_I had a harsher alternative title for this video but I tried to tone it down._

In the OCG, they're players. In the TCG, we're pay pigs.

The TCG and OCG is both technically decoupled from the anime. After Vrains, the anime shifted to be about Rush Duels to appeal more to kids, so the OCG now just does its own thing. Of course, it still has an anime and a connecting card game, so they probably see no problem. But, since Rush Duels is Japan only (I think one other places has it, but whatever), Western audiences basically have nothing left to connect "a" game with. Incidently, this is yet another thing that makes it harder to attract new players.

We're forced to miss out because Konami treats the TCG region players as disposable assets and not players. OCG players get nice products and events, we get scammed with every product release.

There's an ignored factor to this entire thing, which is that if konami doesn't inflate the presence of yugioh themselves, then it also seems smaller in the public consciousness. I literally did not even think about the existence of this game for over 10 years until I ended up getting back into it by happenstance. The presence of the physical game is so understated, and that presence is made even worse by the TCG rarity system/how releases work which further dis-incentivizes people from even playing/ attempting to play the physical game. They need to actually make a push to increase the popularity

Paul is absolutely right. Just to add an example: In 2020, the OCG released the Prismatic God Box, which is, for all intents and purposes, a really nice product for collectors and fans of the DM anime alike. What better way to commemorate the Egyptian God Cards than to give an all-new, high quality rarity printing of each card, with the new support to boot, all in one nicely sealed package? What did the TCG get in lieu of that? Egyptian God Starter Decks; decks that are, depending on who you ask, filled to the brim with bulk, unplayable garbage that is hard to distinguish from the typical random assortment of Yu-Gi-Oh cards you see on the shelves at Walmart. To say “Yikes!” would be sort of an understatement.

I feel like Pokémon in America is run much more like how Yugioh is in Japan. Every time I go to Target I’m always a little jealous of how many different types of products that have coins, dice, sleeves, deck boxes, and playmats along with a deck and boosters. Paul, you may remember back in the day during the heyday of YGO in the early 2000s how much more UDE, 4Kids, and Shonen Jump did to promote Yugioh. I remember going to a random pop up convention that would travel from state to state and show up at your local mall. We meme on stuff like the “Yugioh Dirt Dueler” shampoo pack but the companies that localized the franchise in America back then really followed the Pokémon playbook - and it worked. Remember getting “Music To Duel By” in a Happy Meal? I just feel like Konami America is too rigid and bureaucratic. They don’t know how to market the game - which is why they’ve outsourced almost everything since 2020 from t-shirts to trinkets. They just can’t be bothered or don’t know how to produce things like Japan does. In their defense, however, Japan is a much smaller country than the US. So actually getting these cool little events and grab bags is probably much more difficult when a lot of big chains are pretty brutal as far as margins go.

We really are being mistreated for no good reason in my opinion. The secondary market isn't something that should be mandatory, but I have not bought packs for more than a decade at this point as it's just a poor financial decision most of the time. I've also had to import a playmat from Japan because Konami never got around to distributing it to the outside world, and I'm pretty sure I don't even know about things I would have probably bought upon seeing them.

I remember when you could buy YGO at 7-eleven

This hits home. I quit my job bc of severe depression it caused me. I’ve been going through counseling to handle the suicidal thoughts and ptsd it caused me. Even trying to find a job or a calling in this world is making it worse. Yugioh was one of my escapes from that daily pain. I can’t just go out and buy expensive cards to play at locals and try to win. I have to play cheap rogues that lose hard. We need to make this game affordable and like the OCG bc this is beyond ridiculous

Just got back from Japan myself and yeah, the difference is night and day. It was so much fun going to all the different card shops in Tokyo and Osaka and finding all my cards in the OCG. Decided to while I was there to make the switch over to OCG permanently. The TCG is a complete joke compared to it.

I was in Japan a few weeks ago, I definitely would have went to Tokyo Dome for this had I still been there.

