The guy was (is?) a top level Magic: the Gathering Player, I figure it was written for his blog audience (who would know what Artifact is) and not for a more general audience.
Well, yes. It's a blog post on a blog focused on, among other things, game design and economics, with a focus on MtG and Artifact. Readers are presumed to be at least passingly familiar with the subject - HN is not the target audience.
I would celebrate to see more of this sort of content on HN - while it may require some research, I find that these sorts of articles by people passionate about a topic are often more accurate, insightful, and interesting than a traditional journalistic overview.
A card game designed by Richard Garfield (creator of Magic: The Gathering) and Valve. It was super hyped up pre-release, then became a massive failure due to Valve ignoring tons of negative feedback and thinking that they know better than the people playing. They say they are still working on it, but the last time it got an update was January 28th, 2 months after release.
That was the last actual update, but I think the last time they said anything about the game was this "Towards a Better Artifact" post on March 29: https://playartifact.com/news/1819924505115920089
It says they were going to focus on addressing the larger issues instead of continuing to update it, but it's just been complete silence for over 6 months since then. Like Zvi says at the end of the article, at this point there's no longer any significant time pressure, because everyone's already given up on it. If they do plan to try and re-launch it (and I don't think that's a certainty), they might as well take as long as they need to make sure it's done right the second time.
I can't imagine anyone being hyped for it. What will always stick out in my mind is the immediate reaction to the games announcement, by Valves own core fans.
