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People are also leaving out stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, and Magic The Gathering. All of them also introduce rarities (arbitrary exclusiveness), hidden cards

People are also leaving out stuff like Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, and Magic The Gathering. All of them also introduce rarities (arbitrary exclusiveness), hidden cards in a pack, and extreme gambling gamification. The only non-gambling MtG packs are the preconstructed commander decks. All 100 cards are published. But the packs and boxes? Pure gambling, especially for the chase rare cards. And before anyone asks, yes, my username is based after this $2 card. https://edhrec.com/commanders/nekusar-the-mindrazer https://edhrec.com/commanders/nekusar-the-mindrazer

belkinpower 1y ago
The Pokémon card mania in particular is deeply weird to me. I play Magic at a local card shop a few times a month and it’s always full of people playing Magic, D&D, or various board games. I don’t think I’ve seen a single person playing the Pokémon card game. So who’s buying the valuable singles? What’s keeping the market afloat? It’s bizarre.
- squigz 1y ago
  My guess is literally just the people who trade them - and maybe like, 10 13 year olds.
- asdff 1y ago
  People in their 30s and 40s. It is the same thing with boomers and comic books. What was once in mass circulation in your childhood is now out of print and commanding real value among your nostalgic peers.
  - belkinpower 1y ago
    Sure, that explains vintage cards. I’m more confused about the demand for new ones.
- musicale 1y ago
  Pokémon TCG seems to have turned into a contest among opportunistic resellers to see who can buy up all of the cards and sell them to ... collectors? Other resellers? Who knows? Which is a shame, since the game itself is actually fun. Or it would be if you could buy the cards easily and cheaply.
  - stevenicr 1y ago
    a recent few shorts / scroll to see them: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1RY5RYlgymrW3mZVmJOVUOnF-hkswwey&si=MupmHQl6lLSpFwRq https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1RY5RYlgymrW3mZVmJOVUOnF... tldr: fights, and watch someone buy the entire shelf at walmart in one transaction.
- lnrd 1y ago
  It's a collector's market, the value is in the demand and scarcity. Same as with all other collectibles like baseball cards and such. Or even wines, there are some that are so old they become undrinkable but cost like a car. In collectors market the price is detached from any kind of purpose of the item. Also consider that most Magic cards are also valuable only because of their collector status. The valuable ones are mint first editions and nobody is buying them to play them. So who fuels this collectors market? Nostalgic 30-something that have now disposable income and want to buy things they wanted as children. Same as with videogames collectors and such. You don't need an original copy of Supermario to play it, but people still spend thousands to buy it.
squigz 1y ago
I think there's a massive difference between card packs - which have been as you describe for decades - and the recent boom in sports betting. Most people don't even know what MTG is, or that there's even a market for those cards. Everyone now knows that you can bet on any sport you want - and if some reports are to be believed, a large percentage of people are participating. Anyway, this is why I play MTG online - same with 40k, although there's no gambling there. Just too expensive to play either IRL even if I wanted to.
- banannaise 1y ago
  > I think there's a massive difference between card packs - which have been as you describe for decades - and the recent boom in sports betting. There is, until there isn't. MTG has been leaning drastically into tiered and ultra-premium products. Increasingly, it feels like Magic design and product is focused on extracting money from the whales at the price of hollowing out their playerbase. It's difficult to draw a hard line between wholesome collecting and lootbox gambling, but it's hard not to notice that even the bastions of the collectible industry have been aggressively moving in the direction of the latter.
  - Ekaros 1y ago
    I have never been sure if collecting is wholesome. I think Pohl did show it as one example of rampant consumerist addiction in one of the books(can't remember which of the ones with marketing guys). I would guess that collecting goes beyond wholesome once finding the products comes really hard and there is very high prices and extremely low rates involved.
- TheCapeGreek 1y ago
  > Anyway, this is why I play MTG online I think this depends on how you interact with your chosen game. To me, I play Yugioh as a hobby. If I'm "only" into the digital versions of the game, then it's no different to playing just about any other video game. And even then, these live service TCGs (outside of unofficial simulators) can often have the same lootbox/pack gambling aspects as the real thing. Personally that's not what I want. A good chunk of why I play paper is because of the physical community, in a space outside my home.
asdff 1y ago
