The game industry operates in trends. The evidence supporting this is insurmountable, going all the way back to sidescrollers like Mario, Donkey Kong, Mega Man, and others. These trends are essentially where the money is in the video game industry, and it changes fairly frequently. The two most contemporary examples of this are reality-based First Person Shooters (FPS) and Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas (MOBAs). And, in the coming year, and likely a few years following, the new trend seems to be Digital Collectible Card Games.
After the overwhelming success of significant FPS’ in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, such as Counterstrike, Doom, and Halo: Combat Evolved, we saw an influx of games in the genre. This was only perpetuated by the overwhelming success of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, series – which shocked us out of the pre-existing MMORPG trend. Developers raced to get in on the military first person scene, and the result was new iterations on old franchises such as Medal of Honor and Battlefield. Even science fiction first person shooters, such as Crysis, incorporated many elements of Call of Duty‘s gunplay. The market was so over saturated with these games that, for simplicity’s sake, games were referred to as either CoD clones or CoD killers, rather than by their own names. This trend has died down recently, largely due to the domination of the market by a handful of games in the genre, namely Battlefield, Call of Duty, and Halo.
This is something we’ve become all too used to seeing.
Even more recently, the gaming industry has been taken by storm by MOBAs. Two key games started this trend: League of Legends and Dota 2. Combined, the two see over 30 million users playing every single day. This gave rise to a multitude of new MOBAs; such as DC’s Infinite Crisis, Blizzard’s Heroes of the Storm, Smite, and numerous iOS and Android MOBAs. This trend began back in 2012, and is seems to be slowing down for the same reason that the FPS market did; market domination by a few games, in this case LoL and Dota. Though these games make tremendous profits (according to Superdata, League of Legends alone made almost $950 million in 2014), it simply isn’t there for many of the smaller MOBAs, many of which (such as Crytek’s MOBA Arena of Fate) have lost much of their momentum, and very little has been heard of them since their announcement.
And now, we come to CCGs. In order to understand the popularity of CCGs, we must start in the physical space with a little card game called Magic: The Gathering. According to an NBC article titled “At 20, ‘Magic:The Gathering still going strong,’ published in 2013, there are over twelve million players globally – and this number includes only those players registered with the DCI, and it is impossible to truly track how many MtG players there are out there. Since 2009, MtG has been the most profitable of Hasbro’s entire portfolio – which includes licenses such as Star Wars and Transformers. A market analyst from Needham and C0., Sean McGowan, was quoted in this NBC article as saying that “in the last 15 [years], it’s [the toy industry] maybe had two up years. But this property…at 20 years, I don’t know if it’s ever had a down year. The growth in ‘Magic’ has been bigger than the growth in Hasbro.” This growth is somewhat inexplicable, especially considering that the franchise competes with video games for a similar age demographic.
Remember when Gideon was actually significant to Magic?
In order to further capture this audience, Magic has moved into the digital space, while still maintaining a huge presence in the physical space. The company launched Magic the Gathering Online (MTGO) back in 2002, which despite stability woes, proved exceptionally popular. The most recent statistics released by Wizards of the Coast (in 2007) show that Magic Online accounts for about a third of the brand’s revenue. That’s a third of $250 million annually (this is estimated, as neither Wizards nor Hasbro has released exact statistics concerning revenue), which comes out to over $80 million, which is no small sum. In addition, the company has launched Duels of the Planeswalkers for numerous platforms, including Xbox, Playstation, and iOS. All of this has essentially given Magic a monopoly on the CCG market, both in the physical and digital spaces, for two decades.
The MTGO interface, for those unfamiliar.
Using their revenue statistics, Superdata created the following chart:
Now, this chart does concern Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOs), and so you may be wondering what its relevance here is. Just look at the tenth spot on that list, and the relevance should be clear. In 2014, Blizzard released a game you may have heard of called Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft. Despite only existing for under a year, it has already generated $114 million in revenue, and is sharing list space with MMOs such as Dota, Counterstrike, its big brother (or sister) World of Warcraft, and League of Legends. This is Blizzard and Activision’s response to the recent success of Magic, which finally has real competition in the digital space for competitive CCGs. Though this can’t be confirmed, due to a lack of revenue statistics, Hearthstone may have already surpassed MTGO. Of course, the two attract similar audiences, with professional MtG players such as Conley Woods, Brian Kibler, and Shahar Shenhar helping to publicize the game, despite its relative simplicity in comparison to Magic.
