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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

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Sun, 07/02/2006 - 21:59
larienna
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I have just found recently that the so good editor called "MTG editor" which allowed to create your own MTG cards is officially dead. Here is the page that explains why :

http://mtglair.de/editor.html

I find it totally stupid because this tool was generally used for people to create their own cards. Not necessarily ripping commercial cards set and reselling or redistributing them.

People are allowed to make their own cards and I have even seen custom cards displayed in card magazines without anypeople getting arrested. People used to place sticker on the cards to make their modification. But now we had an editor which is pretty much convinient to use. Why did they have to kill it.

Ok, the MTG symbol are copyrighted. They could ask him to remove the symbol and replace with other symbol instead, it would have been fine. They could even ask him to change the background for something else, no problem we could have made custom background that does not look like the original. But no, they had to put it down completely.

It's in situations like this that I wonder if there is not a better solution to the copyright law.

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Sun, 07/02/2006 - 22:13
#1
Dralius
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

I think that the company is doing what it feels is right to protect its own interests.

On the other hand the software could be revamped to be non-product specific so that they won’t have a leg to stand on in court. It’s the use of copyrighted names, images etc. that is the issue not weather you are allowed to have software that you can make your own cards with.

With a scanner and a copy of MS Word I can make any kind of cards I want as long as they are for my own use.

I would love to see them try to take on Microsoft.

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Mon, 07/03/2006 - 22:22
#2
larienna
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

But I think it still somewhat does not make sense. If a web site review a new card released and place the card picture on the web, their are going to get sued because the card picture was on the web?

I have found this web site recently

http://www.yugiohcardguide.com/

It is a web site that contains many Yugioh card, if not all, with the picture and text description of all cards. This web site is run by an independent guy. Does this mean that this site is illegal because they use the card pictures.

I wanted to make an auditing tool for duel Masters cards. I wanted to include the card description and the pictures( because sometime the names are just not clear enough to identify a card ). Now if I follow correctly their way of thinking, I cannot use their pictures because they are copyrighted material. And maybe I can't use the card name either because it's copyrighted? So I'll have to stick with card number!

Still, I do agree that making a generic card editor would be much better for everybody and it would give us a 2nd card editor ( the other one being Nandeck, of course ). The MTG Editor has really good features like standard rule management with icons and variables insertable in the text.

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Mon, 07/03/2006 - 23:08
#3
Hedge-o-Matic
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

The computer game industry is way ahead of the curve on this one, specifically Epic Games, which brought community involvement to a whole new level. Hasbro and other boardgame companies are foolish if they think that by controlling the community they can increase the longevity of their games. PC game companies faced the demon of community hacks years ago, and embraced the idea. With all the cost involved with producing physical bits, boardgame companies should be more than equally supportive, since they have less viable "competition" from their own communities. Indeed an entire generation of PC game designers came from the community developers.

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Tue, 07/04/2006 - 00:37
#4
FastLearner
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

Larienna wrote:
It is a web site that contains many Yugioh card, if not all, with the picture and text description of all cards. This web site is run by an independent guy. Does this mean that this site is illegal because they use the card pictures.

Yes.

Quote:
I wanted to make an auditing tool for duel Masters cards. I wanted to include the card description and the pictures( because sometime the names are just not clear enough to identify a card ). Now if I follow correctly their way of thinking, I cannot use their pictures because they are copyrighted material. And maybe I can't use the card name either because it's copyrighted?

Right.

Quote:
Still, I do agree that making a generic card editor would be much better for everybody and it would give us a 2nd card editor ( the other one being Nandeck, of course ). The MTG Editor has really good features like standard rule management with icons and variables insertable in the text.

I'm still working on one. Since another big project of mine fell through, I'm hoping to devote more time to it this summer.

-- Matthew

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Tue, 07/04/2006 - 10:20
#5
Shellhead
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

Last year, one of the top players of Vampire: the Eternal Struggle (Garfield's best cardgame) proposed a new kind of tournament called Create-A-Clan. White Wolf, the publisher of V:tes, endorsed the idea and even has helpful links on their website. Basically, you design your own vampires according to some very specific rules, and then play in a tournament using that customized clan of vampires instead of the official ones printed by White Wolf.

The main reason I mention it here is that some of those links at the White Wolf site are to sites with standard V:tes card templates, icons, and tools to customize the cards.

http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/index.php?line=cac

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Tue, 07/04/2006 - 11:30
#6
FastLearner
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

Very cool and smart of White Wolf to handle it that way.

