34. The History of KeyForge: The First Five Years

[00:00:00] This is the history of KeyForge the first five years. Let's get sweaty.

Part one variety is the spice of game design.

KeyForge of course as game by Richard Garfield, the father of modern card games via magic, the gathering. And many, many other designs along the way, alongside his longtime development partner, scaffold Lyas and many other game partners and companies along the way. His exploration of variants in games as a vehicle for skill expression, joy of discovery and sustained enjoyment has been present in pretty much his. Entire career.

Even though today, many of the 60 card formats in a magic, the gathering follow [00:01:00] a relatively standard. Metagame where people find what the best decks are with a given set of cards, publish those and people imitate it. There is quite a bit of variety inside of commander, a 100 card format where you can only have one copy.

Of each card.

And an early magic, the gathering this variance was core to the experience. When he was designing magic, the gathering, he cites cosmic encounter an old board game as inspiration in cosmic encounter. Each player plays as a different, uh, alien peoples with a very unique ability, often very, very game warping

the interaction of these abilities and the politicking between the players creates very, very high variance in between different games of cosmic encounter.

In a 2013 blog post retrospective about magic the gatherings 20 year anniversary. Richard Garfield's rights on magic. wizards.com. The best thing about cosmic encounter is precisely this limitless variety. I have [00:02:00] played hundreds of times and can still be surprised at the interactions, different combinations of aliens produce. Cosmic encounter remains enjoyable because, because it is constantly new. Looking at robo rally, another one of his designs during magic. Looking at robo rally, another one of his designs that came out around the same time as magic, the gathering, you will see this desire for high variance creating these kinds of situation in action with Rally bringing a particularly chaotic version of variants to this work.

Fast forwarding to 2008. We have a digital card game, spectro Mansour co-created by Richard Garfield and scaffold Lyas along with another partner who originated the game. Uh, regarding the mechanics. This is from esteem review posted by in 2013. Each game, you get a random selection of 12 basic cards out of the games, pool of 48 basic cards and four special cards from the class of your choosing. Going to 2018, of course, KeyForge which we'll be talking about the history of going forward, but that was followed by soul forge [00:03:00] fusion or re-imagining of soul forge by Justin, Gary of stone blade entertainment using two unique Hef decks, and then related to this is the upcoming video game. Chaos agents, chaos agents is made by popular area of which Richard Garfield. Is a founder. This is specifically notable as Richard Garfield has often been a development partner or the idea originator for many of the games, uh, he has worked on. And now he is one of four business owners of this particular game that is currently in development. While chaos agents is a video game. The desire for unique gameplay experiences in high variance is really a core to this game. Here's a quote from a tech radar piece in late 2023. Quote for the team at popularity, it starts with this idea of uniqueness. I can confirm that Richard Garfield for about 30 years now has been interested in this unique deck thing. Set Elia status, scaffold ice as long time development partner. What do we were first playing magic.

All the decks were unique. Every deck really did feel [00:04:00] different. Magic then moved into this space where people were constructing their decks instead of using random ones. The uniqueness of what you own gets lost because you're building towards a sort of internet optimized build. Chaos agents will be featuring globally unique characters for players to wield, not dissimilar to KeyForge decks.

Part two. Pitching and development. 2015 to 2018.

The story of unique games starts at the gamma trade show in March of 2015. Eric Lang a prolific game designer approach Christian T. Peterson. And as they talked, they discussed the possibility of a game where each copy or each booster pack was mechanically unique.

You buy a copy and you know, you're the only one with that specific copy. In the world. This was a very interesting conversation to Christian T. Peterson and they committed to making a game with Eric Lang with this [00:05:00] concept. In mind. As they began to move forward on it over the next couple of years, of course. Eric Lang being a high demand designer, it was picked up full time by a game studio and with a non-compete clause, that project, unfortunately, it was never completed. Alongside this longtime FFG designer, Corey Kandinsky. SCA was creating a survival game, which turned out to be a great fit for the idea of uniqueness. Through this process they'd eventually created discover, lands on known a unique board game that came out alongside KeyForge, although too much less buzz and much less critical acclaim than KeyForge. ARound this time, Garfield was pitching the original version of KeyForge to the board game company, days of wonder, also in early 2015, at that point, it was called technic. Days of wonder, unsure of their ability to deliver on a log, large, innovative card game of this scale for they don't publish many card games like this.

