SOE Buys A Booster Pack

If there's anything that playing Civilization taught me it's that corruption and waste spreads quickly in cities that are farther away from your capital. And now SOE has offices in San Diego, Seattle, Denver, Austin and Taiwan. That's a lot to keep tabs on.

But, hey, sometimes acquisitions make sense. SOE's latest, a purchase of Denver based Worlds Apart Productions doesn't seem that bad. The company has developed a platform for putting trading card games online. Examples of their current digital trading card games are Star Trek, Lord of the Rings and Auto Assault. Wait, there's a trading card game based on the MMO Auto Assault? That's kind of bizarre.

Anyway, SOE apparently hopes to leverage the trading card platform into current and future titles. Bandit provided this link to a Kotaku article where SOE's Chris Kramer states:

"There may be a point in time in the future where not only is there an Everquest 2 card game, but people playing in the (computer game version) of Everquest 2 could go into a tavern, sit-down and play the cardgame inside the computer game."

So there you have it. Not everyone thinks adding mini-games like this to MMO's is a good idea. But I do, as I expounded upon in unnecessary length in this post.

Even if SOE doesn't find synergy, perhaps they can just find profit. In this article on the aquisition from the Denver Post, the President of Worlds Apart states that:

"While most online games earn $10 to $20 a month in player subscription fees...a successful trading-card game can average more than $70 per month."

I think he's talking about hardcore non-digital Magic the Gathering players there, but still. Here's a pricing example from the Auto Assault digital card game:

Starter Decks $6.75 / ($6.09 for Shelter members)
Booster Packs $2.25 / ($2.03 for Shelter members)
Booster Box (26 packs) $52.00 / ($46.80 for Shelter members)

It looks like Worlds Apart's first product as SOE Denver will be a digital version of Pirates by Wizkids. I've heard of Wizkids because they make those really fun Heroclix figures. But I never heard of Pirates so I checked it out here. Note that you need to have sound on to understand the animations in the How To Play section. It actually looks like an awesome game to play with friends but I'm not sure how it will translate as a digital game.