A $10 billion corporation like Komoney can’t print meta staples at lower rarities for those who just want to compete, while keeping the higher rarities for those who want to flex? My golf clubs are worth $2200-2500 for a reason, they are immaculately crafted unlike cardboard which can easily be mass produced. No good reason why people should be expected to spend $1500+ on Fire Kings just because they want to compete at the highest level. People should never be priced out if they simply want to compete. Yugioh will always be a game with a high skill ceiling, but the game more than ever feels more about how deep your pockets are.

i'll never forget seeing a full size \ life size dark magician girl cardboard stand that is in display in the entrance of a card shop in akihabara.

Some of the advantages of the cardshops mostly comes from the thing Tokyo specifically has, density, there's over 14 million people in tokyo with access to a great train network. It can't be underestimated how good that is for stores. This isn't true of just YGO but many other hobby products, games or just niche specialist stores in general.

The culture between tcg games in Japan and the West isn't even comparable.

Speaking for myself as a US citizen, I try my best to snatch up any Yu-Gi-Oh merch that's for sale at my local Target, which has been not so bad over the past year or so. I have a couple of game mats, sleeve binders, deck boxes and tins, sleeves, dice, and so forth. If more merch shows up on our side of the world, I'll gladly pick up what I can. I'm an otherwise incredibly barebones and non-collecting type of person, too - Yu-Gi-Oh is the one exception that I completely geek out for. Seeing more stuff and a bigger presence would be a blast.

There are no locals for me; that died mid-2000’s The only way is through DuelLinks or M/D for me - and imo; I like DL since I can bring my deck anywhere/everywhere/anytime. Ultimately, the physical cards are collector items for me. My TCG deck won’t ever be used again. Just a note: I’m aware players prefer TCG than the digital format, but for me it’s perfectly fine and the only way I can keep in touch with the game.

Yeah I have to go to card shops here in Japan more often. Also Bonfire? $20 here! Given it's a rare printing. The restaurant where you got the Hungry Burger from is Coco's Hamburg.

When I was a kid I'd run into these kids who'd somehow get their hands on cards from Japan, some of which I still have to this day, and I can confirm that even back then the print quality was way better than what we had here in the states. To be fair this is how it is for most things that come out of Japan where they just get much more stuff and much higher quality product, but it's certainly way more pronounced with Yu-Gi-Oh. I think something that would help is if they finally decided to unite the TCG and the OCG, but that's a whole other discussion.

OCG player here. One of my gripes in OCG is the lack of reprints of older sets/cards. tbf they dont need to reprint those since we dont have Trad format or time wizard format like in TCG thats supported by konami.

I remember buying Metal Raiders and Magic Ruler packs from the gas station near my elementary school when my mom would take me to school in 2nd grade, back when you could see them sold basically anywhere.

This reminds me how Japan and the west have different mentalities about certain things. Claw machines in Japan are designed for you to win so you come back to play again. And if you just can't win at the claw machine, an employee will come up, open the machine, and take the prize out and give it to you because you at least tried the game out. In the west, at least the States, claw machines are designed for you to lose. You can see on youtube, videos of claw machine owners come up to people, who are winning, shooed away because owners don't want people to win these games. Anyways, different mindsets

Definitely. Went to my first local (PHNI premier) in a decade and bought two boxes. 48 packs and 48 cards worth looking at. Pulled 2 secret Lo-s and didn't even break even. The FRUSTRATING part wasn't the money. It was that I barely even bothered looking at most cards. There were literally 48 cards in 48 packs worth looking at. The rest is junk BULK. This is insanely underwhelming, my mood shifted from the hype of a social yugioh event after a long break as I realized there is just no point in buying anything from konami anymore aside from structure decks... Where is the excitement here?

I agree like I started out getting cards from a local gas station and then got some starter decks. Now you're lucky you get something due to scalpers buying up everything just to flip it and then you have those repacks full of junk nobody wants. It used to be so abundant your group of homies could get cards and just pass around what you wasn't using. Now it's just too much money and it isn't fun to collect, especially since when I cameback into it 10+ years ago there was dueling network before the offical stuff kicked off. Again it took a long time for them to go offical since people just wanted to play.

