What went wrong with Fight Klub?

[TheJord]

I have monitored the slow decay of Fight Klub on the Decipher website. I recently found someone who was interested in the game, and essentially had to keep him away from the website to make sure he wasn't discourage by its lack of usefulness.

So what was it? Being online and player driven? Containing characters that appealed to only a certain crowd? Or have people just lost faith in Decipher?

[HawkeyeSPF]

I had absolutely -ZERO- interest in a game focused on "who would win in a fight" scenarios, so I was a lost customer from the beginning.

Even though I wasn't going to be involved in the game, I watched as things progressed, and I found myself completely turned off by the idea of the game's promotion being player-driven.

That said, I never wished the game or company ill, and it's really a shame the way things turned out.

[Elessar's Socks]

I doubt I'd be collecting any more CCGs/TCGs, so for me it didn't matter what Decipher did or didn't do. But lack of interest in the "Who would win?" concept aside, the perceived exclusivity of it all made me sure I didn't want to be involved in it.

[HawkeyeSPF]

Somebody should show Warren this thread...

[ramolnar]

The era of the CCG is basically over, and has been for a while.
When was the last highly successful CCG launch? I would say World of Warcraft in 2006. Looking at the Gencon list, what's there beyond Magic for adults? L5R? Star Trek? I see The Spoils and Universal Fighting System, both from 2006. I wouldn't consider those massive successes.

The problem is that the CCG model is too expensive. In the traditional model, a playset involves about 200 rares per year, times 4 copies. That's roughly 20 booster boxes - $1500 to $2000 per year. Even getting cards as a Rider, I spent $1000-1200 on cards each year. LotR was pretty good in that you could build playable decks without tons of rares - I built and won with less than 10, sometimes. But it would be hard to play for under $500 a year.

I could buy an Xbox 360 and 5 games for that $500. An MMORPG costs what, $20 a month? Plus, the Xbox and computer are there all the time, where it's easy to find other players and you don't have to travel. Still, many MMORPGs wind down and are closed.

To get enough players for a new TCG, you need to have high popularity - more than Battlestar Galactica  or .hack. Yugioh and Pokemon hit their young target audiences. LotR and WoW had huge fanbases. Even in 2002, I figured LotR would trail off after the movies ended; I would have liked to see a planned Shadows block and wind-down, which would have been much cleaner than the mess we wound up with.

Magic has survived by having the largest audience, but even they had a setback this year with the best card by far, Jace, the Mind Scuptor, costing $80. Their attendance went notably down. Fantasy Flight has survived by switching to a fixed-product model. Looking at the Game of Thrones products, it appears that their monthly chapter packs cost $15, and there are one or two larger sets each year at roughly $30. (Someone jump in if I'm mistaken here.) That's close to MMORPG pricing, which makes it a competitive decision. And they're being vastly helped by the HBO series.

Fight Klub has no inherent fanbase and no outside promotion. The Decipher embezzlement loss drained the reserves, and the "insider gang" model didn't help, but it had roughly zero chance of success from the start.

[Sabrien Reed]

The era of the CCG is basically over, and has been for a while.
When was the last highly successful CCG launch?

Check out Shadow Era TCG.  (http://shadowera.com.)

[FingolfinFinwe]

Ramolnar pretty much hit the nail on the head.  While the past couple years I've been playing L5R competitively, The current arc is ending and I don't think I can afford the $1,200+ per year investment, even though I consider this to be the best TCG game environment I've ever encountered (next arc looks to have a great start as well).

But cost wasn't really a big issue with Fight Klub, as it didn't follow the standard TCG format.  I think it's pretty much been covered here already - the subject matter didn't interest all that many folks (myself included), and I think the network marketing strategy turned off at least half of those that may have been interested.

[ramolnar]

Check out Shadow Era TCG.  (http://shadowera.com.)

Thanks for the link. But is this a TCG? There are no physical cards. I would call this the next generation - online TCG-like events. The developers have done some smart things, eliminating the travel problem by being online, and writing for smartphones. The cost is also much, much lower - I think they've hit the $20 a month key point. Maybe even less.
It'll be interesting to observe where the TCG idea goes, with FFG and this and maybe others.

