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Zynga's Brian Tinsman Talks The Future Of The Card Battler

This article is more than 10 years old.

There are a myriad of full-fledged digital TCG/CCG offerings poised to hit the market this year.  Will this flood of dedicated card titles spell disaster for the popular mobile variant, the card battler?  Brian Tinsman, lead designer on Zynga’s War of the Fallen, thinks the genre will be just fine.  Why?

Accessibility.

“While certainly some of the new titles on the horizon will offer a core CCG experience, they’re never going to be as accessible as a battler.  Anyone can sit down with no knowledge of CCGs and get right into a battler.  You can sit down with a battler title and can easily have a bite sized play session, something you’re never going to find in a dedicated title,” says Tinsman.

“There’s versatility there.  With a battler I can play in just a few minutes, or have an extended play session to make critical deck changes, upgrades, or organize a collection.  With a core CCG/TCG, there’s a huge time investment inherent to the genre.”

We asked Tinsman about some of the aspects that a core player might find lacking in the card battler, such as limited options beyond setting up a deck and seeing the results play out, energy systems, and lack of player interaction.

“That’s one thing we’re trying to accomplish with War of the Fallen.  We’re trying to bring in mechanics from core titles and get them into the game a little deeper in.  We want to maintain that high level of accessibility afforded by the battler genre and then bring in more complex mechanics for our core players.  That’s why we’ve got a real focus on abilities in War of the Fallen, your choices matter beyond just selecting your top level/star cards.”

Card battlers like War of the Fallen are continually looking to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack, as the genre floods the market with a dizzying number of titles.  As with other other mobile genres, the future is expanding with a focus on games as a service, an emphasis on social, and the need for discoverability.

“Some of the updates we have planned for War of the Fallen involve revamping our guild system and making the title more social.  We’re going to have special events. We want players to be able to interact more.  We want guilds to mean something.  We’re going to be able to give our players the experiences they’re searching for.”