SO like everyone else probably, i’m thinking of potential players to bring into the game and my obvious first choice is my best friend.
He’s a bit of a ccg noob in general, but i have been constantly been hounding him to get into the whole genre since SWCCG was in it’s hey-day.
I’ve been heavily into 3 different ccgs over the years: SWCCG, LotR and the little-known (but truly epic) EVE: The Second Genesis ccg, based on the EVE-Online MMO.

My buddy has only ever played one game of SWCCG and loved it. He completely bypassed LotR, and was well into EVE (he still is, although it’s practically a dead game nowadays)

So I’ve been trying to convince him to check out Fight Kloob, so far without much success. I think he’s a bit reticent because, based on his experience with EVE, he reckons that there’s a very steep learnig curve with these things, not so much to do with game mechanics but more with getting familiar with individual cards and what they do, and how to build an effective, competitive deck from them.

I’ve tried to talk about the broad premise behind FK, the paradigm-shifting nature of the set-up, the low cost, the shared ccg experience provided by One, the endless possibilities for characters being brought into the game, how the game is based on the exciting process of two or more people diggin the head aff each other etc etc etc.

It all seems to be falling on deaf ears, which i can kinda understand since we still dont have any source materials to demo effectively, but i thought that by now i would have at least convinced him that FK was well worth checking out.

Any ideas from all you Ideas People?? I’m worried that if i cant sell my best friend on it then it doesnt bode well for promoting the game to other players…

I am in a similar situation, I had a great group of CCGers back in elementary and high school (10years ago) with the glory days of magic, then SWCCG then LOTR. But we realized how much money we were dumping into these games, convincing ourselves that it was an investement and that the cards were worth something.
We grew up, learned that those cards are going to sit in our basements forever and not sell to anyone…
So I have been telling them about FK and they are coming back to me with a “I dont know if i can afford to invest in a new CCG, cant we just keep playing <insert game here video> ?”
So like you Chibri i have the same fears.
I think my solution will be to just let them try it, and see if they like it. In the mean time, I plan on doing my part as a FM and introducing the game to strangers at college and such, get my 10% :P
It might mean less play time for me with my buddies, but perhaps I will set up a gang night in my area or something.

Don’t know if that helps, but its my 2 cents

It does help becuz its good to hear that there’s others in the same boat…

I think your approach is good: Wait until the game actually comes out, and let the product do the convincing for you!

I’m in the same situation too. A lot of my regular gamer friends are ex-CCGers who dropped out due to cost, set rotation making their previous investment worthless and the other usual reasons why someone drops out of a CCG. It’s hard persuading them to try something new, at least with nothing for them to actually try yet.

Mind you at least one of them now loves the idea. He wasn’t sure at first although he loved the multi-licence bit, but as soon as I said “it’s cheap and there’s no set rotation” he jumped right on board.

Another thing, BaronMorrath, that you may have already brought up with your friends is that the investment will be less for FK than the typical TCG because of the 1-3-3 rarity deck building rule.

Chibri, as for “getting familiar with individual cards and what they do, and how to build an effective, competitive deck from them” that’s what Trading Card Games are all about. The benefit with FK is that sets will be smaller and therefore fewer cards to become familiar with. I’m looking forward to the smaller sets.

Another thing that may be a draw is the level of interaction players have with the developers of the game. It’s true the rules are in a draft format but I’ve never played a Trading Card Game where players could be involved at that level. Just imagine what such a large community of players could bring to this game.

In the end players want to see the cards. Until the FMs get the printable demo decks we need to get very familiar with the rules so when we can show the game we can more easily teach the game.

I’m confident Decipher will produce an enjoyable game that provides a wide array of strategy. They’ve done some great games in the past and will do so again.

—William
(CGO)

I think the community is a big draw too…

The EVE ccg that i mentioned were groundbreaking in this – they involved the players very closely in the game development and it was scary the amount of “audience participation” that this generated (until CCP bought over White Wolf and let those guys run things – they somehow managed to kill the game overnight!! DAMN YOU WHITE WOLFFFFF!!!)

My point is that involving the players = EPIC WIN in terms of game success. I’m glad that D are so proactive in this regard.

And thanks lads for making some very good selling points that i hadnt thought about – the 1-3-3 and small set size, cheap cost, no rotation etc.

I had a similar problem starting out. SO for now I have just made people aware of it and then will begin reeeeeeally hyping it when there is something to show people. I’m sure the product will convince people. I mean who doesn’t like movies? And who hasn’t ever wondered something like “If Angel and Blade got into a fight who’d win?” we had conversations like that at work every day!

I really hope we can count on each other to present a friendly atmosphere to new players. I’ve been turned off from games in the past due to negative experiences on the forums. It’s no fun playing a game if you don’t feel welcomed by the people who are already into it.

hey I do my part, you do yours, and we’ll kill anyone who causes mischief! :p No, but you are right I left a forum almost immediately a couple o’ weeks ago due to the posters…

Well its hard to get anyone to get excited without a product. I’m holding off telling my brother-in-law about the game until I have product. And then hopefully I can get him into it which would get my two nephews into it by bypassing my sister who would be a hard sell with “kilos” and “gangs” in the termonology. :P

Yeah, I’m keeping quiet about it until I actually have something to show off, largely because until that point it smacks of a pyramid scheme (not that it is, but it just comes off that way).

What is so bad about a pyramid scheme, anyway? I’m hearing that term thrown around a lot.

Well I’m not entirely sure how they function, but they never actually work. I think its something along the lines of Person A gets person B and C to give them money, and then they get persons D,E,F, and G to do the same, and continue to give a cut to person A or something along those lines but generally everyone gets shafted except for person A.

Good old wikipedia can provide your answer here.

You have the basic gist of it, RPJesus, but as more people join and start forming new tiers at the bottom of the pyramid, making it bigger, the tiers below A will start to benefit as well. The longer a scheme can last the more people that can benefit, but the guys at the bottom (the newest joiners) when it collapses will always get screwed.

But that doesn’t sound like this game. As I’m understanding it, only the people you personally introduced the game to will have 10% of their purchases transferred to you. That means that to get more money, you have to do all the legwork yourself.

Right, this is really non-pyramid scheme. The problem is, pyramid schemes are, or at least had been, fairly common, and caused enough of an uproar that lots of people got really leery of them. The people to worry about when trying to spread the FK word are those who form opinions quickly and won’t listen to reason when the facts are laid out more fully.

Yeah it’s not actually a pyramid scheme, but when you say “Okay, so you buy these cards (which I can’t show you, since they haven’t finished tweaking them) solely in $30 denominations from a single source online, and you get 10% of the money from purchases made by people you recruit”, eyebrows are going to be raised, at least compared with that sans the parenthesized bit and followed by “Wanna try a game?”

Yeah, the system here is not a pyramid scheme, but some might assume it is because they “get money for signing people up,” even though it’s really more like a small bonus for referring people that play; some people just won’t hear it though.

edit Nice timing, RPJesus!

I don’t really plan to mention the 10% much at all, if people want to play they need a handle, by the time they read about the 10% they should already know it’s a legitimate card game and not some fanciful scheme to get rich by screwing over others. And I couldn’t really care less about the 10%, I just want a decent card game to play that lasts more than a year.

That is probably what I’m going to do, too. Honestly, the main draw I see with this game is the fact that it’s player-driven. I’d love to see it last a long, long time.

And finally being able to end the Vader vs. Sephiroth debate isn’t bad either.

Oh, it won’t end, it’ll just change to “Decipher totally shafted Vader’s stats”

Well they did! :p