I don't know what I was expecting considering this set was probably designed at the same time as Iconic masters, but holy smokes did I not expect something like this. Right now this is putting some statements into context as to what they think players were waiting for.
I feel that. Like, don't get me wrong, I love Bident, but some more Purph reprints would be good for my health.
@Mig: one of the most capable pirates in real world history was a lady called Madame Ching.
I think the set can still be salvaged if the final spoilers this week are okay. It feels like all the "card equity" got spent on some really odd choices considering that the price on some of these really old cards are just going to crash. That and the mythics like Chalice of the Void feel less intentional and more like a last minute swap in.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
This is what happens when you have a company that hires employees based solely on their political beliefs instead of the merits of their talents and work.
lol sorry but I cannot take you seriously if you actually believe WotC does that. Hilarious.
We're all entitled to our own opinions here so I don't necessarily expect you to agree with what I said earlier. The point I was trying to get at was whether or not If there's some rational basis behind WotC limiting personal political views or If they just have an irrational fear of differing opinion. If WotC spent less time policing social media and focused more on improving MTG instead of banning dissenters to their opinions then we would be much better off.
Instead they continue to side with people who don't play MTG while disrespecting the people that got them to where they are today. Not only does it set a dangerous precedent for other Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game companies but it also encourages them to get away with the same kind of shady and questionable tactics that ruined Yu-Gi-Oh! and discontinued Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games over the last couple decades.
What is kind of funny is that if someone actually could furnish proof on this I think that could actually start a lawsuit.
There doesn´t have to. He can just explain his reasoning behind his comment, and then back the facts behind his reasons with sources.
Then, you have the sources he funded his believes on, as well as the reasoning that lead him there. If the reasoning is wrong, someone will notice.
If some of the things he funded it on are not facts, but rumors or something, someone will notice.
Like Sayiny "a lot of companys do this, so wizard does it too" is a wrong conclusion,
sysing "all companys do this, so wizard does it too" is the logical conclusion, but i would like a source that proves all companys do it.
I don´t have to explain the difference between prove and claim, do i?
Freedom of Speech is protected by the 1st Amendment but only where the U.S. Government is concerned. What most Americans generally don't know is that the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution only applies to government entities. Over two hundred years ago, Americans decided that they were no longer going to allow the U.S. Government to violate their human rights. Now is the time for our employers to respect our rights as well.
Wizards of the Coast is not a publicly traded company since they're completely owned by Hasbro which technically makes them a non-government entity. On the basis as to whether If Wizards of the Coast is a publicly held company, the question is whether If they can legally enforce social media policies on their customers. We don't even know If Wizards of the Coast or their parent company Hasbro is being subsidized by the U.S. Government.
Why should someone still continue to support MTG If the company who manufactures and sells product for it doesn't respect the 1st Amendment (despite not being obligated to) rights of customers? Confiscating people's MTG cards/collections and terminating DCI accounts so that they're unable to play MTG competitively as a way to prevent them from speaking truth to power is a violation against free speech IMO.
Here's a list of glassdoor reviews from former Wizards of the Coast employees with one particular review of the company that caught my attention:
Wizards of the Coast has problems. In 2016-2017 after the new CEO and Digital Game Studio leadership were onboarded, whatever culture that made WotC a great place to work was quickly undermined. The value that the company had previously placed on work-life balance has deteriorated and shifts in the management structure have made the last couple of years very difficult ones for the organization.
There have been significant culture shifts. Instead of the "work hard, play hard" ethic, the focus became the "True 40" [hours per week]. Mandatory play tests and extra work hours on Friday afternoons, nights, and weekends were demanded. PTO requests became highly scrutinized. Leadership would walk around early (before 9 AM) and late (after 6 PM) and take note of who was working at their desks. Productivity was the mandate. While nominally still allowing "half-day Fridays" (most engineers choose to opt for the 4x9 and half-day Friday schedule), mandatory play tests are scheduled for Friday afternoons.
Pre-releases and other company-wide events which had previously been scheduled for weekday afternoons (The goal is for everyone in the company to play!) were moved to after-work hours so productivity would not be impacted. Success criteria for performance reviews became harsh and people not meeting the bar were escorted out the door.
Part of the cultural shift in 2017 was how engineers were managed. Engineering managers became a thing of the past. In the new world of the Digital Game Studio, HR management functions and responsibilities for performance reviews have shifted to lead or principal developers.
In 2017 there were two significant workforce reductions in technology. In October 2017 a full third of the FTEs in the technology groups at Wizards were laid off. Unsurprisingly, most of the employees impacted by this layoff were people who had had long tenures at Wizards. A large percentage of these employees were over 40. The layoffs in 2017 smacked of age discrimination. The mean age of engineers in the technology organization has shifted significantly in the last two years as the older, dedicated remnants of the former Wizards' culture were separated from the company.
Wizards has hard choices to make. Do they cultivate a workplace where human interactions are valued? Is work-life balance valued or are they treating resources as fungible driving toward one release after another? Do they promote a culture where diverse individuals are valued for their skills or are they a strict meritocracy? Do they value gender, cultural, and age diversity or are they a 20-to-30-something, white-boy gamers club? Is leadership invested in the career growth of their employees or are they just worried about cranking code and releasing product?
I fear the answers to these questions do not bode well for people who love Wizards of the Coast and support the values of collaboration and diversity.
Most people who have worked at Wizards of the Coast since its founding in 1990 believe it has been the best work experience they have ever had.
That is no longer true.
At the cost of shipping Arena and building a "Digital Game Studio", Wizards no longer values its employees, nor are they committed to a diverse and welcoming workplace.
Today, Wizards is not a good place to work. I hope someday it will be again.
Advice to Management
Value people. Dedicated, passionate employees are your key to success.
Respect the culture that made Wizards successful. Don't turn it into a Turbine or a Riot.
Do better.
Also I agree with Tara Sophia of MagicalTabletopGirls on this:
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Instead of forcing it, they could just blatantly ignore it and let artists simply choose whatever they want to make a male or female, and keep it that way.
Ok, now imagine this was the case. What would happen if the artists all decided to have females in every single piece of art. Would that be acceptable?
You say, well, the girl is in, to "increase" diversity, so screw you the 10th male player.
Is that good ? Id say no, everyone should get the same chance to play, not someone should get the vote as they somehow magically increase diversity.
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Then we expand that example.
We have 10 seats and 11 people show up :
1 black, 1 asian, 1 gay, 1 female-trans, 1 is from a poor family, 1 rich kid, 1 big fat neckbeard, 1 cosplaying girl, 1 is a friend of the store owner, 1 smells a little, ...
So , with more details, who gets the vote ?
If you still say the girl is "automatically" in, you trapped yourself in this argument that gender is more important than any other of these differences.
In both examples, the people that get the seats are the first ones to show up. I've never, ever, seen an LGS turn someone away because they're anything but the 11th player when there are 10 slots. I've even seen the the person running the FNM say to the two people trying to sign up "we've only got one seat available, what would you like to do?"
Doesn't matter if 10 men show up and take the 10 seats, or 10 women show up. First in, first served.
If you've seen a shop owner decline someone a seat because their demographic has been filled, they're in the wrong.
The so called inclusion forces a specific inclusion and just cannot fully work out the way to make it really fair for anybody.
In the end, every human has some unique values that stand out and some just choose that "gender" is so much more important than anything else.
Others choose the color of the skin is more important. It simply shouldnt be. An ironically enough nobody even argues about this, it just matters how its enforced , or if its enforced AT ALL into a fantasy game that actively tried to avoid real life religion and topics in its product, but still makes the gender debate such a central "issue", thats an inconsistency, and they could just drop it and put effort into areas that truly deserve it and make the game better, instead of wasting effort and pushing controversy.
Can you explain this statement? Who are the people it's not fair on? As far as I can see, WotC are increasing the types of people shown on cards. Who is missing out?
In the last week, I taught two gay, female, couples to play the game. They were ecstatic to see so many strong female characters shown on the cards. They loved that Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis were a gay couple shown on the card. Alesha, Who Smiles at Death got a similar reaction.
Magic is already a nerdy game and has all kinds of oddballs playing it, theres no point in putting any form of ideology into it, a company should avoid it and not ravel into whatever topic is hot at the moment, just to force changes in a game that shouldnt even care for a quota of male/female characters in artwork , they should just make the game good, ignore all the ideology all together.
(Emphasis mine)
You are right here! Magic has all kinds of people playing it. Why should the art and characters be confined to white males? Why should the art depict scantily clad women in compromising positions? That doesn't help the game. In fact, I'd argue it goes the other way.Parents don't want that kind of sexual objectification around their kids. A kickass woman full armour, on the other hand, is fine.
Inclusion is not a bad thing. Showing a greater variety of peoples, body types, sexualities, genders, helps get more people into the game. If they're happy to see a reflection of themselves in the cards, that's even better!
I don't know what I was expecting considering this set was probably designed at the same time as Iconic masters, but holy smokes did I not expect something like this. Right now this is putting some statements into context as to what they think players were waiting for.
I feel that. Like, don't get me wrong, I love Bident, but some more Purph reprints would be good for my health.
@Mig: one of the most capable pirates in real world history was a lady called Madame Ching.
Cool, I didn’t know that. I guess that from that point of view it makes sense for the leading pirate to be a female character.
I wouldn’t find it odd if all leading characters were females, as long as the setting was something that made sense, like the Amazons world.
I’m also glad that having strong women, gay characters, or whatever, on the cards makes people feel more connected to the game. One more proof that these things matter to some players, unlike what some people here say.
But these things need to be done with logic and sense. Having all the main tribe characters in Ixalan female feels fake and hurts the story. On top of that it’s the opposite of inclusion. Having all the strong characters female means all other groups are excluded.
But these things need to be done with logic and sense. Having all the main tribe characters in Ixalan female feels fake and hurts the story.
I guess my questions for you are two:
Why does having the tribe leaders be female feel fake to you?
Would the story feel more real if all of the leaders were male?
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“Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are.” Esmeralda Santiago Art is life itself.
Ok, now imagine this was the case. What would happen if the artists all decided to have females in every single piece of art. Would that be acceptable?
People would blame just as they do it now, but then its their choice as artists, and not a ideology or instructions that enforce it.
WotC currently follows a pretty strict "world building" plan for artworks, which has benefits and problems.
On the good side it makes art actually look like its from that plane rather than just a more generic art that would fit everywhere or nowhere.
They even did that in Unstable , which makes the artwork more in line and samish , as thats the entire point of having stuff look like its a world it belongs to.
Theres simply not (or extremly rarely) artwork that pops out and breaks the world building.
Often enough that was the case for Rebecca art, as it has such a different style that WotC didnt like to have her artwork, but the overwhelming fanbase kept her in the game.
In both examples, the people that get the seats are the first ones to show up. I've never, ever, seen an LGS turn someone away because they're anything but the 11th player when there are 10 slots. I've even seen the the person running the FNM say to the two people trying to sign up "we've only got one seat available, what would you like to do?"
Doesn't matter if 10 men show up and take the 10 seats, or 10 women show up. First in, first served.
If you've seen a shop owner decline someone a seat because their demographic has been filled, they're in the wrong.
Thats the point of the example. It shouldnt matter, but the game shifts to include as many as possible, while the number of cards is still limited. You simply cannot include "everyone" and you have to make a decision on what you just dont include and someone will always blame you for the decision (and face it, if theres 1 women and you do not let that girl play in a tournament, someone will swing the sexist sword upon you, so chances are a store will not act really fair here, as doing so will just damage their reputation as messages get blurred very easily, if people think they need to WhiteKnight ; good intentions dont always result in good outcomes, some just choose to ignore the outcome all together).
Can you explain this statement? Who are the people it's not fair on? As far as I can see, WotC are increasing the types of people shown on cards. Who is missing out?
The biggest deal is why bother at all for the "missing out".
People like to assume that inclusion also means MORE people play, while not directly aiming for inclusion would result in LESS people playing the game.
Thats not the case at all.
People still play the game, inclusion or not, if you just hate the game you wont play it.
If the prime customer base is white male nerdy people and the game fully commits to what that group enjoys, thats in no way worse, you might even have a much bigger and more loyal fanbase.
You have a huge number of players that will not care at all for whatever is labeled as "inclusion".
