Most popular card games

Y’all are buying a lot of digital cards.

Digital collectible card games (CCGs) brought in $1.2 billion last year and should rise by another $100 million this year, analyst SuperData Research said in a new study released this morning.

The games, which offer players battles with custom-built decks of cards (think Magic: The Gathering), will continue to grow over the next couple of years, taking their place as a “dominant category” alongside massive online battle arena games (MOBAs) and other new genres, the report said. Blizzard Entertainment’s Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft leads the genre.

“Collectible card games have been tremendously popular for a long time, and in its transition to digital has managed to reach a massive audience, ” said Carter Rogers, an analyst at SuperData. An estimated 37 million gamers play digital CCGs worldwide, the study suggests.

“It’s a fascinating category … because it combines micro-transactions with strategic, competitive game play. Collectible card games have remained popular through the years and will continue to be a source of inspiration for the industry at large.”

CCG players are overwhelmingly male, the study showed (80 percent), and the average age is 31. That makes them one of the most male-dominated gaming categories.

Hearthstone leads the market by a wide margin thanks in part to its tie-in with Activision Blizzard’s other games, he said.

“The unprecedented success of Hearthstone compared to its peers is the result of Activision’s brilliant marketing machine and its ability to cross-promote its games unlike any other publisher, ” Rogers said.

Hearthstone brings in about $20 million a month, with 8 million PC and 9 million mobile players, according to the report.

“Being able to build on a vast, pre-existing narrative economy allows both existing and new players to quickly find a touchpoint with the game, thereby establishing a different relationship compared to the majority of free-to-play titles currently available on iOS and PC, ” Rogers said.

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