Not long ago, a netizen with the id Weak_willO on the ResetEra forum exposed a considerable number of fierce goods in his hand-ATLUS was sold between 1997 and 2004, and * * * recorded 8 sets of stories about Megaten, digital demon detective and goddess, totaling more than 20,000 cards (that is, trading card games).
Objectively speaking, these cards don't mean how rare they are (of course, if you are interested in buying them, you will inevitably have to "cut your hands"), but these cards were only sold in Japan in those years, and the number was relatively limited. For overseas enthusiasts, it is now possible to present a deck of cards, which has played a more cultural role and let more people know about TCS built by Atlas around its "goddess" universe.
This netizen uploaded some pictures, from which we can see that there are so many purchases.
In fact, electronic games and TCG have already launched physical cards through game manufacturers, added TCG mini-game elements to their works, or grafted their collection cards into game operations to form a natural alliance.
Let's start with the most representative successful examples, and see how the cultural and creative derivatives of the game to TCG converge from the initial trickle to the rolling golden river today.
I. Black Lotus, Fire-breathing Dragon (first edition flash card) and Blue-eyed White Dragon
Friends who are slightly familiar with the mainstream secondary market of TCG will laugh when they see the three terms of the subtitle. They are the dream cards of fans of Magic Set, Poké mon and Game King, and also the wealth password for manufacturers to unlock the card game market.
The birth of Poké mon ·TCG followed closely the original game Poké mon Red/Green, except that although Nintendo is a game publisher, it has a hundred years of professional experience in making flowers (until today, the flowers made by Nintendo are still folk handicrafts with both texture and design). However, because the TCG market in Japan was almost blank at that time, after learning the complicated rules of the game, the then president of the company, Pu Yamauchi, rejected the indomitable Ishihara Henghe of Baokemeng and tried all the connections before finally reaching a production and sales agreement with the small press media factory.
Until today, Nintendo's flowers are still limited in production and only sold in designated official channels.
From a historical point of view, the story of "Baokemeng ·TCG" from its debut to its sudden popularity has actually kept pace with "Poké mon Red/Green"-it was also the first time that it was cold, and it was also launched with the help of popular publications of primary school students, and it won the first batch of seed users. It also spread rapidly in the form of gifts given by toy exhibitions. After calling a friend, a primary school student, stubborn, "forced" his parents to pay the bill.
That's not all. With the game "Pockmarked Dream" landing in the United States, American veterans (magic the gathering, 1993, born and sown seeds) who have a certain TCG mass base quickly began to use "Pockmarked Dream TCG", and official activities and card updates also followed quickly, forming a scale effect. Before Nintendo took over "Pockmarked Dream TCG" in 2003, the media factory sold a total of 650 sets.
Until today, in the game or board game stores in North America, as long as the new version of "Baokemeng TCG" arrives, players usually quickly enter the market and empty the goods.
If "Bao" is a person who eats crabs in the TCG market, then "Game King" eats lobsters.
Before starting to create "Game King" comics, Gao Qiao Heshu was just an ordinary cartoonist in this comic country, so ordinary that he couldn't make a living by creating comics at all, so he applied to Sega Company as a painter to support himself.
1996 When Baokemeng TCG was released, Gao Qiao and Shushu just got the chance to jump on the serial game king, and this time he seized the fate. The game company's experience and peacetime interest in playing cards enabled Gao Qiao and Shu to find a breakthrough in the innovation of their works.
"Dream Card" for Game King Fans-Blue-eyed White Dragon
Gao Qiao transformed the relatively abstract TCG card play into a picture frame with gorgeous brushwork and strict rules. When the cartoon protagonist's game and hippocampus continue to expand the card set and improve their ability, readers' strong interest in TCG is also increasing.
1999, KONAMI began to issue genuine "Game King" cards under the authorization of Ying Ji Association. Up to 20 1 1, when the total card sales exceeded the Guinness Book of Records, a total of 251700,000 cards were sold. The well-known "White Eyes of the Dragon", it is said that a player in Japan sold four out-of-print blue-eyed white dragons in exchange for his daughter's tuition for three years. On the Japanese Internet, it is said that the price of a green white dragon is as high as 300,000 to 400,000 yen, which is almost equal to 25,000 RMB!
Until today, although KONAMI has become an "old friend" in the eyes of some players, both physical cards and derivative games are still important business components of KONAMI, and the charm of its works can be seen.
Second, playing cards, selling people and picking up garbage.
After talking about physical cards, let's take a look at the familiar card games.
20 15 three games have caused a wide range of topics among players. Interestingly, when players mention them, they always deliberately hide the real names of their works in a half-joking tone, and instead call them by their highly recognizable gameplay. They are power armored soldiers who frantically pick up the garbage of old civilization in order to become the garbage king of the United States in the wasteland world of Radiation 4. In "metal gear's Phantom Pain", in order to expand armaments, without saying anything, the mercenary boss; Who stole another moved soldier from behind; And the demon hunter who is addicted to playing cards and has no intention to save his daughter in The Wizard 3: wild hunt.
As we all know, Wizard 3: wild hunt is a mini-game attached to Kunte.
There is also a glorious tradition in the Sakura Wars series, which regards the Flower Contest as a mini-game.
