Garfield, if you didn't know, also made a little game called Magic: The Gathering. Sounds like Valve is bringing out some heavy hitters to work on their new PC games. There are a lot of new looks at the game around the web if you search for Richard Garfield or Artifact; this preview from Ars Technica is pretty in-depth.

I'm kind of surprised that I never got into Hearthstone or any of the other digital CCGs very much, considering how much I liked Magic and Star Wars CCG in the real world. There's something about handling and moving cards around on a table that seems to be an integral part of the experience for me. But Garfield's involvement is a big plus.

Also of note is Gabe Newell explicitly saying that Valve is going to start shipping "games" again, plural. No real news there; they've said they've been working on VR stuff for a while now, but hopefully there's some meaty SP stuff in there.

I’m cautiously curious like for all digital CCGs. I played most of them but none kept my interest for more than a few weeks.

I find them interesting to look at mechanically, but as someone who’s not very competitive, they rarely have enough single player content for me. Still I was curious when it got announced and knowing that Garfield is working on it mkea even more interested to see how it plays.

The emphasize on the marketplace might be a deal breaker for me. They said some commons could be as cheap as pennies, but I'm more curious about how much the meta cards will be. Decks are 40 cards minimum so the cost for a competitive deck could mount quickly. I also wonder how balancing will work with all their talk about cards retaining value. It would be a bummer if I invested in a deck that later gets nerfed. Would I just have to deal with my deck losing its value?

I kinda just want to play a card game. I don't want to have to "bargain hunt" in the market place, sell off cards or trade with others. The only card game I've been really into is Gwent. CDPR has made some questionable decisions, but one of the things they got right was the F2P aspect of it.

As far as gameplay, it looks interesting. I'll definitely try it out.

Jesus Christ, this website really twisted my reaction to the name Garfield recently.

From the previews I read I didn't see anything that was gonna make it stand out. If anything it seemed to me like the DOTA tie-in sorta over-complicates the whole thing, which is the same mistake all these other CCGs coming out in Hearthstones wake has been doing as well. Much of the success of MTG and HS lies in their simplicity. All you need to know to play those games successfully is that you put cards from your hand on to the board and you use cards on the board to attack, that's it. There's no or laborious scoring systems or phases or lanes or board grids or triggered events or anything, it's just cards. All the complexity comes from card text and card text alone.

The most original idea we've seen is Gwent with its removal of combat, but they completely abandoned that ship a long time ago. I realize that game had issues with interactivity, but there are other paths they could've gone down rather than "power is now health, and half of the cards in the game now deal damage on play". Hell, they were already halfway there with some of the mechanics they had in before things went down (like reveal and mulligan focused decks).

Edit: Oh wow, didn't realize they weren't going f2p. Good luck Valve.

Here's a recording of Gabe Newell's presentation. I found it more interesting to hear Gabe talk about Valve's ideas for the game, directly, than read some games writer's regurgitation (i.e. primary source preference).

My favorite image I saw was with two heroes dead on dire and one on radiant they had Phantom Assassin vs a dire melee creep.

Other than having Garfield's name attached to it, which has actually piqued my interest, the fact it's listed as "not free to play" has me very curious. I highly doubt that'll mean they aren't charging for card packs but it does seem a weird thing to call out. Maybe paid tickets for specific modes like MTGO?

That said, if someone wants to make a video game CCG that actually doesn't suck, two non-core-gameplay features it has to have are 1, a proper draft mode, and 2, trading. The only digital CCG I've seen with proper trading so far was Scrolls and it was one of the reasons I actually liked it. Systems like that of Hearthstone where you dust cards and get absolutely fucked over on their value are entirely designed to grind more money out of players and push me away. Trading is part of the fun of a CCG.

@savage: Oh, this actually answers all my questions! A proper pack based draft mode and selling cards via the marketplace. I hope there is also just direct trading to avoid marketplace fees but somehow I doubt it. Definitely interested.