These games manage all the rules of a CCG, such as tracking the avatar's health, removing damaged creatures from the board, and shuffling decks when necessary.
The games are managed on servers to maintain the player's library and any purchases of booster packs and additional cards through either in-game or real-world money.
The Super Famicom card-battle/role-playing game Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiya Densetsu (1992), based on the Dragon Ball Carddass series, is considered an early precursor to the DCCG, as it allowed the player to collect, buy and sell cards within the game for use in card battles.
Tabletop-based CCGs came about in 1993 with Magic: The Gathering by Wizards of the Coast which became a phenomenon that year in the traditional game market.
[disputed – discuss] Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon Trading Card Game were based on their physical CCG counterparts, Yu-Gi-Oh!
Within the United States, Wizards of the Coast had seen the success of games like Chron X and Sanctum, and initially with the help of a small development firm Leaping Lizard, built out Magic: The Gathering Online (MTGO), an online multiplayer client for Magic first released in 2002 which players could spend money and win games to build out card collections.
MTGO had a number of growing pains over the years, but remains an active service that is used as one point for entry for several of the main live Magic: The Gathering tournaments.
Arcade games of this type have been developed by companies such as Sega, Square Enix and Taito, and are most commonly of the real-time strategy or sports management genres, with some diversion into action RPGs.
[7] Similarly, Phantom Dust (2004) was a third-person shooter, but where the player's attack and defense abilities were randomly selected from a customized "arsenal" of powers that they collected through the course of the game.
[4] DCCG games with significant populations of players include The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls, Kantai Collection and Million Arthur.
In late 2012, Cinderella Girls was earning over one billion yen in revenue monthly,[10] whilst Kantai Collection has grown to more than one million players throughout Japan.
[11] Unofficial ways to play some digital versions of CCGs also exist, such as brand specific programs like Magic Workstation.
[16] Wizards of the Coast announced in early 2017 that they plan to create a new studio to adapt the Magic: The Gathering game into a digital format similar to Hearthstone.
[16] Hearthstone encouraged the release of the digital CCGs Gwent: The Witcher Card Game and The Elder Scrolls: Legends.
In a different case, The Eye of Judgment, a CCG that has been combined with a PlayStation 3 game, bringing innovation with the CyberCode matrix technology.
Valve's Artifact is heavily based on their multiplayer online battle arena game Dota 2, and thus features three boards (called "lanes") instead of the usual one.
[27] A 2022 report by the Norwegian Consumer Council called loot boxes (including booster packs) as "predatory" and can "foster addiction" in players.