"Don't change too much...anything you don’t have to explain to your player is a godsend."

- Blizzard's Eric Dodds explains why Heartstone is so similar to many popular collectible card games. Blizzard has had remarkable success with its digital collectible card game Hearthstone, which makes lead designer Eric Dodds' recent GDC 2014 talk about the game's design especially interesting for anyone looking to better understand how Hearthstone was made -- or how Blizzard's design process is evolving to embrace the mobile market. To hear Dodds tell it, the Hearthstone team took an appreciation for physical collectible card games and figured out how to adapt them into a digital format that leverages the unique strengths of Unity to create a game that's easily accessible and playable across both PC and tablets. Along the way they codified what they learned into discrete nuggets of design theory, some of which Dodds shared during his talk. We've taken the liberty of embedding the free video of "Hearthstone: 10 Bits of Design Wisdom" above, but you can also watch it here on the GDC Vault.

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