Well, it’s official. Artifact is dead.

Again.

I suppose the issue with revivals is that you have to go through the grieving process a second time.

But let’s give some context. Artifact was the best little card game that no one played. It was loathed from the day it was announced. It was decried as it built up towards its release. It was vilified once it finally arrived in our hands. Then people spent its last throes celebrating and reveling over its prepared grave. It seems people got more satisfaction desecrating its corpse than they did playing it.

Which, I mean, I guess we like what we like.

But it was nowhere near as bad as anyone says it was. And it’s a shame for those few of us that actually liked to play it.

And can we just take a moment to appreciate its art. It’s got such pretty art.

However, it was clearly always a niche product.

I guess I’m drawn to niche card games. Perhaps its my stubborn refusal to play Magic: the Gathering. Or perhaps because the only mainstream card game is literally Magic: the Gathering. Perhaps the card game market is simply too niche on the whole to support a breath and depth of experiences and formats. Or perhaps this is further condemnation of the state of art in a late developed capitalist economy. I can only assume there are a bunch of movie fans who are, at this very moment, penning a near identical blog bemoaning the death of their favourite film to the likes of yet another superhero movie.

I don’t know, because I don’t watch movies.

Because they’re just all stupid superhero movies.

However, I can’t help but draw comparisons to Netrunner when reminiscing over what could have been with Artifact. Which, I suppose, isn’t a fair example. The death of Netrunner wasn’t hinged on its market viability. It was successful… enough. It simply wasn’t successful enough for its publisher to fight for its IP rights to continue it. And I’m not the dollars and cents person for either Fantasy Flight or Valve, so I can’t speak to the financial viability of either of these games in this day and age.

And I get that commissioning all that fancy art is cheap. Let alone all the programming and animations that went into bringing this game to life. Artifact is the sort of game that, in the past, would have quietly died behind the scenes at old Valve, never to be mentioned except in passing by former workers disgruntled that their years of hard work amounted to nothing than a few posters to hang on the walls. This time, however, we got to see the sausage being made.

It’s not pretty.

It’s heartbreaking.

I’m also saddened that the legacy Artifact will leave behind is one of smug triumph by the worst aspects of the Internet. Look, I get the disappointment. I was there for the reveal of the game at the International. I wanted to see new heroes and updates for Dota 2 just as much as everyone else. Sure, the last thing I cared about was “yet another card game” at a time when everyone and their grandmother hadn’t released all their own card games. Sure, the game started off on the wrong foot. However, the vitriol that rolled from that first moment was not reflective of the game at all.

It was motivated primarily by a bunch of people online demanding to be right over an argument that no one was having.

People were determined to hate the game on release. I can remember all the hate messages people posted about community members that got early access to the game and were sharing their enthusiasm for it. Then there was all the hate for the people that got early keys from attending promotional events before it launched. It was a cavalcade of hate directed at anyone and everyone who even brushed past the project.

It exceeded far beyond rationality. It heightened and perpetuated the worst toxicity of online culture that festers and breeds in online games. It was on the level of Diretide stupidity and kind of drives home the Hobbesian ideal that man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

A large portion of the online community had determined, before they even played the game, that it was the worst thing ever. It seems they were determined to make it their life goal to see it fail.

And this was a story of their success, in the end.

But it’s a weird, bitter victory. Since this was a game that was ostensibly cannibalized by the very people who want it. Or would want it. It’s not like a rival fan base infiltrated the community and redirected all these irate fans to their favourite game. This was an example of a fan base determined to send a message to their preferred developer. I’m not sure what their message was. I don’t think they had any idea what it was either. It was merely a sustained display of anger to simply communicate that they were… angry, I suppose.

Now, I’ve gone over the shortcomings of the game. I don’t think it’s perfect. Far from it, I think it had some very serious flaws on release. I thought there were some fundamental design issues that would hamper it’s continued development and success if Valve decided to stick by them. So when word of the revival came out, I was curious to see what they learned.

And… I can’t say I agreed with everything they did. What was clear, however, was that Valve was determined to listen to their fans. They seemed to think that the biggest issue they had with the first release was not paying attention to every single scrap of feedback that they got.

That, however, was a mistake.

When discussing the creative process, I often quote a Valve developer. I recall reading an interview where an employee (could very well be an ex-employee at this time so I apologize for not naming them) said that your audience is very good at identifying things that don’t work. They are, however, terrible at knowing what does. You’ll see it all the time. Perhaps you’ve done it yourself. You’ve read, watched or played something and said, “This is awful! Man, if only they did X it would be perfect.”

Except, for most of us, we’re really not qualified to make that second assertion. The first is sound feedback. We are, after all, the best judges of our own feelings and motivations. We spend the most time with ourselves so we should be best at noticing when we like something or don’t. However, people are not trained in every aspect of art. I may not like a pop song but I am the last person you should ask for suggestions on how to improve a beat or melody.

And I found that with my writing. When I gave my earlier drafts to readers for feedback… I can’t deny that the suggestions for improvement weren’t the most helpful. The greatest value I got from readers was finding areas of common ground where they didn’t like something. But their suggestions on how to improve them were not going to work. I can say this with some certainty because I’d tried a few of the suggestions before and they weren’t successful. Other suggestions were simply not going to work on their own.

Now, I can’t say that Valve’s issue with its revival was that they listened too much to bad suggestions. I have no idea what went on behind closed developers doors. Following its development, I noticed them tweaking things to align with the most common complaints. However, in doing so, they ended up gaining complaints for other people who actually liked how it was originally. Plus, those changes just made more problems. The development situation spiraled into a situation where, no matter what was done, no one seemed happy.

And I was a little disappointed because I liked Artifact’s original release. Its revised version was… basically a totally new game. I was on board because it was interesting in its own right and I still believe Valve to be very skilled developers. Furthermore, at the end of the day, the idea of having a card game that could distill a game of Dota 2 into a two player, shorter experience was exactly what Kait and I were looking for.

I guess, in the end, they finally went with my suggestion of making everything free. So, in these last listless moments, Kait and I will still load it up and play with what we’ve got. They polished the revival into a state that looks nice. Certainly nice enough for us to mourn yet another “imagine what this could have been” situation.

At the very least, we’ll have an animated Netflix show by the end of this month to enjoy.

But to all those haters who loathed this game from the very beginning… well, I hope you’re satisfied with this.

Because someone should be.