LICENSING! (The Seven Deadly Sins of TCG Design Part 5!) 

"It's hard to pin down what Star Wars really is." Someone finally has the stones to say it.

Hearthstone is based on the Warcraft franchise which has been going since 1994, but even they have to invent their own characters, stories and mechanics apart from WoW. It's to the point where the Hearthstone world is like the Saturday morning cartoon version of the gritty war thriller World of Warcraft.

Let's make a card game out of public domain properties: Hamlet facing Achilles...

I would love to see a card game that commits all the seven deadly sins of TCG design.

Slight correction: Not having Baby Yoda merchandise ready on launch was an intentional move, pushed by Jon Favreau. Merchandise runs leave plenty of room for leaks, and Favreau wanted the character to be a surprise.

Personally, as a consumer, nothing tells me something is cheap like screenshots. I appreciate stock assets way more than screen shots. I have a few failed Anime TCGs and they all use lots and lots of screen shots from the anime.

Funny thing is the best star wars card game is yugioh with the kozmo arctype

In Yugioh, the Kozmo archetype is a series of cards influenced by both Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz. Not only was it popular with the player base, but the cards themselves saw play for a lot longer than many expected.

Just an interesting tidbit: Star Wars actually has a set in Weiss Schwarz, but because of Destiny being made at around the same time, Bushiroad was denied distribution rights for it outside of Japan, making Star Wars one of the few sets in the game that are banned from North American JP language tournaments.

Hey, the art style thing. Pokemon does varying art styles alot for its tcg. And the yarn style pokemon are nice.

Licensing Fees killed Iron Crown Enterprises. When the new Lord of the Rings movies were coming out, Tolkien's estates wanted almost triple the fee. When ICE couldn't pay, the license went to Decipher, makers of several Star Wars CCGs. Ironically, the same thing happened to Decipher with the original Star Wars TCG. When the license came up, Lucasfilm upped the price and the only company that could afford it was Wizards, who failed completely. Ironically, there was a demo for a Murder, She Wrote card game at 2002 Dragon Con. It played similarly to Mythos where investigators had to collect clues to solve a mystery. Unfortunately, you could also damage your opponent investigators and games devolved into murdering each other by falling down stairs or off ladders. It was something the game creators didn't think of because Jessica Fletcher would never do such a thing, but gamers would.

In the Pokemon TCG, when a card art is credited to Ken Sugimori, then it is not just A stock artwork but THE stock artwork; Sugimori draws the final character designs, that all other depictions are based on.

If Disney ever makes a card game they will (or should at least) just go full on Kingdom Hearts and use ALL their IPs in a single game. The only problem i can see is that if they do they will with 90% probability fall into the Good/evil split that kills Star Wars and LotR games. Personally I'd go for a softer divide with Fairy tales/Super heros/Sci-fy as "colors/grouping" with a resource penalty of some kind if you mix and match

Technically the Pokémon TCG pays Licencing to the Pokémon Company, Who in turn pay the Pokémon TCG to make a card game for them.

5:46 "Blue Beetle Ted Kord"? That's Jaime Reyes from the Batman the brave and the bold cartoon!

Amazing, as usual! My only complaint/suggestion is that this should be a playlist on the channel.

1:16 YOOOOOO, that footage is from chilean tcg called Myths & Legends . The power creep was horrendous before it was shut down but came back like 10 years after with many tournaments and events. It's an interesting story in what you should and shouldn't do when you run a card game and how to make a comeback many years after its death

"Is The Y-Wing is the greatest vehicle in the series?! Yes." Ah. I see you, too, are a man of culture

4:57 Funny enough, Cardfight!! Vanguard uses screenshots or stock images for collaboration sets like Touken Ranbu & recently Bang Dream. Vanguard's Bang Dream booster SOLD OUT within the first 3 days in Japan & players want an expansion. This coming from a game that doesn't allow attribute mixing.

Warhammer Combat Cards (used to be an actual game, now is a mobile game) uses photographs of models for all the card art, and it's really one of the best parts of it. Especially some of the models that are obviously old and weird.

