It's like telling people "You want to give us money!", and watching them nod in agreement and hand over their currency.

The core idea this model relies on is artificial rarity.

Magic The Gathering is a collectible card game (CCG). Some cards are printed less often than others, thus resulting in greater rarity and greater value of those cards.

There have been many cards printed, and to keep things going, they print a new set every few months. Tournament legal games are the only games where player skill matters to a sufficient degree, and as new cards come into rotation for being legal in tournaments, older sets rotate out.

There are 'sealed' tournaments and 'constructed' tournaments.

In sealed, everyone buys new cards and creates their deck only from those cards.

In constructed, you bring your own deck from the cards you own (as long as the cards are from allowed sets). To be competitive in constructed tournaments, you have to have a good deck with pricy rares, and you have to remain flexible in the meta-game (meaning you have to be able to assemble many decks with pricy rares).

Of course, to maintain clear cash-flow, a business model isn't enough: other aspects have to be top-notch as well.

Magic The Gathering is a well designed and balanced game, where skill matters more than luck. The cards are pretty, even beautiful.

Wizards of the Coast (the company that owns Magic) pays respect to players, customers, clubs, and retailers by offering good support and plenty of extra and nifty things.

The only catch is that you have to cash out regularly if you wish to continue playing the game. (And you have to cash out twice as much if you wish to play online as well.)

That is the business model; clear and beautiful in its efficiency.

The dark side lies in human attributes: lack of awareness, lack of self-control, greed, uncontrolled desire to win, addiction, no will to resist peer pressure.

The business model described above takes advantage of these attributes and brings them to surface.

Gnothi sauton. Nosce te ipsum. Know thyself.

Know thyself, or you will be left penniless - and you won't be paying for the gameplay experience, but for the privilege of taking a look at yourself and the world around you.

Go play Magic The Gathering! You may learn a lot. Or not.