"Now in its ninth edition, Magic not only dominates card games and the paper gaming hobby; it also looms large in the history of games on the internet. Magic reshaped net gaming, and vice versa. This caught Wizards off-guard. Adkison the engineer was, by the standards of the early 1990s, remarkably net-savvy; he secured wizards.com the instant he started his company, long before most publishers had ever heard of a domain name. Yet the net confounded his expectations about Magic's players, and the players in turn bulldozed Wizards' early plans for the DeckMaster series."

Trading (Web) Cards

"This is why a Boeing engineer revolutionized the game field and is now worth upwards of $50 million, whereas I scrounge a hand-to-mouth existence writing for online game magazines."

This is not true. In order to make money, you have to have money. You had no means to publish a card game so your mind would naturally be dismissive of the idea.

Oh, pshaw. He'd have gotten venture capital.

Reminds me of the in-game card mini-games in video games, starting with Final Fantasy VIII. One that I had particular fun with was Xenocards in Xenosaga.

"SOE has already moved into virtual asset sales with its Station Exchange, launched for EverQuest II in July 2006. Online card games are a natural extension of this idea"

Natural indeed... why no mention of the fact that Chron X was on The Station for a few years before the two gracefully parted ways?

"Worlds Apart founder and president Scott Martins claimed a successful online card game can generate an average of $70 per player each month."

$800+ per year ON AVERAGE sounds excessive; I suspect a typo. Maybe 70/month for the hardcore section of the player base, or 70/year average, or 70 per player lifetime average.

Either that, or Blizzard is leaving a truly obscene amount of money on the table by not adding micropayments in WoW...

Mentioned on page 6 is Sanctum, originally created by Digital Addiction and now owned and run by Nioga. Like MTGOit is a CCG, yet adds an even more interesting twist in that it throws a strategic boardgame side to it. Found at www.playsanctum.com! Check it out sometime! It has made a niche for itself among the online gaming community and is heading into its 10th year!

Not mentioned? "The first online trading card game was Chron X in May 1997, followed by Sanctum and several more over the years." My article even offers a link to Sanctum's Wikipedia entry.

But I didn't know Sony's station had once carried Chron X. Thanks for the info.

My apologies! I missed it there and I corrected my post.

You might like to take a look at Combat Cards: The Trading Card Game Of Dueling Warriors In The Second Life Virtual World. Combat Cards allows Second Life residents to buy virtual cards from vendors in Second Life and load them in to virtual decks which provide the players a hidden heads up display and also animate their avatars so spectators see the players fighting each other. Our web site at http://combatcards.co.uk provides rules, screenshots, videos, scores automatically sent to the site from Second Life and links to teleport you directly to the Combat Cards arenas. As Second Life is a user created world, Combat Cards is naturally a user created virtual trading card game: residents provided the game design, script code, sound effects, animations and the graphics for the cards which feature shots of Second Life avatars. We're currently planning to release our first horror themed expansion at a Halowe'en launch party in Second Life and we hope to see you there.