Scrolls...ok, wtf is going on?

[FlowerChild]

So, I was just watching Total Biscuit's video on Scrolls, and I'm at a bit of a loss here. It looks good. It looks well thought out. I actually feel the urge to buy it.

So...wtf?

It's obvious to me that Mojang has design talent other than Notch (I had my doubts about this before), so why the fuck is Minecraft currently so neglected on the design front?

My theories so far:

-They really don't give a fuck about Minecraft, as nonsensical as that sounds. As I've said before, it's the company's cash-cow, so why they wouldn't give it more love is a mystery to me.

-They have a designer in-house that REALLY knows collectible card games, but isn't so well versed in other areas of gaming, and thus excels at designing something like Scrolls, but is largely clueless when it comes to something like MC.

No idea if either of those are true, but they're the theories that have occurred to me so far.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? It's a real head scratcher for me.

[Katalliaan]

Looking around, it was actually done by Jakob Porser and Notch, with help on the AI from Jon Kagstrom. Porser's got a bit of history - back in November 2010, he claimed on his Twitter to have 4.5 years of experience working as a game designer for king.com (flash games), and his Minecraft wiki page shows 8 games prior to Scrolls. As far as I'm aware, Porser hasn't done anything with Minecraft.

[Sarudak]

What's so great about it?

[FlowerChild]

What's so great about it?

I think the main thing for me is that it adds an additional tactical layer in terms of positioning and such on a hex-grid, which has always been a big deal for me with such games.

When I used to be into table-top card games of this type, I remember the old Star Trek game (this was around 20 years ago) was one of my favorites because it branched into exactly that kind of thing (in a different way mind you involving placing planet cards which you'd move ships between).

Ultimately, more standard games of this type grew old for me because I found they were lacking in that kind of depth, so when I saw Scrolls in action, it struck a very strong design chord with me.

I guess if I were to assign it the standard quick one line design blurb, I'd say it strikes me as "Magic meets Heroes".

[Sarudak]

Ah. I remember that. I user to play the old star wars CCG with my dad all the time and it had space and land location cards and the land locations could be indoors or outdoors. That game was so complicated. :P

[FlowerChild]

To elaborate a bit further on the above point (and this is something Total Biscuit echoed in his analysis), what I find with more standard games of this type like Magic, is that most of the actual play occurs during deck creation rather than within the game itself, where once you know the basics, you tend to become a bit of automaton in terms of which cards you play and how. There are very few important decisions which you wind up making during play itself.

By adding an additional tactical layer, it turns the game itself into more of a game where unit positioning and such become important considerations, engaging you more in the process.

It impresses me that the Scrolls design seems to have identified and targeted that aspect so specifically, as IMO, it's been a consistent failing of most such games over the past twenty years. I obviously haven't played it myself, but from watching that vid, I think it will be very addictive and successful as a result.

[FlowerChild]

Ah. I remember that. I user to play the old star wars CCG with my dad all the time and it had space and land location cards and the land locations could be indoors or outdoors. That game was so complicated. :P

Yes, it was, and I suspect that's why it never caught on more and largely became a forgotten chapter in the history of those kinds of games. However, IMO, it was just the tip of the iceburg in terms of what could have been done had it been pursued further. I know me and my gaming group rapidly came up with rules modifications like creating a 2D grid of planets to play on instead of the standard linear ones, accommodating more than 2 players in the process (something that the Scrolls design seems ill suited for),that turned it into something really special.

One of the big advantages of doing such games on a computer though is you can greatly reduce the complexity the player has to deal with directly since the game automatically handles the rules aspects, leaving the player to focus on the actual decisions that make such an experience an interesting gameplay experience.

[Rianaru]

Just from 'Magic meets Heroes' I'm already drooling. Time to go check it out!

[FlowerChild]

Just from 'Magic meets Heroes' I'm already drooling. Time to go check it out!

Hehe...sorry, old game industry habit. It was often advisable when presenting a game design to have a one line summary like that at the beginning that would give people an immediate impression of what you're trying to do relative to existing games.

[Stormweaver]

Just from 'Magic meets Heroes' I'm already drooling. Time to go check it out!

Hehe...sorry, old game industry habit. It was often advisable when presenting a game design to have a one line summary like that at the beginning that would give people an immediate impression of what you're trying to do relative to existing games.

What would BTW's one line summary be? If you don't mind me asking.