[Sabrien Reed]

Check out Shadow Era TCG.  (http://shadowera.com.)

Thanks for the link. But is this a TCG? There are no physical cards. I would call this the next generation - online TCG-like events. The developers have done some smart things, eliminating the travel problem by being online, and writing for smartphones. The cost is also much, much lower - I think they've hit the $20 a month key point. Maybe even less.
It'll be interesting to observe where the TCG idea goes, with FFG and this and maybe others.

It is an online trading card game.  The player to player trading is not yet implemented yet though, so you can buy any card you want from the in-game (NPC) Merchant for Gold, which you earn by playing games.

[gofatas]

It was not a powerful TCG from the very beggining...but I dont think TCG are over, they are off over for sometime, not for ever. When you introduce lots of different kind of games in a small market it collapses...when most of those games die, it will be time for a new one! Long life LOTR TCG!

[Ringbearer]

CCGs and TCgs are dead. FAce it, the only one still going strong is Magic. You see that new game smove on to the livign card game model, which works much better, especially in these difficult times.

[Craigb21]

The era of the CCG is basically over, and has been for a while.
When was the last highly successful CCG launch? I would say World of Warcraft in 2006. Looking at the Gencon list, what's there beyond Magic for adults? L5R? Star Trek? I see The Spoils and Universal Fighting System, both from 2006. I wouldn't consider those massive successes.

The problem is that the CCG model is too expensive. In the traditional model, a playset involves about 200 rares per year, times 4 copies. That's roughly 20 booster boxes - $1500 to $2000 per year. Even getting cards as a Rider, I spent $1000-1200 on cards each year. LotR was pretty good in that you could build playable decks without tons of rares - I built and won with less than 10, sometimes. But it would be hard to play for under $500 a year.

I could buy an Xbox 360 and 5 games for that $500. An MMORPG costs what, $20 a month? Plus, the Xbox and computer are there all the time, where it's easy to find other players and you don't have to travel. Still, many MMORPGs wind down and are closed.

To get enough players for a new TCG, you need to have high popularity - more than Battlestar Galactica  or .hack. Yugioh and Pokemon hit their young target audiences. LotR and WoW had huge fanbases. Even in 2002, I figured LotR would trail off after the movies ended; I would have liked to see a planned Shadows block and wind-down, which would have been much cleaner than the mess we wound up with.

Magic has survived by having the largest audience, but even they had a setback this year with the best card by far, Jace, the Mind Scuptor, costing $80. Their attendance went notably down. Fantasy Flight has survived by switching to a fixed-product model. Looking at the Game of Thrones products, it appears that their monthly chapter packs cost $15, and there are one or two larger sets each year at roughly $30. (Someone jump in if I'm mistaken here.) That's close to MMORPG pricing, which makes it a competitive decision. And they're being vastly helped by the HBO series.

Fight Klub has no inherent fanbase and no outside promotion. The Decipher embezzlement loss drained the reserves, and the "insider gang" model didn't help, but it had roughly zero chance of success from the start.

And now Magic is seeing its tournament attendance at an all time high with some tournaments having 2000+ participants. The cards are selling like hot cakes. So I personally do not think the era of the CCG is over. I think there is nothing out there that is good enough to compete with Magic.

The Jace fiasco was a mistake but the attendance dropping was because of a negative play experience that the card created. Once the card was banned, the attendance went right back up.

What is needed is a good game that appeals to the 20-30 crowd. Decipher needs to get reborn and go back after the Star Wars license. (Wishful thinking, I know)

[CoS]

This is the next big thing:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cze/hex-mmo-trading-card-game?ref=banner

[Not a Zombie]

Looks like a carbon copy of magic, adapted to WOW

[CoS]

Looks like a carbon copy of magic, adapted to WOW

I like that a person who understand MtG will immediately be able to understand this game... and WoW elements are nice as well.

1.5mil goal reached so tablet support is going to be impressive for the digital TCG market share.