Big News For HEX

Hello, Cory here…

I think this is the first FULL SIZE post from me here on the HEX site, how uh… exciting! Let me start off by apologizing for the cryptic announcement last week. I didn’t mean to spawn the anxiety that seemed to follow, and hopefully I didn’t oversell the “exciting” part of this.

We have a few announcements to make and I thought it was important that I give a bit of specific explanation on each. I want to make sure its super clear what this stuff means to HEX and the HEX community.

Group Two

Let’s start with the first one; it’s pretty simple. We are inviting another 3,000 people into the Alpha. Invites are going out right now and will continue throughout the day. All Raid Leaders, Guild Masters, Pro Players, Dungeon Crawlers, and Collectors will join the alpha. If all goes well, we hope to get on a regular and expedited runway to inviting everyone into the game. I apologize that this is taking longer than I hoped, but that’s the nature of Alpha and software development—it’s all about discovering the unknown. The glitch-filled, buggy unknown…

New Team Members

Next up, I want to introduce you to two new people on the HEX team!

Alan Comer—Senior Engineer HEX

Alan is a senior Engineer and will be joining our all-star squad of engineers; some of you will understand why I am so excited by this addition right away, as you may recognize the name. For those of you who don’t know Alan, check this out:

– 25 years programming experience

– Worked on Magic Online, Pokémon Online, and Kaijudo Online

– Magic the Gathering Hall of fame, fourth member of the inaugural class

Tyler James –Art Director HEX

Tyler has actually worked on HEX in the past. Weeks ago, we featured his Orc concept art. Tyler is beyond talented; his abilities as a painter are second only to his conceptual design work. When you add in the fact that he can handle 3D assets and in-game elements, it’s pretty clear why we’re thrilled he agreed to join the team. I believe adding his creative vision to HEX will be amazing and I cannot wait to see how the game will look with his skilled hands guiding it.

You may want to wait until you get home from work to view the website, but you can check out Tyler’s portfolio at http://www.artofty.com/

As you can well imagine, I take the team building element of HEX very seriously. My goal is to build a team of superstar talent and establish Cryptozoic as the undisputed leader in digital TCGs. I actually have a list of people that I will eventually hire someday (each one an amazing talent), and as Cryptozoic grows we will continue to build this incredible team. Even with those talented people, we need to focus on cultivating our own talent. To that effort, I would like to announce a way we’ll be also bringing up our own talent and providing a real path for those who feel they have the skills to get into the industry but they just need a chance.

Apprentice Program

We have started a program to recruit and train our future star designers; we give each apprentice a three month paid position here in Lake Forest, CA and spend that time teaching them our tools and methodology. At the end of the three months we either offer the apprentice an associate game designer role or thank them for their hard work and hope sincerely that the program helped them toward finding their place in the game industry.

A good example in the apprentice program is Jason Zila

Jason is an old school professional TCG player, from the same era I was playing actually; I remember meeting Jason when he was 14 at Los Angles Strategicon. I have to say, of all the players I played with in those early days, Jason is the one who impressed me the most. His ability to not only play the game, but also play the player was really something to behold. He’s currently performing well on our “developer” track in the apprentice program.

If you’re interested, you can send in your resume to Jobs@Cryptozoic.com. You must fill in the email subject line with “HEX Apprentice” when you send it to us. The first skill we’re checking is “can you fill in a data field and follow instructions?” We’ll send you a design test and hopefully that’ll be the first step to your new career. Good luck!

HEX is Going Worldwide

Here it is, the largest piece of this announcement and the element that needs some specific explanation: our new publishing and platform partnerships with Gameforge and Level Up!

Gameforge is headquartered in Germany and the leading MMO publisher for Europe. They have over 400 million registered players across 75 countries.

Level Up! has offices in the Philippines, Brazil, and Latin America. As the number one game publisher in those areas, Level Up!’s commitment to quality and customer service is unparalleled.

Our arrangement with these two publishers is great. They totally get it when it comes to what we are trying to accomplish, and to further illustrate this, the contract in place with these companies puts all decision making in my hands.

Let’s separate this so it’s abundantly clear:

We set out to build a game that was built around community, the kind of game that put fans first and did what was best for our fans. That is as true today as it was when I first conceived of HEX. Rest assured, I remain in control of all elements of the game, from pricing to launch dates, and nothing has been compromised with the decision to bring on these partners.

Yes, we have partnered with these great companies to help cover the potential gaps for us as a newly digital company. It’s important that we know what we don’t know. So, why is it great to have the help of two MAJOR publishers?

– Platform services. We should not be in the business of trying to run the back end of an MMO. It’s super expensive and super complex. When it comes to servers, billing, and customer service, the experience and infrastructure of a large publisher will allow us to offer the type of triple-A service you expect. We would have had to spend a significant amount of development time and money building this all from the ground up. Instead, we can invest those resources into giving you an incredible gaming experience.

– Foreign markets. Both Gameforge and Level Up! are based outside the US and they are undisputed leaders in their regions. The localization and support available for these global players will be amazing and years ahead of what we could have provided on our own. My goal was always to create a global community around HEX, making it a worldwide phenomenon. This is big step forward to that goal.

Like most MMOs, we will have to carve out separate parts of the world, and these walled gardens will represent entire ecosystems. As an example, China would have to be run this way. Every game in China is done like this due to local regulations, and we will need a publishing partner specifically for China. Some markets will have different pricing and offer some region specific PVE content to appeal to local tastes or adhere to local standards. That said, we have a plan to integrate everyone into the eSports element of HEX, and I think that’s a big win for a game with a robust international eSports agenda.

