Twenty years after the first trading card game was launched tremendous untapped value exists in gaming assets. Game card ownership and trading provide an especially large monetization opportunity. Cards are still tethered to the games they are played in. Making digital cards freely tradable across games and platforms could see revenues in the $1.4 billion digital game card market jump 42 percent to $2 billion by 2020, estimates digital collectible card game (DCCG) platform Nova Token.
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Monetizing Gaming Cards
Nova Token understands digital game monetization. CEO Paul Barclay spent over a decade on design, product and platform engineering on some of the world’s leading game titles for Wizards of the Coast. Among his early tasks, he migrated Magic: The Gathering—the first trading card game—to the online world. The founder of Magic, Richard Garfield, who grew the Magic card value from $2.99 per pack to $20,000, is a Nova adviser. This team also rolled out the first traded cards for Dungeons & Dragons, Pokémon and other leading game titles.
Expansion of the digital CCG market, however, still faces many obstacles. In addition to the lack of true ownership, low liquidity in cards can lead to exorbitant prices in a market where completing a deck can add significant value. Magic’s cherished Black Lotus card spiked to $20,000 when illustrator Christopher Rush died in 2016. Moreover, game card traders, now numbering over 40 million, are more susceptible to rampant fraud when cards are in short supply.
Nova is solving these issues by launching the world’s first Blockchain-based collectible card game platform. By conducting all transactions with Nova Tokens (NVT) on the transparent Blockchain, the selling of fake cards is eliminated. The ownership of the cards is traceable on the immutable ledger system. With fake cards removed from the market, cards will trade at their true value based on scarcity and competition. Cheating in tournaments is also hard to perpetrate since all activity is recorded on the tamper-proof digital ledger.
Own Your Gaming Cards
Nova Blitz, a cross platform card game, is the first game to be launched on the platform. Three hundred cards are already in circulation and 50 new cards introduced every month. The Nova Token can be used in any card game. As with all games on the platform, players own the cards and can trade them or cash them out at any time.
New cards are earned through proof of stake. When a player stakes NVT on a game and that game releases new cards, players will earn copies of those cards. And like other cards acquired through NVT, players own these cards and can use them as they wish, including selling or trading, all using a reliable and decentralized platform based on the Blockchain. Importantly, the number of available cards will be fixed, so as the number of players grows, so will demand and thus the value for certain cards.
Tokens, Tournaments and Rewards
Upholding this ‘magic’ team’s reputation for developing the most popular game cards, the Nova platform is offering the most attractive revenue deal to game developers, at 90 percent. In contrast, Steam gives 70 percent to developers, and IOS and Android platforms 30 percent. Nova Blitz Is available on Steam, iOS and Android. The NVT token and smart contract code will be open source, while the Nova Blitz platform will remain closed source.
NVT offers numerous benefits over its competitors, including rewarding players with NVT and integration with esports. Skaff Elias, the creator of the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour, which hands out over $1 million in annual prizes, is advising Nova tournaments. Any player can enter a Nova tournament and sign up through a smart contract on the Blockchain. Winnings from tournaments will be paid out in NVT.
Nova tokens are ERC-20 tokens that can be used to purchase cards and in-game items, and enter tournaments.
The Nova Initial Coin Offering (ICO)
The Nova Token ICO began on December 11th and runs until January 10th 2018. One hundred billion NVT tokens are being sold, of which 75 percent will be available for purchase at a rate of one ETH for one million NVTs.
