MTG thread

Heylel said:

Pretty sure it's not shrinking. COVID was a blow to the traditional way of playing Magic but they still sold more cards than ever. I've never seen good estimates of market size among players at home, but they've always said the LGS and competitive crowds were a very small fraction of total sales.

Set still sucks balls though. If this is what Universes Beyond have in store, they can fuckin keep it.

Click to expand...

My whole kitchen table playgroup more or less dropped out during the last 14 months. For one the Godzilla stuff was a bad omen, for myself TWD was the last straw, and so on. I wouldn't know how to judge the casual player base size, but a baseless guess would be that each money grab is driving some established players away, and for the time being that loss is mitigated by the new players they draw in with those cross-overs. They're losing people that purchased product regularly for years ('93 in my case) in exchange for some that only buy the product targeted at them, but I doubt many of them stay in the game.

I believe they are sawing off their own legs in the mid to long run. But from a corporate pov that's ok I guess. Right now they get good results. By the time the consequences are reflected in revenue, the locusts that called those shots from 2018-2022 are working in a different company in an entirely different field.

Mr Creed said:

My whole kitchen table playgroup more or less dropped out during the last 14 months. For one the Godzilla stuff was a bad omen, for myself TWD was the last straw, and so on. I wouldn't know how to judge the casual player base size, but a baseless guess would be that each money grab is driving some established players away, and for the time being that loss is mitigated by the new players they draw in with those cross-overs. They're losing people that purchased product regularly for years ('93 in my case) in exchange for some that only buy the product targeted at them, but I doubt many of them stay in the game.

I believe they are sawing off their own legs in the mid to long run. But from a corporate pov that's ok I guess. Right now they get good results. By the time the consequences are reflected in revenue, the locusts that called those shots from 2018-2022 are working in a different company in an entirely different field.

Click to expand...

This is how I think about it, it's all the classic signs of a dying game.

Given that, like Mist says, revenue is up, they have probably traded a lot of tabletop players for online players and are squeezing more cash out of remaining tabletop players.

Maybe there'll be some longevity with Magic Arena and the game will survive, but there is much more competition in that space.

Chris said:

This is how I think about it, it's all the classic signs of a dying game.

Given that, like Mist says, revenue is up, they have probably traded a lot of tabletop players for online players and are squeezing more cash out of remaining tabletop players.

Maybe there'll be some longevity with Magic Arena and the game will survive, but there is much more competition in that space.

Click to expand...

Of course arena will survive, their only costs are whatever they pay the part time intern that does the work and the 30 year old servers they use

Chris said:

Maybe there'll be some longevity with Magic Arena and the game will survive, but there is much more competition in that space.

Click to expand...

I'd be surprised if Arena remains relevant for a decade or longer simply because the video game market evolves much faster and can see rapid innovation that a card game just doesn't. Every other year will have a new hotness in the digital card game space, and they'll erode Arena.

If they are using Arena to prop up MTG as a whole, in a couple of years, when Arena naturally fades into the background as newer games take the stage, it will kill off MTG as a whole.

Plenty of people still play on MTGO and that platform is like 300 years old at this point. I doubt Arena will just fade away in a couple of years.

Sterling said:

Plenty of people still play on MTGO and that platform is like 300 years old at this point. I doubt Arena will just fade away in a couple of years.

Click to expand...

Not as many as you would think IIRC. MTGA has been doing well, but how many of those players spend money on it each month?

I was gifted three commander decks a few months ago and have been trying the local game shops as they have been opening up. Attendance has steadily been climbing(no shit) and according to the shop owners sales have been very steady for the last few non gimmicky/ crossover sets.

I think people leaving the game over the dumb cards getting released were either already going out the door, or are coming back after their tantrum is over. With a pretty good chance to see both groups come back if their play groups keep on trucking.

I think the rising cost of sets and the fucking over of lgs distribution for amazon distribution are much bigger concerns versus which IP is being sacrificed on the altar of greed.

OU Ariakas said:

I bet they make more money of MTGA but that player activity and retention is better on MTGO. Owning the cards to sell or trade on MTGO makes players less likely to take breaks or walk away from entire sets.

Click to expand...

This is 100% true. The enfranchised players on MTGO (the ones who want to play modern, legacy, draft supplementary sets) are just as strong as they always have been. The player base is MUCH smaller on that program, because all the casuals who played standard or just drafted once in a while are now over in Arena, spending far more than they ever did on MTGO.

Paper magic is also selling more cards than it ever has, secret lair is also a money printer. The one "everyone" hated (the walking dead) was their best seller by a wide margin.

Magic spent a long time catering to the .01% of their player base, and have now realized they can just tell competitive players they can go pound sand, pros dont move cards, Commander moves cards, a functional digital platform with no economy prints money, and nothing really matters.

Maybe thats a long term loss in the cards for a short term gain? But people have been coming for the crown since 1996 and Magic sits atop all their corpses.

