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rwhitisissle , (edited )

Wizards/Hasbro hires contractors to produce art for their game. They make virtually none of it in house. It’s most likely they neither know nor care who or what produces art for MTG. Besides, they produce so much content in a year, some of it has to be AI/ML generated, so this is incredibly unsurprising. At this point, MTG is starting to enshittify by dumping out product as quickly as possible. Their quality control and playtesting has gone out the window. Most of their recent sets are pretty poorly received in the limited magic space. I don’t personally care about the use of AI art, but I can say that for money making enterprises, they’ll eventually have more and more art produced via ML over time, and eventually they’ll use ML to design sets in some capacity, as well. Right now, people are upset over it or annoyed by it on some quasi-ethical grounds of “stealing from artists by not compensating them for the work they produced being used to train the models.” But it’s going to eventually become the norm, purely on the basis that they aren’t going to lose any money from using ML to produce art and they’re going to save money by doing it.

TheBat ,
@TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

What’s up with MTGs being cunts?

Coreidan ,

Capitalism

TheBat ,
@TheBat@lemmy.world avatar

That doesn’t explain Leatherface.

RizzRustbolt ,

This is like the third time they’ve been caught doing it too.

trackcharlie , (edited )

Yea, I’m sure your personal dislike of AI is absolutely going to impact a company’s desire for a worker that doesn’t take breaks, require holidays, food, water or sick leave.

Stop bitching about ai and start bitching about higher corporate tax to fund UBI.

Backwards ass arguments by incompetent morons with zero education in business, computing or technology as a whole, let alone IP law

rivermonster ,

Companies need to learn that it’s a vocal minority that cares. Lots of us love AI art, hell I prefer it at times to traditional. Companies will definitely learn because they only care about $$$. The art is way cheaper to produce, and a lot of people don’t care.

Yes, I do care that there will be no jobs in the future, but the issue isn’t artists jobs—it’s ALL jobs. And that means capitalism has to go and UBI come back. Productivity produces leisure time, and the only reason it hasn’t is b/c of billionaires and near-billionaires thanks to capitalism. Anti-ai art people often just don’t get that the issue is specifically capitalism. Time to get rid of copyright, make all AI productivity 100% taxed, and all AI models owned by the public.

Buttons ,
@Buttons@programming.dev avatar

I guarantee that image came from Midjourney. All its images have the same surreal realistic style.

96VXb9ktTjFnRi ,

I don’t understand the problem people have with AI art, anyone care to convince me how it’s somehow immoral to use a computer for making art work?

Roflmasterbigpimp ,
@Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world avatar

I don’t get it either. People complain about the theft of Art and that Artist will get paid less, but honestly, they will adapt and move on. Like they always have. Is it fair? I don’t know. But the technology is here, and it is not going away.

Decoy321 , (edited )

Historically speaking, “adapt and move on” is a euphemism for “live in abject poverty if you don’t already have another skillset or income stream.”

For example, look at the Luddites. While the term is now used to refer to people who oppose progress, they were originally a group of craftsmen who opposed the industrialization caused by the invention of the loom. While the tech in itself is objectively good, it was the implementation by the elite class that threatened their livelihoods. They went from making decent livings in their skilled crafts to having the options to either 1) work for pennies in triple shifts at dangerous factories, or 2) fuckin riot.

I’m not arguing on behalf of the Luddites, but context is important. In order for “adapt and move on” to be viable, there needs to be a system in place that values the humans involved.

Roflmasterbigpimp ,
@Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world avatar

But what would be the solution? Ban AI for 5 Years? 10? 20? I don’t think that will ever happen. They need to adapt. And they need to do it fast. You can like it or not, but this is the future. And yeah, you can bet I would be upset like hell too if that happened to me, but I would also know that there is no hope in undoing it. And it’s not like there is no upside to this or only for the Elite. The creation of Art becomes available and affordable to millions of people who had either no talent or no money to hire someone. You could say Art gets “freed” from the monopoly of people who are capable of creating it. Like making clothes or building furniture was “freed” this way. It will even increase the “output” of Art. Choosing Human made Art over AI-made is a personal preference then.

