If you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve probably played at least one of the entries in the “Collectible Card Game”(CCG) genre (even if you played one of the ones that wasn’t digital). Regardless whether you particularly enjoyed your experience, the numbers don’t generally lie and the CCG isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The question for today is why do people play these games and what makes the experience satisfying enough to bring people back, buying those card packs expansion after expansion. Due to my higher level of experience with it, I’ll be using Hearthstone as my example, though the principles mentioned for the most part will carry over to the genre generally. (How’s that for a weird closeness in spelling?)Firstly, there are, in my experience, three different types of players that play Hearthstone, and each play for different reasons. Let’s categorize those, and then we’ll look at some of the design that went into keeping each of the three types in the game.

The first category is the “PvE player”. These are the players that buy the Adventures, relatively short sets of missions designed to encourage different styles of play within constrained guidelines. These Adventures unlock cards for the player, but this is not the focus of the PvE player. Due to the fact that they will never probably build a competitive standard deck (one that can be used in the current competitive ladder season, mainly because they want to use their entire collection, not some subset of it), they don’t care about the unlocks so much as the challenge of each encounter and beating it. They often will also just login every day to play through their daily quest, building gold up for the next adventure. I will also put players that only come to Hearthstone for the cross-game reasons in this category (the ones that are only playing Hearthstone for the benefits to their favorite Blizzard game – think card mount in Heroes of the Storm for example).

The second category is the “arena player”. These are the guys that without fail are going to be losing gold in chunks of 150 (should we call them the “150 player”?), as they enter to see their three options of class for yet another attempt at that coveted 12 wins. They thrive on randomness, the strategic decisions that are forced from the randomness of the card draft. These are the players that only 15 years ago would have been only playing roguelikes (random generation and perma-death drives them).

Finally, the third category is the “ladder player”. They are going to be losing gold in chunks of 100 (buying card packs… see what I did there?), as they continually tweak their season decks in the attempt reach those tiny numbers on the ladder. Of course, most of these spend almost as much time on Reddit/HearthPwn/variants looking for meta strategies as they do playing the game. You’ll find them watching the tournaments, the VODs of the tournaments, looking for the ultimate strategies to find those tiny numbers.

The easiest group to keep engaged is actually the “ladder player”, they are your core group of players. Without fail, they will be buying card packs, watching the tournaments, supporting the pro players, etc. They live Hearthstone, because it’s the only way to stay competitive. As long as you keep the game balanced with releases, keep listening to the community and sponsoring highly competitive tournaments, you’ll be fine with this group of players.

The most difficult problem faced when it comes to the “ladder player” is how to grow this group, for as stated above, these are the ones that are going to be spending the time/money on your game. The larger this group is, the more successful your game is going to be. Design decisions that we’ve seen at Blizzard to help promote this include the addition of season formats, specifically created so that new players can join the game and not have to buy hundreds of card packs to get competitive (of course, there’s also the other benefit of this construct where you only have to balance expansions against the last three expansions, instead of against the whole game).

The hardest group to keep engaged is the “arena player”. While this group enjoys the randomness of the arena mode, they are also aware that there are many other games out there that include the same mechanics (with more coming all the time… just look at the roguelike tag on Steam these days). The new card releases help, for sure, but with a mode that basically hasn’t changed since its release, how does Blizzard continue keeping people in the game from this cross-section of players? (The answer is coming in the next few paragraphs.)

Every CCG player, at heart, is a gambler. They are someone driven by the odds, what’s the likelihood of a card coming up next, what is the likelihood that the Arcane Missiles will hit the right target? You have six cards left in your deck, top-decking that Ragnaros finisher will end it in your favor, what are the odds you’re going to draw that card on your turn? Conversely, since you’re assuming that the silly priest that you’re playing against teched at least one copy of SW: Death, what are the odds that it is in his hand? Will he play another target for Ragnaros or will it guaranteed hit face this time? These are gambling questions. For the most part, these are things that the player can’t control, they are going to either happen or not happen based on the game’s inner dice mechanic.

Hearthstone, more than any other game that I’ve ever played, is an incredibly satisfying gambling game. Blizzard is aware of it and keeps adding to their collection specific mechanics targeting that feeling. For example, consider the “Discover” keyword: A card mechanic that, when triggered, allows the player to choose between three cards that they never considered putting in their deck. These can be cards from across the entire collection, including ones that you’ve never even owned (the feeling when you discover a legendary that you’ve never gotten to play is quite amazing, actually). How often is a ‘discovered’ card the tipping point of your game? Just yesterday, I played a match against an agro Murloc deck where a discovered “Avenging Wrath” was able to clear the board and re-stabilize the game, resulting in a win.

This randomness (the gambling element) has two distinct advantages. Firstly, it creates a meta that is about dealing with randomness on ladder, which makes every game play out a bit differently, even if you’re using the same deck. This difference per game is even more pronounced in Hearthstone than in something like Magic: The Gathering where card draw is the biggest random factor. Secondly, it makes a game of Hearthstone always feel winnable, because you never know if you’ll discover/draw/resurrect the answer to your opponent’s play. As with my Wrath’ed Murloc example above, the desire to keep looking for the answer is much more intense. A popular Arena streamer, itsHafu, recently said that you should never concede the game in Arena until they have lethal (the ability to kill you) next turn. You never know when the game will turn to your favor.

Hearthstone is fun because it’s a game of infinite possibility. Even though the deck you’re building is limited to thirty cards, when you can steal from the opponent’s deck, copy their minions, discover a card in the entire Hearthstone collection, or just add five random legendary cards to your deck at the beginning of the game, you never know when you can turn it around. Hearthstone is fun because it’s the ultimate gambler’s game. Play Arcane Missiles against a two health minion, Avenging Wrath a yeti and hope it kills it, Ragnaros against a full board and hope it gives you the ~15% lethal chance. These are all instances that feed the gambler in us. Hearthstone is fun because the constrained Adventure missions have interesting new mechanics and spawn new ideas and decklists that wouldn’t be possible normally (Dreadsteed overpowered when infinite respawn and charged anyone?).

A couple of ending notes:

I categorize myself as a PvE player nowadays. In the past, I’ve been an arena player, but due to time constraints and other games that are taking my attention, I generally will just login for daily quests, weekly brawls, and Adventure releases. I never mentioned Brawl and that’s because of the huge swing in its popularity. If there is a good release (ie the Chess one… wow that was awesome), then it draws a huge number of players over the week it’s active. However, some of the worse releases (like the above-mentioned Dreadsteed nonsenses), are less used other than getting that card pack.

Please leave a comment and let me know if you disagree, think there is a type of player that I missed, or even just want to add a thought!