Give trading card platforms a soul
As a child, our mom knew exactly how to get us to behave: by rewarding us with Pokémon cards. Simple pieces of printed cardboard that opened the door to Valhalla for us. Almost two decades later, I plunged into that world of collectible cards again, although this time I no longer had to wait for my mother’s permission to buy a new pack of cards.
It’s not just the world of Pokémon which has adult collectors, almost every trading card game (Magic: The Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh!…) does. They gather on forums and websites to discuss, exchange, and sell these cards or to play online games. Until now there are several completely separate platforms.
On the one hand, you have platforms such as Cardmarket and Catawiki that serve purely as a sales platform. Their user interface is very straightforward and they have only one goal: to buy and sell trading cards. If you look at a detail page of a trading card, you will often only see the price of the object and the seller. There are also multiple apps from each brand of trading cards to keep track of which cards you have and which you don’t.
In addition, there are also content-driven sites such as Bulbapedia and MTG Salvation where you will find a lot more information. Upcoming releases are discussed, there are fora to find other collectors, interviews with artists are published…
Finally, almost every card game has an online version that can be played. These are often developed by the company that owns the associated intellectual properties (The Pokémon Company, Wizards of the Coast…). On these platforms, cards that people have physically come to life so that you can exchange them virtually or use them to play with.
These are all interesting projects, but it’s a bit strange that they are still separate islands. Why is almost no one combining different aspects from these online platforms? Developing a full-blown online game is, of course, something out of this world, but Cardmarket would get even more traffic if it would publish more content about (upcoming) trading cards. There are already some blog posts on Magic: The Gathering published, but they are mostly hidden in a corner of the site. By making that content more prominent, these cold trading platforms would finally get a bit more soul.
That enriching content doesn’t necessarily have to be focused on existing franchises. It can, for instance, be a sandbox designer mode where indie card game developers can create a digital version of their game.
On the other hand, the sites developed by the community could get a financial boost if they also start to focus more on selling trading cards. An indie app I can use to keep track of my collection is nice, but it is even more convenient to immediately buy my missing cards on the same platform. It’s time to leave the islands, so we don’t have to switch between several platforms and apps depending on what we want to do!