Decoy321 ,

Social programs and monopoly busting worked quite well in American history, despite what many people may currently think.

We have governments, they should be for the people. They can craft legislation that protects people and ensures their economic livelihood.

Roflmasterbigpimp ,
@Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world avatar

Do not confuse Technology with Monopoly. Of course, you can fight Monopols and you definitely should! But You can’t and shouldn’t stop Technological advancements. And as sooner People realize this, the sooner they can move on and the smaller is the chance they will become totally crushed when they get replaced by AI.

Decoy321 ,

Make no mistake, I am not confusing the two. In fact, the whole point of my previous post is that the problems come from the latter and not the former.

Roflmasterbigpimp ,
@Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world avatar

Oh yeah thats true! Fuck Monopols!

Exatron ,

It’s not using a computer that’s the problem. The issue is that generative AI scrapes the entire internet to feed its model without compensating, or even asking, creators for using their work.

C126 ,

People are mad to realize something they thought was spiritual and purely human can be reduced to a mathematical algorithm and be generated by machines.

Some claim they’re mad that it’s because the training looked at art without permission to develop the algorithm (which everyone knows all artist do, making those people look like complete hypocrites), but that just sped it up. It would have happened eventually anyway, because the fact is, art is not spiritual or uniquely human, it’s patterns and shapes, which computers are great at.

Eyelessoozeguy ,

This seems disingenuous, because you equate algorithm training to human brain. I hope you dont seriously thing the process of looking at and thinking about art is that same for a human artist or an algorithm.

The point were it doesnt equate is the idea of style. Each artist is constantly refining their style of art. But the algorithm doesnt have it’s own style and can only ape a style that already exists.

rwhitisissle ,

The foundational premise of this argument is purely that there’s something “special” about human thought and that the way humans do pattern recognition is somehow “better” than a machine’s.

nycki ,

Hey, don’t claim to represent my opinion if you don’t understand my reasoning. I don’t think art is mystical or spiritual at all, not in the way you’re describing it. Art is absolutely about patterns, and I agree that those patterns are inevitably going to be learned by computers.

My objection is not to “AI Art” in general, but to the specific type of art which is brute-force trained to mimic existing art styles. When organic artists take inspiration, they reverse engineer the style and build it up from fundamentals like perspective and lighting. Stable Diffusion and other brute-force ML algorithms don’t yet know how to build those fundamentals. What they’re doing is more like art forgery than it is like art.

And even then, I don’t really take issue with forgery if it’s done in good faith. People sell replicas of famous paintings, and as long as they’re honest about it being a replica, that’s cool too. Ethically my objection is that AI artists typically “hide their prompts” and try to sell their forgeries as originals.

Toadvark , (edited )
@Toadvark@mander.xyz avatar

Speaking as a professional artist myself, I’d wager that many of the responses you’ve run into are emotional ones. Supporting oneself as an artist was already difficult, and AI generation is an astoundingly powerful tool. For a long time there was a sense of financial security in quieter/grunt background and asset design work such as the WotC backgrounds in this situation. WotC in particular was touted as “one of the companies that actually pays artists to make neat things” in fantasy art circles, and so their fans and artist clients (often one in the same) feel betrayed.

I’m personally a sad-bitch about it because my peers and I have been posting art for one-another and fans online since 2002, our work was scraped, and now people can click a button to ape the look of all of our work without having run across it organically, knowing our names, or being able to, like, say hello to us. I really don’t mean that out of self-importance or ego- the community I grew up in online was all about discovering working artists by word of mouth this way, and getting to know them. So it’s a weird (albeit unintentional) dismantling of a community and “a way that was”, so to speak.

More practically one of my specific worries regarding AI generated images: Illustration in the literal sense of the word means ‘to illuminate’, to make clear’. Think along the lines of technical illustration- biological in my case, but this extends to mechanical parts, manuals, diagrams, medical books. These are situations where clarity is seriously important, and I feel like the deluge of generated images (and the general public’s lack of information about how the image gen works and how to decipher them) will cause harm.

Hopefully that wasn’t too much of a ramble. 🫤 TLDR: It isn’t necessarily immoral, but people are emotional, it’s a big change, and it’s happening really damn fast.