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Tue, 07/04/2006 - 13:39
#7
Shellhead
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

I had so much fun designing the cards that I created three good decks and recruited a couple of friends to play the spares in the local Create-A-Clan tournament. One of them won first place with the Whateley Clan (based on Lovecraft's short story, The Dunwich Horror). I placed second with a clan based on Zelazny's Princes of Amber. Sadly, the third deck, based on Batman's rogues gallery, just got an honorable mention for most fun to play against.

It was a good experience overall. The design rules made me really analyze the structure of the game in a way that I had never considered before. Physically creating the cards made me more conscious of layout and design of game components, so my next actual game design will probably result in a fancy-looking prototype.

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Tue, 07/04/2006 - 20:01
#8
RobBartel
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

Hedge-o-Matic wrote:
Indeed an entire generation of PC game designers came from the community developers.

Absolutely. I was Lead Designer on Neverwinter Nights, a Dungeons & Dragons game for PC/Mac/Linux. We put significant development effort into making the toolset user-friendly, releasing it to the fan community, and then supporting it through our website. The result was phenomenal and we have hired extensively from the various writers, designers, artists, and programmers that emerged within the community. Anecdotally, I've heard of numerous other developers making hiring decisions based on skills demonstrated through the use of our toolset as well.

Kudos to White Wolf for applying a similar concept to their CCGs.

Cheers,
Rob

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Wed, 07/05/2006 - 08:34
#9
Scurra
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

RobBartel wrote:
Hedge-o-Matic wrote:
Indeed an entire generation of PC game designers came from the community developers.

Absolutely. I was Lead Designer on Neverwinter Nights, a Dungeons & Dragons game for PC/Mac/Linux.
Now that's a credit to be proud of. NWN is one of the few game-engines (the FPS engines are another) that were clearly designed with the understanding that a sufficiently large minority of the player pool were going to want to mod it. I was very impressed with the flexibility it offered but I was never able to invest the time needed to implement the multi-track storylines I wanted to do. (Frankly, I'll stick to the FTF games for that ;-)) But I do play the odd user-module from time to time, and they keep impressing me.

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Wed, 07/05/2006 - 09:29
#10
Zzzzz
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

RobBartel wrote:
Hedge-o-Matic wrote:
Indeed an entire generation of PC game designers came from the community developers.

Absolutely. I was Lead Designer on Neverwinter Nights, a Dungeons & Dragons game for PC/Mac/Linux. We put significant development effort into making the toolset user-friendly, releasing it to the fan community, and then supporting it through our website. The result was phenomenal and we have hired extensively from the various writers, designers, artists, and programmers that emerged within the community. Anecdotally, I've heard of numerous other developers making hiring decisions based on skills demonstrated through the use of our toolset as well.

Kudos to White Wolf for applying a similar concept to their CCGs.

Cheers,
Rob

Rob did you attend GenCON the year NWN was released? If you did, I meet entire team that was there. I kept talking to all the people there (Sass) since I was thinking about moving into the game development industry. Are you still at Bioware? And you might even have a copy of the RPG books that I helped co-develop.

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Wed, 07/05/2006 - 09:42
#11
LSJ
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

Shellhead wrote:
Last year, one of the top players of Vampire: the Eternal Struggle (Garfield's best cardgame) proposed a new kind of tournament called Create-A-Clan. White Wolf, the publisher of V:tes, endorsed the idea and even has helpful links on their website. Basically, you design your own vampires according to some very specific rules, and then play in a tournament using that customized clan of vampires instead of the official ones printed by White Wolf.

The main reason I mention it here is that some of those links at the White Wolf site are to sites with standard V:tes card templates, icons, and tools to customize the cards.

http://www.white-wolf.com/vtes/index.php?line=cac

To fill in a few more details:

The first VTES Create-A-Clan was in 2003. White Wolf itself has run two C-A-C events (one at Dragon*Con 2004, one at Gen*Con 2005), and we'll be running another at D*C 2006 -- the link you give above is for the WW variation of the original C-A-C rules (since each C-A-C uses their own twists on the design parameters).

A few groups in Europe have also put on their own C-A-C events.

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Wed, 07/05/2006 - 11:39
#12
gilbertgea
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

Wow, a fansite attacked by lawyers.

Well, if you dont agree with WotC, you could always spend your money on something else.

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Wed, 07/05/2006 - 11:55
#13
Willi_B
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The "MTG editor" is dead ... courtesy of WotC

I think you have to see that it was a site that could essentially be a "how-to" guide for making counterfeit cards.

Perhaps if the guy went to Wizards and asked permission and they put a huge "Example" over the cards they owned, it wouldn't have gone to this point. Maybe they would even be so kind as to let them use the mana symbols.

It seems to me that magazines like Inquest are obtaining permission.

They might be able to still get permission yet.

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