You may already be aware of the series of satirical videos made by Graeme Barrett where he opens a pack of “Divorced Dads” cards that contains cards like “Healing Potion” (Pepto-Bismol) and “Unwrapped Christmas Gift”. The satire of the “post-covid Pokemon card opening video” is just on point. I’ve linked them below if you have no idea what I’m talking about.
Original video series
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4FTASzSPThM
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7VA6abbGw4c
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4KM9SVyhlpA
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ua1DgHeIuX4
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0uILI6N0FrA
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uH8uSn-Y50I
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1Bm9uCukgds
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/981_YBK6nzY
Since he was on my radar and we both live in Toronto, I had an opportunity a couple weekends ago on Father’s Day to meet with him at a local card shop:
If you notice, the start time was at noon and no end time was given. After getting home from visiting my actual father, I decided to take a shot around 4:00pm to see head over and see if he was still there (I had also never been to the cardshop before so I wanted to check it out). He was still there but because I arrived kind of late - I guess a lot of the action was happening around noon. But I ended up talking to him for almost an hour. I’m going by memory but I’ll do my best to recall the details of what we talked about.
Basically, with the viral “Divorced Dads” videos he produced, he felt like he was really tapping into something. So he transformed what was 100% a joke into a serious attempt to create a new TCG. I bought a few packs while I was there.
Yes it’s a picture on my dirty stovetop which is intentionally on-brand.
I believe he said it was about 4 months of non-stop work to go from nothing to these packs. It was essentially just him, so he had to design the cards, invent the gameplay and figure out how to produce the product. He said his background was in Magic The Gathering (but to a limited degree) and knew very little about Pokemon cards. He doesn’t play MTG, today but he said he wanted to recreate the feeling he remembers when he had played it. I did not actually probe into the gameplay details, since I’m not a huge TCG player myself.
The cards look like this. And I know instantly some of you recoiled at the AI art. We actually talked a decent amount about the use of AI. He said the first comment on the video when he finally revealed the project was about the AI art. I could tell it was something he heard a lot of criticism about. And the copyright with AI art is interesting - He said he “owns” only 2/3rds of each card lol. But I personally think this is a really practical use case for AI art. He said - being just one person trying to see the viability of a new TCG - that he could neither spend the time doing the art himself nor could he devote thousands of dollars of resources to properly pay artists for what was just a trial run. He also didn’t want to use Kickstarter and be beholden to the masses.
That said, he was satisfied with the amount of product he sold. He is working on the next set and hiring real artists and paying them. Some are from MTG. I recommended he commission Arita for art - because it reminded me how he recently illustrated the MTG card below.
He also was considering hiring artists to go back to draw the original set “Court of Chaos” cards so he could 100% “own” them. The art style is intentionally using the fantasy/grungy look. He said that some of his harshest critics were the very conservative fans where the “Divorced Dad” joke was probably too real for them and they generally don’t get the MTG/fantasy vibe.
The holos were very dull looking, definitely could use some improvement. He said he got the cards printed in China in the same place MTG cards were printed at. Apparently the pack production is non-trivial. Since they have to collate and seed each pack with a holo, it’s more work. The cards feel okay, like ones you would get in a board game. I noticed there was no inner graphite layer and pointed that out.
The backs. All holos have this weird print error on the bottom left. I guess the community of people who are into this TCG (reddit and discord) have viewed this error endearingly - similar to how we treat shadowless cards. Apparently it’s unclear why this error happened.
In addition to getting the pack above signed, I also got a Cynthia’s Feelings card signed. It was the most Divorced Dads Pokemon card I could think of.
The final thing I wanted to mention is that he’s in touch with PSA to try to get these graded. It’s a really interesting situation. PSA doesn’t want to prematurely give legitimacy to this TCG, so he has to basically demonstrate it’s a serious thing, which was one of the motives for running this event. It sounds like PSA has a department that scouts for cutting-edge novel TCG ventures now. Part of that was how they made the TCG version of the PSA magazine.
I’m not trying to promote the game or anything. Feel free to check it out if you want (or not). Despite him seeming like a really nice guy, I’d actually bet against the game’s long-term success. But that has way more to do with the probability of any TCG succeeding rather than this one specifically. Even Disney has troubles with it. Maybe someone that has a better understanding of TCG mechanics can comment how on how well you think this game plays How to Play – Divorced Dads because I think play-ability is #1 for a game like this.
Overall I just wanted to share the experience and what I took away to be the many challenges of starting a fresh new TCG. The vibe I got was this was not just a money grab and he really wanted to get the game mechanics working and make this a serious project. It’s a tough balancing act to keep the original joke premise while making a game people will engage with seriously.
t-shirt? I need one.