There was an anonymous email on the Giant bombcast that says Richard Garfield is no longer working with Valve. This hasn't been verified, so there is no real confirmation, but it seems within the realms of possibilities.
Here is the link with the discussion, they are good at putting in in context. There might be a lot of reasons why he is out, if this turns out to be real.
Posted Jan 23, 2019, 1:23 PM UTC · edited
I'd take it with a grain of salt. But Giant Bomb has a history of getting some crazy insider anonymous emails over the years. They were getting updates on Fortnite for years when people were still wondering if it still even existed.
They're also really good friends with Brad Muir(Works at Valve) which was just a couple months ago talking to the crew about the game. I assume it'd be an easy thing for them to reach out on but still want to keep it as an anonymous email. They could have easily just ignored the email.
That is why I posted it. It is in no way confirmed, but the Bombcast is a huge podcast that has a lot of listeners from inside the industry.
As I see noone gaining anything from sending a anonymous email, it has some chance of turning up to be true.
At the moment it is just a rumor, but we'll see in a few days.
Giantbomb doesn't matter anymore.
lol
When Ryan Davis died they gave up and sold out to CBS. Now they're just as likely to get into political arguments than to play games.
....They were at CBS for like 2 years before Ryan died. Giant bomb has now been around longer under CBS than it was under Whiskey Media.
Sounds like you’re just mad about some political views...
snowflake
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That could be true. Oooor the Anonymous email could be a random troll but you do you
Hence the 'take with a grain of salt'
Giant bomb doesn't just take whatever emails, they get a ton, and no one on the staff really cares about Artifact all that much. It's pretty easy just to brush off an anonymous email on their part about a game they don't really care about. Add that to the fact that they could easily confirm it enough to know whether they should care about the email? It's at least possible.
Garfield has never worked for Valve full time, he always had a more of an advisory role, even to a degree with Artifact, even though he was involved a lot more in it. He has helped Valve on many games, including DotA 2 and TF2. He's a friend of Valve, it's not possible that they will suddenly cut him off forever, and because he has never really been what you would call an employee there, it makes little sense to say that he's "out".
Garfield himself has said that his input is mostly in the beginning, and then he comes in more rarely and rarely. So sure, he might be stepping down for now, but of course he's not completely out of Valve, and might come in in the future to help with more expansions. He's still a very valuable asset to Valve and Artifact.
This is what I assume. I mean, he had Keyforge come out at the same time as Artifact.
Expected, thats what he does. He does not work for WotC on Magic either, or for Fantasy Flight on Netrunner, he does go from time to time and do something, like an expansion, but he does not work full time in either. That what probably is going to happen to Artifact, he comes and helps with an expansion or so.
Its not a big deal or has anything to do with the game.
If you weren't aware FFG lost the Netrunner license so not even FFG is working on it anymore. Garfield did however design Keyforge with FFG which is very popular currently. Makes me wish he'd given that game to valve instead of artifact. It is prime for digital.
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Last we heard he was working on the first expansion. Maybe his work is done and it was time for him to move on?
If I recall correctly he was only hired for developing the game and maybe an expansion. He wasn't supposed to stay on the team and balance the game or further develop it like Icefrog in DotA.
That was my understanding too. If this news is true, I would actually take it as a good thing - it means the first expansion is close! Shut up and take my money Valve!!!
I wouldn't interpret it like that. Just because cards are designed it doesn't mean that art, animations and gameplay are ready as well. On top of that Valve may want to wait with the release - the base set is still quite new, maybe they'll also bundle it with a number of changes to the game and try to market it as the saving update of Artifact.
I would expect that we will see a new expansion every 4 months. Artifact came out in late November, it’s now late January. Another 8 weeks and packs should be out, 4 weeks from now we get an announcement / see the first cards?
That is very possible, we have no idea on what his contract or agreement was. There was no other info, but people will interpret it as they will.
what does it mean " is no longer working with Valve"? RG designs games and hands out notes for expansion then gets out. that's what the guy does.
him not working on Artifact any longer was already what we expected and definitely knew.
If this is true, I honestly won't miss him.
Richard Garfield and the original creators of the game not understanding the pitfalls and possibilities of the digital age (i.e. outdated monetization, refusal to properly balance cards for an interesting gaming experience etc. pp.) are the main reason in my personal opinion why Artifact can not yet live up to its full potential.
Basically, he took the lore and fame of a wonderful, community created, truly f2p game with incredibly deep and satisfying gameplay and tried to turn it into his wet dream of an updated but still outdated version of a game and monetization scheme he came up with 30 years ago.