I'm already expecting the Branded/Albaz set to be OCG only, just like the Numbers collection.

what its like being a yu gi oh tcg player in rural canada go to gamestop day one of a new set buy all 4 packs that the store received packs contain wildly incoherent cards with no synergy next set comes out and do the same new packs contain wildly incoherent cards with no synergy, but also they're new so there's no synergy with the old ones repeat for 2 years have 2 cards from 80 different decks but not enough of a single archtype to ever make a single coherent deck. give up and buy from face to face realize every card you want is out of stock

It feels like the 2-player starter duel thing you just made a video about succinctly shows the difference in quality between what we get here and in the OCG.

I hope the TCG and OCG release products like the Pokemon Premium collections. Reprint 1-2 cards with alt art, an oversized promo of it, and some packs, for an affordable price. This could allow players to get sought after cards for cheaper, whilst maintaining the "premium" rarity of cards from packs. I think to the point of 'missing out', that the way the TCG is monetised, plus how ruthless and cutthroat the secondary market is, and anecdotally how standoffish and ruthless a lot of tcg players can be, probably has something to do with why konami are hesitant to invest more support into the TCG game as a whole.

This has been a trend TCG Konami has been going on since 2020, they've made changes some better and some worse in years prior, but 2020 was the start of the depravity for TCG Konami. Core sets did away with rare prints and TCG Konami shifted most of those cards to super rare prints rather than the common print where 8/9 cards in a pack are. This leads to packs being mostly useless as you sift through 8 cards hoping for a nice card, but it'll end up being a bulk super rare. In the OCG, packs are far more appealing as packs will carry more variety and with a better distribution of rarities and products helps see different cards and different rarities. One of the other problems with the TCG getting traction in regions like NA is that there's a stigma of the game being childish due to its 4Kids dub which tanked its reputation to meme status. This is where we get the Water Legendary Duelist box to go from OCG Shark on the front to Mako Tsunami. People in the West were turned off by the design of Yuma even though he's one of the best protagonists in the series. TCG Konami needs to be pushed to match sets as closely to the OCG, at this point, TCG exclusives are almost never worth the investment or interest due to how poorly designed they end up being, leading one to wonder if they're only there to fill up spots so that the valuable OCG cards in a set are that much harder to pull which leads to more purchases from the TCG community who are too hyped up on the cool new toy to notice or care about how rough they have it compared to other TCGs.

Oh yeah, figured that out like year 2 of the game being out in the west when I found out about their Structure Decks and cards like Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon along with Crush Card Virus were in those decks. Then of course the uncensored cards, timely releases, different rarities, Premium Packs and other collector items. Heck, in high school, my friends and I just combined TCG and OCG so that we could get the best of both worlds. Luckily, there was a Swap Meet near where I lived that had the Japanese sets and boosters.

Now that I think about it. It is kinda rough being a TCG player.

I just wish Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG would allow OCG cards to be played in tournaments as long as there is a TCG equivalent of said card. Other card games allow this and it would be very easy for Konami to implement as an official ruling.

One of my favorite YGO cards has always been Flying Penguin. Goofy little lvl 4 normal monster, 1200 attack, with big ass ear-wings growing out his skull and blushing cheeks. Got him from a McDonalds promo when I was a kid, loved it.

We also still don’t have rush duel after four years since it came out in Japan.

You know what Yugioh players are missing out on too? Prize Money and good Prize Cards for the Pro Players

Someone on Twitter brought up one of the reason why Konami cares for the OCG vs the TCG more is cause unlike in Japan, where there's hundreds of other card games Konami is competing against, everywhere else they just have Pokemon and MTG to fight against.

Yeah being in Japan was an eye opener, there was so much cool yugioh stuff in every card shop

it is very cool how the OCG treats its players, i do hope the TCG will one day give us the same treatment

I’m going to be honest, i didn’t even know lore books where a thing. I didn’t even think the lore was official!

I'll never forget rescue rabbit

I've been living in Japan going on 10 years, and I have to say it is preferable to what I see going on in the TCG. Most of the major events are only in big cities, and things can be a little low on the ground in more rural prefectures; I have a two hour drive to my nearest Konami Friendly Shop. But it is definitely more affordable and I like the product lines more. I think a big part of it is the fact that the card market is far more competitive in Japan. They have to offer more and make it appear attractive to customers who can easily swap to another game. I think KoA look at MTG prices and try to market Yugioh the same way. It's a very poor fit. On the Japanese side, I think Konami view themselves as a Japanese company making Japanese products for Japanese customers, and the rest of the world is just an afterthought. Bonus revenue once their true market in Japan is done with a product.

