A lot of people are dumb. Next question.

>>96835220
You want honest answers?

Low barrier for entry. You can get a cheap pro-constructed themed deck and play a game with it.

Easy to find opponents. You can go to any FLGS and odds are high someone there not only plays your TCG of choice but has a deck on them.

Ease of setup. The majority of TCGs don't require a board, dice, or any other components besides a deck for each player.

Low overall cost for deck construction. Taking a pre-con and a handful of boosters you can usually build a functional and unique deck.

This is all without getting into the collecting aspect, the selling aspect, and other shit. If you are just fucking around and not being competitive for shit, most TCGs are actually pretty cheap to get into. I do agree the business model should die, but I'm not blind as to why it exists.

>>96835349
Basically this. Easy entry is enough to get people just within sight of the part where they can start gambling.

>>96835220
Paypigs are retarded subhumans.

>>96835220
You can’t 3d print a card.

>>96835648
You can 2D print it though.

>>96835220
Do people even play TCG? I always assumed its more of a collectorship hobby for peasants too poor to buy crap like watches and fountain pens

>>96835705
People used to, before faggot "investors" took over the scene.

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>>96835220
>exploiting mentally ill people is profitable
Who would've thought?

>>96835690
Show me a tewty printer then

>>96835349
>The majority of TCGs don't require a board, dice, or any other components besides a deck for each player.
tell that to modern MtG players, who each need seven types of counters, seventeen types of tokens, and preferably a sophisticated accounting system to track which card was exiled for what reason and under what circumstances it can be brought back into the game
I got a couple decks a few years back to try out MtG after a long while, and I have no fucking idea how the players manage this insanity nowadays
I was hopelessly naive in thinking all I need is the cards and maybe 1-2 markers

>>96835690
>not printing the card out of your finest hard resin, painstakingly cleaning it, painting the art with all the craft and skill of a medieval monk illuminating holy scripture, then putting in 3 layers of extra-thin card condoms and never touching it again, lest it break and waste all your effort

>>96835842
I just get my servants to recreate all of my cards in the form of cuneiform tablets.

>everyone knows "the house always wins"
>they still go to vegas

tbf in a hundred years or something I wouldn't be shocked if gambling and other dopamine hacking shit has accelerated to an unreasonable point and it all gets regulated.

>>96835220
regarding tcgs, opening them and getting "something of worth" is part of the fun, it's gambling
regarding "non-scam games" they don't have any gambling

>>96835852
It already has. But gambling is too profitable for the powers that be for it to get truly shackled down.

>>96835839
>I got a couple decks a few years back to try out MtG after a long while, and I have no fucking idea how the players manage this insanity nowadays
i looked back at 8th edition recently and i genuinely miss the simplicity of the cards

>>96835220
FOMO and peer pressures from friends, next question.

>>96835690
I've got power 9 printed really badly inside really cheap sleeves for Utopia cube. Last time we played I misread black lotus and was accidently cheating with it until my friend pointed it out.

>>96835852
In a hundred years, the world is going to be a vastly different place, likely without humans.

>>96835220

Here's the truth that you may find hard to swallow: despite being a scam, Magic the Gathering was the best game ever invented until about 2018. It's literally the cleverest, most mechanically sound, most fun, most enjoyable, better than Chess, Go, anything you can name. That is why people were willing to get scammed by it; it was a cost worth paying.

>>96835220
I don't think it's a scam to get a pre-constructed deck and play it. People who do play competitive and need to gamble for the best cards are insane.

>>96838296
Duel Masters is fixed MtG

>>96835220
Because card games are fun and playing a card game where I can pull a dragon out of my ass is extra fun. It's just the simple.

>>96835648
Back in the day one of the neighborhood kids and a bunch of molds of Yu-gi-oh cards, and we'd press them into cow shit and play yu-gi-oh like that.

>>96838640
how can that be true when mtg didnt need fixing until well after duel masters came out

>>96835648
It's easier to print MtG cards. A few hundred dollars and you'll have all the equipment you need to do professional playing cards.

>>96835220
It's more like what others already said in the thread, you are willing to bat an eye over the scam aspect since they did design a genuinely good game. We know it's a fucking waste of cardboard and could be done better (though I'm still not even sure about that since the LCG model was it's own shitfest as well, yes I did play L5R thank you very much) without exploiting addicts, but during the times a company actually cares about a TCG they get their money in and we get a quality game out with close to infinite expansibility. I would bet the non-scam games you think about don't offer nearly as much options of gameplay as the inventions TCGs made along the way we take for granted by now.

TCGs are like capitalism at it's worst but also at it's best.

>>96835220
In a world at war with individual values, "which 60 cards do I put in my deck?" is the only meaningful form of self expression some people will ever experience.

>>96843927
>mtg didnt need fixing until well after duel masters came out
have you played vintage? it's a shitshow

>>96835220
modularity is good design, and tcgs are inherently modular. the individual modules are packaged as cards, which new/casual players immediately understand are interchangable. tinkering and customization give players an easy-to-follow outlet for self-expression. you don't even have to understand the game itself, just the fact that 60 cards make a deck.

contrast with ttrpgs, which are also intended to be modular, but don't have physical objects representing specific modules. a typical player's introduction to d&d, for example, is a pre-written campaign with no obvious places where elements can be added or removed. in theory, a dm has even more flexibility -- they can even change or ignore the rules if it suits the story -- but in practice this doesn't occur to new players.

tl;dr -- making each creature a card makes it easy to understand that creatures are interchangable, and changing creatures in/out of a game is fun

>>96835220
Competitive games rely on FLGS to host events. TCGs pays the bills a lot better compared to fixed cardpool models like LCGs. Without these events the competitive game would be dead

>>96835220
This is why my dad would belittle all tcgs as paying for cardboard and would take away my Pokémon cards and lock them in a drawer. He recognized the danger. He did the right thing and I will do the same. Thanks dad.

>>96844785
and yet how many still net-list?

>>96852608
those people are on the other side of the conflict