9:45: The Star Wars CCG only died because Decipher lost the license. It was still moderately popular when it was taken. The fans of it were amused/dismayed when the 3rd game failed. It maintained a small but dedicated fanbase for quite some time. It still has some fans but they are now too spread out. Young Jedi was also Decipher, and ended quickly for the same reason partly, but it also didn't do well.

"The Y-Wing is the Dodge Rambler of the Rebellion. You get to your destination, but why?"

With the Star Wars card games you forgot about one that for some reason I still own, Star Wars Jedi Knight

Been loving this series, came here as soon as I saw the notification!

Loving the "Mitos y Leyendas" little appereance, it was the TCG that made me get into this since it was a really cheap and local TCG in the 2000's, the only lifedecking game i'll ever love, it's shitty though ashdgdgsusf

Meanwhile, the Decipher Star Wars CCG is still going, almost 3 decades later.

so essentially is the same problems as licenced videogames except worse?

Quickly reading the title, I was excited that there would be a Seven Deadly Sins TCG.

Weiss shwarz was actually real fun. The mechanics were pretty unique as well as the clock system it used. Closer you got to clocking out, stronger the cards you were able to use. Star wars destiny was a really fun game. Solid mechanics and the dice added the right amount of luck needed for a game. Great video..!! Can't wait for the rest.!

I love this series of videos, great job reviewing old dead games. Nowadays I'm looking for Shadowrun TCG content, but can't find much of it. Have you ever seen this game before? The art is amazing and the game looks fun for multiplayer. Greetings from Brazil!

The Decipher situation is a lot more sophisticated than it looks today. For those first four years, Star Wars was the second best selling CCG on the market, only losing out to Magic. Seriously. If it was 1996, you were playing a CCG that was NOT Magic, chances were very good that it was Decipher's Star Wars. It wasn't until the introduction of Pokemon that the 2nd slot was in serious jeopardy. The first problem for Decipher was that they had a massive embezzlement situation building. Moving into the late 90s, this started impacting the company's ability to produce on time, and the embezzler sabotaged development of their product tracking software specifically because it would have resulted in their detection. This means that, even though the game was wildly successful, the company started running into financial problems around 2000. There's letter from the CEO talking about it on the internet somewhere. It's insane. The second problem was Wizards of the Coast, and this is a little harder to track publicly. Wizards was fresh off acquiring TSR from a court case in the late 90s, and went on to start hunting down licenses. One of those was the Star Wars CCG. They already obtained the RPG license for Star Wars from West End Games, and had started publishing that under the rule system from the recently acquired D&D. We don't know how much they bid on the Star Wars CCG license, but it was significantly more than Decipher could afford to keep the license. It's pretty clear that Wizards expected their Star Wars CCG to outperform Decipher's, and there's actually some support for that position. Decipher's card game was exceedingly complex, with numerous fiddly card interactions. The original Star Wars and Star Trek CCGs from Decipher really tried to simulate their worlds, rather than be a coherent game first, and that meant it was an extremely daunting game to get into. This is why Decipher had two additional Star Wars CCGs in publication, Young Jedi and Jedi Knight. Both were designed to be easier entry points, and Young Jedi was specifically marketed at younger kids who were just getting started in CCGs. So, one major threat for licensed CCGs is, losing the license. Wizards overproduced the hell out of the first three sets of the TCG. LGSs appeared to pick up the first two assuming that nothing had changed. Endpoint sales were not forgiving. I say this as someone who had to eat unsold cases of the Wizards TCG after launch. Their third expansion continued on those numbers, but LGS purchases were down, and the A New Hope expansion ended up getting dumped in mass market stores. After that the print runs dropped seriously. It looks like the game was always successful, but it never rivaled Pokemon/Magic numbers and so Wizards canned it rather than renewing the contract. Decipher tried to keep going by releasing a "serial numbers filed off," version of the game called, "Wars." It's good(ish), but really illustrates that the only thing keeping their game going was the license, and that folded after a single release. Interesting, Decipher's Star Trek CCG was another one that really illustrated the risks of licenses. Originally, the production plan was for the first year to include Premiere, Alternate Universe, Q Continuum, with Holodeck Adventures sneaking in somewhere around Holiday 1995 or Q1 1996. Premiere released in December of 1994, with an unlimited version hitting in early 1995. However, Alternate Universe dropped in December 1995, Q Continuum came out in mid-'96, and Holodeck Adventures was shelved for years. In 1997, they got access to the rest of the Star Trek license, so, plans changed dramatically. However, it was taking a year between sets initially because Paramount was demanding full approval for each individual card. While Decipher was able to, eventually, break away from the, "two people playing solitaire," reputation that the game started with, the difficulty adding new content crippled the game out of the gate.

