What Happened to the "Playing Cards" Category on Kickstarter? || A Quick Analysis

[BaconWise]

Greetings!

I decided to do a quick check on Kickstarter this morning and, as always, I filter by the "Playing Cards" category and sort by "Newest". What is with the onslaught of tabletop and trading card games? Not that it's a new issue, but tarot decks are frequent in the category as well. It seems more often we see anything but playing cards when browsing new projects under that category.

Just for confirmation bias, I looked back at the 50 most recent projects, as of today (May 12th) and here are the numbers:

• Playing Cards: 12/50 or just under a quarter of the listed projects in that category

• Tarot: 11/50 or just over 20% of the category

• Tabletop or Trading Card Games: 27/50 or a bit over HALF of the category

In my unimportant opinion, I think Kickstarter should expand the filter categories to include tarot. I already know Trading Cards and Tabletop Games have their own categories, so I have to wonder why the creators are selecting those filters as it might not be reaching the intended audience. When I see actual Playing Card projects show up only a quarter of the time, it seems something is broken or perhaps KS just treats the category as a catch-all.

Any thoughts?

[mulrich]

Is this a recent thing? I’m relatively new to this hobby and kickstarter and it seems like the playing card category has always been filled with lots of non-playing cards.

[Honeybee]

Interesting Jamie, it would seem that any 'playing cards' in Tabletop games shows up in Playing cards too
This morning there are 11,287 projects in playing cards
and 6,803 playing cards in Tabletop games

I instantly see a couple of double ups like River Rats, so that explains why over half the playing card listings are not classic playing card decks

So I am thinking that 11,287 - 6,803 = 4,484 is the real number of regular playing card decks listed on KS right now

It would seem that if a creator lists as playing cards in Tabletop games they get double listed - in tabletop and playing cards
It is probably surprising that all playing card creators don't choose Tabletop games to capitalize on this (Please DON'T) or maybe KS would filter out those that do not have to have a new game element to them

It is also interesting that more cards are being made for 'new games' than new traditional decks

[MagikFingerz]

And of course Kickstarter itself does the bare minimum (read: nothing) to curate these categories...