"Rare" cards cost hundreds of thousands, why do small cards become teen social codes?

At a toy store in Beijing, parents buy cards for their children. Photo by Yao Xiaodan/ Guangming photo by reporter of this newspaper

After school, Babe, a boy who had just entered the first grade of primary school, excitedly clipped his folder under his arm and hurried to the community, waiting for the children who came home from school one after another. Every time a little friend came over, he smiled and asked, "Change?" Then open the folder, it is full of "Ultraman cards", there are all kinds of forms, some are three-dimensional, some are transparent and shiny, some are colorful; there are all kinds of "levels", from "R" (English word Rare, referring to rare) to "SR" (English word Super Rare, referring to super rare) "SSR" (English word Superior Super Rare, referring to special super rare) and so on. Soon, many children joined him, and everyone talked to each other about the new cards, sometimes exchanging a "same level" card.

After the winter vacation, the children's money is abundant, and there are more types of cards in their hands. Many parents have reported that cards have even become an indispensable tool for children to socialize. "I started thinking it was just an ordinary toy, but I didn't expect that now children are becoming more and more addicted to it, in addition to buying cards, but also engaging in 'battles', which cost more and more in this regard." Liu Xi, a parent of a third-grade primary school student in Beijing's Chaoyang District, told reporters of his distress.

How popular are Ultraman cards? The reporter found that these cards are cultural derivatives of a well-known Japanese film and television drama, and the cards are printed with the images of heroes and monsters in this film and television drama, and their force values are marked. On February 27, a company selling cards had just attacked the city and opened a second flagship store in North China in Zhengzhou. On the forum, a "rare" card can be called out for tens of thousands of yuan to hundreds of thousands of yuan, and even "experts" have instructional videos, teaching parents and students to buy high-level cards through "algorithms".

Why does a card the size of a playing card capture the hearts of many children? Is there a solution to this kind of game addiction? How can teenagers have a good, healthy collection hobby? The reporter visited the group that bought and collected cards.

Children: Keep buying, keep repeating, keep exchanging, keep discarding

Who's buying cards? The reporter walked into a card flagship store, the clerk introduced, there are Naruto, Ye Luoli, Pony Baoli, Harry Potter and other well-known IP card sales, but the most popular is the Ultraman card. The prices of these cards range from a few dollars to thousands of dollars. Parents reflect that the lower the price of the card, the fewer "heroes" are issued, and almost all of them are "negative characters" such as monsters. The clerk also said that the higher the price, the higher the level of the hero, the level of the card, and the number of rare cards. "The best set is the new edition of the year, which is out of print after we finish it, which is very collectible." Xiao Lei, a clerk, told reporters, "The tens of thousands of yuan of cards on the market now are our limited editions of that year. ”

At the same time, the limited edition adopts a membership sales model and has a certain purchase threshold. The flagship store will issue purchase coupons to members, and purchase them with coupons. The clerk said it was to guarantee the "scarcity" of the cards.

Restricting purchase evokes the children's view of winning and losing that "what you buy is a victory"; at the same time, these cards are being repeatedly printed in large quantities. There are 30 packs of cards per pack, each with 8 cards, and most parents and children buy one box at a time. Opening the package, the reporter found that the 240 cards were full of repetitive characters. Because they could not buy the cards they wanted individually, many children threw away some of the cards after opening the box on the spot, causing great waste. The flagship store has a recycling bin for waste cards, which specialize in recycling brand-new cards discarded by children. The clerk assured that the lost cards would not be repackaged for sale due to hygiene concerns. The fate of these duplicate cards, then, is to be thrown away as soon as they are sold. This is also the main reason why many children exchange cards with each other.

Merchants have designed some probability algorithms, and it is difficult for primary and secondary school students to accurately calculate how to buy the right cards, so they can only keep buying, repeating, exchanging, and discarding.

There is another reason why cards attract teenagers, and the clerk Xiao Lei told reporters that cards are divided into two types: collection type and battle type. Collectible cards mainly show the "level" of heroes, the battle type is from virtual to reality, each box of battle cards are marked with the words "Hero Showdown", after opening there are two packs of cards and a "war zone map", the map is also densely printed with battle rules. The clerk explains: "The basic principle is 'ratio size', stronger than the hero's skills. "The flagship store has more than a dozen battle tables, and the clerk told reporters that there will be teachers teaching on the spot every week, and live battles will be organized every month, and the children's enthusiasm is very high." Most of them were boys, from four or five to teenagers, and the stadium was almost full. ”

The flagship store is scrolling with advertisements endorsed by celebrity families, and there are large pillars of light on the walls that make up "You Can Believe in Light", as well as isometric models of heroes, which attract the attention of children.

Parents: From "no objection" to "hidden worries"

How many children are addicted to cards? The reporter randomly made a statistic when a primary school was out of school, and the boys in a certain class in the third grade were more or less playing. "There's no one who doesn't play, it's just that the level of immersion is different." The teacher told reporters.

