Fake Cards

Hey look, it's a picture of a phone with a picture of a card that doesn't really exist on it! 

A long time ago, I dabbled with an app produced by Topps that allowed the user to collect virtual baseball cards on it. There were some elements of the app that I really liked (daily fantasy), but in the end, as a free-to-play player, I felt extremely disadvantaged and cheated, especially by a certain feature (again, daily fantasy). Of course, such is the life of the gamer that doesn't want to pay for the things that supposedly bring him or her joy. I rage quit the thing, and then came crawling back this year to see what had changed.

This is an actual card you can collect in Topps BUNT now. Just let that soak in.

In all fairness, though, a lot has changed. The fantasy baseball element has improved significantly, although it requires so much of the player's attention that it will never find enough space in my increasingly scattered brain these days. More importantly, however, there are actual things to do and "cards" to collect, even for the freeloading player.

(This is what one of the old cards looked like, at least when I originally played.)

I still can't see myself spending real dollars on this for some images of what are supposed to represent trading cards, but I am checking in daily and collecting (some of) the things. I don't know why I do this. I think I just got tired of other things that I can kill some time with while I'm waiting around to pick up my lunch, among other things.

I just looked back and read my original post for the first time since writing it, and can address some of the things that have changed, if you're one of those people who gave up on it.

• Daily fantasy still heavily favors people who get the better (boosted) cards, which is what you'd expect. They pay money. However, there are interesting consolations for people that participate and are less, er, boosted.
• Trading makes sense now, even though I still think the rating system is suspect. There's a smooth flow to the trading "feed", and with a little patience it became easy to understand how people work with trades. I actually managed to complete every tier of the Series 1 base set this year, with much help from these trades.
• People still love the inserts! But certain people also have other weird goals, like collecting as many "Tier 1" (like the most common of all base cards) of their favorite player, for some reason. There is/was actually some sort of "Card Fusion" system where you could grind up a bunch of lower tier cards to make a better tiered version, but that feature was disabled right around when I showed back up. Suspicious!
• Rules and gameplay features, otherwise, seem pretty stable. As do the bugs. Hey, it's been five years since I last touched the thing, so it makes sense.

If you are involved (or are thinking about getting involved), I go by 'madding' on the thing. If I know you from the blog (or you mention it), I'm sure I will be up for helping you out with some favorable trades. That's not to say I have anything good, of course. I'm a free player, after all.