Time for some more flexible people to step in and give this game the balancing and gameplay variety it and the DotA universe affiliation deserve.
At least it doesn't have lands.
Yooooo haha I can’t stress this enough. Although I am a sucker for land art in mtg.....
It's too late for MTG to redesign, but lands are just archaic...letting you choose how many lands to put into your deck, good. Having when you get them be luck of the draw? Bad. Having 1 colour have the majority of the mana ramp, while another has the majority of deck manipulation to avoid mana flood/screw? Even worse.
Lands are the most genius part of the design of MTG, and I think the perception that they were a bad design has negatively impacted the industry. Lands in your deck mean that you can't rely on every draw step being gas and it creates interesting deckbuilding constraints and rewards good deckbuilding.
The solution to mana screw feelbads is to revise the mulligan rules, which they have done, not remove lands entirely.
O yea I’m just saying the worst gaming experiences I have (terribly not fun) are getting mana screwed in mtg. It doesn’t happen a lot, but enough to wake me up at night lol
I'm not saying it isn't already better than the competitors (it is to me).
Just saying it should and could be even much better if it was trying to be more like Dota2 and less like the card games of the 1990s both in monetization as well as (and more crucially) in gameplay/balancing.
90% of the heroes are playable on the highest level in Dota2. This is the direction we should be thriving for, not some lazy design that makes three cards must-haves in their respective colours and ends up giving us the same five decks with very slight variations in every top level tournament.
I think Valve has realized this too and is going in the right direction - as usual. The fact that Garfield initially claimed rebalancing isn't needed or useful shows how out of touch he actually is with a modern, digital, truly competitive game.
The worst offender for me, in any game, is having so much design room being wasted. Compare to hearthstone, where you never have all 9 classes in the meta at once, and Shaman got stuck with a useless Freeze archetype one expansion and just...couldn't really play with cards from that expansion because they were all freeze themed and freeze doesn't pay off.
Same with the Heroes in Artifact. Heroes are a big thing, so at minimum 80% of them should be playable.
He had nothing to do with that. That is not how Richard Garfield operates. He creates a game. He creates some cards, maybe even stays on board for the card design for a couple of sets. Then he moves on. He never was in any way involved with monetization or post-launch balance. Thats on Valve entirely. They are the one who went with that.
You know this how?
You think it's a coincidence that the monetization goes against what Valve has been doing successfully for a decade or so now in Dota2, CS and TF and happens to align with what Garfield half-bakedly mused about in his "manifesto"?
Fact is we both don't know for sure but I think if you watch a lot of RG interviews about Artifact and what it was supposed to be you will realize that he was looking to mostly copy his (or Magic's) model of the nineties and transfer it into the digital world.
Even if he didn't personally come up with the monetization scheme it is almost 100% likely that he had more to do with it than the "higher ups" at Valve who have been making billions with completely different monetization models on all their successful games and are probably now showing Garfield and his ilk the door to turn around Artifact as well.
Did you not see Gaben give that whole press conference explicitly explaining in detail his views on the monetization of Artifact and it's economy pre-release. Did I fucking hallucinate that?
Beyond knowing how both Garfield operates (based on all of his previous games) and knowing how Valve operates (seriously, why do you think lootboxes is against what Valve is doing? Theyre like the lootbox company. The only difference is that usually their lootboxes are only cosmetic, buuut this is a card game. Lootboxes are an established thing. Guess they thought they could get away with it)?
Well, the biggest indicator is who the biggest, most ardent defender of the monetization was. Who the one was who constantly talked about it and defended it to the bitter end. None other than Valve CEO Gabe Newell. You dont get more "higher up" than the guy who controls the whole bloody company. So no, there is a 0% chance that Garfield had more to do with it than the higher ups at Valve. Thats not how he operates, thats not how valve operates, and thats not what we saw.
Because Garfield always does the same thing. He has made many a game before, and they all worked like that. He is a game designer, not a marketting and monetization guy. Given that he never sticks around after creating the game (beyond possible a consultation role, but even that is rare), why would he? His interest is in the game being made. How its handled after that is up to the responsible company.
We will see. I think it's pretty obious in his manifesto (where he clearly states that he will no longer work with publishers who use abusive monetization models) that he cares and actually probably would have refused to even make the game for Valve unless he thought the monetization model was not abusive in his weird "protect the whales" kind of world view. Artifact is 100% in line with that manifesto and has almost nothing to do with "lootboxes". He even says that he would rather take a fair amount up front (i.e. sticker price, clear price for cards on the market and buy-in to play game modes) than taking it from the whales who are all poor addicted little guys that can't help themselves (i.e. "skinnerware", buying levels or power-ups, cosmetics, any kind of open-ended, unlimited or unclear payment models).
