Advantages of Digital Card Games
I hope you’re all having a great 2023. I’ve been busy but still want to show some love to Pojo. Today I’ll discuss why I’ve been playing card games digitally for the past 10+ years.
1) Affordability. Yes, some can be expensive, but usually not as much as a real life card game. And there are some digital card games that are affordable or have a totally viable free to play model.
2) Minimalism. Being able to keep your whole collection in a tablet and/or laptop rather than having several shoeboxes and binders of cards.
3) Less micromanagement. You don’t have to constantly worry about selling/trading cards before they lose value. You can use a search feature instead of scouring your collection to find a specific card.
Note: Some of these points are totally subjective. Some people love having collectibles and owning something physical that won’t get taken away from them if servers get shut down. And some people take pride in micromanaging their collection, just like how some people take pride in cleaning and waxing a car.
4) Cards can be changed. If a card is rebalanced or reworked, every digital copy will be changed at once. Cards don’t need to be reprinted.
5) No ruling disputes. Cards resolve by themselves. This means no need to memorize/google long lists of rulings, or wait for a judge; this makes games faster. This also means the rules are the same in every game; cards don’t work differently from one tournament to the next depending on who is judging.
6) No cheating. It’s not possible to: Add/take away cards from your deck or side deck, or swap cards between them before the match starts. Have extra copies of cards. Bribe judges. Mark cards. etc. (Yugioh was notorious for this)
7) More game mechanics are possible. Cards can have effects where they create other cards or morph into other cards. Tokens can be more easily created.
8) Not location dependent. What if you don’t have a hobby/comic shop with tournaments nearby? Especially true for less densely populated areas. But even in dense areas, stores can go out of business or stop hosting your card game (Big ones like Magic are safe, but some of the others may be harder to find real life hobby groups)
One advantage of physical card games is socializing with real-life people. This is a completely valid point. While you can meet good friends online, there is something that’s just magical about having some place to go every weekend where you feel loved; and going to larger events with friends is really fun too.
Age may be a factor. Younger people have highschool/college social groups that play physical card games. But many (though not all) people in their 30’s-40’s+ prefer the convenience and low-maintenance of digital, as they prefer to focus their time on career and/or family, or on other hobbies.
