MetaZoo: Cryptid Nation - The Cryptid Trading Card Game!

MetaZoo's Secondary Market and Pricing Strategy
over 5 years ago – Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 05:27:41 PM

There's nothing more frustrating than wanting a card and seeing that I cannot afford it. Generally this happens with older cards from sets two decades old, but it also happens with newer cards as well. It happens with newer cards in 3 situations:

• It is highly sought after due to its abilities in competitive play and relatively hard to pull from a booster pack/available in small quantities.
• It's not highly sought after for competitive play, but it is highly collectible and available in small quantities. 
• Its primary market price (what it is sold at in the store) is inflated in anticipation of how much money it will make in the secondary market because of its collectibility/importance to competitive play. 

I'm okay with the first two, and I see them resulting from "natural" forces in a game's meta. Sometimes you can't even anticipate which cards will be highly sought after in competitive play (looking at you Crobat V). 

I'm not okay with the 3rd situation, where the company making the cards recognizes the secondary market and tries to inflate it by pricing secondary market prices into the primary market pricing. Certain companies are even known to hire economists in order to predict secondary market pricing. There are a few reasons why I think this is reprehensible. Mostly, I think when the company producing the cards try to play the secondary market game, they are intentionally removing some of the magic of collectibility (no pun intended), and the act of collection becomes almost entirely financial/transactional. 

What do I mean by that?

We have all likely thought to ourselves "Dang, if only I could go back in time and buy some first edition base set Pokemon booster boxes when they were $100 a pop." There's an intrinsic excitement to be able to get in on the "ground floor" of a game in anticipation of the the cards you are collecting will one day skyrocket in value. How many of us got the Pokemon Movie Mew promo and squirrelled it away thinking one day it would be the rarest card in the world? How many of us kept going back to our local game store after school to buy a single pack with some salvaged lunch money in order to see if we could pull the latest Charizard? 

The excitement of winning a card in a competition and seeing it become highly sought after is something that can't be captured by buying a $100 card directly from WOTC and watching it pop up to $200. Sure, that's great, but does it make your stomach drop/heart flutter, does it create a special memory?

A low bar to participate in the initial stages of the collective parts of a TCG is absolutely key to creating the magic of collecting it. If the first edition base set booster box of Pokemon was priced at $10,000 because they knew one day it would be exceptionally rare, you wouldn't have had all those kids scrambling to buy the packs after school because their salvaged lunch money wouldn't be enough to cover the cost of buying even a single pack. That initial magic never would have been lit in the hearts of these collectors, and the prices we are seeing today on the secondary market never would have been justified from the natural drive to collect the game. 

Pokemon continues to do this properly, and the bar to collect even the most expensive products on the secondary market remains low (from a financial perspective) in the primary market. MTG has gone in the complete opposite direction, and the financial bar to collecting MTG in the primary market is so high that, at least for me, the magic of collecting no longer exists. MTG doesn't have to create this "ground floor" excitement because their market is already captured - but what does it mean for future generations of MTG players? 

So what does this mean for MetaZoo?:

It means that MetaZoo will never price anything in the primary market in anticipation of prices on the secondary market. 

Yes, certain products will have limited print runs; certain products will only be available in certain geographic regions for a limited time; all products will have set symbols, edition symbols, etc... in order to maximize collectibility; certain cards will only be available via competitive play, contests, raffles, you name it. Collectibility will always be baked into the product as a core feature, but it will never factor into our pricing model. 

Does this mean we sell a product for $2.99 or even give it away for free only to see someone sell it on eBay for $300 the next day? Does that mean we miss out on a lot of money due to primary and secondary market pricing disparities? Yes, and we are okay with that - we believe fostering a healthy community and maximizing affordable collectibility will pay off in the long run... and believe me, MetaZoo is in it for the long run. 

Plan for Competitive Play
over 5 years ago – Tue, Aug 25, 2020 at 02:42:27 PM

Hey everyone, 

As you know, we are introducing a truly innovative game mechanic where your surroundings impact the power of your cards. Rain, rivers, lakes, and even cups of water have the chance of increasing the power of your Water Spells. A raging fireplace, a lighter, and even ceiling lights can make your Flame Beasties or Lightning Artifacts significantly more dangerous. 

This innovation is the special sauce that we hope will allow MetaZoo and the Cryptid Nation base set to be successful, but we recognize its limitations. First, many people live in regions where they are either limited or enabled by 4th wall effects that are ever-present. For instance, players living near the equator might not be able to experience the joys of creating a dominating Frost Spellbook (well, one that takes advantage of the 4th wall effects). 

In order to address this, we created the concept of Terra - these are cards you can add to your deck that, when placed into the Arena, trigger 4th wall effects that are not present in your surroundings. In this way, you can still run a dominating Frost Spellbook in the middle of an Arizona summer. 

