MVP141: Altered - The Game Aiming To Change the TCG Industry

Thomas Traplin 0:00

All right, welcome to another episode of the Manaverse podcast. I'm your host, Tom Traplin. And this is the podcast where we talk about what it takes to build a successful friendly local game store for the most part. Today, we're actually talking about Altered a brand new trading card game that is coming to the market pretty soon this year. And I've got with me, Eric, I'm gonna pronounce your name terribly. But Dieulangard? Does that's, that's, that's not terrible. But thank you very much for coming on the show and giving us some of your time to answer some of these questions. Because there are a lot of people who have a lot of questions about this game. Yeah,

Eric Dieulangard 0:40

go for it. I mean, I'm here for that. Any question is welcome, and I'll try to answer it.

Thomas Traplin 0:45

What are your plans? What is: 2024

Speaker 1 1:03

ne that's going to come up in: 2025

Thomas Traplin 8:00

Now that's perfect I was I wanted to just get a concise summary of what the game is all about what makes it different, what makes it innovative, because there is a lot of like that I'm pretty sure you the first game to really try and integrate like a QR system and a unique digital ownership. And there's a lot of questions around that sort of thing. And well, there's tons and tons of questions to them that came to my mind while we were going through the intro that I have seen in other groups and other people kind of just asking about like, well, what is this guy? What does this mean? Two of the things from a retailer's perspective, when it comes to TCG, is the secondary market for a lot of stores is a big part of why they carry game right like magic singles, and being able to resell rare vintage cards or just you know, car or rare expensive, you know, popular cards from standard sets. That's a big part of the business model, right? Being able to open booster packs, and then sell those as a service is important. This sounds very different. So how would this work for the average game store? Would they be able to sell singles in the same sort of way? Or would they have to like do something completely different?

Eric Dieulangard 9:10

Since a few days, yes, we are bringing something new to the table. But we don't really remove the old way either. The thing is, let's say you have a store and you have cards because you've bought cards like when you buy magic displays and you've just opened them to sell singles for example. And you have those singles in outer instead of having them in your stocks you have them in your digital collection. So as a store owner, you will have a store account, which is a regular account but with more features, which allows you in particular to do your employees. So you will have a system of rights for your employees you will even at some point be able to manage multiple stores with only one account. So all in one place. Only one stock. And then you can sell your singles over the marketplace. So you will sell the digital ownership of your singles and the physical cards you have kept for yourself. You might think what do I do with them because I'm not a player, I'm a store and they have no value, they have no digital ownership attached. The thing is, let's say you live in Minneapolis, okay, you turn, Minneapolis, you just bought a car from anyone over the internet, maybe not your local store. But this card, you don't have it yet. Alright. But maybe, maybe you want to use print on demand, because cotterman is going to send it to you brand new, that might be the way you want to go. But maybe for some reason, it's too expensive, or you're too far or too long, or you want it right now in one hour time, and your store, maybe he has this card, Okay, this card has no digital ownership attached, but then it has still a physical value. So what he could do, he could just toss a scarf and be like, you know, cotton when he delivering the cards for you, but just quicker from the store. So maybe you will find anything you buy over the Internet at the store and buys him from there. Instead of getting them reprinted from Carta Mundi, that might be very convenient. And as a way of thinking this is because print on demand is a feature that will only be orderable for 20. So you cannot order one card per one card. So if you want to add a card, it has to be minimum 20 cards, and then 40 cards and 60 cards, okay? The more cards you order, the less you pay, because the shipping cost is divided person number of cards you order, and you will get a discount, the more cards you order. So you as a store, you might be the place where people will buy their cars from and the store will print them and demand for them. So So might be keeping the stock, just for those people not willing to go through printing when because it's too expensive. They are not big buyer enough, they are not big enough to buy enough cars, and you will have the cost per cent because you have you have some you have some market size for yourself. As well, we are going to implement another system, which is we want people to be able to ask for printing demand as a group. So you as an individual, you might be having like a Unique card, I haven't talked about the unicorns, but maybe you want we want to talk about them later. Maybe you want to recapture a few unicorns or one you bought you had just one and you don't want to bring 19 as a cat, you know, you just want one, this card is very specific cards, the store is not going to have it because it's a Unique card, if you haven't bought it from the store, there is zero chance he has the printed car, but you just want his card. So what you will do is you can do that with a group of friends or with store and you will you will put baskets, you will create a basket or store will have an open basket in which you can just drag and drop the cart you want into your basket and they will pass the order you know that will they will gather the orders from the community and then pass the orders. And because they are supplying the pantries, they will be seated cards, the orders and you will go to the stores to retrieve your cards once they are shipped and received. So this is another way of making stores the centerpiece of the system, by being a way an easy way to use a print on demand system, which in some cases in some occasions is not gonna appeal to you, okay, maybe you're a beginner and you don't care and you you just buy 20 Uniques and you make your order, you don't want to think about it. That's that's Uber it, you know, but maybe you want to go to the restaurant, because you get the cheaper price, and the restaurant is 200 meters away. So it's more convenient for you going there and you get your order, plenty of ways are going to be available to to the stores to make business around the system.