If any, at all. Pointed to their sister company in asthma day. [00:06:00] FFG. In March of 2016, Richard and his team, assuming scaffold lies as there as well. Pitches to fantasy flight games and they decide to work together to produce the world's first unique deck game.

Here's a quote from the blog post, the unique story of unique games published on the FFG website.

And this is a direct quote from Christian T. Peterson about this process. I will note that this quote includes the idiom sacred cows, a 19th century English term, based on popular understanding of Hinduism's treatment of cows as holy. Quote FFG is not always the easiest game studio to collaborate with for outside designers in our approach to game design, there are no quote, sacred cows. Every stone is turned option assessed, and we work very hard for any design to be the very best experience and value as we see those.

Of course. I'd like to think that there is a special FFG NDIS to our work. Uh, style and approach that cuts no corners is not afraid of hard work and seeks to innovate wherever possible. We are not always perfect, but we always aim to be, and we do much soul searching when we fall [00:07:00] short.

I believe the FFG approach to game development was a little surprising to Richard at first. The progress and changes to the technic design theme and marketing plans. What becomes somewhat tense at times? As Richard rightfully challenged FFGs desired changes or additions. He himself works tirelessly alongside us to test and think through the merits of every suggested change, balancing component algorithm, weighting, and artwork style. I hope Richard will agree that he and FFG have established a terrific and productive relationship in the course of bringing KeyForge into its hard fought life.

We certainly think so.

And quote.

Part three. Launching KeyForge. In 2018.

Call of the Arcons was the first KeyForge set.

It was the set people were buying as they took up the game and tried it out for the very first time. According to arc-on Arcana. At the community Wiki quote, more than 30,000 decks were registered in the master Vault app on the first day and more than [00:08:00] 500,000 in just the two months after release sales exceeded FFGs expectations and caused temporary product shortages. In October of 2019, just 11 months after release call up the Arcons surpassed a 1 million. Registered decks. And to quote.

Given that decks are unique. They were able to be registered online through a system called the master Vault and the deck registration numbers showed that somebody had not only purchased deck, but also scanned it in to this website.

The game was received favorably across many notable board game reviewers all across the internet. No pun included called it his favorite collectible card game. Shut up and sit down, gave it a review where one host loved the game and one head, a very middling depending on it. And it had a positive review and many, many follow-up videos from Tom vassal of the dice tower. Notably when KeyForge launched.

Uh, there were some bad words included in some of the deck names who all, some work had been done to try to mitigate this, the naming algorithm did have an issue. [00:09:00] Where were the words, racism and fascism, along with some other unfortunate combinations were somehow included or created in deck names. This provided much a viral coverage for the game with tightened flare, the farmer of racism, being the deck, receiving the most attention online. These decks were pulled by FFG from tournament legality of course, making them immediate collectors items.

The game received a lot of attention from retailers and from media online, giving the novelty of how the game functioned, being a unique deck game with unique decks, of course, and no resource costs and a. The victory condition of forging three keys instead of fighting down your opponents hit points.

It seemed to be a great answer to the wallet driven metagame of several formats in other major games. This popularity would mean a big sales in the first handful of months of KeyForge.

Part four. The early sets. 2019. To March, 2020. [00:10:00]

KeyForge sold a very, very well in its early days.

According to ICV. The website reporting on the business of geek culture. KeyForge outsold Yu-Gi-Oh in hobby stores specifically in spring of 2019.

In mass market, they KeyForge was fourth behind the big three. That is the Pokemon trading card game magic, the gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh. But again, specifically in hobby stores, something I see V2 calls, the hobby channel. KeyForge outsold Yu-Gi-Oh in that spring.

Fantasy flight games announced a Vault Tour is during this period as their premier tournament event, much like these days, flesh and blood has battle hardens and callings and MPH MTG for a long time has had the pro tour vault Tour is became the locked in name for big fun, important KeyForge events. They had a semi-casual intent, but as the highest profile KeyForge events, they did carry with them large amount of prestige for winning or regularly making top cuts.

It was the only way to measure. Hey. Who's actually really good at this game. Who should we pay attention to? [00:11:00] The very first two Vault tours were held in March, 2019 and dined OVN. And in Seattle, Washington. Fantasy flight games decided to forego a 2019 world championship to better prepare since the game was, would be hardly a year old when the first world championship, if it had been held in 2019, what happened?

