My favorite hobby right now is Bandai Namco's One Piece Trading Card Game. The game came out in the U.S. in late 2022, but I did not start playing until more recently, the summer of 2025, and started playing in real tournaments in the fall of the same year. I quickly fell in love with the game due to my pre-existing love for the One Piece anime and manga, and it fixing a lot of the game design choices I didn't like from magic the gathering (like its energy system and interaction approach). Though I am in school for mostly video game design, I have found that I sometimes learn the most from analog games. This game has to constantly balance the competitive integrity of each card, while still selling a commercial product that people collect. It's really interesting to see how cards end up interacting with each other (intended or not), and the ways in which Bandai have to intervene when some of those interactions get out of hand. This game teaches me about wide scale balancing without having to deal with bugs and errors, and on top of that, it's extremely fun!
