The Quest
There is something missing. No, I’m not talking about my socks. A good traditional digital collectible card game (DCCG) is what I’m looking for and I am having a hard time finding one. By traditional, I mean a DCCG that stays true to the physical CCGs such as MTG, Pokemon TCG, and WoW TCG. From my search, I found that there are only a few games available in this genre and it is dominated by MTG games. Here are some points I found these games to be lacking in.
- Magic: the Gathering – Duels of the Planeswalker – Official Site
- One of the biggest complaints about this game is that deck editing is VERY limited. You must play with preconstructed decks and can choose to add/remove additional cards that are won through campaign mode.
- Because of no deck construction there is also an absence of trading cards. Everyone already has them!
- While the game does have a campaign mode, it does not tell a story and is only a series of AI matches.
- I have not played online but having looked at it I can tell it is fairly limited.
- Challenge mode was really great.
- Magic: the Gathering Online – Official Site
- I never played this, just read about it and watched some videos.
- Since this game went live nearly a decade ago it is reasonable that it looks outdated. The UI and graphics appear to be from the late 90’s.
- The release predated the concept of ranked matches which are now nearly a standard in any PvP game.
- From what I can tell it only has PvP and no PvE. If it does have any PvE then it is very limited and does not contain any type of story or quests.
I recognize that there are many other games that can be considered a CCG. Why I did not bring them up is because I do not consider them to follow traditional rules as they are more of a fusion of genres. While I was looking at these games, I did find that they are generally more feature complete. Here are some of the games I looked at.
- Magic: the Gathering Tactics – Official Site
- After following this some before its release and then playing it some I can say that I was reasonably disappointed.
- Largest disappointment is the claim to free-to-play but without spending money you only get a starter deck and the first 5 missions. It should have just been called a trial version.
- Besides this inhibitor, the game is fairly complete with features. It has a story mode, trading, auction house, PvP, tournaments, and a few other shinies.
- Gameplay itself did not seem too intriguing and was somewhat boring, albeit I only played the first 5 missions with a starter deck. This is when they are suppose to convince me to spend my money on the game though.
It is sad to see that such a great genre has been neglected aside from MTG. There are many other games that pull from CCG concepts but few that keep the focus on them. Overall I feel that there is a need for a traditional digital CCG that has a modern feel, feature complete with an intriguing and fun gameplay. This is where Crea comes in…
Now where are my socks?
siegegames.wordpress.com 
Most online CCG’s know they have to differentiate from MTG in order to draw interest. Urban Rivals and most others also try to take advantage of being an online game as much as possible by utilizing random elements. If a CCG wants to be successful they need to keep the “random” factor while allowing skill to be important. Urban Rivals has a huge following but the lack of a real skill aspect to that game will always keep it in check. Magic has balanced skill and luck better than any other CCG which is why it has been so successful.
As I will go into with my follow-up post to this one, I do believe it is possibly to differentiate from MTG while staying true to the traditional CCG rules. However, even Crea, the game being developed here, does diverge some by adding in some persistence to the experience making it not 100% traditional. Throughout development I have found myself fighting off randomness in order to keep this balance of skill and luck. This will undoubtedly be an ongoing challenge.
Thanks for your thoughts Andrew.