I should hate and fear the concept of Steam’s virtual trading cards, decrying them as merely a cynical ploy to sell more games. Yet for some reason there’s this itch somewhere towards the back of my brain. Actually it’s less an itch, and more like a single finger prodding the part of it that makes me desire new mobile phones and graphics cards that are barely any better in practice than the ones I own already, and causing me to think want, want, want, want, want, want. I don’t quite know why. It’s something to do with the fact that there is a thing I could collect, and it’s going to happen with undue amounts of effort. Even more so, now that these win-by-playing digi-tchotchkes are rolling out of beta and into broad public availability tomorrow.(more…)