The Impact Factor

TIF’s 2014 Game of the Year Awards: The Final Day!

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ONE

Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft: Blizzard (OSX)

You have now read me go on and on about my #5-#2 games (hopefully!). They are all tremendous and I’m glad to have played them. Many left a huge impact on 2014’s year in gaming. A few will have lasting impacts as we move deeper into this generation of gaming. But no game has had a greater impact on me, or will continue to have such a substantial impact on the world of gaming in the years to come as Hearthstone. Yes, that’s right. Blizzard’s free-to-play take on a card game is my game of the year. Not just barely-so, either. Hearthstone makes me excited every time I play it, excited for it’s own future, and excited for what’s to come as the games industry constantly grows and evolves. The race was close for slots five through two, but when it came down to the decision making process, Hearthstone was the clear winner for game of the year. Let me just get into a little of why Hearthstone is my personal GOTY.

Hearthstone’s core strength reflects Blizzard’s core strength as a video game company: simplicity. Blizzard is known for making “genre” games that refine and simplify a pre-established formula. A chief example of this is World of Warcraft (WoW). EverQuest and games like it established the basics for what we understand an MMORPG to be. WoW innovated on this, not by completely redefining the MMO experience, but by making it simple and accessible. The depth comes from how all these simple systems synergize. As a testament to this approach, WoW is over a decade old and still one of the most played MMO’s worldwide. Hearthstone takes this ideology and applies it to both a making a great digital card game and a great free to play game, but more on that in a bit.

Hearthstone is an “easy to learn, a lifetime to master” kind of game. The rules of a standard match are pretty basic: Draw a card, gain a mana crystal, play whatever you can from your hand, attack with your minions, get your opponent to 0 health. Hearthstone borrows a lot of elements from both Magic: The Gathering (MtG) and the physical WoW card game. And there is no shame in that: MtG’s basic style of gameplay is the reason for its continued success for over twenty years. As a fan of MtG, I was easily hooked on the general flow of play in Hearthstone. The rest is easy to get into as well: getting new cards, building custom decks, and playing real people in casual or ranked play. Hearthstone also offers a tremendous diversity in how you can play the game. You can spend hours playing the AI to rank up, or in the challenging Naxxramas expansion. You can play casual only, or ranked only. Or Hearthstone’s version of drafting in the arena. If that was not enough, Hearthstone rewards you for playing as little or as much as you want to. Earning gold, used for packs or arena, comes through daily quests. Most of these can be completed in 30-60 minutes, allowing you to be “done” for the day while still making progress towards improving your card collection.  These quests can be stacked over multiple days, allowing for quick, massive gold gains in one play session. If you have more time on your hands, long arena runs can net you huge rewards (hundreds of gold) and ranking up on ladder can earn you extra gold and card backs. Hearthstone acknowledges that you’ve got a lot on your gaming plate, and rewards you for playing how you want.

Extra cards can be converted into "arcane dust"
This allows players to craft key cards they are missing.

Hearthstone is an amazing free-to-play (F2P) game. The moniker “F2P” has such a negative connotation these days: often implying an experience that tries to nickel and dime you at every corner, or locks content behind pay walls or time walls. Hearthstone is not that kind of game. Real money can be used to buy packs, the Naxxramas adventure, or arena runs. All of those can be purchased through gold earned in game. And while gold earning could be a little faster, you earn enough to buy a pack every two days. The bulk of Hearthstone is playable at any time, gold or no. You could play ranked for 10 hours straight without spending anything. The same thing cannot be said for so many other F2P games (my two week addiction to the iOS game Jurassic Park Builder was filled with unnecessary “Wait 2 hours or pay money to continue” periods). Critics complain that the rate of acquiring new cards is too slow. A lot of that frustration stems from “losing to decks with better cards.” This can happen, but you can win a substantial number of games using cards unlocked from the get-go. People falsely attribute losses to “pay-to-win” rather than their own lack of skill or in-depth knowledge of Hearthstone strategies. Sure, you’re not going to beat the best of the best, but most games new players participate in are winnable. And not to belabor it for too long, but Hearthstone is a card game. If you had the entire collection of cards within a week of booting up the game, a lot of the appeal is lost. Building up your collection is a part of any trading card game, and trying to find ways to use the cards you have is consistently fun and challenging. Otherwise, in a model where you acquire all the cards with ease, huge demands are placed on the designers to infuse new cards as quickly as possible. Making too many cards too fast can detract from card balance and quality, which is not something I look for in a competitive card game. I hope games like Hearthstone (as well as TF2 and DOTA2) continue to lead the way on what F2P games can be. In that way, I see Hearthstone as a key player in shaping a brighter gaming future.

