Collectible Card Games Short Lifespan?

[Haruspex_Pariah]

Now I've been thinking about this for a while.

It could be my imagination but it seems that CCGs have a pretty high "mortality" rate. I used to pick up issues of InQuest and Scrye once in a while and I'd commonly read about a new card game that would fall off the radar completely in a few years or so.

From the look of things, these "dead" games weren't actually bad but simply ran out of steam? Only the entrenched games like Magic and YuGioh seem to have stayed alive (correct me if I'm wrong though).

Curious to hear the forum's opinion, as to whether my observations are accurate and if so (or not) why?

[Suedars]

The collectability aspect means that you're generally only going to play one game because of the high cost of playing. Because of that there's only room for a couple games in the market. Games that have successfully broken in have generally been ones that tapped demographics that weren't already being marketed to. Yu-Gi-Oh went for a much younger audience than MtG. The WoW TCG was able to draw WoW players who might have never played a TCG before.

Throughout the late 90s and early 00s you had a lot of games sprouting up that didn't really understand that and thought that if they could design a good game they'd become the next MtG. Having a good game alone isn't enough though, and it worked out poorly for most of them. Nowadays game companies generally seem to understand that as there are far fewer ill-advised entries into the market and new card games generally go the Dominion route.

[factotum]

Magic the Gathering has survived as long as it has by producing new card sets every year, and by setting up the competitive scene so you have to use the last few sets only. This forces existing players to keep buying new cards, keeping the game alive while they go out and get new players into the fold!

[Mando Knight]

CCGs depend on the publisher producing new product, sponsoring a competitive scene, and advertising the previous two points.

Magic: the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Pokémon all do these things.

[ryzouken]

All this talk of long running CCG's and no talk of Legend of the Five Rings?
It's the second longest running CCG there is (second to Magic) and boasts a plenty strong playerbase. So really, there's about 4 CCG's that have lasted.

[Dragonus45]

Yea L5R is in excellent card game, and its best feature is the effect that players have on the story of the world. Which is also a very strong point in its favor. One consistent world and story is one of the things that magic until recently just didn't have.

[warty goblin]

CCGs depend on the publisher producing new product, sponsoring a competitive scene, and advertising the previous two points.

Magic: the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Pokémon all do these things.

Also, if you're a themed spinoff there's only so much content you can make. Magic etc can just make more stuff up at will, but something like an LoTR TCG has a much more finite pile of material to pull from. It's sort of got an expiration date built in because of that.

[Lord Seth]

CCGs depend on the publisher producing new product, sponsoring a competitive scene, and advertising the previous two points.

Magic: the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Pokémon all do these things.I think it's more than that. The key point is that you need an audience and you need to keep that audience. Nowadays, it's hard to get an audience unless you're based on some already-existing franchise. But that ties into the second problem: To keep the audience, then (1) the franchise in question needs to stay popular, and (2) needs to keep having new things to come out with. As others have pointed out, a problem is that generally speaking, you're going to run out of things to make cards out of. There was a Xena: Warrior Princess card game I remember reading about...well, once the show was over, there was only so much more they could really add to it.

Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh managed to fill those, though. Both Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh were popular series, and that got people to get into them. Now, as for new directions for the series? Well, as long as Pokemon keeps having more games, it'll keep having more card possibilities, especially because the games are always adding more Pokemon. As for Yu-Gi-Oh...well, the interesting thing is, the Yu-Gi-Oh card game doesn't have much to do with the show. Oh, sure, they play the card game on the show, but the card game--at least from what I've seen of it, I'm not a player of it--is fairly unrelated to the characters or plots of the show. So like Magic, they can just expand to wherever the heck they want. In terms of ensuring the continued success of the card game, having the show structured around the card game (making it popular), but ultimately not having the card game have much to do with the show (allowing the card game to exist as an independent after the show lost popularity) allowed them to keep bringing sets out like Magic did.