mitos y legendas!! gosh, that game was the best. Specially since it costed like a third of what YGO/Pokemon/Magic cost. That and they always came out with special editions in ludicrous packaging, like when they made a wooden pyramid that could hold cards

as a chilean, i got hyped seen the "mitos y leyendas" footage

To be fair, Star Wars claimed they didn't have Baby Yoda merchandise because they didn't want it to be leaked and people to be spoiled (because products have to be ordered and go to stores before content releases). It's actually something highly commendable.

About your last point, WotC did that with a recent MTG Set, Ikoria. They designed this monster mutation mechanic and a world around that, and then they have alternate art and names for a couple cards that are Godzilla-themed.

[Proceeds to make a Fast & Furious TCG] First released in 2001, still continues to make movies. The ride will never end.

So excited I get to see the new episode before work.

Funny. Star Wars Unlimited has since come out in 2024 and is amazing despite leaning HARD into the original trilogy and Rogue One. It even uses the light/dark side of the force. But extremely well this time.

Fun bonus to using stock/old art at first is that when you finally start making your own, you can use that to advertise a set, like hearthstone did.

I've played various trading card games my entire life, and have been a huge fan of the genre since starting, and man this series is awesome to watch as someone who has both played these things since the boom in the 90s/2000s and dabbled in game design. Comfy watching.

The Decipher game is still being maintained by a "Player's Committee", which started when the license was pulled from Decipher and given to WotC.

I've been playing Star Wars Destiny with my brother and it's pretty fun. It's just a bit confusing to learn

You should talk more about young jedi. I was so hyped for that game. I still have a lot of cards that I bought back then. And even for a 12 year old I quickly realized that they couldn't add more material with just one movie.

The last bit reminds me about the fact that there's a yugioh deck heavily inspired by star wars I didn't know about til recently

really love that this one basically perfectly predicted marvel snap's art style

I'm really digging this series and Rouge's Theme from SA2 made it great :D

Alien Predator is one of the greatest card games of it's time. It's an innovative asymmetrical game play and game board building mechanic were leagues ahead of it's time. Sadly the lack of support and the small pool size kind of killed the game in it's crib.

Been waiting for this video, such a good series

Such an underrated channel. This is great, man!

I want an entire set licensed by Star Wars. Different planets can provide different element of the force. Cards can just be re skinned existing magic cards.

When I saw the notification for this video i got really excited because i really love this series and all his videos

Great series, hope to see Kodok talk about the epic Austin powers tcg. The last video made me binge watch all of Kodok's vids over the last two weeks

Been enjoying the series. Keep up the good work my man

This is an interesting video after the Walking Dead thing Magic did.

Nice use of the Count Basie music from Blazing Saddles :D

so glad I found this channel, great content

"All games featured are the property of their owners" OOOOH REALLY? XD

The Nelo Angelo theme in the intro just gets you MOTIVATED

3:17 - "A Batman who laughs?? Don't be ridiculous, nobody will want that, and we certainly wouldn't go nuts driving that concept into the ground!!"

As a game designer I love this series so much!

Yaaaaaas I'm so happy this is finally out!! This is my favorite series. I snorted so hard at the Star Wars bit. But holy crap I had no idea how many games before Destiny existed.