FontMasterFlex ,

it IS immoral unless you consider theft a moral act.

RagingRobot ,

What if you are stealing bread to feed a starving family?

FontMasterFlex ,

that doesn’t make it right. would it be right to rob a bank if you were homeless? or better yet, is squatting ok if you’re homeless?

daniskarma ,

You wouldn’t download an artist.

FontMasterFlex ,

i would if i could.

Eyelessoozeguy ,

One of the big issues is that AI art doesnt have it’s own style. It’s a rough amalgamation of art stapled together and smoothed to remove the seams. The art used to staple together is were this style comes from, but without knowledge of or credit to that artist. The AI doesnt do a creative process only mimicry, it cant create a new movement in art like modernism or surrealism but it can ape those existing movements. This is the problem with it. Stolen artwork stapled together without any new creative ideas thrown in.

h3rm17 ,

It can create new art styles. If for example puntillismo (no idea how it’s written in English, sorry, a painting made of small little dots) didn’t exist, you could tell the AI to do do a painting of an old lady at the beach, the picture painted using small little dots, and with sufficient prompt engineering, you would pretty much create puntillismo.

Most real people do not have their own, completely unique style. They inspire from previous work by other people, in cases like magic or commissioned work get a prompt of what they need to create, etc

Pretty similar if you ask me. Sorry I cant expand more, gotta get to work.

96VXb9ktTjFnRi ,

I don’t think this is true though. If you come up with clever inputs you can certainly invent new styles, with AI being your instrument. At the point of plagiarizing, that’s what all artists have done for the entire history of art and I don’t think there is anything wrong with it.

nycki ,

Go look up the existing arguments against AI, and write your rebuttal to those, and then debate people about it. More productive for everyone involved.

Lols ,

i can excuse hiring mercenaries to rough a guy up for leaking cards, but using AI art is a step too far!

Rubanski ,

They sent the actual Pinkertons!

harsh3466 ,

I had to step away from Magic and Wizards after the Pinkerton incident, and everything they’ve been doing since just affirms how shitty a company they are.

I didn’t bud light the cards I already own, and I still occasionally play with friends, but I haven’t spent a dime on MtG since, and I may never again.

In the grand scheme of things it means shit. Capitalism gonna capitalism, and ultimately, nearly all capitalist companies are shit. I couldn’t function in this society if I stopped using or spending money with every reprehensible company.

But with Wizards, I felt, “you know what, I just can’t do this anymore.”

mossy_ ,

WotC going nose-blind got me to switch from D&D to Pathfinder. Not sure there’s an equivalent for trading card games, unless yugioh became more comprehensible in the last fifteen years

sebinspace ,

Pokémon.

They were the original creators of the Pokemon TCG, and when TPC decided they’d start printing the cards without the involvement of WOtC, they responded with some “scorched earth” nonsense. These guys have needed to touch grass for years.

That being said, I’m surprised there’s no open source TCG.

harsh3466 ,

An open tcg would be pretty fun and interesting. I’d definitely give that a go if it existed.

sebinspace ,

Awhile back, I pushed around the idea of a spaceship TCG based on my experience in EVE Online (speaking of out-of-touch companies), but I never went anywhere with it. The idea of having a command structure like MTCG Commander, and the rest of your deck being built to protect it. The capital would only take damage after all support ships were destroyed, sort of like attacking the player directly in YGO. Using planet cards like energy/mana, like you’re harvesting resources from those planets to built ships for your fleet

harsh3466 ,

That sounds super fun. I’d play that!

Laurentide ,
@Laurentide@pawb.social avatar

That sounds fun. I had a similar idea once, but it was mechs protecting a massive rolling city with its convoy of industrial vehicles. Many of the game mechanics would be enabled by specific vehicles that were vulnerable to attack.

HobbitFoot ,

The problem with an open source TCG is that you need a way to balance it, which can be hard with a distributed group of designers not in communication with each other. You definitely couldn’t design something in a paper format; maybe as a computer card game.

sebinspace ,

I’m sorry, but that’s not true at all.