Some might, they either dislike it or they like it, so the net benefit is practically zero. The number of people that wouldnt play the game regardless is small, but it still shapes how people feel and talk about the game and as its a global product, the market and local areas are very very different among the world, so they just cannot appeal to everyone and they will even hurt people.
And dont be fooled. Of course a company will not share negative feedback in public if they can avoid it, and especially not if its against the ideology agenda that company is committed to.
That means, if they get negative feedback about inclusion topics they will just not threat them as they will feedback that opts for what they already do. Its pretty clear biased, but thats very well expected.
Inclusion is always something that people have to do because they want to do it, and any group that doesnt, will feeld threatened by it.
Why threatened ? For every inclusion topic you want, you have to shave back what otherwise would be, its as simple as that.
And the question stands if you actually need that, or if it even benefits just a very minority , while it bothers probably more.
The discussion becomes even more biased if one side is downright labeled and insulted, if all they actually want is to not include these topics
at all in the game of magic ; you can still have inclusion and all kinds of discussions elsewhere, and in some places its great, in others its not.
In the end, theres a truth in all directions, being blind to any of them just shows halve the picture.
You are right here! Magic has all kinds of people playing it. Why should the art and characters be confined to white males? Why should the art depict scantily clad women in compromising positions? That doesn't help the game. In fact, I'd argue it goes the other way.Parents don't want that kind of sexual objectification around their kids. A kickass woman full armour, on the other hand, is fine.
You just assume that parents are "the parents" , as like there are just one kind of parent and they all have the same view of the world.
That already is plain shortsighted, understandable, but still pretty limited.
Sexualization in itself is a topic that can be discussed in many directions and it has roots in religion, culture and all kinds of areas that are again, very fundamental and people very easily become unable to have any form of debate , as they feel so deeply attacked.
Its an issue, and the easy way out is to throw your own opinion on whatever is the biggest nominator in your area and roll with it so you have as little differences as possible.
For my taste, thats terrible, as i embrace differences, variety and want as many view points as i can get, instead of all people having the same.
If you show a sexy picture of a women, that is fair ground just as a women in heavy armor. I wouldnt favor any over the other.
Aesthetic wise i might enjoy one more than the other, but nobody should be blamed for that, thats what art is about.
Inclusion is not a bad thing. Showing a greater variety of peoples, body types, sexualities, genders, helps get more people into the game. If they're happy to see a reflection of themselves in the cards, that's even better!
Inclusion is a topic that simply shouldnt be a part of the game.
They use resources to do that, they give art directions, write and rewrite story to fit in different genders or looks.
If it would be natural, it wouldnt feel that forced as it is , designing by quotas is the keyword here, thats my biggest concern and what i dislike , variety in itself is a net benefit, but cards are still limited to a numbers, and some minority will always be left out, and enforcing a strict 50/50 split of male/female is also a bad decision, if its made as a rule, rather than common sense.
Running a mild inclusion is acceptable, doing it by force and putting it on people if they like it or not, thats an entire different story.
So no, Inclusion can very well be a BAD thing, mostly because its unnecessary and forceful in execution (as thats exactly when people feel it bothers them, not the inclusion itself, but how its put on them as they dont have a choice anyway, like "eat it or die", such choices arent really fair choices).
In the last week, I taught two gay, female, couples to play the game. They were ecstatic to see so many strong female characters shown on the cards. They loved that Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis were a gay couple shown on the card. Alesha, Who Smiles at Death got a similar reaction.
Who is this harming?
Lots of people will be totally fine with it, as they dont even know. Lots of players i played with are indeed gay, and nobody cared as nobody knew and they dont put it on people and spread it. People get along well.
At some point another person wondered in the store and was very forceful with how they are gay, putting that topic on people that just want to play magic and being persistently annoying with it is harmful, very problematic.
In the end, thanks god that person didnt ever come back. So yes, it wasnt a problem with them being gay at all, but some topics just dont have a place in a store and people playing magic, you are better off keeping stuff private ; for me thats common sense, and others feel so deeply insulted and others will band with the annoying person and blame ALL the others that feel terrible about it.
Inclusion in itself shouldnt be bad, but forcing it on people and pretending you HAVE TO be inclusive to everything and anything is just downright illusionary to the reality.
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Some might even truly have issues with anything "gay" included in the game , think its unnecessary to do so, maybe in their country gay is even "illegal" or their religion is against it, its a topic that better isnt included in the game at all, as the tiny amount of people that benefit from including it stand directly against the people it bothers ; so its better if its never included at all ; that battle can be fought somewhere else, like in politics, Magic is a bad place to do that.
Yes, depending on country and region, you might have a very "gay-friendly" worldview, but lots of others do not (and i dont count myself to that, but still can accept that its how it is, have enough gay friends that i am fine with, and mainly as they dont push it on me).
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Magic has to deal with lots of topics.
Including religion symbols or stuff in the game?
Thats a problematic topic, so its avoided.
They could ignore it and still embrace including real life religion on cards, but thats simply not on the agenda today.
Skulls of humans are a problem in China , so they are removed. You have that kind of stuff too, so there are even laws that influence what you want or not want to include in a fantasy world.
So your feedback can be quite biased, depending on who you ask and what feedback you are looking for (as you might just ignore people that have other views as you, maybe your local store even has a very clear direction it goes, so "inclusion" also gives signals to "exclude" anyone that doesnt go all out "inclusion" for absolutely everyone, which makes the idea of a very real inclusion so paradoxic, as whatever you do, you never truly include everyone, as trying that already excludes people somewhere else). And as of right now, the main agenda focus of WotC is of course the US market, and sexismn debates are a thing, so thats on the agenda too ; other countries just dont care for it as much, and have other topics to throw in. Whatever agenda you follow, it speaks for itself and sends messages.
Anyway, that topic goes far beyond Magic and has many heated discussions for what this forum simply isnt a good place (which has to be accepted) (if you want to , send me a private message to keep it as calm as possible).
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To sum it up:
Inclusion isnt bad or good for the game, its simply unnecessary use of resources that are better spend on the quality of the game and materials (in which WotC really lacks unquestionable).
Inclusion driven by a company agenda only leads to it bothering someone.
The game is played by a massively majority of male players. Ignoring that just leads to worse sets for that exact group. Anyone that doesnt care can exclude them anyway.
Product-Quality would be a net benefit to everyone, and not just to benefit some minority of the day that wants to see a card made for them ; still waiting on my fat neck beard avatar card (joke, i already have Johnny, Combo Player)
I'm confused why having female characters or different ethnicities in the story/art is a problem for anyone. I don't think it is, it's just an easy but bad example to point to when unhappy about other issues. It's an international game so it must reflect the world it's played in, westerners are the minority!
The problem for me is that wizards is starting to follow far left twitter outrage culture where "mean" people in the out group (usually centre left) are labelled harassers and banned (they won't go to the police though), while the same sort of "meanness" from the in group (far left) is applauded. It's happening in comics and has progressed to the writers/artists attacking the fans so they are now haemorraging readers.
My other problem is the assumption that because men and women are identical (unless you are trans, then the differences are super important), 50% of magic players must be women, therefore that 50% of players are NOT women must be a sign that the men are hideous and harassing them. I don't really like being blamed for MTG being majority male when the girls at high school though we were nerds for playing and stayed away (but were happy going drinking with us) and every women I've talked to about the game despises playing it. Get young girls playing the game still in school, it's too late to try to get a market from 20-30 year old women who already developed hobbies.
I honestly don't know what gives you the idea that anyone is blaming you personally for MtG being majority male. No one does that.
People are calling out bad behavior if and when it occurs. This is not equal to blaming *all* guys who play the game. I just for the life of me cannot understand why you would feel personally attacked if someone is pointing out that not all is well in the world.
Riku of Two Reflections - Copy, then copy again | Shattergang Brothers - Token Sac&Recur | Gahiji, Honored One - Multiple attack steps | Karametra, God of Harvests - Landfall, Creaturefall, Shroud | Ruhan of the Fomori - Stop hitting yourself | Zurgo Helmsmasher - Equipment&Wraths | Crosis, the Purger - Dragon Tribal Reanimator | Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - No stax, just tap and untap fun | Anafenza, the Foremost - Enduring Ideal Enchantress | Sharuum, the Hegemon - Sphinx Tribal Control | Noyan Dar - Spellslinger | The Mimeoplasm - Counterpalooza
Lists can be found here.
Still convinced the guy on Beseech the Queen is wearing a Mitra-type hat. Wake up sheeple!
I'm confused why having female characters or different ethnicities in the story/art is a problem for anyone. I don't think it is, it's just an easy but bad example to point to when unhappy about other issues. It's an international game so it must reflect the world it's played in, westerners are the minority!
The problem for me is that wizards is starting to follow far left twitter outrage culture where "mean" people in the out group (usually centre left) are labelled harassers and banned (they won't go to the police though), while the same sort of "meanness" from the in group (far left) is applauded. It's happening in comics and has progressed to the writers/artists attacking the fans so they are now haemorraging readers.
My other problem is the assumption that because men and women are identical (unless you are trans, then the differences are super important), 50% of magic players must be women, therefore that 50% of players are NOT women must be a sign that the men are hideous and harassing them. I don't really like being blamed for MTG being majority male when the girls at high school though we were nerds for playing and stayed away (but were happy going drinking with us) and every women I've talked to about the game despises playing it. Get young girls playing the game still in school, it's too late to try to get a market from 20-30 year old women who already developed hobbies.
I honestly don't know what gives you the idea that anyone is blaming you personally for MtG being majority male. No one does that.
People are calling out bad behavior if and when it occurs. This is not equal to blaming *all* guys who play the game. I just for the life of me cannot understand why you would feel personally attacked if someone is pointing out that not all is well in the world.
Because of #NotAllMen, we clearly still have people who dont get it.
If the prime customer base is white male nerdy people and the game fully commits to what that group enjoys, thats in no way worse, you might even have a much bigger and more loyal fanbase.
So, only white males should be portrayed on cards, because they're the biggest market? Quite frankly, I think the game would lose a lot of flavour if every card in Magic looked like it was straight out of Arthurian or Tolkien lore.
I would probably stop playing if Maro came out and said "The next world we're visiting is Whitewashed Chinese world! All of the dragons are going to look like the traditional serpentine dragons of Chinese lore, but don't worry! The characters will all be white males! We have to make sure we don't lose any white males! Narset and Teferi were going to be the planeswalkers of the set, but now, we have Neville, who specialises in rebounding spells, and Trevor, who can phase things in and uses time magic!"
Inclusion is a topic that simply shouldnt be a part of the game.
They use resources to do that, they give art directions, write and rewrite story to fit in different genders or looks. If it would be natural, it wouldnt feel that forced as it is ,(1) designing by quotas is the keyword here, thats my biggest concern and what i dislike , variety in itself is a net benefit, but cards are still limited to a numbers, and some minority will always be left out,(2) and enforcing a strict 50/50 split of male/female is also a bad decision(3), if its made as a rule, rather than common sense.
Running a mild inclusion is acceptable, doing it by force and putting it on people if they like it or not, thats an entire different story.
So no, Inclusion can very well be a BAD thing, mostly because its unnecessary and forceful in execution (as thats exactly when people feel it bothers them, not the inclusion itself, but how its put on them as they dont have a choice anyway, like "eat it or die", such choices arent really fair choices).
Number 1: How does including a greater variety of people on cards feel forced? The representatives from the Ixalan tribes don't feel forced. For Vona, there was Mavren, for Vraska, there was Jace, for Huatli, there was the Emperor, for Tishana, there was Kumena. I don't see how they 'forced' anything.
Maybe it's just due to where I live, but I don't see a woman in power being a strange concept...
Number 2: Let me get this straight, some minority would be left out, so you're implying that there's no point trying to include anyone but white males? Is that what you mean?
Number 3: Please elaborate. Why is it a bad decision? That's close to the actual population split. That's what my playgroup is nearing.
As far as I can see, the people who feel picked on when there are women/minorities shown on the cards with a similar frequency to the "all important" white male character really need to reevaluate what their issue is. Their issue seems to be that white males have gone from over 50% representation to about 50% representation. That smacks of all sorts of bigotry issues for that individual, and I would refuse to play with that person. That is not an attitude that I want around me.
In all, I think WotC needs to continue with their inclusion policy. It weeds out people who give the game/LGS's a bad name, and it makes other people happy. People who don't see people like them in popular media. There is no harm in that whatsoever.
