Lessons from CCG’s What Can Video Games with Digital Objects Learn From Collectible Card Games?

Who am I? Started in game design in 1991 working for Richard Garfield on Magic, eventually became SVP at WotC/Hasbro In 1994 became the business and brand manager for Magic Co-Designed or developed most of WotC’s CCG’s Designed Organized Play systems such as the Pro-Tour Started Three Donkeys in 2004 with Richard Garfield consulting and designing Schizoid and Spectromancer Taught Characteristics of Games at UW, podcasts with Richard

The Interesting Thing By their nature, distributed object games inextricably mix design and business

Magic: The Gathering Yearly Revenue 1994-Present Wholesale m$ Retail m$

Pokémon TCG Top Year Wholesale 700 m$ Retail 1.75 b$ (TCG only)

Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG Top Year Wholesale 1.2 b$ Retail 3.0 b$ (TCG only)

Definition Distributed Object games contain hundreds of semi-individually purchasable objects that together constitute a large portion of the play value of the game – They can take a basic gameplay interaction and turn it into as much of a hobby as a game – Difficult to construct, but can provide an enormous payoff for customer and publisher

Assumptions Repeat purchase revenue model – Essentially you are creating an operating system – Difficult for players and designers, so should be robust enough for long-term involvement – Huge benefit to not have to purchase all at once – Implies a degree of ‘sophistication’ in the audience

Assumptions Limited SKU’s – Personal bias on this one, but I hate analysis paralysis for the consumer. NO BAD PURCHASES! – Implies randomized selling, but be creative, e.g. different rarity levels, no refill, etc.

Assumptions Plan for success – You will have a wide range of customers with different amounts of skill, free time, psychographics, entry times, and especially money to spend – This assumption leads to huge constraints for gameplay (our focus here)

Implications For these games, purchase decisions are not made once, heavily influenced by the marketing guys— they are CONSTANT decisions Respecting all your customers pays off Each game is a sales pitch

If every game is a sales pitch,… Objects should be easily understood – The customer needs to think they know what they’re getting. The easiest way is clarity.

If every game is a sales pitch,… For objects to have a clear benefit across different entry times and purchase levels, the value of each purchase (in winning %) should have only logarithmically increasing value

If every game is a sales pitch,… For objects to be useful across many levels of skill, you may consider removing or mitigating physical skill and hand-eye coordination from the picture

If every game is a sales pitch,… Add randomness – For small audience sizes, a high degree of randomness in gameplay is critical – For astute audiences, it is very helpful to maintain discussion about strategy/value

If every game is a sales pitch,… How can you add real value to the objects? – Cash out – Tournaments – Desire to collect – Community – Many others Figure out and feed them

If every game is a sales pitch,… Your customers are your salesmen – Intermixing of large populations is nice, making randomness even more critical – Have fun while you are playing those with better ‘decks’ – This implies limiting formats and some amount of free-to-play

Reconfiguration is Half the Game Losses are critical to drive sales, but more importantly to access the interesting part of the game play!

Reconfiguration is Half the Game Losses easy to come by in multiplayer mode for the total population, but harder to get right for each player-to-player interaction. Skill can be high, but accuracy in skill testing is bad Single player version must entail a lot of losses

Reconfiguration is Half the Game Repeat play is critical – Must keep playtime short to allow rematches.

Design and Business are Mixed

Changing the rarity of an object changes the price of the product!

Design and Business are Mixed Changing the power of an object changes the price of the product $

Design and Business are Mixed Changing the release schedule changes the gameplay – Competent strategy, especially for combinatorial games isn’t always easy to come by – Don’t cut your best salesmen off at the knees by limiting their time

Design and Business are Mixed Changing the price of the product changes your potential customers – Beware of business concerns and know your audience

Design and Business are Mixed Organized Play (Tournaments, Leagues, etc.) is a powerful tool, but is it marketing or design? – Games are not just their rules – Players are more amenable to ‘patches’ in format – OP may be the organism, but the rules are the skeleton

Long Term Concerns How do you keep the objects interesting over the long term, and why should you care?

Long Term Concerns Rotate objects – In and out, not just ‘out’

Long Term Concerns Avoid complexity creep

Long Term Concerns Avoid power creep – Or you won’t be able to rotate objects back in – And you won’t be in control of your game

Conclusion

There is no substitute for studying games. All games.

Your customers don’t care about your org chart