O.K. Introduce yourself please...

I'm Sara/delirium, a dual-degree student in zoology (herpetology) and fine arts, so this is right up my alley. I ran in to this place a while ago and have watched from a distance since then. I figure it's about time to get involved. I have a number of illustrations to submit of less-than-glamorous vector-based creatures (mosquito, toad, etc.) and have an extensive knowledge of weird creatures (onychophora, etc.) that I intend to illustrate at some point.

My best friend is VERY in to dinosaurs, so if there's an interest in extinct animals, she's an animation student studying at SCAD (art school) and I might be able to convince her to do a few things for it.

Yay!

Hi! I'm Gina. I work fulltime at the Natural History Museum in London on the collections committee. I also work freelance as a Natural History Illustrator. I'm a big believer in science and art working together. ^^

That's awesome! I'll actually be starting a sabbatical with Bob Bloomfield's group at the NHM in July. Will have to say hello!

Oh, excellent! It would be great to meet you and say hi.

I don't know Dr. Bloomfield personally (the place is so huge it's difficult to get to know everyone) but I will certainly keep an eye out.

Hello all. I'm Paul. Always wanted to be in science but I'm registered blind so I had to settle for doing an MA in Visual Arts & Illustration instead. Determined to establish myself as a natural history illustrator, despite insistence of tutors that "no one wants realism anymore". First commissioned work (illustrations in a book about beekeeping) due to be published in the UK tomorrow. Most intrigued by what you folks are doing here...

Yay Paul! I was hoping you'd join.

Hi Gina!
Yes, thanks to you making me aware of this project! Much appreciated. Your squid painting is amazing!
P:)

I'm Joel, in Houston Texas. I'm a Prelaw student with a copyright/ip focus, mixed media artist and mold maker (not much help here unfortunately), writer, amateur game designer, and hair stylist.

I think this is incredibly cool and am excited to try to contribute.

Hello, everyone! I'm Wootfish, a hopeless math person and fan of crowdsourcing. I found my way here via BoingBoing, that most wonderful directory of things, and I have to say I think this project looks very cool.

I used to make games as a hobby, so I figure I could be of some use in the design/balance department once I familiarize myself with the shape things seem to be taking. All the work I've taken a look at so far has proven quite interesting, so I'm optimistic.

Hello!

I'm not a biologist, I'm not artistic, I was never into CCGs like Pokémon and I don’t have kids or spend any time around them... Yet for some reason this idea really appeals to me!

It might be more useful to know what I am. I'm a software tester. Though I don't get to participate often I am I fan of science outreach and I think it is vital (I volunteer as a Physics tutor at the university level). For the card/board games I do play on occasion I have become notorious as a sort of griefer. That might not sound like a ringing endorsement but it’s really a direct result from my testing background. It could be hard to balance a game without someone around to show you how unbalanced it is. Games have rules just like software and I would be happy to find any bugs that might be lurking about

I’ve seen some really good ideas that I would like to add my 2 cents or simply offer my encouragement. I’ll save that for another post though.

Silver Adept - Youth Services Librarian in the Seattle area. Came here by way of BoingBoing, and probably don't have a lot of anything to contribute for the actual science bits, but I've played and seen played more than a few card game types, so maybe I can help out with some of the mechanics.

Hi I'm Retha, I'm a designer/illustrator from South Africa. I like reading popular science books about evolution and I have imaginary conversations with ants.

You can view my portfolio here

I'm looking forward to doing some illustrations for this project and I am going to try and get my dad to sign up as well. I would also like to help with the social media aspect. (btw can we have a thread where everyone can post their twitter user names?)

handshakeintheneverendingjungle

hi im Sam looks like a very cool idea, got here from kotaku.com, i am thinking of doing some art for the project as it looks fun

Hey all. I'm Charles, Also got here from Kotaku. Very interesting system you have going here, looking forward to trying to contribute to the cause.

My name is Greg. I work in IT (specifically, identity management consulting). I have been playing CCGs since 1994 or so, and I have long been a nerd about biology. I have professional experience as a graphic/web designer as well.

Hi, I'm Silje. I've studied biology, geology and other related disciplines in college and college university. I'd been thinking about and meddling with ideas for my own ecology CCG, before I found this project and site (it took much googling, filtrering out the Xeko game before phylo randomly showed up!). Finally, somebody else working with this great idea, I mean, throughly (more educational/complex than the xeko game)..the rules and gameplay seem pretty good...

You can see my ideas here Designing an eco ccg. UnSuprisingly, I'm also an avid CCG player, most experience gathered in Magic. And when I was younger, I played the pokemon handheld games, good grief.