It’s not hard to balance it if you treat it like open source software. There’s still an owner that controls what is “official”. If you want to suggest changes, you make a pull request, as you would with software development, which either gets denied or approved by the owner of the official project. If you don’t like the direction the official game is going, you can “fork” it, call it a fork of the original if the license requires it, and you are now the owner of that fork, able to make whatever changes you’d like.

Open Source does not, at all, imply a lack of control. Blender is open source, but the Blender Foundation still has very strong control over what ends up in the codebase.

To that end, you can suggest balancing changes to the game project, and the owner of the project can approve or deny it.

As far as a paper or digital game goes, either one works. If someone wanted to print the cards and sleeve them, they can. We did that for proxy cards in Pokemon.

If someone wanted to create a higher-quality card, they could. Distribution might be difficult, but I can absolutely see someone selling a set of these cards on Etsy. That would be a challenge for whoever is interested in doing so.

The same goes for digital. The official project wouldn’t even have its own game, it would leave that to the creativity of the community and whoever is interested in doing that, and those projects could be listed by the project owner.

HobbitFoot ,

It’s not hard to balance it if you treat it like open source software.

It is even if you balance in an open source environment. “Closed source” successful games still have to invest substantial funds to playtesting. In an open source system, you are developing in the open. This is going to split the game already into beta and stable. You also probably aren’t going to get individual cards approved since you need to design around the interactions between cards.

If you don’t like the direction the official game is going, you can “fork” it, call it a fork of the original if the license requires it, and you are now the owner of that fork, able to make whatever changes you’d like.

So now you have multiple versions of the game floating around with sets of approved cards. Unlike M:tG, these sets are developed to not be compatible and it may be difficult to figure out what sets are legal in the version you are playing.

To that end, you can suggest balancing changes to the game project, and the owner of the project can approve or deny it.

And you still have the development process, which is hard to fix once you print cardboard.

If someone wanted to create a higher-quality card, they could.

I’m not talking about foils, but categorically better cards. You are going to have card developers with a vested interest to make sure their cards get played, and that generally means making cards at a higher power level.

sebinspace ,

I think a lot of what you’re saying is coming from the perspective of a profit motive. That’s certainly one way of looking at it, but I personally wouldn’t start something like this with a profit motive. Personally, the “cool factor” alone would be motivation enough for me, but this would require the game as a whole operating in a way other TCGs do not.

I’m not talking about foils, but categorically better cards. You are going to have card developers with a vested interest to make sure their cards get played, and that generally means making cards at a higher power level.

I also was talking about overall card quality, not specifically foils. Other than that, power creep is always going to be a thing, regardless of the motives of the project owner.

But the nice thing about open source is that if you don’t believe it’s a good idea, you don’t have to participate.

HobbitFoot ,

Other than that, power creep is always going to be a thing, regardless of the motives of the project owner.

But it is a major problem for closed source systems which can be made worse if open source methods are used on cardboard. Is someone going to want to keep playing a game when they buy some boosters but find out that some of the people they play with won’t play with those cards? Even worse, there isn’t a uniform way to define formats?

But the nice thing about open source is that if you don’t believe it’s a good idea, you don’t have to participate.

But no one else is participating either. There are fan made TCG’s, but none of them adopted the open source model. There is one body that designs cards and I don’t see that changing. Even then, the trading or collecting part of that hobby goes away; they become Living Card Games instead without the collectable nature of more traditional distribution systems

sebinspace ,

If no one’s done it, we don’t know if it’ll actually work, we can just theorize. I don’t see the harm in anyone trying, and I don’t particularly care for defeatism.

HobbitFoot ,

This isn’t defeatism, but pointing out potential flaws in a system being developed. If designers can’t address potential fatal flaws, the system won’t progress.

sebinspace ,

Alright, well I can’t be expected to have all the right answers. What do you suggest?

HobbitFoot ,

I think you can have a community designed game, but you are going to have an internal organization to it.

Whom ,

It’s worth mentioning that while developing in the open is the standard in the git era, it’s not a requirement for open source and for a project that would benefit doing otherwise they could easily just do big releases with the source available and the proper licensing.

