no cards that cost will ever outpower, outmatch or somehow offer anything at all that is not already offered by it's free version. Meaning, treasurecards or such wouldn't be official WT cards, even if they could exist within the realms of a system (say the craphone app's). If we ever release "rare" offfical cards, and I think we should, then the only thing that would ever be different on them is their visuals. Never stats, never name, never wording. They'd just have alt visuals.

The biggest potential problem with WT is the fact that, while you're eliminating the biggest balance issue in TCGS (high prices and card rarity), you're also getting rid of a huge draw for them (collecting, rarity)

"Forge" allows you to play MtG against an AI and it fakes rarity. You begin with scarcity and have few cards, and you only get new ones at random when you beat an opponent. That can easily be made in WT. It can already be done in gCCG as well, and in any system you implement it in.

Us giving out all cards doesn't hinder the collector from collecting. Trust me on that.

[Mudskipper]

Accidental double post, please ignore

[Mudskipper]

Looking back on your posts and my explanation, I don't think I explained this concept very well. It's very complicated, and some of the "spectator mode" stuff needs a bit more explaning from my POV as a PC game commentator.

I think you make a very good case against the idea of dynamic payouts, and I probably should have presented this whole topic as a question rather than an idea. Still, I think it brought some concepts to light that I think deserve to be looked at, and I'll explain what those are in a bit.

I got curious about what parts of the top-level play you were researching: Was it the money part and how to earn of a CCG as a player, or other aspects? I haven't paid much attention to this myself eithe . Would be nice to get more research on it written up properly. Some kind of paper on top ccg culture, who the players are, why they play, from where, what background class wise etc etc.

My own understanding is that it's usually 17 to 27 year olds that partake in pro ccg competition, usually white, middle class, almost only male, and with of course a really good understanding of the meta game. That's key.

Generally speaking, that assumption is correct. The pro MTG community is a little more diverse though, with some pro players being poker stars, game shop owners and people who grew up with the game and have a knack for it.

A good example of a pro player is David Williams, who you can see here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiFdhvm-lv0

Another good resource for learning about pro MTG players is the kindle book "Quest for the Pro Tour", written by Jamie Wakefield. He's a bit more on the "geeky" side of things, having been a D&D player before making it to the MTG stuff. I think finding a good balance for the people who want to get into the lore and fantasy aspect of WT and people who just want to play the game for the customization and strategy is a good idea, personally.

Beyond that you have WoW, which really mostly appeals to the WoW people, and Yu-Gi-Oh!, which is mostly played by kids, but has a following among the anime community and is basically like Magic in Japan. I really don't have a very extensive knowledge of any of these games besides Magic, but I think the interest in the TCG genre goes beyond what you'd think.

For example, a little app called "Rage of Bahamut" is pretty much the top-grossing game on andriod currently. And it just happens to be a TCG-type thing. A shoddy and poorly done one, but a TCG nonetheless. It also seems to be popular among the 17-27 year old facebook/reddit crowd, which are the kinds of people who we should probably promote this game to. Another game popular among that crowd is "Shadow Era", which is actually a halfway-decent game, albeit with lame artwork and terrible background music.

Sorry I kind of veered off into "TCG players in general", but marketing is kinda where I was going with this whole concept, and cash prizes are a VERY good draw, even if they're small. ALL the games listed above (with the exception of Bahamut) have cash prizes as draws for players.

Because of the form of presentation:

There are many people who commentate MTGO and DotP and get a ton of subs, as well as people who post "deck techs" and stuff for the physical cards. What I don't see though, is an emphasis on livestreaming public games and built-in tools for commentators and recorders such as being able to bring up and highlight card abilities and costs rather than just maximizing the card itself, bringing up scores like many other e-sport focused games do (such as ATK/DEF, Influence, token counts, etc) and making the game overall feel more "pro". Again, this is all a personal opinion, but I think if you openly embrace the "pro" side of the game, people will love you for it.

