A Godbook is a book made by wizards given to select people prior to spoiler season to review the new set. In the past both New Phyrexia and Avacyn Restored were leaked early from godbooks.
I wasn't playing back then, so can someone explain what the big deal is with these things? Players got banned for leaking NPH, and the post on here says mtgs had to consult a legal team before releasing the AVR one. I mean yes everyone gets to see things early, but is it that big of a deal? I here players talk about how Wafo-Tapa should be ashamed of himself to this day for leaking a godbook and how he should still be banned.
Is it really that big of a deal that a set got spoiled a little early? I mean, if someone leaking KTK tonight, would the magic world implode? It's not like the info is time sensitive, if everyone has access to the same information what is the big deal? Of course wizards want to have spoiler season and control how the set is revealed, but I think a week before the prerelease is too late to fully spoil a set they were done working on years ago.
What do you think? Is leaking a godbook is damnedable offense? What's wrong with revealing information to everyone a month early? Besides stepping on Wizards toes?
Edit: Isn't it actually unfair to give people like Starcity the godbook earlier than players? They can directly monetarily benefit by raising the price of a known high profile reprint before anyone else knows, why is it ok to tell a retailer but not the players?
By the time godbooks are out the sets are long since finished. How does a month early leaking lead to lower sales? People can do the same with prereleases right now. I can proxy the whole set and draft for a week to prepare for the prerelase if i want.
Edit: Isn't it actually unfair to give people like Starcity the godbook earlier than players? They can directly monetarily benefit by raising the price of a known high profile reprint before anyone else knows, why is it ok to tell a retailer but not the players?
Just to clear this one up. The God book is not given Starcity games. It is given to the few remaining Print Magazines that cover MTG so they can get a set review out to their readership in the issue released closest to the pre-release/release date of the set. Instead of having to wait until the set is uploaded on Gatherer and then having to be put into an issue where it is no longer relevant.
Every Website that does preview cards for a set is only given the cards they are slated to be previewing. Anything else that they know about a set they have learned the same way the rest of the world does.
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Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and start slitting throats.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
As long as it's legal to leak it, I see no problem. Hype is diminished for a set? If all you have to market it is hyping the unknown and impulse buying, it wasn't a good set. Prereleases aren't as casual? They don't need to be casual. The same information is available to everyone.
As long as it's legal to leak it, I see no problem. Hype is diminished for a set? If all you have to market it is hyping the unknown and impulse buying, it wasn't a good set. Prereleases aren't as casual? They don't need to be casual. The same information is available to everyone.
Imagine your getting payed to write an article for a card for the mothership. The latest set is called New Phyrexia. You and five others are getting payed by WOTC to give them traffic to their website. If someone releases the Godbook for all to see, you sir just lost money. This also means several foriegn websites will recieve less traffic. It indeed matters little once all the cards are known, but WOTC WANTS YOU TO GO TO PRERELEASE AND RELEASE. Thats why they slowly reveal cards over a few weeks time, they give us names, pictures, set symbols to help us be ever eager.
WOTC Is a company as well. If a freelancer who is also a competitive player releases information beyond what they were instructed to show, like releasing the whole set when you were meant to do a 1 card article, on their product well in advance before the product is released, that freelancer probably just violated a contract.
As long as it's legal to leak it, I see no problem. Hype is diminished for a set? If all you have to market it is hyping the unknown and impulse buying, it wasn't a good set. Prereleases aren't as casual? They don't need to be casual. The same information is available to everyone.
Imagine your getting payed to write an article for a card for the mothership. The latest set is called New Phyrexia. You and five others are getting payed by WOTC to give them traffic to their website. If someone releases the Godbook for all to see, you sir just lost money. This also means several foriegn websites will recieve less traffic. It indeed matters little once all the cards are known, but WOTC WANTS YOU TO GO TO PRERELEASE AND RELEASE. Thats why they slowly reveal cards over a few weeks time, they give us names, pictures, set symbols to help us be ever eager.
WOTC Is a company as well. If a freelancer who is also a competitive player releases information beyond what they were instructed to show, like releasing the whole set when you were meant to do a 1 card article, on their product well in advance before the product is released, that freelancer probably just violated a contract.
If you already work directly for wotc you don't need a godbook because you are already privy to all inside information.
As long as it's legal to leak it, I see no problem. Hype is diminished for a set? If all you have to market it is hyping the unknown and impulse buying, it wasn't a good set. Prereleases aren't as casual? They don't need to be casual. The same information is available to everyone.