Hearthstone: a more aesthetically appealing version of MTGO.
The unprecedented success of Hearthstone is something that other developers and publishers simply cannot ignore. Maybe Hearthstone‘s success is an outlier, and can never be repeated. It may just be brand association with World of Warcraft, and Blizzard as a whole, that attracted gamers to the CCG. That being said, a slew of digital CCGs were announced in the back half of last year, both based on licensed products, but also new IPs. Many of these games will be hitting iOS, PC, or both sometime this year.
Examples include the iOS exclusive Earthcore, Jagex’s Chronicle: Runescape Legends, and a Pathfinder digital CCG for mobile devices. Two of these (Pathfinder and Runescape) are already significant franchises in the gaming world, be it video gaming or tabletop gaming. These are just three examples of CCGs that gamers can expect to see released this year, and stand side by side with numerous others. It is my prediction that this will be the trend in 2015, and we will see even more CCGs announced by major publishers, using existing IP. Both EA and Ubisoft have the capability to do so, and even smaller studios likely have the resources to build CCGs not based off of existing properties. Furthermore, the profits on Hearthstone will likely continue to increase with new content being made available for the game. The same is true of Magic.
I’m not quite sure what’s going on in Runescape Legends, but it looks pretty cool.
The evidence is hard to deny. Once a game in a certain genre makes the type of money that Hearthstone has made, that genre becomes the next big thing, so to speak. If there’s one thing that publishers are good at, it’s going where the money is. Can we blame them for this? Not really, especially if we get some good experiences out of it. I think that the most significant aspect of this possible trend is that it was heavily inspired by a physical medium. This is fairly new for the video game industry. Sure, we’ve had board game adaptations before, but none of them have been as successful as Hearthstone, or even MTGO, currently are. The implications of this are interesting – at what point will these video games overtake their physical counterparts? I mean, the argument could be made that Hearthstone is already well on that path.
But what I’m more interested in, as a Magic player, is how this will impact the player base of Magic. It’s probably still the best option in terms of mechanical complexity, and I’m sure that Hearthstone will turn people on to Magic, introducing people to an entertainment medium they would never ad found interesting before. We’ve already seen the impact that one medium can have on the sales for another – just look at comics. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that, as comic book movies have become more popular, so has the source material. Ten years ago, comics were barely a $300 million industry (adjusted for inflation), and in 2013, they was well into a $500 million industry. Basic economic theory also tells us that goods that complement one each other – in this case, digital and physical CCGs – boost sales of one another. But I won’t bore everyone with economic theory, I just can’t help that I’m a humanities nerd.
The interesting thing about this trend is that each new game actually promises to do something different. Whereas many FPS’ and MOBAs didn’t even bother to disguise the fact that they were relying heavily on Call of Duty or League of Legends to build their game, none of the games announced look all that similar. You’ve got MTGO, which is the most competitive/”hardcore” of the games. You’ve also got Hearthstone, which is the most similar to Magic, but a bit more casual. Then there’s the Runescape game. Not much is known about it, but the few screen shots look entirely different from either Magic or Hearthstone. Finally, the iOS game Earthcore promises to differentiate itself by offering a nuanced card crafting system. Hopefully the games do all manage to be different enough from one another to warrant playing all of them.
A screenshot of Earthcore, which is set to release on iOS early this year.
One of the other significant implications of this is its effect on free to play games. All of the CCGs that have been announced (including the aforementioned trio) are free to play games, in line with Hearthstone and MTGO. The free to play model here is one that is insanely risky – what evidence is there to show that anyone would want to pay for digital cards that will likely not have any actual value? Frankly, it’s miraculous that it worked out for Hearthstone, and is a testament to how good that game is. This free to play model relies entirely on players being invested in the mechanics enough to pay for digital cards. This requires an excellent set of mechanics – which Magic already had when MTGO came around. It will be interesting to see if this free to play model will even work for other games of the genre.
Regardless, I’m not going to lie about my excitement that this could become a new trend for video games. Is that a bit naive? Perhaps, but I’m just giddy with excitement that CCGs are actually something that people don’t just write off anymore.
Anyways, let me know your thoughts on my predictions in the comments below. Seriously, we have a comments section for a reason people. Feel free to tell me I’m an idiot, although I would prefer you didn’t.
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