As much as Hearthstone succeeds as a F2P game, it is even more successful as a digital card game. Hearthstone is the biggest, and best, example of making a trading card game work digitally. I cannot even properly express how much of a trainwreck MtG’s online version is, but just know that it is universally disliked. I’ll use it as a foil in most of my following examples. Let me get into just a few ways that Hearthstone is a great card game that really takes advantage of being a video game. First, in Hearthstone, you can only play cards on your own turn. In MtG, being able to respond to cards played or actions taken by your opponent is a key part of the game. When online, though, it amounts to incredibly slow games that are bogged down by clicking dozens of yes/no pop-up prompts. In Hearthstone the games run smoothly, because once you end your turn, you are completely hands off. This speeds up games and removes a lot of, often tedious, complexity. Second, Hearthstone lets you customize your decks right off the bat and gives you a good selection of cards to do so. In other MtG digital releases, like MtG2014, you’re stuck playing pre-constructed decks for a long time. And, after that, you have very limited options for card customization. Hearthstone gives you a lot to work with and, with the ease of adding/removing cards, lets you tweak your deck constantly to see what works and what does not. Third, asynchronous drafting! In MtG online, when you enter a draft, you need to stay for its entirety or you lose out on your rewards. This whole process can take upwards of four hours. Hearthstone respects your time, and lets you play your arena games at any time. You can make your draft deck and play your games with it a week later. Or play two games one day, and finish the rest another. The arena is especially reflective of Hearthstone’s accessibility and ease of play. Fourth, Hearthstone smartly balanced game length. The majority of matches last 15-20 minutes, allowing you to play a couple games even with the most limited of time. Finally, match making. Getting into a match in Hearthstone is quick and easy. You are normally matched up with a player within 10 seconds, and games are mostly lag and glitch free. So many other games, including AAA releases, struggle with matchmaking. Sure, Hearthstone has the advantage of being 1v1 over games like Destiny where it is 6v6, but Blizzard has clearly put a lot of effort into getting into, and out of, games a quick and painless experience. The list of how Hearthstone simplifies and perfects the card game experience could go on for pages, but I hope I got my point across when I write here now that Hearthstone is one of the best card games I have ever played (digital or not).

I have played a LOT of Hearthstone. No intention on stopping anytime soon!
P.S. Ignore my low rank, it has been a Casual mode kind of month for me. 

One of the more interesting aspects of Hearthstone, and why I think it will continue to have such a large impact in the years to come, is the community that has formed around it. Every day there is a new website dedicated to some aspect of Hearthstone, whether it be the best decks for current ranked play or tips/tools for doing well in the arena. Each week is filled with Hearthstone tournaments, from invitationals to open series. Hearthstone is also one of the most viewed games on Twitch. Popular streamers like Trump or Amaz garner 30k+ viewers daily. The world championship back in November put up astounding Twitch viewership numbers. Back in the fall Blizzard announced that there were over 20 million registered Hearthstone users. 20 MILLION. The ease of getting into Hearthstone coupled with its active community surely contributed to this astronomical total player base. If even half that, or a quarter of that, play semi-regularly, that is still a crazy large number of people playing. Hearthstone has also managed to find its way into the “e-sport” scene (a term I detest, but that’s for another article), with teams of pro-players popping up everywhere. This past month, the first Hearthstone team house was put together: where a handful of pro players from one team all live together and play, in hopes to refine their skills and decklists for tournament play. Hearthstone is big now, and it’s only getting bigger.

You play all kinds of people in Hearthstone. Here is me playing against
the popular Twitch streamer, Trump.

And there is so much more that I want to get into, but don’t want to make this article overly long. For example:

• How Hearthstone is an amazing mobile game
• How Hearthstone maintains my fervor for the game, where I am building and playing a new deck every day
• How Hearthstone has made people care about a card game (not an easy task)
• How Hearthstone smartly controls in-game communication to create a pleasant competitive experience
• How Hearthstone is experimenting with, and excelling at, new content releases like Naxxramas and Goblins vs. Gnomes
• How Hearthstone succeeds wholly independent of its source material (I have, and never will, play WoW) 

Like so many Blizzard products, Hearthstone is a game that will be around a long time. Team 5 is constantly working to build a legacy, and evolve the Hearthstone experience. Many game critics acknowledge the success of Hearthstone, but seem trepidatious about making it their game of the year, often relegating it to their mobile GOTY. A free-to-play card game, in this sea of AAA releases? But for me, and so many others, Hearthstone left the largest impact. I’ve been playing the game for nearly a year and I am more into it now than I have ever been. Hearthstone is a game I will think about, and play, for potentially years to come. Hearthstone gets being a card game right, and being free-to-play right on so many levels. No game in 2014 will have the same lasting impact as Blizzard’s digital trading card game experiment. Hearthstone came as a complete surprise, but I am so happy that I jumped on board. Please, if you have any interest in video games at all, please check it out. What’s to lose: it’s free!

I hope to see you at the inn sometime soon. Pull up a chair by the hearth!