Thomas Traplin: 13:52

That's exactly what I was hoping to do here. This is uh, how does this work? How does this fit into the model? You know, is there room for for stories to actually, you know, to carry this to build this into their system into their business and actually benefit from it and have their community also benefit from it. And it feels like there is a good middle ground between the printed demand and the secondary market.

Eric Dieulangard: 14:14

And there's an example just picking up random numbers. I don't have the official numbers but let's say you your other 20 cards and it cost you $10 Plus shipping cost. Okay, so it's 50 cents per card. Yeah, 50 cent pickup for 20 cards. And maybe it's a store by just putting your cart you want into its baskets will provide you with a certain per card price, because it orders more. So I was able to just be able to provide you with a lower price and attract you from buying from them just because they might buy them for 15 cents, and maybe they will resolve them to you to 30 cents and you know makes a difference in revenue. And it's not only about the revenues they make from this kind of business because it's more sense your answer and okay additionally it might be. Something that's, it's also that if you want your cards, you have to go to the store. And usually if you go to the store, some people will just go retrieve the cards leave. But some people will come stay and spend money on other stuff. You know, just this is, this is a simple way to attract people to visit your store. And then it's up to you to make money out of your customers in more than one ways with whatever products you want to sell.

Thomas Traplin: 15:24

I like the idea of kind of creating a funnel where the store becomes kind of the default way maybe potentially, for most players to acquire the cards that they want, rather than each person individually putting in an order with Qatar Monday try to get their their cards shipped to their house, it makes sense to centralize it really somewhat around this community hub, which is the game store, and then the players benefit, but the store benefits as well. So I can see why that why that would work. Another question? And this might be a very leading answer, because I want to talk about the whole Unique system. But one of the questions was Why? Why would somebody buy booster packs? If they could do this whole print on demand digital ownership? You know why? Why would the booster pack exist for a card game like this?

Eric Dieulangard: 16:10

Because the first question is, how do you buy something on the marketplace, if there is nothing because no one has had boosters. If you want to have cards on the marketplace, you need to sell boosters, so people have cards to sell. And then it's just a question of offer and demand, the more cards on the marketplace, maybe the less value to buy new boosters, and more cars are lacking to the marketplace of cars you wish. And it's all a question of prices, if the cars you want is I don't know $30 on the marketplace, then maybe you feel like it's good to buy boosters, because you get a chance to get them or otherwise, if most of the cars are cheap, it means that probably it's a better deal to buy them from the marketplace. So at first you need to sell boosters, since there is a market and since the market is just balanced, like any other car game, in fact, I mean, we are no different. We just have one marketplace. And for magic and users there is tons of marketplaces, but same stuff. Why would you go and buy boosters, if you can buy from TCG player or source it again, same answer, when you see your incentive to do it. And there is this additional thing is that when you open boosters, you can get something which is a Unique card. And then when you get is not on the marketplace will never be because it's a Unique card. So you might have found maybe the right Unique cards for your deck, but maybe not. And maybe you want to give it a chance. And it's it's a chance to experience something which isn't very common with the other card games anymore. Because in magic, it's just you have the cars, on TCG player, you have them in boosters, you can go one way or the other. But if you're looking for a Unique card that well it doesn't exist, you have to open boosters in hub for it to be the one you look for. Yeah, I

