Hex: Shards of Fate TCG - Set 7: Frostheart 6/29/17
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OU Ariakas
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I thought the same thing when I bought in; that it was going to be MtGO except cheaper and better. Then I started playing the game. Champions, Threshold, permanent card effects; they all make the game play differently.
Legally, however, none of that matters. What matters is if Hex violated any of their copyrights, patents, or trade dress. The first two are usually very hard to prove in board/card/video games. The third is where there is the most leeway and where most legal types have differing opinions.
ronne
Nǐ hǎo, yǒu jīn zi ma?
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I've been holding off really playing Hex until the whole thing shakes out, as I'm reasonably certain they are going to get buttfucked and the whole thing will crash and burn.
It's a good game, but I don't want to invest time and/or money when I don't think it will survive.
It's a good game, but I don't want to invest time and/or money when I don't think it will survive.
OU Ariakas
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I believe Hex will come out of this just fine. They have top-tier legal representation (the kind who don't take cases that are obvious losers) and they seem to be willing to take it to the mat. The beta economy is behaving quite healthily right now and the game is a lot of fun.
If you spend an hour in the game, you notice very quickly that the game behaves very differently than mtg. The most obvious differences for me are with champions, gems, perm buffs to cards, and the replication mechanic that opens up metas that cannot exist in a format that must support physical play.
Once the pve mechanics are fleshed out, the overlap will be even smaller.
Obviously things like 5 colors + colorless, initial hand size, many card mechanics (flight, steadfast, speed, swiftstrike, etc.) are the same, but there are others that are new (inspire, rage, escalation).
I am having a blast playing the game right now and have followed the law closely enough to believe that my time and money are not likely to be wasted. If it does go down in flames, at least I will have had many months of playing a very fun game. I regret buying titanfall a lot more than I will ever regret spending the money I have on Hex.
If you spend an hour in the game, you notice very quickly that the game behaves very differently than mtg. The most obvious differences for me are with champions, gems, perm buffs to cards, and the replication mechanic that opens up metas that cannot exist in a format that must support physical play.
Once the pve mechanics are fleshed out, the overlap will be even smaller.
Obviously things like 5 colors + colorless, initial hand size, many card mechanics (flight, steadfast, speed, swiftstrike, etc.) are the same, but there are others that are new (inspire, rage, escalation).
I am having a blast playing the game right now and have followed the law closely enough to believe that my time and money are not likely to be wasted. If it does go down in flames, at least I will have had many months of playing a very fun game. I regret buying titanfall a lot more than I will ever regret spending the money I have on Hex.
Also - legally speaking - for the copyright claim to have weight, you have to show that customers are literally confused that one game is not the other. Common sense tells me that very, very few (if any) people actually believe they are playing mtg or a mtg expansion when they load up Hex.
Trade dress and patent stuff are different, but the copyright argument has no merit here and Hasbro knows it.
Trade dress and patent stuff are different, but the copyright argument has no merit here and Hasbro knows it.
Lasch
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Not to go all "Simpsons did it". But isn't rage = bushido, inspire = evolve/ally combo, and escalation the kindle/ak/muscle burst with zenith mechanic?
OU Ariakas
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OU Ariakas
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How is it going to look to the court when Hasbro's attorney argues those mechanics are stolen just to have the Crypto lawyer stand up and show them how they are entirely different? Is the court going to assume that Hasbro didn't do their homework? That would seem to strike right to the heart of the entire case.
Palum
what Suineg set it to
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Confusion is trademarks not copyright. Copyright is irrelevant in the case despite Hasbro claiming otherwise. If Hex -actually- copied card faces/art/lore you might have a claim. They are relying on the patents which have continually been beaten in court and trade dress which is to say they are trying to pull an Apple and claim beveled edges are their invention.
