Collectible Card Games and Living or Expandable Card Games are two similar and related models of how to produce a card game with a large amount of card and deck building options. I am going to briefly compare and contrast these two models to bring some of the emergent behaviors that cause the two models to be more alike than I thought they would be. Some of the recapping I do in this article will be information that many of you will already know. I present it here to try and give a bit of background for people who may not already know these things.

I have always enjoyed card games and I've have spent a large portion of my life making and playing games with large sets of cards that you can build decks out of. The huge amount of options presented by sets of cards and deck building (along with play formats) is a compelling play space that many players find enjoyable.

Collectible Card Games

Ah collectible card games. Exploding on to the tabletop gaming scene in 1993 Magic: The Gathering was the first collectible card game. Its fairly straightforward rules and new take on fantasy themes caught on quickly and its success upended the status quo of war games and role playing games being the dominant forms of tabletop games for players seriously involved in the hobby. The popularity of collectible card games has been long lasting and has brought many people into gaming that might not otherwise have been interested. There have been many different entries into the genre over time some meeting with more success than others. The category continues to be profitable and big business for many publishers to this day and has also big inroads into the digital game space.

A collectible card game works like collectible sports cards. Baseball cards being the most dominant collectible sports genre. Except, with a ccg the cards you get out of booster packs can be assembled into a deck and used to play a game against decks built by others. This idea seems obvious now but at the time, it was ground breaking. The concept of a "metagame" came into widespread use around collectible card games and the competitive and public play they have fostered.

Pros:

  • Easy to learn.
  • Lots of game play options and replay value.
  • Portability.
  • Collectible business model encourages repeat buying and is favorable for publishers.
  • Collectible business model creates a secondary economy around the product that players can take part in.

Cons:

  • Amount of preparation and gameplay options can cause decision paralysis for players.
  • The larger the product line becomes the larger the barrier to entry for new players becomes.
  • Collectible business model and secondary economy is very off putting for some players.
  • Large up front costs to create and produce.

As we can see, many of the good points of a collectible card game are also its drawbacks. Nothing like a good ol double edged sword!

Living Card Games

A living card game functions mechanically like a collectible card game. It creates a set of cards that players can use to build decks in differing ways that they then take to play against other player's decks. Then, more cards are released adding to the pool of usable cards over time expanding the game and making it "living."

The first living card game was Fantasy Flight Games' Call of Cthulhu the Card Game released in 2008. Fantasy Flight has trademarked the term "Living Card Game" since they did pioneer business model. The Call of Cthulhu game was originally a collectible card game but Fantasy Flight transitioned it into the living card game product format in what appears to be an attempt to address player concerns and make the product cheaper to get into and play. Living card games are generally cheaper than collectible card games because they do not have a blind buy collectible model. You buy products and get a set spread of cards in them. Much of the time products will include full play sets of cards so that there is no need to purchase the SKU again if a player already has. This model is much more like a board game with expansions so it makes sense that Fantasy Flight thought it up as, at the time, they were mostly a board game publisher. There have been more entries into the genre since. Notably Android Netrunner, again from Fantasy Flight Games, in 2012. Some other companies have taken shots at the product format as well but the vast majority of LCGs have been FFG products to date.

Pros:

  • Relatively easy to learn.
  • Lots of gameplay options and replay value.
  • Portability.
  • Reduces cost for players.
  • Reduces publisher cost, comparatively.

Cons:

  • Amount of preparation and gameplay options can cause decision paralysis for players.
  • The larger the product line becomes the larger the barrier to entry for new players becomes.
  • Limited or sealed play is mostly nonexistant, narrowing player choices and making set assessement much more solvable.
  • Still significant costs to create and produce.

Since the whole idea of a living card game is to take the experience of a collectible card game and remove the collecting part of the game, the pros and cons of each are clearly very related. living card games have so far sought to release smaller, more affordable, expansions on an aggressive schedule to keep player interest and mix up the meta game. So, they will add less cards to the pool at a time but do so monthly or even weekly in some cases.

Variations on a Theme

CCG's and LCG's are two product models that are variations on the theme of a deck building card game with expanding options and an ever shifting metagame. One is a response to the other that inherently disagrees about how attractive collectability is and attempts to control risks and resource costs for both the publisher and players.

LCG's just cost less to make and play than a CCG. There are large production costs associated with the production of a CCG that don't exist for an LCG in packaging and collation costs. However, the LCG business model lowers the overall potential profitability of the product for the publisher while still creating a monetary barrier to entry over time. Once an LCG has been going for a year or two it can cost $270-450 to get a set of everything that serious players of the game are using to build decks for play. While this amount of money can easily be spent on one set release by serious players of a CCG, this is enough money that it acts in the same way as the monetary barrier to entry for a CCG. Additionally an LCG doesn't create secondary value that can be traded in to build new decks or move on to other things, and there is no trading possible, other than for collectible promo materials.

Both models require much the same development investment from a publisher. Art and layout for the cards is the same type of work, game design and development is exactly the same. Let's look at just art for example. Lets say there are 180 cards in the set of cards we are looking to make. Prices for card game art can vary widely depending on the product from about $100-$1000 per piece. This depends on the artist contracted, if it is a licensed property, complexity of the subject matter, etc ... Art for digital collectible games can probably command even higher prices depending on the artist. So, we will assume slightly lower than the median cost for our example. Say $400 per piece. So, for our 180 card set our cost for art is $72,000. This doesn't count our art directors salary or any fees that may be required for corrections needed after approvals have been given.

This $72,000 figure lets us do some more math to compare how the two models work.

Let's say our 180 card set was made to build the base set starter box for an LCG. Our starter box is going to cost $45 at retail. So, as a publisher we can assume that we will get 40% of the retail price when we sell our game to distribution. This means we get $18 whenever we sell an introductory unit of the game. This means that we will need to sell 4,000 units of our starter box to break even on just the cost of the art for this set.

If we take the same 180 card set and build a set for a collectible card game out of it. To be sold in booster packs we will sell booster packs that have 10-15 cards in them and retail for let's say $3.50. Again we get roughly 40% of the retail price when we sell to distribution. So we get $1.40 per booster pack sold. So, to break even on our art costs for the set we will need to sell 51,429 booster packs. If we package our booster packs into boxes of 36 packs this is 1,429 boxes of booster packs. Yes, this model charges players more than double the amount of money for a common buying unit. It is why it requires less players to reach the same amount of money.

As I said it cost more to print and collate a CCG release as it uses foil packaging and collation is an additional step but, the example of cost around is art is fairly applicable for the other areas of cast around getting the product to market. Additionally an LCG functions much more as a subscription than a collectible game does. Once your number of "subscribers" consistently dips below a certain number then the product being produced definitely loses money.

I think both of these models are a valid way to bring a product to market. They appeal to different types of players as well so if , as a publisher, you know your audience is opposed to collectability then it may be a better choice to go the expandable card game route.

Due to the lower potential profit, comparable costs, comparable barrier to entry, and absence of secondary value I would lean toward making collectible card games wherever possible. I believe this is why we haven't seen the genre of expandable card games gain a hold and take off for other publishers other than Fantasy Flight.

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