The Eye of Judgment is one of the most conceptually interesting video game releases of the past several years. As a peripheral-based game it’s an intriguing release that brings several questions to mind. Why did Sony decide to make this game? How was the game’s marketing plan established? Has the marketing plan been successful? Is the game receiving the attention necessary to maximize its potential? As a passionate video game observer and fan, I think it’s a title that is worthy of further study and discussion. It is unique enough to warrant a comprehensive analysis.

The first and most obvious question is why did SCEJ decide to make this game? It seems to be aimed at the Pokemon/Yu-Gi-Oh/Magic: The Gathering crowd, which is logical. If you can capture market share in the collectible card game marketplace there seems to be large profits available from future content releases. Although I am far from being an expert on CCGs, I understand their basics, and future additional content seems to be a much larger revenue source than your run of the mill downloadable content.

Unfortunately, The Eye of Judgment has been a mysterious product in the United States since its release. The game seemed to receive a fair amount of press coming out of E3 and GenCon and then had a nice little push in the weeks leading up to the game’s release date. Anyone who had heard about EOJ and was interested could find sufficient information to keep up to date. Early game play reviews were universally positive; every review that I could find praised the game’s balance and unique spin on CCG play. While the Eye peripheral is not perfect, reviews were generally very favorable.

The notable video game review sites were also very positive about the Eye of Judgment – but only if you read the text of their reviews. For some reason IGN, Gamespot and the rest of the major sites seemed more interested in subtracting points from EOJ’s review score because it’s a video game that plays a CCG. While the reviews were universally positive in praising the game play of EOJ, they seemed to take points away arbitrarily because it wasn’t more than a brilliant CCG, which generally left reviews in the 7 to 8 range. But a brilliant CCG is all that EOJ set out to be.

The reviews did not seem to take into consideration that the Eye peripheral alone is $40 and the game included $19 worth of cards, making the game basically $11. It’s pretty tough to find a very good video game with deep and engaging game play at any price, let alone $30. It’s a shame that EOJ did not receive slightly higher scores. Average scores in the 8.5 range rather than the 7.5 range would have made this title a better seller, and 8.5 would be a low score for this game. It deserves every bit of 8.5 if not higher. This tells me that SCEA’s marketing department did not do their job of getting EOJ’s strengths out there in the minds of reviewers, leaving the game sales crippled at launch.

Not only did SCEA fail to court the major game review sites, they also ignored the huge CCG market. Although the game was reported to be a hit at GenCon, the game and cards are not yet available at the local analog gaming retailers where so many loyal CCG fans buy their products. While many clerks at these establishments are aware of EOJ from GenCon, they don’t have the product and haven’t had a chance to play it. With thousands of dedicated CCG stores across the country that are set up to push products like this SCEA made a huge blunder by not putting this game in their hands up front. This is how grassroots marketing works: you must put the product in the hands of the people who are highly likely to enjoy your product and spread the word. If this game were set up to demo in CCG stores, this game would be selling huge quantities nationwide – and moving systems, which Sony so desperately needs.

Speaking of sold out, EOJ is extremely difficult to find. Gamestop stores only received allocations to cover their pre-orders. Although I have seen a few copies at Target and Toys R Us, most stores are sold out. I haven’t seen a copy of the bundled game in over a week at this point. The cards are extremely difficult to find as well. The cards were initially only available at Target and Toys R Us. These locations, at least in Indianapolis, were sold out within 72 hours. On one Saturday afternoon I traveled to 5 locations before finding any booster packs. The following week the cards were finally sent to Gamestops across the country and immediately sold out. Maybe SCEA simply underestimated the demand for this game, but with copies of the game so scarce at retail this feels like a colossal mistake. You can’t sell products that people can’t find in stores.

So why am I writing about a game that requires purchase of a peripheral, got mediocre reviews, and is nearly impossible to find in stores? Because the damn game is simply brilliant.

