Trading Card Games and my project

[Rips]

In September I'm heading into college for Game Design & Development. Right now, I'm super excited because now I know why I'm doing it. Before that, I had a bit of trouble figuring out if this program was the right thing for me. Video games aside, I had to think real hard why the hell I wanted to do this because the program isn't all about video games. Being stumped a couple of weeks I hadn't had a clue until I came across my old yugioh cards buried in my storage room. It hit me right then and there the passion and fun I had with these things and that I wanted to create that in a profession. That's the core reason I'm heading off to this program. Time has passed since then and I've more and more had the itching sensation to start designing and brainstorming ideas on starting my own trading card game.

I'm brainstorming ideas on designing my own card game along side of brainstorming and constructing ideas for a manga to go along side with it. This is only a fraction of my personal project. Part of this project is the intense research and documentation of anything and everything to do with trading card games, their many origins, and the hype and excitement associated with them.

Through hundreds of TCG's, I've sorted through and put what I think is a mainstream of 6 different games.

They are:

1. Pokemon
2. Yu-Gi-Oh!
3. Magic: The Gathering
4. World of Warcraft
5. Bleach
6. Naruto

Growing up, it was all about Pokemon and Yugioh for me. I was younger when Pokemon came out so all we really did was collect the cards and showed them off to each other in school, building a collection. Age 12-13 is when yugioh was big for us with the collecting of the cards and building our decks to be the best duelists. Besides yugioh, I don't know how the other games play out at all.

This past week I've been searching online teaching myself the games on their official websites:

http://www.go-pokemon.com/howtoplay/
http://www.wizards.com/magic/TCG/Default.aspx
http://www.officialbleachtcg.com/
http://www.bandaicg.com/naruto/cardlists_s1.html

Not only that, this week I'm going be printing out the starter box's of each game (in colour) so I can get the feel of how the cards are in my hand. I'm going to put them in protective sleeves to get a more realistic feel. My cousin has agreed to help me by facing off against me to better understand the style and feel of the games.

While doing this, I've lined up the animes and mangas associated with the TCG's that I'm going to watch/read. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl season, Yugioh 5D, I'm already up to date with Bleach, but I have never watched Naruto. I know a lot of TCG's became huge thanks to its promotions through video games, anime, and manga so I will extensively comb over these as well to see what makes them tick.

Over all, I'm trying to understand how and why these TCG's became so big. It's frustrating because I lived through this as a child and I should have the answers, but I really don't. This is where I'm hoping you come in. Tell me what made you get into TCG's if you were into them at all. Hell it doesn't have to be the games, Pokemon, yugioh, naruto, bleach. Anything helps really, I'll take any tips or links you can throw at me.

On a ending note, no matter who tells me what or laughs at me for doing this, saying that I'll be a struggling Canadian artist and that you can only break into this business through Japan, that's fine. I'm going to stick to this project and not let down. I'm even planning on learning Japanese to have as a back up in case I ever do have to put this all through Japan, which I'm sure I may have too.

 

[Rips]

Right now, from what I read on Wikipedia, Yu-gi-oh! is the number one highest played TCG in the world. All TCG's usually spawn from a Manga, anime, or video game. I understand a big role of success in these games is the variety of strategy and choices you have to take when playing such as elements and such.

 

[Dayner]

Yu-Gi-Oh! and pokemon is popular here in saudi , but sadly most cards are fake or most ppl dont know how to play with rule , there is no kind tournaments here also

 

[Gerry]

Awesome, best of luck to you ^^

Got a couple TCG's you could look into as well.

Funny enough, the manga Berserk actually has a trading card game, but only 1 store in Tokyo sells them according to hbi2k on Youtube, this one is probably best for the hardcore Berserk fans but it looks interesting.

There is also The Eye Of Judgement on PS3 which uses the Playstation Eye and Trading Cards to produce 3D rendered models of the trading cards you scan under the Eye. Apparently that TCG is one where you can't get fakes due to the special barcodes needed for scanning them under the Eye but I'm not sure.

Hope this helps =)

 

[xlucifelx]

You should try basing a cardgame on the video game franchise known as Persona =D. I was actually thinking about this myself as I played through Persona 4. Like Yugioh, Persona already has to do with cards . . . so that's a major plus and the variety of monsters from the first persona games to the newest is huge, plus there is a whole lot of other tidbits you could incoperate into a game like that but of course, you'd have to play them too, to understand what I'm talking about.

