Game Design
Designing a card game starts with understanding how you want players to feel while sitting at a table. If you're just starting out, imagine the kind of experience you want to evoke: tension, creativity, teamwork, or bluffing. From there, every mechanic you build becomes a tool for shaping this experience.
The following section explores ways to turn ideas into concrete systems. Here, you'll learn how to translate themes and emotions into mechanics to create a game that functions with clarity and purpose.
What the Experts Say
When setting out to turn your idea into a playable experience, it is important to avoid common mistakes made in the game development process. From designing rules that stifle creativity, or accidentally introducing a card that allows a player’s turn to last forever, there are a variety of missteps that can plague your game design experience.
That’s why, when starting out, it can be beneficial to learn from those who have already released games. In this section, you will find a variety of resources from those experienced in the card game industry.
'Magic: the Gathering': 20 Years, 20 Lessons Learned
This resource is a Game Dev Conference (GDC) talk from Mark Rosewater, the Head Designer for Magic: The Gathering. The video is organized into a series of 20 lessons that the team behind Magic: The Gathering learned throughout the game’s decades-long popularity. You may recall from the “Get Started” page that Magic: The Gathering kicked off the modern CCG movement—well, Mark Rosewater has led development on that game since 2003. He is one of the foremost experts in CCG design, and his insight is invaluable to any aspiring card game creator. This video details specific instances throughout Magic’s lifespan that can help you ensure that your game is balanced, accessible, and most of all, fun to play.
Also from Mark Rosewater—this resource is a blog archive of insights into Magic: The Gathering’s development process. Starting from 1993, the year it was published, and continuing to this day, this resource is an incredible treasure trove of information for anyone interested in CCG development. This resource is a part of the broader Article Archive section of the Magic website, which allows for basic searching and filtering to navigate over three decades of articles. In it, Rosewater discusses everything from specific, problematic cards to general design theories for CCGs. At the bottom of each article is a link to the podcast: Drive to Work With Mark Rosewater, which offers audio versions of some articles, along with others outside the Making Magic blog. The usefulness of this resource cannot be understated: it is, perhaps, the single greatest collection of card game design philosophy in one place.
Designing Race for the Galaxy: Making a Strategic Card Game
This resource is another GDC conference, this time from veteran game designer Tom Lehmann. In it, he details the process of designing his game, Race for the Galaxy, including his overall design process, and how he handled criticism and feedback during the playtesting process. He discusses opportunity cost, card management, and enhancing player engagement. If the resources by Rosewater are critical for CCGs, then this resource from Lehmann is equally as useful for those interested in LCGs. This resource will walk you through the design process in a similar way as this guide—with an industry veteran using his own game as an example.
This resource is a podcast that features designers of all types of games discussing their knowledge of the industry. Focus is primarily split between video games and tabletop games. Several episodes have focused primarily on card games, such as “#259 Diving Into Cards as Components” and “#262 Diving into Co-op Card Games with MJ Newman.” Even episodes not specifically about card games have something to offer, since many facets of game design (such as player retention, balance, and engagement) are shared across mediums. This resource serves as an alternative to the written content produced by Rosewater, and offers a wide variety of knowledge across the gaming mediums.
Game Design Books
This resource is a text widely considered to be the first resource any aspiring game designer should turn to when entering the industry. Written by a veteran video game developer, this text discusses various aspects of game design, relating elements from tabletop, card, and athletic games to video game production. However, in recent years, the text has received criticism for what many perceive as disparaging, gender-based comments made throughout, which reflect an outdated view of the video gaming industry and women at large. The text’s widespread usage in academic fields within the last 15 years mandate its inclusion in this guide, but readers should take caution when considering if they wish to approach this text.
This resource, published in 2004, is often considered foundational in pioneering the field of modern game design. Its significance lies in how it was the first to formalize the study of games, including analysis of various gameplay systems and the player experience. Although Salen and Zimmerman write broadly about games as cultural artifacts and interactive systems, many of their core concepts are especially applicable to the design of card-based games. Specifically, their concepts of meaningful play, uncertainty, and resource management are mainstays of the card game genre.
This resource, written by industry analyst Joshua Bycer, is one of the few texts written specifically about the design of TCGs and CCGs. It offers some more focused discussion of principles and theories related to card games in particular. However, the text focuses heavily on video game-based card games (such as Hearthstone and The Witcher 3’s Gwent), rather than traditional, physical card games. That’s not to say that this text is irrelevant to our topic—in fact, the contrary is true: since this text writes specifically about card game development, it is a great resource for aspiring designers, especially those just starting out, or without much experience with video games.