Trading card games: the secret to success on mobile platforms

This topic has been repeatedly raised on the pages of foreign sources. The editorial board of the App2Top portal also devoted several analytical articles to card collectible games, the main conclusions and conclusions of which are presented here on Habré.

Statistics

Three out of ten games at the cash register of the top 10 Google Play USA are related to card collectible games. In the cash top-10 of the App Store, one game of this category is presented so far, which, by the way, has not gone out of this top for three months now. This is Rage of Bahamut , which only in the US market earns, according to the most conservative estimates, $ 2-3 million per month. In Japan, a game of the same genre can earn up to $ 8 million per month in top positions.

The popularity of collectible card games

According to Xiaolei Zhang, director of the marketing company D2C, in an interview with Gamasutra, one of the reasons for the success of such games is the user's passion for collecting. In Japan, this culture has developed long ago, as in the United States.

This is what developers use: to attract the attention of users, it is enough to add cards to the game, I'm sure Jan. In turn, the favorite character of the game on the map will motivate the user to buy. In addition, the character from the setting understandable to the player allows you to quickly figure out the rules and what bonuses the card gives.

But collecting in itself is not interesting if there is no PvP that is necessary to retain users. For example, not so long ago, the Korean publisher Com2uS reported that more than 400 million times were played in their Homerun Battle in PvP mode.

By creating a card MMORPG in miniature, that is, allowing players to buy new cards, change them, join guilds, you can get a group of loyal users. It depends on how tightly you work with them, update the game and upgrade the deck of cards, whether the players will spend money.

The second feature of collectible card games is ease of development. Having created the engine, developers can constantly release both new cards and new games in general, simply changing the graphics and UI. This dramatically reduces development costs. In addition, each time, simply changing the images on the cards, you can reach a new audience.

Prospects

According to Syali Dzhan, card collection games have one main drawback - the winner is the one who spent the most time and money. But this fact is also an advantage in terms of stable earnings in the presence of fans. As a result, Jan is confident that card collectible games will become an independent gaming genre with their own standards and metrics.

Russian developers, although they understand the prospects for the trend of card collectible games, cannot boast of particular success in this area. Why? Maybe readers of Habr can share their thoughts on this topic.

For us, the main reason seems to be the fact that geek communities in Russia are still underdeveloped, while in Japan and the USA they feed the entire market. So, hoping for such success of card collection games in Russia is not worth it, but you should think about the release of our developers with these games in the American and Japanese markets.