The Marketing of TCGs

The idea of a Trading Card Game is a rather interesting marketing strategy on its own. It's a game that keeps updating and therefore the game keeps changing. At one point, the only Trading Card Game was Magic, but over the years, many more have started popping up, some have been successful, some haven't. Most of this has to do with game quality and marketing. Different card games have vastly different marketing strategies. Even between successful games, there are still vast differences. Magic was the first and has the best organized play, Pokemon has Nintendo and the video games and anime behind it, Yu-Gi-Oh started the Card Game anime genre, which oddly developed into more, and Vanguard has...a lot.

Magic: The Gathering

Since it was the first, let's start with Magic. Magic didn't really have much competition, and popped up in game stores as a new type of game to play. It was a cool idea for many and others were grabbed by the fantasy aspect. A lot of players came from D&D. As more expansions came out, Wizards eventually tried to turn it into a sport so that it wouldn't run the risk of dying out like most fads do. The started to hold large tournaments for big cash prizes and try to make the top players well known, so that players could have a goal in playing. While this happened years ago, no other Trading Card Game has outdone the organized play that Magic has. Many stores host FNM (Friday Night Magic) every week, along with other tournaments, and the Pro Tours and Grand Prix always offer good cash prizes and good coverage so that people can watch from home and learn from the pros.

A little before M10, Magic sales had started to decline, so some reinventing had to be done with some help from Hasbro, creating sets such as M10 and introducing characters that would be mascots for Magic: Planeswalkers. Another trick Wizards uses to keep Magic new is the introduction of new blocks. While the game may focus on a war for Mirrodin one year, the next it will be on a Horror filled world, with Vampires and Werewolves (although I'm a bit disappointed at their timing...cought*twilight*cough). In short, Magic changes every year to stay new.

Also, while Magic is a nineteen year old game, it still manages to allow new players in at anytime, through limited formats and set rotations. While formats such as Legacy and Modern exist, where expensive decks tend to rule, and put beginners at a disadvantage, these are not as common as Standard or booster drafts. Standard uses only cards from the last two blocks, allowing players to get caught up quickly, and while booster drafts may take time for a player to get the hang of, they allow anyone to play without having a previous deck. While other games have sealed formats, Magic makes the most use of them. Magic is the oldest game and one of the easiest to start playing.

Yu-Gi-Oh

Yu-Gi-Oh is a very interesting game. Originally it wasn't really meant to be anything more than a reference to Magic for the original Manga series, which featured the protagonist defeating his enemies in various games. It was called Magic and Wizards in the manga, and although it was never intended to be an actual game, enough people wanted to play that the second series of the manga was solely based on the game and the actual cards themselves started to be printed. Soon enough, the Yu-Gi-Oh anime took off, and this was the start of the Card Game Anime genre, which surprisingly took off. Yu-Gi-Oh didn't have to worry about not having a mascot, since they already had one. Yugi was printed on the cover of the packs and the decks were based off of different characters. Additionally, characters' ace cards from the show became known, and the game became popular for both previous TCG fans and fans of the anime. With kids playing the cards of their favorite cards on the show and a competitive circuit started for older players.

As the years went by, new series came out, changing the mascot. With these new series came new types of cards that could be used in players' "extra decks," putting players without the cards at an instant disadvantage oftentimes. This drove up the price of the secondary market for competitive players and became quite expensive to compete in. Additionally, Konami's English branch started making good cards rarer than their Japanese counterparts and creating "TCG exclusives" (in japan it was called an Official Card Game, so TCG referred to the english, french and a few other language's cards). Usually, when they didn't like something, players would threaten to quit, but never actually did, resulting in the game in the game getting worse and more expensive.

With the most recent series, Yu-Gi-Oh has reached an extreme. At the moment, a top Yu-Gi-Oh deck may be more expansive than the more expensive topping Legacy deck for Magic, making it really hard for new players to get into tournaments. Some staples will go for over a hundred dollars, and competitive decks will often go for over a thousand. However, within a year most cards will be reprinted and a card will drop from 200 bucks to 8 or so, which sort of screws the players who got them while they were expensive. Oddly enough, for a game that's so expensive to compete in, Yu-Gi-Oh doesn't offer any prize support and Konami has proved over and over that they can not maintain a good game even, so that raises a lot of questions as for why competitive players even exist. Yu-Gi-Oh is certainly a fun game to play for fun, but it's hard to understand why all competitive players haven't quit. So far, Konami's "corrupt" strategies have been working, but many players seem to be switching to Vanguard, since Konami's mess ups with the prices and the ban list (Konami's way of trying to fix the game, by banning unfair and game breaking cards). This may be the downfall of Yu-Gi-Oh, over here.

