ORGANIZED PLAY (Errata Text)

repeat after me it is not the job of the fans to maintain the fan base now don't get me wrong fans certainly have their place in raising awareness for a trading card game spreading hype teaching new players and maintaining wikis and fan pages but to place so much of your marketing reach on telling the fans to get out there and spread the word is irresponsible and lazy it is up to you the game developer to not only produce a quality game that fans will get excited for but to make sure that your game gets out there and fan response is little more than a minor tool for that there are other more substantial ways to promote your game a successful kickstarter can be leveraged into meetings with the distributors who provide product for local game stores far more effectively than a store-by-store campaign proof of interest is important but it is again something you need to earn but beyond that is maintaining interest getting your games into stores is one thing like with the marketing campaign and social media presence getting people into those stores to buy that game is another and a lot of it relies on the social aspects of trading card games now i know this might sound silly considering we are on year two of the friggin apocalypse but there was once a time where game stores actually had spaces with like tables and chairs and stuff set aside specifically for people to come and play games with each other wild right man i miss those days and it's here where organized play comes into play man i could have done that better hello and welcome to errata text the follow-up to the seven deadly trading card game sins where we look at the important aspects of game design organized play as opposed to casual play is a gaming format created and distributed by a game's developers where game stores host local events for players to gather at and participate in often with special prizes that players can earn by winning tournaments accumulating points or simply as a reward for showing up to play but of course a lot goes into organized play it's an important tool to help a game catch the updraft of its early release hype but here's the thing while it's important that it must be quickly implemented and robust it actually doesn't need to be that complex at least not at first so a quick warning before i go any further i am going to be lifting the hood on organized play and that might have the effect of removing some of the magic from it so if you want to stay in the dark about what goes on behind the scenes with organized play this might not be the video for you we good okay at the end of the day organized play is a business transaction it is an offer to stores host an event for our game at your store and our fans will show up at your store to play at the event and buy our game from you a local game store's time and space is limited so you have to respect that and prove that your organized play is worth the trouble because here's something not everybody knows about organized play while it's usually free for players to participate in it's not free for the stores who hosted them these organized play kits don't get sent to stores out of the goodness of the publisher's hearts they have to pay for them on top of providing the time and space to play the same applies to things like demo kits and the like most cost the stores money to have show up even if they say they are free for players remember when i made that aside in the unmixable attribute sin where i glowered at the notion of players demanding that a store host organized play events while buying all of their cards from ebay this is why there are few things that a game store hates more than receiving demands from someone who never buys anything it's one of the reasons draft play and release events are so popular participating in these events requires you to buy product after all but that's not the only way to get people into stores most organized play also offers prize support usually in the form of special cards and premium tokens two more advanced kit like playmats card boxes and even little trophies and promo figures yes yes i won these i play games i'm good at them i win i promise this is what i mean by robust but not complex you don't have to launch your game with a championship point system and grand prix lineup all ready to go merely enough structure to get people in the habit of playing your game in a store yes it's also a habituation thing like a login bonus or a weekly coffee card but hey at least it's a social experience that brings people together now when it comes to actually running these sorts of organized play programs most companies tend to be a bit hands-off as to the event itself stores have their own ways of doing business and running events that make them and their customers comfortable is not really your place to interfere most of the organized play kits i've gotten contain little more than instructions on how to run a swiss tournament with some exceptions for prize point distribution or order of card use for campaign based games and yes this can include stores that charge money to participate in organized play like i've said that's their prerogative and the stores that i've been to that charge for their organized play events tend to provide a prize pool from the product they have for sale integrating the promise sales directly into their tournaments similar to those draft and release events i was talking about earlier pokemon's own event guides lay out the possibility of charging for play with the addition of store provided prizes you really don't need to squash this kind of behavior unless it becomes rampant and overpriced otherwise there's little more than a need for accountability for the sets include a disclaimer on the order form and packaging that prohibits resale and encourage retailers to take some snapshots of the events such as people playing and the event winner for quote unquote social media use with the unstated purpose being to make sure that the kids are being used as indicated rather than just getting sold off which yeah i confess i might have done a bit of a naughty when i purchased these organized play kits however all of these kits are several years old so it's not like i'm depriving other people the opportunity to play by purchasing these second hand so with that out of the way let's move on to the big question which organized play kit is right for you as i said before there are a lot of possibilities when it comes to how you structure your organized play support but what matters in the end is that something exists to help encourage people to purchase their product in an actual store and continue to play your game now while i'm sure you would love