this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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Pokémon.
They were the original creators of the Pokemon TCG, and when TPC decided they’d start printing the cards without the involvement of WOtC, they responded with some “scorched earth” nonsense. These guys have needed to touch grass for years.
That being said, I’m surprised there’s no open source TCG.
The problem with an open source TCG is that you need a way to balance it, which can be hard with a distributed group of designers not in communication with each other. You definitely couldn't design something in a paper format; maybe as a computer card game.
I’m sorry, but that’s not true at all.
It’s not hard to balance it if you treat it like open source software. There’s still an owner that controls what is “official”. If you want to suggest changes, you make a pull request, as you would with software development, which either gets denied or approved by the owner of the official project. If you don’t like the direction the official game is going, you can “fork” it, call it a fork of the original if the license requires it, and you are now the owner of that fork, able to make whatever changes you’d like.
Open Source does not, at all, imply a lack of control. Blender is open source, but the Blender Foundation still has very strong control over what ends up in the codebase.
To that end, you can suggest balancing changes to the game project, and the owner of the project can approve or deny it.
As far as a paper or digital game goes, either one works. If someone wanted to print the cards and sleeve them, they can. We did that for proxy cards in Pokemon.
If someone wanted to create a higher-quality card, they could. Distribution might be difficult, but I can absolutely see someone selling a set of these cards on Etsy. That would be a challenge for whoever is interested in doing so.
The same goes for digital. The official project wouldn’t even have its own game, it would leave that to the creativity of the community and whoever is interested in doing that, and those projects could be listed by the project owner.
It is even if you balance in an open source environment. "Closed source" successful games still have to invest substantial funds to playtesting. In an open source system, you are developing in the open. This is going to split the game already into beta and stable. You also probably aren't going to get individual cards approved since you need to design around the interactions between cards.
So now you have multiple versions of the game floating around with sets of approved cards. Unlike M:tG, these sets are developed to not be compatible and it may be difficult to figure out what sets are legal in the version you are playing.
And you still have the development process, which is hard to fix once you print cardboard.
I'm not talking about foils, but categorically better cards. You are going to have card developers with a vested interest to make sure their cards get played, and that generally means making cards at a higher power level.
It's worth mentioning that while developing in the open is the standard in the git era, it's not a requirement for open source and for a project that would benefit doing otherwise they could easily just do big releases with the source available and the proper licensing.
That said, I think this is overcomplicating things. You could simply have a nonprofit organizational body who designs in-house just as Wizards does and releases the final product into the public domain or under Creative Commons licenses. Unofficial cards compatible with your game will more or less be the same as they are for Magic: optional modules that are clearly not part of your vision for the game and so playgroups must choose if they want to play the game your organization produces or an expansion to it.
I agree your approach would be the way to handle it and it has been done for some games.
But I would call fan designed games open source. There is a closed organization designing it, even if it is non-profit.
Assuming you meant to type "wouldn't," I think you may be a little off on what you think free and open source software entails. It doesn't imply an open design process or anything of that kind, though it does lend itself well to those workflows. It instead describes what the end user has the freedom to do with what they receive. This is true of both of the philosophically different but practically similar "open source" and "free software" definitions.
In the software world, FOSS developers can, if they want to, design entirely behind closed doors within their own organization and drop a disc with the software, the source code, and licensing guaranteeing you certain freedoms. In the case of adapting that philosophy to a game, I think this would probably be the best approach to avoid the problems of design by committee. The cards could be released freely and included could be project files for card design, art used, etc. to allow people to do whatever they want with em.
I think of it more comparing a game like D&D which would work well under an open source model.
A large part of the appeal to a CCG is the interaction of the different cards together. It is a set of cards to play with, not a series of individual cards. Traditional trading card games, living card games, and deck builders are built on these card interactions. Sometimes it involves designing synergistic mechanics but it can just be creating the environment where different strategies can compete against each other. New cards get added in part to fit well with existing ones. Cases this doesn't happen is considered to be a failure.
The open source model does not work well with that design goal.
There is going to be an inducement by designers to push for power creep since designing stronger cards will get them played. There may not be enough headroom for a game to deal with the constant increase in power.
You also have the fracturing of different formats. It took a while for Magic to get to the number of formats it had and even then most constructed play defaulted to Standard. How are you going to be able to have a CCG work with hundreds of formats filled with cards that don't work with each other and can maybe even have homebrew cards that wreck the metagame?
A card game isn't like an RPG where you can have a base rule set while letting others create potentially clashing supplemental sets and adventures. Hell, we've even seen forks like with Pathfinder. There is a reason why RPG's adopted an open source mindset while card games didn't.