A remaster of forbidden Memories would actually be good as surprisingly there is a decent speedrun Community for the game despite it being considered very hard

Love the videos! Take care!

Yeah, it's also the same feeling when I compare Taiwan's Yu-Gi-Oh to Canada's Yugioh. Taiwan is alot more enthusiastic when you go into the shops (not to the extent of Japan ofc).

Both Korea and Japan have amazing products. It's not just Japan. Korea also gets the same stuff as Japan in similar quality. TCG products have always, without exception, been inferior in every metric. We just gotta stop buying up bad product (product with crap print quality, extreme short prints, etc) and buy good product. Look how fast they came up with RC02. Even then, the OCG RC boxes are 1/4 the price with far superior print quality and better pull ratios. The OCG also still has ultis and ghosts in core sets. Konami TCG has no excuse. Players just have to close wallets on bad sets and be vocal about bad sets. Konami will never listen if players keep giving them money. The goal of every business is to work less and make more.

I’ve recently transitioned from yugioh to pokemon and played at a few leagues and it feels like night and day. Packs feel good to open, and at least where I live there seems to be way more places to play pokemon than yugioh. Entry packs are nicer, it feels nice to build to 2 top tier decks at the price of 1 rogue deck in yugioh. and just overall it feels like they care more.

In the UK in my experience the game feels largely low budget and abandoned. You see a few old structure decks in super cheap feeling boxes at FLGS's but nobody carries boosters anymore and you dont see anyone below like 30 playing it anymore. College age folks almost always say "nobody stocks it" or "i literally cannot read a lot of these cards if i forget my glasses" and it feels like you only ever saw it at videogame stores buying it in with all the cheap tat they used to become discount hot topics to try and stay afloat but those are all shuttering. I went to my local card shop yesterday and they had 7 different digimon boosters and those gift pack boxes and the like, a bunch of once piece stock with binders and sleeves and so onand even some flesh and blood but the only yugioh product in the entire store was some legend of blues eyes structure decks dumped on a shelf in the back with stuff like the warhammer age of sigmar the tcg stock. When stores are treating it like legitimate dead games that shut down you know somethings in dire need of a fix.

They tried adding lore with the Albaz Structure deck, but I think they could just create a webpage or a downloadable pdf of some of the lore. I think just doing the bare minimum of that would really be a good way to test the waters.

Basically how it feels to be a Gundam fan in the west

Anime related pop up stores ect are really common in Japan when a series is current and really big or if it is big anniversary year for an older series. A lot of the general promotional stuff like with seven elevens is more a thing over in Japan because its a lot less niche compared to the west and is often done with a variety of series. I remember early pokemon TCG they did a promotion with gas stations where I live but that was also during pokemon's initial hype in the west. Yugioh tcg has gotten to an extremely niche point where if you arent really active in the community you likely dont even know its still going. From when I went to Japan I went into a card shop and the first think I noticed was how healthy the community looked in terms of amount of players and variety of ages, compared to if I go to a yugioh local in the west majority of players are in the age range where they would have grown up with the original anime. 100% agree with how there card shops are a lot more yugioh theme with the cut outs ect, I remember when OTS stores used to be given a bunch of cool stuff back in the day not sure if Konami even still does that. The last time I played in person yugioh was with a friend that is in a city two hours from the city im in, her local card shop had a bunch of the cool old stuff that OTS stores used to get given was really cool to see and wish more cardshops had that stuff

I really wish we would get the Valuable Books too. I love the Visas Starfrost lore so much it‘s such a shame that we probably won‘t get them…

LOVE THE CONTENT SUP APS!

An interesting follow-up comment is for the video game collection whether or not they will include all three versions of the fourth game. Since the Game Boy Color game actually came in three different versions just like Pokemon.