There are a few ways these Terra cards are balanced: 

• Terra is played on rotation - There are only 6 Terra slots in the Arena, and it's first come first serve. However, once a 7th Terra is placed into the Arena, it replaces the Terra placed in the first slot, the 8th Terra replaces the Terra in the 2nd slot, and so on. 
• Including Terra in your Spellbook means it affects the combinatorial makeup of your deck. If your deck only has 60 cards, and you have built it around 10 Terra cards, 1/6 of your deck is Terra and this impacts the draw rate of combinations you might rely on to deal damage, heal, etc... 

Because of these challenges introduced by the 4th wall effects, and the way Terra is balanced, how will competitive play be done? We have a few ideas and would love feedback from the community: 

• A competitive format where 4th wall effects are optional. You either enter into a bracket where the 4th wall effects are activated, or a seperate bracket where the 4th wall effects are not activated. 
• Competitions are held in regions that have a specific environment that triggers 4th wall effects: massive tents set up next to a forest, cabins in snowy mountains, etc... and we hold multiple competitions a year in various locations.
• In a normal convention center, pseudo-environments are created (tables within a part of the convention center surrounded by trees, for instance, and other tables within a part of the convention center that has a cold room with ice sculptures, etc... so many cool ideas we can mess around with!)  and you choose which pseudo-environment bracket you want to play in. 
• Perhaps the most challenging, a rotating pseudo-environment that relies on you being able to rapidly change your deck between rounds in the bracket. 

None of these ideas will solve all of these challenges, but this is just the start! We have to get creative, and that's a lot of the fun. If you have any ideas, we would love to hear them. And as always, thank you to everyone who has contributed so far to the campaign!

Partnership with Cryptid Crate!
over 5 years ago – Mon, Aug 24, 2020 at 04:36:07 PM

Hey everyone - just a quick update. As the final countdown starts, we will be posting at least one to two updates a day (even if they are small!). 

We wanted to let everyone know that we have been in talks with Cryptid Crate (https://boxmountainllc.com/pages/cryptid-crate/) to get our booster packs into their fall boxes! 

As we form our business relationships/collaborations, we will be sure to let everyone know!

Remember, the campaign ends on August 30th, 2020, so if you know anyone, friends/family/pets, that would be interested in the game, be sure to let them know so we can continue to build the MetaZoo community!

1 week left! Apparel has arrived and New Stretch Goal revealed!
over 5 years ago – Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 09:12:48 AM

Ladies and Gentlemen and Cryptids! We are officially 1 week away from the campaign ending, and the support that has been outpouring on Instagram, Discord, Reddit, and Facebook has been truly inspiring. 

We hit another stretch goal associated with our shirts, but we have decided to go ahead and simply release a storefront on RedBubble after all the requests we have been getting. Come out and support MetaZoo by buying some of our merchandise (or putting it toward the next stretch goal...). Below are some images available on our storefront:

You can buy these NOW right here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/MetaZooGames/shop?anchor=profile&asc=u

If you have a specific design or cryptid you would like us to do custom, just shoot us a message and we will make it available for you on the storefront! 

As our last stretch goal, we will be aiming for our own, custom foil design pattern - for those in the TCG community, you know how big of a deal this is. We are setting this goal at 20k, and we recognize how lofty this goal is but we hope to reach it together! We are thinking something similar to this design:

Finally, in this last week and following the campaign we have lots of news coming your way: podcast interviews, collaborations with a major subscription box, youtubers, and of course SAMPLE CARDS and GAMEPLAY VIDEOS! 

Thanks again for everyone's support, now let's blast through that finish line. 

The FREE Sample Cards are on their way!
over 5 years ago – Wed, Aug 19, 2020 at 09:49:18 AM

Good news everyone, this week we receive the sample cards - that means two things: 

• Gameplay videos and walkthroughs 
• Absolutely mind blowing holographic (and normal) sample cards sent out to you, our amazing pledgers!

See the custom envelope we have ordered to get these sample cards to you in style!

As pledgers, you obviously get first pick when it comes to the cards, and the supplies are definitely limited (for instance, there are only 100 Mothman holographic cards coming). 

If you want to receive sample cards, just fill out the information in the link below, and specify which cryptids/spells, etc... from the Gold, Silver, and Bronze sample cards (see earlier updates!) that you want!

https://tinyurl.com/y545flbj

All pledgers will get at least one holographic card, and we will try to give you as many as we can! 

These sample cards are a really special opportunity to get your hands on MetaZoo: Cryptid Nation MONTHS ahead of release. Collectors take note as well - these cards will all have special "Sample Set" symbols on them.

Another update will be posted this week when the cards arrive, and then another update again when they are sent out.

Thanks again for everyone's continued support. Now let's get everyone some cards!