Wouldn't expect there be so small amount of sw ccg/tcgs. Looking forward to the next vid!

I've designed an Avatar The Las Airbender CCG out of inspiration last year. I kept working on it as a hobby and I even started dreaming about contacting Viacom and talking about licensing before I got in touch with precessional game designers who taught me about licensing fees and other complications. As I love what I've created I insisted on it. I now have it ready (with almost 300 cards) on Tabletop Simulator (check "Contos de Avatar" at the workshop), but no intention to get it published. It's all in Portuguese for now, but I'll definitely translate it someday to share it with the fanbase worldwide. I'm glad I could use the mechanics (and all the learning) to develop a new CCG, with a lore developed by my gf and I. I hope I can finish it soon and put it to test 😉 The lore feels much like Avatar meets Harry Potter TriWizard Cup in a pre-industrial University.

Was surprised to see Mitos y Leyendas here. Didn't think anyone would know it outside of Chile

oh damn this is the earliest i've been to any video

I assume you’ll address the games that did it well in the after video. But I’d love to see more on your thoughts and opinions on Weiss Schwarz. I’ve been playing it on and off for years and I think that’s what’s so great just find the set you like build and play and then come back when another set you like comes out. No need to follow every set release.

Right now Star wars has 3 different miniatures games in print. There is Armada where you use miniatures of large ships to reenact the scenes from the movies where they have giant space battles. There is X-Wing where you fly a single squad of a few ships and have a really simple game about positioning. Then you have Legion where you have the on the ground battle in a War Hammer 40K style miniature game. Xwing even has 2 editions with 3 core sets. X wing is the most popular with Fans, with Legion picking up steam as number 2 since it leans harder into the miniature crowd.

I found about the star wars CCG recently, I'm still learning it but it seems very in-depth with a lot of sets and actual tournaments

A Saw TCG woul actually be pretty dope.

Great vids man, love the series

Can't believe you got Otto Mann to collab with your video. Righteous.

Kohdok: *Mentions Star Wars as a TCG* Me: *Flashed back to when Star Wars became a part of another TCG* Kohdok: *Shows aforementioned TCG* Me: Source is here... tcgrepublic.com/category/subcategory_page_6146.html

Finally this series is awsome

As a Chilean player, seeing Mitos y Leyendas here was quite nice, even if I don't actually play. Loving the series, can't wait for the next episode.

Yu-gi-oh itself is actually licensed! Konami wasn't even the first company to license it, there's an earlier Bandai adaptation, and those older Bandai cards are collectors items. This is also why the early video games (also licensed by Konami) had a different ruleset - Konami hadn't developed the physical card game, the OCG (amusingly named Original Card Game), until a few years after they got license for video games and other merch.

0:54 Wait, isn’t that the cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 at the bottom of the screen? It is! Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well.

I thought of this video when i heardabout the announcement of the walking dead cards in magic

On the topic of comic book based cards being printed in the style of comic book covers, I am willing to bet money that the Magic the Gathering Universes Beyond crossover sets with Marvel will have that as an alternate art treatment.

Oh boy, I just found this series today and just finished the last video.

Wow. A shot of a Doctor Who CCG card. That takes me back.

Do you think you could do a follow up video going deep on all the Star Wars card games you mentioned? I haven't played any of them and I'd love to see where each one succeeded and failed!

The bloodborne card game is a great example of a one and done licensed card game. It's actually fun, and they didn't try to make expansions.

The "Using Screenshots" had me swooning nostalgic over the original DBZ CCG from the early-mid 2000's, not only did the screenshots totally work for the game by providing great visuals for us to see what our moves actually looked like, but the game was actually pretty fucking good. Each Color and Race had distinct and unique mechanics. I played a Red aggro Cell w/ Cell or Cell Games Red mastery that STOMPED. Gosh I miss that game so much..

I'm also a huge fan of the Y-Wing. It's one of the few fighters that have ion cannons as standard weapons, and they're tough as nails.

