Hearthstone’s new formats and the rise of digital scarcity

> In Hearthstone, on the other hand, there's no practical reason that Blizzard couldn't keep selling its entire line of cards directly for as long as the game exists.

There's no _technical_ reason why they can't continue to sell all of the types of cards however they aren't introducing scarcity for the sake of it, or as (just) a money grab.

When they design a new card they have to ensure that it fits with the other cards in the game, tweaking the effects it has so that it isn't too powerful when combined with existing cards. This becomes increasingly difficult as the number of cards increases. The "Standard" mode changes announced today make their job a lot easier as they only have to consider the last 2 years worth of cards (+ classic + basic cards) when designing new cards.

IMHO this will be a net positive for the game.

The article gets quite short on my expectations. It just notes that Hearthstone is doing the same things that "Magic: The Gathering" does. And they notice - I disagree - that is completely different because Magic has to deal with physical cards while Blizzard has digital ones.

> it's a systemized way of creating enforced scarcity of a theoretically limitless digital product through a deliberate, timed process.

This is the theme that will have make a memorable article. Our economic systems have been dealing with scarcity for a long time. The increase in production and reduction of scarcity was one way of measuring an economic system success. I really would have liked a talk about how for the last decades we have designed scarcity as an expanding business model and what it will mean for the future of economy.