The result is a game that's easy to learn, hard to master, and as this year's World Championships showed, can be downright nail-biting to watch in tournament play. An automatic mana ramp keeps the game moving at a brisque pace, and cards are relegated to only a handful of effects with clear visual indicators that take advantage of the video game medium. Hearthstone stripped down the CCG to its component parts, kept what was necessary, and threw out the rest. When it canceled its long-in-development MMO Titan, its comments about smaller teams working on passion projects highlighted how Hearthstone has shifted the very culture of the studio. Several months and 20 million users later, it's clear the company has stumbled onto something grand. Even Blizzard didn't seem to count on its massive success. It was a small side project, created by a tiny internal team and debuted at a fan convention, PAX, instead of the media spectacle of E3. Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft was an odd project for a studio more known for its massive successes. When Blizzard turned its eye for simplicity and elegant design towards the collectible card game genre, we all benefitted.
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