This “inclusion” policy banner that’s being waved here reeks of man hate.
They argument the game should be more welcome to women, but if a male costumer is lost because of the changes made to try to attract women, then it’s good riddance.
They argument all groups should be included, and the answer is to make it all about only the female group.
@Hackworth – It wouldn’t feel fake if the setting justified it, and it wouldn’t feel fake if the female characters actually didn’t act like male ones. Also, knowing the company is pushing the game towards females makes you notice it all even more.
If the “inclusion” policy is to be taken seriously and accepted then it has to portray several groups and not only one.
If not, then were just watching the man hating faction of this “female movement” pushing their agenda.
The tone and quantity of articles recently just comes off as if it's all our fault rather than a cultural issue around what games little girls play or a biological issue with women being attracted to different hobbies.
The biggest tragedy for me is when you get female bloggers saying that FNM is uncomfortable for them because they have to deal with smelly/autistic/socially awkward people, MTG has been a refuge for people like that! Guess what? I've had to deal with uncomfortable players too! It's sad that there can't be a place for the socially awkward to learn some social skills because everything has to be perfect for the women.
The irony is that making MTG more diverse is making MTG be less inclusive. I guess this is subjective though, you have to have seen the articles/threads/blogs I've seen.
I guess it is very much subjective, yes. I have seen a lot of articles, but not a single one claimed "it is all the fault of every male Magic player". Again: People are calling out bad behavior. Bad behavior exists. Of course there may be other (e.g. cultural, idk) reasons why fewer women play the game. That does not excuse *****ty behavior.
And no, it is not only women who experience bad behavior. For instance, I am a 27-year old heterosexual white dude. When I first started going to the local game store as a kid, I made a number of bad experiences. I got bullied into trades I didn't want to make and ripped off, I had opponents who reacted super rude and angrily when they lost to me, and so on. That was intimidating and uncomfortable. I know from personal experience that there are plenty of people who feel entitled to behave like dicks just because they believe themselves to be more skilled at the game. I am sure a lot of other people will have made similar experiences. This behavior is not being socially awkward or an oddball, it's being a dick. Plain and simple.
Now, imagine this possibility: Could it be that women have to deal with this kind of behavior more often? I absolutely think so. I think it is plausible that there are MtG players who assume any woman they see will be less experienced at the game and who feel entitled to patronize her, and be rude if it turns out she is not complete ***** at the game. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence for this behavior. Could it be that this is part of the reason why you don't see many women at game stores? Again, I absolutely think so. Is it the only reason? Probably not. But antisocial behavior is a thing. Just because women are not the only ones affected doesn't mean they are not affected, or not affected to a higher degree.
Now, could there also be sexist behavior in the MtG community? I absolutely think so. There is a lot of sexism in this world, even to this day in relatively modern western nations. Just talk to your female friends or your mother, they will have plenty of stories to tell. I see no reason why the MtG community and local game stores should be exempt from sexism. It is an illusion to think the community is a haven of non-sexist behavior. So: if women are talking about what they experienced as sexist behavior, there is good reason to listen to them with an open mind.
Nobody is saying that socially awkward guys are not allowed to play MtG and be themselves. There is nothing wrong with being socially awkward. There is nothing wrong with being a guy. The issue is when people behave like dicks to others in some way.
Now, are there also players who are not sexists or idiots, but still could do with learning better social skills? Probably yes, as you are saying yourself. Will these players learn if nobody ever tells them what they could do better? Probably not. Is telling them what they could do better equal to attacking them as human beings and telling them they are not allowed to play MtG? Absolutely not.
If new people are entering the community and point out not all is well, we can react by rejecting them and wanting to keep everything as it is. Or we can take it as a learning opportunity, and maybe the community will be better off because of it. And, maybe, we will learn things that also help us outside of MtG.
Riku of Two Reflections - Copy, then copy again | Shattergang Brothers - Token Sac&Recur | Gahiji, Honored One - Multiple attack steps | Karametra, God of Harvests - Landfall, Creaturefall, Shroud | Ruhan of the Fomori - Stop hitting yourself | Zurgo Helmsmasher - Equipment&Wraths | Crosis, the Purger - Dragon Tribal Reanimator | Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - No stax, just tap and untap fun | Anafenza, the Foremost - Enduring Ideal Enchantress | Sharuum, the Hegemon - Sphinx Tribal Control | Noyan Dar - Spellslinger | The Mimeoplasm - Counterpalooza
Lists can be found here.
Still convinced the guy on Beseech the Queen is wearing a Mitra-type hat. Wake up sheeple!
Nobody has to be "truly" harassed (and that word alone is so loaded with emotion and "feeling" , its not even quantified enough to make it any justice), but if someone joins a group and "feels" unwelcome, its not necessary the problem of the group, that person simply doesnt fit that play group , and that has to be acceptable, you cant just "exclude" everyone that isnt for "include" everyone else , thats in no way better at all and in some areas you might lose a tremendous amount of players.
The inclusion train as a "general" approach just doesnt help and shifting the entire game in that direction is just not doing anything helpful to the game. Women dont start playing the game if they simply dont like the game, regardless of art and story. If someone is interested in the story chances are they already play the game.
And no, it is not only women who experience bad behavior.
It really shouldnt be reduced to women. Everyone can find a store that is unwelcome to them, no matter who you are. If thats the case, you simply ignore that store, thats the easy solution. The aggressive approach is to change that store to make it welcome to you, which will probably alienate all the people that play in that store , thats not really solving any problem at all, it just shifts the focus and might cripple the store, especially if that "new" individual might lose interest in the game shortly after and the store is left without players.
Thats the big part about "forcing" inclusion.
Nobody would ever argue if a new player is truly interested in playing and the people arent just downright insulting, it will work out and it already did before they started the shifts to force the "inclusion agenda".
Some people simply cry out louder than others. Some just leave in silence and skip the crying part.
Putting the word "You are part of the problem" on people is among the worst sentences you can say, just to highlight that.
Its such a broad and easy way to shift all responsibilities to them, while they had a perfectly happy life to that point. You just demand "them" to change instead of maybe doing it yourself.
Its a very fundamental issue and many perspectives to look at it, neither is totally wrong or right and thats why its so different from country to country and culture to culture, or even store to store.
For instance, I am a 27-year old heterosexual white dude. When I just started going to the local game store as a kid, I made a number of bad experiences. I got bullied into trades I didn't want to make and ripped off, I had opponents who reacted super rude and angrily when they lost to me, and so on. That was intimidating and uncomfortable. I know from personal experience that there are plenty of people who feel entitled to behave like dicks just because they believe themselves to be more skilled at the game. I am sure a lot of other people will have made similar experiences. This behavior is not being socially awkward or an oddball, it's being a dick. Plain and simple.
Thats the text book example of a bad store, as the stuff doesnt give a ***** about what people do at all, regardless of gender or anything.
But the store is equally bad "inclusive" to anyone, its just a bad store. But still, clearly SOME people play in that store, so "someone" is attracted to just that.
So the big point is, how this issue is approached.
Do you FORCE inclusion on that store and simply demand they remove all people that are "dicks". That simply changes the store and suddenly the playgroup of all the "dicks" isnt welcome anymore in that store , so you actually do the opposite of inclusion, you REMOVE the players.
If that store has a positive result of these changes its good, but in a bunch of areas that simply means you remove your most loyal players and replace them with some other people, that might just skip playing and you are left with an empty store nobody plays in.
But lets be realistic, a store with lots of people that are just insulting isnt just not welcoming, its simply a terrible store and chances are theres not many players anyway. But if the store itself doesnt want to make changes, theres no reason to force it upon them. From a business perspective they might change to be inclusive if they think thats better for them , if they dont, it might simply be a store with a terrible business model , thats the choice of the store and should be the choice of the store alone to make it as enjoyable for the players that actually play in that store (that said, theres still bounds to all that, nothing is without limit and theres still laws that exist).
Now, imagine this possibility: Could it be that women have to deal with this kind of behavior more often? I absolutely think so.
Thats already incredible biased and pushes your thinking in a corner. All together theres a tremendously less amount of female players so that alone makes it harder to fit in a playgroup, as interests might be different.
I think it is plausible that there are MtG players who assume any woman they see will be less experienced at the game and who feel entitled to patronize her, and be rude if it turns out she is not complete ***** at the game. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence for this behavior.
Given the small amount of female players thats even totally justified. A lot of female players are indeed just worse at the game and some have indeed more of an issue losing to a women than to another man , that alone isnt even a problem that needs fixing, its culture, and if you say thats just wrong to do so, you force your thinking upon them, which is just as bad.
However, if a women is actually good at the game and attends often in a store, chances are people will accept that and if they have something to talk about, become friends and that is a NATURAL inclusion, people accept and understand.
The bad approach is to force inclusion, by giving special rights and putting up rules that prevent any natural inclusion to happen.
And in the end, if the playgroup just cannot role with the girl, it might just not be the right store to play in. Question still stands if its the goal to replace the social awkward nerd with a handful of female players that otherwise wouldnt go along. Its just 2 groups you play out against each other.
Could it be that this is part of the reason why you don't see many women at game stores? Again, I absolutely think so. Is it the only reason? Probably not. But antisocial behavior is a thing. Just because women are not the only ones affected doesn't mean they are not affected, or not affected to a higher degree.[quote]
There are simply less women overall.
If a store is filled with 100% grown up man, its already a stretch to have a girl wander in the store and play with them. Thats just much more unlikely to happen, as all our cultures might stand so much against it.
If the opposite would be true, a store full of 100% grown up women, a boy that joins to play with them might be way less of an issue. Thats mainly culture that impacts that.
But why exactly is it even important to change a culture of a store at all, if they get perfectly along as they are?
By forcing inclusion you just make the store less attractive for other people.
If a store is 100% male, some players might feel much more welcome to that store as they are male too, so collecting more male players is much easier for the store (and as there are simply much more male players overall, it attracts overall more players).
If a store has say a 50/50 split of male and female, some socially awkward players might not feel welcome in that store, as they intentionally avoid women (in there life overall) , so thats also not inclusive at all, you simply cannot make it perfect for everyone and "forcing" inclusion just means you exclude other groups, even without realizing you do.
I am all for natural inclusion, if a girl just happens to fit in a playgroup they will get along sooner or later if they are not completely hostile against it.
[quote]Now, could there also be sexist behavior in the MtG community? I absolutely think so. There is a lot of sexism in this world, even to this day in relatively modern western nations. Just talk to your female friends or your mother, they will have plenty of stories to tell. I see no reason why the MtG community and local game stores should be exempt from sexism. It is an illusion to think the community is a haven of non-sexist behavior. So: if women are talking about what they experienced as sexist behavior, there is good reason to listen to them with an open mind.
Theres sexism in cultures as its historicly shaped.
That goes incredible deep and far beyond Magic.
And it highly depends on what you want to archive and the question still stands if you NEED this changes at all, or people get along with it just fine, as nobody truly has any "damage" if they cannot play Magic at a store, its a hobby and not a job.
To some degree you will always have sexism in either direction, as nobody can deny male and female arent the same, and there is no reason to force them to be the same. That said, there shouldnt be laws that put boundaries on gender alone. But if people just dont want to play with the other gender, you shouldnt force them to do so, choice is what matters, and if you choose to not play with some people, you just do so and that should be acceptable, otherwise you just fuel the anger against the people you try to protect as you will spread the message that these people "deserve" the help and protection which makes them special ; just dont do that at all, unless a situation is so hostile that it demands intervention as it conflicts with actual laws in a country.
Nobody is saying that socially awkward guys are not allowed to play MtG and be themselves. There is nothing wrong with being socially awkward. There is nothing wrong with being a guy. The issue is when people behave like dicks to others in some way.
Being rude is not cool, thats just the reality.
However, magic isnt your job, you dont have to force people to get along, they freely choose to play in a store and with other people and that also means they should have much more freedom in how they act, its free time and it should be enjoyable for them.
Lets say a playgroup gets along with making jokes about genitals and what not, very sexist jokes, but its funny for them and the atmosphere in the store is fine, everyone is happy.
If you now put a women in that playgroup all of them feel terrible , and rightfully so, as suddenly what they enjoyed cannot be done anymore.
However, in a natural inclusion, that women might just perfectly get along with sexist jokes and throw in some anti-male ones too, if that works out, Perfect match, everyone is happy and can do what they enjoy.
