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Collectible card game

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Collectible card games (CCGs), also called trading card games, are not played with traditional playing cards, but with sets of cards that can be bought, traded, and combined into sets or decks in various ways. These games are generally promoted by the manufacturer of the cards themselves, and are structured so that purchasing additional cards is to the player's benefit. Typically, CCGs are games for two or more players where a player's goal is to use the deck they have constructed to defeat his or her opponent(s).

History

Collectible card games began in 1993 with Magic: The Gathering, designed by Richard Garfield and published by Wizards of the Coast. Magic was designed so that games would be relatively short and easy to setup compared to role-playing games and board games.

Distribution

While trading cards (for example, depicting baseball players) have been around for much longer, it is the aspect of being able to play with these cards that is unique to CCGs. This makes them interesting to people outside the traditional trading card collectors, although it is of course possible to buy and trade CCG cards just to collect a full set.

Unlike traditional trading card packs, CCGs invariably offer starter packs that contain a sufficient number and mix of cards to start playing a game immediately. Starter packs typically have 40 to 100 cards and some sort of rulebook helpful for beginners.

A big factor in any CCG is the difficulty in obtaining the more desirable cards in the game. Most of the cards are sold in booster packs of 10 to 15 cards with each pack having:

  • 1 card of a high scarcity
  • 2-3 cards of a lower scarcity
  • 7-12 cards of the lowest scarcity

CCG publishers distribute cards so that players and collectors have to buy many packs to get the rarer, more desirable cards. The rarest cards tend to be the most powerful in terms of gameplay. They also tend to be the most expensive to obtain individually.

CCGs appeal to a very broad age group, and it is common to see middle-aged professionals and teenagers in animated conversations about their favorite card game. The percentage of female players, however, tends to be quite low.

Gameplay

Each trading card game has a fundamental set of rules that describes the players' objectives, the categories of cards used in the game, and the basic rules by which the cards interact. Within these rules, each card will typically have text explaining that card's effect on the game. This allows game depth without the need to memorize large volumes of rules, since the relevant text will be available when needed.

Apart from single cards, there are often many combinations of cards that interact in useful ways. These "combos" add to the gaming experience by allowing the player to exploit the mechanics of the game to his advantage. One of the most attractive aspects of CCGs is the freedom to design your own deck according to your own style of play. This is done by researching card effects and putting them together in such a way that they complement each other.

The act of playing against other decks is the tactical aspect of a CCG, as opposed to the strategic aspect of deck construction. Decks are built from a pool of hundreds or thousands of different cards, so the combinations and overall strategies are almost endless. Still, in most games decks tend to fall into a few broad categories with variants underneath.

Most CCGs share a few common features. Many use a turn-based system where players may perform actions only at certain times and in a certain order. There is usually a way to control how cards come into play. This is done with mana in Magic: The Gathering and with energy in Pokémon. There is usually a scoring system (for example, life points) that determines how long the game will last and the ultimate victory condition. Also, most CCGs have gameplay areas analogous to a deck, a discard pile, cards in play, and a hand.

CCGs have also been developed that are played over the Internet. Instead of receiving physical cards, a player establishes a "virtual" collection that is kept only in electronic memory. There is generally a mechanism for negotiating and effecting trades online. There are online versions of games that originated as physical CCGs, as well as games that exist solely online. Many games in the latter category would be difficult or impossible to play face-to-face because they rely on online capabilities for secrecy, complex combat calculations, etc.

Patent

Wizards of the Coast holds a patent, U.S. Patent #5662332, on trading card games. The patent covers:

  • Games published in the form of trading cards.
  • Games in which a player selects a collection of tradeable elements and uses that set to compete with other players.
  • Certain aspects of gameplay originally developed for Magic: The Gathering, such as "tapping" a card to indicate it is temporarily depleted.

The patent stirred up controversy among players. It was granted after several game publishers had already launched trading card franchises of their own, which Wizards of the Coast saw as direct or indirect competition. Wizards used the patent to prevent these games from being published. Many of the ideas claimed in the patent predated Magic, appearing in games played with collectible sports cards or in live-action role-playing systems. Others felt that trading card games were properly seen as a game genre rather than as an invention; patenting the concept was analogous to patenting the novel or the epic poem. Still others predicted that the patent would asphyxiate the entire genre, by forbidding it to evolve in the public domain.

In 2003, Wizards of the Coast sued Nintendo, alleging, among other things, that Pokémon trading cards were an infringement of its patent. The issuance of the patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office is not conclusive as to its validity, because many patents that are issued are later overturned in court. Therefore, if this litigation had continued, it could have produced a court decision upholding, restricting or invalidating the patent. After a few months, however, the parties settled the case on undisclosed terms, precluding a judicial ruling.

List of Collectible Card Games

External links

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