Ava Jarvis: The Rise and Fall of the Collectible Game, Part 1

Blame Magic.

Ever since the original collectible game made a splash—no, a tidal wave—on the gaming scene in the mid-1990s, we've been inundated with one collectible game after another. These days they aren't even necessarily card games: there are collectible miniature games, collectible build-your-own-ship games, collectible Diskwars discs, and even collectible pogs.

We know it's stroking the hot plate when we tangle with a collectible game. But in many ways we underestimate, even cheapen, the guile and uniqueness of this most costly family of games.

So what makes a game collectible? As things turn out, it's not the number of expansions you have, and size has nothing to do with it. I know there are people out there who insist that a collectible game is anything with expansions, or at least a number of expansions greater than X, for some personal value of X. But such games are not necessarily collectible. People may be tempted to buy all the expansions, but if there is no customization for individual players, there is little drive to go overboard with multiple copies of an expansion—indeed, most games don't work well, or even at all, with multiple copies of an expansion. This is why, despite the desire of many people to collect all the Carcassonne, Dungeoneer, or Settlers of Catan expansions, they are not engaging in a collectible game.

The next characteristic that raises red flags for some are games that involve individual players engaging in deck or army construction, in addition to X expansions available. This, too, is not necessarily collectible: People are again tempted to buy all the expansions; they may even buy multiple expansions if the rules allow multiple copies of a particular unit or card. However, if players know the contents of any game or expansion ahead of time, it is possible to construct a decent, tournament-quality army or deck without buying left and right. You can even get one of everything in a single order to a decently supplied seller, guaranteed. This is why, regardless of all those who spend hundreds of dollars on Heroscape or Warhammer, those are not collectible games.

A true collectible game (or CG) has both of these characteristics and one more, very important, very definite one: blind packaging, in that one doesn't know what one is getting in the package. Sometimes this means, with a large enough base set, that a CG only exists as expansions for itself: you buy your first (usually randomized) starter and proceed onto buying numerous booster packs. But blind packaging has a direct impact on the amount of money you spend to compete at a tournament level—and it is much higher than the equivalent level for any other kind of game, even those with many expansions. Indeed, blind packaging can make a large cost impact even in a small pool of items.

Here's a mini-example. Suppose we have a (very tiny) pool of 12 different cards, and every "booster" has three cards in it. There are 220 equally possible boosters, assuming that each card in a booster is distinct. Now, if the boosters were not blind, you could easily pick four and be done with "collecting" the 12 cards. But here, this is a blind draw. The 220 possible boosters are easily partitioned into 55 quad-sets that each contain the perfect 12 sequence, but you only have a 25% chance of picking such a set of four. You will definitely need to increase the number of booster packs you buy—around three to four times as many, and there's still no guarantee in the end.

This tiny example has a literal real-life counterpart—Navia Dratp shares about the same qualities of distribution and pool size, which is why you need to buy a case of 12 boosters in order to collect roughly 12-some characters in a set.

And of course, most CGs would be much worse if they actually used an even distribution, as they have an even larger pool. Collectible card games usually run 300 or more cards in a "base set" and around 100 to 200 for "expansion sets".

The designers and publishers of CGs with such large pools are not insane, since this becomes even worse odds than roulette. Instead, they use a rarity structure, a partitioning of the pool which is both a blessing and a curse, though to tell the truth it's mostly blessing.

Rarity structures typically follow the MtG pattern, with different ranks of distribution for particular cards: "common" rank is the bulk of a set, the "uncommon" rank is a smaller part of the rest of the set, the "rare" rank is the smallest. Some games even feature more graduations of ranks—so there might be two "uncommon" ranks that are roughly the same, except one is slightly rarer than the other. Commons might have a more complicated breakdown. MtG's rarity structure actually follows the more complex model—which is why some commons can be so deucedly hard to collect.

The blessing is the partitioning: At the cost of creating a rarity structure in the first place, and making it extra difficult to get certain cards, the membership of all three ranks is much reduced, and the probabilities can be disjoined from each other rather than conjoined (e.g., add the separate probabilities of collecting cards in each rank, instead of multiplying them against each other).

Two things "ruin" this best of all worlds. First, the subsets of the pool are actually of vastly different sizes, with commons forming the bulk of a set, uncommons making up a smaller portion, and rares left over in the smallest membership. This would actually make collecting commons more troublesome than collecting rares, except that this is somewhat balanced out by changing the booster composition. For example, MtG has 15 cards per pack: 1 rare, 3 uncommon, and 11 common. Wikipedia has more examples of booster composition across different CCGs. This swings the balance back—but at the cost of making one rarity rank much easier to collect in fewer boosters, while making the others harder to collect in the same number of boosters.

Make the uncommons more powerful that the commons, and the rares more powerful than the uncommons, and you have the principles that build up "chase" classes of cards. Usually the term "chase rare" is only applied to "extra-rare" rares, usually foil cards or occasionally very, very powerful cards. (And yes, MtG also has graduations of the "rare" rank, in addition to more special chase rares.)