But if you throw the sexism-sword upon the playgroup you force them to change , they suddenly are not allowed to have fun anymore, and you just "hope" they understand and get along with it, others might not like that change and leave the store, as its a place they freely choose.
Now, are there also players who are not sexists or idiots, but still could do with learning better social skills? Probably yes, as you are saying yourself. Will these players learn if nobody ever tells them what they could do better? Probably not. Is telling them what they could do better equal to attacking them as human beings and telling them they are not allowed to play MtG? Absolutely not.
Depending on how you do it, its just equally bad.
You simply destroy a playgroup either way. The extremes are what matters.
If a store isnt extreme in either direction, it shouldnt be any issue at all, a women wont feel uncomfortable at all and the men will simply not give a crap about it. If that is the case, nothing needs solving.
If the store is an extreme to either side, it depends how the situation is approached.
If the store puts up RULES and just forces changes , it makes it more and more bad for people, while others get along with it. No matter what, you "force" that change.
If you just tell a person, even in private that some comments or actions bother you, thats the most natural approach (and more what you say in your comment) , but you still just "hope" they change, they might or might not.
In the end "someone" has to make a choice and either leave the store or change behavior. Demanding changes is never a good approach, people have to do it because they choose its good and accepted it to be a good choice for them too.
If new people are entering the community and point out not all is well, we can react by rejecting them and wanting to keep everything as it is. Or we can take it as a learning opportunity, and maybe the community will be better off because of it. And, maybe, we will learn things that also help us outside of MtG.
Well even after years of "inclusion agenda" , magic still has very very small amount of female players, pretty much no Pro-Players that are female (extremely little numbers) and the entire game simply doesnt seem to role with them that well.
Competitive play might just not be the focus of female players and gaming stores are in general "nerdy" and to some degree a safe-haven for socially awkward primary male players (and thats unlikely to change, theres countless females that are VERY hostile to male magic players, but they simply dont play magic, so these groups dont get in a direct conflict).
I just dont see a need to push an "inclusion agenda" in the game itself.
If a store chooses its a good business approach to change in that aspect, they will do so.
If players leave because of it, they did make that choice.
If a store is very insulting and harmful to females, it would be the best approach to simply let that store be and its simply not a good place for female players, let that people have their fun in the free time they have, even if you dont agree with it.
The game itself should focus on making the GAME better to find players because the GAME is good , the QUALITY of the product is fantastic and that alone brings in new players.
Inclusion just means you exchange people and change how playgroups play. They might just leave magic and you lost customers, or you might find new players, that either stick to the game or dont. But in the end, its a gamble.
Making the GAME better is a sure fire way to get more players, and should be the actual focus on spending your time and resources as a company, so the "inclusion agenda" is just a terrible investment a company shouldnt push at all, especially not if they have visible problems in areas that are just more important.
As a company you also need to know what your customer base is. You can spread a little to hopefully get more customers, but you can also spread too much and just lose people as your product gets more and more diluted with these changes.
If your goal is to get a perfect 50/50 split of male and female players, it either means you need a tremendous amount of new female players, or you remove male players, till it matches the amount of female players ; so going by the numbers with a quota is a terrible approach.
People who are not me have no right to voice concerns about MtG community issues. I am the only one who knows how things should be and everybody else needs to adapt to my vision or gtfo
Read your post again, but replace all instances of women/female with jew/jewish (or african-american, or christian, or asian, or male). See if you notice anything.
I am getting really tired of arguing with you. It's becoming clear that you are unwilling to have any kind of productive conversation, that you are unable to see that there are other people besides socially awkward nerdy white guys who want to be able to enjoy this game and go to a game store and feel welcome there. Your argument boils down to "well, we just don't like XYZ people, so they shouldn't come to our gamestore. There is nothing we can change." You are expecting others to put up with you and adapt and compromise, but you are unwilling to make any changes at all to compromise with other people. You seem to think you own MtG and have a natural right to determine how the community should be.
I am sorry to tell you that you have no such right. MtG does not belong to you. Game stores do not belong to you. Life does not revolve around you. You are not the center of the universe. Welcome to the real world.
I don't know how many more ways I can say it: Making changes to accomodate newcomers does not equal banning established patrons. Nobody is trying to "get you" and make you miserable. People only want to be able to play MtG at their local game store without being uncomfortable. SAME. AS. YOU.
You are not the only person who wants to relax and have fun at a game store. You are not the only person who lives in society. There are also other people. Asking for a mutual respect and politeness is a basic element of human society and you will encounter these demands in all areas of life. If you are unwilling or unable to learn basic human values that underlie any social interaction, that is tough for you and I am sorry. However, that does not mean others need to put up with you or accept being treated badly by you. A game store is a public place. If you want to have a safe-haven without people who you might disagree with, just stay home.
Riku of Two Reflections - Copy, then copy again | Shattergang Brothers - Token Sac&Recur | Gahiji, Honored One - Multiple attack steps | Karametra, God of Harvests - Landfall, Creaturefall, Shroud | Ruhan of the Fomori - Stop hitting yourself | Zurgo Helmsmasher - Equipment&Wraths | Crosis, the Purger - Dragon Tribal Reanimator | Derevi, Empyrial Tactician - No stax, just tap and untap fun | Anafenza, the Foremost - Enduring Ideal Enchantress | Sharuum, the Hegemon - Sphinx Tribal Control | Noyan Dar - Spellslinger | The Mimeoplasm - Counterpalooza
Lists can be found here.
Still convinced the guy on Beseech the Queen is wearing a Mitra-type hat. Wake up sheeple!
I just dont see a need to push an "inclusion agenda" in the game itself.
There are very few things in life that are a true need. In the scope of Magic, basically nothing is a need. Wizards doesn't "need" to keep printing Magic sets at all. But they definitely want to. To use your words, they don't "need to push an "inclusion agenda"". But they might want to do the thing you describe in that way.
MTG needs girls to play is different from MTG should allow girls to play.
It isn't like MTG is a He-Man Woman Haters Club.
The first people who started playing this game were probably ostracized in excluded, so they probably used this game as a means to form their own group. If someone joins this group and says they are excluded, it just means that they are probably the same type of person that excluded the people who would later form the typical group that plays MTG.
Let's say there are 2 people. One loves wearing a shirt depicting a graphic. That shirt is that person's identity. You have the other person who fears whatever graphic is on that shirt. Either the first person stops wearing that shirt, or the second person overcomes that fear. Full inclusion is impossible.
Ice hockey is probably the whitest sport ever. I don't see the NHL trying to get more people of other ethnic groups to play. Ice hockey is an expensive sport, and usually the people who could afford all the equipment are usually white people. Should the sport try to remove the protective equipment just to include the ethnic groups so they could afford to play the sport? Probably not.
Maybe the reason why girls don't play this game is that they have this preconceived notion that only dweebs play this game. Do you who is driving girls away from the game? The vocal few who share their bad experiences on social media, when normally, the community is probably already inclusive as it is. If WOTC says the community are mysogynist because a few people say so, then girls will stay away from MTG, but if WOTC tries to show the good points of the community, rather than the bad, then maybe girls will more likely to give this game a shot.
I guarantee you if some non-white NHL player goes all over social media and complains to the NHL how the white players are racist, that the NHL will not attract non-white players.
As I said before. You are who you are. Sometimes you have to compromise to fit into a group.
Read your post again, but replace all instances of women/female with jew/jewish (or african-american, or christian, or asian, or male). See if you notice anything.
Do not put your interpretation in my sentences that i never said. And keep it calm, nobody attacks anybody, unless they choose to do so.
And your kinda pathetic editing of my posts instead of quoting them shows me that you are unwilling to value other view points.
I am getting really tired of arguing with you. It's becoming clear that you are unwilling to have any kind of productive conversation,
While in reality this is exactly the "conversation" that is helpful, otherwise you would just argue to someone that has the same opinion as you do already. The really good discussions always require that you have some different viewpoints to share, otherwise you can just skip it.
that you are unable to see that there are other people besides socially awkward nerdy white guys who want to be able to enjoy this game and go to a game store and feel welcome there.
Thats at least what you want to read, but not what i actually wrote or present, common issue if people just want to see any other viewpoint as a threat, its not, as they cannot present their own they try to blame the other and think that would solve anything.
Your argument boils down to "well, we just don't like XYZ people, so they shouldn't come to our gamestore. There is nothing we can change." You are expecting others to put up with you and adapt and compromise, but you are unwilling to make any changes at all to compromise with other people. You seem to think you own MtG and have a natural right to determine how the community should be.
Yes to some degree that not even wrong. I dont see a reason to disrupt a working store and playgroup by forcing someone new in this group that simply doesnt fit in that group.
I am NOT against inclusion at all, but i am against the approach to force it upon people. If they dont want someone at the store, they dont want that person at the store, that simple, for whatever reason. If you force the people to play together regardless, you just fuel that problem instead of working to solve it, thats not helpful in the slightest.
I am sorry to tell you that you have no such right. MtG does not belong to you. Game stores do not belong to you. Life does not revolve around you. You are not the center of the universe. Welcome to the real world.
I have no idea why you even wrote this or think that i ever said anything like that.
I just merely give examples, that are neither me nor my perceived world or even my local store, its just that i know quite a lot of different viewpoints and i can accept either of them, instead of siding with one and calling the other the devil.
I don't know how many more ways I can say it: Making changes to accomodate newcomers does not equal banning established patrons. Nobody is trying to "get you" and make you miserable. People only want to be able to play MtG at their local game store without being uncomfortable. SAME. AS. YOU.
And as i said, if that is all you try to accomplish, it depends on the approach and if its "forced" or just implied by communication.
So we actually dont say anything different, its only a matter of how its going to be done and in some areas it might be better not done at all as there is no necessity to do so and only bothers the people without any adequate gain.
You are not the only person who wants to relax and have fun at a game store. You are not the only person who lives in society. There are also other people. Asking for a mutual respect and politeness is a basic element of human society and you will encounter these demands in all areas of life. If you are unwilling or unable to learn basic human values that underlie any social interaction, that is tough for you and I am sorry. However, that does not mean others need to put up with you or accept being treated badly by you. A game store is a public place. If you want to have a safe-haven without people who you might disagree with, just stay home.
If something works for years you have to question if you actually need to change it at all and if that results in a net positive gain or just people getting annoyed by what you are trying to accomplish.
And a store isnt necessary as much of a public area as you might think it is. Any store can kick out whoever they dont like and are not forced to make business with them and a lot of stores run after they are closed later in the night, which is pretty much a "private" group with its own rules.
The real question is what you want:
1) Force and promote Inclusion AT ALL COST
Or
2) Natural Inclusion by sharing a hobby
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I side with option 2) and i dont think every store has to be inclusive for everyone , as that is simply not possible to archive, as some people just dont get along, and you dont need to force them to, they can very well ignore each other and do their own thing, or find a store that fits to them (which leads to the problem that WotC is more and more forcing stores into a corner , making magic less and less profitable and that leads to a decline of the number of stores, which just fuels the problem that some areas might not even have any store at all, or just 1 store, which then has to be as neutral to anything as possible, instead of having like a bunch of stores in an area that might better offer the customer base what they are searching individually ; so what WotC is doing also makes stores more and more the same and the more you as a customer deviate from that neutral position, the less its actually for your needs and wishes).
----
So yes it comes down to that some stores might just be a place for "dicks" , as long as all the "dicks" gather in that one store, people that dont feel welcome can totally ignore that store and play in another store that might simply not have these dicks.
You just dont have to to force people to get along if they dont get along and i dont see a need to do so in every aspect of life and if they dont wish to do so.
There are very few things in life that are a true need. In the scope of Magic, basically nothing is a need. Wizards doesn't "need" to keep printing Magic sets at all. But they definitely want to. To use your words, they don't "need to push an "inclusion agenda"". But they might want to do the thing you describe in that way.
Its the topic of the threat that people give their opinion what WotC "could" do different, so theres that.
Of course its a company and if they want to do something they just do it, people will still either like that or not.
----
Maro made a twitter about a question of why Ixalan has so many female pirates, and that they intentionally made them female.
They intentionally did that and then after that they are surprised that people notice and are bothered by it ? Thats just strange for me.
The issue i see with that is that people will notice that something is off with what they expected to get.