Imagine your getting payed to write an article for a card for the mothership. The latest set is called New Phyrexia. You and five others are getting payed by WOTC to give them traffic to their website. If someone releases the Godbook for all to see, you sir just lost money. This also means several foriegn websites will recieve less traffic. It indeed matters little once all the cards are known, but WOTC WANTS YOU TO GO TO PRERELEASE AND RELEASE. Thats why they slowly reveal cards over a few weeks time, they give us names, pictures, set symbols to help us be ever eager.
WOTC Is a company as well. If a freelancer who is also a competitive player releases information beyond what they were instructed to show, like releasing the whole set when you were meant to do a 1 card article, on their product well in advance before the product is released, that freelancer probably just violated a contract.
If you already work directly for wotc you don't need a godbook because you are already privy to all inside information.
He's trying to get you to think from an employees perspective. It costs them income.
Indeed. Most game companies (from trading card to board game to console and pc) usually have their employes under a contract obligation to not reveal information until appropriate set times and dates for upcoming releases. Just because they know information doesn't mean they can tell the whole world about it without a large backlash from the company they are working at/with. As you and I, the consumers are not meant to know the whole picture. We are meant to see a picture slowly reveal itself to us until it is time.
Magic 2015: WOTC opened it up to show all 269, before that night we were at 225. This was intentional by the company as they want you the consumer and player to head over to LGS and play some prerelease and release while having the information to go on to understand what could be a good pick and what might be a bad pick. A major fauxpas that could have occurred would be if we know about the entire set a month in advance.
As long as it's legal to leak it, I see no problem.
People given godbooks are also likely beholden to non disclosure agreements.
Sure, it isn't _illegal_ (as in a criminal act), but if Wizards gets pissed off enough, you'll be facing a lifetime ban from the game (which, incidentally, is also 100% legal) plus a civil lawsuit.
If all you have to market it is hyping the unknown and impulse buying, it wasn't a good set.
That doesn't justify breaking a contract.
Prereleases aren't as casual? They don't need to be casual.
Says who? Casual is the biggest market. Prerelease is likely the time when wizards makes the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time because of this.
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"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
WOTC may want me to go to a prerelease or release of a set when little information about limited is available, but myself and others have the desire to be an informed consumer. If a godbook is leaked and through careful examination and testing it's determined that limited will be an unbalanced environment, I would be thankful that I knew that beforehand and didn't waste my money and time on a lackluster experience. And the guarantee of a good experience would be just as valued.
Some websites who reveal cards may lose money if the godbook is leaked. Such are the perils of a free market.
Also, I do recognize that prereleases and releases are a primarily casual experience. Where I go, attendance more than doubles. But the distribution of players is made up of experienced players that show up to every limited event, and casual players who are only seen for these events. Casual players will generally not be winning this event simply because they lacked not only the skill to win games, but the knowledge of the potential meta that experienced players spent time gathering. As a limited player, it's not really my concern how the casual players feel if they don't want to be aware of the meta, because they will show up regardless of their chances of winning. That's what I meant by the prereleases not needing to be made casual. They are intrinsically casual already. Why not support players who want to do well?
If godbooks were leaked several weeks in advance, then that means more competitive players would have ample time to proxy and test out the new cards, thus making it unfun for the casual players at prerelease. The very fact that no one has gotten the chance to actually get any of the cards or test out the full set at the very earliest until the week before is exactly why it makes it for a very casual environment. You take that away, and casual players will not be coming, at least not in the current numbers.
If godbooks were leaked several weeks in advance, then that means more competitive players would have ample time to proxy and test out the new cards, thus making it unfun for the casual players at prerelease. The very fact that no one has gotten the chance to actually get any of the cards or test out the full set at the very earliest until the week before is exactly why it makes it for a very casual environment. You take that away, and casual players will not be coming, at least not in the current numbers.
You realize that right now somewhere, someone is doing the exact thing you mentioned? So it wouldn't be a change at all since people already do it.
How do they know it wouldn't make them more money? Earlier spoilers gives pros more time to write articles about the set. People would have bought WAY more packs of BNG if Courser of Kruphix was spoiled earlier, by the time everyone realized how good it was JOU was out and competing for sales. Having more knowledge about the set would boost sales IMO. Some people in my LGS called BNG the worst set in years, and didn't get a single pack. Which is saying something since you get a free pack for playing FNM. If the set was spoiled earlier, people would have realized how good he was and gotten more packs when BNG didn't have JOU and CNS to compete with for sales.