to make your play kits as amazing as possible with free deck boxes and weekly play mat giveaways which by the way if you do give away playmats try to make sure that they're shipped rolled and not folded because problem is these things are expensive expensive to make and expensive to ship and as i said before those costs get passed on to the stores who might not be too enthusiastic dropping a hundred dollars a week for an organized play kit that they cannot sell and which may or may not get used i mean by all means feel free to go nuts with whatever price support you use in events you host personally like at conventions or personal store visits and hype meets you could give away cards deck boxes play mats cell phones all expenses paid vacations you're on the hook for all of it after all maybe i'll do a better video about event promotion and convention etiquette in the future though gdc gave us a good chat on the subject over here link in the description but when it comes to widespread organized play where the costs get passed on to others a gentler touch is called for and price support has its limits by far the simplest and most common form of price support is promo cards a little packet of cards is by far the most cost effective form of organized play most know what to do with a packet labeled op tournament kit that contains 17 copies of one card and three copies of another these sorts of kits are so inexpensive to make that tossing them in for free with a store's order can be considered an effective sunk cost just an aside here not sure how a lot of card game distributors do it but a lot of companies tend to present order sweeteners like display stands for a large initial order and things like countertop displays and organized play kits are a fantastic order incentive to include on your initial set tossing one in with every order unprompted proportional to the amount purchased is a great way to give a game store an answer to the folks who show up and ask if the game is gonna get organized play i mean they got sent a kit might as well give it a try and if after that they ask you for another kit send them one just be sure they provide the receipts on subsequent kits with those photos i mentioned earlier back on the subject of promo cards i talked about these a bit in my rarity iceberg video and they can be a sticky subject for example pokemon used to make a lot of exclusive promo cards like my chain reaction eevee a card that would still be considered really good today however like i detailed in my rarity iceberg video this does mean there's a chance that you can make a very limited run of a card that is necessary for competitive play like tropical beach there is also a very good chance that this ev card is older than you and if they ever made it legal for play again i get an unfair advantage for just being alive in the late 90s so modern procedure with these sorts of promo cards is to make them spiffier versions of cards in the current standard rotation with alternate art foil treatment or special stamps added on now these can be neat on their own a standard card in a unique art style would certainly draw attention but the problem here is that the cards still need to be appealing on their own by far pokemon's most popular organized play rewards are the trainer cards and energy cards things that are in demand but not scarce another neat thing pokemon does is where you get a new stage of a pokemon's evolution each week or month where you participate where you basically build up towards a full set to get the final evolution something more recently phased out much to my dismay is that you could also get stamp cards that through participation and earning points lets you earn a gym badge usually a patch or pin as an added reward this one right here honestly is a masterpiece i like to think its title is tempting fate while we're on the subject of pokemon there are largely two categories of organized play league play and tournament play league play such as what gets seen with pokemon is a system where the focus is participation over winning basically people show up to a store do some trades play some casual matches and get a promo card just for showing up now i know there will be loads of people out there who are just giggling at the idea of participation rewards however something to keep in mind the first step to winning is showing up it's a deliberately low stakes environment where players of all ages and skill levels can enjoy themselves and get some neat prizes hardcore players also enjoy league play as it gives them a low stakes environment to test out strategies and trade for the cards they need to finish their deck maybe buy some singles from behind the counter while also helping out new players leagues are also an opportunity to have a bit of fun with your game where you can include rule changes or new scenarios to play out for a day these are more commonly done with miniatures games as shifting the terrain or objective to match the rules is a bit easier one thing i wish we could see is league kits for co-op games like arkham horror where a league kit would be a source of a new campaign to play through with a new chapter occurring every week or so do it well enough and a store could build a collection of stories to play out weekly or monthly as reruns most organized play kits tend to ship quarterly tied in with set releases hence a good thing to throw in with a store order like i said before tournament kits tend to be one shots where the contents of the kit are meant to be spent in a single event while league kits are designed to last the entire quarter through a slow trickle of content though monthly versions of both exist as well a pokemon league kit for example contains a slim and basic assortment of prize support meant to last for three months where rewards are based on amount of monthly participation with each player's first week each month earning them a promo card with increased participation letting them earn a bonus by the end of the season others like dragon ball produce the promo cards as assortments which come in little blind packs making it more of a booster design now that can be kind of frustrating randomizing your promo cards like this but it does have the beneficial effect of allowing you to stretch out an essentially identical kit across an entire month for example if this kit contained 32 of these blind packs but you only get eight players per week who show up hey that is four weeks worth of promo cards right there that can be easily used with every player it's a simple kit cheap to produce cheap to ship and with a lot of stamina where the store has to do little more than provide space hand out some cards and snap a