Would it be cheaper or more expensive to run an online only CCG?

[yamas11]

Compared to running a real life CCG.

You wouldn't have to worry about constant printing and card stock costs, but there would be the price for a server that could handle many players.

[briggs]

I would say it costs as much, if not more than printing a card game.

Sure you don't have to deal with printing cost and running out of product, but there is a lot of upkeep to an online card game and it has a lot of draw backs.

You have to worry about hackers, support for stupid people that whine about everything, support for the people who get hacked. You've got servers, maintaining the servers, keeping the servers online 24/7, coding a massive program, beta testing, editing it, blah blah blah.

[Tokimo]

The costs are part of the equation, but one I wouldn't focus on as the primary concern.

There are a lot of people who play card games at lunch. There are a lot of people who play card games at gaming stores. There are a lot of people who play card games at their friend's houses. Not all of these people are going to play cards online.

It's fun to have the pretty cards in your hand. It's fun to open packs (according to some people, I personally find the experience statistically disappointing).

Then of course there is the cost. To write a single CCG program you are probably looking at 4-8 weeks of development time if you are lucky and get a good engineer. A good engineer probably wants a lot, but let's say you get a cheap one. You're still looking at $15,000 to pay your engineer to get everything all set up. And that was a generous scenario where you got an engineer who's working cheap and is still pretty good, there are so many bad engineers out there who are make themselves sound good that you'd probably get a bad one who would ask for $20,000 and then not deliver.

[yamas11]

Ah thanks for the information.

So overall, real life CCG's sell better and are also cheaper to run? If possible, could you tell me how much it costs yearly to maintain a real life CCG, and how much it costs yearly to maintain an online only CCG (just the costs, ignoring any profits that's made)?

[Tokimo]

Offset printing usually starts making economic sense at thousands and tens of thousand printings. I am not familiar with printing rates, but cardboard CCGs are really expensive too. Unless you're moving hundreds (guess?) of boxes of boosters you'd lose money on the printing.

[greasontim]

if your a nature person than makeing a online one helps the ecosystem!

If your game is setup proporely than a online wont be that bad but you need someone that knows how to code inorder for it to work out.
and you need a server.
Est harddrive space for a card game
about 20kb per card or so
avg set has about 200-400 cards in it
4-8MBs per set + Program
and cause it would be online you have have the server files that keep track of wins/loses and the decks people have made and what cards everyone has

so if your willing to try it go ahead
you can make money by having it online as well
like have a special set that people can't get exept by paying or something (just a idea)