Card Game Microtransactions

[yudencow]

I thought for a long time for a different busines model for our genre. New card games have hard times to fill expectaions relying on people with cardboard crtack to their game. if you have no IP to support you these days, it will be very difficult.

Why not make them online free-to-play, with the possiblity to get the cards you collected sent to you for a small fee. The company will receive most of its revenue from selling different skins of the same card like league of legends with their champions.

What do you think?

[MLaRF]

The biggest reason companies don't do this is because they need to make money in order to pay their employees and bills and such, and making them free to play just isn't a big enough revenue. At least, for larger companies that already have a base, employees, and investors putting their trust and money into them; smaller companies could start out with free-to-play games, but the only way to make a company survive is to have it make as much money as it possibly can, and keep growing before it gets squashed out by a bigger company, random and costly accident, or periods of lower income. Making people have to buy each pack of cards and such is, in fact, a terrific idea from a business standpoint (although so is making a power creep, for reasons discussed in lackey's game creation tutorial, but that's just an annoyance for consumers and will overall lower the money gained from semi-competitive consumers).

That being said, the idea of making them free online with microtransactions has a lot of potential for businesses, much like Pokemon TCGO is doing. The only problem I'd say TCGO has is that you need to buy real cards in order to get virtual ones, instead of being able to do it the other way around; I mean, sure, you can buy virtual cards on TCGO, but you don't get any real-world rewards for it, so it might not be worth the consumer's money. The best way to do it would be a lot like a cross between Pokemon TCGO and the Yu-Gi-Oh video games, where [A] you would be able to obtain virtual cards by inputting some code from real-world cards, and you could buy virtual cards - but here's the kicker - and allow the company or vendors to mail you cards based on either the cards you get virtually, a value system based on virtual cards, or just on a pack-for-pack basis like the PTCGO codes.

That's about my two cents.

[Typherion]

I suggest taking a look at the online card game Shadow Era.

Despite the fact that it is a 99% ripoff of the WoW TCG, it seems to be pretty popular and making money. But you can also see that they must have invested lots of money in programming, coding, artists, music, etc.

The game was first released as a free to play online game. It is possible to earn game currency to buy new cards at a very slow rate through playing, or you can pay real money to access new cards more quickly. After the success of the online game they started producing and selling real cards through their website.

[yudencow]

How does Shadow Era and Pokemon TCGO make money exactly?

[Typherion]

I don't know about Pokemon, but Shadow Era sells "Shadow Crystals" for real money that you can use to buy new virtual decks.

Apparently there are a lot of people who want to play competetively against other players as soon as possible. So they pay real money via paypal for virtual currency in order to get cards quickly instead of slowly earning currency through the single player campaign.

[MLaRF]

PTCGO probably makes most of its money through people who buy real-world cards, because each pack of real cards comes with a code for a virtual pack. There's also a virtual currency that you can buy with real money, but that currency is only used to get more virtual cards, which is probably a lot less common in kids and collectors. ('Course, there's also the entire rest of the pokemon franchise bringing in money, so it's not like we can completely say that these are their only sources of income.) But Yeah, I think I may check out this Shadow Era sometime soon.

[yudencow]

So if I get ir right the online card game business m,odel should be:

-Online currency to buy packs
-Real-life transfer of cards
-Long way possible to get cards freely
-Instantaneous way to get cards for money

Is the selling different skins of the same card is cool?
How can you get money for advertisement?
Is it worth selling other stuff like shirts and knick knacks?

[MLaRF]

Is the selling different skins of the same card is cool?

Maybe. I would probably say no, for all the effort it's worth. Different skins and such for the entire site maybe, but each individual card wouldn't be worth it. You could maybe expect purchases at 5 cents a card, but then the cost for the artist would render that unprofitable.

How can you get money for advertisement?

Exactly the methods you stated. Advertising would also bring more consumers in, so as soon as you can get a successful advertisement out there, the business can start to snowball.

Is it worth selling other stuff like shirts and knick knacks?

Yes, this is one of the most important ones. This is why Star Wars has been a strong franchise despite being 35 years old. Merchandise is like the lungs of a business: it may not be where the heart is, but the heart is pumping out for no result once you take them out.

[yudencow]

Okay, thanks.

The idea of the skins came from team fortress 2 hats. What can be its equivalent in a card game? Other than rarer cards. Maybe playmats?

[yudencow]

Acouple of things that ran through my mind:

Is it worth to have cards develop according the storyline like 7th sea?

How do you implement ads of others in your game for more income?

[DavidChaos]

As far as the discussion on Microtransaction Card Game model, I actually had a similar idea, concerning the release of the video game.

In essence, when you open a virtual pack, you are able to buy the pack outright after having seen what's in it; many players will like this model, since they would simply be able to skip over virtual packs that they didn't pull anything good out of.  But what if the pack has a single card that isn't really worth that much in it but it's the very card you need?  Simple; an option to buy cards in your virtual collection individually, based on rarity.

Storyline development can, in many ways, go hand-in-hand with mechanical development.  After all, take a look at Magic; there are 3 different versions of a number of Planeswalkers.  Why is this?  Simple; the storyline calls for a new one, and they have gameplay to go with them.

Implementing ads into a card game could be very, very tricky without alienating customers.  However, let's say that they sponsor a big tournament.  Perhaps part of that tournament can include a special promo card for that sponsor?  And if the card gets popular, make more of it in a set, probably at a high rarity.  It would not be a good idea to do a lot of sponsored cards in packs, though, but perhaps a small insert ad card, or with permission from the company, a coupon of some sort in packs?  Of course, if the video game previously mentioned is web-based, it'd be simple enough to put an ad or two on the screen without getting in the way of the gameplay.