It's always exciting to see a titan of industry enter a new market. If you've not heard, Disney recently announced via their table top partner, Ravensburger, that they will be entering the TCG market. There are a lot of games that have come and gone in the long history of trading card games. I think Ravensburg has the IP to make something successful but maybe not the expertise that has kept few games at the top. The game must accomplish a few important things to be successful long term, and a lot can be learned from the current behemoths of the TCG world.

Image: Ravensburger and Disnery

It's possible to debate which games stand as the pillars of the trading card game industry, but to me at least, it's clear there are 3 games that stand above the rest and have some uniqueness that keeps them on top. Magic: The Gathering, the father of TCG design, continues to stand the test of time with its willingness to innovate and unparalleled game play. Pokemon Trading Card Game is probably the closest analog to what Lorcana may end up being, with its reliance on a strong intellectual property. Ironically, PTCG was first designed and developed by MTG's developer, Wizards of the Coast, so it also has a strong design foundation despite now straying far from the original implementation. Yu-Gi-Oh! is, in my opinion, the final pillar of trading card games because its success largely comes from the TV show of the same name which brings players to the game. At the upcoming D23, I'm interested in seeing which axis Ravensburger is planning to attack. It's possible to do all 3 things these other card games do with pockets as deep as Disney's, but will that stretch them too thin and would it be wiser to do fewer things better?

From the outset, Ravensburger will have its work cut out for it in order for this game to be successful and I don't think their priorities should necessarily be what most people expect. For example, I don't actually think they need to make a particularly competitive game. Trying to do something like the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour for Lorcana is not likely to yield the results they want. The target audience for Disney products isn't people looking to prove they are the best, it's likely children and parents looking to have a good time. The best way to approach the situation is more likely akin to the Pokemon Trading Card Game which leverages people's love for the IP. Nintendo knows which characters are popular and can help sell more packs and subsequently make those characters more often to satisfy collectors of the game. What I mean by this is don't make a single Mickey card and seldomly include him in sets. They need to find a place for a new Mickey every year. They should also consider how PTCG monetizes its characters. Charizard and Pikachu appear frequently in sets at a high enough rarity to sell packs but still a low enough rarity that collectors find buying booster packs to be worthwhile. It's important, especially for a new game, for core game pieces to be easily accessible and for premium versions to be rarer and help sell product.

The next hurdle I think Ravensburger will need to overcome is how to structure their set releases. Are they going to go the PTCG route and base their sets around new IP releases? How are they going to include enough characters that people care about? How are they going to assure their products have wide appeal? This is one of the potential strengths of partnering with Disney: being able to find out which characters appeal to certain demographics and which do not. With that information, Ravensburger can make sure a good spread ends up in the same set, giving it that wider appeal they need. If we see things like the Star Wars set, then the X-Men set, and the Mickey set, they're going to run into problems very quickly. If they go the route of including mashups like Buzz Lightyear and the Mandalorian, they could see long term sustained success. Something like Capcom's digital card game, Teppen, could be the best route forward for incorporating character team-ups and keeping player interest.

Ravensburger will also need to analyze what went wrong with previous attempts to create the game world they want to make. Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom was a collectable card game that allowed you to battle villains in Disney theme parks. The game had several shortcomings: a low number of unique cards to collect, hard to get individual characters you may like, gameplay limited to in-park attractions. That can be solved pretty easily by just making more cards and making sure they're available in big box retail stores like Target and Walmart. The other game to think about is Disney Infinity, which I believe suffered from a number of issues, but one of the biggest ones was tying each release to a specific franchise (Pixar/Disney then Marvel then Star Wars) instead of integrating them all together. That strategy precludes people that like Disney products but don't care for those specific properties from wanting to spend money on the game. All of the toys-to-life games suffered from similar fatigue problems so it's not clear to me that a more diverse lineup of characters on release would have been able to save Disney Infinity.

My final food for thought are things I expect Ravensburger has already taken care of and ultimately shouldn't be real issues. Ravensburger needs to be able to print the cards with reasonable quality, cost, and in numbers great enough to satisfy early demand. The company makes board games and presumably they have the logistics in place to print and package booster boxes of cards. Next, they must be able to create in-store incentives to host events for players to participate in organized play at their local game store. This isn't easy to accomplish, but a common approach is via promo card distribution which may lead to more early adopters. Lastly, they must come out swinging but also not burn everything at the beginning. I find it hard to believe the first set won't have a Mickey and Minnie card but they need to be cognizant of saving some exciting characters for later and having a content pipeline that supports Darth Vader and Cinderella in set 2, Spider-man and Tinkerbell in Set 3, etc. Overall, I am cautiously optimistic about what this will do to the TCG landscape; but, I can't speculate further until we see more information at D23.