Vanguard

Lastly, Vanguard is a new game that has had a marketing campaign surpassing probably every other game (trading card game, board game, and maybe even video game) to date. That of course is in Japan and Singapore, where the game is officially released. They started off with a lot of hype for it, backed by one of the biggest marketing companies in japan. Months in advance, they already had scheduled teaching events around Japan and had announced an Anime. Japan produces many trading card games and card game anime, so no one thought much of it at first. It got some attention, since the manga artist/writer had already done a Yu-Gi-Oh manga (Yu-Gi-Oh R), and one of the creators of the game was the creator of Duel Masters (possibly the top TCG in Japan), so many Duel Masters fans were hoping for this to be the next Duel Masters. The game was being made by a TCG company called Bushiroad, which was fairly big in Japan, but not well known world wide, and they focused on making card games to appeal to an older audience, so that people who'd outgrown Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh could still enjoy trading card games. That on it's own wasn't really anything that made this game stood out, however, the president of Bushiroad, himself, was backing Vanguard, which seemed to be a pet project of his. This was certainly interesting.

As more info got released, it became clear that this could easily become the next big thing. Months in advance, training sessions had been set up all over Japan and a popular manga magazine was giving out full decks for people to play with. The anime's theme song was done by a popular rock band (Jam Project), which had written a song called Vanguard for the show, and as a commercial mascot, a rock star named Daigo had agreed to be the "image character" for Vanguard. A cell phone game was announced, along with a radio program and even a television program to teach Vanguard strategy called Vanguard TV. Many commercials were made starring Daigo, and always played Vanguard's official theme song, Climber X Climber by Breakerz (Daigo's band).

All of this advertising for a card game that no one even knew how to play got interest from other countries as well, so there was a lot of anticipation and the game itself did not disappoint, featuring easy to learn, but still hard to master game play, as well as art by many manga and anime artists, making the cards themselves visually appealing. Bushiroad held many events in Japan, and eventually the english version was released in Singapore, which didn't get as much advertisement, but still had celebrities showing up to events. The English version has been making its way over to America as well and plans to host a World Championship this year. There is a lot of talk online about Vanguard, and a good portion of Yu-Gi-Oh players seem to be switching over. While Bushiroad has not even done any advertising in America, it seems to be the next big thing, and may knock Yu-Gi-Oh out of its spotlight.

Kaijudo

One more notable game to mention is Kaijudo. It's rare that a company has a chance to reboot/revise a game, but that is exactly what Wizards is doing to Duel Masters. Duel Masters had a failed run back in 2005, which was basically because the anime had a parody dub and Wizards made a joke out of it, however many believed the game itself to be one of, if not, the best TCG. The game was basically a sped up version of Magic, and is currently a huge success in Japan. However, after seeing its success in Japan, Wizards decided to try again with all new cards, planning for a June release. Oddly, this game doesn't seem to be getting advertised much, but simply the fact that it's from Wizards means that it will be getting attention. It also has a show coming out, but not too much is known on that yet. It's unknown if it will feature the card game or just the creatures themselves.

When the Pokemon TCG first came to America, it was run by Wizards as a way of getting kids into TCGs so that they could switch to Magic. This was a very good move, of course, as kids who loved Pokemon would likely want to continue playing card games as they got older, but would have to switch. Eventually, Nintendo took back control of Pokemon, so for a while, Wizards hasn't had a game for younger audiences. Kaijudo seems to be their latest attempt and no one is sure whether it will succeed or fail. If Wizards actually takes it seriously, it will likely succeed. While aimed at kids, this game is also striking an interest with old Duel Masters fans, so it is likely that it will hit a chord with high school and college age students as well. Interestingly enough, while it's meant to be an easier version of Magic, Duel Masters actually fixed Magic's biggest problem, the fact that players could get screwed because of too much or too little land. Every card in Duel Masters could be used as mana, allowing for a quick and fun game. This is certainly something to keep an eye on. Again, it's all up to Wizards. This has a lot of potential and it is in Wizards' best interest to make this a success. If Wizards can get children crazy about this, then they will have an easy switch over to Magic as they keep playing. Or if Kaijudo is more fun, they may just keep playing.

Conclusion

All in all, this will be a very interesting year for Trading Card Games, two games that are likely to be top contenders are coming to America and older games seem to be losing their grip (I expect Magic to stay strong, of course, but Yu-Gi-Oh, and maybe even Pokemon, may lose to their competition). Vanguard calls itself "The Next Era Trading Card Game." It seemed cheesy at first, but this may be a new era in Trading Card Games and these games certainly have a lot of potential.

Resources for Magic history: Johnny Magic and the Card Shark kids.

Vanguard info was from the official site and traslated by NeoArcadia of the NeoArkCradle forums.