[Ed: We are pleased to welcome funktion as a regular contributor to Hex Vault! This is the first of, hopefully, many contributions to come. Outside of Hex Vault, you can also catch funktion’s videos on his YouTube channel, funktionfails, and he frequently posts on the official CZE Hex TCG/MMO Forums. Welcome, Funktion!]
At one point in time going into the local game store to play Magic (MTG) was one of my only regular sources of social interaction. I expect the same could be said for others who spend most of their free time playing MTG or any other trading card game for that matter. Local game stores weren’t just places to go and sling cardboard, they were also places to socialize. Eventually I became increasingly involved with work and couldn’t play regularly at the shop. In my case, if I can’t participate in a hobby regularly then I have very little interest in it at all. That’s where Hex should really shine for me, I can play a well made and very deep card game on my own time! With that said, there are a number of hurdles which Cryptozoic will face since Hex is operating in a purely digital space. I’d like to address those hurdles in my first article here on Hex Vault. While we’re waiting for more details to be revealed about the game I’d like to explore some of these dilemmas that come with a digital only card game and look at ways in which Hex can come out for the better. In today’s article we’ll be looking at a few of the situations which arise with the lack of a physical location…
Local Game Stores (LGS) Provide a Market for Cards
This aspect is fairly straightforward, and one I feel that comes out in Hex’s favor in almost every instance. The card singles market is driven by game stores, whether the transaction takes place on the ground floor or over the internet they are the ones laying the infrastructure for the buying and selling of cards. Even when it comes to sealed product, pre-con decks or promotional materials; it is the game store that takes care of the sales and distribution, not the actual producer of the game.
In Hex’s case there is no middle man, you are buying product directly from either Cryptozoic or from other players through the auction house. The only casualty I see here is for the people who enjoy trading cards with someone else in person. There are some people out there that get a lot of enjoyment from this, but most of the people putting their binders out on display at a shop are not necessarily doing so because they just happen to be nice people trying to get you what you want.
Digital vs Physical: Highly favoring digital. The players and the producers both come out on top. The players are getting a cheaper product; meanwhile, the producers have lower production & overhead (shipping etc) costs. Furthermore, there will be fewer people trying to make an arbitrage off of the producers.
LGS’s Create and Maintain Interest in the Game
During my stint as a regular player at my LGS, I was always amazed by the number of players that would show up for a pre-release. There’s nothing quite like being able to crack open a set for the first time and play with it before it’s even on sale. Many of these players would come back the following week, buy a box of cards, and then not set foot in the shop until the following pre-release. The average weekend might see fifty or sixty different people come in and play, but on the weekend of a pre-release that number easily eclipsed four or five hundred. To think that weekend that the same thing was happening at hundreds of other stores across the globe is pretty staggering. Another thing that storefronts have going for them is that they drive interest just by being there. It doesn’t take much for someone to just walk in the door buy a one pack of cards for three bucks and become hooked from that moment on.
How does Hex make up for that “gap”? It’s definitely a big one, but video games have come a long way in the last few years. Streaming and webcasting have absolutely blown up, there’s all kinds of room for Cryptozoic to work with there. If it weren’t in a weird grey area, I would say that they developers could join in on pre-release tournaments and play alongside the fans while streaming the whole thing. I would be pretty excited if round 3 of the day I found myself paired up with Cory, Ben, or any other of the familiar faces. On the flip side, should Hex have a presence within storefronts? I’m not sure that I can really say either way. The “OH!!! What’s that?” factor would definitely be high, but considering that the game is digital only the additional costs of tablets or pc’s is certainly a non-zero. I don’t see any other way than the store having to foot the bill for the hardware considering they would be responsible for it if something broke. Where’s the incentive for them to jump through such a large hoop when they are probably unlikely to profit much from doing so?
Digital vs Physical: Slightly favoring physical. There’s really nothing that a digital card game can do that will get it to operate on the mass scale that a game like Magic the Gathering can. You know what though, that’s fine, all the distribution and tournament operation makes up for quite a large cost. I might be looking at this with rose-tinted glasses, but Hex isn’t competing with MTG, it doesn’t need to. From my viewpoint it is competing with Magic Online (a completely different topic for another day perhaps), as well as a number of video games which are outside of the TCG genre in general.
I want to make a another note here… I feel like Cryptozoic is poised to make a truly revolutionary game. If they manage to ride the marketing surge to victory, they could very easily be the next League of Legends. Having lower operational costs from operating in a strictly digital market could be a massive boon.
LGS’s Serve as a Hub for Social Interaction
Well, I’ve come full circle back to where I started. Most people playing to a store on a regular basis are doing so because ultimately they enjoy playing with other people face to face. With Hex you’re much less likely that you’ll form a long last friendship that continues to develop outside of the game. However, not all social interaction is good. You’re also a lot less likely to get your entire collection stolen out of your backpack while you’re looking the other way. You’re not going to get your cards torn up by your opponent when they lose to you in a fit of rage. You’re not going to get rules lawyered. You’re not going to go to a tournament where the tournament operator underestimated the interest and booked a 150 person hall at the Hilton when they should have opted for a 400 occupancy venue. This last one is a big one for me, you’re not going to have to deal with the anti-social behavior and misogyny that run rampant in the culture (at the very worst you’ll be able to mute/ignore people online).
Digital vs Physical: No preference. Now I’ve had some great times playing at card shops, but by and large those times were with people who I already knew beforehand. There’s a handful of friendships I made that kept going even after I stopped playing, but by and large I shared nothing in common with most of the people I was meeting. To me where Hex has the opportunity to come out on top is that you’re not actually tethered to a card shop. With the aid of a handful of tablets you and your friends could meet at a park, library, bar, or even yes a card shop and play a couple of times a month in person. If playing in person is still something you crave, it will still totally be within your means to do so with Hex.
So in case you’re not familiar with me yet… I’m incredibly excited about this game. I think Cryptozoic is really pushing the boundaries here in many aspects, in some cases they’re rehashing something ancient but in their own unique way, in other ways they’ll be trailblazing and coming up with something nobody could have ever expected. While some people might see the things I’ve mentioned in this article as drawbacks, instead I see them as obstacles. Hex is not the first game to come across many of the these obstacles; however, it is poised to approach them from a new angle. In many cases they have the potential to turn these obstacles into advantages, traditions can be turned on their heads and perhaps push the game (not to mention TCG’s in general) in a new and exciting direction. A week from now, I’ll be on my way to GenCon to get some hands on time with the game and hopefully some face to face time with the developers. This is just the beginning, it’s so exciting to be a part of it! I really hope you’ve been enjoying the content I’ve been putting out over the last few weeks, I really enjoy sharing it with everyone and so long as people seem interested I’ll keep it flowing.