I think it's more important that the game is fun to play than that the game is realistic in every aspect...or else what's the point?

I'm not a biologist in any sense of the word, but I have a friend who is who wants me to show her how to play this game. Since it's not exactly finished yet, I thought I would lend my weight to the playtesting. I've been designing games since I was 10 (I found one when I was moving a few years ago!), but I'm mostly here because I've been working with Fenris on Rage for the last 4 or so years.

Hello-

I was directed here by a friend yesterday, because a few weeks ago my 7-year-old kid and I had started working on a game we called "BioBattles!" with the same notion as Phylo. I can't tell now whether this was independent thought, or I'd heard something back when about Phylo or the Pokemon-vs-real-creatures discussion, but the inspiration was the same. My kid knows a lot about Pokemon, and it seems like that brain space could be filled with REAL facts instead.

I've never played Pokemon. I play Magic: the Gathering sometimes with friends, but borrow their decks to do so. I mostly enjoy the CCG play, but I find the business model insidious so I've tried to avoid getting sucked into it.

I'm trying to get familiar with the existing state of the game and the discussion here. I already have various thoughts, but they might be totally misplaced due to my ignorance so far.

• I wonder if rarity (http://phylogame.org/about/#rare) matters for making the games enjoyable, and how that can be emulated in an open-published game. There is a gameplay aspect to rarity, which is that it helps to balance overpowered cards, which makes for a little more slack in balancing the cards initially. There is also likely to be a collector's fun aspect to anticipating the cards you don't yet have.
  
• My initial bias on the many-ways-to-play-the-game is negative because it's following closer to a CCG model than a deck-of-poker-cards model. I know there are a number of ways to play Magic (two-player, 5-player, booster draft, two-headed-giant), but all of these are tiny variations on the essential core game. While innovative alternative rules could be very neat, I think designing for a single set of rules will make a better game.
  
• Related, I think the cards should have a version number on them, so that if the game rules evolve it will be easier to identify which card versions are archaic, whether that means they're not allowed, or it means they're overpowered and awesome!
  
• I think the photo-drawing toggle is brilliant!
  
• I'm going to have to experiment in play-testing to see if building an ecosystem is as exciting as battling. I like the fact that the gameplay is itself educational-the game I was making with my kid was still extremely fuzzy, but was really about totally fictionalized battles.
  

I know diddly about biology, and I'm not much of an artist, but I'll see about redirecting the attention I was giving to our little game to Phylo instead. Thanks for getting it going!

-Timothy

Hi,

I'm Tangram, father of 2, living in Australia.

I'm a long time board, card, and PC gamer. This project's goal of blending gaming and learning pushes all the right buttons for me.

Cheers,
-T.

TDang wrote:
I wonder if rarity (http://phylogame.org/about/#rare) matters for making the games enjoyable

Rarity has two functions: to entice you to buy more; and to restrict the number of cards available in 'limited' play (where you have to build a deck from a random selection of cards). The latter will be achieved by the printing budget of whoever is in charge!

Vivienne wrote:Hello!

I'm Vivienne Lam, a graduate student studying plant systematics and evolution at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. =)

Hi !
I've just visited this forum. Happy to get acquainted with you. Thanks.

Hi!

I'm Tracy. I heard about Phylomon from a friend who (correctly) thought I would like the idea.

I doubt I'd be useful for doing illustrations, but I tend to take photos of things people don't take a lot of photos of, and I've traveled quite a bit throughout North America.

The photo submissions page currently asks for plants. Plants, I can do, including ones from currently under-represented terrains.

It looks like there's only one card for a desert environment, so I started there. Among other things, I put a dozen photos of desert plants in the photo pool. They're all from the Mojave, but at the moment there is one lonely cactus card to represent desert vegetation, so if even one of my photos gets used it will be a big improvement. My understanding is that a good trading card game should just keep releasing new cards indefinitely, so in theory eventually whatever I submit might be useful. :)

If I remain motivated enough to keep going, this will force me to actually key out everything I intended to look up later, assuming I can find the right field guides. :P In any case, for now I'm having fun picking things out, and cropping and resizing them.

Hi guys! I'm new here, I really like your game and I want to help you in my spare time. I'm studying Natural Science in Italy,Genova, now I just finished my exams and I have lots of time.Until Sept.
Unfortunately I arrived at a time when the forum is not very active

Henry Brock, Master's in Materials Science from UW-Madison, avid gamer (board, card, word, math, PC, some design), and thrilled that Phylomon exists.

Hi Henry,

Good to have you here. The forum has been a little slow of late, but hoping to get things hopping again!

cheers
dave