Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield has founded a new game studio, along with veteran developers of Hearthstone, World of Warcraft and Halo.
The new studio, known as Popularium, has already begun work on its first title. As the name suggests, the studio takes a community-centric approach to the development process. Drawing inspiration from the community-driven development cycle of titles like the beloved ARPG Hades. Popularium aims to incorporate "continuous community involvement" into the design process, according to the studio's official website (opens in a new tab).
Popularium goes on to describe their ambitious mission statement. “Even in the early stages of development, we will provide you with the means to impact both gameplay and asset creation across all of our games. Our goal is for all of our games to be as fun to watch as they are to play.
In addition to Richard Garfield, Popularium also includes industry veterans Skaff Elias, Aarka Ray, and Jon Blankard who have contributed to projects ranging from the ever-evolving World of Warcraft to the online pioneer Xbox Live.
Popularium has already announced its first project: Chaos Agents. Although in early development, Chaos Agents promises to be a "genre-bending" title, taking the form of a multiplayer strategy game "pitting over 60 unique heroes against each other in a chaotic battle for supremacy." A quick look at the Popularium website reveals a distinctive art design, reminiscent of Overwatch 2, but with its own unique style.
In an interview with Gamesbeat(opens in a new tab), Garfield stated his intention to create an "auto battler royale". In recent years, Garfield has developed an interest in automatic combat which he strives to bring to Agents of Chaos. “It showed one of the directions you could go in,” he said, “it solved a lot of the problems that games often face where you have a buildable element or a strategic element…the gameplay is very laid back, very broad, I mean , there's no jerking to it, there's no element of speed... which often limits your audience.
organized chaos
Whether or not the Agents of Chaos will be able to overcome this hurdle remains to be seen. Either way, the promise of strategic, modular battle royale from such an esteemed team of game designers excites me. It will be fascinating to see what these veterans come up with in the context of collaborative community development and modern gaming sensibilities.
The collectible card game landscape owes a lot to Garfield, as do his forays into the world of video games. Juggernauts like Magic: Arena, Legends of Runeterra, and even Hearthstone take a lot of inspiration from the original Garfield card game from 1993. In all of these titles, the modular nature of the design allows new sets to introduce interesting new mechanics without undermining the whole. of basic rules that makes the game fun.
The modular approach is part of the reason Magic: The Gathering has been around for 30 years and is still going strong.
The importance of modular design also applies when considering Popularium's commitment to community-driven design. This approach would allow players themselves to contribute new mechanics while operating in the same design space as the developers.
This approach is part of the reason Magic: The Gathering has lasted 30 years and is still going strong. However, even the old paper giant sometimes shows the age of him. Speaking about Magic: The Gathering in his interview with Gamesbeat, Garfield lamented that "when magic was first created, everyone had their own valuable collection, but those treasures became commodities and we've lost some of that magic...ever since." I've been trying to figure out how to get back to that, now digitally we can bring back that unique collectible idea with Chaos Agents.
Whether or not the Agents of Chaos will be able to overcome this hurdle remains to be seen. Either way, the promise of strategic, modular battle royale from such an esteemed team of game designers excites me. It will be fascinating to see what these veterans come up with in the context of collaborative community development and modern gaming sensibilities.