Steem Monsters Sunday!: Evolution of Trading Card Games

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My interest in @steemmonsters have drove me to learn a bit about trading card games. Other than collecting sport collectible cards and comics when I was younger, I never got involved into traded card board game as it was after my time. Going into @steemmonsters will be a learning from scratch experience although I have had gaming experience on consoles in the past. As I have been researching about this, @gamercrypto recently pointed me to an article in one of the latest Game Informer magazine (#305) called “Trade Secrets” by Suriel Vazquez. In this article, they visited Creatures studio which is in charge of designs, art, testing, and releases of the popular Pokemon Trading Card Game.

Since 1996, the Pokemon Trading Card game has sold over 26 billion cards in 11 languages, across 74 regions. The popularity has maintained interest since its initial release whereas the continue to have tournaments with $500k in prized on an annual basis. This was an experiment to take from “digital to cardboard” the popular Pokemon Game series. The successful experiment is now a cornerstone for the Pokemon brand which they put first when designing and releasing new cards which take up to one year for a full set. That year will from ideation to release through multiple iterations to ensure the game itself remain engaging and balanced.

I mention these key pieces because I believe @steemmonsters is taking a similar approach in that they want to create their own community behind a game with a deep backstory and lore to maintain players engaged. They engage by following the characters as they progress into the lore that is also being developed as per the Kickstarter details they have share. This will provide an important branding strategy that can help develop and grow and community that will engage actively within the STEEM ecosystem which itself is socially driven. We see this as the project leaders @aggroed and @yabapmatt continued to seek community input and feedback for the designs, lore and even voiceovers for the project.

A major challenge for the Creatures studio is adapting the games as new iterations are designed following new Digital game releases. They also are concerned with overall accessibility for players as certain cards “creep up in power or games to become more intricate.” This leads to the potential of veteran players having unfair advantages over newer player which would limit the growth over the long term. For example, the abilities were added to make matches more exciting for new players who might otherwise be trounced by pure skill. They typical bring in groups of testers that are not from the competitive community to see how a card’s power level performs relative to their expectations.

”Part of making the game accessible is ensuring the strongest cards can in fact help newer players defeat veterans, under the right circumstances. This means making sure a card’s power is easy to understand and utilize, and that it behaves consistently across matchups between players of all skill levels.”

This is an important consideration for @steemmonsters as well as interest will increase as more casual players (like I intend to be) join some battles for entertainment. However, if balance is not contemplated, new players and those with limited cards will be unmotivated to continue participating in events and even games. I have read that the intent is to find ways to balance and matchmake with cards of similar levels and power, but we will need to see as gameplay approaches. I look forward to testing teams and see how they match up within the setups of the Splinters created thus far.

The article also goes into some detail of the importance of the development being “ever-evolving.” They have found themselves surprised at ways players build strategies and combinations that they had not contemplated. They have also needed to make adjustments to cards that were deemed broken and impacted gameplay (i.e. Lysandre’s Trump Card had to be banned from competitive play).

”While the team pays close attention to the meta of the TCG and addresses major issues, they tend to focus on moving forward when making new sets, rather than try to fix older strategies.”

This is also an important issue that we know for a fact that @stemmonsters are looking closely at as they released the stats on their cards. They will be surely testing the gameplay performance of certain strategies and team and most certainly will adjust if anything seems to provide what I would call a “crutch” that makes one card or set of cards a must to be competitive. I am excited to see how the testing goes and what adjustments are made as they could potentially alter the demand landscape for certain cards. We have already seen that certain cards have increased in price once the stats were released. There are many in the community that have already begun constructing team and strategies in preparation for the start of battles.

The thought of sharing this is to not only promote the project that @steemmonsters have developed but also demonstrate the potential this has for our #STEEM ecosystem and community. Having an engaging experience which is what the team is striving for would serve the best for the ecosystem as it could drive more projects to be added. This would add value to the blockchain we engage in every day. Imagine the demand for STEEM over time if billions of cards of @steemmonsters are sold? The number is not daunting considering that well over 1 million cards are out there right now (my estimate based on 300k packs times 5 cards each). I hope this summary can also reach the project team so that they can see the journey of a successful project.

What are your thoughts on the potential of @steemmonsters and its implications to the STEEM ecosystem? Could this be the path for more projects to take as goal for developing and innovating on the blockchain? I look forward to your thoughts and feedback in the comments below.

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