Hearthstone Makes $20 Million Per Month As CCG Market Grows

[Fanghawk]

Hearthstone Makes $20 Million Per Month As CCG Market Grows

A new report shows digital card games are big enough for their own business category, with Blizzard's Hearthstone leading the pack.

We already know <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/reviews/11117-Hearthstone-Review-A-Strategic-Addiction>that Hearthstone is a fun game, but how successful is it overall? One way to measure its impact is financial earnings, and on that score Hearthstone is doing very well. In a new market report released by Superdata, it appears that Blizzard Entertainment is raking in a cool $20 million every month - not bad for a completely free-to-play game. Not only that, the entire genre of digital card games is quickly becoming a dominant business category alongside MOBAs and other comparable gaming genres.

"Collectible card games have been tremendously popular for a long time, and in its transition to digital has managed to reach a massive audience," Superdata analyst Carter Rogers explained. "It's a fascinating category ... because it combines micro-transactions with strategic, competitive game play. Collectible card games have remained popular through the years and will continue to be a source of inspiration for the industry at large."

According to Rogers, Superdata has been following CCGs since 2009. The latest study surveyed 776 players from May to June 2015, while analyzing 256 million transactions from 2011 to 2015. The results show that CCGs were a $1.2 billion industry last year - which is predicted to increase by $100 million by year end.

There are lots of great games within this growing market, but Hearthstone clearly leads the pack. Rogers attributes this success to Activision's marketing and cross-promotion platforms. Combined, that's created 8 million PC players and 9 million on mobile devices - although there's certainly overlap between each group. "Being able to build on a vast, pre-existing narrative economy allows both existing and new players to quickly find a touchpoint with the game, thereby establishing a different relationship compared to the majority of free-to-play titles currently available on iOS and PC."

Naturally, Superdata's study has other interesting tidbits as well. For example, roughly 80% of CCG players are male - making it one of gaming's most male-dominated markets - while the average age is 31. Regardless, I suspect the big focus is on how the market will continue to grow, especially <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/141713-Hearthstone-Grand-Tournament-Expansion-Revealed>with a new Hearthstone expansion on the way.

Source: VentureBeat

Permalink

 

[Charli]

Thank you hearthstone, I have no interest in you whatsoever but thanks for keeping my MMO game afloat. Cheers bruh.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

does anyone fear card games are going to be the next moba, mmo or iphone games where the genre starts off promising but it quickly turns out to many clones that fail and The genre will self implode itself.

I love hearthstone but most companies will want that money and will make crappy clone after crappy clone

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

does anyone fear card games are going to be the next moba, mmo or iphone games where the genre starts off promising but it quickly turns out to many clones that fail and The genre will self implode itself.

I love hearthstone but most companies will want that money and will make crappy clone after crappy clone

I don't think so. CCG's are quite hard to make well. Hearthstone barely scrapes by on quality, but then their company is built with people that love CCG's.

CCG's tend to not allow players to switch from one game to the other quite easily, because you need to build up a collection and you're leaving a collection behind going to the other. So... no I don't think so. But we'll see.

You can say the same thing about mmo and look how many of those failed. People in big companies don't care about little details like that all they care about is "a card game is printing money make a card game" and they don't think it's any more competent in that

 

[Zydrate]

I don't get it.
After taking four tries to defeat Illidan in the tutorial, I proceeded to not win a single game against any bot, ever, to unlock more diverse cards to use. I uninstalled a few days later.
I really don't understand why this is such a powerhouse.

 

[(whitty name here)]

does anyone fear card games are going to be the next moba, mmo or iphone games where the genre starts off promising but it quickly turns out to many clones that fail and The genre will self implode itself.

I love hearthstone but most companies will want that money and will make crappy clone after crappy clone

I don't think so. CCG's are quite hard to make well. Hearthstone barely scrapes by on quality, but then their company is built with people that love CCG's.

CCG's tend to not allow players to switch from one game to the other quite easily, because you need to build up a collection and you're leaving a collection behind going to the other. So... no I don't think so. But we'll see.

