Magic The Gathering Trading Card

Magic The Gathering Trading Card Game, Wizards of the Coast's upcoming digital collectible card game, is now in open beta. Wizards of the Coast has released two new set sets of Magic: The Gathering cards in the US market today, and they're both worth spending a few bucks on.

Magic The Gathering players will find Magic The Gathering Standard and Magic Online Adventures set books in the stores, and many gamers will also be able to download booster packs to expand their collection.

GameSpot recently sat down with Wizards of the Coast to ask about the specifics of the new expansion packs, and a few of the new features that are included in the expansion packs.

GameSpot: We can tell you that the two packs in the US are part of the new "Collectible Cards." How did you get into making a card game in the first place?

Miles Teller: After spending a few bucks, I spent a couple of bucks on an authentic Magic The Gathering card set. It was really hard to get into Magic The Gathering before we even had a full time job with the team. We started building games in a few weeks and started developing concepts that we didn't have the time or money to create. When we first started the production of the Collectible Cards, we realized that the numbers were starting to get pretty high. At the beginning of the game, we had a 50-million-unit core game, but we just couldn't put out the games until we had about 5,000 or so new players. Then, after two months of development, we just had to make a sequel, and we had to build an entire new game. We were already thinking about making a very innovative game, and then, after six months of beta testing, we got ready to launch, and we were very impressed with the results. We couldn't let that happen until we could start thinking about what's next.

That was the biggest challenge we faced. The last thing we wanted to do was get us into trouble and make mistakes. First, we were already quite weak in the global market, and if you compare it to the US market, it's pretty similar, but the global population is much lower, so we're having to find a way to get us into the world we're supposed to be in.

Then we realized that we had to stop making games. We really tried to make a game with an open-ended approach, and if you look at open-ended, we can't just put people in a map and give them missions. We want to make a game that really has no linearity, where there is no ability to progress or get by.

So, we found that we had to do a pretty comprehensive map and make some design choices that we didn't want to make. It was really tough to make it into a game where it didn't have that big scope. I think when we did that, we found the player in the world looking at him. That was a really difficult aspect of developing, because when you play a game, it's always unclear why you're looking at him, but when you look at his face, he's not looking at him, because he's just trying to figure out what he's looking at. And if he's not looking at you, why aren't you looking at him? Because he's staring at you?

There's so much of that throughout the game that can be experienced when you're playing as a player.

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GS: How does the business model compare to other games? How do you use all that free time to get a player's attention, what are some advantages that other games offer, and when do you get a player's attention?

RM: First of all, it's absolutely not the cost of development. But we are being careful to take our free time and make sure that everyone is able to play. We are always adjusting the distribution based on the needs of the players. In some cases, we will give a player's attention for free, while in others we will offer players full access to the game, both for themselves and for others to try the game.

GS: The battle system used in KUF: Heroes was essentially the fantasy-themed structure from the dungeon-crawling, hack-and-slash style of KUF games. Tell us about how it fits into that direction. Will there be any such system?

RM: Not at all. We are really trying to put the player's attention and the information they are going to get at a much quicker rate than in previous KUF games.