And the classic pirate is male that people have in mind , so expectations are to get male pirates.
If a bunch of them would be female, people wouldnt have noticed at all, and it wouldnt be a topic at all.
But the fact they strive for like a 50/50 split (or even a higher female number than males for human pirates) did bother some people that noticed it, as its against expectations and it directly leads to connected topics and makes people question "why" they push that into the game and knowingly so, not by accident.
And its not even a gender debate, we had the same with the new sliver look and feel they made , people just didnt like it, and felt it was unnecessary to change it at all, as slivers already have a distinct look and feel, and with the changes they lose that and just become yet another much more humanoid looking tribe.
This stuff just makes mechanics more and more the same, and people dont really like that. I can understand why, even if i might have a different opinion of it personally.
Selling something people like and changing it to something they dont like isnt really a good method, but its very often done in lots of industries.
Just see some video game series. People like them and just buy them as they liked pretty much all of them so far. Then the company decides to change a lot and instead of making a new title, they put the series brand name on it, as they know people will buy it for that alone, while they hurt the series in the process, as people dont get what they expect and the producer knowingly cheats them on that to sell more product.
If i buy milk at a store i really want to get milk, and not suddenly a "50% less milk and 50% more fruits" product.
People have expectations and if something doesnt fit in they will notice that, in a good or bad way.
I will never stop being baffled by all these guys who claim to be the epitome of macho manly testosterone factories and then say they think there are too many illustrations of women.
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Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching.
Maro made a twitter about a question of why Ixalan has so many female pirates, and that they intentionally made them female.
They intentionally did that and then after that they are surprised that people notice and are bothered by it ? Thats just strange for me.
Who says Wizards is surprised?
Quote from ChrisBlitz »
Not sure why it's thrown around as a fact (like CasualCalamity1 did) that women have a tougher time than men and must be suffering more harassment. How do you know? Who told you this? It's ideological from what I can see, the women I know don't have noticably more "someone was *****ty to me" stories than I have.
There's a good chance they're just not telling those stories to you. But sure, it's also possible that's the way it is with your immediate surroundings.
This is not really the place to delve into all the details of why someone might believe that. I think it's sufficient to say that there's been a lot of investigation into the matter, including a great deal of scientific research, over the last century - and that it's a growing field of study.
I don't think there's anything I can provide in this context to convince you that it's not just ideological; but at least I can tell you that the people you are describing commonly believe that their views are founded in empirical fact and scientific evidence.
I've had a really *****ty time as a straight white man too!
I don't actually have much problem with how MTG is being run (other than policies being abused to randomly ban people), it's just toxic parts of the community spending more time on social justice than actually playing the game. It's like they are not here to play?
There's not usually much difficulty in doing both.
But yeah, for people who care about justice in any sense, justice is usually more important than playing a game.
If they do it intentionally its worse doing so.
After all the stunts they pulled in the last years i am just assuming they are surprised and just dont know better.
But chances are they indeed knew what they are doing , even with the feedback , its the agenda after all, someone made that and that just means this agenda has an effect on everything they do, and i very much critic that.
(theres for sure more of that, but i am not searching all of the twitter stuff)
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I am not a fan of that, would be much better if they just made a natural world and not try to "influence" players into an ideology, especially as they sell a game global and not just to people in the USA.
The game would benefit if they focused on making the game as good as possible and not spend time and resources into this agenda , it clearly changes how they make products and they spend money on it, while other aspects suffer and they claim they dont have money for it ; so pardon me for being suspect of the reasoning for all that.
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Into perspective for a business. Its one thing to play with expectations and use it as a tool of surprise and its an entirely different story to directly design against customer expectations knowingly it will bother them, thats a bit of a scam.
The game would benefit if they focused on making the game as good as possible and not spend time and resources into this agenda , it clearly changes how they make products and they spend money on it, while other aspects suffer and they claim they dont have money for it ; so pardon me for being suspect of the reasoning for all that.
You know, we have a lot of complaints about soulless corporations that only care about making money. It's one of the biggest complaints of our time. Is it that bad for people in a corporation to try to do something they think is good, and isn't just about maximizing profit?
You can believe that they're wrong about it being good, and I really don't think I want to argue with you about that - but are you really preferring the corporation to be a profit-maximization machine over trying to care about ethics as well?
I had a reply with linked sources typed up, then my laptop glitched and wiped the page. I'll edit later if I can be arsed.
@Chris: the % of magic players who are women is around 50-35% (different sources give different results, I used MaRo's tumblr for over and under). But the Store/Event play % sits around 10%, with some stores dropping to 0%. That's a significant difference, suggesting something about the conditions under which women play magic.
By referencing Hambly as a player who was randomly banned because reasons, you've posted evidence supporting the "women suffer more harassment" theory. As a Magic celebrity, Hambly broke the Code of Conduct over a period of months, and was banned for doing so, but in your post this wasn't worthy of mention.
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Your argument that people are spending more time on social justice than playing isn't well supported, because the fact of the matter is people are trying to play, but ********s in the community are trying to stop them. Hambly getting banned was a case of a toxic community member being removed.
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“Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are.” Esmeralda Santiago Art is life itself.
You know, we have a lot of complaints about soulless corporations that only care about making money. It's one of the biggest complaints of our time. Is it that bad for people in a corporation to try to do something they think is good, and isn't just about maximizing profit?
You can believe that they're wrong about it being good, and I really don't think I want to argue with you about that - but are you really preferring the corporation to be a profit-maximization machine over trying to care about ethics as well?
If you care about profit-maximization while following a strict ideology agenda, then yes, skip the ideology part and just try to make money by making your product as good as possible.
Selling product on basis of ideology is just not going to cut it, unless your customers are really into that and dont care for the actual product.
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I really strongly believe a company better keeps a focus on making the product as good as possible and doesnt try to sell product on ideology if they can help it.
Last bunch of years they just got bite by the ideology bugs and someone in management clearly thought thats how they are going to roll.
Maro shifted a lot in that direction over the years, so he clearly pushes that agenda pretty hard, and thats reason enough people start to really badly dislike him for doing that, they just want that crap out of the game ; theres plenty of political places to talk about that, magic really doesnt need to do that, especially not if theres very visible problems with the product that need serious fixing way before spending money on stuff like that.
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If a company starts to follow ideology, they will piss off people that dont agree to that ideology.
If they simply dont follow any ideology and just focus on making the product as good and competitive as possible on the market, that will be for the good of every customer and the company as well. Thats why its a good idea if a company stays out of political talk, religious talk and any form of sexism talk , all topics that simply have no place in that industry for the product they make, you simply have to follow the law in the country you are working in (and if that law is bad, politicians have to change it, not the company).
Sadly enough a very specific kind of customers demand ideology in companies, and that is very well the source of all kinds of influences that most definitely do not make the product any better at all, rather makes it worse for the majority, just to mainstream it to that ideology.
Simply keep that crap out of the game design, make sure its good thats many times more important.
@Chris: the % of magic players who are women is around 50-35% (different sources give different results, I used MaRo's tumblr for over and under). But the Store/Event play % sits around 10%, with some stores dropping to 0%. That's a significant difference, suggesting something about the conditions under which women play magic.
Maro is just particularly bad at presenting research numbers and somewhat fails to put them in context.
The number he pulled was indeed just from a market research group, they neither have nor used numbers of all customers they actually have (DCI numbers and the like). Thats not what the number represents.
The crazy high 38% female players number might even not be "completely" wrong, given that there are quite a lot of casual players that are female, simply dont have time to attend to FNMs or just dont want to play competitive at all.
So the more nerdy under 18 boy will go out and play in a gaming store, especially as other boys are playing in that store already.
The girl wont, also because family wise, the parents might not really be cool with them playing at a store that has that many male players (for whatever reason, out of fear or whatever, topic of itself).
For grown up players, chances are female players just dont have the time to attend to FNMs that are later in the night, again for whatever reason, be it children or anything else. Chances are also that the "father" of such a little family might actually attend the FNM (thats the case for many people i encounter in my life, the wife simply doesnt care for magic as much, but might actually play casually, either with the children, rarely with her husband, or anything like that).
For the outside world, the husband is THE magic player and presented to the other players, they simply cannot see the female player that is "hiding" at home.
In competitive magic the number of female players is STAGGERING low, for lots of reasons. A very real question is why you would even like to change that , and do so with aggressive changes, its the kind of "forced inclusion" i so dislike, you just declare something as a problem that might just not be one at all, and demand fixing that problem, while nobody really sees a point in doing that.
Also, a very big portion of casual players really doesnt care much for magic and simply has not enough understanding to give as much talk about it as we do here. Everyone that reads this forum has to understand that they are already a very highly committed type of player to the game, thats way more than overwhelmingly bigger part of players you simply never ever get in contact with, as they do not play competitive, never play in stores and you very well dont know they exist.
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That all said, players very well perceive the world they life in and the more "hardcore" long term player might just care for other things than the casual one that might buy a commander and play that for years without changing anything (i know a bunch of people that just bought a set of commander decks and play these decks like its a game itself, they never bought any boosters and they probably never will and they just dont care for magic at all, so any topics about "inclusion" are completely irrelevant to them anyway).
A very visible fact is that all the years that WotC is pushing the "inclusion" agenda, the numbers for competitive magic dont go up in any meaningful numbers at all, so its for real wasted effort and just produces outcry after outcry for the fanbase that it actually effects , and thats just as unnecessary as it gets (almost like they enjoy poking the hornet nest and still demand them to buy the product).
WotC actively removed all kinds of goodies for competitive players. In the past (and thats easily 10 years already) they wanted players to actively go and play in stores, attend competitive tournaments and get in touch with communities in actual stores.
Right now they more and more work against it, its like they made a 180° turn and run in the different direction entirely.
And as a long term player you really cannot "like" that at all, as it hurts the game as what you know made it great, and it just chops and chips pieces away from it.
Its a terrible direction they run into and sometimes they notice , sometimes they are just completely blinded by ideology, and being blind to that never ever was a good thing, history did teach us that many many times over and over again.
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To sum that stuff up, yes, WotC for real isnt making and designing magic for the wishes and needs of the "hardcore" players that play the game for a crazy amount of time.
In the past they at least tried, now they openly do not even try anymore and work against it.
Just dont assume people dont notice that and even less assume that people will just accept that direction they are running into.
I think the set can still be salvaged if the final spoilers this week are okay. It feels like all the "card equity" got spent on some really odd choices considering that the price on some of these really old cards are just going to crash. That and the mythics like Chalice of the Void feel less intentional and more like a last minute swap in.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Instead they continue to side with people who don't play MTG while disrespecting the people that got them to where they are today. Not only does it set a dangerous precedent for other Trading Card Game / Collectible Card Game companies but it also encourages them to get away with the same kind of shady and questionable tactics that ruined Yu-Gi-Oh! and discontinued Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games over the last couple decades.https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123024596
Freedom of Speech is protected by the 1st Amendment but only where the U.S. Government is concerned. What most Americans generally don't know is that the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution only applies to government entities. Over two hundred years ago, Americans decided that they were no longer going to allow the U.S. Government to violate their human rights. Now is the time for our employers to respect our rights as well.
Wizards of the Coast is not a publicly traded company since they're completely owned by Hasbro which technically makes them a non-government entity. On the basis as to whether If Wizards of the Coast is a publicly held company, the question is whether If they can legally enforce social media policies on their customers. We don't even know If Wizards of the Coast or their parent company Hasbro is being subsidized by the U.S. Government.
Why should someone still continue to support MTG If the company who manufactures and sells product for it doesn't respect the 1st Amendment (despite not being obligated to) rights of customers? Confiscating people's MTG cards/collections and terminating DCI accounts so that they're unable to play MTG competitively as a way to prevent them from speaking truth to power is a violation against free speech IMO.
Here's a list of glassdoor reviews from former Wizards of the Coast employees with one particular review of the company that caught my attention:
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Wizards-of-the-Coast-Reviews-E4718.htm Also I agree with Tara Sophia of MagicalTabletopGirls on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXNziehMGis
"Restriction breeds creativity." - Sheldon Menery on EDH / Commander in Magic: The Gathering
"Cancel Culture is the real reason why everyone's not allowed to have nice things anymore." - Anonymous
"For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" - Mark 8:36
"Most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution." - Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
"Every life decision is always a risk / reward proposition." - Sanjay Gupta
Ok, now imagine this was the case. What would happen if the artists all decided to have females in every single piece of art. Would that be acceptable?