I feel like it only became rampant in recent years. As a 90s kid no one cared about the card packs. We all assumed they'd be junk cards and a waste of $7 or whatever. No, the move for card people back then was to wait for the card show and just buy the cards you actually want from a card dealer. The thing is now people are marketing the pack opening. You have social media accounts of them pulling cards from packs and getting all hyped up about it. Again no one thought that was fun in the 90s, everyone hated that aspect of cards in the 90s but thats because the unboxing as an experience wasn't marketed by anyone at all. People just wanted cards they thought were personally cool in some way. And likewise expansion of markets in the internet era means people start to have shared values of what is a valuable card based on market price vs just being interested in some certain cards out of your own interest.
- lurk2 1y ago
  > Again no one thought that was fun in the 90s, everyone hated that aspect of cards in the 90s How old was everyone in the 1990s? Kids loved this kind of thing in the 2000s.
  - asdff 1y ago
    I can't imagine kids even liked it then. Again most of those packs were junk cards. Like total crap cards. Oh gee a rattata and some energy cards. All you wanted was Ash's squad from the shows.
    - lurk2 1y ago
      The kids I knew who played these kinds of card games all loved buying booster packs, but they weren’t paying for these packs themselves and most grew out of playing by the time they reached high school. I can see it not being as fun for adult players who understand the probability metagame being played, but I think one of the reasons these games had so much financial success in the first place was that they identified a behavioral loop that they could exploit, exactly like contemporary developers did with loot boxes.
mnky9800n 1y ago
I used to really enjoy magic. Then at some point I couldn’t keep up with the constructed meta. So I switched to drafting. But now it seems like everything is so gamified that playing the game isn’t enough anymore. Now you need to play all the time both in the shop and on mtg arena and it’s like designed to keep you hooked. I hate it. I really just can’t be bothered to play anymore. It’s no longer fun it’s just a grind.
- nicce 1y ago
  > It’s no longer fun it’s just a grind. Like most new games these days. I play only old games or few special ones like Baldur’s Gate anymore.
  - mnky9800n 1y ago
    Yes I’ve been playing a lot of civ4 and sim city 2000. It’s so much more enjoyable because it’s simply about playing a game where complex simulations put together interesting problems to solve. As opposed to figuring out how to unlock the next whatever skin, weapon, armor, card set, fake money gems, other fake money coins, etc. Edit: btw if anyone is looking for a civ4 game hit me up
- tayo42 1y ago
  Why does drafting feel like that?
  - recursivecaveat 1y ago
    I'm not that poster, but 4 times as many unique cards are released a year as 20 years ago (2X vs 10 years ago). The pace has greatly increased the commitment to keep abreast of the game.
    - mnky9800n 1y ago
      Yes and it’s obvious the only reason is because making more money is better than only making enough money. This is probably why gameplay has changed so much to where every deck is some combo blah blah. Like most of the older deck formats are gone. Like look at the decks when they published the 1999 Grand Prix winning decks and compare them to today. Like it had mono green stompy next to these fiddly urza combo decks. I dunno I’m just sad the game sucks now. I had a lot of fun playing with friends when I was younger. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/World_Championship_Decks/1999 https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/World_Championship_Decks/1999
hshdhdhehd 1y ago
And Robinhood etc.?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jparishy 1y ago
Sports, too. Recent post from the President of Upper Deck talking about it: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jmash_everything-speculative-is-up-right-now-the-activity-7388926281733627904-9JJQ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jmash_everything-speculative-...
TimByte 1y ago
The randomness is marketed as part of the fun, but for a lot of players (especially younger ones), it taps into the same reward-loop psychology as slot machines
rs186 1y ago
Why not mention blind boxes and Labubu I never understand why people "collect" these things
- hobofan 1y ago
  Labubus are much less about collectior value. They are more like a wearable luxury item that's sold via a gambling mechanic. Their value is much less speculative and much more closely based on (blindbox price * distribution percentage of the rare variants) than most of the other items being dicussed here.
uses 1y ago
As a Magic player, yeah some people definitely have a compulsive addictive gambling relationship with the product. And Wizards has been leaning into that recently with more rare versions of mechanically identical cards. However, you can buy sealed product to both build your collection and get cards to trade. And the main reason for sealed to exist, ostensibly, is limited. And a lot of people don't interact with the "gambling" aspect at all. I'm very deep into magic after 10 years, and I almost exclusively buy singles and do prereleases. I might buy like 10 random packs total in an entire year.
gnopgnip 1y ago
There is a big difference with a physical product. It’s harder to get in over your head and go bankrupt