You can say the same thing about mmo and look how many of those failed. People in big companies don't care about little details like that all they care about is "a card game is printing money make a card game" and they don't think it's any more competent in that

One can say that the very reason the imitation MMO's failed was BECAUSE people were too invested in the game they were already playing. Some people(Such as myself) would try the new one out, and eventually go back to the one that I had played for much longer just because of the fact that I don't want to start again on something that wasn't as good.

Guild wars 2 stuck for the longest, but I think FFXIV is the game I'm going to stay on for the time being. They've stolen just enough of the good stuff from WoW, GW2, etc and left out a lot of the bad stuff that I'm actually happy to be doing quest after quest.

It's the same idea for CCGs. I used to play Magic. Like a LOT of Magic. To the point where I put myself into financial trouble and had to quit. Hearthstone is just enough like magic to scratch the itch with much less of the investment that magic requires. If someone told me there were other X,Y, and Z CCGs coming out, I may check on them just to see what they do different, but I'll be going right back to Hearthstone because that's just where all my cards are now.

 

[elvor0]

I don't get it.
After taking four tries to defeat Illidan in the tutorial, I proceeded to not win a single game against any bot, ever, to unlock more diverse cards to use. I uninstalled a few days later.
I really don't understand why this is such a powerhouse.

I don't get it.

In the nicest /possible/ way, saying you don't understand why a game is popular because you only barely scraped by the tutorial and were unable to beat /any/ of the bots seems a little...self centered? I mean at no point did you consider that it might be your fault and not the games?

 

[Bindal]

I don't get it.
After taking four tries to defeat Illidan in the tutorial, I proceeded to not win a single game against any bot, ever, to unlock more diverse cards to use. I uninstalled a few days later.
I really don't understand why this is such a powerhouse.

If you're so bad that you can't even win a tutorial against a bot while having the deck stacked in YOUR favor, then you obviously didn't understand how the game works in the first place. And due that, you consider the game bad and refuse to understand why others don't think that way instead of actually trying to figure the game out (which isn't hard)

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

does anyone fear card games are going to be the next moba, mmo or iphone games where the genre starts off promising but it quickly turns out to many clones that fail and The genre will self implode itself.

I love hearthstone but most companies will want that money and will make crappy clone after crappy clone

Nah. There's no space for competition. Heartstone is to good and in the real world MTG dominates everything.
Sure people will try, but it'll crash pretty hard. Those games aren't like MMOs which you can pick up an daddle around a little bit. Cardgames are time investments and also money investments, they need more dedication from the player.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Honestly I want the government to step in and declare any kind of "blind bag" (booster pack) purchases (with real money) to be a form of gambling and limit companies from marketing them to anyone under the age of 18.

 

[Bindal]

Honestly I want the government to step in and declare any kind of "blind bag" (booster pack) purchases (with real money) to be a form of gambling and limit companies from marketing them to anyone under the age of 18.

And how would you justify it as gambling? You are garantueed to get something. That's not a gamble.

 

[Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)]

Honestly I want the government to step in and declare any kind of "blind bag" (booster pack) purchases (with real money) to be a form of gambling and limit companies from marketing them to anyone under the age of 18.

so every card game ever made is gambling than? At least in hearthstone you can get cards and packs for free with crafting and gold.

 

[BoogieManFL]

How that can make that much money that often seems nothing short of insane to me.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

Honestly I want the government to step in and declare any kind of "blind bag" (booster pack) purchases (with real money) to be a form of gambling and limit companies from marketing them to anyone under the age of 18.

And how would you justify it as gambling? You are garantueed to get something. That's not a gamble.

It is a gamble because what you get for your money is randomized. It is a psychological exploit to maximize the amount of money that someone needs to spend to get a specific outcome.

Honestly I want the government to step in and declare any kind of "blind bag" (booster pack) purchases (with real money) to be a form of gambling and limit companies from marketing them to anyone under the age of 18.

so every card game ever made is gambling than? At least in hearthstone you can get cards and packs for free with crafting and gold.

Not every card game, but every game that sells blind "booster packs" for real money is. And I only said blind bags with real money. Blind bags with gold/game currency is fine because it isn't exploitative. For examples of card games that are "honest" check out the Fantasy Flight living card games and also Sentinels of the Multiverse.