[DaveYanakov]

That's what I loved about Eve Online's CCG experiment. Not only did you have to manage your resources to buy your mobile units with which to attack and defend, you could spend resources to open up new sectors open to all players for exploitation and then would need to divide your fleet between them. There were still asshole deck options for the people who were into that sort of thing like the unassailable economy deck and control decks but overall it was enough fun that even after it was discontinued I bought three display cases of boosters so that I would have enough cards for friends to build decks out of them.

As for Minecraft being a cash cow, the problem is that what they are doing is working as a way to milk it. Notch made a promise way back in early development that early adopters would never pay for expansion packs which seems to have resulted in an avoidance of expansions altogether. Instead they keep pushing fluff content with broad mass appeal and sell another million licenses every update. It is literally printing money for them.

The downside being that if FC hadn't been so positive about this, I would have completely ignored Scrolls. I am doubly concerned because it seems like CCGs invented the entire concept of 'perpetual development' even before MMOs hit the scene.

[Sarudak]

Yeah I had no intention of ever buying scrolls. Now I'm a bit interested though...

[Rianaru]

Hehe...sorry, old game industry habit. It was often advisable when presenting a game design to have a one line summary like that at the beginning that would give people an immediate impression of what you're trying to do relative to existing games.

Well, that's one of the reasons that I do some research on games that I'm told are good before I actually buy them :)

[FlowerChild]

Yeah I had no intention of ever buying scrolls. Now I'm a bit interested though...

Yeah, that was basically my reaction. I think I largely watched that vid with the thought of "ok, let's see how harshly the realities of the game industry are going to smack Mojang around now", and walked away thinking "oh wow...I think this is actually going to succeed and I want to play it". I somehow feel dirty even considering a purchase given what they've been doing with MC, yet I still am. Also, given how pissed off I've gotten at Mojang in the past for their decisions with regards to MC, and how they've diverted resources away from its ongoing development for what seemed to be these total tangent games, I have a hard time swallowing potentially supporting that move through buying one of them.

Total Biscuit actually echoes much of my surprise in that vid, talking about how rare it is to see a studio pop out a game in a completely unrelated genre to their previous and have it be good. This really is hitting me out of left field.

What would BTW's one line summary be? If you don't mind me asking.

Errr...I never really considered it seeing as how BTW is a mod rather than a standalone (I HAVE thought a lot about it for RTH though, but am not ready to share that part), and given how BTW evolved organically with no clear vision of where it was going at the start beyond those first six blocks. It just always "was" without any real need to compare it to existing stuff :)

Maybe "MC meets Dwarf Fortress meets Don't Starve" or something along those lines. Of course, one of those games didn't exist at all when I started, and the other I only learned about and tried about a year ago, but yeah, that's what comes off the top of my head.

[Wafflewaffle]

It's obvious to me that Mojang has design talent other than Notch (I had my doubts about this before), so why the fuck is Minecraft currently so neglected on the design front?

They are hipsters! You know when a rock band that has been too long away from the mainstream gets a hit on the radio and makes millions? That rock band HATES that song, cuz now they need to play it in every possible ocasion. That rock band is mojang, that hit song is Minecraft.

[FlowerChild]

Actually, I will say that the one line summaries often fail with truly innovative games (which makes them doubly difficult to "sell" as designs).

Like, MC is a great example for me as it largely defines a genre. What would it have been summarized as beforehand? "Dwarf Fortress meets Quake?". That's the best I can come up with off the top of my head, and it's a pretty terrible description.

I think the same is somewhat true for BTW as well, as it's primarily pushing the engineering & survival aspects of MC, with it being rather hard to find existing iconic games about those subjects. These are largely all new genres.

MC meets Bridge Builder or something I guess, but again...really shitty description.

[DaveYanakov]

What would BTW's one line summary be? If you don't mind me asking.

Minecraft meets gameplay

[Thorium-232]

Minecraft meets gameplay

If this were reddit, someone would jump in with the "List of Burn Centers in the US" link right about here.

[Gilberreke]

I remember seeing the potential in Scrolls in one of the first vids they showed it off in. If you see it too, then I'm actually a bit reassured that this will be my third Mojang purchase (I own a key to Cobalt too).

In fact, I don't know how many of you have tried Cobalt, but it's rather nice too, for what it is. Haven't played in a long while though, maybe they ruined it in the meanwhile.