couple pictures it's meant to encourage people to pop in from time to time to play however it is also admittedly a little boring i mean promo cards are nice but they're just shiny versions of cards i can get normally so what happens when we up the support stakes when a lot of people think of fancier organized play rewards they are talking about deck boxes sleeves acrylic tokens and play mats these are common tournament rewards and this kind of accessory swag is seen as far more desirable than a promo card they are also however a lot more expensive cards are cheap they're flat they pack flat they ship flat and they weigh next to nothing however when you get into the realm of acrylic tokens deck boxes or playmats those are a lot more costly to produce and ship expenses which again are usually passed on to the venue there's a reason why the fancy price kits are usually connected to a set release event the stores that order these release event kits will get their money back on the built-in product sales those events carry still there is no denying that useful kit like sleeves boxes and playmats are powerful incentives to get people to show for organized play hence why it's generally not a bad idea to prepare an organized play kit to tie in with a set release making it so that places can order these kits roughly the same time that that new set becomes available many kits can be put together with distributors as well if your goal goes further than promo cards and those are also things that distributors can allocate out of most of the play kits i've gotten the vast majority include a setup for between 8 and 32 players with a set of prizes for a tournament's top four top two and winner with the winner getting the most expensive item usually a playmat of which just one is provided not to say this is the only way to do it some stores extend these kits by giving a tournament winner choice of one of the prizes with each week's winner taking one top prize until they run out again their prerogative some slimmer kit designs have fancy versions of game components as prizes instead of boxes and mats providing a slick upgrade as a play reward without making the kit huge and heavy the sorts of things you get in a pokemon elite trainer box with the dice and status tokens are the sorts of things that make good league prizes and pokemon has done dice as prizes at their more competitive events though if you're going to do promotional dice do make sure that they are tournament legal which would be see-through with rounded edges prizes need to be just as practical as they are cool which does remind me of probably the worst kit i've gotten out of any of them the star wars destiny spirits of rebellion kit the kit itself has a league format kinda like a fun fest where players perform a series of tasks to win a set of three promo cards now on its own this is great it encourages people to participate and engage and is sort of a scavenger hunt to earn neat prizes which on its surface is something that gamers tend to really enjoy however the problem comes from the cards themselves their special extended art promos written in the star wars font which i think was something developed recently to increase overseas brand appeal and yeah that's certainly neat but how am i supposed to play with cards that i can't read i mean i know exactly what this card is it's overkill but you get my point i remember there was also this weird trend where they made textless promos where it was the card printed with its full art but with no effect text on it anywhere which again is cool as you get the full scope of the art but it also renders them useless as playable cards especially if the original cards have complicated effect text it's something kinda neat but completely impractical so yes another thing to keep in mind when developing this kind of prize support is its effect on practical function i mean cards that already lack effect text like blue eyes white dragon or most resource cards would thrive with extended art versions but for the most part their form over function to a negative degree now the fact that these promo cards are written in a fictional language is certainly a problem but the second problem with these promo cards is you see how these cards all have a list of numbers and symbols going down the sides well that's in reference to their companion die a companion die that is required in order to use these cards did the kit come with these dice of course not worse still is that there are plenty of destiny cards that actually do not require any companion dice at all which obviously would have made for better prizes this has the effect of rendering the contents of this play kit full on useless even if you did know what the card says the missing companion dice renders them truly unplayable another big problem with a lot of the fantasy flight promo kits i got is that they appear to have different dimensions from the standard cards for sale kind of a big whoops as it makes it easy to tell where certain cards are in your deck if you don't use card sleeves this was likely caused by having their base sets and promo sets produced at different print shops and some of my fantasy flight products even state that quality can be an issue for their more print-on-demand products still a form of qa to keep an eye out for however by far the most extravagant of my organized play kits is this legend of the five ring stronghold kit admittedly incomplete in this edition but it is a truly enormous kit which is designed to act as both an enormous 32-player league kit but also a major tournament kit loaded to the gills with weird stuff we're talking promo cards playmats metal tokens plastic reminder cards acrylic dials woodcut markers yeah it's a lot this is no doubt an expensive kit one made for the game's release to try to generate as much hype as possible and maybe a bit too gaudy for its own good not to mention it's a kit from a major company bringing back one of the longest running card games of all time so some opulence isn't maybe out of the ordinary but the fact that none of their other games have ever used these sorts of kits outside of like legit state championships should probably tell you something i mean not even the game of thrones championship set gets this gaudy well maybe for the plaque although one thing of note that's interesting about this kit is the patronage card i don't know how many of you are familiar with store sweeteners like rush packs or buy a box promos designed to incentivize purchases inside an actual brick and mortar store rather than from a major retailer or online but a patronage card is meant to be that similar kind of reward which is tied to an organized play kit by