belkinpower 1y ago

The Pokémon card mania in particular is deeply weird to me. I play Magic at a local card shop a few times a month and it’s always full of people playing Magic, D&D, or various board games. I don’t think I’ve seen a single person playing the Pokémon card game. So who’s buying the valuable singles? What’s keeping the market afloat? It’s bizarre.

squigz 1y ago
My guess is literally just the people who trade them - and maybe like, 10 13 year olds.
asdff 1y ago
People in their 30s and 40s. It is the same thing with boomers and comic books. What was once in mass circulation in your childhood is now out of print and commanding real value among your nostalgic peers.
- belkinpower 1y ago
  Sure, that explains vintage cards. I’m more confused about the demand for new ones.
musicale 1y ago
Pokémon TCG seems to have turned into a contest among opportunistic resellers to see who can buy up all of the cards and sell them to ... collectors? Other resellers? Who knows? Which is a shame, since the game itself is actually fun. Or it would be if you could buy the cards easily and cheaply.
- stevenicr 1y ago
  a recent few shorts / scroll to see them: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1RY5RYlgymrW3mZVmJOVUOnF-hkswwey&si=MupmHQl6lLSpFwRq https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1RY5RYlgymrW3mZVmJOVUOnF... tldr: fights, and watch someone buy the entire shelf at walmart in one transaction.
lnrd 1y ago
It's a collector's market, the value is in the demand and scarcity. Same as with all other collectibles like baseball cards and such. Or even wines, there are some that are so old they become undrinkable but cost like a car. In collectors market the price is detached from any kind of purpose of the item. Also consider that most Magic cards are also valuable only because of their collector status. The valuable ones are mint first editions and nobody is buying them to play them. So who fuels this collectors market? Nostalgic 30-something that have now disposable income and want to buy things they wanted as children. Same as with videogames collectors and such. You don't need an original copy of Supermario to play it, but people still spend thousands to buy it.

squigz 1y ago

I think there's a massive difference between card packs - which have been as you describe for decades - and the recent boom in sports betting. Most people don't even know what MTG is, or that there's even a market for those cards. Everyone now knows that you can bet on any sport you want - and if some reports are to be believed, a large percentage of people are participating. Anyway, this is why I play MTG online - same with 40k, although there's no gambling there. Just too expensive to play either IRL even if I wanted to.

banannaise 1y ago
> I think there's a massive difference between card packs - which have been as you describe for decades - and the recent boom in sports betting. There is, until there isn't. MTG has been leaning drastically into tiered and ultra-premium products. Increasingly, it feels like Magic design and product is focused on extracting money from the whales at the price of hollowing out their playerbase. It's difficult to draw a hard line between wholesome collecting and lootbox gambling, but it's hard not to notice that even the bastions of the collectible industry have been aggressively moving in the direction of the latter.
- Ekaros 1y ago
  I have never been sure if collecting is wholesome. I think Pohl did show it as one example of rampant consumerist addiction in one of the books(can't remember which of the ones with marketing guys). I would guess that collecting goes beyond wholesome once finding the products comes really hard and there is very high prices and extremely low rates involved.
TheCapeGreek 1y ago
> Anyway, this is why I play MTG online I think this depends on how you interact with your chosen game. To me, I play Yugioh as a hobby. If I'm "only" into the digital versions of the game, then it's no different to playing just about any other video game. And even then, these live service TCGs (outside of unofficial simulators) can often have the same lootbox/pack gambling aspects as the real thing. Personally that's not what I want. A good chunk of why I play paper is because of the physical community, in a space outside my home.