Thomas Traplin: 17:59

want to explain a little bit more of that. Because it's not just like, it's not just unique in that, you know, there are lots of unique printings of magic cards right there as a special versions of a card, but they're all the same version of the card. They're just, you know, they're they're shiny, or they have a different art or something along those lines. When you say unique, you mean like actually, like one of a kind, not just, you know, a special treatment or something like that. How does that whole work that whole process work? Well,

Eric Dieulangard: 18:26

this is the only comparison I can I can make is the unique ring from magic, the one who which sold for $2 million. This one very common, what's really unique. And in our case, every eight boosters, you will find one Unique card. And this unicorn is one called which the association of statistics, keywords, rules. And factions, the owl is randomly generated by an algorithm, which we have educated we have admitted, we have made it something we want. So as a result of it is something we wish to have for the players that we control that once you open it, the way it's been generated is purely a unit. So no one else on the block might have the same association of statistics, Monaco's texts, etcetera, etcetera. And there will always be at least a small difference. So when you get a car, what it does, we'll be the only one cut on earth to do it forever. As

Thomas Traplin: 19:28

a, you know, design elements. I mean, I really wonder like, how does the algorithm work? How does it like determine, you know, the playability and stay within the bounds to not create the insane superpowered guard, and all of that, but I don't want to get too deep into that. I'm sure that will be revealed. And

Eric Dieulangard: 19:45

we could we could, I mean, we can talk about it right now, but it's just that we have time for it, or do you think it's interesting for your community, your utility?

Thomas Traplin: 19:52

I think I will save that for maybe another time. I think there are a whole bunch of other questions I want to dive into first but other than really like the mechanics of that That's just my personal I like the design elements of the game. But there are a bunch of questions that still need to be answered and that I've got from from listeners that they're curious. They want to know, the one of the big ones was around the Kickstarter details around the Kickstarter, will there be a retailer to tear? How will they? How will that fit into with them? How, what kind of support will it be? Can you talk about that?

Eric Dieulangard: 20:24

Yeah, for sure. So yes, there will be a retailer pledge. And there is going to be a discount on it, which I'm not going to unveil right now. Because this is part of the release of the Kickstarter page. At the end of the month, this retailer pledge will be orderable directly from us. So you want to order from Kickstarter, you will find an explanation on the Kickstarter page with an email address to contact us. And we will need to check first that you really are a retailer in order to validate your new orders. And then how it works is you will only pay a small percent upfront 10%, if I'm correct, but I need to check, let's say 10%, but something small, and you will pay the rest on delivery. So which means we don't want you to have financial issues with ordering from us, because you would only be able to sell the products very much later here you will be able to order it for a small price. And then when it is delivered, you pay the rest. And by the way, first thing is when you receive the product, and it should be in July, you will be able authorized to sell it instantly. So before the official release of the retail product, so if you go with the Kickstarter product, you can sell it in July, as soon as you have it, it's fine. And second second point is because you go into Kickstarter, so product you will get will be very special, because it will be the Kickstarter product. So as such, and it will be rebuilding in late late January. But I can say it now, every single card within the Kickstarter will have a Kickstarter edition stamp, which will remain when you reprint it on demand, and which will be shown on the marketplace when you sell the cars. So any Kickstarter edition card will remain the Kickstarter edition card as shown as it's on the marketplace. So you will keep the value this way from scouts. And as well as there is plenty of surprises about the product contents themselves, which might be slightly different from the official retail product. In terms of good stuff, let's say. Furthermore, one thing just to be sure we are not misunderstanding here. The only product which is retail pledge available is cards and displays, not accessories. Just so you know, if you want accessories, you're just a regular customers, all the games unique accessories that are going to be shown and so on will be only regular customers. So you will have access only to boosters and displays.

Thomas Traplin: 23:04

Okay, so reading through some of these questions, you already answered a bunch of them while you were going through that. So that works out great. One of the other ones was how does the digital digital token aspect work for retailers will be able to sell or give away decks that we retain the tokens for like a starter deck product. So people are curious how the QR ownership system works. One of the questions, that's a corollary to that was, you know, is this a a blockchain kind of thing? Is this an NFT? Like, how does all that relate? Because it sounds similar. So maybe clarify that for people. It's

Eric Dieulangard: 23:37

just like any other video games, I don't know. World of Warcraft, for example, you have your account online, and it's saved on Blizzard servers, same force, you just create an account, it's on our servers and you do your business from your account. There is no NFT everything is transferred from the applications platform. And that's it like basically any video games nowadays. Where you have stuff like skins or whatever, and you can trade them. What

Thomas Traplin: 24:07

are the plans for organized play? So how are you going to support retailers who want to run tournaments? Oh my God, because that's, again, another major aspect is event organization. How does that work with Altered.