That said, I think this is overcomplicating things. You could simply have a nonprofit organizational body who designs in-house just as Wizards does and releases the final product into the public domain or under Creative Commons licenses. Unofficial cards compatible with your game will more or less be the same as they are for Magic: optional modules that are clearly not part of your vision for the game and so playgroups must choose if they want to play the game your organization produces or an expansion to it.

HobbitFoot ,

I agree your approach would be the way to handle it and it has been done for some games.

But I would call fan designed games open source. There is a closed organization designing it, even if it is non-profit.

Whom ,

Assuming you meant to type “wouldn’t,” I think you may be a little off on what you think free and open source software entails. It doesn’t imply an open design process or anything of that kind, though it does lend itself well to those workflows. It instead describes what the end user has the freedom to do with what they receive. This is true of both of the philosophically different but practically similar “open source” and “free software” definitions.

In the software world, FOSS developers can, if they want to, design entirely behind closed doors within their own organization and drop a disc with the software, the source code, and licensing guaranteeing you certain freedoms. In the case of adapting that philosophy to a game, I think this would probably be the best approach to avoid the problems of design by committee. The cards could be released freely and included could be project files for card design, art used, etc. to allow people to do whatever they want with em.

HobbitFoot ,

I think of it more comparing a game like D&D which would work well under an open source model.

A large part of the appeal to a CCG is the interaction of the different cards together. It is a set of cards to play with, not a series of individual cards. Traditional trading card games, living card games, and deck builders are built on these card interactions. Sometimes it involves designing synergistic mechanics but it can just be creating the environment where different strategies can compete against each other. New cards get added in part to fit well with existing ones. Cases this doesn’t happen is considered to be a failure.

The open source model does not work well with that design goal.

There is going to be an inducement by designers to push for power creep since designing stronger cards will get them played. There may not be enough headroom for a game to deal with the constant increase in power.

You also have the fracturing of different formats. It took a while for Magic to get to the number of formats it had and even then most constructed play defaulted to Standard. How are you going to be able to have a CCG work with hundreds of formats filled with cards that don’t work with each other and can maybe even have homebrew cards that wreck the metagame?

A card game isn’t like an RPG where you can have a base rule set while letting others create potentially clashing supplemental sets and adventures. Hell, we’ve even seen forks like with Pathfinder. There is a reason why RPG’s adopted an open source mindset while card games didn’t.

Whom , (edited )

That already is how Magic is, though. There’s a core base ruleset and cards deemed official by the original organizing body and tons of custom stuff out there that the original body doesn’t treat as part of their product. The organizing body can control power creep and all that within its own ruleset, and most players would likely choose to use that so they don’t end up with 999/999 epic dragon of doom for 2 mana, but they don’t have to. The only real difference in this sense is that the organizing body wouldn’t be a corporation driven by profit and that players would have more legal headroom and proper tools to make custom stuff rather than the current awkward position fan sets land in.

In fact, this would give the organizing body that stands in for Wizards more room to hold back power creep, as they wouldn’t have the constant nagging knowledge that increasing power a little more will net them more money. They would have maximum control over deciding what is best for their version of the game. I imagine we’d end up with a few standardized systems of play like we have now in corporate TCGs, the original organizing body’s version alongside scattered other custom versions for highly opinionated players who want something different.

HobbitFoot ,

There are non-profit Living Card Games out there, including the current iteration of Star Wars: Customizable Card Game, but they still package card design together internally.

And you sidestepped my comment about cohesive card design. It isn’t just designing cards, but the collection of cards together as well. Why separate these two activities?

And if the open source model could work, I feel like it could have been implemented by now. We’ve seen it implemented in RPG’s and some board games, but why not card games?

Whom , (edited )

I’d like to gently suggest you reread my comments, because my whole point is that design, rulesets, and declaring legality within their own system can all happen with a governing body that is not a for-profit company and released according to the same principles as free and open source software. There is not separation of those activities if you simply choose to play the original, say, Bizards of the Boast version as most players realistically would. Stuff made by others would effectively work just like homebrew does now.

HobbitFoot ,

I literally gave the name of a non-profit game with my response.

And I recognized you can create a card game without a for-profit company running the design.

I feel like you are taking past me because you are conflating tying two design activities together as requiring a profit motive.

