By Samuel S. Ready, MLIS
The main article written at this time about deck-building games and library collection development appears to be the one by Robbins for Library Journal in 2012. Robbins recommends deck-building games for acquisition by libraries with robust game collections—but this is only the beginning of the relationship between such games and libraries.
Robbins (2012) does a good job of explaining why trading card games such as Magic: the Gathering are not a great fit for libraries: competitive and commercial, they present a never-ending arms race that is won by spending money buying new cards all the time. Trading is not the same as sharing, and the game is not a closed system. Robbins points out that deck building games are more democratic and self-sufficient, which is true. What Robbins fails to then say is that deck-building games such as those manufactured by Cryptozoic Entertainment are a good fit for libraries because they are in a way a simulation of library collection development.