Eric Dieulangard: 24:19

So at first, we will start organized play as I said on day one of the release. So day one I say maybe the week after, but shouldn't be September 24. And you should be able to have kids like for most of the usual two cities that you can order, and you'll get your kids based on your spendings and so on. So we still need to discuss the details. I'm not able to give you all of that right now. But this is basically systems that people are used to we will try to give you as much as possible as much value as possible to attract your customers to your stores. Amongst the value what I can tell you is there is a specific The system in our game, which is named a failure, I don't know if you've heard about it if it rings a bell for you or not. But the failures

Thomas Traplin: 25:07

or idoe. But let's let's tell people, okay, okay.

Eric Dieulangard: 25:10

It basically because it's the boosters for production issues and cost we at first, we couldn't put forays into our boosters. And we know people like for us. So we came up with the solution which which, which nowadays we see as a really good is that in the boosters, you will find special cars named foilers, which when you scan one of them, is giving you a token, a right to find any card in your collection. So there will be three kinds of failures, common words and Unix, because there is three rarities into our game. When you find a rare foiler, you just save it into your collection. And when you want to use it, it's wasted it's used. But then you have chosen one of your rare cards in your collection, and you just make it flow. And from then on, it will remain for it forever. And when you print it on demand, it comes forward to you, you get it for it. So you can choose whatever you want to follow with the spoilers. And by the way, if like me, because I'm like this, I don't like Ferraris. When I find one of those cards, I just save it to my collection. And then I can sell this right over the marketplace. Because it's a token I can sell. So it has value, I can sell it to people interested in force, and they will buy it from me and for the concert. So that's one part of what we are going to put into the organized play weekly kit, let's say among other things, and aside from this organized play will only be able to be available to stores in 2024. So better in 2025 with the release of the first expansion, which should come in January 25. That's when we want to start organizing stuff on our side of things. And probably we the first major tournament in the US in February 25. That's our current roadmap, then there's the one in Europe probably in March. And once again, this should occur around the early summer time, US and Europe and probably your final summer in September for the first year. So a small year, you know, just because we want to learn, we want to be sure we master what we do, we need to grow as well and to, to scale up on the HR side of things we need to recruit and so on. And but then once we arrive after the First World Championships, that's where we want to reveal the serious business. And it will depend on how the game has been doing as a community. And so but we want to grow and we want to bring people with way more opportunities to play and to meet like conventions and so on. Just we want to make it slowly but surely, very

Thomas Traplin: 27:43

exciting. I like the idea of the pool. I really liked the foils, I think it's a really cool idea. I like the you know, the shareable aspect of it and the fact that it's a unique thing that you apply to things. It's a consumable item in the marketplace, I think it's really neat, really good way to actually execute, execute foiling inside of this kind of a game. But that's exciting. I'm, I'm interested to find out more once, you know, details become available, and it's something that you can talk about. Do you have any plans to offer support for stores that want to run kids or family play? So think hyper casual? Is there anything going to be specific for something along those lines? Or is it gonna be more, you know, organized plays usually, the more competitive players

Eric Dieulangard: 28:24

to be honest, not at some moments, just just not that we are not willing to do it. But it's just that we need to build something first, the basic, which is bringing gap weekly opportunities for people to go to stores. And then we will grow as a company. I mean, we have a Kickstarter coming up, then we have the official release. And once we know how well we are doing, how big we can we can we can be in one year time, how much we can spend, and so on. It's all things we will do as much as we can as soon as we can, what we can do. All

Thomas Traplin: 28:57

right. I'm also curious, I'm working with a store in California that's on the roadshow, and they've got some demos coming up. Can you tell people a little bit about what the Roadshow is and how they might be able to get involved to find out a little bit more of

