The Trouble with Trading Card Games
I understand the business model for setting your card games up like this. You can generate a steady interest among children by creating card games that fosters a sort of “planned scarcity” of goods. It’s not like the card game company couldn’t give everyone what they want, by printing more of the popular and most useful cards, they simply choose not to.
Booster packs have always been what I don’t like about the current trading card game industry. Most of the trading card games in stores today require kids to buy stacks of useless cards in order to get one or two interesting ones. My local game stores behind the counter space is stacked high with wasted cards that nobody wants, because their trading card game insists that random discovery is preferable to everyone getting the cards they want.
It doesn’t have to be this way. A collectible card game can be just as interesting when everyone has access to all the cards. What’s more, the waste of paper and dollars is sharply reduced if a collectible card game is designed for full access to cards.
Where the fun and collectability of a collectible card game centers on the characters and a complete deck, game balance is also maintained. If everyone has access to the same resources they can test their skill rather than their budget.
It’s like a game of chance for kids, as they purchase booster packs to hopefully get the winning card. The other downside of a trading card game designed this way is that kids can buy themselves into an unfair advantage – affecting game balance and putting new players at a disadvantage.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 28th, 2009 at 4:46 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.