I recently started playing Hearthstone, Blizzard's new free to play CCG. It is extremely similar to Magic: the Gathering. The designers of Hearthstone admit to being heavily influenced by Magic. What stuck out to me were the differences and how closely these design decisions were influenced by the medium. Unlike Magic Online, which is just a port of Magic from paper to digital, Hearthstone makes use of many features which are easy to implement in the digital world, but extremely hard in the physical.
The primary example of this is how creatures/minions are affected by damage. In Magic all damage is erased at the end of the turn. This simplifies the record keeping and means that counters can be used for other things without over taxing the player's mental resources. Hearthstone takes the opposite approach with damage on minions, it persists over turns. Because the game is digital, this is extremely easy to implement. A simple number that counts down is sufficient. Plus, the game can actually change the number on the card itself, which is impossible in a paper game. This means all the relevant information is compactly displayed. The truth is that neither of these decisions are "wrong" for designing a game, but the limitations of a medium push design in a particular direction.
Another interesting deviation that is completely due to the digital nature of Hearthstone, is the persistence and creation of cards which are not in one's deck. A common mechanic in card games is to have Token Creatures, essentially creatures not represented by actual cards. Usually used to summon multiple creatures with one spell. In Magic, there is no assumption that one has cards to represent these. People usually use whatever they have on hand, like pennies, as the physical version of token creatures. This means that Magic cannot have the token creatures returned to your hand, deck or sit in a graveyard. So token creatures simply cease to exist once they leave play.
Contrast this with Hearthstone, where they can become physical cards if such a minion is returned to your hand! The returned token has a mana cost and can be played just like a normal minion. The truely amazing thing is these token minions often only exist as cards when returned in this manner. The game creates cards out of nothing to maintain the consistency of effect, which physical games literally cannot do without much greater expense.
This creation of cards shows up in many places in Hearthstone. Such as the Bananas you get in the tutorial missions. Though there is one case that actually violates one of the cardinal rules of Magic design. You can never have an opponent's card in your hand, deck, or library. This is another practical matter as it ensures that people always have their full deck at the end of a match. Plus, most use card cases which tend not to match across players. Hearthstone has no such issue as the decks are just reset after every match. The Priest even has a few cards which copy the opponent's cards from the deck or hand. In addition it is possible to bounce your creature into your opponent's hand if they have it on their side of the field due to some mind control effect.
I really like that Hearthstone is embracing the medium is it built in. It forces the game to be qualitatively different from the physical card game predecessors. What really excites me is seeing how they continue to leverage the differences in the mediums to create unique cards and effects in future expansions.
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