Risk is a strategy board game of diplomacy, conflict and conquest for two to six players. The standard version is played on a board depicting a political map of the world, divided into 42 territories, which are grouped into six continents. Turns rotate among players who control armies of playing pieces with which they attempt to capture territories from other players, with results determined by dice rolls. Players may form and dissolve alliances during the course of the game. The goal of the game is to occupy every territory on the board and, in doing so, eliminate the other players. The game can be lengthy, requiring several hours to multiple days to finish. European versions are structured so that each player has a limited "secret mission" objective that shortens the game.
The Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game is an out-of-print collectible card game produced by Decipher, Inc. Released November 2001, it is based on Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and the J. R. R. Tolkien novel on which the films were based. Decipher also had the rights to The Hobbit novel but did not release any cards based on it. In addition to images taken from the films, in 2004 Weta Workshop produced artwork depicting characters and items from the novel absent from the films for use on cards. In 2002, LOTR TCG won the Origins Awards for Best Trading Card Game of 2001 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Card Game 2001. Decipher's license to The Lord of the Rings expired on July 30, 2007, after which all official promotion and distribution of the game stopped.
The Nintendo e-Reader, commonly abbreviated as e-Reader, is an add-on manufactured by Nintendo for its Game Boy Advance handheld video game console. It was released in Japan in December 2001, with a North American release following in September 2002. It has an LED scanner that reads "e-Reader cards", paper cards with specially encoded data printed on them.
Guild Wars is an online role-playing game franchise developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSoft. The games were critically well received and won many editor's choice awards, as well as awards such as "Massively Multiplayer/Persistent World Game of the Year" by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, as well as Best Value, Best Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), and Best Game. Guild Wars was noted for being the "first major MMO to adopt a business model not based on monthly subscription fees", its instanced approach to gameplay, and the quality of the graphics and play for computers with low specifications. In April 2009, NCSoft announced that 6 million units of games in the Guild Wars series had been sold. The sequel and fourth major entry into the series, Guild Wars 2, was announced in March 2007 and released on August 28, 2012. It features updated graphics and gameplay mechanics, and continues the original Guild Wars tradition of no subscription fees. The Guild Wars series had sold 11.5 million copies by August 2015
Granado Espada is a Korean fantasy MMORPG developed by IMC Games Co., Ltd. Originally released in South Korea in February 2006, the English localizations were launched in the summer of 2007 in North America and Southeast Asia. Granado Espada won the 2006 Korean Presidential Award for Best Graphics and Game of the Year, with features previously unseen in an MMORPG. Granado Espada features a unique art style based on the Baroque period of Europe, differing from the standard “sword and sorcery” fantasy themes of the genre.
Phantasy Star Online Episode III: C.A.R.D. Revolution is a turn-based role-playing video game released for the GameCube in 2003. It has a card-based play style, making it unique among games in the Phantasy Star Online series. The story of the game takes place twenty-one years after the fourth episode, itself set after the first two episodes.
Twilight Imperium is a strategy board game produced by Fantasy Flight Games and Asmodee in the genre of science fiction and space opera. It was designed by Christian T. Petersen and was first released in 1997. It is now in its fourth edition (2017), which has large changes over previous editions. It is known for the length of its games and its in-depth strategy. As of 2024, its compelling gameplay and enduring popularity have been hailed by Nerdist and Polygon as one of the "greatest board games ever made."
Guild Wars Nightfall is a fantasy action role-playing game and the third stand-alone campaign in the Guild Wars series developed by ArenaNet, a subsidiary of NCSOFT corporation. Nightfall was released worldwide on October 27, 2006, having been in development alongside Guild Wars Factions since November 2005.
Guild Wars is a multiplayer online action role-playing game developed by ArenaNet, a subsidiary of South Korean game publisher NCSOFT, and released in 2005. As the original installment of the Guild Wars series, its campaign was retroactively titled Prophecies to differentiate it from the content of subsequent releases. The game contains a co-operative role-playing portion and a competitive Player versus Player (PvP) portion. In PvP, players may use either their co-operative characters or PvP-exclusive characters who are inherently maximum level and have account-based access to unlocked content.