Whom ,

you are conflating tying two design activities together as requiring a profit motive.

I’m not though! I am saying, repeatedly, that a single organized group or even singular designer, for-profit or non-profit (but ideally the latter, of course) can do ALL of those design activities and release it as open source. They can design every card, decide every rule, and decide every card that “counts”. Having a FOSS license doesn’t change any of that. It’s up to players if they want to just use that or use additional stuff others make…just like it is now, since homebrew exists and will always exist as long as there is paper to write rules text on.

HobbitFoot ,

And you keep ignoring my statements about the system being more important than the individual parts. A designed system doesn’t get the value from FOSS development that other game systems get.

Whom , (edited )

Well, the point is that the advantages of centralized development don’t have to be given up, because development can still be centralized. The advantages of FOSS development I’m building this point upon aren’t like increased efficiency or something like that. It’s an ethical thing, allowing the game to be the public good it ought to be (and functionally kind of is, looking at proxies and homebrew). If those original designers ruin the game in a way that upsets enough people, a new designer or group could fork it and become the new standard. This isn’t really possible with a proprietary game without stepping incredibly carefully around the law. Homebrew and modified cards can exist, but if there was a modified version of Magic threatening to replace the original game, Wizards would be sending nukes your way real quick.

But I get that you seem to be coming at this from a different position, if you don’t consider games being made as part of the commons as an inherently good thing then we have a philosophical disagreement that goes beyond the scope of this discussion. I believe that making stuff that belongs to everyone IS the value of free and open source development, not a means to an end.

HobbitFoot ,

if you don’t consider games being made as part of the commons as an inherently good thing then we have a philosophical disagreement that goes beyond the scope of this discussion.

I defined a type of game being made as part of the commons as being an inherently good thing.

You are still talking past my assertion that a deck building card game is defined by the card pool, which is usually designed by a singular group of people.

Whom ,

You are still talking past my assertion that a deck building card game is defined by the card pool, which is usually designed by a singular group of people.

I’m not talking past it, because as I’ve said over and over, I agree. That singular group of people can just release that card pool under a Creative Commons license and any associated software under a FOSS license and they have made a FOSS card game. What is the problem?

HobbitFoot ,

They can, but it doesn’t provide any benefit to the game based on how card games like M:tG work.

LibertyLizard ,

An idea I’ve had for a while would be to have some kind of direct democratic method for designing new sets or cards, and for rebalancing or banning them if need be. I think it would be doable if you could achieve a critical mass of people. The custom magic subs on Reddit could basically form a functional game on their own.

General_Effort ,

One could use AI for playtesting; see if there’s overpowered cards, or a single dominant strategy.

A quick search finds this finished(?) project for AI playtesting with some fancy documentation. Seems to have been met with a complete lack of interest. Shame, it looks interesting.

TAG ,
@TAG@lemmy.world avatar

I have come across a couple digital CCGs. Not sure if they are any good.

Also, sorry to be a “well actually” guy, but Pokemon TCG was always designed by The Pokemon Company. WotC just licensed the rights to translate the game.

sebinspace ,

YEAH there it is. I knew it was complicated, just didn’t remember how exactly, I just remember the “scorched earth” weirdness

“In response to losing the license for printing Pokémon cards in 2003, Wizard’s at the time VP, Vince Calouri; launched “Scorched Earth Mode.” In this, Calouri openly threatened Nintendo, telling them that, if they retracted the license, Wizards would flood the market, causing a plummet in product value, and devaluing the product for Nintendo. After the license was indeed lost, Wizards decided to vent the entire supply of a private stocked warehouse in an attempt to make good on their threat. Additionally, former members of Wizards’ playtest staff alleged that, under Scorched Earth Mode, Organized Play had “given up on trying.” This led to many bizarre events occurring, such as officially run Wizards’ “FAT” (Fan Appreciation Tournaments) where entry was the price of 2 packs, but the winners were guaranteed 16 packs as prize. Other times, it meant releasing cards with errors on purpose, to suit the desires of Wizards’ balancing team, such as the Best of Game Hitmonchan.”

