Most places do a year in review at the end of December or beginning of January. I’m not one of those people but there were two things that released last year that I do want to discuss. These are, regrettably, my biggest disappointments. Both have a similar trajectory, however, so while I’m making a more positive push on content and such this year, we’re going to start on shaky ground.

The first game I want to discuss (and both my disappointments are games) is Valve’s Artifact. It was one of those few games that I’ve been anticipating because it frankly sounded exactly what I wanted. Kait and I both enjoy Dota 2 but are simply too busy to really play the game as much as we like. It is unfortunately a rather lengthy experience. It is also unfortunately a team game that involves relying on four other players to coordinate and cooperate in order to achieve success.

Dota 2 is also a complicated game so you’re very reliant on your compatriots to perform well. Thus, there’s a bit of a negative feedback loop for the game as you get older. The more work makes you busy, the less you play. The less you play the worst you do. The worst you do, the more your teammates get angry at your performance. So while Kait and I like to watch the International every year, we’re simply incapable of committing to the game itself anymore.

But a two player card game that plays very similar to Dota 2 is exactly what we needed! Kait even had rudimentary design documents on her own homebrew Dota 2 board game. And since we play each other there isn’t any worry about meeting grumpy people who have no interest in being patient with lapsed players who have no idea what the strategies for the newest big update are.

So despite the lukewarm reception of Artifact’s initial reveal, I had been steadily growing interested as information dripped out over the year leading up to Artifact’s release. The game does, indeed, have a very familiar framework: players build a deck including five heroes. These heroes, when killed, are returned to the “fountain” and can return to the lanes two turns later. They each have signature cards and abilities often reflective of their characters in Dota 2. The goal of the game is to push down your opponent’s towers to get access to their ancient. Either you destroy towers in two lanes or you destroy one tower then the ancient in one.

In order to help destroy these towers, you can play the cards in your deck. Now, all the heroes have been split between four different colours and the cards each have a corresponding colour as well. Thus you may only play cards in a lane with a colour matching a hero in that same lane. So if you want to play your Bronze Legionnaire (which is red) then you will need a red hero (like Legion Commander) in the lane you want that Bronze Legionnaire. The colours naturally represent game archetypes with red focusing on strong heroes, green highlights powerful creeps and buffs for those creeps, blue is focused on destructive and controlling spells while black is all about making gold and murdering heroes.

You can have any mixture of colours in your deck but since you’re limited to exactly five heroes, that creates a natural focus for your deck. I am far from good at the game so have mostly kept myself to two coloured decks. You have a primary focus (say strong heroes in red) and pick two supports for those heroes (like two black to make lots of money to buy those red heroes game winning items).

There’s another element in Artifact that is reminiscent of Dota 2. At the end of each round – a round ends once both players have passed in all three lanes – there is a shopping phase. Also included in your deck construction is an item deck. It must consist of at least nine items and these are, essentially, a baked in sideboard. During the shopping phase you get one random card from your item deck, one from the consumable deck (which has the same items for all players) and one item from the secret shop (a random item from all the possible items in the game). Your item deck has the benefit that if you purchase the item from it, you draw a new item from your deck to replace it. For the secret shop and consumable deck, you need to wait for the end of the next round to have them replenish.

Now, I may not be the most devoted card game player but there’s a few modern updates to the game that make me really enjoy it. For one, your economy is automatically managed. You have a mana pool for each lane that you use for your spells (but not your items, they’re free to play after you purchase them). This pool increases every turn so you don’t have to worry about being mana screwed like a certain other game. You also get to draw two cards at the start of your turn so your card draw isn’t as unforgiving especially since deck sizes are forty (or more) cards. Also, rounds are shared. So one player (who has initiative) will get the first chance to play a card in a lane. Then, their opponent gets to go. This continues until both players pass.

This sharing of actions is really neat for a couple of reasons. For one, it cuts down on the ability for “degenerate combo” gameplay. Netrunner had a few decks that, once the player got the necessary pieces, they could win the game without their opponent getting any chance to react (with the sole exception of trying to close out the game before their enemy got their combo assembled). The problem, of course, was that it was difficult to tell if you were playing against a combo deck sometimes so you may not even know you were in danger until it was too late. But in Artifact, your opponent gets a chance to respond after piece of your combo gets played and allows more interactivity between the players.

This core game element also means that sometimes playing nothing is the more strategic play. And that’s what I really love about Artifact. It’s a fairly simple game to understand, and the cards themselves are rather straightforward, but the actual strategy is insanely deep. I haven’t really lost any games where I felt I couldn’t do anything but mostly made really poor choices. And that’s where the difficulty of the game lies. There are so many choices to make in the game that it is hard to know exactly what you should do.

It’s an exciting game that’s deliciously complicated and I love.

So how is this game a big disappointment for me? Well, the game simply is not doing well. And while the Internet is full of personal theories for this, I have my own. There are a large number of factors that have led to Artifact’s dwindling numbers. Some are rather unpleasant. There is a certain amount of negativity in the gaming space that has, unfortunately, only seemed to have grown over the years. Unfortunately, there’s a rather vocal population that would like to see anything Valve creates fails. Plus, there’s a strange brand loyalty amongst gamers and many see competing games against their favourites as a threat against themselves. Course, this sort of brand loyalty has been cultivated by companies and I am concerned what this will mean for the future.

But I don’t believe this hostility is the only reason Artifact is floundering. And I would rather focus on causes that can be addressed.

