subject: Exercise Your Imagination With Magic The Gathering [print this page] Collectible card games have never been so popular. Despite having been around since the early nineties, their retro appeal far removed from a digital world of massively multiplayer universes has seen a massive resurgence. As the twenty-something generation speeds ever faster to the realms of marriage, mortgages and children, many are looking to rediscover an early age of youthful innocence when the world didnt seem so complicated. The result has been booming sales in cards games such as Pokemon and Magic the Gathering, along with a burgeoning trade in associated paraphernalia. The trend has extended to collectible miniatures and the Warhammer franchise is doing equally well.
Yet its not simply the act of collecting what could be a mawkish fascination with the past: many collectors are actively involved in playing the games and finding an analogue escapism in a Web 2.0 world of retina displays, 3D movies and advanced voice recognition. Sometimes, the pacific sense of timeless diversion is more attractive than the sway of massively violent videogames that leave the participant wondering if the best solution to his work problems is to emulate the game strategy of Grand Theft Auto. Games like Magic the Gathering and Cardfight Vanguard allow participants to flex that much neglected muscle imagination, and enter a world thats entirely their own. Free from the dictating fascism of code monkeys, players have found that the social aspect of games like Magic the Gathering adequately compensates for the lack of digital wizardry that entices many gamers.
This trend for retro escapism has been replicated in the rise of other traditional toys and collectibles, with, for example, a recent surge in popularity for 80s game emulators, which recreate the thrill of early video games like Frogger, Outrun and Pong. A burgeoning market has developed to meet the demand and there are many great online stores that offer a wide range of collectible playing cards, as well as many other retro games such as Dungeons and Dragons or Call of Cthulhu. As a facet of popular culture, collectible card games have developed a mass following and players of these games are by no means restricted to men alone, although they do represent the core of most players.
Although collections of various types of cards are rarely worth much intrinsically, they often occupy a special place in the heart of collectors, many of whom have vast numbers of cards. Indeed, one of the attractions of collectible card games is that they are relatively inexpensive and so are accessible to all.