Angerz said:

This is 100% true. The enfranchised players on MTGO (the ones who want to play modern, legacy, draft supplementary sets) are just as strong as they always have been. The player base is MUCH smaller on that program, because all the casuals who played standard or just drafted once in a while are now over in Arena, spending far more than they ever did on MTGO.

Paper magic is also selling more cards than it ever has, secret lair is also a money printer. The one "everyone" hated (the walking dead) was their best seller by a wide margin.

Magic spent a long time catering to the .01% of their player base, and have now realized they can just tell competitive players they can go pound sand, pros dont move cards, Commander moves cards, a functional digital platform with no economy prints money, and nothing really matters.

Maybe thats a long term loss in the cards for a short term gain? But people have been coming for the crown since 1996 and Magic sits atop all their corpses.

Click to expand...

You are correct. They are telling competitive players and constructed players to pound sand. They want to milk what they think is a cash cow, but is it really? Is mainstream MTG a cash cow or a fad like all things nerdy lately? Time will tell.

On a side note, the class enchantments are really good. I like the design a lot.

OU Ariakas said:

If they are doing Forgotten Realms then where are the gods that everyone grew up with? Where are Kelemvor? Cyric? Midnight? Elminster? Fuck, they have Brunor but not Wulfgar, Artemis, Regis, Cattie-brie, or fucking Jarlaxle? It's like they half assed the card selection when they could have made it another legendary heavy set like Dominaria to give them a ton of flavor but all be one-of's in a deck.

Click to expand...

They haven't mentioned it a lot, but due to being the "summer" set, they are treating it somewhat as a Core set, so, while it does have some new and slightly more complicated mechanics, it was probably never going to have Gods, or an over abundance of legendaries. It's a lot of broad stokes and generic D&D stuff.

That does, however, mean they do have room to revisit for a more story focused set with the rest of Drizzt's party, or the Dieties & Demigods book, etc

OU Ariakas said:

Owning the cards to sell or trade on MTGO makes players less likely to take breaks or walk away from entire sets.

Click to expand...

That may be true to a certain degree, but the economy of MTGO makes it exceptionally easy to cash out and take very little loss. Bot price scrapers can even allow you to come out ahead if you have the patience to sell card by card.

Before I gave up Magic entirely, I bought in and sold out of Modo numerous times. Even under the worst situation I never took more than a 15% loss.

Yeah I feel like MTGO is way easier to walk away from than Arena because of how the collections work.

Angerz said:

This is 100% true. The enfranchised players on MTGO (the ones who want to play modern, legacy, draft supplementary sets) are just as strong as they always have been. The player base is MUCH smaller on that program, because all the casuals who played standard or just drafted once in a while are now over in Arena, spending far more than they ever did on MTGO.

Paper magic is also selling more cards than it ever has, secret lair is also a money printer. The one "everyone" hated (the walking dead) was their best seller by a wide margin.

Magic spent a long time catering to the .01% of their player base, and have now realized they can just tell competitive players they can go pound sand, pros dont move cards, Commander moves cards, a functional digital platform with no economy prints money, and nothing really matters.

Maybe thats a long term loss in the cards for a short term gain? But people have been coming for the crown since 1996 and Magic sits atop all their corpses.

Click to expand...

I've honestly never understood why WoTC ever bothered to listen to the competitive crew because spikes don't buy cards. With each set release they'll either trade with casuals or use store credit to pick up what they need. Spending money is a last resort and even then it's on singles, not packs/boxes so WoTC is still out of the loop.

Maybe, at some point, in Magics history catering to the 'pros' made financial sense, but it hasn't in a long, long time and I'm speaking from the spikiest of spike positions. I NEVER played Magic for fun. I played to win and make it to the Tour (and did, internet /flex).

Point being, it's the casual players that buy the overwhelming majority of sealed product and generate revenue. Consequently, I think WoTC is starting to realize that 'pro' players are insignificant in the grand scheme. I'd wager that 85% of players have no idea who LSV (one of the most famous pro players in Magic's history) is and once you go a step lower than his level of Magic 'fame' that number rises to 95%.

The competitive scene was awesome for those of us that enjoyed that kind of thing, but it just doesn't make any business sense. Especially now with how expensive the entire thing has gotten.

The SCG model is a lot more viable because they use it to move insane numbers of singles and replenish stock.

I imagine the inflection point began (or was noticed at least) in 2009/10 leading to the release of the first commander set 2011. The first couple of them did have some incredible cards for competitive players (which was a bad idea, and continues to be when they put them in casual products), but that was definitely the start of them realizing way more money come from kitchen tables than tournament halls. There was certainly a time where the pro tour and the like was effective marketing to get those kitchen table bucks, but the game has grown so much bigger than that, most people have no idea who the "big name" magic players are (which is also a failure on WotC's part to not capitalize on their own marketing dollars, but thats a whole different conversation)