tying it to the organized play kit it does guarantee that it will wind up in a brick and mortar store rather than an online retailer giveaway cards aren't actually a good idea in general the best way to get somebody interested in your card game is to get your cards into their hands and a little card slipped in with anybody who shows up to the store to buy something is a fantastic first step to getting them to try out your game but yeah these stronghold kits are at least a hundred dollars which is enough to basically offset sales margins and i'm sure it did for enough stores that these aren't exactly commonplace anymore i mean could you imagine if a store dropped a hundred dollars for this massive space-hogging kit and nobody showed up to play so yeah most tournament kits tend to be a lot more restrained and low risk they have a decent stack of promo cards a handful of useful game accessories and maybe something fancy like a mat for the winner some keep it slim by limiting it to a few acrylic game tokens on top of the cards while others have gone so far as to include the shipping box as one of the prizes in an act that i think gets a little too cute but the strangest one i've seen comes to us again from legend of the five rings the version made by aeg this time it's a pretty typical set with a handful of promo cards and some deck storage tins but the bizarre thing is that this set shipped in a metal lunchbox and it's like this huge behemoth of a lunchbox is this like the lunchbox that the mafiosi kid brings to school listen i know it smells like whiskey and gunpowder but i assure you the only thing in that lunchbox it's one really big hoagie sandwich seriously why did aeg ever shift away from cardboard so that's how one can assemble a basic kit to encourage stores to support your game it's just as much about presenting these stores with something cheap and simple enough to execute as it is providing a draw for players and finding the proper place to land that balance is its own bit of work however when it comes to organized play a lot of people think of the sorts of things the largest card games get up to regional events grand prix and world championships with big often monetary prizes in fact the reason i think a lot of games hesitate on rolling out organized play is because they think such a system is required which again it isn't though do remember events you host yourself can have layouts and prizes as extravagant as your budget allows and can work as a sort of world championship arrangement a lot of games do this limiting the big shindigs to cross-country gaming conventions or stores with high sales volume with a final gathering that the winners of the previous tournaments get flown out to this is probably the peak budgetary ability of a game that isn't run by a major corporation but back to the subject of high grade organized play this is not something to step into lightly after all there is no sense in hosting a grand prix without an audience it sounds like a cool aspiration to have a point system and leaderboards and hardcore official scoring events with big monetary prizes at the end but it is also a massive headache across the board and not just financially when it comes to things like what pokemon and dragon ball have with official player numbers and accounts it like the request for photos serves more the purpose of being an accountability thing where game stores will have to send in a sheet of player numbers and tournament results to prove that they are using their kits rather than taking photos participation in winner points are also a common thing attached to these but this is where the migraines really dig in the big thing is data entry even if a simple sign up sheet is enough for players to jot down their personal account numbers to show they participated somebody either whoever is working at the store running the event or whoever you put in charge of event management is gonna have to type those numbers in somewhere to keep track of everything let alone the sort of system you'd have to put in place to keep all this stuff together which is an aspect of computer programming and design i can't even get into understanding adding tournament victory points actually makes it worse as a whole new set of accountability factors comes into play to prevent players from buying up point cards or for players to pool their points like burma shave cans to game the system when using a system like dragon ball super which has scannable cards the more cogs you add to the machine the more places that machine can break down so a point system like this really isn't something to get into until your game is doing numbers large enough that you can hire some people to keep tabs on this sort of thing not to say a point system that can be redeemed for small rewards is out of the question at least in that case gaming the system doesn't manipulate rankings not sure why these fell out of fashion but redemption programs equivalent to box top prizes used to be a mainstay of the industry where people save pack rappers or insert cards and send them in to earn promo cards or special prizes but this is something i think a lot of people need to understand about organized play a more bare bones approach with relatively hands-off events and cards for prizes might be all that a fledgling game can handle in its inception and like i keep saying that's fine think of these sorts of card games as like indie video game developers you wouldn't put the same expectations onto them as you would a aaa company if a game is put out by a major publisher one with plenty of distribution and manufacturing ties by all means you should feel that a more aggressive budget for organized play should come with it right out of the gate but a first-time dev dropping an untested game into an already saturated market likely doesn't have the sheer capital to launch a similar endeavor in which case the quality of the game and what support can be done matters a whole lot more still to bring this all back around it is the responsibility of the producers to keep people excited for the game and its future hopefully i've demonstrated some cost-effective ways to cultivate a store-centric community that's as easy for them to implement as it is for you an online presence and fan support are important but at the end of the day you've made the game and you need to get people together to play that game in order for it to thrive keep that in mind and you too can build a better card game join us next time on errata text [Music]

Channel: Kohdok

Views: 31,577

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Id: b38n-kKxRtc

Length: 25min 46sec (1546 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021