In both examples, the people that get the seats are the first ones to show up. I've never, ever, seen an LGS turn someone away because they're anything but the 11th player when there are 10 slots. I've even seen the the person running the FNM say to the two people trying to sign up "we've only got one seat available, what would you like to do?"
Doesn't matter if 10 men show up and take the 10 seats, or 10 women show up. First in, first served.
If you've seen a shop owner decline someone a seat because their demographic has been filled, they're in the wrong.
Can you explain this statement? Who are the people it's not fair on? As far as I can see, WotC are increasing the types of people shown on cards. Who is missing out?
In the last week, I taught two gay, female, couples to play the game. They were ecstatic to see so many strong female characters shown on the cards. They loved that Kynaios and Tiro of Meletis were a gay couple shown on the card. Alesha, Who Smiles at Death got a similar reaction.
Who is this harming?
(Emphasis mine)
You are right here! Magic has all kinds of people playing it. Why should the art and characters be confined to white males? Why should the art depict scantily clad women in compromising positions? That doesn't help the game. In fact, I'd argue it goes the other way.Parents don't want that kind of sexual objectification around their kids. A kickass woman full armour, on the other hand, is fine.
Inclusion is not a bad thing. Showing a greater variety of peoples, body types, sexualities, genders, helps get more people into the game. If they're happy to see a reflection of themselves in the cards, that's even better!
Cool, I didn’t know that. I guess that from that point of view it makes sense for the leading pirate to be a female character.
I wouldn’t find it odd if all leading characters were females, as long as the setting was something that made sense, like the Amazons world.
I’m also glad that having strong women, gay characters, or whatever, on the cards makes people feel more connected to the game. One more proof that these things matter to some players, unlike what some people here say.
But these things need to be done with logic and sense. Having all the main tribe characters in Ixalan female feels fake and hurts the story. On top of that it’s the opposite of inclusion. Having all the strong characters female means all other groups are excluded.
Why does having the tribe leaders be female feel fake to you?
Would the story feel more real if all of the leaders were male?
Art is life itself.
People would blame just as they do it now, but then its their choice as artists, and not a ideology or instructions that enforce it.
WotC currently follows a pretty strict "world building" plan for artworks, which has benefits and problems.
On the good side it makes art actually look like its from that plane rather than just a more generic art that would fit everywhere or nowhere.
They even did that in Unstable , which makes the artwork more in line and samish , as thats the entire point of having stuff look like its a world it belongs to.
Theres simply not (or extremly rarely) artwork that pops out and breaks the world building.
Often enough that was the case for Rebecca art, as it has such a different style that WotC didnt like to have her artwork, but the overwhelming fanbase kept her in the game.
Thats the point of the example. It shouldnt matter, but the game shifts to include as many as possible, while the number of cards is still limited. You simply cannot include "everyone" and you have to make a decision on what you just dont include and someone will always blame you for the decision (and face it, if theres 1 women and you do not let that girl play in a tournament, someone will swing the sexist sword upon you, so chances are a store will not act really fair here, as doing so will just damage their reputation as messages get blurred very easily, if people think they need to WhiteKnight ; good intentions dont always result in good outcomes, some just choose to ignore the outcome all together).
The biggest deal is why bother at all for the "missing out".
People like to assume that inclusion also means MORE people play, while not directly aiming for inclusion would result in LESS people playing the game.
Thats not the case at all.
People still play the game, inclusion or not, if you just hate the game you wont play it.
If the prime customer base is white male nerdy people and the game fully commits to what that group enjoys, thats in no way worse, you might even have a much bigger and more loyal fanbase.
You have a huge number of players that will not care at all for whatever is labeled as "inclusion".
Some might, they either dislike it or they like it, so the net benefit is practically zero. The number of people that wouldnt play the game regardless is small, but it still shapes how people feel and talk about the game and as its a global product, the market and local areas are very very different among the world, so they just cannot appeal to everyone and they will even hurt people.
And dont be fooled. Of course a company will not share negative feedback in public if they can avoid it, and especially not if its against the ideology agenda that company is committed to.
That means, if they get negative feedback about inclusion topics they will just not threat them as they will feedback that opts for what they already do. Its pretty clear biased, but thats very well expected.
Inclusion is always something that people have to do because they want to do it, and any group that doesnt, will feeld threatened by it.
Why threatened ? For every inclusion topic you want, you have to shave back what otherwise would be, its as simple as that.
And the question stands if you actually need that, or if it even benefits just a very minority , while it bothers probably more.
The discussion becomes even more biased if one side is downright labeled and insulted, if all they actually want is to not include these topics
at all in the game of magic ; you can still have inclusion and all kinds of discussions elsewhere, and in some places its great, in others its not.
In the end, theres a truth in all directions, being blind to any of them just shows halve the picture.
You just assume that parents are "the parents" , as like there are just one kind of parent and they all have the same view of the world.
That already is plain shortsighted, understandable, but still pretty limited.
Sexualization in itself is a topic that can be discussed in many directions and it has roots in religion, culture and all kinds of areas that are again, very fundamental and people very easily become unable to have any form of debate , as they feel so deeply attacked.
Its an issue, and the easy way out is to throw your own opinion on whatever is the biggest nominator in your area and roll with it so you have as little differences as possible.
For my taste, thats terrible, as i embrace differences, variety and want as many view points as i can get, instead of all people having the same.
If you show a sexy picture of a women, that is fair ground just as a women in heavy armor. I wouldnt favor any over the other.
Aesthetic wise i might enjoy one more than the other, but nobody should be blamed for that, thats what art is about.
Inclusion is a topic that simply shouldnt be a part of the game.
They use resources to do that, they give art directions, write and rewrite story to fit in different genders or looks.
If it would be natural, it wouldnt feel that forced as it is , designing by quotas is the keyword here, thats my biggest concern and what i dislike , variety in itself is a net benefit, but cards are still limited to a numbers, and some minority will always be left out, and enforcing a strict 50/50 split of male/female is also a bad decision, if its made as a rule, rather than common sense.
Running a mild inclusion is acceptable, doing it by force and putting it on people if they like it or not, thats an entire different story.
So no, Inclusion can very well be a BAD thing, mostly because its unnecessary and forceful in execution (as thats exactly when people feel it bothers them, not the inclusion itself, but how its put on them as they dont have a choice anyway, like "eat it or die", such choices arent really fair choices).
Lots of people will be totally fine with it, as they dont even know. Lots of players i played with are indeed gay, and nobody cared as nobody knew and they dont put it on people and spread it. People get along well.
At some point another person wondered in the store and was very forceful with how they are gay, putting that topic on people that just want to play magic and being persistently annoying with it is harmful, very problematic.
In the end, thanks god that person didnt ever come back. So yes, it wasnt a problem with them being gay at all, but some topics just dont have a place in a store and people playing magic, you are better off keeping stuff private ; for me thats common sense, and others feel so deeply insulted and others will band with the annoying person and blame ALL the others that feel terrible about it.
Inclusion in itself shouldnt be bad, but forcing it on people and pretending you HAVE TO be inclusive to everything and anything is just downright illusionary to the reality.
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Some might even truly have issues with anything "gay" included in the game , think its unnecessary to do so, maybe in their country gay is even "illegal" or their religion is against it, its a topic that better isnt included in the game at all, as the tiny amount of people that benefit from including it stand directly against the people it bothers ; so its better if its never included at all ; that battle can be fought somewhere else, like in politics, Magic is a bad place to do that.
Yes, depending on country and region, you might have a very "gay-friendly" worldview, but lots of others do not (and i dont count myself to that, but still can accept that its how it is, have enough gay friends that i am fine with, and mainly as they dont push it on me).
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Magic has to deal with lots of topics.
Including religion symbols or stuff in the game?
Thats a problematic topic, so its avoided.
They could ignore it and still embrace including real life religion on cards, but thats simply not on the agenda today.
Skulls of humans are a problem in China , so they are removed. You have that kind of stuff too, so there are even laws that influence what you want or not want to include in a fantasy world.
So your feedback can be quite biased, depending on who you ask and what feedback you are looking for (as you might just ignore people that have other views as you, maybe your local store even has a very clear direction it goes, so "inclusion" also gives signals to "exclude" anyone that doesnt go all out "inclusion" for absolutely everyone, which makes the idea of a very real inclusion so paradoxic, as whatever you do, you never truly include everyone, as trying that already excludes people somewhere else). And as of right now, the main agenda focus of WotC is of course the US market, and sexismn debates are a thing, so thats on the agenda too ; other countries just dont care for it as much, and have other topics to throw in. Whatever agenda you follow, it speaks for itself and sends messages.
Anyway, that topic goes far beyond Magic and has many heated discussions for what this forum simply isnt a good place (which has to be accepted) (if you want to , send me a private message to keep it as calm as possible).
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To sum it up:
Inclusion isnt bad or good for the game, its simply unnecessary use of resources that are better spend on the quality of the game and materials (in which WotC really lacks unquestionable).
Inclusion driven by a company agenda only leads to it bothering someone.
The game is played by a massively majority of male players. Ignoring that just leads to worse sets for that exact group. Anyone that doesnt care can exclude them anyway.
Product-Quality would be a net benefit to everyone, and not just to benefit some minority of the day that wants to see a card made for them ; still waiting on my fat neck beard avatar card (joke, i already have Johnny, Combo Player)
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
People are calling out bad behavior if and when it occurs. This is not equal to blaming *all* guys who play the game. I just for the life of me cannot understand why you would feel personally attacked if someone is pointing out that not all is well in the world.
Tamanoa - Welcome to the Jungle
Lists can be found here.
Because of #NotAllMen, we clearly still have people who dont get it.
Spirits
So, only white males should be portrayed on cards, because they're the biggest market? Quite frankly, I think the game would lose a lot of flavour if every card in Magic looked like it was straight out of Arthurian or Tolkien lore.
I would probably stop playing if Maro came out and said "The next world we're visiting is Whitewashed Chinese world! All of the dragons are going to look like the traditional serpentine dragons of Chinese lore, but don't worry! The characters will all be white males! We have to make sure we don't lose any white males! Narset and Teferi were going to be the planeswalkers of the set, but now, we have Neville, who specialises in rebounding spells, and Trevor, who can phase things in and uses time magic!"
Number 1: How does including a greater variety of people on cards feel forced? The representatives from the Ixalan tribes don't feel forced. For Vona, there was Mavren, for Vraska, there was Jace, for Huatli, there was the Emperor, for Tishana, there was Kumena. I don't see how they 'forced' anything.
Maybe it's just due to where I live, but I don't see a woman in power being a strange concept...
Number 2: Let me get this straight, some minority would be left out, so you're implying that there's no point trying to include anyone but white males? Is that what you mean?
Number 3: Please elaborate. Why is it a bad decision? That's close to the actual population split. That's what my playgroup is nearing.
As far as I can see, the people who feel picked on when there are women/minorities shown on the cards with a similar frequency to the "all important" white male character really need to reevaluate what their issue is. Their issue seems to be that white males have gone from over 50% representation to about 50% representation. That smacks of all sorts of bigotry issues for that individual, and I would refuse to play with that person. That is not an attitude that I want around me.
In all, I think WotC needs to continue with their inclusion policy. It weeds out people who give the game/LGS's a bad name, and it makes other people happy. People who don't see people like them in popular media. There is no harm in that whatsoever.
They argument the game should be more welcome to women, but if a male costumer is lost because of the changes made to try to attract women, then it’s good riddance.
They argument all groups should be included, and the answer is to make it all about only the female group.
@Hackworth – It wouldn’t feel fake if the setting justified it, and it wouldn’t feel fake if the female characters actually didn’t act like male ones. Also, knowing the company is pushing the game towards females makes you notice it all even more.
If the “inclusion” policy is to be taken seriously and accepted then it has to portray several groups and not only one.
If not, then were just watching the man hating faction of this “female movement” pushing their agenda.
And no, it is not only women who experience bad behavior. For instance, I am a 27-year old heterosexual white dude. When I first started going to the local game store as a kid, I made a number of bad experiences. I got bullied into trades I didn't want to make and ripped off, I had opponents who reacted super rude and angrily when they lost to me, and so on. That was intimidating and uncomfortable. I know from personal experience that there are plenty of people who feel entitled to behave like dicks just because they believe themselves to be more skilled at the game. I am sure a lot of other people will have made similar experiences. This behavior is not being socially awkward or an oddball, it's being a dick. Plain and simple.
