PSA: Steam trading card is up

[onyhow]

Yeah, that came out of nowhere...still, there's some good pics in there!

[Shoat]

The best thing about the trading cards is that people give me free money for them (I have already bought 3 games with trading card money), so sadly I won't get to enjoy the pretty pictures on them much.

Still, it's good to see AI War get more integrated, it may convince a bunch more people to play it.

[Draco18s]

The best thing about the trading cards is that people give me free money for them

I've completed a few sets, mostly only the ones for games that I actually CARE about.  I got a snazzy background for my Steam profile from Dino D-Day, for instance.  AI War I'd totally collect a set for.

But yeah, I've picked up $12 from selling duplicate cards.

[Aklyon]

I've obtained gunpoint and a background from banner saga from the cards I've collected over time.

[x4000]

Yep!  We're going to be announcing this later today along with the expansion stuff, heh.

Incidentally, we make money off the cards as well, which is pretty cool.  When people do trades, some portion goes to the developer, I guess?  We don't make a ton, but even for our less popular games it's like $20 per month.  Pretty sweet incentive for developers to add this sort of thing.

[Draco18s]

@X: cool beans!

@Aklyon: I did the winter sale collection as I had like 5 or 6 towards a set of 8, so I paid the 30 cents or so it took to get the last couple.  I also did (aforementioned) Dino D-Day and Monaco.

[Vyndicu]

Yep!  We're going to be announcing this later today along with the expansion stuff, heh.

Incidentally, we make money off the cards as well, which is pretty cool.  When people do trades, some portion goes to the developer, I guess?  We don't make a ton, but even for our less popular games it's like $20 per month.  Pretty sweet incentive for developers to add this sort of thing.

Actually when you do the purchase it will tell you how much goes to dev and how much goes to steam.

For TLF cards it says 10% goes to dev and 5% goes to steam. But on a 10 cent card it is pretty small. You only start to see bit more from foil card purchases due to rarity and value.

[Aklyon]

And there supposedly are booster packs that appear at random, though I've never seen one appear. They show up for a couple dollars in the market though, the last time I'd looked.

[Draco18s]

For TLF cards it says 10% goes to dev and 5% goes to steam. But on a 10 cent card it is pretty small. You only start to see bit more from foil card purchases due to rarity and value.

It might be small, but across 200k users it can add up.  Like X said, it's only $20 but that's more than I make in ad revenue for all the flash games I've ever published.

And there supposedly are booster packs that appear at random, though I've never seen one appear. They show up for a couple dollars in the market though, the last time I'd looked.

I have four.  Once you have all the free drops you're allowed, your tossed into a pool for packs.  The higher your steam level, the higher your odds of getting a pack.*  It's also biased towards people who haven't received a pack in a while.

*The more sets you complete, the higher your level, allowing you to complete more sets.

[x4000]

Ah, neat!  Yeah, I actually overestimated how much we make off those, remembering.  Our life to date earnings on cards (as of the end of April) are:

Valley 1: $110.02 (5,377 trades)
Skyward: $73.12 (3,273 trades)
Bionic: $37.53 (5,888 trades)
TLF: $4.92 (2,813 trades - that's in the first 2 weeks of it being out)

[Vyndicu]

And there supposedly are booster packs that appear at random, though I've never seen one appear. They show up for a couple dollars in the market though, the last time I'd looked.

Yeah it is completely RNG on if you get one as drop and it is kind of silly that you need to complete a set to cause a card booster to drop for someone else. So yeah...

It also indirect ties into your steam level the higher you are and keep logging on each week to be eligible for a drop. Kind of counter-intuitive if you ask me.

[Vyndicu]

On a tiny off-topic aside. Did you get my PM Keith?

My forum "sent" pm box is empty for some reason.

[x4000]

On a tiny off-topic aside. Did you get my PM Keith?

My forum "sent" pm box is empty for some reason.

I can't answer if he got your PM, but you do have to specifically hit a checkmark to save to your sent folder, unless you change that setting in your profile.  No idea why that defaults to off.

[Draco18s]

it is kind of silly that you need to complete a set to cause a card booster to drop for someone else. So yeah...

I think it causes boosters to drop for more than one person in an attempt to keep the card distribution constant.  So 3 sets of 8 cards completed will cause 8 packs to drop.  But that's just a guess.  Anything less than that would cause a net loss of cards in the system (assuming that no one is buying the game any more).

My forum "sent" pm box is empty for some reason.

Sent items is always empty unless you check "Save a copy in my outbox"
(Ninja'd by X)

[PokerChen]

 I find steam cards curious, as they represent steam giving phantom wealth to players. The only input I can see from the "real" economy into the system are players stocking their wallets with real currency. Other players then take a small portion of this real currency per trade, while steam gets ~1 cent back per transaction, and pays devs ~1 cent.
 Pessimistically, a scheme to get people to give steam their money, while paying devs a small sum and giving players some of the dev's art assets.

 The net number of cards should normally be relatively constant to keep inflation/deflation under control without supervision. The average cost of a card, I guess, depends first on how many cards it takes to get a badge, and then the amount of cards in circulation (decided by the number of people who own the game), and then the age of said game.

 Also, I suggest making the number of cards in your game odd, rather than even.