I'm not sure about Legend of the 5 Rings, but my guess is that it's stayed reasonably popular by, like Magic, getting its foot in the door early enough that it wasn't drowned out by all the other games that came out in response to Magic's success. And like Magic, it's fairly boundless in terms of being able to bring out new sets.

[Haruspex_Pariah]

I just think it's a real shame, since some of the dead CCGs had some interesting mechanics (or at least they looked interesting). But that's the reality of the gaming industry I suppose.

Oh, and sorry for forgetting L5R. :smallwink:

[Eldan]

Yea L5R is in excellent card game, and its best feature is the effect that players have on the story of the world. Which is also a very strong point in its favor. One consistent world and story is one of the things that magic until recently just didn't have.

Sure it did. Novels were around pretty early in the lifespan. The Plane of Dominaria was the setting for most of the run, and moving to other planes is a pretty recent idea, with the exception of the Weatherlight run, where Dominarians visited and warred against other planes. Antiquities through Scourge (thanks, Wiki!) is nine years on the same plane. Mirrodin, coming in after that, was connected to Dominaria. And now, Wiki tells me, they are back on Dominaria(I haven't played in years).

[Brother Oni]

The other thing that L5R has, is that it appeals to the ardent Japanophiles (using a polite term for it).

I played it up to the end of the Day of Thunder storyline and I tried to teach my wife once and she loathed it, citing the character names as a major turn off (she speaks Japanese natively).

[Lord Seth]

Sure it did. Novels were around pretty early in the lifespan. The Plane of Dominaria was the setting for most of the run, and moving to other planes is a pretty recent idea, with the exception of the Weatherlight run, where Dominarians visited and warred against other planes. Antiquities through Scourge (thanks, Wiki!) is nine years on the same plane.Except that's broken up by Tempest/Stronghold/Exodus. I think Homelands was also a different plane (then again, who cares about Homelands?). Nemesis also returned to Rath, and the Invasion block was kind of a combination of Rath, Dominaria, and Phyrexia.


Mirrodin, coming in after that, was connected to Dominaria. And now, Wiki tells me, they are back on Dominaria(I haven't played in years).They were away for a while, came back to Dominaria just for Time Spiral, and afterwards seem to have gone back to changing planes throughout the sets. They did return to Mirrodin briefly though.

[Squark]

Except that's broken up by Tempest/Stronghold/Exodus. I think Homelands was also a different plane (then again, who cares about Homelands?). Nemesis also returned to Rath, and the Invasion block was kind of a combination of Rath, Dominaria, and Phyrexia.

They were away for a while, came back to Dominaria just for Time Spiral, and afterwards seem to have gone back to changing planes throughout the sets. They did return to Mirrodin briefly though.

But Tempest/the like was tied to the weatherlight cycle, so you still had the same antagonists and protagonists. Also, a game built around traveling between planes kind of needs people to, you know, travel around planes.

[Calamity]

As for Yu-Gi-Oh...well, the interesting thing is, the Yu-Gi-Oh card game doesn't have much to do with the show. Oh, sure, they play the card game on the show, but the card game--at least from what I've seen of it, I'm not a player of it--is fairly unrelated to the characters or plots of the show. So like Magic, they can just expand to wherever the heck they want. In terms of ensuring the continued success of the card game, having the show structured around the card game (making it popular), but ultimately not having the card game have much to do with the show (allowing the card game to exist as an independent after the show lost popularity) allowed them to keep bringing sets out like Magic did.

Yeah this is sort of true although it should be noted that there are still cards specifically made for the shows that make into the real life game itself. Recently they've used new shows to create new types of cards altogether (Synchro Monsters from 5D's, Xyz Monsters from ZeXal), I guess to keep the metagame from going stale.

I think with Yu-Gi-Oh! it's kind of a mix. They're constantly releasing cards from the current show (advertising as 'LOOK! Now you can use the cards that <insert protagonist here> uses in the show and be as awesome as him!', but they're also constantly releasing cards that aren't from the show. Whether the card game would die out without the show or not is something I couldn't say I know.