SkepticalButOpenMinded ,

In most existing TCG, artificial scarcity is a meta-mechanic of the game. For many, that’s part of the fun of the “collecting“. It’s fun to collect rare cards because they’re in limited supply.

That said, I think there could be, in theory, an open source way to have artificial scarcity and the fun of collecting. Maybe have a nonprofit that sells official printed cards at cost?

sebinspace ,

Yeah, I guess it’s actually more accurate to say this would just be a CCG along the lines of Dominion.

harsh3466 ,

I’m not a ttrpg player, but I followed the OGL nonsense, and that put a pretty bad taste in my mouth. And then they just kept being assholes.

Right now, I don’t need to dump hundreds of dollars into a new different tcg. As it is I’m happy playing with my friends using the cards that I already have.

TAG ,
@TAG@lemmy.world avatar

I have heard good things about Flesh and Blood TCG. From what I understand, the story behind it is similar to Pathfinder: a WotC partner got pissed at WotCs shenanigans and decided to make their own game.

There are also a ton of great non-collectible deck construction games. Unfortunately, they tend to fail fairly quickly because it is not profitable for local stores to host events. If you want a Magic-like one, I recommend Epic Card Game. It has a free-to-start app for Android, iOS, PC and possibly Mac.

samus12345 ,
@samus12345@lemmy.world avatar

“No ethical consumption under capitalism.”

But you can at least do what you can to lessen consumption, however small.

harsh3466 ,

Absolutely agree. I do what I can to reduce my own consumption.

It’s not a huge thing, but I ride my bike to work as much as possible, try to repair and reuse, thrift shop where I can, and make choices like not giving WotC money.

LaunchesKayaks ,
@LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world avatar

My parents gave me all of their hella old cards. I don’t think I’ve ever bought cards since I was given so many.

Meanwhile two of my friends can’t afford basic shit because they splurge on cards.

harsh3466 ,

That’s awesome. I used to have a good collection of hella old cards (I started playing when the game launched), sold them and got out of the game for a good decade or so, then got back in.

I won’t sell my cards this time around. I’ll hold on to them for the times we do play.

LaunchesKayaks ,
@LaunchesKayaks@lemmy.world avatar

I think my oldest cards are from alpha? Maybe beta? I know they were bought right when the game came out. I don’t play much because the cards can’t hold up in a game against current cards. Shit’s just too OP nowadays lol

Kyoyeou ,

Same here, haven’t bought anything since the DnD set, and to be honest I only play commander and play less and less and basically only use one single political deck

harsh3466 ,

All we tend to play is commander as well, and my wife and I have a good variety of decks to keep it fun/interesting when we do play, which honestly isn’t very often anymore.

We used to play weekly. Last year we played maybe half a dozen times.

Roflmasterbigpimp ,
@Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world avatar

Okay but what should I play then? MTG is just so cool and fun to play! ._.

Whom ,

You can still play Magic if you want to avoid Wizards, you can print proxies or (if you play online) use a foss client like Cockatrice. There are even tools to simulate drafts and such if you want some limits on what you can use.

The nice thing about card games is it’s actually very easy to not give the companies behind them anything and treating them as folk games we all own.

Decoy321 ,

You’re a grown ass person, you can make your own decisions.

acockworkorange ,

OotL here, what Pinkerton incident?

Eyelessoozeguy ,

Some guy ordered a booster box for pack openings got a set that wasnt released yet. Wotc sent Pinkerton after him to retrieve the product. And yes the same organization of mercs for hire from Red Dead Redemption.

acockworkorange ,

Fucking mob behavior, what the hell!

drdiddlybadger ,
@drdiddlybadger@pawb.social avatar

Fuck it. Not buying MTG stuff again. Only a matter of time until cards are wholesale AI generated at which point you could just generate the card your damn self.

Even_Adder ,

That sounds pretty cool too.

thehatfox ,
@thehatfox@lemmy.world avatar

MTG cards can already get pretty wild, to the point that some card combinations almost rewrite the rules of the game.

I hate to think what sort of mad abilities LLM hallucinations would create.