Now, imagine this possibility: Could it be that women have to deal with this kind of behavior more often? I absolutely think so. I think it is plausible that there are MtG players who assume any woman they see will be less experienced at the game and who feel entitled to patronize her, and be rude if it turns out she is not complete ***** at the game. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence for this behavior. Could it be that this is part of the reason why you don't see many women at game stores? Again, I absolutely think so. Is it the only reason? Probably not. But antisocial behavior is a thing. Just because women are not the only ones affected doesn't mean they are not affected, or not affected to a higher degree.
Now, could there also be sexist behavior in the MtG community? I absolutely think so. There is a lot of sexism in this world, even to this day in relatively modern western nations. Just talk to your female friends or your mother, they will have plenty of stories to tell. I see no reason why the MtG community and local game stores should be exempt from sexism. It is an illusion to think the community is a haven of non-sexist behavior. So: if women are talking about what they experienced as sexist behavior, there is good reason to listen to them with an open mind.
Nobody is saying that socially awkward guys are not allowed to play MtG and be themselves. There is nothing wrong with being socially awkward. There is nothing wrong with being a guy. The issue is when people behave like dicks to others in some way.
Now, are there also players who are not sexists or idiots, but still could do with learning better social skills? Probably yes, as you are saying yourself. Will these players learn if nobody ever tells them what they could do better? Probably not. Is telling them what they could do better equal to attacking them as human beings and telling them they are not allowed to play MtG? Absolutely not.
If new people are entering the community and point out not all is well, we can react by rejecting them and wanting to keep everything as it is. Or we can take it as a learning opportunity, and maybe the community will be better off because of it. And, maybe, we will learn things that also help us outside of MtG.
Tamanoa - Welcome to the Jungle
Lists can be found here.
Dear reader, dont even bother reading it if the topic already bothers you.
Nobody has to be "truly" harassed (and that word alone is so loaded with emotion and "feeling" , its not even quantified enough to make it any justice), but if someone joins a group and "feels" unwelcome, its not necessary the problem of the group, that person simply doesnt fit that play group , and that has to be acceptable, you cant just "exclude" everyone that isnt for "include" everyone else , thats in no way better at all and in some areas you might lose a tremendous amount of players.
The inclusion train as a "general" approach just doesnt help and shifting the entire game in that direction is just not doing anything helpful to the game. Women dont start playing the game if they simply dont like the game, regardless of art and story. If someone is interested in the story chances are they already play the game.
It really shouldnt be reduced to women. Everyone can find a store that is unwelcome to them, no matter who you are. If thats the case, you simply ignore that store, thats the easy solution. The aggressive approach is to change that store to make it welcome to you, which will probably alienate all the people that play in that store , thats not really solving any problem at all, it just shifts the focus and might cripple the store, especially if that "new" individual might lose interest in the game shortly after and the store is left without players.
Thats the big part about "forcing" inclusion.
Nobody would ever argue if a new player is truly interested in playing and the people arent just downright insulting, it will work out and it already did before they started the shifts to force the "inclusion agenda".
Some people simply cry out louder than others. Some just leave in silence and skip the crying part.
Putting the word "You are part of the problem" on people is among the worst sentences you can say, just to highlight that.
Its such a broad and easy way to shift all responsibilities to them, while they had a perfectly happy life to that point. You just demand "them" to change instead of maybe doing it yourself.
Its a very fundamental issue and many perspectives to look at it, neither is totally wrong or right and thats why its so different from country to country and culture to culture, or even store to store.
Thats the text book example of a bad store, as the stuff doesnt give a ***** about what people do at all, regardless of gender or anything.
But the store is equally bad "inclusive" to anyone, its just a bad store. But still, clearly SOME people play in that store, so "someone" is attracted to just that.
So the big point is, how this issue is approached.
Do you FORCE inclusion on that store and simply demand they remove all people that are "dicks". That simply changes the store and suddenly the playgroup of all the "dicks" isnt welcome anymore in that store , so you actually do the opposite of inclusion, you REMOVE the players.
If that store has a positive result of these changes its good, but in a bunch of areas that simply means you remove your most loyal players and replace them with some other people, that might just skip playing and you are left with an empty store nobody plays in.
But lets be realistic, a store with lots of people that are just insulting isnt just not welcoming, its simply a terrible store and chances are theres not many players anyway. But if the store itself doesnt want to make changes, theres no reason to force it upon them. From a business perspective they might change to be inclusive if they think thats better for them , if they dont, it might simply be a store with a terrible business model , thats the choice of the store and should be the choice of the store alone to make it as enjoyable for the players that actually play in that store (that said, theres still bounds to all that, nothing is without limit and theres still laws that exist).
Thats already incredible biased and pushes your thinking in a corner. All together theres a tremendously less amount of female players so that alone makes it harder to fit in a playgroup, as interests might be different.
Given the small amount of female players thats even totally justified. A lot of female players are indeed just worse at the game and some have indeed more of an issue losing to a women than to another man , that alone isnt even a problem that needs fixing, its culture, and if you say thats just wrong to do so, you force your thinking upon them, which is just as bad.
However, if a women is actually good at the game and attends often in a store, chances are people will accept that and if they have something to talk about, become friends and that is a NATURAL inclusion, people accept and understand.
The bad approach is to force inclusion, by giving special rights and putting up rules that prevent any natural inclusion to happen.
And in the end, if the playgroup just cannot role with the girl, it might just not be the right store to play in. Question still stands if its the goal to replace the social awkward nerd with a handful of female players that otherwise wouldnt go along. Its just 2 groups you play out against each other.
Theres sexism in cultures as its historicly shaped.
That goes incredible deep and far beyond Magic.
And it highly depends on what you want to archive and the question still stands if you NEED this changes at all, or people get along with it just fine, as nobody truly has any "damage" if they cannot play Magic at a store, its a hobby and not a job.
To some degree you will always have sexism in either direction, as nobody can deny male and female arent the same, and there is no reason to force them to be the same. That said, there shouldnt be laws that put boundaries on gender alone. But if people just dont want to play with the other gender, you shouldnt force them to do so, choice is what matters, and if you choose to not play with some people, you just do so and that should be acceptable, otherwise you just fuel the anger against the people you try to protect as you will spread the message that these people "deserve" the help and protection which makes them special ; just dont do that at all, unless a situation is so hostile that it demands intervention as it conflicts with actual laws in a country.
Being rude is not cool, thats just the reality.
However, magic isnt your job, you dont have to force people to get along, they freely choose to play in a store and with other people and that also means they should have much more freedom in how they act, its free time and it should be enjoyable for them.
Lets say a playgroup gets along with making jokes about genitals and what not, very sexist jokes, but its funny for them and the atmosphere in the store is fine, everyone is happy.
If you now put a women in that playgroup all of them feel terrible , and rightfully so, as suddenly what they enjoyed cannot be done anymore.
However, in a natural inclusion, that women might just perfectly get along with sexist jokes and throw in some anti-male ones too, if that works out, Perfect match, everyone is happy and can do what they enjoy.
But if you throw the sexism-sword upon the playgroup you force them to change , they suddenly are not allowed to have fun anymore, and you just "hope" they understand and get along with it, others might not like that change and leave the store, as its a place they freely choose.
Depending on how you do it, its just equally bad.
You simply destroy a playgroup either way. The extremes are what matters.
If a store isnt extreme in either direction, it shouldnt be any issue at all, a women wont feel uncomfortable at all and the men will simply not give a crap about it. If that is the case, nothing needs solving.
If the store is an extreme to either side, it depends how the situation is approached.
If the store puts up RULES and just forces changes , it makes it more and more bad for people, while others get along with it. No matter what, you "force" that change.
If you just tell a person, even in private that some comments or actions bother you, thats the most natural approach (and more what you say in your comment) , but you still just "hope" they change, they might or might not.
In the end "someone" has to make a choice and either leave the store or change behavior. Demanding changes is never a good approach, people have to do it because they choose its good and accepted it to be a good choice for them too.
Well even after years of "inclusion agenda" , magic still has very very small amount of female players, pretty much no Pro-Players that are female (extremely little numbers) and the entire game simply doesnt seem to role with them that well.
Competitive play might just not be the focus of female players and gaming stores are in general "nerdy" and to some degree a safe-haven for socially awkward primary male players (and thats unlikely to change, theres countless females that are VERY hostile to male magic players, but they simply dont play magic, so these groups dont get in a direct conflict).
I just dont see a need to push an "inclusion agenda" in the game itself.
If a store chooses its a good business approach to change in that aspect, they will do so.
If players leave because of it, they did make that choice.
If a store is very insulting and harmful to females, it would be the best approach to simply let that store be and its simply not a good place for female players, let that people have their fun in the free time they have, even if you dont agree with it.
The game itself should focus on making the GAME better to find players because the GAME is good , the QUALITY of the product is fantastic and that alone brings in new players.
Inclusion just means you exchange people and change how playgroups play. They might just leave magic and you lost customers, or you might find new players, that either stick to the game or dont. But in the end, its a gamble.
Making the GAME better is a sure fire way to get more players, and should be the actual focus on spending your time and resources as a company, so the "inclusion agenda" is just a terrible investment a company shouldnt push at all, especially not if they have visible problems in areas that are just more important.
As a company you also need to know what your customer base is. You can spread a little to hopefully get more customers, but you can also spread too much and just lose people as your product gets more and more diluted with these changes.
If your goal is to get a perfect 50/50 split of male and female players, it either means you need a tremendous amount of new female players, or you remove male players, till it matches the amount of female players ; so going by the numbers with a quota is a terrible approach.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
I am getting really tired of arguing with you. It's becoming clear that you are unwilling to have any kind of productive conversation, that you are unable to see that there are other people besides socially awkward nerdy white guys who want to be able to enjoy this game and go to a game store and feel welcome there. Your argument boils down to "well, we just don't like XYZ people, so they shouldn't come to our gamestore. There is nothing we can change." You are expecting others to put up with you and adapt and compromise, but you are unwilling to make any changes at all to compromise with other people. You seem to think you own MtG and have a natural right to determine how the community should be.
I am sorry to tell you that you have no such right. MtG does not belong to you. Game stores do not belong to you. Life does not revolve around you. You are not the center of the universe. Welcome to the real world.
I don't know how many more ways I can say it: Making changes to accomodate newcomers does not equal banning established patrons. Nobody is trying to "get you" and make you miserable. People only want to be able to play MtG at their local game store without being uncomfortable. SAME. AS. YOU.
You are not the only person who wants to relax and have fun at a game store. You are not the only person who lives in society. There are also other people. Asking for a mutual respect and politeness is a basic element of human society and you will encounter these demands in all areas of life. If you are unwilling or unable to learn basic human values that underlie any social interaction, that is tough for you and I am sorry. However, that does not mean others need to put up with you or accept being treated badly by you. A game store is a public place. If you want to have a safe-haven without people who you might disagree with, just stay home.
Tamanoa - Welcome to the Jungle
Lists can be found here.
There are very few things in life that are a true need. In the scope of Magic, basically nothing is a need. Wizards doesn't "need" to keep printing Magic sets at all. But they definitely want to. To use your words, they don't "need to push an "inclusion agenda"". But they might want to do the thing you describe in that way.
It isn't like MTG is a He-Man Woman Haters Club.
The first people who started playing this game were probably ostracized in excluded, so they probably used this game as a means to form their own group. If someone joins this group and says they are excluded, it just means that they are probably the same type of person that excluded the people who would later form the typical group that plays MTG.
Let's say there are 2 people. One loves wearing a shirt depicting a graphic. That shirt is that person's identity. You have the other person who fears whatever graphic is on that shirt. Either the first person stops wearing that shirt, or the second person overcomes that fear. Full inclusion is impossible.
Ice hockey is probably the whitest sport ever. I don't see the NHL trying to get more people of other ethnic groups to play. Ice hockey is an expensive sport, and usually the people who could afford all the equipment are usually white people. Should the sport try to remove the protective equipment just to include the ethnic groups so they could afford to play the sport? Probably not.