They did promise a KeyForge celebration, but that did not occur in 2019. Note that that may of course be where it goes. Galaxy pulled KeyForge celebration from during the ghost galaxy acquisition later.

During this time in many notable and sustained community efforts across content and other things. Uh, popped up notable podcasts include sanctimonious, which helped find the pulse of the community and working. Often for the good of everyone taking, uh, bringing on guests. Involved on the victim side of cheating scandals. the blog at time, shapers were prolific author.

A roar gave many strategy articles to guide how people thought, how to be better at the game. Uh, bouncing death cork was a podcast that created many of the frames for how we [00:12:00] think about KeyForge and have innovated on some of those ideas today, but with a large credit to how they began thinking about the game for people to innovate on or react to. The podcast helped from future self capturing the joy of playing KeyForge with friends is very long running and still running to this day with, well over 200 episodes going. Wild wormhole was likely the very first KeyForge podcast and YouTube channel run primarily by he who shall not be named our cons corner is another one of the longest running KeyForge podcast, which brings the am talk show style to KeyForge. And it was created on top of one of the hosts, former wrestling content feeds. Uh, notably this podcast has a lot of event organizers who have run IRL and online events for a long time, providing many, many hours of KeyForge fun to many members of the community.

And in some cases, Uh, filling the gap where official organized play was not available for various reasons. Carlo discovery was started. [00:13:00] Uh, during this time we're at, and I spent three years providing content through that channel. Tabletop Royale started here as one of the longest running and most, most in-depth KeyForge streamers Notably at being a real life stream where they actually play KeyForge physically and we get to watch and hang out with two of the most generous people in KeyForge Nathan and Justin.

Online resources also need to be mentioned here. The crucible.online was the community run on official way to play KeyForge online forked off of gin. techie.net with many, many notable contributors to keeping it alive. And I should note that the crucible.online is likely one of the only reasons that KeyForge actually stayed alive during the pandemic and during some other times in the game's history.

We also have Dex F KeyForge. KeyForge dot com the absolute best way to organize one's own collection online and look for new decks. That's created and maintained by Novo Westlake.

During this time, we also have to mention the second set that launched age of Ascension.

Now designing age of Ascension, they had their pencils down. That design was [00:14:00] finalized before called the Arcons. Launched. So any lessons from called the Arcons were not able to be integrated into age of Ascension and then due to supply pressure on call the Arcons. Now I should note here with the supply pressure on called the Arcons.

Everybody didn't notice that it sold out everywhere and you couldn't get it for some time. Uh, Christian T. Peterson is on record as saying he ordered what he calls a career endingly large amount. Of Carl of the Arcons where his finance people bust into his office and saying, how could you do this? When in fact he didn't order enough.

Now, of course he can't look that far into the future. So he should be. Commended for going, uh, as big as he did, even if it wasn't far enough. It's always difficult to predict exactly how much supply you need, especially for, uh, for companies. The size of fantasy flight games. But for the immense crowd that was pulled into the game through call of the art cons, many of the cards and play patterns in the set to age of Ascension were underwhelming and unexciting driving many players away from [00:15:00] the game during this time.

Part five, the dark times, March, 2020 through June, 2022.

The COVID 19 pandemic shut down. KeyForge at least as much as that shutdown, everything else. tOurnament's were canceled and mass mutation. The next set coming out in 2020. Was delayed for many, many reasons relating to COVID-19. Mass mutation introduced the enhanced keyword, where a car could have enhanced and then some bonus pips after it. And during the construction, if an enhanced keyword card was included in the deck list, those pips will be randomly distributed to other cards in the deck, making unique decks, even more unique with where those bonus pips landed. Dark tidings.

The next set came out in March of 2021 with the tide mechanic and the designers had considered several ideas for the tide until the development team remembered they had printed the car to value camp. As an anomaly and worlds collide and anomaly being a [00:16:00] very, very rare card, which would appear in a very small percentage of decks.

So Vallow camp. It was only in a very, very small sliver of decks in world collide. And valid camp on it indicated a high and low tide mechanic since it was, uh, looking forward at possible future sets at the time FFG saw errata as an absolute last resort. So as a result, the mechanic for the entire set was locked in to the way it had been written on valley camp.

Well, these sets never had their day in the sun with a non pet demic release mass mutation would come to be one of the more powerful sets by reputation and dark tidings, unfortunately would be considered both low power and low fund by many people. Uh, though, there'll be several detractors to that who carry quite a bit of fun and some powerful decks would that set.