I'm not even saying he is wrong about his points - even though it's rich coming from the guy who basically invented/popularized what you call lootboxes in the 90s. The point is that he is clearly against "milking whales" (i.e. what Dota2 and most other successful games are doing) and finds it much more accepteable to charge a fair price from everyone and avoid having rich arabs or addicted people pay 95% of the costs while most everyone else plays for pennies.
Moreover, Newell defending the monetization means nothing. He will defend all his projects and it is well known that Valve gives much more creative licence to designers and game developers than most other companies so I think all indicators clearly point to Garfield either directly coming up with the monetization or at least being completely in line with it - or otherwise he could not have developed the game for Valve after what he said in his manifesto.
I get a feeling you are a bit blinded by your idolization of Richard Garfield but maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm also wrong about the whole monetization thing but I'm more than willing to meet you again in two or three months to talk about where the game has been going and what that means in terms of who of us was right about this one.
Well this is not as big news as you paint it. Richard helped design core game design, but Valve probably just took it off from that. It is ok for the game. Magic is like 20+ years in strong showing without its creator participating (with rare appearances once in a decade or so). This shouldn't be any worrysome.
Well, I wouldn't be surprised. Also, if true, don't think it's a big deal. I think the core gameplay and vision definitely was created with Garfield's direction and it turned out, in my opinion, quite good. However, not sure how much more he can contribute from here on. It's more about day-to-day development of the game and balance changes, which can be handled by more hands-on developers.
dont forget the monetization model
that is an excuse to denied that the game is not fun.
He was never an employee at Valve. He was a contracted consultant.
He didn't design cards. He didn't balance the game. He didn't do monetization. He designed core mechanics and that's all.
I'm pretty sure he hasn't been full-time working at Valve for a while now because his job was done. This "rumor" is almost certainly false.
I wish Valve would’ve just created their own game without Garfield and his MTG crew, I truly belive it would’ve been light years better than it is now if they just made it themselves and trusted their own judgment, who knows maybe it would’ve been just one lane and completely different than it is now but I still think it would’ve been a way better game, more casual friendly too.
agreed. Its like giving george lucas the keys to make his own star wars movies. Absolute disaster
I don’t think the actual gameplay would of been much better, it’s already pretty good imo. But everything outside of the core design would of been better for sure.
would of
You probably meant "would've"! It's a contraction of "would have".
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Doubtful. He created the card game concept, they just worked with him to flesh it out. Im not even sure they wouldve made a card game had he not approached them. For that matter, most of Artifacts pitfall are on Valve, and as long as Valves decision of business model and the resulting balance matter wouldve stayed, no matter the game, it wouldve failed.
F2P incoming. People who bought the game will earn ticket fragment every 3/4/5 wins. You heard it from here first.
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Try 4 months.
Artifact will never go free 2 play. In 1 year I will be the one laughing.
Mate in one year, You might be the only one playing.
I was under the impression that was always the plan. Garfield doesn't seem to hang around his projects for very long once they leave the nest.
Perhaps Valve realized that while Richard Garfield's name might be useful to sell a card game, his ideas obviously aren't anymore as this is yet another failure on his part.
Or perhaps 'tis much ado about nothing as Garfield had everything done that he'd agreed to do as part of his contract and wants to spend time with adult beverages and pretty girls.
Perhaps Valve realized that while Richard Garfield's name might be useful to sell a card game, his ideas obviously aren't anymore as this is yet another failure on his part.
The 2018 Magic the Gathering set Dominaria had Richard Garfield as one of the principle designers. It was a huge hit and is widely considered one of the best Magic sets in recent history.
He just created Keyforge which has been a success so far, as well as fun recent magic sets
If true, probably big change is coming, maybe finally some cosmetics, some kind of f2p model, fixes/changes to some gameplay rng (personally hope for TP shop rng problem and arrows) complaints, and ofcourse features (replays, live games, match history...etc) but that would happen anyway in time.
maybe finally some cosmetics, some kind of f2p model
Yes, clearly Richard Garfield as the rules designer was stopping Valve from implementing these. /s
nice get these people out
why would he keep working there? he comes in to design the game and leaves. i'm not sure what the big deal is about. it's not like the dude would have an office and a 401k for the next 10 years at valve.