I have a question as someone who has played yugioh in the past but doesn’t Karleigh would it be possible for you guys to just buy OCG packs from Japan and play with those if they have better rates?

Konami has partner stores in Japan that allow them to connect with players better. I’m surprised there isn’t more of that out in the west , like in big cities ( exclusive product, instructor events, etc)

Great video 👍

It's definitely not just a Yu-Gi-Oh thing; Digimon has a similar experience where there's kind of naturally more types of content in Japan than what comes overseas on top of the localization-based delays

Its not just yugioh Its the same for vanguard and weiss schwarz from bushiroad. Its just a difference in TCGs in east vs west

Another thing to mention that if they made master dule go off the release of the ocg it would be better for players overall

On domain format right?

Long time wind, winged beast, harpie fan.

Great vid 👌

i agree but i also need to point out that that's just how japan rolls, i am a fan of madoka and there is a lot of madoka cafes along with other anime cafes along with drama tracks and a MADOKA MAGICA MUSEUM and radio show. i want to go to the madoka museum!!!! but also i have a lot of Nichijou radio tracks in my itunes...... "The Puella Magi Madoka Magica anime's 10th anniversary exhibit took place in Tokyo from September 22 to October 5, offering fans in Japan the opportunity to re-experience the TV series comprehensively. This was a particularly dense exhibit-each room had its own theme and was packed to the brim with videos, artwork, and props. It was an excellent showcase of the sheer amount of creative work that was involved in just a single cour of anime. "

You would think that for a company that sees their players buy 100-300 dollar cards they’d be confident enough to release the same products that the ocg does, if it’s from a risk standpoint that they refuse to do so

For those bringing up that the OCG has more competition to deal with. It's worth noting that this is starting to happen in the TCG landscape as well with the rise of the Digimon TCG, One Piece TCG, Dragon Ball Super TCG, and Lorcana, all making waves, rather than before where the only other 2 major competitors were MtG and Pokemon TCG. If the logic of Competition is the main factor, then to keep sales up and attract players, they'll need to adapt and stop with the crappy model already. Not to mention we got a taste of the OCG's product with the Rarity Collection and that may arguably be their most successful yugioh product ever (arguably, not confirmed), so it'd just be smart business-wise in the short and long term to scrap the TCG model for the OCG one.

Also need to bring the OCG cards over sooner. things like "Dark Magician" could use things like "Chronicle Sorceress".

is it true they are gona remaster the old gba and ps games? i couldnt find anything regarding that

This happens because of a skewed perspective of popularity, mostly due to density. Let's say Japan has 1 million YGO fans. Those fans are all in Japan, which while certainly not a small country, is not the biggest in the world either. Those 1 million fans are relatively concentrated. If you pull up a heatmap of Japan's population density you also see that the population is the densest in 4 "hot spot" areas, which is where you'd find most of those fans. Now let's say America, which has a much bigger surface area, also has 1 million YGO fans. Those fans will be more spread out and not have that same density the Japanese fans have. If you pull up a heatmap for America, there's more like 15-20 hot spots where the population is dense. Therefore it often seems like in any given American area, the amount of YGO fans is comparatively low, even if in total it might be the same number of fans, due to those fans being spread out more. This in turn makes things like locals and conventions seem emptier, which gives the perception that YGO is less popular. Not to mention that Japan sees all of America and Europe as just "the west", which dilutes that density even more. Because of this perception, things like merchandise and promotions are not brought to the west, as the perception is that those would not catch on, and therefore not be worth the significant cost that comes with it. It is something that has often been seen with toys, video games and anime. Luckily with things like digital sales and social media this trend is shifting, as the real popularity of Japanese products outside Japan can now be seen more clearly by the creators themselves.

I thought we all knew that the tcg was getting screwed over compared to the ocg from the beginning and tcg players were just in denial. Also outside of short printing for card rarities, the companies/ partners in charge of the tcg side of things don't care about their player. It's like were the invisible middle child.

love your contents on konami products and consumer standpoints but nothing will change because people in the tcg are continuing buying products regardless how bad quality controls has been

The OCG Rarity Collection BOX is higher quality than the TCGs. The throwaway packaging for the OCG has more effort put into print quality than playable cards in the TCG.