I honestly believe that there’s a fantastic game in Artifact and, while it isn’t going to interest everyone, I think it’s got more appeal than some would argue. It’s first couple of days also saw a huge amount of interest and players that have been steadily dropping off since launch. So, how did that happen? I don’t think so many players bought into the game thinking it would be something else. It’s not the gameplay that’s pushing them away.

No, unfortunately I think Valve misread the market. Artifact has a rather novel monetization scheme compared to its competitors. The game is $20 to play. But that just gets you a couple of packs and two starter decks that don’t include any of the best cards. The idea was to copy the marketplace for games like Magic: the Gathering. And I’ve expressed my distaste for Magic: the Gathering’s pricing before. One of the reasons I like Netrunner was its living card game format felt more approachable to me. Plus, Artifact’s rivals in the digital card game space are all free.

Now, most consumers these days are savvy enough to know that “free” games aren’t truly free. The closest would be Dota 2 as its only paid options are strictly for cosmetic items. Thus, by branding Artifact as a Dota card game, I think it created the expectation that it too would be free. Granted, the first adopters clearly saw that it had a $20 buy-in but I feel that Valve did a really poor job of selling their pricing scheme.

This is perhaps the most egregious mistake from Valve. They knowingly bucked the market trends in order to adopt a pricing scheme that has a fairly established history of criticism. Now, I’ve read people actually compare price between Artifact and, say, Hearthstone at a competitive level and Artifact is actually cheaper unless you devoted half a year or more grinding out wins to “earn” free cards that can be recycled into what you need in those free games. Valve also mentioned in earlier interviews that they wanted a more traditional price scheme because they wanted players to retain the value of their purchased cards.

Which I think is a poorly considered tactic. When Artifact launched, it may have been cheaper to play competitively compared to other games immediately, but everywhere you looked in the client there was a price tag. Packs cost money ($2 each with a random assortment that could easily be doubles). Individual cards cost money (Axe himself was $40 at launch!). Game modes cost money ($1 for tickets to enter ones with packs as prizes). Within the first few days, Valve made a free Draft mode available but its first launch had only games against bots or constructed play as free for players. And constructed play would pit you against players who had sunk over a hundred dollars to get the best cards.

This did feel exploitative, even if the numbers “crunched” better. It was also increasingly demotivating because players had just dropped $20 dollars to load the game up and they were immediately with a overwhelming cacophony of prices and transactions to extract more from their wallets.

So I don’t fault anyone for dropping the game at that point. I had only intentions of playing with my sister so us being restricted to our starter decks was fine. But even I felt that I could get my $20 worth of game by playing with those decks alone and then waiting for months to see if I could pick anything else up for a more reasonable price.

Thus I believe that Valve chased off its consumers by coming across as far too greedy. Their competitors offer their games for free, so it was already going to be a challenge convincing players to drop $20 upfront. Then, Valve themed the game on their premier free game ostensibly expecting them to come over while now “nickle and diming” them like Dota’s competitors do. Finally, the justification for this expensive route was to compare Artifact to traditional physical card games without acknowledging that Artifact is a digital card game with no physical product to produce.

Naturally, people are going to value a digital product where they have nothing to show for their purchase as being less valuable than something than can physically give to their children or sell at garage sales or burn to heat their homes in the dead of winter.

So, is Artifact dead? I don’t think so. I think Valve needs to recalculate their price for the game. At this point, they need to demonstrate to players that Artifact is worth the price to enter. I don’t agree that it needs to go free to play as that will just introduce the predatory grinding components that free to play subsists on. No, Artifact needs to go “dirt cheap” to play.

I’d say make Artifact’s base purchase $5 or $10 dollars. Packs should be fifty cents. Cards should sell for pennies on the marketplace with the sole exception of really rare cards maybe fetching several dollars. Valve makes money off every marketplace purchase, after all (two cents for your one at the lowest listed price). Then, Artifact should instead push cosmetics as its primary source of income – just like Dota 2!

There’s a wealth of ways that Valve could sell digital hats for this game. Animated or alternate art cards are a very common and very successful option used in traditional card games! You can sell card backs, different boards, different imps (animated mascots that are pretty adorable), different animations and environmental effects! Some of these cosmetics can be tucked into your card packs as a rare chance to drop for those that want an equivalent to loot boxes.

To compensate for players that initially bought in at a higher price point, Valve should offer them three custom hero art cards: Rix, Legion Commander and Sorla Khan to represent the Call to Arms story arc. I don’t believe it should be free to play Artifact since that leaves the game open to cheaters and scammers. Having an initial price point means that account bans actually carry some weight to them. But it should be very cheap to buy in to the game.

With these alternative, cosmetic options as your primary source, you can market the game as actually being competitively priced to the others on the market. I think most people will be far more forgiving of the difference between free to play and long to grind versus pay to play but $20 to get everything in the game.

I think this will bring back a lot more players who won’t mind investing a little more of their time into the game. Then the tournament circuit and pro scene can keep interest along with variable game modes and future releases. At any rate, something has to change or else the game won’t be around by the end of 2019.

Which is unfortunate because it is a really fun, well designed game that really resonated with a lot of people at one time. I’m really hoping we get to see where these game systems can go because the foundations leave open a game that has a lot of potential. And Dota 2 provides a number of fantastic heroes that still need to see representation here. Valve is always going to face an uphill battle with any of their new releases but there’s no reason for them to abandon their old methods of pro-consumer decisions which had garnered so much goodwill. People don’t want to see a price breakdown between four different games to understand that what they’re playing is somewhat cost effective despite all the price tags attached to everything.

They just want to play.