Maybe the reason why girls don't play this game is that they have this preconceived notion that only dweebs play this game. Do you who is driving girls away from the game? The vocal few who share their bad experiences on social media, when normally, the community is probably already inclusive as it is. If WOTC says the community are mysogynist because a few people say so, then girls will stay away from MTG, but if WOTC tries to show the good points of the community, rather than the bad, then maybe girls will more likely to give this game a shot.
I guarantee you if some non-white NHL player goes all over social media and complains to the NHL how the white players are racist, that the NHL will not attract non-white players.
As I said before. You are who you are. Sometimes you have to compromise to fit into a group.
Do not put your interpretation in my sentences that i never said. And keep it calm, nobody attacks anybody, unless they choose to do so.
And your kinda pathetic editing of my posts instead of quoting them shows me that you are unwilling to value other view points.
While in reality this is exactly the "conversation" that is helpful, otherwise you would just argue to someone that has the same opinion as you do already. The really good discussions always require that you have some different viewpoints to share, otherwise you can just skip it.
Thats at least what you want to read, but not what i actually wrote or present, common issue if people just want to see any other viewpoint as a threat, its not, as they cannot present their own they try to blame the other and think that would solve anything.
Yes to some degree that not even wrong. I dont see a reason to disrupt a working store and playgroup by forcing someone new in this group that simply doesnt fit in that group.
I am NOT against inclusion at all, but i am against the approach to force it upon people. If they dont want someone at the store, they dont want that person at the store, that simple, for whatever reason. If you force the people to play together regardless, you just fuel that problem instead of working to solve it, thats not helpful in the slightest.
I have no idea why you even wrote this or think that i ever said anything like that.
I just merely give examples, that are neither me nor my perceived world or even my local store, its just that i know quite a lot of different viewpoints and i can accept either of them, instead of siding with one and calling the other the devil.
And as i said, if that is all you try to accomplish, it depends on the approach and if its "forced" or just implied by communication.
So we actually dont say anything different, its only a matter of how its going to be done and in some areas it might be better not done at all as there is no necessity to do so and only bothers the people without any adequate gain.
If something works for years you have to question if you actually need to change it at all and if that results in a net positive gain or just people getting annoyed by what you are trying to accomplish.
And a store isnt necessary as much of a public area as you might think it is. Any store can kick out whoever they dont like and are not forced to make business with them and a lot of stores run after they are closed later in the night, which is pretty much a "private" group with its own rules.
The real question is what you want:
1) Force and promote Inclusion AT ALL COST
Or
2) Natural Inclusion by sharing a hobby
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I side with option 2) and i dont think every store has to be inclusive for everyone , as that is simply not possible to archive, as some people just dont get along, and you dont need to force them to, they can very well ignore each other and do their own thing, or find a store that fits to them (which leads to the problem that WotC is more and more forcing stores into a corner , making magic less and less profitable and that leads to a decline of the number of stores, which just fuels the problem that some areas might not even have any store at all, or just 1 store, which then has to be as neutral to anything as possible, instead of having like a bunch of stores in an area that might better offer the customer base what they are searching individually ; so what WotC is doing also makes stores more and more the same and the more you as a customer deviate from that neutral position, the less its actually for your needs and wishes).
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So yes it comes down to that some stores might just be a place for "dicks" , as long as all the "dicks" gather in that one store, people that dont feel welcome can totally ignore that store and play in another store that might simply not have these dicks.
You just dont have to to force people to get along if they dont get along and i dont see a need to do so in every aspect of life and if they dont wish to do so.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Its the topic of the threat that people give their opinion what WotC "could" do different, so theres that.
Of course its a company and if they want to do something they just do it, people will still either like that or not.
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Maro made a twitter about a question of why Ixalan has so many female pirates, and that they intentionally made them female.
They intentionally did that and then after that they are surprised that people notice and are bothered by it ? Thats just strange for me.
The issue i see with that is that people will notice that something is off with what they expected to get.
And the classic pirate is male that people have in mind , so expectations are to get male pirates.
If a bunch of them would be female, people wouldnt have noticed at all, and it wouldnt be a topic at all.
But the fact they strive for like a 50/50 split (or even a higher female number than males for human pirates) did bother some people that noticed it, as its against expectations and it directly leads to connected topics and makes people question "why" they push that into the game and knowingly so, not by accident.
And its not even a gender debate, we had the same with the new sliver look and feel they made , people just didnt like it, and felt it was unnecessary to change it at all, as slivers already have a distinct look and feel, and with the changes they lose that and just become yet another much more humanoid looking tribe.
This stuff just makes mechanics more and more the same, and people dont really like that. I can understand why, even if i might have a different opinion of it personally.
Selling something people like and changing it to something they dont like isnt really a good method, but its very often done in lots of industries.
Just see some video game series. People like them and just buy them as they liked pretty much all of them so far. Then the company decides to change a lot and instead of making a new title, they put the series brand name on it, as they know people will buy it for that alone, while they hurt the series in the process, as people dont get what they expect and the producer knowingly cheats them on that to sell more product.
If i buy milk at a store i really want to get milk, and not suddenly a "50% less milk and 50% more fruits" product.
People have expectations and if something doesnt fit in they will notice that, in a good or bad way.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
There's a good chance they're just not telling those stories to you. But sure, it's also possible that's the way it is with your immediate surroundings.
This is not really the place to delve into all the details of why someone might believe that. I think it's sufficient to say that there's been a lot of investigation into the matter, including a great deal of scientific research, over the last century - and that it's a growing field of study.
I don't think there's anything I can provide in this context to convince you that it's not just ideological; but at least I can tell you that the people you are describing commonly believe that their views are founded in empirical fact and scientific evidence. There's not usually much difficulty in doing both.
But yeah, for people who care about justice in any sense, justice is usually more important than playing a game.
If they do it intentionally its worse doing so.
After all the stunts they pulled in the last years i am just assuming they are surprised and just dont know better.
But chances are they indeed knew what they are doing , even with the feedback , its the agenda after all, someone made that and that just means this agenda has an effect on everything they do, and i very much critic that.
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/171074786068/why-is-wizards-trying-to-fix-something-that-isnt#notes
http://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/169309413338/whats-with-all-the-pirates-being-female
(theres for sure more of that, but i am not searching all of the twitter stuff)
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I am not a fan of that, would be much better if they just made a natural world and not try to "influence" players into an ideology, especially as they sell a game global and not just to people in the USA.
The game would benefit if they focused on making the game as good as possible and not spend time and resources into this agenda , it clearly changes how they make products and they spend money on it, while other aspects suffer and they claim they dont have money for it ; so pardon me for being suspect of the reasoning for all that.
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Into perspective for a business. Its one thing to play with expectations and use it as a tool of surprise and its an entirely different story to directly design against customer expectations knowingly it will bother them, thats a bit of a scam.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
You can believe that they're wrong about it being good, and I really don't think I want to argue with you about that - but are you really preferring the corporation to be a profit-maximization machine over trying to care about ethics as well?
@Chris: the % of magic players who are women is around 50-35% (different sources give different results, I used MaRo's tumblr for over and under). But the Store/Event play % sits around 10%, with some stores dropping to 0%. That's a significant difference, suggesting something about the conditions under which women play magic.
By referencing Hambly as a player who was randomly banned because reasons, you've posted evidence supporting the "women suffer more harassment" theory. As a Magic celebrity, Hambly broke the Code of Conduct over a period of months, and was banned for doing so, but in your post this wasn't worthy of mention.
Your argument that people are spending more time on social justice than playing isn't well supported, because the fact of the matter is people are trying to play, but ********s in the community are trying to stop them. Hambly getting banned was a case of a toxic community member being removed.
Art is life itself.
If you care about profit-maximization while following a strict ideology agenda, then yes, skip the ideology part and just try to make money by making your product as good as possible.
Selling product on basis of ideology is just not going to cut it, unless your customers are really into that and dont care for the actual product.
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I really strongly believe a company better keeps a focus on making the product as good as possible and doesnt try to sell product on ideology if they can help it.
Last bunch of years they just got bite by the ideology bugs and someone in management clearly thought thats how they are going to roll.
Maro shifted a lot in that direction over the years, so he clearly pushes that agenda pretty hard, and thats reason enough people start to really badly dislike him for doing that, they just want that crap out of the game ; theres plenty of political places to talk about that, magic really doesnt need to do that, especially not if theres very visible problems with the product that need serious fixing way before spending money on stuff like that.
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If a company starts to follow ideology, they will piss off people that dont agree to that ideology.
If they simply dont follow any ideology and just focus on making the product as good and competitive as possible on the market, that will be for the good of every customer and the company as well. Thats why its a good idea if a company stays out of political talk, religious talk and any form of sexism talk , all topics that simply have no place in that industry for the product they make, you simply have to follow the law in the country you are working in (and if that law is bad, politicians have to change it, not the company).
Sadly enough a very specific kind of customers demand ideology in companies, and that is very well the source of all kinds of influences that most definitely do not make the product any better at all, rather makes it worse for the majority, just to mainstream it to that ideology.
Simply keep that crap out of the game design, make sure its good thats many times more important.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Spirits
Maro is just particularly bad at presenting research numbers and somewhat fails to put them in context.
The number he pulled was indeed just from a market research group, they neither have nor used numbers of all customers they actually have (DCI numbers and the like). Thats not what the number represents.
The crazy high 38% female players number might even not be "completely" wrong, given that there are quite a lot of casual players that are female, simply dont have time to attend to FNMs or just dont want to play competitive at all.
The Reddit for this topic has a bunch of comments that very well reflect that:
https://www.reddit.com/r/lrcast/comments/2ysg41/38_of_magic_players_are_women/
So the more nerdy under 18 boy will go out and play in a gaming store, especially as other boys are playing in that store already.
The girl wont, also because family wise, the parents might not really be cool with them playing at a store that has that many male players (for whatever reason, out of fear or whatever, topic of itself).
For grown up players, chances are female players just dont have the time to attend to FNMs that are later in the night, again for whatever reason, be it children or anything else. Chances are also that the "father" of such a little family might actually attend the FNM (thats the case for many people i encounter in my life, the wife simply doesnt care for magic as much, but might actually play casually, either with the children, rarely with her husband, or anything like that).
For the outside world, the husband is THE magic player and presented to the other players, they simply cannot see the female player that is "hiding" at home.
In competitive magic the number of female players is STAGGERING low, for lots of reasons. A very real question is why you would even like to change that , and do so with aggressive changes, its the kind of "forced inclusion" i so dislike, you just declare something as a problem that might just not be one at all, and demand fixing that problem, while nobody really sees a point in doing that.
Also, a very big portion of casual players really doesnt care much for magic and simply has not enough understanding to give as much talk about it as we do here. Everyone that reads this forum has to understand that they are already a very highly committed type of player to the game, thats way more than overwhelmingly bigger part of players you simply never ever get in contact with, as they do not play competitive, never play in stores and you very well dont know they exist.
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That all said, players very well perceive the world they life in and the more "hardcore" long term player might just care for other things than the casual one that might buy a commander and play that for years without changing anything (i know a bunch of people that just bought a set of commander decks and play these decks like its a game itself, they never bought any boosters and they probably never will and they just dont care for magic at all, so any topics about "inclusion" are completely irrelevant to them anyway).
A very visible fact is that all the years that WotC is pushing the "inclusion" agenda, the numbers for competitive magic dont go up in any meaningful numbers at all, so its for real wasted effort and just produces outcry after outcry for the fanbase that it actually effects , and thats just as unnecessary as it gets (almost like they enjoy poking the hornet nest and still demand them to buy the product).
WotC actively removed all kinds of goodies for competitive players. In the past (and thats easily 10 years already) they wanted players to actively go and play in stores, attend competitive tournaments and get in touch with communities in actual stores.
Right now they more and more work against it, its like they made a 180° turn and run in the different direction entirely.
And as a long term player you really cannot "like" that at all, as it hurts the game as what you know made it great, and it just chops and chips pieces away from it.
Its a terrible direction they run into and sometimes they notice , sometimes they are just completely blinded by ideology, and being blind to that never ever was a good thing, history did teach us that many many times over and over again.
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To sum that stuff up, yes, WotC for real isnt making and designing magic for the wishes and needs of the "hardcore" players that play the game for a crazy amount of time.
In the past they at least tried, now they openly do not even try anymore and work against it.
Just dont assume people dont notice that and even less assume that people will just accept that direction they are running into.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