Slashdot Mirror
Why Card Copying May Not Ruin Eye of Judgment
Last week it was revealed that the cards used in Sony's interesting new CCG/Videogame hybrid Eye of Judgement can easily be copied and reused. The large symbols on the cards that register with the game also make them prime candidates for counterfeiting. It may sound dire, but weizur writes with a link to a post on the Zen and Games site that theorizes this may not be the end of the world for the game. "Ultimately the rules of the game change. No longer is it a game about collecting and skill begins to play a much larger role in the game in the long run since personal wealth and ability to acquire cards becomes a non-factor. What Magic has taught us though is that this isn't really a bad thing and much fun can still be had when the game becomes a game of skill and less a game of chance, this is of course in theory as Eye of Judgment probably doesn't have the depth and finesse that Magic has and ultimately the game design of Eye of Judgment and it's ability to be a fun game will be the ultimate test."
Would it have been too expensive to print unique IDs on every card? Card copying is only an issue for online play, after all. Make the UID a hash that gets sent back to the servers, then you could have stopped all casual piracy.
To further reduce the problem, simply track hash failures and duplicate UIDs, then wait a bit for the cheaters to get confident before banning all rampant cheaters for a month, sending angry messages to all moderate cheaters and deleting all offending cards from the database.
Combined technical hurdles and fear tactics would wipe out practically all significant cheating, leaving only the soldering gun / hex editor crowd who you're not going to stop anyway. For them, as TFA says, there's only so far a hacked deck can take you.
even Magic "rare" cards aren't really that rare when the print run is millions. Magic R&D stopped designing sets for "rare" collectors a while ago. Now they design sets and rarity per "box" so that sealed pack play is balanced... the competition circuit will get whatever they want because they're willing to pay 100x cost to get it.
The better plan for an online game might be to use skill or exclusivity as short term ways of varying the game. Doll out exclusive cards by mail and balance them by zip code, it would take a few weeks before they spread to common play. If you used them for tournaments or such the time (to being copied) would be long enough to work. Or go to a WoW type thing where you have to play a "character" and build skill points online before you can use certain cards.... and like WoW as you gain specialization, you limit options to be "all powerful". Find ways to make play fun right NOW, and then release to collectors later after letting the cool factor of the players run it's course.