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Comment by MegaButts | Hacker News Reader

Maybe this used to be true (I am not making a claim one way or the other) but it seems unlikely they would have that approach and end up with their latest offering - Artifact. I realize not every game is going to be a hit but that game doesn't seem to be liked by just about anybody.

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It’s not a game that I, a long time Valve fan would have any interest in, but I’ve been told by friends who are into card games that the actual game was fun, it was the awful pricing that killed it.

It's a game that is very fun for people who are already invested in card games. The pricing was a big issue, but another one was that the game just isn't that fun for more casual players. It's a game that is very sensitive to misplays, has much more visible RNG than other card games (but I'd argue not much more RNG total) and a lot of the game's play patterns push you into lines where the right play is to just do nothing.

I played Artifact, it was fun until it died, but a very tough set of lessons for Valve to swallow:

1) Their reputation really has been damaged over no HL3/Dota 2 money grabs.

2) That they can't just publish anything onto Steam anymore with little to no upfront communication.

3) Not all monetisation models are viable - especially with the recent loot-box fiascos. If they wanted a card economy the game should've been free with random cards, with the option to purchase cards to have your own collection.

The past few months they've definitely started to change over the response to Artifact. Dota Underlords was shipped in only 5 months, so it just shows what they're capable of with a little pressure.

Artifact is a case study in how user testing alone goes wrong.

They did extensively test Artifact but user testing will get you stuck in local maxima. You still need someone with a good wholistic vision to make a great product.

>wholistic

Holistic?

I support wholistic as an alternate spelling of holistic. You're actually likely to come to a good idea of what it means even if you've had no exposure to real word before.

Eggcorns are neat.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/06/01/411231029...

They are both equally correct terms, with the same meaning.

D'oh. Count this in the things I've learned and then forgot.[1]

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15313367

I'm not sure, by default I parse that as 'who' not 'whole' and that takes me down a very misleading path.

I heard they had a lot of feedback along the lines of "I really like this game, but I'm not sure if other people will" (this from a friend who is friends with one of the artifact devs, so take it with a healthy dose of salt).

Teams changed too. Companies try to develop identities and cultures but it's often just the sum of its people.

Valve also has a unique decentralized structure where teams work independently on games, as has been noted many times before with their handbook (not sure how accurate that is today). So it's possible you're just seeing the results of a completely different team.

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