Eric Dieulangard: 29:13

it as a roadshow is an idea that we decided to do because we needed to find a way to make the game known as by as many people as possible, because we are not local. Now we are not Disney, we are not ours. So we have no big IP behind us just to help us, you know, make the news. So instead, we believe that if we go to the people and if we offer these crazy animations, so if you want to retro for your store, just get in touch with with us and we will put you in touch with Cascade game which is our service provider in North America, if it's in other countries you have to go through as Madrid to contact them. And this is an occasion for you to have a demo player and free step for you to have a full afternoon of playing for your players. With promo cards and so on, and you keep this stuff, so everything is offered to the store. And you can keep it and have people play more if you want. And this is something we are aiming for 250 stores worldwide at the moments we have planned at stores in the US and Canada. But we might be willing to do more if it's a success, it's only going to start right now in January, because most of us were pretty busy last year, and we started in late November. So us is going to start right now. And you have if you type roadshow, or if you check our social media, you might find the link with all the retro available to you with a map. So you just check where you are, and you see what's available around you. And then you directly get in touch with the store and to subscribe to register to the event and to play. Cool,

Thomas Traplin: 30:50

very exciting. I like I really like the idea of the roadshow I think once people get exposed to the way the game plays and really kind of get used to the different aspects of you know, the design and, and the the innovation, right, like once they used to it, I think it won't be won't be as you know, unusual, I guess.

Eric Dieulangard: 31:10

And you see something we've it's pretty strange, because we didn't have that in Europe. But in the US we some stores came up with the remark like why would I give you my customers or your roadshow? You know, what do I get in return. And, and and in Europe, we don't have this kind of commence. And to me it's kind of strange, because it's free. I mean, at first, you do it, you don't do it, that my business. But if you do it, it's free. It's one way of just bringing something new to your players. If they like it, maybe you want to go further, maybe you want to provide them with products, if you don't want to you don't, at least it makes people come to your store, maybe people you've never met before, because we have fans everywhere in the world who are looking eagerly to find a place to play Altered and who are driving for hours just to go to one place. And maybe they will just buy something you sign you know, like, play other games. And then you keep the products. So it's also free products for you. You get free promos. We have play sets of promos for the store owners, which will be valuable in the future as well. There are we I mean we don't sit really like good points. Not willing to do it. But well, whatever. Some people just don't want

Thomas Traplin: 32:24

to Yeah, which sounds crazy to me, because well, offering the event for somebody to come into your store and try something new, like game stores do demos all the time, right? So so why would you demo my board game hook? Well, that's because you can sell the war game, you can sell the card game like there's a reason to do that the event itself is fun. The people want to come tribal to do it. And like you said, and we do the demo.

Eric Dieulangard: 32:48

They're looking for these, we have a demo later for you. So it's not like you're going to have to learn the game. And to make the demo yourself. No, you just need to push the information to your community and to explain to them how to register. And that's basically it, we do the rest.

Thomas Traplin: 33:05

There's no reason not to, like personally for me, like I don't know why anyone would say well, why would why would I host this and like they take care of everything. Why would you not want to do this, people are excited about this, they want to come Come find this. And like I can tell you that the store they're working with, they are now opening up new, they like they have to do more sessions because people have have taken up all of the space for the one that they booked originally. So there's a lot of people who are interested in finding out more, so give them a way to find out more from you. Right, like as the store owner, just

Eric Dieulangard: 33:34

to mention it. At the moment, us I think we have 55 stores already registered. So we wanted to we asked that cascade game to offer to try to make it happen in in as many various areas as possible. We don't want like 20 events in New York, you know, we want maybe one, two, but on the other cities all across America. So wherever you live, you can find one place to play which is close to you at some points. But just just to mention in France, we have already 65 stores. I mean 65 already registered, you know that okay, we are French, it's easier to communicate and so on. But we have some opportunities for you in the US to get the roadshow still left, we can get you in touch with casket game very easily. And by the way, we've I don't know if you know, but when we were at Gen Con last year was the first time we revealed the existence of the game. We've met with some of the biggest tours in the US sell Millenium games, and some others. And those guys, they are backing guests from day one. I mean, they are behind us, they are having to roadshow into the stores. They have very big communities that are advocates for us. So I mean, probably those guys I know some of them have very big retailer communities. I mean people talk together maybe you know some of them and and II whatever I suggest all the time if you if you have doubts and if you don't want what we say or you don't trust what we say. Maybe just ask As always, or retailers that have already been in touch with us or have done stuff with us,

Thomas Traplin: 35:04

when he gave us exactly how I discovered, Altered in the first place, because he was talking about how exciting it was. And obviously, he was, he was hyping it up, like very, as something like revolutionary. So like it was very excited, like, okay, let's pay attention to what he says. So let's, let's see what this is all about. So I know we only got a couple more minutes before you gotta go. The let's let's do two things to wrap it up, make it easy. How do people get in touch with? With with you to set up either a roadshow or find out a little bit more? Where can I go for more information?

