Flash Duel is the simplest of the three card games I'm working on. Or to put it another way, it has the shortest playtime (only about 5 minutes!), and is the easiest to teach to non-gamers, like your mom. Yet it manages to have real strategy and 45 different character matchups!
It will come in two varieties: the regular version cards-only. The gameplay involves dueling along an 18-space linear track, and in the card-only version, there are 5 cards in the box that you put together to make the track. This version is very portable, so its small size combined with the fast playtime makes it a great game to play on-the-go.
But what if you'd like to Flash Duel in style? In that case, I've got the DELUXE version for you. It's ridiculously fancy. Here are some pics:
The box is made of wood, not cheapy cardboard like most games. The game's logo is laser engraved into the sides of the box. Yes, LASERS are involved. The track is made of wood, it's two pieces that fit together like a puzzle (not shown here, but you can see a picture of the deluxe track on the back of the box). It comes with two wooden pawns (not pictured). Those 5 red discs are wooden tokens, stained red then the logo laser engraved (MORE LASERS), and they help you keep track of how many rounds you've won. A game consists of best 3 out of 5 rounds, so if you win, take one of those fancy blood-red tokens to keep track. And of course, there are the cards (also not pictured above).
Anyway, I just wanted to show you guys the boxes and tokens because they look pretty cool. Manufacturing is going on right now, and the game will be available online in a few weeks.
Oh and by the way, Flash Duel features 10 characters from my Fantasy Strike world, each with different gameplay. You'll see these same 10 characters in my other two upcoming games, Puzzle Strike and Yomi. And if I get your support...in a fighting game someday.
I read a lot about psychology, then I tell you guys none of it. This is probably because I spend practically every waking moment working on the graphic design of three different card games and the logistics of manufacturing them. Anyway, Jesse Schell takes the opposite approach and clearly explains the intersection of games and psychology, instead of keeping it to himself.
Prisoners to External Rewards
The unspoken premise of his DICE 2010 lecture is that people are prisoners to external reward systems. "External reward" is practically a curse word to me, a thing I'm ever vigilant against. I don't need experience point systems giving me a false sense of mastery, or Xbox "achievements" for watching the opening movie of a game (that's a real one). But people absolutely are driven by external rewards. So much so that Schell doesn't even question it, he simply takes it as given.
He muses about a (dystopian?) future where games with external rewards permeate every minute of our lives. He looks at the beginnings of that in our current world and extrapolates out an extreme future where this stuff has completely taken over. What will stop it from taking over? Nothing, of course. Humanity has thoroughly proven that it can be manipulated by hollow external reward systems, and so these systems will take over. Most "games" on Facebook right now are hardly games at all, they are simply viruses-of-the-mind that are designed to spread, rather than to be of any actual value. Once your shoes have sensors on them, your Corn Flakes box has an internet connection to your friends' Corn Flakes boxes, and your e-book reader has eye-tracking which rewards you with points if you really read a book...points and "games" will be woven into your everyday life.
Who Exactly Will Design Our Future?
Facebook "games" generally have their (virus-like) systems designed by skilled game designers. Schell points out that currently the external reward systems we see cropping up in places like his car's dashboard (that shows a plant growing the more energy he saves) are designed by "whoever happened to be around at that company." He rightly points out that actual game designers have the power and skill to make sure the future external reward systems that will permeate our lives will actually improve our lives also. These systems could cause us to read more and better books, to brush our teeth as much as we should, and so on. Yes, that could happen. DanC of lostgarden.com made that exact point as well, and we've already seen the benefits of it in exercise games like Wii Fit.
I'm with Schell every step of the way in his lecture, except for that last bit though. While it's true that skilled designers could use all this for good once sensors and points take over our real lives, it seems almost certain that they generally won't. If Facebook is any indication, they will simply create the most effective mental viruses that drive whatever commercial behavior they want, with little regard to the victims (consumers).
The Good Side of External Reward Systems
For the record, I'm ok with (and sometimes do consulting work for) external reward systems that are not evil. For example, a leaderboard system or matchmaking system surrounding a competitive game is an external reward system, but it also legitimately improves the experience of competition. As mentioned above, the various fitness games we're seeing these days use points and gamey systems to motivate us to exercise, and I can't say I'm against that. It's a helping hand to do what we should be doing anyway. These things certainly can be used for good...it's just that they so often are used for evil (such as to stimulate addiction with no benefit to the victim).
Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Freedom
I urge you to be vigilant against external rewards. Brush your teeth because it fights tooth decay, not because you get points for it. Read a book because it enriches your mind, not because your Kindle score goes up. Play a game because it's intellectually stimulating or relaxing or challenging or social, not because of your Xbox Live Achievement score. Jesse Schell's future is coming. How resistant are you to letting others manipulate you with hollow external rewards?
Sometimes I research board games, usually to scoff at their overly complex designs and the 500 pieces that come in the box. Occasionally I find really well designed games. And even more occasionally, I find mind-blowing video reviews that leave me thinking "this is the greatest video about a board game ever!" This is one of those times.
Dear Board James: please make Yomi, Flash Duel, and Puzzle Strike look as awesome as DragonStrike.
A year or so ago I read up on various critics' top 10 lists of TV shows. One show that came up often was Dexter. I have to say that it's incredible and it fully deserves all the praise it gets. I've been thinking about the show from the point of view of a game designer.
Mechanics Matching Flavor
Game designers are often faced with the challenge of matching mechanics with flavor. What I mean by that is on the one hand, we have to create a system of rules that actually works, but on the other hand, the experience these rules create has to be aesthetically pleasing somehow.
As a simple example, let's take Rook in the card game Yomi. We have to balance Rook so that he's fair against other characters. Rook has lots of slow moves so making them faster would be a way to increase his power if we found him to be too weak. This solution isn't aesthetically pleasing though, because it violates his flavor. He's supposed to be a big stone golem so he probably shouldn't have fast moves. Instead, we need some sort of solution to make him fair (the mechanics), but that fits the experience you're supposed to have while playing Rook (the flavor).
As you can see, the solution I chose is Rock Armor, also know as "super armor" in many fighting games. He has slow attacks, but unlike other characters, he has a way to continue his attack even he gets hit by a faster attack from the enemy. The mechanics and flavor work together here, and there's even another level to it. Rook's card game incarnation has a mechanic (super armor) that's familiar to fighting game players. He'll probably have that same mechanic when he appears in an actual fighting game someday. So not only does Rock Armor make sense inside the card game, but it also helps the entire card game's flavor match the experience of playing a fighting game.
Plot vs Character
Fiction writers face a similar type of challenge. They have to deal with "mechanics" too, though they usually
Friday, February 26, 2010 at 9:01PM 
Flash Duel is the simplest of the three card games I'm working on. Or to put it another way, it has the shortest playtime (only about 5 minutes!), and is the easiest to teach to non-gamers, like your mom. Yet it manages to have real strategy and 45 different character matchups!
