Games
The inspiration Gwent has taken from Blizzard’s massively popular card battler.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was undoubtedly one of last year’s biggest hits. An epic adventure brimming with sprawling quests and an untold number of hours for players to delve into. Millions of players were drawn in by this massive, fully realised fantasy world, but without question a huge number of players wasted much more time than they’d like to admit just playing the card game Gwent.
In smoky taverns or sat around a fire as the sun sets, with complete strangers or Geralt of Rivia’s closest friends, Gwent could be played with anyone, anywhere, which was sort of the problem when there was a Ciri to be looking for; once you get addicted to Gwent it’s rather hard to stop. With its simple rules yet game-changing strategies and manoeuvres, Gwent quickly became a cult favourite.
Last month, the team responsible for the sensational mini-game within a game, Polish developers CD Projekt Red, finally confirmed during Microsoft’s E3 press conference that they would be releasing a standalone version of Gwent, mostly because the demand for it from the fans had reached overwhelming levels.
While it no doubt already has a large fan base thanks to the Witcher 3, Gwent will now, for the first time, be competing with massive, dedicated rivals such as Magic: The Gathering, Clash Royale, The Elder Scrolls: Legends and, of course, Hearthstone – as well as trying to create a safe and fun environment in the wild west of the internet.
This presents new challenges all of their own: the trolls of the Northern Kingdoms don’t have anything on those yelling at you from the safety of their bedrooms and logging off in a huff before they can concede defeat. Blizzard of course has had several years’ headstart in the card battling genre, but that also means Projekt Red has the benefit of hindsight, and it’s clear that the studio is drawing more than a few “learnings” from Hearthstone. Here are five that Geralt seems to have taken to heart in the run up to launch.
1. Things have to be fair
Is there anything worse than feeling like you’ve been cheated out of a victory? We can all accept defeat if we’ve been truly outclassed by the opposition, or if we personally made a mistake that led to our downfall, but losing due to the RNG overlords? Well that’s just infuriating. Fairness is probably the most important lesson Gwent has learned from Hearthstone, which means it’s the game’s biggest catalyst for change.
In Witcher 3, Gwent was designed specifically for the player to win and to get maximum enjoyment out of it. The player may not have won every time, but with it being a single-player game not much thought ever had to be given to the opponent. So in the base game there was an easy and obvious way to win: use spies, decoys and healers to get your hand as big as possible, then roll over your opponent with a superior numerical advantage.
Now Gwent is going multiplayer that obviously needs to be changed, or matches will become tedious rather quickly. Thankfully CDPR are already on it as changes, like deck-building rules, useless cards getting more purpose and the heavily spy-focused faction Nilfgaard being removed, have already been implemented.
So many millions of people continue to play Hearthstone because it isn’t pay-to-win; players with more or newer cards don’t have a massive advantage and players win, at least when Yogg isn’t involved, due to ability rather than quality of deck.
2. Catchy music is a must
When you’re playing a standalone card game for hours on end it quickly becomes apparent how important the music is. It has to have the right blend of catchy and memorable, but it can’t reach the point where it gets annoying or repetitive, or else it might just drive the players to insanity and make them go elsewhere for their card fix.
Hearthstone’s soundtrack has a great mix of cheery upbeat strings, mellow horns that change up the tone and a constant good beat that keeps the tempo and excitement high. If you’ve played even just 10 minutes of The Witcher 3, you’ll know that it too boasts a brilliant soundtrack, with Wild Hunt making the most of mandolins, violins and spine-tingling vocals to evoke a true feeling of epicness. If the soundtrack for Gwent is half as good as The Witcher 3’s, then it’ll be right up there with Hearthstone in the awesome music department.
3. People need to care about the lore
Even if you’ve never played a single game set in the Warcraft universe, you’ve still no doubt heard of it. From several Warcraft games and the insanely popular MMO World of Warcraft, to a Hollywood blockbuster movie and Hearthstone itself, Warcraft has been seeping into popular culture for over two decades. The main reason that the franchise has managed to cross so many mediums and garnered millions of diehard fans is because it has a deep, rich lore that so many people have invested in and love.
Gwent has followed Hearthstone’s lead in this regard as the lore in the world of The Witcher is extensive and gripping. The world was created by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, who wrote two collections of short stories and a whole saga of five books, which detailed the story of Geralt of Rivia and his ward Ciri, the politics of a war-ravaged land at constant odds with an invading foreign force and how friendship can be forged in the most dire of circumstances.
Brimming with hundreds of larger- than-life characters, the Witcher books then allowed for CDPR to create three humongous games, set after the events of the books, containing thousands of stories. With comic books, Polish TV shows and a blockbuster movie of its own due in 2017, Gwent has a great depth of lore that people are attached to which could make it a great success. Take, for instance, the new hilarious Roach card, which can be summoned from anywhere on the board but, fitting her buggy nature in the game, she will choose where she wants to go. Even her illustration is of her looking confused on the roof of a house.
4. Lots of cards are needed
Everyone loves collecting cards, don’t they? Everyone did it with physical cards when they were kids, and now thanks to video games we can collect them in a virtual space, too. Just by glancing at the massive popularity of FIFA Ultimate Team and Hearthstone, people love collecting cards, comparing them to what they’ve got and then putting them into their newly improved deck. The feeling when a new pack opens and it’s revealed that you’ve got a shiny or the one card that’s avoided your grasp forever is truly euphoric.
For Gwent to be kept fresh and interesting for the players, new cards are going to have to be added on a fairly regular basis or they may find that players will soon grow tired and fade away. Thankfully, CDPR have seen how adding new content has kept Hearthstone alive with millions of players and they plan to do the same by adding new cards, mechanics, single-player adventures and game modes – and have shown how good they are at living up to their word with promised DLC and expansions for The Witcher 3 proper over the last year.
New cards are what keeps a card game interesting as it means the metagame is always changing and nothing becomes too stagnant. The Witcher universe has hundreds of characters yet to get carded, from Witcher 3’s Bloody Baron or the book’s infamous Leo Bonhart, so there should be no shortage of inspiration for new, beautifully drawn cards.
5. Single player modes are great too
Multiplayer isn’t for everyone, whether it be because a player doesn’t feel confident enough in their ability or would just rather relax when playing rather than have to concentrate on beating an opponent. There has to be something in Gwent for those people who rather play on their lonesome than compete against people from all over the globe. In Hearthstone this is done through the several “solo adventures”, which provide interesting little stories.
With The Witcher 3 being a game so focused on telling lots of stories, be it be the overarching narrative about the world’s demise or just a short, simply tale about a statue’s private parts being stolen, CDPR love telling tales from the Northern Realms. So much so that it would seem weird if Gwent didn’t have one, too. Thankfully, Gwent will have a solo adventure which will be fully voice acted by the cast of Witcher 3 and will amount to at least 10 hours of content, which will no doubt get us all addicted to Gwent once again.
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