During the dark times, the survival of the community really was done by the community. Especially online. There were many tournaments and leagues that popped up like crucible.online, tournament's run by the staff of the crucible.online each month for a number of [00:17:00] months. The aforementioned sanctimonious ran multiple invitationals, inviting some of the best and most notable players to play and, uh, organized streams around them.

Our cons corner, uh, regularly organized the play. We had mentioned before through partners like pink bunny games, and then running a live event called KeyForge live. And providing much, much of value to the community through providing more and more ways to just play the game. The ancient bear Republic league has been running for a long time and is a highly notable league, with its team structure and being run out of the California USA. The Nordic KeyForge league is highly notable in being perhaps one of the biggest overall, if not the biggest KeyForge. Online league and using a unique and amazing format called Nordic Hexad for their competitions. There's also the KeyForge premier league. Uh, looking to, uh, highlight individual players and individual runs in more traditional formats. Should also be noted that team GG out of Italy also organized several KeyForge live events. Uh, [00:18:00] over the past number of years before it goes to galaxy, picked it up. The characteristics of the community is that they really stuck together.

During this time. There was a lot of streaming where everybody would hang out in each other's streams and talk about KeyForge. As people looked at decks or played online and discord community in Hangouts and many smaller leagues and for more interesting. Uh, for other interesting things were formed. There were many innovations and testing with formats during this time, given the access to different kinds of testing with this easily provided by the crucible.online and the time to reflect, uh, several. Several innovators in this space and commentators were carrying B and a roar, both providing ideas for new formats, testing them, giving feedback on them as the community, tried to figure out exactly how you could play KeyForge in the most fun way

then during this time we had a blog post article released by fantasy flight games called down, but not out this blog, post communicated, two things that the software suite used to build KeyForge had been lost and that they were committed to [00:19:00] making a digital version of KeyForge with a company called stainless games. After the ghost galaxy acquisition on June 29th, 2022 stainless game set in an email to me. There's nothing to report from our end.

I'm afraid this is all background stuff. As far as we're concerned. Seeming to indicate continuing progress on the game, but there was no comment or activity from stainless games since then.

Regarding the loss of the software suite Ryan Thompson, who worked at FFG at the time we interviewed on call of discovery sometime after he left the company. Among other insights. He witnessed to the fact that the loss of the software suite was due to a ransomware attack.

As a supplementary note here, a skilled ransomware attacker can compromise any backups connected to the victims.

Network. Offsite off network backups are possible, but become much more difficult with vast amounts of data such as art for card and board games.

Part six, the once and future KeyForge June, 2022 to December, 2023.

[00:20:00]

The original post that ghost galaxy published when they purchased KeyForge and then announced it in June 20, 22 is no longer available in the form it was published in, but thanks to the internet archives way back machine, we have an archivable link provided in the show notes, and that I've used for reference for the section.

Over the first 18 months are taking us up to December of 20, 23 here of them owning the game.

They did accomplish quite a bit. They rebuilt the entire algorithm program sets into a. Software called forge fire. Which given the reports about, uh, the. Not to inappropriately, use the word, put slapdash way. The algorithm set and the program being set was constructed before a seemed a major step up in workflow to have forge fire. Combined all the parts necessary to create and print. A unique deck.

Uh, winds of exchange was the next set and that went to game, found a crowdfunding place so that they could gauge exactly how big the interest [00:21:00] the purchasing power interest was. In KeyForge still that raised over a million dollars with over 6,000 people backing. Giving ghost galaxy, quite a bit of confidence in the fact that KeyForge would really be viable, a very fair move after buying a game.

That was for all intents and purposes. Dead in the water, as far as economics are concerned and then trying to rebuild it and capture lightning in a bottle twice. They introduced the Alliance format allowing people to mix and match house pods, since each KeyForge deck is made up of three houses, they said, why not combine house pods within sets to create Alliance decks. And if it's successful and if people actually played this and had tournament's for it, then this would give utility and thus real value to your book collections.

They held a number of events during this time, including seven Vault Tour is five in the United States and two international with a total of $100,000 in price support money that went to winners and not to a marketing budget. KeyForge celebration was held in [00:22:00] 2022 without a world championship at it, but announced about a month beforehand.