However, today's parents of primary and secondary school students, when they were primary and secondary school students, have also collected large and small cards, including a simple "Water Margin Card", a certain brand "Three Kingdoms Card", and even some film and television stars' peripheral cards. They have also exchanged with each other and have carefully collected them. Therefore, when today's primary school students are addicted to cards, many parents are "somewhat ambivalent" about this mentality.

"I understand in my heart, but I also have some vague worries. At that time, I also bought a lot of crisp noodles for the 'Water Margin Card' and racked my brains to collect a 'Song Jiang'. But today, when the child is tied tightly to the card, I feel that something is wrong. We were just trying to collect a whole set of cards, today's children set cards when they are young, they will participate in battles when they are older, and then they will have Cosplay (role playing) and other activities when they grow up, and this kind of 'user stickiness' makes me very worried about this. Li Yuanxia, a second-grade parent of primary school in Haidian District, Beijing, told reporters.

Li Yuanxia's contradiction comes from two aspects, on the one hand, she is worried that the child is overindulged, on the other hand, she is worried that this is the "subculture" among the children, and it is their "communication code", and once "cut off", it may be detrimental to the child's mental health.

The reporter learned in the interview that Li Yuanxia's experience represents the mood of most parents. Because of their childhood experience, at the beginning, parents' attitude towards their children's collection of cards was "not opposed" or even "happy to see it", only treating the card as an ordinary toy or an ordinary collection. Like children, they did not do in-depth research and "plunged headlong into it" until they found that the child's "stickiness" was getting stronger and stronger, and they woke up like a dream. Li Yuanxia introduced that among the parents around her, some people will cut their children's cards and confiscate their children's cards in one breath, but after the children get the ideal results, they can't help but buy their children's favorite cards as a reward.

"Behind every box of cards is the words 'reasonable consumption, do not indulge', but each of their rules accurately hits the child's heart, whether it is a social attribute or a battle attribute, it is so addictive, how can the children not be addicted?" 」 Li Yuanxia told reporters.

Teacher: It is advisable to be unblocked and not blocked

Guo Feng, a full-time psychology teacher at Qingdao Qiyuan School, told reporters that there are many reasons why children are addicted to card games. "First of all, the targeted commercial sales behavior of merchants meets the psychological development needs of children, resulting in them being defenseless when facing card games. Secondly, parents lack understanding and screening of the 'media' content or game tools that their children watch, resulting in blind 'entering the pit'. Third, some parents do not pay attention to the high-quality accompaniment of their children in the early stages and do not establish a healthy parent-child relationship. Finally, when parents find that the adverse effects of card games on their children are difficult to control, they often take a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to make children 'quit', which can easily lead to parent-child conflict and children's rebellious psychology. Guo Feng said.

Li Xiao, a first-class teacher at a middle school in Haidian District, Beijing, also believes that there are many reasons why this kind of card game is popular. "To a certain extent, parent-child relationships will affect whether children are addicted to a certain kind of game, but addiction is the result of a combination of factors, and it is related to the age of children, classes and school ethos." Li Xiao told reporters.

How to avoid card addiction, let children develop healthy hobbies, and have the ability to identify some bad hobbies? Guo Feng said: "From the early stages of children's growth, parents should pay attention to screening the content and toy games they watch. The data shows that children under the age of 5 like brightly colored animation works with simple and straightforward plots. Parents should do a good job of screening to avoid some simple and rough plots becoming the 'spiritual food' of their children's early years. At the same time, we must pay attention to the quality of the parent-child relationship, the more we play with some creative toys, the more we must communicate with the child, enter the child's spiritual world, let them feel the companionship and attention of their parents. In addition, it is necessary to establish a sense of rules for children's consumption behavior. Some children's parents don't let them play cards, so they secretly let their grandparents buy cards. Parents can let each family member talk about their views on consumption through family meetings, so that over time, the child's concept will change, and a healthy consumption concept will be established, and the repeated and wasteful parts of the card rules will be doubted. Of course, once parents find that there is an obvious conflict with their children's concepts in terms of games, they must stop and repair them in time, and they cannot blindly complain, let alone one-size-fits-all, and should not be neglected or blocked. ”

Li Xiao believes that in the process of dealing with "addiction or not", there will inevitably be contradictions, and the principle of parents is to "handle flexibly" instead of "rigid treatment". "Parents should use ingenuity in the process of educating and cultivating their children, rather than making brute force, otherwise they will not be able to reach the speed." As children age and independence increase, parents will have more and more feelings of powerlessness and frustration. ”

The reporter learned in the interview that both parents and teachers hope to set up corresponding access systems for such games in relevant laws and regulations. Wang Jing, legal counsel of a "tide play" company, told reporters that at present, in addition to purchasing the production copyright of the corresponding film and television works, there are no more relevant regulations on market access. Some teachers have suggested that they hope that such games can be implemented in accordance with the relevant regulations for children in online games.

Source: Guangming Daily