Magic: The Gathering is a video game published by MicroProse in March 1997 based on the collectible card game Magic: The Gathering. It is often referred to as Shandalar after the plane of Shandalar, where the game takes place. The player must travel the land and fight random enemies to gain cards, and defeat five wizards representing the five colors. The player must prevent one color from gaining too much power, and defeat the planeswalker Arzakon, who has a deck of all five colors. Adventure and role-playing elements are present, including inventory, gold, towns, dungeons, random battles, and character progression in the form of new abilities and a higher life point total. An oversized version of Aswan Jaguar was included in the game box.
Urban Rivals is a massively multi-player online virtual trading card game. The game features over 2,000 characters with varying rarities and abilities to discover, collect and level up by fighting live against players from all over the world. It also has an active market, where players can buy cards from other players or put their own cards up for sale.
Lord of Ultima is a defunct free-to-play, browser-based, massively multiplayer real-time strategy (MMORTS) video game by Electronic Arts. The game started a beta test on April 20, 2010 and was developed by EA Phenomic. While it is, technically, part of the Ultima series of games, there was very little actual connection to the other games in the series.
Command & Conquer: Tiberium Alliances is a military science fiction massively multiplayer online real-time strategy video game developed by Electronic Arts Phenomic and published by Electronic Arts as a free-to-play online-only browser game. The game entered its closed beta stage in December 2011. The game entered its open beta stage on March 15, 2012 and its official release was on May 24, requiring an Origin account to play.
Always-on DRM or always-online DRM is a form of DRM that requires a consumer to remain connected to a server, especially through an internet connection, to use a particular product. The practice is also referred to as persistent online authentication. The technique is meant to prevent copyright infringement of software. Like other DRM methods, always-on DRM has proven controversial, mainly because it has failed to stop pirates from illegally using the product, while causing severe inconvenience to people who bought the product legally due to the single point of failure it inherently introduces.
WWE SuperCard is a 2014 digital collectible card game featuring WWE Superstars for iOS and Android, and a mobile installment in the WWE video game series, under the WWE 2K banner, developed by Cat Daddy Games and published by 2K. As of 2024, it is also the longest running (official) online WWE mobile game.
Pokémon TCG Online was a 2011 video game based on the Pokémon Trading Card Game developed by Dire Wolf Digital, a studio based in Denver, Colorado. The game was available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, iOS and Android. It was originally released in March 2011 under the name of Pokémon Trainer Challenge as a browser-based game.
Hearthstone is a digital collectible card game released by Blizzard Entertainment in 2014, available for Microsoft Windows and macOS PCs and iOS and Android smartphones. The game is free-to-play, with players gaining in-game currency and card packs via winning matches and completing quests, while real-world money can be spent to acquire additional card packs and cosmetic items. The game has been critically well-received and financially successful, estimated in August 2017 to earn nearly US$40 million per month. As of November 2018, Blizzard has reported more than 100 million Hearthstone players. Blizzard has continued to expand the game with the addition of multiple expansions, adventures and game modes.
Eternal is a free-to-play online collectible card video game developed and published by Dire Wolf Digital. Eternal is available for iOS, Android, Xbox One, PCs using Steam and Nintendo Switch. The game features cross-platform play, allowing players to use any of the supported platforms to compete against each other. The game takes place in a Weird West fantasy setting. The game was in Steam early access in November 2016 and then had its official wide release in November 2018 that included support for the Xbox One. Eternal was released for the Switch on October 8, 2019.
Love Live! School Idol Festival is a Japanese rhythm game series. The first game, developed by KLab and published by Bushiroad's Bushimo, was released in Japan on April 15, 2013, for iOS and June 8, 2013, for Android. The game was free-to-play with an in-app purchase system. It featured songs and characters from the series Love Live! School Idol Project and Love Live! Sunshine!!, newly introduced girls, and stories that were not included in other media in the Love Live! franchise.
Overwatch 2 is a 2023 first-person shooter video game produced by Blizzard Entertainment. As a sequel and replacement to the 2016 hero shooter Overwatch, the game included new gamemodes and a reduction in team size from six to five. The game is free-to-play on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S and features full cross-platform play. Overwatch 2 was announced in 2019 and was playable in early access from October 2022 until officially releasing in August 2023. The game was planned to feature more story-based cooperative modes, but these were scrapped in 2023 to focus on its player-versus-player (PvP) elements.
