Fundation

I’ve been playing games for a long time. Long enough to remember arcades, for example.

Lately, I find the experience is less satisfying. I’ve often complained that the gaming companies are exploiting many of the worst individual instincts. Unlike the mostly cooperative PVE environments of roleplaying or single player video games of my youth, the new multiplayer environments encourage win-at-all cost approaches which tempt people with premium-cost advantages.

It’s not a specific game anymore, but what passes for gaming in many ways. Don’t get me wrong, there are still a lot of positive things coming out of the gaming community. I see people who are working to make gaming fun, affordable, and accessible to as many people as possible. The gaming community has done a lot of hard work to produce quality games.

It’s just that I am getting a bit burned out on some of the recurrent problems, like aimbots and cheat programs in online gaming, and pay to win gaming in general.

Projects like my Magic cube are attempts to make the drafting experience more accessible to other players and create a better group experience than some of the other formats.

I appreciate the efforts of the community modders in games to extend the playability and depths of games. For example, I recently picked up the CS:GO Operation Payback map pack and thought it was great to see some new content for a game that keeps improving.

Still, I and other players, are getting tired of waiting for the aimbotter who joins the server to get bored (usually after two rounds) and leave so we can actually get on with playing the game. Increasingly, I find myself encountering obstructionists who do not want the gaming experience to improve for others.

I am concerned about a lot of things in gaming, leaving me to wonder if today’s players are getting the experiences they deserve in gaming.

It’s a shame that given the amount of time and energy people put into trying to make the games enjoyable for players, there are also people putting time and energy into ruining the experiences of others.

Let’s keep in mind, gaming is supposed to be fun for people. It may seem stupid to have to say this, but some people don’t seem to understand this.

Circling Back to the Cube

I opted to play test the cube once again. This time six people opted to enter the cube draft. I opted to wrap the cards in 15 card aluminium foil packs to avoid confusion and pre-shuffled the cards to save time.

“Foiling” a cube.

I’m exploring more practical options, like cloth bags, for future drafts. It will take some time to locate the appropriate product for my cube drafting needs.

Some issues remain in running the draft. My first round ran a little long to say the least. It’s hard to play and organize the events. As a result, most players only played one round. The event is still a very social experience and it is nice to know that cube drafting at an LGS is viable.

Of course, after every draft, I reflect upon my own notions of the strengths of each section and try to make some changes to the Cube to improve the cube. Changing the cube is a very time consuming task. It requires that I resort the cards by color and converted mana cost. Then I shift one card in and one card out and update my spreadsheet.

In any case, I hope that I can continue to improve my cube and create a more interesting shared and balanced experience for the players. This is all very much a learning experience for me. Despite the fact that free FNM’s are now a regular event again, I am going to focus on my cube design and development for the time being.

One, somewhat unfortunate side-effect of creating a cube, is the fact that the creator has prior knowledge of the cube’s content. If someone else created a cube, I could draft their cube and these issues would be minimized. Given the enormous amount of time and energy that goes into building and maintaining a cube, I am not sure how realistic it is to expect others to create cubes.

Finally, I would again like to thank the people who took the time to try my cube. I often hear terrible things about Magic players in online postings. You constantly hear about people having their decks or cards stolen. My experiences have not been like that at all.

My experience with other Magic players is fairly positive. No one has taken any of my cards and everyone seems to respect each others collections and possessions. If you show up to enough events, you really do begin to get to know the other players and it makes for a great time. You also get to see players participating in charity events, attending free FNM’s, and making unique and creative contributions to the community.

Of course, I am still disappointed by the price increases in singles over the last year and it has certainly dampened my spending and impaired my enjoyment of the game. In addition to my usual concerns about the unjustifiable cost of cards, I am increasingly concerned that the price of singles incorporates the costs associated with prize structures.

I failed to make any trades. To be fair, the only thing I have to trade right now is a single Flinthoof Boar. While the Gruul plague is widespread enough to put the card in general demand, I have not met any players interested in making trades for that card. The upshot is that the attempt to trade the card did lead to some great conversations anyway. I’m really not interested in taking my little piggy to market and selling it to the store, so instead I’ll just hold onto it and if it trades it ever trades. If not, I guess I have a Flinthoof Boar.

I’d also like to add that by getting back out into the real world and playing Magic again (after my dismal experience with being muted online), I also ended up with a free haircut. A local barber ended up giving away free haircut coupons at the LGS I was at, so I took them up on their offer.

Finally, a new art book arrived this week so I’ll be getting back to my drawing as well as enjoying other online games. While the cube drafting has been a more refreshing experience, it’s also been a lot of work. Given the resources I have, I feel that my cube probably won’t undergo any dramatic improvements and it’s going to enter basic maintenance mode.

Update: Week 3 was a bust. No one wanted to cube draft. I updated the cube a bit more and I ordered the cloth bags anyway. Week 4 went better as a few people did cube draft, though my cloth bags did not arrive in time for drafting.