Chapter 58: The Secrets to Profiting from Card Games

Are domestic card games fun to play?

This is a subjective question; different players have different tastes. Many criticize card games for being crudely made, monotonous, and repetitive, which is indeed true. Yet, they make money.

If they make money, it means players acknowledge them. Why do players acknowledge them? Because they find them fun.

It's a strange phenomenon: players criticize these games while simultaneously spending money on them.

Why do card games make money? What's so fun about them?

This is a broad topic. If Alex Parker were to write a paper on the core of card games, it could easily span thousands of words. Simply put, the fun in domestic card games comes from three main aspects.

First, the joy of collecting and developing cards.

This enjoyment is based on players' recognition of card characters. Once, a mobile game company created a card game based on "One Piece." A wealthy player entered the game and immediately spent thousands of dollars just to draw a card of Hawkeye Mihawk.

In another instance, a player spent $5,000 during a test phase to get a card of Zhuge Liang in an unknown Three Kingdoms card game, even though the character wasn't available yet. The game company had to rush and create the Zhuge Liang character.

In "I Am MT," many players grind daily to gather purple card fragments or spend a lot of money on ten-card draws to get the desired cards.

Game designers purposely adjust card skills and power levels to match the storyline (or tweak them based on character popularity) to foster player recognition of the card characters. When this recognition is established, the card becomes valuable, and players will spend money on it.

Once a card value system is established, different cards have varying values, fulfilling players' desire to collect and develop them and making them feel their money is well spent.

The key to profiting from card games is establishing a card value system that players recognize, similar to stamp collecting, and continuously selling new cards to players. After obtaining their desired cards, players will continue to spend money to upgrade, enhance, and level up their cards, feeling a sense of growth with each upgrade.

Second, the fun of exploring team combinations and developing battle strategies.

Card game combat systems may seem monotonous, but they are pretty wealthy. In "I Am MT," each card has regular attacks, skill attacks, and passive abilities, with character designs based on "World of Warcraft's" combat system. Each character's skills are unique.

For example, there are different area damage skills: Blizzard (full-screen attack), Whirlwind (attacks three units in the front row), Chain Lightning (attacks three random units), and Piercing Shot (attacks two units in a column).

Skills are also divided into physical and magical damage, single-target and area damage. Healing skills vary as well, from single-target to area healing.

Moreover, there are damage reduction, resurrection, and damage-over-time skills, covering almost every imaginable ability in the card combat system.

With factors like card placement, attack order, attribute countering, and leader skills, the card game combat system becomes highly playable.

While this combat system can't compare to PC games, it's sufficient for mobile players.

This system can be adapted to most worldviews, such as anime like "One Piece" and "Naruto" or martial arts novels.

Third, marketing strategies and numerical stimulation.

This encompasses a wide range of content like operational activities (seven-day login, sign-ins, growth funds), daily benefits (maintenance diamonds, stamina gifts, online rewards), and initial numerical structures.

These features are not exclusive to card games but are now standard in all domestic mobile games, from SLG (strategy games) to FPS (shooters).

This "Pavlovian" numerical stimulation, criticized by countless players and game reviewers, is still universally implemented because it's simple and effective. Removing it leads to noticeable drops in-game data and revenue.

The "numerical stimulation" system works by making the game free to attract as many players as possible, carefully guiding new players to quickly experience the game's core fun and gameplay without any difficulty, and allowing smooth progress initially.

However, this smooth progression doesn't last long. Within a week or three days, players will face challenges.

In these games, paying players and non-paying players are inherently unequal. To encourage spending, the game sets up checkpoints where players encounter difficulties, prompting them to spend money to enhance their power and continue progressing.

But if a non-paying player encounters a checkpoint, they might quit the game. How to keep these players? Simple: give them rewards.