[Issue #11]: The Pack Experience(s)
Comparing Topshot packs to physical trading card packs!
Welcome pack…I mean back, to today’s issue of the Dropshot! I wanted to devote some time to actually dive deep into the actual design and user experience of the Topshot packs. Packs are the most coveted item on the platform, mostly because it’s the most cost-efficient way for collectors to acquire new moments. Yet they also contain the “unknown” factor that is mostly absent from other parts of the platform; on the marketplace, you know exactly what you’re purchasing, but packs innately store the excitement and unknown potential of pulling an expensive moment at a low serial number.
As someone who got into Topshot without being into the physical/legacy precursor (trading cards), I’ve always been curious about how the Topshot pack “user experience” (in tech/software vernacular) compares to the physical trading card experience. So I ordered a “hobby box” of 1999-2000 Topps Season NBA Tipoff cards and filmed myself opening two of those packs. I also was lucky enough to get a recent Base Release (Release 26), so I recorded my screen while I was opening the pack (sidenote: my girlfriend was curious about this as well, so her voice is in the videos, and she helped me record the physical pack opening).
Going into this, I assumed that I would have some “reverse bias” towards Topshot packs because that’s what I’m used to, unlike other Topshot users who have experience in the collectibles space. My curiosity around the pack experience was around three dimensions:
How much do “moments” vs “cards” matter in the pack opening experience? How is it designed to be highlighted?
The excitement I felt while opening the packs. What part of the experience actually stirred my excitement, as a consumer?
What does the conversion funnel to being an “active market participant” look like for physical cards when compared to Topshot moments?
In each section, I’m going to dig into these core themes, in addition to any other stray insights that I noticed along the way.
The Topshot Pack Experience
You can watch my Topshot pack opening video below:
The main theme that I see, when watching this video, was that the whole pack opening was designed to feel like an “event”. The shaking pack animation is a nice touch; it makes the pack feel “alive” and viscerally makes you want to open it. The flash animation after the pack opens and the music that starts playing makes it feel like a private show that is being organized and shown exclusively for the pack opener. It all combines to make it feel like you’re a part of an exclusive club - especially after you’ve potentially waited hours in line to just have the privilege to buy a pack. The hidden cubes and all-black background only augment the sleek look. One thing I’d like to see is different animations / artwork / music in the pack opening based on the type of pack - I’ve never scored a rare or legendary pack on Topshot, but they don’t look any different than the base pack openings. Overall, though, it’s so cool and makes you immediately want to click on the hidden moments!
Even though this wasn’t relevant in this pack opening, I also like that you can hover over the different cubes and get a special color rendering for any “rare” or “legendary” moments. This allows the user to pre-select and customize their pack opening experience — randomized, best to worst, or worst to best. My favorite pack opening feature, though, is the team logo showing before the entire moment is revealed - it really heightens the anticipation in that split second before the whole moment is revealed and gives you a specific moment to root to “open”. You can see the highs and the lows of this in my pack opening — I was rooting to get LaMelo Ball’s moment when I opened the Hornets moment instead, so I was sad, but when I opened the Timberwolves moment, I got the player I wanted (Anthony Edwards) and I was so excited (as you can hear in the clip 😜 ).
The “gallery” style rendering of each moment after it is opened is interesting. To my knowledge, it’s the only time where all the metadata of the moment (description, score, serial) is shown on a single succinct frontend component. Normally, when I’m viewing a moment on a marketplace, I have to scroll a little bit to see the score, moment description, etc. Obviously they have less information to render when you open a moment when compared to the marketplace rendering because they don’t have to show the pricing / market information, but I do like the more “clean” moment viewing that you get when you first open a moment. I wish there was a way to view that again.
