That TCG Blogger

The whole principle of a board game is simulating a fantasy experience, correct? By that logic, wouldn’t it make sense that a game that literally brings the cards in your deck to life would revolutionize the Trading Card Game world as we know it? Sony must have thought so, with the release of Eye of Judgement the player would use a webcam like object attached to the Playstation in order to bring their cards to life on the screen. Sony then did the obvious thing and advertised the game like crazy in order to get the word out, but how would gamers take this new development in the gaming industry or would it even be considered that? The average TCG Gamers looked at this game and simply laughed, the VG Gamers just brushed it aside not wanting to ever touch a card over their controller, and The Eye of Judgement is left to be a total disappointment. Was it just the player’s lack of appeal though or was the game a complete failure on all sides?

You play Magic: The Gathering on the weekends, at your local card shop, compete in pre-releases, and follow the pro-tour; wouldn’t you want your card game to be taken to the online world? The average person would think so, but if you take the time to sit down with a professional player, you will find that they live for the thrill of sitting face to face with their opponent. Being able to read your opponent’s facial expressions in order to figure out their play style is what makes a table top game so fun, taking away from that only leads to making the game a robotic sequence of turns rather than an exchange of emotions in battle. That’s what separates the great players from the mediocre ones, the ability to read your opponent and tell what cards they hold just by that (see previous blogs). The fact that Sony tried to add all these flashy graphics to an already great formula kills the whole idea of card games.

The Eye of Judgement being a Playstation only title obviously appeals to the gamer which at the time of its release; was limited in titles for the system. Once again though, the irony of it all sets in. Most video game junkies are just that, dedicated to the game and nothing else. When they see a card came such as this, they are automatically put off by the cardboard rectangles that they’ve never seen before. Rather than just getting into a new world, it is much easier to just play a shoot-em-up or another fantasy game that’s new to the market. It has become fairly obvious that the design crew behind the game did no market research in order to find what the fans truly wanted.

The fact that the marketing research was terrible, only leads one to wonder if its not just a coincidence that they skipped out on this. Meaning, that their game was probably looked over for a reason. One of the major complaints on this game from the people who played it was the fact that the light in the room had to be blinding in order for the game to successfully work. Considering that most would play this in a basement or at night after work, that could turn out to be a huge problem. The small community of players that play this competitively complained that you can just print off copies of the cards and the “eye” would read them as the actual cards, sounds pretty legit right? With a system that needed so much to work and was so simple to hack, its obvious that the game failed from the begin with.

-That TCG Blogger-

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