NISEI's cards and sets - such as the Uprising booster pack - are completely compatible with the original Android: Netrunner releases. But what is it about Netrunner that inspires such devotion? With a current staff of 52 and ongoing recruitment, a website, live tournaments and several new card sets under its name, it's clear the project is serious about its purpose. As Westfield explains, that's a handy backronym: 'NISEI is both something from the game and also the Japanese word for 'second generation'.' Staffed by volunteers, its mission is to keep Netrunner alive not merely on life support, but as a vibrant, growing concern by supplying new material for the game and organising tournaments.

NISEI stands for Nextrunner International Support and Expansion Initiative. When some of the key community members said they were working on something called Project NISEI I decided I wanted to be involved as much as possible.'Īndroid: Netrunner's asymmetry is something I've not seen anywhere else. 'It had given me something positive to focus on during my divorce, so it felt like losing a friend. 'After the game cancellation was announced, I was pretty devastated,' Serenity Westfield, the community manager at Project NISEI, tells me. Perhaps most impressive of all, though, is Project NISEI. Inside and out of the board gaming community, it's regarded by many to be one of - if not the - best trading, collectible and expandable card games ever released. Some of the game’s cards and sets that saw limited print runs now command sums many times their original selling price. It spawned slavish articles in the mainstream video game press and got coverage in national newspapers and magazines. It's not just the odd tweetstorm Netrunner fans turn up in all sorts of high and unlikely places. Image: Fantasy Flight Gamesĭuring its run, Android: Netrunner's influence spread way beyond the gaming community. It proved popular but suffered cancellation for a second time six years later, mere months after the release of a new revised core set, this time due to an apparent licensing dispute with original publisher Wizards of the Coast.Īndroid: Netrunner's 2018 revised core set, released only a few months before the game was cancelled. Fantasy Flight also changed its setting from the Cyberpunk universe to its own sci-fi world of Android, granting the game a new prefix upon its rebirth in 2012. The publisher changed Netrunner’s format from a collectible card game to a 'living' one, where it released fixed expansions - rather than randomised booster packs - on a regular schedule. After lying dormant for 12 years, Fantasy Flight Games picked up the licence. But the card game of cyber espionage never took off like its fantasy sibling and got nixed four years later.

Designed by maestro Richard Garfield, the mind behind Magic: The Gathering, and set in the expanded universe of Mike Pondsmith's prescient sci-fi RPG Cyberpunk 2020, the original Netrunner came out in 1996. Not bad for an out-of-print game cut short in its prime.Īndroid: Netrunner's cancellation in autumn 2018 was its second demise. Fans of the game poured forth their love and the hours they'd sunk into play. But that made the single strong trend that emerged all the more striking over and over, the game Android: Netrunner came up. As you might expect, there was a colossal diversity of opinion. Last May, there was a thread on Twitter where gamers discussed the tabletop titles they'd spent the most hours playing.

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