The best thing that SCEJ did was partner up with Wizards of the Coast, the giants made famous by Magic: The Gathering. Reports suggest that the game was play tested on paper for more than three years before beginning on the software side of the game. This long play testing period really shows when playing the game.

For the uninitiated, EOJ is basically Magic: The Gathering meets chess and/or tic-tac-toe. Where M:TG’s primary play mechanic is destroying your opponent, EOJ’s primary mechanic is controlling 5 of the board’s 9 squares. For you Halo people, it’s territories to M:TG’s slayer. Why does this formula work so well? Partially because it takes a lot of the emphasis off of the big expensive rare cards. While EOJ certainly has those ultra-cool rare cards that come only 1 to a pack, they are much less effective than they are in M:TG. Because EOJ uses a 30 card deck to M:TG’s 60 card deck you generally can’t get by with lots of the high powered cards, because your opponent can quickly grab spaces before you build enough power to cast those fancy cards. For experienced M:TG players: you cannot build mana like you do in M:TG. And, because the game has the board mechanic, one card cannot dominate a game the way a couple powerful cards can in M:TG.

Basically, the starter deck that comes with EOJ is a competent deck and you can win with it. Tweak it out with 5 or 6 boosters worth of cards and you can put together a great deck. Beyond that, they only reason to buy more cards is for fun. The best part of the game is looking at all the various deck building strategies and trying the thousands of strategic combinations. It feels like an old-fashioned concept: have fun by using your brain to make decisions and develop complex strategies.

Reading message boards and comment sections across the internet, I repeatedly come across people upset that the EOJ cards can be copied. You have read this at some point: “I was going to buy this, but I’m not going to since you can copy the cards. Now everyone online is going to cheat!” This baffles me. The main problem with CCGs is their cost. The fact that you can copy cards evens the playing field to some extent. You will never get beat by someone who can spend more money than you. Isn’t that appealing to people. Yes, you can copy the rare cards, but this will not help you learn the strategy of building a great deck. I personally am not copying cards at this point and would prefer not to. If you want to copy them, go ahead. So far I have collected 86 of the 110 cards in the game. Of those, I would say that 5 or 6 of the rare cards are highly useful. I would guess that maybe 10-12 of the rare cards in total are cards that I would want to use on a regular basis. If you want to copy those 10 or 15 best rare cards, go for it. I don’t see how doing that is going to make it more difficult for me to win.

If you have read this far, it is obvious that I am a pretty big fan of The Eye of Judgment. Here’s my official review:

Game Concept and Design (10/10)
The game is very unique. It’s the first cross between an analog game and a video game, and I love it. Major points for thinking outside the box and bringing the best of Magic: The Gathering to a console. I love that I can tweak my deck in my office on my lunch break.

Game design is nearly flawless. There are few cards if any that break the game, and the balance is extraordinary. There are 110 cards in the deck, and only a few that I would not strongly consider putting in a deck. It makes choosing 30 cards for a deck a very difficult proposition – it’s like choosing your favorite child.

Game Execution and Production (7/10)
The single player mode is relatively shallow, but the AI puts up a pretty good fight. The single player game is basically a fertile training ground for online play. Online play works extremely well except the occasional dropped connection. Pre-registered decks work well to spoil cheaters.

The graphics are relatively last-gen. The battle sequences and okay, not great. The battle arenas leave a little to be desired. The rock music gets old and begs for custom soundtracks, which are not available.

Online Experience (8/10)
Generally good, would be nice to be able to resume games with dropped connections, which seems to be a common problem with PSN. It’s free, so you can’t complain too much.

Overall (9/10)
I will be playing this game for years so long as new cards are released in a somewhat timely manner. Tons of fun, and a great intellectual alternative to the mindless run and gun of most of today’s games. A real pleasure. If the booster packs were $2 instead of $4 I would give it a 10/10.

Feel free to discuss this review here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 9:19 am and is filed under Commentary, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.