That already is how Magic is, though. There's a core base ruleset and cards deemed official by the original organizing body and tons of custom stuff out there that the original body doesn't treat as part of their product. The organizing body can control power creep and all that within its own ruleset, and most players would likely choose to use that so they don't end up with 999/999 epic dragon of doom for 2 mana, but they don't have to. The only real difference in this sense is that the organizing body wouldn't be a corporation driven by profit and that players would have more legal headroom and proper tools to make custom stuff rather than the current awkward position fan sets land in.
In fact, this would give the organizing body that stands in for Wizards more room to hold back power creep, as they wouldn't have the constant nagging knowledge that increasing power a little more will net them more money. They would have maximum control over deciding what is best for their version of the game. I imagine we'd end up with a few standardized systems of play like we have now in corporate TCGs, the original organizing body's version alongside scattered other custom versions for highly opinionated players who want something different.
There are non-profit Living Card Games out there, including the current iteration of Star Wars: Customizable Card Game, but they still package card design together internally.
And you sidestepped my comment about cohesive card design. It isn't just designing cards, but the collection of cards together as well. Why separate these two activities?
And if the open source model could work, I feel like it could have been implemented by now. We've seen it implemented in RPG's and some board games, but why not card games?
I'd like to gently suggest you reread my comments, because my whole point is that design, rulesets, and declaring legality within their own system can all happen with a governing body that is not a for-profit company and released according to the same principles as free and open source software. There is not separation of those activities if you simply choose to play the original, say, Bizards of the Boast version as most players realistically would. Stuff made by others would effectively work just like homebrew does now.
I literally gave the name of a non-profit game with my response.
And I recognized you can create a card game without a for-profit company running the design.
I feel like you are taking past me because you are conflating tying two design activities together as requiring a profit motive.
I'm not though! I am saying, repeatedly, that a single organized group or even singular designer, for-profit or non-profit (but ideally the latter, of course) can do ALL of those design activities and release it as open source. They can design every card, decide every rule, and decide every card that "counts". Having a FOSS license doesn't change any of that. It's up to players if they want to just use that or use additional stuff others make...just like it is now, since homebrew exists and will always exist as long as there is paper to write rules text on.
And you keep ignoring my statements about the system being more important than the individual parts. A designed system doesn't get the value from FOSS development that other game systems get.
Well, the point is that the advantages of centralized development don't have to be given up, because development can still be centralized. The advantages of FOSS development I'm building this point upon aren't like increased efficiency or something like that. It's an ethical thing, allowing the game to be the public good it ought to be (and functionally kind of is, looking at proxies and homebrew). If those original designers ruin the game in a way that upsets enough people, a new designer or group could fork it and become the new standard. This isn't really possible with a proprietary game without stepping incredibly carefully around the law. Homebrew and modified cards can exist, but if there was a modified version of Magic threatening to replace the original game, Wizards would be sending nukes your way real quick.
But I get that you seem to be coming at this from a different position, if you don't consider games being made as part of the commons as an inherently good thing then we have a philosophical disagreement that goes beyond the scope of this discussion. I believe that making stuff that belongs to everyone IS the value of free and open source development, not a means to an end.
I defined a type of game being made as part of the commons as being an inherently good thing.
You are still talking past my assertion that a deck building card game is defined by the card pool, which is usually designed by a singular group of people.
I'm not talking past it, because as I've said over and over, I agree. That singular group of people can just release that card pool under a Creative Commons license and any associated software under a FOSS license and they have made a FOSS card game. What is the problem?
They can, but it doesn't provide any benefit to the game based on how card games like M:tG work.
I think a lot of what you’re saying is coming from the perspective of a profit motive. That’s certainly one way of looking at it, but I personally wouldn’t start something like this with a profit motive. Personally, the “cool factor” alone would be motivation enough for me, but this would require the game as a whole operating in a way other TCGs do not.
I also was talking about overall card quality, not specifically foils. Other than that, power creep is always going to be a thing, regardless of the motives of the project owner.
But the nice thing about open source is that if you don’t believe it’s a good idea, you don’t have to participate.
But it is a major problem for closed source systems which can be made worse if open source methods are used on cardboard. Is someone going to want to keep playing a game when they buy some boosters but find out that some of the people they play with won't play with those cards? Even worse, there isn't a uniform way to define formats?
But no one else is participating either. There are fan made TCG's, but none of them adopted the open source model. There is one body that designs cards and I don't see that changing. Even then, the trading or collecting part of that hobby goes away; they become Living Card Games instead without the collectable nature of more traditional distribution systems
If no one’s done it, we don’t know if it’ll actually work, we can just theorize. I don’t see the harm in anyone trying, and I don’t particularly care for defeatism.
This isn't defeatism, but pointing out potential flaws in a system being developed. If designers can't address potential fatal flaws, the system won't progress.
Alright, well I can’t be expected to have all the right answers. What do you suggest?
I think you can have a community designed game, but you are going to have an internal organization to it.