Obviously you can't fully mimic the kind of stuff Starcraft and LoL have to offer, but there are little things you could do aesthetically to make sure people commentating and livestreaming can easily point out stats and abilities on a smaller screen. Remember, commentators are essentially advertising your game for free, and will probably be spreading details about the game via youtube, reddit, facebook, etc. Providing tools that appeal to PC gamers as well as TCG players will generate more interest in both respective communities, especially on the the PC/Mac/Linux side of things.

I'm not sure why anyone would pay for watching others play computer games.

well, people pay to watch stuff like MLG, Star League, etc, but the idea as I suggested it was basically just to sell treasure cards, which ended up being a terrible concept (more on that later)

Wouldn't be easier to get people to pay for premium crap that isn't really functional in a relevant way (for example: bigger avatar in forum, nickname in colour x, created games are listed first in lists, etc etc)? It seems it's easier to get an active persons money than a passive viewers, even if the two are probably the same in most gaming communities.

You're totally right on this. I would peronally rather not charge people for avatars and colored names though. Selling stuff like digital playmats and event tickets with premium members getting that stuff free among other things sounds (to me anyway) like the way to go.

the again, I have no idea how Sandscape will actually function in the end, so all of this is mere speculation.

We could make an experiment. I could play a game of something, and ask you to watch. 50% of the times I would stream live. 50% of the time you'd see a pre-recorded game. In all cases you would never know what you were looking at, if it was pre-rec or live. How would it matter for your perception? It would be identical games played. (Given spectators don't chat or interact with players, which would be a disaster if they did in any competitive game anyhow)





There's a big difference between live and post comms, with post comms being more strategy-focused or analyzing past games, and live comms being more interactive, such as for giveaways, opening digital boosters, or just watching someone play live without a scripted dialouge. Also, players sometimes DO chat or interact with players via tweets, messages and more. It's actually quite common for streamers to do that in non-comp games.

Without comms though, yeah you really couldn't tell the difference.

What I think is your goal here is to make WT a lucrative game to play in the sense that you can earn money by playing it. I don't think that can be done in a way that makes it more lucrative than, say, Poker, for obvious reasons.. one being that poker was designed for that purpose. Nor would we be able to compete with MtG on that front. The payouts are huge, and they have Hasbro backing them, and you can't beat those guys in those regards.

I would have to be koo-koo for cocoa puffs insane to think that any TCG could get close to Poker in terms of cash prizes. And obviously competing with MTG is out of the question, as it's THE game currently. Again, I don't think I phrased my original post very well, as the intent was not to imply that Wt could compete with poker, mtg, etc, but to suggest crowd-sourced payouts ala Kickstarter as draws for players who are into that kind of thing.

As for marketing the game solely on the basis of cash, I think that's a terrible idea, as we don't have a large company or even a large following of people backing us up currently. However, if the game draws gamers with promises of being a player-driven, fully customizable game, I think considering crowdsourced prizes by the players for the players might not be a bad idea.

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Besides - WT people that want to earn cash can do so of each other. Say we arrange a championship and it costs 10 bucks to partake. Say we keep 10% for arranging it all, and that the what we keep goes into creating new cards for the world (no profit), and that the rest is divided by the top x players depending on rank.

THIS is a much more feasible and better implementation of a crowdfunded competition than anything I suggested earlier. I really wan't thinking in any number-crunchingly realistic way, but rather, suggesting a vague and highly conceptual idea. This however, seems attractive, kickstarter-ish and totally doable. Profit would be nice though too

If we ever release "rare" offfical cards, and I think we should, then the only thing that would ever be different on them is their visuals. Never stats, never name, never wording. They'd just have alt visuals.

That's really the idea of the treasure cards. same cards you get fore free, but with an alt background of a bronze, silver, gold or diamond rarity, and maybe alt art or something. No power advantages, simply aesthetic fluff given away as a sort of "thank you" for donating. If you got a Diamond orc for instance, it would still be the same orc everyone has, only with a variant background and maybe different art.

I could see them being sold on their own, as an optional asthetic collectible bought in digital "packs".

Well, thanks for taking the time to respond to my post. Looking back, a lot of the suggested ideas really didn't make sense, but as I mentioned before, I think it raised some questions that should be addressed.