This is all theory of course, they/we don't KNOW what will or will not happen. They would just rather not take the risk of a better player experience at the sacrifice of maybe some sales, even if it could actually boost sales.
Actually, does anyone know how well New Phyrexia sold? What effect did the godbook have on sales, if any?
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I wasn't playing back then, so can someone explain what the big deal is with these things? Players got banned for leaking NPH, and the post on here says mtgs had to consult a legal team before releasing the AVR one. I mean yes everyone gets to see things early, but is it that big of a deal? I here players talk about how Wafo-Tapa should be ashamed of himself to this day for leaking a godbook and how he should still be banned.
Is it really that big of a deal that a set got spoiled a little early? I mean, if someone leaking KTK tonight, would the magic world implode? It's not like the info is time sensitive, if everyone has access to the same information what is the big deal? Of course wizards want to have spoiler season and control how the set is revealed, but I think a week before the prerelease is too late to fully spoil a set they were done working on years ago.
What do you think? Is leaking a godbook is damnedable offense? What's wrong with revealing information to everyone a month early? Besides stepping on Wizards toes?
Edit: Isn't it actually unfair to give people like Starcity the godbook earlier than players? They can directly monetarily benefit by raising the price of a known high profile reprint before anyone else knows, why is it ok to tell a retailer but not the players?
Just to clear this one up. The God book is not given Starcity games. It is given to the few remaining Print Magazines that cover MTG so they can get a set review out to their readership in the issue released closest to the pre-release/release date of the set. Instead of having to wait until the set is uploaded on Gatherer and then having to be put into an issue where it is no longer relevant.
Every Website that does preview cards for a set is only given the cards they are slated to be previewing. Anything else that they know about a set they have learned the same way the rest of the world does.
- H.L Mencken
I Became insane with long Intervals of horrible Sanity
All Religion, my friend is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination and poetry.
- Edgar Allan Poe
The Crafters' Rules Guru
Imagine your getting payed to write an article for a card for the mothership. The latest set is called New Phyrexia. You and five others are getting payed by WOTC to give them traffic to their website. If someone releases the Godbook for all to see, you sir just lost money. This also means several foriegn websites will recieve less traffic. It indeed matters little once all the cards are known, but WOTC WANTS YOU TO GO TO PRERELEASE AND RELEASE. Thats why they slowly reveal cards over a few weeks time, they give us names, pictures, set symbols to help us be ever eager.
WOTC Is a company as well. If a freelancer who is also a competitive player releases information beyond what they were instructed to show, like releasing the whole set when you were meant to do a 1 card article, on their product well in advance before the product is released, that freelancer probably just violated a contract.
If you already work directly for wotc you don't need a godbook because you are already privy to all inside information.
Magic 2015: WOTC opened it up to show all 269, before that night we were at 225. This was intentional by the company as they want you the consumer and player to head over to LGS and play some prerelease and release while having the information to go on to understand what could be a good pick and what might be a bad pick. A major fauxpas that could have occurred would be if we know about the entire set a month in advance.
People given godbooks are also likely beholden to non disclosure agreements.
Sure, it isn't _illegal_ (as in a criminal act), but if Wizards gets pissed off enough, you'll be facing a lifetime ban from the game (which, incidentally, is also 100% legal) plus a civil lawsuit.
That doesn't justify breaking a contract.
Says who? Casual is the biggest market. Prerelease is likely the time when wizards makes the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time because of this.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Some websites who reveal cards may lose money if the godbook is leaked. Such are the perils of a free market.
Also, I do recognize that prereleases and releases are a primarily casual experience. Where I go, attendance more than doubles. But the distribution of players is made up of experienced players that show up to every limited event, and casual players who are only seen for these events. Casual players will generally not be winning this event simply because they lacked not only the skill to win games, but the knowledge of the potential meta that experienced players spent time gathering. As a limited player, it's not really my concern how the casual players feel if they don't want to be aware of the meta, because they will show up regardless of their chances of winning. That's what I meant by the prereleases not needing to be made casual. They are intrinsically casual already. Why not support players who want to do well?
You realize that right now somewhere, someone is doing the exact thing you mentioned? So it wouldn't be a change at all since people already do it.
This is all theory of course, they/we don't KNOW what will or will not happen. They would just rather not take the risk of a better player experience at the sacrifice of maybe some sales, even if it could actually boost sales.
Actually, does anyone know how well New Phyrexia sold? What effect did the godbook have on sales, if any?