 

[Dayner]

persona 4 is not TCG ;p

 

[Rips]

Awesome, best of luck to you ^^

Got a couple TCG's you could look into as well.

Funny enough, the manga Berserk actually has a trading card game, but only 1 store in Tokyo sells them according to hbi2k on Youtube, this one is probably best for the hardcore Berserk fans but it looks interesting.

There is also The Eye Of Judgement on PS3 which uses the Playstation Eye and Trading Cards to produce 3D rendered models of the trading cards you scan under the Eye. Apparently that TCG is one where you can't get fakes due to the special barcodes needed for scanning them under the Eye but I'm not sure.

Hope this helps =)

Yeah when I come up with the money I'm for sure going to be getting that game.

 

[Pupusa]

I used to play Magic the Gathering, and then some Pokemon & Yugioh. The most I remember spending was around $300 in a month for Magic at one point. The first thing for any TCG is make it simple enough so you can pick it up and play within minutes, but have so many cards that the real complexity comes from building very specific decks with certain cards.

Magic was great in this example, you have 5 color choices, each suited to a different style of play, and within those 5 colors you had hundreds of cards to customize your deck, it gets addicting when you want a certain card and just buying boosters for it.

The only problem that happens is that as you begin to introduce more and more cards game balance becomes difficult. Just about every TCG has had to ban atleast some cards from tournaments because certain combos become instant wins.

I would say the most important thing to do is play testing, lots of it, friends, family, whoever. See if it's easy to pick up and explain, and see if anything is potentially game breaking. whenever you come up with a new element, test it out before you put it into TCG, if you do it all in one shot you may get decks that just become unbeatable.

 

[Rips]

I used to play Magic the Gathering, and then some Pokemon & Yugioh. The most I remember spending was around $300 in a month for Magic at one point. The first thing for any TCG is make it simple enough so you can pick it up and play within minutes, but have so many cards that the real complexity comes from building very specific decks with certain cards.

Magic was great in this example, you have 5 color choices, each suited to a different style of play, and within those 5 colors you had hundreds of cards to customize your deck, it gets addicting when you want a certain card and just buying boosters for it.

The only problem that happens is that as you begin to introduce more and more cards game balance becomes difficult. Just about every TCG has had to ban atleast some cards from tournaments because certain combos become instant wins.

I would say the most important thing to do is play testing, lots of it, friends, family, whoever. See if it's easy to pick up and explain, and see if anything is potentially game breaking. whenever you come up with a new element, test it out before you put it into TCG, if you do it all in one shot you may get decks that just become unbeatable.

Thanks for the tips. I know Yugioh had a LOT of banning as time went on due to "one turn kills." My main concern right now to not mimic anything else. I'm studying the different card games along with their origins, many of them being manga. I didn't know that Yugioh originally came from a manga so I'll be reading that soon. I have an idea similar to pokemon, but obviously I'll have to vastly change it. Right now I'm just trying to come up with various ways to introduce diversity without using the staple elements in other games such as light, darkness, fire, water, etc..

I have quite a few concrete ideas... but I don't want to post them on here just yet.

 

[Taurothar]

So far I've spent a fair amount of my life playing Magic, DBZ-TCG, and Yugioh. Mostly because I spent a lot of time in a game shop owned by someone I had become friends with. Out of the three, the most dynamic was Magic, the most popular and simplest was Yugioh, but the one I had the most fun with was DBZ.

Elements that are especially important in a good TCG:
*Deck control - Be sure to give some to the player, but make them pay for it. Never allow them to just pick the card they want without a hefty penalty. Make a maximum and minimum card count for the decks that makes sense. Under 40 cards in some games allows a strategy to develop too quickly to be fair, and obviously a maximum if a victory condition includes not running out of cards. A global rule of "no more than 3 copies of any card" with specifics more restricted helps balance out strategies as well.
*Hand control - Much the same as deck control, allowing too many cards at once can severely unbalance a game. Make sure cards that allow you to draw, recover, or recycle other cards are very specific and are restricted from recycling themselves in. Have a set plan for how cards are put into and removed from a hand, whether they be shown to or hidden from opponents. One of my favorite penalties a card can have is to be required to play with your hand face up on the table for x turns or the duration of the game.
*Set duration - A game should have a defined duration, if not specific, at least arbitrary. This ties into the deck maximum, which requires the game to end when a deck is exhausted. Victory conditions that don't allow a game to end under 5 turns is also a plus, which helps to destroy those instant wins that plague other games, it allows a defense to be set up at the very least, players won't feel cheated out of a fair game.
*Set pattern of play - All TCGs need a structure to the rounds that is infallible, stages that events can happen and cannot happen. This helps new players pick up the game because they can use the steps to remember what to do as they go along. It also helps veteran players structure strategy and determine what action happened first. This came up a lot in even the national tournaments where players were very experienced, but used different patterns of play at their local game shops.