I love the Mystery Science theater Reference

An awesome game that uses both marvel and dc( as well as WWE and D&D) as licensed product is Dice Masters. It has some great strategy, great team mixing , and even some cool what if cards. Definitely worth checking out.

What are your thoughts on Dicemasters by wizkids it's a collectable dice game which uses marvel and DC licences aswell as d&d at one point and it went on for quiet a few years

10:48 That SA2 music hit hard

Super weird coincidence I put your video on my tv sat down at my desk took a second started The Outer Worlds on my pc and just as the title screen popped up you flashed the cover art

Now I'm going to be bumping the Sonic Adventure 2 Soundtrack for the rest of the year. Thanks.

I know he talk about ufs, but he could have use it has an example for the having the licensing company input when you want to release the set, Jasco is infamous about late set and always needing to swap release because company went to make change on release. I heard one of the set got push because the company didn't like 1 card. Their main solution is to produce 3-4 set in advance and when one company give their go to one of those set they release it. Making it impossible to know what the next set will be in advance, we often learn a month or two before it's release.

Just as a fun fact: The footage in the 1:13 minute is about Mitos y Leyendas (in englis: Myths and Legends) the only tcg made in my country (Chile) that survived to the years. I played when I was like 8 or 9 years old. It was funny watch something from my country in an english talking video hahaha

I remember playing the star wars ccg. I also remember a star trek one as well.

Forgot to mention the dice for sw destiny! My collection is so huge with dice. The randomness hurt its competitive players. And the production costs must've been horrendous!

Love this series!

Honestly, I feel the best way to go about licensing for a game is either use your own or pay a one time fee per set for various licenses, a la Weiss Schwarz. You get a lot more creative freedom along with a greater margin of error. PS: slight correction when it comes to the Dragonball Super stuff. Bandai doesn’t own the license rights, Shueisha does (they also own YGO and Naruto but that’s not the point). Bandai just pays for the rights to do mostly whatever they want for games involving said license and only exclusively them. So I feel there’s a greater margin of error for them. Also, the game technically has the studio that makes the anime do all the arts so it isn’t quite stock assets or screenshots. I mean, they have GT and OG stuff in the style of the Super anime so they’re making new assets specifically for the game on a frequent basis.

5:46: ... That Blue Beetle card says Ted Kord, but depicts Jaime Reyes. Wow. Much effort.

Didn't even think about it until now, but there were, at least, two Comic Book Superhero CCGs that allowed Marvel/DC crossovers. Vs is the one people are most likely to remember now. That hit in the mid-2000s, and alternated between DC and Marvel releases, though it did get a Hellboy boxed set at one point. I'm not sure which other spin off sets may exist. Vs. probably has one of the harshest card rotation systems I've ever seen. Only the most recent sets were legal in Modern format. (Though, it's technically possible the Hellboy cards were permanently tournament legal, as no other Dark Horse sets were released, I'm unsure.) However, it wasn't the first game to allow crossovers. Overpower started out as a Marvel Superhero CCG in the mid '90s. Eventually it would expand to include DC characters, and there was even an Image comics expansion with characters like Spawn and Witchblade. There were problems. The Marvel, DC, and Image cards all had distinct card backs. So you couldn't mix cards between different licenses without using opaque card protectors, which were still slightly unusual at the time. Additionally, DC characters were introduced along side the addition of a new character attribute (bringing the total from 3 to 4), this meant that the characters were not, initially, cross-compatible, however the next Marvel set reprinted existing characters with the new attribute. Rights for Overpower started with Fleer/Skybox, who'd gotten into the CCG market with two licensed games (Overpower and a Star Trek CCG based on the original series and, supposedly the animated series from the 70s, though as far as I know, no cards were printed drawing from that source), but final two sets for Overpower were published by Marvel themselves. Ironically, this included the Image expansion.

Great video m8! I wonder have you ever talked about those abhorrent (imo) "living card games"?

The Star Wars games have been given a raw deal by the companies that created them. Decipher Inc. went into bankruptcy via some shady family issues, and FFG can't seem to keep a game with an IP running to save their lives without rebooting it every few years.