On the back of Blizzard business cards: Ben Brode details Marvel Snap\u2019s unlikely genesis YouTube: Marvel SnapFour years on from Hearthstone\u2019s global rollout, director and public face of the development team Ben Brode left Blizzard. Fast forward another four years and his new studio just launched its debut project Marvel Snap. But how did this gargantuan partnership come about? How did an indie team strike gold out of the gate? Ironically enough, it all started on business cards from his former employer. When Hearthstone entered the spotlight in 2014, it largely helped revolutionize the Collectible Card Game genre in digital form. Captivating presentation, addicting gameplay systems, and of course, that once-renowned Blizzard polish all helped catapult it into one of the more popular and successful CCGs in the Western market. Years of support, multiple expansions, and millions in revenue later, how do you follow up on such an immense creation? That\u2019s exactly what Ben Brode set out to answer in 2018 when he announced his departure from Blizzard and formed Second Dinner alongside a slew of ex-Hearthstone developers. Before long, the crew had amassed $30 million in investment from Chinese company NetEase and announced its first title was to be a collaboration with entertainment juggernaut Marvel. This was all before even so much as nailing down an idea of what this game might look like, as Brode recounted in conversation with Dexerto. Friends in superpowerful places Before Second Dinner opened up shop and long before Marvel Snap came into the equation, Brode worked alongside Jay Ong at Blizzard. In the midst of Hearthstone\u2019s transition from Beta to full-fledged release, Ong took up an exciting opportunity at Marvel. He was to lead the charge as the head of Marvel Entertainment\u2019s video game wing. \u201cHe had a really cool strategy,\u201d Brode said, having been contacted by Ong soon after stepping into his new role. \u201c\u2018Let\u2019s do to Marvel Games what Marvel has done with [the MCU].\u2019 Every single time a Marvel movie comes out, you\u2019ve gotta see it because you know it\u2019s gonna be good. So he said Marvel Games should be like that. Every Marvel game should be awesome. The fruits of that labor have only shown in recent years, with the likes of Marvel\u2019s Spider-Man from Insomniac Games and Marvel\u2019s Guardians of the Galaxy from Eidos-Montr\u00e9al raising the bar on what fans can expect from games under the umbrella. But Ong was putting out feelers far and wide from as early as 2014. One such group he was eager to collaborate with was his former colleagues on the Hearthstone team. \u201cHe called and said \u2018I know you guys can make incredible stuff. I\u2019d love to do something incredible on mobile. If you guys start a new studio, I would love to work with you and do something really cool.\u2019\u201d In a matter of months, Brode and a handful of others parted ways with Blizzard, founded Second Dinner, and took up their friend\u2019s offer on a Marvel-centric mobile game. Exactly what said game would look like, however, no one had quite thought that far ahead just yet. \u201cWe were working on some other ideas,\u201d Brode explained, \u201cand when we were like \u2018ok, this Marvel thing is going to happen,\u2019 we started skinning them with Marvel.\u201d It didn\u2019t take long for the team to realize this approach wasn\u2019t going to cut it though: \u201cWe needed to build a game from the ground up to be a Marvel game, so we started over.\u201d Making the most of unused business cards From the very beginning of this partnership, Brode knew he wanted his team to develop a mobile card game of sorts using the Marvel IP. Typically, this ideation process can be grueling. Which central mechanics should you hone in on? What should it look like? How many players per match? It\u2019s all a great deal to consider but fortunately for the newly relocated group, they settled on the idea of Marvel Snap sooner than expected. \u201cWe quickly landed on [Snap]. In fact\u2026 it was so fast,\u201d Brode laughed. \u201cIt was the second idea we had. We were like \u2018this is too fast, we should explore other things just in case.\u2019 How often is the second idea the best idea? So we spent at least a week trying out other stuff. It was the worst week because all we wanted to do was play [Snap].\u201d So with the earliest concept of the Snap gameplay loop swiftly in focus, what came next was to design a few cards that work within the rules. It\u2019s here where a batch of now outdated business cards from his former workplace came in handy. \u201cOnce upon a time, we used to make card games on the back of my dad\u2019s business cards. So when I got my first job in games, I got business cards and I kept them. I thought someday, maybe I\u2019ll make a card game with these. So when we started doing this, I got my business cards and I did the first prototype of Marvel Snap on the back of my old Blizzard business cards.\u201d Brode shared some of those cards, each crudely written out with black marker. They had all the same relevant information you see on your favorite characters in Marvel Snap today: Cost, Power, card names, and card effects. Shockingly enough, many of these stats and abilities even hold up to this very day, years removed from the concept phase. Elektra is still a 1 Cost | 1 Power card that destroys an enemy 1-cost card. Captain America is still a 3 Cost | 3 Power card that gives other cards at the same Location +1 Power. Even Galactus remains intact from the very first idea, destroying two Locations on the board if it\u2019s the only card you play at the other. The likes of Professor X, Gambit, Namor, and many others were all envisioned from the very start of development, right on the back of old Blizzard stationery. \u201cWhat\u2019s funny is this makes it seem like not a lot changed,\u201d Brode said, \u201cwhen actually, a lot did change.