Virtual Gaming Cards From The Continuing Committee And The Holotable!
In the early 1990s, Decipher acquired the licensing rights to several lucrative franchises and developed Customizable Card Games for Star Trek and Star Wars. As the CCG market changed, Decipher lost the license to Star Wars and then Star Trek. What Decipher underestimated was the commitment their players had! That commitment to the game has sprouted The Holotable and The Continuing Committee and the advent of “virtual” gaming cards.
When Decipher changed its corporate direction, it decided to dump the vast online support network it had created for players of the Star Trek CCG. Undeterred by lack of corporate support, a band of Star Trek CCG players acquired the Star Trek content from Decipher’s significant website and created The Continuing Committee.
The Continuing Committee is an online resource for players of the defunct Star Trek CCG. More than a reference for what Decipher created, the Continuing Committee has continued developing the game through collections of virtual gaming cards. The virtual gaming cards present images with game text in the format of the original Decipher cards. All of the various corners of the Star Trek universe that Decipher did not have a chance to incorporate into the game have been rendered online by a dedicated community of player/developers. Online, they create “cards” that allow them to continue playing their beloved game well-beyond the static product represented by Decipher’s cancellation of the product line. The Continuing Committee’s efforts are not a true progression of the game in the virtual world; players are encouraged to print the virtual cards and then play those physical cards.
What is a pretty incredible reimaging of the defunct physical game is the effort made by The Holotable. When Decipher discontinued the Star Wars CCG, another company launched a Star Wars trading card game. Players who invested so much time and money in Decipher’s product and game mechanic resisted the other release. They founded The Holotable.
The Holotable took the idea of virtual cards to an entirely different level. Instead of simply creating card images that matched the style and game mechanic of the Star Wars CCG, they created an entire virtual play platform. Registering with The Holotable, players may assemble virtual decks – file folders of their virtual cards – online. Players then play against one another by connecting through the Internet and adding their decks to a random shuffling program that then allows players to play against one another online with the sense of unpredictability for which card games are known. Ironically, the customizable card game industry was born out of a desire to compete with video games (the same demographics tend to be targeted for both), but the Holotable has essentially saved their card game by making an exceptionally sophisticated virtual gaming platform!
They may not (usually) exist in the physical world, but the ingenuity shown by The Continuing Committee and The Holotable to transform their beloved games into virtual games online is undeniably cool.
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