I collected the 1996 Netrunner CCG for years; last year I found someone who was more or less selling off their complete collection (I didn't have any of the 2.0 cards or the majority of the 2.2 cards, and was also missing a handful of the 2.1 rares - inheriting a couple boxes of all the miscellaneous spares was fine by me if it meant a 100% complete binder) so that very expensive chapter of my life has closed.
I also went out and finished my "first TCG appearence of the original 151" Pokémon collection with one of my first few paychecks after graduating (had to shell out the money for Charizard and a couple others that were never in my collection from childhood). I really wanted to retroactively declare myself the coolest kid on the playground at recess, otherwise what was all that work for? :)
Sadly, while card games were an important part of my life growing up, a lot of mental switches flipped over the last year or so and I honestly regret spending so much money and time in the card game world over the entire first part of my life. In 2012 Android: Netrunner introduced me to the LCG model and made me realize that the CCG model was exploitative and a terrible use of my money (obvious in retrospect, but when you're in the thick of it, you try and rationalize it, you know?). Then, working towards my degree for a few years after that kept me out of the tournament ecosystem for so long that I found myself not wanting to go back - there were simply more productive uses of my brain cycles than deck construction and playing games. I know they say "time enjoyed wasted is not wasted time" but if I would have programmed or learned a few languages or focused on competition math or read classical literature or learned to cook or any number of other things in that first 18 years, I'd be so much better off [1]. It's possible many coders feel the same way, and that's why you're not seeing them.
[1] In fact, should parenting be in my future, I don't think I'd let my kids have nearly as much post-pubescent "non-skill-building" fun as I was allowed to have; competition for income is fierce and it's only going to get worse.
> I know they say "time enjoyed wasted is not wasted time" but if I would have programmed or learned a few languages or focused on competition math or read classical literature or learned to cook or any number of other things in that first 18 years, I'd be so much better off [1].
Better off in what sense? If we're talking about skills that apply to the rest of life, I honestly feel like deck optimisation was much better preparation for a real-world career (where the problem scope is never fully defined, the measure of success always involves an element of randomness, and hidden interactions abound) than competition maths was. And while it exercises a different kind of imagination and storytelling, I'd argue that games in a shared-world fiction can give a more intense practice of the things that classical literature give you.
I also went out and finished my "first TCG appearence of the original 151" Pokémon collection with one of my first few paychecks after graduating (had to shell out the money for Charizard and a couple others that were never in my collection from childhood). I really wanted to retroactively declare myself the coolest kid on the playground at recess, otherwise what was all that work for? :)
Sadly, while card games were an important part of my life growing up, a lot of mental switches flipped over the last year or so and I honestly regret spending so much money and time in the card game world over the entire first part of my life. In 2012 Android: Netrunner introduced me to the LCG model and made me realize that the CCG model was exploitative and a terrible use of my money (obvious in retrospect, but when you're in the thick of it, you try and rationalize it, you know?). Then, working towards my degree for a few years after that kept me out of the tournament ecosystem for so long that I found myself not wanting to go back - there were simply more productive uses of my brain cycles than deck construction and playing games. I know they say "time enjoyed wasted is not wasted time" but if I would have programmed or learned a few languages or focused on competition math or read classical literature or learned to cook or any number of other things in that first 18 years, I'd be so much better off [1]. It's possible many coders feel the same way, and that's why you're not seeing them.
[1] In fact, should parenting be in my future, I don't think I'd let my kids have nearly as much post-pubescent "non-skill-building" fun as I was allowed to have; competition for income is fierce and it's only going to get worse.