OU Ariakas
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Hasbro's brief includes Rage as a direct copy of Bushido. Legally it doesn't even matter if they are not groundbreaking. Numerous rulings have shown that you cannot patent or trademark board/card/video game mechanics and Hex does not copy any names over so copyright is out the window. That leaves Hasbro fighting that all of those things together must prove trade dress. Crypto is in a unique position to fight trade dress since Hasbro hasn't come after them for using similar rules and mechanics in the WoW TCG and that has been around for years.
I have been out of mtg for a while, but I think the following is correct:
Rage is different from bushido (rage is perm boost, bushido is while blocking / attacking - rage is attack only, bushido is +x/+x)
Inspire effects subsequent cards that have cost >= the original while ally effects impacted all other allies
I do not know what the kindle thing you mentioned is, but escalation does not work like the zenith cards I know in mtg (could be wrong on this one).
And yes, whoever corrected me on copyright - you are right. I meant trademark. It is an argument Hasbro is making that will not hold water. Their other arguments seem weak to me, but that one seems ridiculous.
Hex does not seem to be behaving like a firm short on cash. The lawyers they have engaged are from a firm I have worked with professionally and know are very expensive. The specific lawyer on their side has previously won a case against Wizards on a related complaint. Who knows what their books actually look like, but they are not behaving like a company just trying to survive right now.
Here is the Hex lawyer if anyone cares:
http://www.dorsey.com/meiklejohn_paul/
and the other case:
http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/kb9...the-coast-inc/
Fair enough. I am not really trying to predict the future with any of this. The game might get shutdown. That might happen for legitimate reasons or BS reasons. So be it.
I am having fun with it now. If it shuts tomorrow, I will have gotten far more value for my $$ than I have from any other game purchase I have made in the last two years. If it lasts forever, awesome. If not, it lasted about 50 times longer than Titanfall did for me.
I am having fun with it now. If it shuts tomorrow, I will have gotten far more value for my $$ than I have from any other game purchase I have made in the last two years. If it lasts forever, awesome. If not, it lasted about 50 times longer than Titanfall did for me.
No, those are all quite different.
Bushido - when that creature blocks or is blocked, it gains +X/+X until end of turn. E.g. your 2/2 attacks, is blocked, becomes 4/4 until end of turn then goes back to 2/2
vs
Rage - when a creature attacks, it permanently gains +X. E.g. your 2/2 attacks, instantly becomes 4/2 and stays that way. If it attacks again next turn it will become 6/2 etc.
Evolve - if another creature with higher power or toughness enters play, add a +1/+1 token to it
vs
Inspire - any creature with a higher cost cast while this one is in play permanently gains (X), where X is stats or an ability, e.g. flight, swiftstrike, speed etc. Includes some interesting meta effects like sword trainer which inspires it's own current attack value into other creatures.
Escalation vs combination of 4 other keywords - this is actually pretty close, but the fact that you needed to combine four different keywords in a different way to match it probably should suggest that being an outright copy is kind of off base ;p I.e. that one is exactly the same as if you took these ones and stuck them together and combined it with that one, and then implemented it differently.
Laura
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This is the only game that made me think "I think company X is going to sue them" I didn't have this thought ever before even when I played RIFT's Beta.
To be honest Hex does play like MTG in its very CORE and that's the problem. Every other addition feels like an expansion. It's like the two-headed-ogre variance of the many MTG variance that can change the game a little; but the core is the same. Didn't MTGO had something like the Champion thing Hex has? I AM SURE I played a "champion" in MTGO last decade. Some avatar with special unique ability.
However, that doesn't give WotC the rights to sue them because "game mechanics" are not copy righted, right?
Otherwise ID soft should sue every FPS out there.
To be honest Hex does play like MTG in its very CORE and that's the problem. Every other addition feels like an expansion. It's like the two-headed-ogre variance of the many MTG variance that can change the game a little; but the core is the same. Didn't MTGO had something like the Champion thing Hex has? I AM SURE I played a "champion" in MTGO last decade. Some avatar with special unique ability.
However, that doesn't give WotC the rights to sue them because "game mechanics" are not copy righted, right?
Otherwise ID soft should sue every FPS out there.