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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

From: Jeffrey Nuremburg <xanatos@********.NET>
Subject: Card Art!
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 00:50:23 -0500
> First off, what's the purpose of the card art? IMHO,
> it's unneccessary to play the game, though almost half of the card is
> taken up by it. Why? It's just to give you an idea of what the card is.
> It's there to give you a feeling and mood and description that takes a lot
> less space than text would to describe the same thing (in most cases). If
> you aren't understanding what the card is by looking at the picture, then
> it hasn't done its job.

Well, I agree with you to some extent. The card art is there to
give the card itself a sort of Aesthetic feel. It is significantly more
enjoyable to place a card on the table with an interesting picture of a
Troll on it then to place down a card that says "Troll" in big letters. But
there is another significant reason for including card art that occupies the
majority of the card, visual recall. By giving each card an individual
piece of art, the player(s) are able to easily recall what the card is and
to make associations about it. In addition, the player(s) have an easier
time memorizing card abilities with a picture to base it on. Interestingly
enough, I belive that Richard Garfield wrote a small paper concerning this
topic and its relevance to when he was first creating Magic: The Gathering.
In it I believe he stated that there was a difference in the player(s)
recollection of card effects/types/abilities once individualized pictures
were included (I believe that this was at a point when they were first
testing out the game and the card art consisted of clip art images taken
from their word processor/page layour program). Anyway, either way you look
at it, the card art is critical. It pleases me immensely to use cards with
good art, hell, half of the cards are select for my deck are chosen because
they "look cool"! :)

--
Jeffrey Nuremburg / System Administrator
xanatos@********.net
cgiguy@********.net - All CGI related requests

"I've been an atheist - I had found it difficult to
have religious beliefs and scientific ones, but I've
accepted that I have a duality - there's a human
way of interacting with people but also a mechanistic
explanation of what people are and how they work."

- Rodney Brooks, Director of MIT's AI Lab

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