Even_Adder ,

I remember seeing someone making a set a little while ago. As far as balance, you’d probably have to crowdsource it.

match ,
@match@pawb.social avatar

May I introduce you to Loadingreadyrun’s RoboRosewater Master’s Cube Draft

General_Effort , (edited )

Yes, it makes no sense to do this on purpose. If they convince their customer base, that handmade is better, they can keep down hobbyists and indie devs. With an image as a “premium brand” one can also charge higher prices, though that may be beside the point in that business.

oconnordaniel ,

Right? And it’s so easy to say from the start “Yeah, one of the Artist used some AI on some background items.” And just own up to it. AI is at the level of ‘Everyone is doing it’. All you have to do is make some vague promises of “We’ll try and do better and catching poorly done AI in the future” and everyone would just shrug and nod.

It’s the unforced error of lying about it that’s the bad part.

grahamja ,

I think all of the card games with random pulls are a bit of a ripoff.

The RPG crowd is the lead in pirating or flat out making their own rules and barely spending money. They just need rules and dice. You need a small group, and there really aren’t tournaments so you can play it however you want.

Table top war gaming in the middle is being filled with indy 3d printed miniatures and home made rules that can take over local scenes pretty easily. 40k still dominates the space, only because most people act like its the only game (it is by far the most common already) and you can buy the minis from most any hobby store. The tournaments are huge, and sometimes the biggest tournaments even dictate the rules just as much as the game seller and most people want to play “tournament legal” armies only.

MTG and other card games are the only thing keeping most hobby stores alive and prints money. it is entirely on for whatever reason, people just want to buy another booster. It is as bad as gambling if not worse, you don’t even know what you are buying. It should be even easier to pirate and print your own resources to play card games but somehow it is a huge money maker because as always, people flock to the largest group of gamers in their space.

Indy RPG and Skirmish tabletop games make boat loads of money for small groups of people and it is easy for them to run circles around larger game manufacturers. Things like 40k and MTG where there is such a huge following of people who might not necessarily care and just want to go to massive tournaments it is much harder to challenge those established followings.

apprehensively_human ,

It is as bad as gambling if not worse, you don’t even know what you are buying.

To be fair, booster packs are designed primarily to be used to play in limited formats like draft or constructed. People buying boosters to try and pull expensive cards are doing themselves a disservice by not just buying or trading for the singles they want.

vic_rattlehead ,

I’ve bought more 40k after owning a resin printer than before I did. Love my flgs.

Khrux ,

They are specifically claiming that they were unaware and it happened due to the artist using the built-in AI aids in Photoshop, which is against their policy.

I actually trust WotC on this depite despising basically every other decision over the past year that they have made. They have repeatedly made their stance on not wanting AI content clear but individual designers and artists are easily equipped to just ignore that and only get caught when they don’t clean up the obvious AI errors afterwards. WotC need to be fair better at internally vetting their art and I recon they are with card art or art that is making its way to books, but art from marketing and other adjacent areas is slipping through the cracks.

Initially denying the art being AI generated is actually probably the biggest tell that they didn’t intend it. If they make a policy against it and get obviously caught, it’s totally illogical to deny it and damage their reputation further, but if they trust the artist initially, then they have grounds to deny it until they vet it or the artist owns up, which is probably what happened here.

Hasbro on the other hand only care about one thing, the line going up to their investors can cum. Currently the only reason that WotC has such a strong anti AI content policy is because the heart of their content is about design, from their artists to game designer, and many of the people who hold these roles are beloved voices in the community and if their jobs are at risk, they’ll be loud and clear about it, and we need to hear them and support them when Hasbro try to encoach on this policy, and make it clear that any cost-cutting from AI generated content will cause enough outcry and boycotting that their stock price goes down.

s38b35M5 ,
@s38b35M5@lemmy.world avatar

Just a quick look at the gauge should be enough.

djsoren19 ,

It was, there was a ton of outcry because of their denial of such blatant AI art. One prominent MTG artist even ended their partnership with Wizards over the lie, which I think is ultimately what caused them to come out and admit it.

They also made a promise not to use AI art like two weeks ago, so now a lot of other artists are unsure if they want to continue their partnership with Wizards after being lied to. Make no mistake, if the artists weren’t willing to put their careers on the line to force this apology, Wizards would have just lied and moved on.

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