But this partitioning is also a blessing—or at least the opportunity for one. Any CG will build the memberships of their rarity ranks as a pyramid, commons forming the large base and rares the sharper point. But a good CG will also build the functionality of the rarity ranks like a pyramid, too—commons are not impressive, but are technically solid; uncommons are more specialized, but more powerful in what they do; while rares work only in particular situations. Why is this important? It's important because what a collectible game can guarantee is variety—a large, bewildering amount of variety that both creates the meta-game that overshadows every deck construction, and fuels the creativity for different types of decks centered around different card combos. In order for that variety to exist and still provide a stable base for players with budgets, there has to be a common, solid base with opportunities to see special cards from time to time.

Of course.... that's like "jam tomorrow". It's very hard, once you see the rainbow, to resist tracking down the pot of gold.

This is the soul of collectibility.

The distribution of a collectible game does make them seem extremely viable. You might think that if you power such a profit engine with decent, even excellent, rules, you would be guaranteed to pay off college for your kids and retire at an early age.

Well, you would be horribly wrong.

A lot of what was discussed above assumes that distribution has not been screwed up somehow, either in terms of booster composition, rarity rank memberships, or functionality for each rarity rank. There are many things that can go wrong—and that's before we look at the market forces that are almost unique among collectible games.

Next time: In The Game Inventor's Handbook, Stephan Peek invites the reader to consider why The Legend of the Five Rings survived, whereas its more refined sister The Legend of the Burning Sands did not. What can kill a collectible game? Heck, what can't?

---

New Year's Resolution update.

Well, I did not really expect, nor think, that I should find others of like mind and turn my new year's resolution into a kind of meta-game. Thanks to Jonathan Franklin, I now have. It's called Iron Gamer. The rules have been loosened up (now you can buy a second game in a month for -3 points and a second expansion in a month for -2 points, although a third of either in a month knocks you out of the game, and the goal is now 0 points at the end of the year). Many exceptions and special cases have been called out in an FAQ, with more showing up about every week. There's a group of seven people officially participating on BoardGameGeek, and one of them is a playtester (hi Jonathan!).

Occasional discussion appears on the Iron Gamer Discussions thread on BoardGameGeek, and the choices of the members this January are in the Iron Gamer: 2007 January GeekList.

All I can say is wow! It's a rare gamer, it seems, who can, or even wants, to hold back on purchases these days. To find seven (the magnificent 7 for 2007?) is wonderful. I'm so glad people are participating. I do my best to occasionally steer things this way and that, but work has been getting in the way this week (and the week before... really, Spring is as busy as Winter in some respects).

So far it's been easy for me to hold back. I'm not even buying a game this January; just an expansion, which means I'm at +2 points. I'm saving up for when, I am sure, BattleLore, Heroscape, and Dungeon Twister all have a new expansion within two months of each other. There are a few Essen picks I would grab in a heartbeat (Through the Ages and R-Eco), but they are so unavailable that my desire is pretty spent at this point. Anything that looks vaguely interesting I might trade one of my multiple gathering-dust games for later this year. For example, I'm thinking of letting go of Antike, both A Game of Thrones and its Clash of Kings expansion, and Shadows Over Camelot along with the official painted knights expansion that came out for it. They are all good games, but unfortunately I've tended to buy what I want before anyone can get around to making a trade with me.

Of course, we are in a current downturn in the yearly output of new games. When the Nuremburg 2007 convention gets under way, temptation will be back with a vengeance. The worst—and the best—is yet to come.
© 2007 Ava Jarvis

---

Comments:

You must register with BGN in order to comment. Registration is free!

Great article, Ava.  Thumbs up and all that. Posted by Jon Theys on Feb 1, 2007 at 10:30 AM | #

Good read.  Nice breakdown on some CCG details.  You don’t address any of the emotional issues involved in the game (trading/buying sight unseen), but the mechanics of the distribution is well covered. Posted by Matt J. Carlson on Feb 1, 2007 at 03:54 PM | #

Thanks Jon! Thanks also Matt.  The emotional issues will be covered in the next article. Posted by Ava Jarvis on Feb 1, 2007 at 04:07 PM | #

(Plus a few are alluded to here.  Jam tomorrow.) Posted by Ava Jarvis on Feb 1, 2007 at 04:09 PM | #

Sorry to tempt you, Ava, but R-Eco will likely be showing up from an American publisher before year’s end. More details once I get the okay to talk about them… Posted by W. Eric Martin on Feb 2, 2007 at 12:26 AM | #

I forgot to add that I think Magic the Gathering is one of the best games ever invented. I worked in a game store when it debuted back in 1993, and the impact it had on gamers was phenomenal. From an initial order of two Alpha decks, our store was ordering case upon case of cards, and the employees were all buying cards, creating decks, and playing non-stop after hours. The variety in card design, deck-building and play formats, which has continued for more than a decade, is astounding. That said, I’m unlikely to play Magic anytime soon except for the odd booster draft. The game soaks up money like a sponge, and I much prefer purchasing complete games now rather than the parts. I still have Vintage decks assembled in boxes in the game room though. Posted by W. Eric Martin on Feb 2, 2007 at 12:33 AM | #

< Back Home