Crowdsourcing

I read this post and it really rung true with me.

Author: inb63

Forge is a great program, I started using it around a year ago and was amazed at the huge number of cards I could play with. Months later I was creating a custom set and scripting my first cards. It was so amazing for me, a guy with near zero programming experience to see some of his babies work on Forge. Anyways, I tested this card and it works.

I sort of laughed when I read that.  The message sums up the theme Forge: “huge number of cards” and a guy with zero programming experience could actually contribute something.  The card code that he posted was very impressive and is from the upcoming Innistrad set.  (You can see the official Innistrad spoiler here.)

Name:Dearly Departed

ManaCost:4 W W

Types:Creature Spirit

Text:no text

PT:5/5

K:Flying

T:Mode$ ChangesZone | Origin$ Any | Destination$ Battlefield | ValidCard$ Creature.Human+YouCtrl | TriggerZones$ Graveyard | Static$ True | Execute$ TrigPutCounter | TriggerDescription$ As long as CARDNAME is in your graveyard, each Human creature you control enters the battlefield with an additional +1/+1 counter on it.

SVar:TrigPutCounter:AB$PutCounter | Cost$ 0 | Defined$ TriggeredCard | CounterType$ P1P1 | CounterNum$ 1

SVar:Rarity:Rare

SVar:Picture:http://www.wizards.com/global/images/magic/general/dearly_departed.jpg

End

Crowdsourcing is the ultimate goal for many projects like Forge.  Crowdsourcing is like outsourcing, except you give the task to a crowd of people.  For Forge the biggest help that anybody can do is to add cards and now that many cards can be scripted, instead of hard coded in Java, crowdsourcing can help Forge add more and more cards.  Obviously not all cards can be scripted but Forge’s scripting has grown from supporting very simple cards to tournament winning rares.

Thankfully the user inb63 didn’t mind trudging through Forge’s scripting documentation and learning it.  I personally don’t understand the card code that he posted but I’m very impressed that it works.  Obviously Forge lends new meaning to fan created cards, since Forge lets you actually use your creations in a real game.  (Theoretically a program like Forge would make rapid prototyping and testing of a new card game much easier versus cutting cards out from a sheet of paper.) 

The ultimate goal would be to allow people to upload cards to a massive online database and then Forge would seamlessly check the database and download new cards.  While this is a pipe dream now, it may be possible in the future.  (Obviously the cards would need to be checked somehow to make sure that they work and that they implement the rules correctly.)

Thanks for reading,

mtgrares

p.s.

The best known crowdsourcing project is Wikipedia.  More and more projects are trying to use crowdsourcing to solve many different types of problems.  Crowdsourcing is the future.