[Vexalor]

I personally think Scrolls looks pretty interesting also. Don't know if I'm convinced enough to buy it quite this early in development, but it definitely looks to be of much better quality than I expected.

Anyways, I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that many of the developments in Mojang as a whole have been in the works for quite some time. I think that Mojang may be passing from the passionate dedication of the indie developer to the capricious economy of the professional game company. They seem to be behaving more as a company now than anything else. Minecraft is old news now, which is sad, but Mojang believes they can do better elsewhere. They believe that they have to move on to producing the next product, the next big idea, and above all they want to be more than just the business facet of Notch's great brainchild, Minecraft.

I am under the impression that Notch's move to move on and take Mojang elsewhere began quite some time ago, and, in fact, possibly with the "full release" of Minecraft 1.0 bullshit. That should have been a sign to all of us that Notch was beginning to think of finishing Minecraft up. Minecraft has been finished for quite some time now, to be honest. Even though it's ostensibly still under development, it isn't. Notch is gone, and Mojang has diverted all of its real resources out. I may be one of the few who thinks that Mojang knows exactly the level of game design ability exemplified by people like Dinnerbone, and that he is in charge of Minecraft and not one of their other projects for a reason. The fact that they have all of their more experienced and creative people out of Minecraft should make it pretty clear where Mojang the company intends to go.

I believe that, when the port to Xbox is complete, Minecraft will be through. There really isn't much left to it in the eyes of Mojang. Clearly incompetent people like Dinnerbone have been assigned to handle Minecraft in order to hopefully fulfill some long un-kept promises and so as not to "disappoint" the Minecraft fanbase by ending Minecraft's spirit of ongoing development with so many promised features not in the game. The real tragedy here is not that Mojang wants to give up/finish up on Minecraft, it's that they decided to try and stretch out its lifetime by putting terrible game designers like Dinnerbone on its development rather than just finally declaring it finished like reasonable people.

[logorouge]

Wow. Color me surprised, because I am. I kinda expected crap and what I saw in that video seems pretty good and intriguing. On one side, I'm a huge fan of that kind of game. On the other side, it's made by Mojang. I'm kinda torn here.

[Six]

Like, MC is a great example for me as it largely defines a genre. What would it have been summarized as beforehand? "Dwarf Fortress meets Quake?". That's the best I can come up with off the top of my head, and it's a pretty terrible description.

"Dwarf Fortress meets Lego".

[FlowerChild]

"Dwarf Fortress meets Lego".

I do believe that's worse :)

Dwarf Fortress already implies Lego given it's a voxel based game in which you can build anything you want. I said "Quake" given that MC is in a first person perspective.

Anyways, it doesn't matter. Was just using it as an example of how some games are much more difficult to classify through relating them to existing games if they're particularly innovative.

[FlowerChild]

Clearly incompetent people like Dinnerbone...

Just wanted to return to this for a second:

I really don't think we should be going this far. I'm harder on Dinnerbone than most...yes, but I also always try to make an effort to state that's based on lack of experience in design, which he can not be faulted for, and that the responsibility rests with those that put him in that position.

As far as I can tell, he's a kid (I think he's only in his early twenties) that wound up in the absolutely ludicrous position of being handed a huge amount of control over one of the biggest gaming properties on the planet.

So as much flack as I give him, I DO sympathize with him there, and the position he's been put in, and I do think calling him incompetent is going too far. I'm sure he's a fine programmer, but man, talk about being thrown into the deep end.

I can understand the frustration people feel over the turn MC has taken, but I would urge some restraint when it comes to directing blame like that.

[johnt]

Eventually someone is going to introduce a next-gen voxel-based game that will obsolete minecraft, but it'll have to be vastly and obviously superior to minecraft for it to catch on.

Notch could have put a bunch of people to work developing Minecraft 2.0, but minecraft 2 could have been Asheron's Call 2 or Everquest 2. Since minecraft's success is so dependent on network affects, who knows how many people would have jumped ship.

I'm not sure that putting a bunch of designers to work developing Minecraft further would have been a great idea either, because then you'd have had 100 dinnerbones adding in pointless features instead of just a few people.

I think maybe the best idea would have been to hire a bunch of independent mod teams to develop paid-for DLC packs after 1.0 was released(closer to The Sims model) and mostly focus on developing the api and features for modders internally.