As you can see in the diagram, each walled garden will have two distinct sets of tournament servers: a regional set and a global set. Regional sets will offer tournaments tailored to the local time zones (so you’re playing in qualifier tournaments when you want to play) and also take advantage of what formats are most popular in that region (who knows, maybe Russia will love double elimination King of the Hill sealed deck). The Global tournaments are available to everyone in every territory and will have tournaments day-and-night. Global tournaments will offer a robust set of formats, everything you would see on the regional tournaments servers, and those global tournaments offering the same prizing globally, including our premier eSports events. So, yes, you will be able to play with your friend in Vietnam and your cousin in Germany on the tournament server.

Outside of these tournament servers, each walled garden will be a separate reality. They will each have their own economy, in-game items and accounts. All in-game elements are non-transferable between these regional servers.

So that’s it, the latest round in big announcements. I am sure we will have more before this game is done.

Before I leave, I have one last thing to say about our new partners, and specifically one person…

Meet Phil Cahiwat co-founder of Level-Up!

And a Producer level backer from the Kickstarter campaign!

“I learned about Hex through Kickstarter like most of the other backers. I think though I had a different perspective on the campaign. I’m a co-founder of Level Up!, the first online publisher in the Philippines, India and Brazil and we’ve just started expansion in Spanish speaking Latin America. My job as the Business Development Director is to identify key trends in online gaming and to acquire new content. I was doing research on the viability of servicing mobile and browser based games and learned that TCG/CCGs along with other games that had strong collectability features were one of the fastest growing segments on these platforms. At the same time, we were seeing that most of the growth from our client based business was coming from competitive, session based games like League of Legends and our own FPS games. And then HEX showed up on the popular projects page on Kickstarter.

I have to say, up to this point, I had high interest but very limited experience with TCGs. Of course I was aware of the big brands but I was intimidated with the prospect of getting involved with something like MTG for various reasons. I just felt it was too late for me. Where do you start in a game with a 20 year history? Do I really have to truck down to the local FGS and get spanked by kids less than half my age (much less) to become a competent player? I immediately saw the value of HEX both as a player and a publisher and for the exact same reasons.

I can go on forever about the reasons Hex excited me as a Producer backer and a potential licensee but I’ll just give you my top 3

1. The Ground Floor: This is an opportunity to start at the beginning of not just a new game but a new category of games. Ultima Online pioneered MMORPGs, LoL pioneered MOBAs and HEX will launch as the world’s first MMOTCG. If Cryptozoic is able to do what they say they’ll do, and I’m confident they will, the value of Hex will be immense as an early adopter. If you could go back in time and put down $10K to receive a full playset of every MTG card for the life of the game, would you? Now add in all the other values Crypto threw in during the campaign. No brainer, right? Now what if you were given the opportunity to invest in the IP and brand at MTG’s very inception? Instabuy. Which brings me to my next reason.

2. Longevity: Traditional online games have a relatively short lifespan. 99.9% of the games out there have maybe a year of decent growth and peak revenue before you start to see a steep decline. Now you look at trading card games like MTG, L5R and Pokémon. These games have not only existed for years upon years but they still continue to grow. Since Cryptozoic is a TCG developer first and foremost but have plenty of online game experience under their collective belts, they are well ahead of any would-be competitors. The longevity potential of HEX is just crazy. As a publisher, the importance of this cannot be understated. Cory has been kind of to let me in on the content development pipeline and I can tell you, there’s enough on there right now that if they stopped thinking of new stuff tomorrow, my newborn will still be seeing new content when he starts playing. As a Producer, I have an opportunity to make a real impact on a persistent game world that will be experienced by millions of players for years to come. My own concept for a dungeon will be based on my son. It may not be immortality, but it’s close enough.

3. The Kickstarter Video: Or to paraphrase a forum user, “The moment you realize we just gave a guy in drag $2.3 million.” This video perfectly illustrates the brand personality of Cryptozoic. They are irreverent yet incredibly modest. The HEX development and management teams are made up of rockstars who still play gigs at the local dives. This is exactly the kind of personality I have always tried to instill in my own company. “Fans first” is not just PR smoke blowing but a core value of Crypto. As Level Up! has grown we’ve become increasingly more “corporate” but Cory’s belief that passion for your product AND your consumers need not be mutually exclusive is infectious. Each of the Crypto team members have enough on their resumes that they could be, should be complete dickheads (am I showing my age yet?) but they remain extremely accessible. Give Cory a call or show up on one of their game nights and see for yourself. I’m super excited to finally work with the kind of company we aspire to be. Granted, businesses rely on revenue, but I know they have yours and my best interest at heart.

I’d also like to add, one of the other things that got me really excited about the game is the community I’ve seen develop here. While trolling will always be a part of online forums, the amount of support and encouragement I’ve seen from players like hex_colin far outweighs the toxicity. In my experience of operating MMOs for over 10 years, I think this kind of community interaction is unique to TCGs and will contribute heavily to the success of Hex. Games like LoL and Counterstrike have very unforgiving learning environments and can be a complete turn-off for new players. I believe this is due in part to the game design and the kinds of players they attract. I’ve been playing in the Hex Alpha since its launch and I have yet to run into a jerk. I hope you all remain kind and I look forward to playing with you. Speaking of which, you can find me on the forums as Murtaugh and I’m totally looking for a guild who’s accepting of a player with more resources (decks) than time or skill. Maybe I’m not too old for this shit.”

Amazing right? Our new partners are actually true believers in what we are trying to accomplish with HEX. Its one the reasons I was comfortable bringing them onboard and feel totally confident that it’s the best possible decision.

Thanks again for reading this long article, I am sure I will be jumping into various forum threads to discuss and answer the 1,000,000 questions all this raises.

Love, Cory

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