Planning ranges

Nine streams. One studio.

These are estimates for a new studio, not a forecast and not an offer. bad Seal has no sales, no outside budget, and no playable build. The pictures are the world. The numbers below are what it costs to start a piece of it, and what we should not pretend to build.

The market around the work

Published estimates for trading cards in 2025 sit between about $7.8 billion (BCC Research, toward $11.8 billion by 2030) and about $10.1 billion (Dataintelo). One tabletop report put the wider hobby near $11.8 billion for 2025. The houses do not agree, and none of those dollars are ours.

The shelf is held by Pokémon, Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and One Piece. A new game does not receive a percent of that market for existing. Most new card games do not stick. The marketable part is not the size of the category. It is that one collection can be a pack, a duel, a board, a comic, and a figure, the way those older lines already work.

Each stream

The city game

Market. The largest ceiling, and the slowest thing to prove.

Why it can sell. A living city with cards in the fight is easy to show and hard to copy once it is playable. The pictures already explain it in one glance.

What blocks it. Those pictures are a world, not a budget. A full open city, fourteen roles, fishing, vehicles, and a souls-like fight is not a first game. It is several games.

Honest scope. First version: one district, one role, a menu, a shop, a small deck, and one fight. Day and night can wait. Fishing and cabs can wait.

Cost to start. $0.8–1.5 million and about a year, with five paid people. The art we already have is the expensive part that is partly done.

Physical cards

Market. The category is real. A new name inside it usually is not.

Why it can sell. People already pay for packs, and the same card can be a fight, a shelf piece, and a piece on the adventure board. That is the marketable idea.

What blocks it. Pokémon, Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and One Piece already own the shelf. Two thousand three hundred cards is a library, not a first printing.

Honest scope. A first set of about two hundred cards, sold direct and through a few shops. The rest of the registry stays the design list until a set earns the next one.

Cost to start. Art and layout from work already underway. A small first printing, a few thousand boxes, is roughly $80–200 thousand before anyone is paid to sell it. A hobby-wide release is a partner, not a purchase order we can write.

Web cards and a ladder

Market. Cheaper than the city, and the daily habit if the cards are good.

Why it can sell. A ranked game gives people a reason to come back between printings. Known card games have shown that a phone client can feed the paper one.

What blocks it. A new intellectual property does not inherit someone else’s players. Ranked means accounts, cheating, and a season. None of that exists.

Honest scope. The same first set, in a browser, with one ladder. No season advertised until matches are real.

Cost to start. $150–600 thousand and six to twelve months, if it shares the card data with the table and does not try to be the city.

Adventure Mode

Market. A second sale of the same collection, to people who want a table, not only a duel.

Why it can sell. The rules are written. The cards are the characters. A board game with a book of rules is something backers understand.

What blocks it. It needs components: a board, tokens, and a few figures. It should not ship before the card set it uses.

Honest scope. One board, the version 1.0 rules, and the first set. Not a campaign of six boxes.

Cost to start. Design is largely done. Tooling a small direct-sale run sits in the same band as the first card printing, roughly $50–150 thousand, if the figures are resin and not steel molds.

The Kryptids

Market. A front door, not a profit center.

Why it can sell. A comic makes the city readable without a download. New readers are cheaper to reach with a story than with a rulebook.

What blocks it. New comics sell in the hundreds or the low thousands unless the name is already known. Cover date October 2026 is a date on the art, not a print run.

Honest scope. Issue 1, using art that exists, then stop and see if anyone asks for issue 2.

Cost to start. $5–25 thousand to finish, letter, and print a short run. Do not staff a monthly book.

World Builders

Market. High price, high attachment, and a brutal first mold.

Why it can sell. A figure that is also a piece on the board is the Games Workshop idea, and a brick that builds the city is the construction-toy idea. Both sell when the world is already loved.

What blocks it. Steel molds are a factory. We do not have a factory, or the audience that pays one back.

Honest scope. A few resin display pieces tied to cards people already want. Construction sets wait until a set has sold.

Cost to start. Resin pilots, tens of dollars a unit. Injection molds, tens to hundreds of thousands before a single brick ships. The second number is not in the first studio.

Soundtrack

Market. Mood, later.

Why it can sell. Music helps a trailer. It does not launch a studio.

What blocks it. The comic leads. Music follows on purpose.

Honest scope. Nothing this phase.

Cost to start. Not budgeted.

NFTs

Market. Not in the money plan.

Why it can sell. Ownership of a rare card is a real collector desire. A chain is only one way to do that, and not the first way.

What blocks it. Nothing is minted. No chain is chosen. Demand and the law both move. Projecting a take from this would be fiction.

Honest scope. Leave it off the roadmap until the cards exist in a game people play.

Cost to start. Zero in every case below.

How the set is marketable

Sold separately, these are nine cold starts. Sold as one world, a card is the advertisement for the board, the comic is the advertisement for the card, and the figure is the card you can hold. That is the pitch. It only works after one piece is in a person’s hands. Until then the marketing is the art, the rules, and a straight ask: gifts, unpaid help, and a partner who has shipped something.

Practical order: the comic and the card faces in public, a paper prototype at a table, the web ladder once a set is stable, shops only after a small printing does not sit in a garage. Ranked play and a city district are what make a second year. Molds and a chain are what you earn, not what you open with.

Three ways to build the studio

Today the studio is a founder paying personally, plus people who want to help and are not paid. A new studio, in the ordinary sense, starts when someone funds payroll. These three cases are planning ranges. They are not promises, and they are not a term sheet.

As we are

Money: Personal money only. The public gift goal is $25,000.
People: The founder, and anyone who helps without pay.
Time: Ongoing. No ship date.
What ships: More art, the rules, this site, and a paper set if the printing can be paid for.
What to book as income: Do not plan product revenue. Gifts, if they come, are not sales.

A seed, and a slice

Money: $0.8–1.5 million.
People: Five paid seats: design, two programmers, production, and the founder. Help can still be unpaid beside that.
Time: About twelve months.
What ships: One playable district and a first card list of about two hundred. No molds. No chain. No fishing sim.
What to book as income: Plan product revenue at zero for that year. The slice is what makes a larger check possible.

A studio, if the slice holds

Money: $4–8 million.
People: Twelve to eighteen people. This is the new studio, not the help list.
Time: Twenty-four to thirty months.
What ships: Beta of the district, the web ladder, a small physical set, issue 1 of the comic, and a few resin pieces.
What to book as income: First selling year, if both the set and the client actually ship: plan $0.3–2 million gross, and be ready for less. A publisher can change that. A spreadsheet cannot.

What those budgets do not buy

Matching every concept frame as a shipped open world — the whole city, every role, the docks, the cabs, fourteen jobs, two thousand cards in print, construction-toy molds, and a token drop — is a different company. That scope is on the order of $25–80 million and several more years, and only if a publisher is carrying it. It is not the ask. The ask is the slice, then the first set.

Outside market figures are other people’s research. Costs are industry-typical ranges for a US remote team and a small first printing, not quotes. Income ranges are scenarios, not projections the studio has earned. This page is not financial advice and not an offer of securities. Help is still unpaid. A gift is still not equity.

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