Now there is some grace for their timelines here, since this was in 2022, simply. About five months after they announced they had acquired the gang. Where they had a celebration with many of the diehard fans and people got to play winds of exchange for the first time. In 2023. Many of the Vault Tour events occurred bringing the premiere, uh, brand name. Uh, prestige events back to KeyForge. And KeyForge celebration too was held in late 2023, where the first world champion tournament occurred. there they had an Alliance tournament and an arc-on tournament for the title of world champion. And donuts dad of the ancient bay Republic in the USA was the first Alliance champion and Dorian 11 of the Italian team sends a no bank, took the first arc-on championship trophy.

Oh.

During this time, the reception and media was a bit more muted and a bit more mixed since, the game was having a much smaller comeback then of course its initial launch when it was completely new, fresh and exciting. Several [00:23:00] outlets where staff retained a love for KeyForge like team covenant and the dice tower did put together coverage for winds of exchange. And many people did cover the game pound campaign as a large point of interest in the board game community. As of writing, however, a variety of searches for KeyForge on Google, still return articles on the unfortunate names back in 2018 and 2019, and the people also ask a section on Google continues to return questions about the game failing or dying. One does hope that continued success with the game over time.

As people generate more interest in it. We'll have the algorithms recognize new states of the game and that'd be reflected in such places online.

Part seven. KeyForge his future self.

And that section, dear listener, I'm going to be talking a bit more about some of the core parts of the game in the community in general. And a few hopes for the future here, as we wrap up and look forward. [00:24:00] The two most powerful parts of KeyForge are number one. The game itself, the game has a huge variety, endless variety, endless match-ups between decks that are fresh.

Every time you play in my experience, if you continue to rotate decks and try and match ups that you want to try. It is, it is difficult to regularly have bad games. I've KeyForge.

Now the culture and attitude KeyForge attracted with this mechanics are also beyond, beyond any other game. I have seen even the most toxic pokes, like. Even the most toxic folks, like one person who viewed themselves as competitive and stated you need at least $3,000 to win a game of triad. One of the original formats of KeyForge didn't last in the community, the people who have stuck around are generally community builders and collaborators who like to just like to play KeyForge and talk about KeyForge and be good. At KeyForge. Now that being said, that's the second powerful part of the game that I think has kept it up to this time is the community. This game attracted and kept good people. [00:25:00] Even through all of the ups and downs, and even through the many little deaths this game experienced as we look forward, hopefully to a future. So the community and the game itself have really been the absolute superpowers of KeyForge. And whenever KeyForge looks like in the future, these two things I think will always be the cornerstones. That being said, if there is a current vision for exactly what are the core promises of KeyForge. Who KeyForge is for and what success looks like for KeyForge. This isn't something which goes galaxy has clearly and regularly communicated. I would encourage everybody who is trying to community build to KeyForge to figure out what that means for yourself.

Especially as you try to attract new people. And if ghost galaxy is open to comments, of course, I would encourage them to lock in that strategic vision part and share it where appropriate. Something that was mentioned during KeyForge celebration too, by Christian T.

Peterson, which I must agree with outright is that KeyForge is one of the hardest games to produce. From the innovative suite of software and having to create it twice and then capture [00:26:00] lightning in a bottle again with acquiring the game and it being a unique deck game where there's nothing else like it.

And you can't simply copy many of the known best practices from things like magic, the gathering Pokemon, flesh, and blood in Yu-Gi-Oh. You have to really start from scratch and do a lot of experimenting. So while there are many, uh, fair criticisms, two level at ghost galaxy and Christian T. Peterson over time, do keep this in mind that, uh, it is a very, very difficult game to produce There are several mistakes that will not excuse.

Of course. Uh, but do keep this in mind that there was really nothing else like it. No, no defaults. You can pull from. The industry's 30 years of experience. KeyForge will always be a game where you can just pick up two decks and have hopefully a good time with them. And if you curate your experience and your expectations, you can regularly have a fantastic time plan.

KeyForge with sealed, practicing match-ups practicing for a tournament. Uh, whether it's one you organize or an entire Vault Tour. There is such magic in this game that I will never lose, especially with all the stories. [00:27:00] I have been able to be a part of both personally, and then bigger in the community. Across across all the kinds of things, the community. Has done.

So dear listener, this is the pen ultimate episode of KeyForge public radio. We will be back next week with one more episode before KeyForge public radio sunsets for good, thank you so much. And we'll see you next time.