Yeah, my locals basically stopped carrying yugioh cards and doubled down on MTG and Pokemon, with a smattering of Lorcana. They never had any big yugioh events, whereas there were always Magic drafts, sneak peaks, tournaments, etc. There was just no incentive for them to advertise more yugioh, considering the state of the secondary market at the time. A lot of people hate sealed product, and I get where they're coming from, but that really kills stores' incentive to carry any of said product.

I'm just taking a break from Yu-Gi-Oh! for now. Maybe after they post the Blue-Eyes stuff on Master Duel. I just find that I do not have fun playing against any of the current decks atm. The last card I purchased was Super Starslayer TY-PHON and that was just a single. Haven't even got to use it in person because there closest locals to me is 50min away and I can't justify to go to it and get washed. I hope we see some more social aspects form with Yugioh because atm I just can't enjoy it with just the card game. Please give me an Albaz show or Sky Striker stuff.

I’ll never forgive the TCG for not giving us those Egyptian god boxes with those amazing sleeves and prismatic secret rarities. What did we get? Two crappy Egyptian god structure decks

The difference is due that japan while being a dense country have way more tcg than we have in West. And player are more prone to switch game when one crash or it one got boring. That mean that game editor cannot be as predatory to sell in japan because people will get their tcg itch off with an other game. Where as in the west , if you want to play a japaness Trading card game, you only have yugioh if you want to find a lot of player and have event. Plus magic is the number one TCG for at least the last 10 years and it taking a lot of the TCG player. Even more at a casual level with commander now. Than mean less competition and predatory sales technique

Isn't Konami's other main business pachinko? Seems like they know exactly what they are doing.

I give my agreement that the TCG side is a letdown. I switched to importing my cards long ago, due to being tired of the annoying and inconsistent censoring. Which, thankfully, led me to become a proud owner of one of the limited 光の創造神 ホルアクティ and several copies of マジマジ☆マジシャンギャル. They are easily two of my most rare cards, YGO or otherwise, and using Magi Magi is fun as a straight upgrade summon for BMG in my spellcaster deck!

The most frustrating part about this is that we can't blame Konami itself. The fault lies in the TCG, so that's the America and Europe branches. People complain about Konami in general, but if you look at the OCG you can see what products Konami makes. Konami of America and Europe are the ones to blame here. They're supposed to be the ones taking Konami products to western counties. Konami makes fine products, as we can see in thr OCG, but then those products get messed up by the American and European branches... Abd they also dropped the ball on marketing the new shows. They also dropped the ball on merchandise, as there's a lot of Konami merch that remains only in Japan. Konami isn't messing things up. It's our own local branches that have messed it up. It's our local branches that should be marketing the shows, they should be the ones making sure we can get all the merchandise we want, they should be making sure the products are fair and of good quality. What do we get instead? Zero marketing for anything past GX, merchandise is a diceroll, products lagging behind the OCG, messed up rarity system and they dont even make sure that the printed cards are of good quality. If the company youve contrwcted to orint the csrd drops their quality there are measures that can be taken to fix that. And Rarity Collection 2 being a TCG product is the perfect proof that they do have the freedom to do whatever they want with the products. Also, it's our local branches that refuse to be open. That's why the TCG exists. So the American and European branches can communicate with the players in those regions. And they don't do that either. Duels from the Deep had to feature Mako in the TCG because the Konami branches in Europe and America have dropped the ball so hard that they can't put one of the main characters from Zexal on the product. It has to be a character from DM that has had like 2 appearances. And why are we still localizing the names? Reginald Kastle? What's wrong with Ryoga Kamishiro? Anime is more popular than ever and now our local branches aren't even bringing in the Rush Duels anime to the west. They're regressing while anime is only going up Here's a question. Pokemon is making a killing selling plushies. Konami made Scapegoat plushies in Japan. Why didn't the local branches didn't bring this to us?

Ocg have maxx c issues and get TONS of products and events to compensate. Tcg have price issues. That's it. We get no compensation.