As others have said. Garfield is a game designer, he doesn't often participate much in later sets/balance. He makes a game, then moves on to the next thing. Him leaving Artifact isn't a sign of doom (as if we needed more of those). He hasn't been involved in MTG in years, but that game chugs along just fine. Regardless of whether Artifact survives, the game's rules engine is solid and allows for a lot of creativity in terms of play styles and card designs. I feel like Artifact will either die this year, or really make a strong come back.
He hasn't been involved in MTG in years,
I agree with your overall point, but Garfield was on the design team for the 2018 set Dominaria. He tends to come back every once in a while.
Yea that's true, and if artifact develops legs, he might come back for a guest appearance. But his departure isnt really anything to be alarmed about.
So, I've been following RGs games for a while and this is kind of his thing and well his strength.
He comes in and makes the initial design and maybe 1-3 expansions then leaves to go work on another project.
I also think this is a good thing. He is great at coming up with new mechanics and systems, but I don't think he truly understands modern gamers need for things like a ladder, F2P, etc. The companies that buy RG games need to understand this and make the surrounding aspects of the mechanics match up with their audience's expectations.
I'm of the opinion that Artifact's current problems are mainly due to Valve listening too much to RG about his opinions about items like ladder, monetization, etc without questioning it.
Richard Garfield usually just births the idea and the initial offering then moves on and collects royalties. He can't stop creating new things. Wouldn't surprise me. He'll come back from time to time just like in MTG.
If this is true that's my take on this. Some will interpret this as "oh he's abandoning ship because the game is not performing well" but I see it more as "he did his job and now he's moving on."
Yup. Dude has made like 20+ card games, he can't sit in on them all for the rest of their lives. He creates and then hands it off.
Yep, 3 successes in 30 years yet people keep employing him dunno why.
You should look up how venture capital actually works.
How many card games are actually successful?
How many you got that thousands and thousands of people play?
That's a lot of success.
Player count is at 2000 peak at the moment. But I am sure there is no problem, the game is still awesome and staff.
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I wouldn't be surprised if most people think he just created magic and nothing else. But if you go to the guy's BGG page he's a serial creative; he doesn't stay in one place for very long
Magic wasn't even his first design, Roborally is what led him to Wizards of the Coast.
He created roborally? That’s a great game.
Such a great game.
Yep, and of the dozens of games he's had a part in creating maybe 3-4 at most could be described as successful.
That's how it is in most creative professions. Most of what you make won't be a huge hit.
Yeah but he's not even the one responsible for MTG being popular.
What are you talking about? He was working on the game up to Ravnica and that was a time that the game saw a lot of its growth.
All you ever need is 1
He has had a few too, so he is deservingly a legendary designer. Magic is his crowning piece but other games are beloved too. King of Tokyo, Netrunner, Roborally and the now selling out Keyforge.
Jyhad (Vampire: the Masquerade card game) may be one of his best designs ever, but because it was meant as a multiplayer game and also a very long game on top of that, it basically floundered after a few years.
It is also a testament to people that say that the only thing he knows is RNG. It is a game with very limited RNG outside of card draw.
Ask Alan Moon if he would rather have a few decent successes or one big success like Ticket to Ride.
Nah, to have 2-3 in 30 years after tons of tries means you got lucky. That also means companies should not be paying him because his name isn’t worth the chance of yet another flop.
You really are a hateful little man. Good luck with that.
1- Bullshit argument, as said by other replies to this comment
2 - A game being successful or not has maybe 20% to do with game design. The rest is balancing (not the role of a designer), art, marketing, community, ....
I was huge in to Star Wars TCG as a kid. Didn't even know he created it. In terms of concept and game design I think he hit it out of the park with Artifact. A lot of the fails come from selling an unfinished version of the game, poor marketing, etc. I would never expect him to really be in charge of fine tuning balance changes either, which is another issue here. He can't do ALL of that.
Very much this. He likes to create new games. But that doesn't mean he hates his old creations or the people he worked with. After many years away from Magic, he recently helped create a set recently.
He actually has returned quite a few times besides Dominaria. Notably, he was on the design teams for Ravnica and Innistrad, two of the most beloved sets in Magic's history.
His work on Dominaria is great example of his design style. He came up with Sagas, but originally he wanted them to be 7+ turns long with requirements for each effect to trigger. Interesting, sure, but completely unrefined and unfun. Just like most of his projects.
I wish I could remember where I found this info.
Making Magic: The Saga of Sagas
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