CROWDFUNDING
FORGING A NEW PATH
What if you created a trading card game that didn’t just leave you to build your own decks, but could use an algorithm to make billions of different, usable decks, that meant no one knew what you’d get within each pack – but you could play with every single one? Brilliant, you’d probably think. Except when the algorithm had some hiccoughs… Ross Gilbert discusses its return to crowdfunding, and what it means for the game.
Written by Ross Gilbert
Keyforge had a chance. It really did. In a world where a game like the Transformers TCG was made by Wizards of the Coast and featured an extremely strong licence but never made waves, Keyforge had a chance.
The first Keyforge set, Call of the Archons, launched in November 2018 and initial sales were extremely strong. It’s hard to get an accurate idea of collectable game sales but the website ICV2.com makes a list twice a year and in Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 Keyforge came 4th behind only the “big three” TCGs (Pokémon, Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh) and even outsold Yu-Gi-Oh to come 3rd on the Hobby Channel in Spring 2019, looking specifically at sales in hobby stores, as opposed to the mass channel looking at sales in supermarkets etc. It looked like its makers Fantasy Flight Games had a hit on their hands.