BUILT FOR PLAYERS: HOW THE CYBERPUNK TCG IS FIGHTING THE INDUSTRY’S SCARCITY PROBLEM
Since our announcement of Cyberpunk Trading Card Game in December, we’ve been blown away by the community’s enthusiasm. Thank you so very much for the fantastic reception, and for sharing your excitement on social media and in our Discord!
Among all these conversations, we’ve seen a recurring anxiety about product scarcity in the industry, and whether this issue would also affect Cyberpunk TCG. In the interest of transparency, we want to share our strategy for addressing this core issue.
We have three core goals:
- Get cards in the hands of actual players and collectors, for a reasonable price — starting with Kickstarter so everyone can participate.
- Make it easy for local game stores to support and invest in our game through guaranteed allocation and guaranteed restock quantity.
- Communicate with total transparency to both players and stores about how we’ll be doing just that.
PRIORITIZING PLAYERS
The Cyberpunk franchise has a lot of followers, and the TCG community has never been more active and interested in new games. With such a large potential audience, we chose to launch the TCG on Kickstarter to get an accurate picture of player demand and guarantee that all players who want cards will receive them.
We've seen price-gouging crop up often in the broader industry, stopping new players from picking up a game and preying on the established community. We refuse to let that happen in Cyberpunk TCG; our goal is to make the game as accessible and long-lived as possible. Initial release through Kickstarter guarantees us the financial and productional ability to get every day-one player or collector access to our product.
PROTECTING LOCAL GAME STORES
Local game stores are the lifeblood of trading card games. They are where communities form, gather, and thrive. For retail distribution, our strategy is to partner with distributors in each region to responsibly allocate products — no need to submit orders to several distributors in hopes of receiving some percentage of your total needs. With a single distribution partner per region, ordering products will be much easier, and we at WeirdCo will have an easier way to manage supply via tight integration with our partners.
As part of this push, we will guarantee allocation to verified play stores that place their orders before our production kick-off deadline (to be revealed later). Plus, we’ll set aside a certain amount of product to restock them. Event stores put a lot of effort into sustaining a TCG community, and we want to reward the stores that build ours — not have them jump through hoops just to carry our game.
We also plan to start with a slower release schedule than industry leaders, giving us time to perfect production practices, implement robust organized play, and avoid wallet fatigue for your customers. We strongly believe in the value of playing games face-to-face with other people. Fostering a healthy and welcoming organized play program is critically important for us, and we’ll support the stores that support us. We’re in this together!
COMMUNICATING WITH YOU
Players and stores have many games and companies to choose from, so we know that being a part of your regular gaming schedule is a privilege we need to earn. We want to make sure you can trust WeirdCo to bring you quality product and organized play at a scale that will excite players for a long time to come. And this all begins with the Kickstarter campaign.
Kickstarter allows us to communicate directly with our players, capture their feedback early, and make adjustments as needed to create the best possible TCG experience.
We’ve said it before, we’re saying it now, and we will continue to say it: a TCG can’t exist without a community to play it. Player enthusiasm is what keeps any TCG alive and relevant. We’re confident this Kickstarter will serve as a transparent measure of our game’s potential, and convince you to invest your valuable time into Cyberpunk TCG.
Thank you for supporting us, and happy gaming!
– The Weird Crew