With the Wizarding 3 winning the TGA Game Award on 20 15 and the long-term selling momentum, the Kunte brand has been further promoted as a built-in mini-game. Kunte not only has perfect rules and a substantial library of cards, but also a very important selling point of TCG cards in reality-replacement. Players need to fight against Quint through different side missions to strengthen their cards. If there is any shortage, it is naturally the shortage of PVP mode.
However, in the game industry, the demand of users has always been the greatest productivity. Only one year later, CDPR published The Wizard: Kuntka. This game independently produced a full version of the game, which not only added more rich and varied gameplay, but also paid tribute to the classic settings in the original game with a square card. Players can continue in the wizarding world in a peaceful way through steel swords and lightning balls.
Obviously, the business model of "Kunte" is similar to the well-known Hearthstone. The difference is that the latter is backed by World of Warcraft, a cultural gold mine, and there are countless classic elements that are familiar to the majority of players, which can be "compressed" into the unique environment of card games, which also provides a huge operating space for the version upgrade, activity development and card package expansion of the works over the years.
Although there will inevitably be some friction with the players' expectations in the process, Hearthstone is definitely the most successful card game with comprehensive game quality and commercial performance in the game industry at this stage.
At present, The Master of Yin and Yang: Baiwei Brand, which China players are familiar with, is also in the product layout of "the original works lay a solid foundation and the cards expand outward". However, because the Master of Yin and Yang itself has the label of "cards", the setting of Baiwei brand is more easily accepted and understood by the market public, which is a big ip of domestic games and leads to a feasible development path.
In addition to using cards as the gameplay itself, when designing games around how to use cards, there is another way to use cards as the main fighting method in the game, which is rationalized through world outlook setting, so that players and characters can interact through cards.
For example, Rockman EXE, which has been popular for a period of time in the GBA era, should be changed from an orthodox work in which players should temper their reaction ability and operation to a hard level design, and then adapt to the story background of the online world struggle in the game, and design the combat chip into a card style, which successfully popularized the Rockman series among teenagers and light players for the second time.
Similarly, the memory chain of kingdom hearts, which is also on GBA platform, abandoned the 3D ARPG game on PS2 because of the weak function of GBA, and chose a card that did not emphasize the picture, but ensured the computing power and combat intensity of the game, which left a deep impression on the players at that time.
Third, little sister, big brother and black uncle.
Since we want to talk about cards, there must be a krypton card drawing link that players love and hate in the end. For the game industry, "Krypton card drawing" is an out-and-out "heterogeneous". The concept of this form can be traced back to "card exchange", and the most representative example in reality is the star card.
Star cards were originally used by fans of American Baseball League for sales and publicity. After decades of long development, they have gradually become a fixed cultural activity.
Nowadays, professional sports leagues will authorize the copyright of their teams and players to card manufacturers (specifically, in practice, some players in each era are not within the scope of authorization for different reasons). Card manufacturers design theme star cards with different appearances, different categories and different prices, and then randomly place different cards according to the blind box drawing rules, so that rare cards have high trading value in the secondary market.
The final auction price of the card was $750,000, which was far from the upper limit of the value of baseball cards.
It can be seen that the card design classification, character strength, limited time activities and rarity of most Krypton card drawing games can be found in the marketing strategy of the star card market for decades. For example, limited-time activities correspond to a superstar's rookie season. For example, the highest-priced James star card so far came from his rookie year in 2003 when he just entered the NBA. Only in this year's star card, James's rookie card is still kept.
The $200,000 James rookie signature card is one of the most expensive basketball star cards at present.
From an aesthetic point of view, the beauty of the card surface is usually proportional to the price level of the card (of course, this law does not apply to those old cards with sky-high prices). The more powerful the characters in the game are, the better their looks will definitely be. Not only the character's own face value and dress are outstanding, but also the edge embellishment of the card surface will definitely be different.
The concept of rarity of SR and SSR is equivalent to the proportion when the star card is drawn. Nowadays, the blind box limit also follows the same sales logic.
Sometimes, looking good is more important than anything else.
Paving the way is the ready-made star card market. When FIFA's UT mode and NBA2K's MT mode play the role of building a team lineup, the logical chain of the whole operation link will be so 6. When a SSR young lady in Azhai charges 648, fans will also buy VC points to exchange cards for their young black uncle.
Last year, fans were still crazy about Kobe's theme bag, but now there is a gap between heaven and man.
Take "NBA2K" as an example. A new year's game, no matter how much it costs, as long as there is a new work, you must start all over again. According to the current real season progress and previous classic stars, players can get rare cards according to a certain probability, and after each theme is collected, they can also exchange corresponding reward cards.
In addition to the familiar intensity classification, 2K also drew inspiration from the real star cards, and introduced signature cards with the watermark of the star's signature (in reality, of course, the autograph found by the star card company), limited-edition cards and-yes, you must have guessed-limited-edition signature cards.
At that time, an NBA2K account was limited to 8 Kobe signature cards, which could sell at a sky-high price. It can be seen that the marketing design with the concept of Star Card has really come to people's home of sports games.
Conclusion: When games such as War Machine and Call of Duty World War II began to use cards as visual symbols or buy goods, the relationship between cards and games has entered a normal relationship. After all, even Ellie, who seeks revenge in the last days, never forgets to collect super-English theme cards along the way. It seems that human obsession with cards will not disappear even if civilization is destroyed.