August 19, 2009

Community Gaming and the Mysteries of Mind Twist With Randy Buehler
By Louis Bedigian

“We really want to get this 'social part' right for Mind Twist and to do that it’s crystal clear that social networking has a key role to play.”

It's rare that you get to interview a developer or publisher about a game that's still being kept under wraps. Typically they won't say anything until a zillion screenshots, fact sheets and press releases have flooded the Web.

Although Mind Twist, an online strategy game from Richard Garfield (the creator of Magic: The Gathering), has yet to be shown to the public, Randy Buehler was eager to hint at what's to come. "Mind Twist is a turn-based strategy game designed to be played multiplayer, which are two things it shares with almost all tabletop games," says Buehler, a former Wizards employee and now the VP of Business Strategy at Mind Control, the game's developer. "If you think about it, the idea of a single-player game barely existed until about 1980 – games have been multiplayer for millennia and now that Internet technology has finally advanced to the point where online multiplayer is convenient to do, we look forward to watching that trend continue.

"That said, Mind Twist could never exist as a tabletop game. We’re taking advantage of features that can only be done well in video games, like hidden information and characters with persistent states across many turns."

With a title like Mind Twist, most players would expect there to be some kind of mind-bending element to the game. Is that the case?

Randy Buehler: It is what I would call a “thinking game.” Instead of having the winner of a match be determined by who can click faster and more accurately, the best players will be those who can out-think their opponents either before the game begins (when deciding which pieces to take into battle with you) or during the gameplay itself.

Is there a story attached to Mind Twist?

RB: There will be. Stay tuned.

What are your goals? How do you win?

RB: The details of the game design will be revealed over the course of upcoming months, but have not been talked about publicly yet.

Is this strictly a multiplayer experience? If so, does that mean that the game cannot be played on the iPod touch without using a WiFi connection?

RB: There will be a single-player campaign mode in addition to multiplayer matches.

Mind Twist will launch on the iPhone and Facebook before coming to other platforms. Obviously Apple's device and the social networking site are very successful. But from a game development standpoint, what made you and your team select them as the key platforms for Mind Twist? Were any other platforms considered for the initial launch?

RB: The thing that has always fueled tabletop gaming is community. Whether you’re talking about board games, role-playing games, or collectible card games; it has always been the conversations about those games and the broader context that comes from things like tournaments and years-long campaigns that keeps people coming back. We really want to get this “social part” right for Mind Twist and to do that it’s crystal clear that social networking has a key role to play. As for iPhone, the ease of turning ourselves into a publisher via the app store combined with the micro-transaction functionality that is built into the 3.0 operating system made it an easy choice as well.

Speaking of other platforms, where is Mind Twist headed next?

RB: We’ll see. Technology moves so fast that we’re not going to bother even trying to decide this until we get the game up and running.

Are the iPhone and Facebook versions exactly the same? Or is the game merely playable on an iPhone because you can access the Web, and thus Facebook, with it?

RB: There will be one set of servers that can be accessed from any number of different client platforms. Since our game is turn-based, it doesn’t really matter what sort of input device you use (that’s as opposed to something like an fps where mouse and keyboard vs console controller vs iPhone would make for unfair fights). The game will be a native iPhone app – or, more accurately, the game already is a native iPhone app in our test versions and we already have iPhone vs. PC multiplayer working.

If there are separate versions for the iPhone and Facebook, will they be released simultaneously?

RB: Approximately.

Thus far, most of the Facebook games seem to make their money solely from microtransactions. Do you think this trend will continue with future social networking games?

RB: I think the free-to-play / micro-transactions business model is quite simply a better mousetrap. It’s not for every game, but it lends itself very well to online games that are constantly being maintained and updated. So yes, I do think that trend will continue. I think you’ll find Mind Twist to be very different from the current crop of social games, however, in that most of the current games are massively single-player experiences whereas the whole point of Mind Twist is to have an actual, compelling, multiplayer game.

Is there anything else we should know about the gameplay, or any other aspect, of Mind Twist?

RB: You can become a fan on Facebook [or] follow us on Twitter @themindtwist for more updates as they come out.

Thank you for your time.

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