\u201d Although the core idea of \u2018snapping\u2019 was in place, many fundamentals hadn\u2019t yet taken shape, despite the fact a few dozen cards were effectively finalized right away. From \u201cthe number of turns\u201d to \u201cthe way Locations work,\u201d and even the Snap mechanic itself, plenty of variables were up in the air as development got underway. \u201cBut throughout all of it, a lot of these cards stayed very similar.\u201d Back in the formative years of Second Dinner, the growing team was laying tracks while the train was already in motion. Cards continued to be theorized while basics building blocks were still yet to be locked in place. Initially, for instance, Locations functioned quite differently from how we see them today, Brode elaborated. Where today each of the three unique Locations reveals itself one turn after another, that wasn\u2019t always the case. In fact, Locations \u201cdidn\u2019t always have abilities\u201d in the first place. Later down the road, when custom effects were involved, all three Locations would reveal on turn one. Unfortunately, this solution was \u201coverwhelming,\u201d the team quickly realized before pivoting once again. At this stage, players were even required to build multiple decks \u2014 one housing your cards and one for Locations. In essence, each competitor was able to influence the playing field by pre-selecting a favorable effect on the board. \u201cYou built a 12-card hero or villain deck and then you build a Location deck. The Locations were one of mine, one of yours, and one at random. So the games were less variant and it was very unbalanced. Certain strategies had access to very powerful Locations and certain ones didn\u2019t. It was much more complicated.\u201d While limiting RNG and having a say in which Locations appear has been a popular talking point among the community, Brode and the team tested it extensively in previous years and came to the conclusion it\u2019s simply \u201cless fun. \u201cPart of the fun in Marvel Snap is being put in new situations that you have to puzzle your way out of. If you\u2019re in the same situation over and over again, there\u2019s less puzzling, less thinking on the fly, and less problem-solving. So I think having a lot of variance there is really important.\u201d The weight of Hearthstone\u2019s shadow Regardless of how you look at it, Second Dinner certainly had a tremendous weight on its shoulders during Marvel Snap\u2019s development. Be it internal stress from those on the former Hearthstone team wanting to outdo their previous work, expectations from the new Marvel Games division in their corner, or simply just investors keeping tabs on their progress, pressure was clearly mounting. \u201cI remember thinking, gosh, what if it\u2019s not fun?\u201d Brode admitted. \u201cWe\u2019re going to spend years trying to make this thing and what if I set us off in the wrong direction?\u201d Having served as the face of the Hearthstone team throughout its launch years, all but representing the developers in videos for the community, appearances at major events, and leading content reveals, Brode is no stranger to bearing the brunt of that pressure. If Marvel Snap were to fall short, in many ways, he would take on that responsibility. But three weeks removed from the global rollout and Marvel Snap has done anything but that. \u201cLaunch has been amazing,\u201d he said, with the trademark Brode smile the CCG community knows all too well. \u201cIn some ways, launch represents an exhalation of breath I\u2019ve been holding in for four years. \u201cI\u2019m a very optimistic person so I felt pretty good about it. We\u2019ve been playing it for years internally. It\u2019s a game we playtest every week if not twice a week. So I think we had the benefit of just a huge amount of time to really hone in and polish the core gameplay, make sure it felt really good.\u201d But not only that, Brode had unwavering confidence in those around him: \u201cA game like this is only as good as the team building it. \u201cWe have just this unbelievable team. Our VFX artists are so good at making snappy VFX that really highlight the stories of the characters. The engineering team built a really unique backend where we were able to launch a giant game with no server issues, no downtime, that\u2019s kind of unheard of. We just have this unbelievable team. Our number one value is to make a place people really love to work at. Everything else becomes easy after you do that.\u201d Second Dinner\u2019s launch title shot to the top of the App Store and Google Play charts shortly after release, quickly reassuring Brode and the team at large they were on the right path all those years ago. Though as we all know, in a live-service world, launch is only the beginning. But with the state of Marvel Snap upon release and a developer committed to its long-term success, there\u2019s no question the sky is the limit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On the back of Blizzard business cards: Ben Brode details Marvel Snap\u2019s unlikely genesis YouTube: Marvel SnapFour years on from Hearthstone\u2019s global rollout, director and public face of the development team Ben Brode left Blizzard. Fast forward another four years and his new studio just launched its debut project Marvel Snap. But how did this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}