How not to start a card game

For this entry, I was looking for advice I could give about how to start a card game. I could have spent an hour or two talking about the paperwork, the designs, the intrinsic elements of the process of creating a card game, and a bunch more of boring stuff that I've yet to mention. Even though I plan to talk about them someday, I promised last entry that this one would be shorter. That's why I'll take the other path, and talk about how not to start a card game.

While analyzing and designing card games, I've found some starting points that seemed ok at first sight, but that later in the process show their ugly face. Some in particular are very dangerous, as they almost always end being a disaster. I thought it would be a good idea to put some warning signs beforehand, so that new designers don't take the same path as me and waste their time with unworkable, uncommercial products. Here is a list of ideas you shouldn't bother to try:

• Games based around someone else's Intelectual Property:
  
  I mention this sign first because it is most commonly seen in new designers. Its popularity comes from the designer not having to bother with the background work, as it uses one done by another author. Game elements and cards are put into place fast by taking them directly from the source, and along with a card game system "borrowed" from another card game, the whole project can be finished in a single day. That is how Japan's card game industry works, by the way.
  
  Many downsides of this approach are summarized on Make up your own damned IP, a worth reading article from the blog InvertedCastle. Even with the owner's permission, the game's fate will become deeply attached to the original source, and it will fade away with it.
  
  
• Games with which you can play poker:
  
  Never, ever, design a card game with that idea on mind. On the surface, it looks as an added value. In practice, it suggests people that they could be playing poker instead of your game (not the best idea you would want to transmit). The nail in the coffin arrives when you realize that people might just buy a poker standard deck to play your game. Ouch!
  
  
• Strategy Games based around rock, paper, scissors:
  
  I've never understood why people associate strategy with rock, paper, scissors. For starters, the only strategy that works in that game is the lack of any discernible strategy. The only appeal the game could have, is the feeling that it is about reading the opponent's mind, which is completely lost once you add the randomness inherent to almost all card games.
  
  Note that the game includes as a principle that every tactic has a countermeasure, a property that is always interesting to have in a strategy game.
  

These aren't the only bad ideas you could attempt, but in any case, they would be material for another post. Hope you liked it!