Card Zero

Follow along as a try to make a board game with 1 billion unique cards

This is arguably one of the more self indulgent things I’ve ever done, but you’ll have paid to be here so I’ll only feel a little bad.

I accidentally found q-basic on a family computer when I was 11, and 26 years¹ later left tech to publish board games full time. Analog, in-person, cardboard-plastic-and-wood board games. You can’t change them once they’re launched. You have to make the whole thing on the first shot². You have to move and store them around the world; a particularly insidious nightmare in this year of C19+2. Dang, I miss making software.

In all that time I never really blogged³, vlogged, or posted anything substantial to social media consistently. In theory I like the idea of being a person who does, so here we are. Writing things down requires that you think coherently, and forces a reckoning for the “amazing” ideas in your head. The accountability to you, dear reader, doesn’t hurt either.

So, I’m going to write about making a game with a billion unique cards. There’s nothing special about that number in particular other than it being big — really big — in terms of how many unique cards you usually find in a board game. Inventing a billion cards isn’t something a human can do alone, so I’ll have to put the machines to work to help get this done. Don’t worry, I have gamer’s honor⁴: I will not cheat. Each card needs to be interesting, look interesting, and matter for the game. Oh, this means I’ll have to make the game itself, too. I’ve done that a couple of times, so, that’ll be easy, right⸮

I have procedural content generation projects for two of my games⁵ that are already in the works, so I’ll talk a lot about those a lot along the way. It shouldn’t stray too far from the goal, though. NFT⁶s will be involved, too, obv.

Speaking of goals, I hear smart goal-setting involves dates, so I’m aiming to give myself 1 year from today for the initial launch. Wow, that feels aggressive (8 months would be worse), but I’m pumped and you’re still reading — let’s go!

1. , a CS degree, 15 years of building enterprise software, 1 acquisition, and a ton of ai, generative art, and other hobby coding projects, and a growing obsession with the crypto space later…

2. Yeah, yeah, expansions…

3. It’s the third paragraph and I’m already lying to you. You should probably leave.

4. I made this up, it’s not really a thing.

5. Spoiler alert for Floodgate fans, Sagrada and Decorum are both planned to have fancy, infinite content generation. Get ready!

6. You definitely don’t need to know what this is to enjoy the ride