Eric Dieulangard: 35:39

Okay, as I said, Any country besides US and Canada, you have to go to your Asmodee sales contract. So that you're aware of the roadshow, you just go to them, and they will tell you what to do. If it's US and Canada, whether you are in direct contact with casket game, and you know, some of them and just go to them was a wise you, you come to us on Discord mainly. So the best thing to do is to join us on Discord or to talk to us through our social media in private messages. And we will punch you out to casket game and get you in touch with them for the roadshow. And I mean, if you have more. And if you have more questions, it's the same. Usually it's if it's business questions like retail processing questions, usually it will go to us money, because they are the one distributing for us. But if you have questions about the system, understanding some stuff and so on how it works, like the questions you had, you can come to us. Also, if you type Altered FAQ on Google, you will find the official FAQ for the game. And there is plenty of informations about most of the question you asked here, you will find the answers there.

Thomas Traplin: 36:54

Yeah, for sure. I've been telling people to go the FAQ because it keeps getting updated and keeps getting expanded. So it's a good place. If you're if you're curious and you want to you want to find out a little bit more. That's that's a good place to start. Hopefully this interview also helps. Last thing before we say goodbye would be is there anything that you would want to say to retailers? Before you go? Is there anything you want them to know? Or is anything that you feel like they should be thinking about right now with regards to Altered.

Eric Dieulangard: 37:20

I mean, there is so many retailers in the US market for examples that do not know yet about us and so on or they might hurt here award about us. It's just good the site, I mean, as a Kickstarter is going to be released 30 of January, it's going to last a month. So you have like to the 20 up to the 29th of January to check it out for yourself. And you know, just just for this campaign, check what's coming out because this campaign is going to be very, very, very unique, very special. And I'm not saying this like just because I'm the marketing guy. No, no, no, this is really, we've made our work. We've studied everything that everyone else has done in Kickstarter campaigns for TCGs. And the way we're doing it, what we're doing in it, the pledges we have done and the stretch goals we have prepared for you are going to be very surprising. So at some points, we believe that the product is your opportunity to get a product from the Kickstarter is going to be really one of a kind. And and saying this. And at the same time, you have to understand that because they will not order from Kickstarter, we won't be able to have the numbers shown on the Kickstarter page from the retailers, which is the very basic why we did the Kickstarter in the first place is because we we wanted to advertise through the number we could get from Kickstarter. So what I'm saying here is you as a shop, I'm not saying it to you to go to the Kickstarter, say wants you to help me build up the big numbers, this is not going to happen because we won't have this number upfront. But you might be sad if you missed it. And you want to go with us again later. And you had an occasion to go with it now because it's going to be amazingly cool. So check it out for yourself. And if you don't want to just wait for the end results, see how it goes. Check what the community says about the game how big it made and maybe then just order from Asmoday and see how it goes from here when you can start ordering from them and you will get the retail product which is pretty good as well. But this is the only the one and only ever occasion to get to product via Kickstarter. We will never do once again. Once again. I mean, after that we will just be regular feeding in company releasing new expansions and so on. That's a Kickstarter. Oh my God is good. should check it out.

Thomas Traplin: 39:41

Very exciting. All right. Well, thank you Eric, for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. This was a lot of fun.

Eric Dieulangard: 39:47

Well, thank you Tom. And just keep in touch once you've published somewhere if you have social media, we can just you know retweet, repost, and by the way, do not hesitate to come to the discord. We have a content sharing channel. This is where you should post You will stuff once it's published on social media so our community can get access to it. And it's pretty eager to hear more about the game. So

Thomas Traplin: 40:06

exciting. I will do that. Alright. Well thank you again for, for giving us your time. And we'll talk to everybody in the next episode of the members podcast. Bye

Eric Dieulangard: 40:15

bye. See you Tom. Thank you.