Eye of Judgement

I've first read about Eye of Judgement on Penny Arcade, now Keen and Graev have a short review of Eye of Judgement. So I'm looking for more information about this game, and my spider sense begins tingling. Eye of Judgement boosters with an official retail price of $4.99 are selling second-hand here in Europe for up to 20 Euro ($28). And that's from serious sites like Amazon.de. The last time I saw this level of crazyness was 1993 when the first Magic the Gathering cards hit the street. It could very well be that Eye of Judgement is the next MtG.

So what is Eye of Judgement? It is the world's most expensive trading card game. To play you need a Playstation 3 and a Play Station Eye camera, plus at least the rather expensive starter box with the game, with then optional theme decks or boosters to add to your card pool. Oh, and a TV, but I'll assume you have one of those. So if you have the TV but nothing else, starting to play will cost you over $500. Ouch! After that, the sky is the limit, trading card games are notorious for people spending way too much money on them. Having been caught in the MtG back then, I'm well aware of the dangers.

So why is Eye of Judgement apparently such a hit? Because it combines the addictiveness of trading card games with a way to overcome the disadvantages of a card game. Card games suffer from being not very graphically attractive, and from having to find somebody to play against. In Eye of Judgement you play your cards on a play mat, which is scanned by the PS Eye camera. Thus the PS3 knows what card you played where, and translates your action into a graphically more appealing event on the PS3. And because the PS3 can be connected to the internet, you can play against anyone in the whole world who has the same game and is also looking for somebody to play against. The computer even prevents cheating, by scanning your deck, virtually shuffling it, and telling you what cards you "draw".

This is way better than either pure card games, or existing online versions of trading card games where the cards are all just virtual. You get to hold the cards in your hand, get to do a real collection, but still have all the advantages of finding people to play against online. And apparently the graphics are way better than lets say Magic the Gathering Online, which only displays cards, no animated graphics. While the requirement to have a PS3 will certainly mean that Eye of Judgement will be less of a mass phenomenon than Magic the Gathering was in the 90s, this could be one of the games that drive the sales of the PS3.

The only cloud on the horizon is the limited capabilities of the PS Eye camera to tell a real card from a good photocopy. Apparently the first working pdf files of ultra-rares have appeared on the internet. And unlike MtG players rarely meet each other face-to-face. Thus Eye of Judgement might end up being the most successful trading card game in which there isn't any actual trading of cards taking place.