This is more of a business note, but if you want success, donate a couple starter sets to the places who will sell it. What got me into Yugioh initially was the game shop had a few starter boxes sent to the store with a note saying they added half a dozen starter sets at no extra cost for demonstration. These were given out to the regulars, me included, and we playtested the game. The more we played, the more others wanted to try, and it caught like wildfire. Being something I wouldn't have paid to try at first, it made me a customer to have it handed to me initially.

 

[Rips]

So far I've spent a fair amount of my life playing Magic, DBZ-TCG, and Yugioh. Mostly because I spent a lot of time in a game shop owned by someone I had become friends with. Out of the three, the most dynamic was Magic, the most popular and simplest was Yugioh, but the one I had the most fun with was DBZ.

Elements that are especially important in a good TCG:
*Deck control - Be sure to give some to the player, but make them pay for it. Never allow them to just pick the card they want without a hefty penalty. Make a maximum and minimum card count for the decks that makes sense. Under 40 cards in some games allows a strategy to develop too quickly to be fair, and obviously a maximum if a victory condition includes not running out of cards. A global rule of "no more than 3 copies of any card" with specifics more restricted helps balance out strategies as well.
*Hand control - Much the same as deck control, allowing too many cards at once can http:severely unbalance a game. Make sure cards that allow you to draw, recover, or recycle other cards are very specific and are restricted from recycling themselves in. Have a set plan for how cards are put into and removed from a hand, whether they be shown to or hidden from opponents. One of my favorite penalties a card can have is to be required to play with your hand face up on the table for x turns or the duration of the game.
*Set duration - A game should have a defined duration, if not specific, at least arbitrary. This ties into the deck maximum, which requires the game to end when a deck is exhausted. Victory conditions that don't allow a game to end under 5 turns is also a plus, which helps to destroy those instant wins that plague other games, it allows a defense to be set up at the very least, players won't feel cheated out of a fair game.
*Set pattern of play - All TCGs need a structure to the rounds that is infallible, stages that events can happen and cannot happen. This helps new players pick up the game because they can use the steps to remember what to do as they go along. It also helps veteran players structure strategy and determine what action happened first. This came up a lot in even the national tournaments where players were very experienced, but used different patterns of play at their local game shops.

This is more of a business note, but if you want success, donate a couple starter sets to the places who will sell it. What got me into Yugioh initially was the game shop had a few starter boxes sent to the store with a note saying they added half a dozen starter sets at no extra cost for demonstration. These were given out to the regulars, me included, and we playtested the game. The more we played, the more others wanted to try, and it caught like wildfire. Being something I wouldn't have paid to try at first, it made me a customer to have it handed to me initially.

Thanks for all the tips. I totally agree with the set duration part (and everything else) because I absolutely hated one turn kills and strategies that revolved around instant kills.

That business note is a great idea. Sadly I don't think it'll be me distributing or publishing that game, I don't think I'll be able to make that note. My plans are to one day present this game to Wizards of the Coast and go from there because from what I read they hold a heavy patent which leaves me very little wiggle room to go at things on my own. It's a patent which holds games published in the forum of trading cards, games in which a player selects a collection of tradeable elements and uses that set to compete with other players, and certain aspects of gameplay originally developed for Magic: The Gathering, such as "tapping" a card to indicate it is temporarily depleted. I lost the link for it at the moment. "As a holder of the patent, Wizards of the Coast has requested that all trading card game publishers license the mechanics described in the patent, usually for a royalty fee based on total sales."

I'm not quite sure how it works... I'm going to have to learn how licensing, distributing and publishing works. I had it explained to me before but I already forgot.

