Cold Beam Games have begun an experiment using Steam’s new trading card system. If you can get enough cards to craft five badges then you’re rewarded with a gold ship. If you manage to craft the rare foil badge you get access to the new point-boosted Dragon Ship.
The most likely way to get hold of these cards and badges is to buy them on the Steam market. We asked the developer if this was their intention.
“Not quite,” said Beat Hazard’s creator, Steve Hunt. “After reading the docs I assumed that players could trade cards with each other. I didn’t realize that you have to go through a market. So it’s not quite as I expected.
“However, that’s the way it does work and I guess it’ll be interesting to see how popular that is.
“From a cost point of view, it seems that you should be able to sell surplus cards for roughly the same amount that you pay for the ones you need.
“Adding content with cards is a bit of an experiment. I’m interested to see how it goes.”
Hunt’s right, it will be fascinating to see how players respond to the card bonuses. Valve have created a whole new tool for developers, one they can employ to encourage and reward players for sticking with their game. Cold Beam are one of the first to start offering in-game rewards for collecting cards and creating badges, rather than simply rewarding collectors with Steam profile updates.
If games like Beat Hazard see success with this sort of implementation it’s hard not to see lots of developers adopting a similar reward system.
Beat Hazard’s a good test case, too, as it’s been a phenomenally successful game, grossing more than $2 million. It clearly has a load of players to become invested in these new rewards. Hopefully Hunt will be as open with the success of his experiment as he has been with the game’s financial details.
Further details on the new ships can be found here.
With additional reporting by Jeremy Peel.