It's kinda wild to me that with YuGiOh, they decided on this silly OCG/TCG split, instead of simply releasing a western-only set featuring only OCG cards that're missing, then just did worldwide, simultanous release for every set thereafter. Then you just have one version worldwide. YuGiOh is one of the "big three" and Konami still act like it's a little upstart. Hell, Flesh and Blood have been doing exactly what I suggested here to push toward full global releases, and they're a fraction of the popularity of YuGiOh.

As a Moroccan the whole North african region has been largely ignored by Konami for years for no particular reason even in this MD event the numbers of north africa region is larger than other TCG places but konami refused to help organise events products etc...

I see you decided to pose for a thumbnail this time compared to the last video lol

I remember i could buy a single yugioh card from a vending machine in a Publix Supermarket

Oh yeah absolutely, the Yu-Gi-Oh experience in Japan is miles better, unfortunately Konami has not done a good job in the west, most of the problems with the game (power creep aside) do not exist over there. Korea I would argue gets an even better deal with extremely cheap cards, but Japanese OCG cards are very reasonably priced. I have stopped buying TCG cards altogether and only buy OCG for years now.

I wonder if a big celebrity came out and said I love play Yu-gi-oh and I have this huge collection and stuff. And have been playing for years thats moderately popular to pretty popular if it would attract more people to it. It is something I noticed for other types of stereotypical nerd hobbies and suddenly a big influx of people join the band wagon partially because of it.

I had my 1st ots tournament yesterday after years of playing just for fun on my little town. And oh boy I got wiped by runnick, kashtira, birds and chimera. I went in with an experimental traptrix deck since I wanted a cheap xyz deck. Man.... with that experience and "playable cards" being that experience. I think I may stay away from tournaments and just dedicate to collecting and fun/meme decks

The OCG printing English cards now

The ocg is mostly japan, it has a dense group of players. Meaning travel is less so its easier to profit on big events, so they can invest more there. Yugioh is also bigger culturally speaking there Products, the issue the tcg could fix, but the anime products the tcg DM d*** ride which is too dated, but the newer anime werent boardcasted well enough in the west. Reprints tcg is better, banlist too but overrall its down to Infrastructure, and the tcg maybe scared of risks.

I would assume the reason why we don’t get any of that cool Yu-Gi-Oh stuff here in the US is because the demand is lacking here. In Japan, they have a much higher demand for Yu-Gi-Oh products. It’s probably just a money thing. It does kind of suck.

I don't even have card shops that sell yugioh cards only magic and pokemon it's crazy I have to drive 6 hours to find a place that sells yugioh products and does turniments

The TCG is in a catch 22 of Konami not pushing Yugioh because it's a smaller market, but the market's small because Konami doesn't push Yugioh. There is also a large stigma in the US about hobbies. Outside of cars, fashion and sports, what you do for fun is usually seen as childish to many people, especially the older generations.

Classic japanese conpany mindset, they care about home market and the rest is a bonus

Looking at the Bonds Event map in Master Duel, the evidence is pretty clear. As of this comment, there are about 1 million more bond duels that have hapoened in Japan over North America. And again, this is just JAPAN, not including the rest of the OCG region. The OCG has a larger and more concentrated audience when compared to the TCG. So it's obvious, the TCG is not treated as highly, because the audience is not as prominent.

I just wish we used ocf ban list.

I guess it's easier for Japanese products to be of better quality in Japan than in the West, and that the passion is more important in Japan than in the West, where money is more important (idk I might be making stuff up)

OCG equals players, TCG equals collectors because we like to collect our shiny things and treat them as investments.

I find crazy non being able to use OCG cards in TCG tournaments (especially english OCG cards). I mean i'm not going to understand japanese text as much as other languages. That's literally done to squeeze more money out of us...

As a slight counterpoint, if I recall correctly, our YCS events are more regular in contrast to OCG which in contrast are flashier. This is why we don't get a lot of regular information about top-level OCG metas from such tournaments and usually rely on locals. OCG players, feel free to correct.

yea ygo was always better in ocg the actual care for the playerbase is significantly much bigger while in tcg we are consumers nothing else. the average player wont be allowed to posses meta defying cards such as sp, wanted but in ocg they are all equal .