 

[Trippyhippy]

I still play Magic: The Gathering and I have for 14 years.

I have about 300 lbs (135 kg) of cards. At some point my friends got tired of playing and gave me all their cards. Now 4 or 5 of us just make decks out of my cards and play agaist each other. We add different rules and stuff to keep each other from making the same decks all the time.

Like last time we built decks, I was only allowed to use 2 casting cost and below cards and he wasn't allowed to use any creatures that weren't walls.

I lost.

I started playing Magic very early in it's life and because of that I have a LOT of the extremely valuable cards. Unfortunatly, I used them to play games with and they are in horrible condition.

As far as what made me play... I heard someone talking about the flavor text on some of the cards and that got my attention. Then I watched a game. Then it was all over from there.

To this day, my favorite flavor text is on goblin grenade it says (I don't suppose we could teach them to throw the cursed things? -Ivra Jursdotter)

Goblin grenade is sacrafice a goblin to deal 5 damage to any target.

I wonder how many people will read this far down into my nerdy ass post?

 

[Rips]

I still play Magic: The Gathering and I have for 14 years.

I have about 300 lbs (135 kg) of cards. At some point my friends got tired of playing and gave me all their cards. Now 4 or 5 of us just make decks out of my cards and play agaist each other. We add different rules and stuff to keep each other from making the same decks all the time.

Like last time we built decks, I was only allowed to use 2 casting cost and below cards and he wasn't allowed to use any creatures that weren't walls.

I lost.

I started playing Magic very early in it's life and because of that I have a LOT of the extremely valuable cards. Unfortunatly, I used them to play games with and they are in horrible condition.

As far as what made me play... I heard someone talking about the flavor text on some of the cards and that got my attention. Then I watched a game. Then it was all over from there.

To this day, my favorite flavor text is on goblin grenade it says (I don't suppose we could teach them to throw the cursed things? -Ivra Jursdotter)

Goblin grenade is sacrafice a goblin to deal 5 damage to any target.

I wonder how many people will read this far down into my nerdy ass post?

14 years, whoa. To be honest, I would still be playing Yugioh if I wasn't to shy and concerned about my image about being nerdy.

I read your whole post, I know what you mean with the flavour text. That's probably the really fun part about designing each monster. Good to hear.

 

[Whimsey]

While the TCGs that are popular now have been based off manga/anime, it certainly isn't true that they all are/have been.

Check out, I dunno, flea markets and eBay to look for some of the older and out of print and foreign games- Highlander, Vampire; the Eternal Struggle, Spellfire (I think that was the name of the old D&D one), Star Wars, Babylon 5, Mytos y Leyendas from Chile, and Devacurse from Thialand. There's also the WoW trading card game.

While many of these games didn't last, there are also some interesting elements in some of them. The characters in Highlander and WoW, for example.

There are a couple of web sites out there devoted to letting people play out of print games over the net with each other, though I can't think of any off the top of my head.

 

[Xzerper]

14 years, whoa. To be honest, I would still be playing Yugioh if I wasn't to shy and concerned about my image about being nerdy.

Who cares if you play the game? Its fun as shit, even still I collect to this day when I see I can make upgrades to my Dragon Deck.

Just look at the people, cause you will undoubtly play your own game...and tell them. "I made this game, I will play it as well. =P"

You don't make a game because you dislike it, or think they gonna lol@you.

You'll enjoy the game, play the game, make the game and make LOTs of money from the game too. Reguardless of rather or not it becomes big.

Another tip: MOST(not all) Card games become widely popular because there is a TV Series/Show that goes along with it. They like the series, then they actually get to PLAY the game in the series themself.

Kinda one of the reasons I started Yu-Gi-Oh! I thought the show was cool, no evil ppl etc irl to beat down...but being able to control all the cards and decide the outcome of the duel was the thrill. Collecting the useless cards that looked cool were always something too..and the Rare Dragon Cards no one could find as well.

But if you make 'super powerful rare cards" ..Definitely imply a hard/very bad downside to using the card like having to discard cards from your hand or deck or remove frm graveyard

Will make people less inclined to use that in their deck(True serious players). If they have to keep discarding cards/use other cards to support it...gonna be hard to make a very successful deck without sacrificing some of the 'staple' cards.

All about balance.