Here's a fantastic example of rearward design: A team of counterfeiters in China has created a physical version of Hearthstone.

That's right. You're looking at a digital card game reverse-engineered into a physical one, complete with a raft of exciting new features such as offline mode, manually calculated statistics, zero audio and animations, as well as the exciting prospect of card decay.

According to VentureBeat, the set costs 300 Chinese Yuan (around $50), and comes with four copies of every normal and legendary card, with more cards for minions that can spawn in greater numbers.

Does anyone know how to pronounce "Pass me that Arclight spanner" in Chinese?

There's also a nifty token that can be attached to cards to show effects like whether a card is on Taunt, Stealth, or has been Silenced. Plus, there are also switches that can adjust the health and attack of your minions.

As much as this is clearly an enfeebled bootleg version of Blizzard's triumphant card game, I really can't help the fact that I long for it dearly. I think it's because, after playing Hearthstone for more than (I'm guessing) 400 hours, I've gradually built up a desire to hold its wondrous, beautiful minions in my hands.

Granted, the lack of voice acting would really suck, but we could do that ourselves right? How cool would it be to throw down a card and shout at your opponent "Behold the might of stormwind!" (Confession: I do this already).

Oh, before you go, it's probably worth caveating this with a salient reminder that plagiarism and counterfeiting is, like, not exactly legal.