On the “futuristic” theme, the “cube” design definitely makes it feel more futuristic - a nice contrast to the “2D” physical cards. I could see an extension of Topshot moments in the physical world as a wall display. And it seems like the moments have been designed with 3D in mind:
The last piece of the opening experience is the summary page, which unfortunately I didn’t capture in the video. But the summary page allows you to see what “baller status” achievements you scored in the pack, and obviously you can then click on each of your moments to get an immediate current value of the moment on the marketplace. However, there is currently a lack of insight for new users about how many copies/mints of the new moment you have are currently available on the marketplace vs. how many are yet to be released:
Now on to talking about physical packs!
The Physical Pack Experience
You can watch my physical pack opening video below:
The pack anticipation is different for physical cards — it mostly comes from ripping the pack covering and then feeling the physical touch of the card. It’s definitely an experience that is hard to replicate, and when reflecting on the Topshot pack designs, they’ve definitely tried to go in a different direction. While Topshot packs feel more like “events”, physical pack openings feel more intimate since the cards are there in front of you, without any flash or pizzazz to mark the event as significant. Cards stored in packs also have a distinctive scent; I can see the touch and smell of a new physical card cracked open as a big draw that is highly valued by sports cards “traditionalists” that don’t get the appeal of Topshot moments.
One drawback of this experience is that I don’t feel a large buildup of anticipation — I’m more in a hurry to rip the pack open, and you see the card the instant you open the pack and then slide over to see the next one. Context and stats seem to be more important to the physical cards than the moment, as they take up the whole back half of the card. The stats and the score of the game are kind of afterthoughts in the current Topshot design.
The big difference, obviously, is that physical cards are static. Some of the pictures are definitely dynamic, like the Kobe card I pulled from a different Topps pack, but I didn’t really like the picture on the Allen Iverson card that I pulled. Obviously, the Dapper content team has a lot more options to choose from when comparing moments to static images, but they definitely deserve a lot of credit for capturing some really key moments (like the Luka step-back playoff game winner, the LeBron Kobe Tribute Dunk, and Zion’s first viral NBA moment / block). Not all the moments on the platform are that great, but the really cool moments transport you to a specific time and place in your memory of the first time you saw that moment. That experience simply doesn’t really occur with sports cards — you more remember the player’s entire career, or that particular season if they have something cool written on the back of the card.
With regards to marketplace actions, with sports cards, there is kind of a “what now” feeling — with Topshot, at least you can tweet at people or build a showcase to kind of be “social” with it. Furthermore, if I want to sell my card from my collection, I have to now navigate the byzantine world of graded cards vs raw cards, mint ratings, different grading agencies….it gave me a bit of a headache, to be honest. Just take a look for yourself:
eBay is the best place to find pricing information, but it’s so varied and fragmented, which probably more shows how used to Topshot giving me instant pricing information. This can actually be a bad thing, since it incentivizes flipping your moments instantly if you can make your money back on your pack — for more information on that thread of thought, I’d recommend this thread:
Bullet Point Reflections
The design team at Dapper has a lot to be proud of - as much as the engineering and scaling improvements have been key to Topshot’s performance, the design of the product is what separates the experience from just looking like an “eBay for basketball NFTs”. My girlfriend: “opening packs is my favorite part of Topshot. it’s so fun!!”
Scarcity occurs naturally with physical cards — will be curious as to how fungibility of Topshot moment affects their value over time.
The dynamic nature of Topshot moments highlight the players more than the sports cards, unless the action shot on the sports card is specifically appealing
I’d like to see more integration into the social utility of Topshot - the showcase contest is a good step, but the more utility that Topshot adds to these moments, the more separation they can gain from the sports card market. NBA partnership should align well on this, as the NBA also wants to capture a piece of these profits (reselling recurring revenue streams vs one-time yearly licensing fee to Topps/Prizm/etc)
Would be interested to see if Dapper starts selling / marketing “hobby boxes” with multiple packs. Could see them making that a prize for a showcase contest / Hardcourt contests in the future.
Thanks for reading this latest issue! Coming up next: some more concrete ideas about how to make showcases more useful in the Dapper product.