asdff 1y ago

I feel like it only became rampant in recent years. As a 90s kid no one cared about the card packs. We all assumed they'd be junk cards and a waste of $7 or whatever. No, the move for card people back then was to wait for the card show and just buy the cards you actually want from a card dealer. The thing is now people are marketing the pack opening. You have social media accounts of them pulling cards from packs and getting all hyped up about it. Again no one thought that was fun in the 90s, everyone hated that aspect of cards in the 90s but thats because the unboxing as an experience wasn't marketed by anyone at all. People just wanted cards they thought were personally cool in some way. And likewise expansion of markets in the internet era means people start to have shared values of what is a valuable card based on market price vs just being interested in some certain cards out of your own interest.

lurk2 1y ago
> Again no one thought that was fun in the 90s, everyone hated that aspect of cards in the 90s How old was everyone in the 1990s? Kids loved this kind of thing in the 2000s.
- asdff 1y ago
  I can't imagine kids even liked it then. Again most of those packs were junk cards. Like total crap cards. Oh gee a rattata and some energy cards. All you wanted was Ash's squad from the shows.
  - lurk2 1y ago
    The kids I knew who played these kinds of card games all loved buying booster packs, but they weren’t paying for these packs themselves and most grew out of playing by the time they reached high school. I can see it not being as fun for adult players who understand the probability metagame being played, but I think one of the reasons these games had so much financial success in the first place was that they identified a behavioral loop that they could exploit, exactly like contemporary developers did with loot boxes.

mnky9800n 1y ago

I used to really enjoy magic. Then at some point I couldn’t keep up with the constructed meta. So I switched to drafting. But now it seems like everything is so gamified that playing the game isn’t enough anymore. Now you need to play all the time both in the shop and on mtg arena and it’s like designed to keep you hooked. I hate it. I really just can’t be bothered to play anymore. It’s no longer fun it’s just a grind.

nicce 1y ago
> It’s no longer fun it’s just a grind. Like most new games these days. I play only old games or few special ones like Baldur’s Gate anymore.
- mnky9800n 1y ago
  Yes I’ve been playing a lot of civ4 and sim city 2000. It’s so much more enjoyable because it’s simply about playing a game where complex simulations put together interesting problems to solve. As opposed to figuring out how to unlock the next whatever skin, weapon, armor, card set, fake money gems, other fake money coins, etc. Edit: btw if anyone is looking for a civ4 game hit me up
tayo42 1y ago
Why does drafting feel like that?
- recursivecaveat 1y ago
  I'm not that poster, but 4 times as many unique cards are released a year as 20 years ago (2X vs 10 years ago). The pace has greatly increased the commitment to keep abreast of the game.
  - mnky9800n 1y ago
    Yes and it’s obvious the only reason is because making more money is better than only making enough money. This is probably why gameplay has changed so much to where every deck is some combo blah blah. Like most of the older deck formats are gone. Like look at the decks when they published the 1999 Grand Prix winning decks and compare them to today. Like it had mono green stompy next to these fiddly urza combo decks. I dunno I’m just sad the game sucks now. I had a lot of fun playing with friends when I was younger. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/World_Championship_Decks/1999 https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/World_Championship_Decks/1999

hshdhdhehd 1y ago

And Robinhood etc.?

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jparishy 1y ago

Sports, too. Recent post from the President of Upper Deck talking about it: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jmash_everything-speculative-is-up-right-now-the-activity-7388926281733627904-9JJQ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jmash_everything-speculative-...

TimByte 1y ago

The randomness is marketed as part of the fun, but for a lot of players (especially younger ones), it taps into the same reward-loop psychology as slot machines

rs186 1y ago

Why not mention blind boxes and Labubu I never understand why people "collect" these things

hobofan 1y ago
Labubus are much less about collectior value. They are more like a wearable luxury item that's sold via a gambling mechanic. Their value is much less speculative and much more closely based on (blindbox price * distribution percentage of the rare variants) than most of the other items being dicussed here.

uses 1y ago

As a Magic player, yeah some people definitely have a compulsive addictive gambling relationship with the product. And Wizards has been leaning into that recently with more rare versions of mechanically identical cards. However, you can buy sealed product to both build your collection and get cards to trade. And the main reason for sealed to exist, ostensibly, is limited. And a lot of people don't interact with the "gambling" aspect at all. I'm very deep into magic after 10 years, and I almost exclusively buy singles and do prereleases. I might buy like 10 random packs total in an entire year.

gnopgnip 1y ago

There is a big difference with a physical product. It’s harder to get in over your head and go bankrupt