Children’s Card Games: Modeling Trading Card Games as a Diffusion in Innovation
Collectible card games have steadily gained traction in the past 20 years and have now become a viable business with a large network of dedicated consumers. Different games may vary in game play, but their success is all based on a direct benefit effect.
Due to the nature of card games, the trading card game (TCG) market can be modeled as a diffusion of innovation. Classical TCGs require two or more players to face off against each other, so the enjoyment (i.e. benefit) derived from a card game is dependent on how many people in a player’s social network also play the game (i.e. adopt the technology). Networks in which card games proliferate can be found in game shops, school clubs, and comic book stores. Different TCGs are incompatible, thus two people interacting in a network resemble a network coordination game (fig. 1). Two people committed to different card games cannot play together, so the benefit is zero (we assume each person/node in the network only plays one type of card game, but as I’ve discussed below, this often reflects the reality); when two players play the same game both players receive a payoff of “x”, where x is a numerical value tied to the satisfaction players derive from the TCG. Raising this payoff for a novel TCG lowers the threshold “q” to get people to play the game.
However, TCGs add a new level of complexity to the network diffusion model in these games are always evolving and thus, old and established TCGs still have an opportunity to change their payoff in a network and retain/entice new players in the face of newer competition. TCGs usually evolve by introducing new cards which add complexity and new elements to the game. As a result of this constant shifting payoff, a single TCG rarely achieves a full cascade through a network.
| Fig. 1 | Player 2 | ||
| TCG 1 | TCG 2 | ||
| Player 1 | TCG 1 | x1, x1 | 0,0 |
| TCG 2 | 0,0 | x2, x2 |
source:
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/networks-book-ch19.pdf