Seen some anecdotal reports from attendees that the main event at GP Sydney this weekend has between 500 and 600 players. Format is sealed.
Also similarly, the Modern PPTQ held at the event is reported to have gained only around 60 players. (by way of comparison and scale, on more than one occasion in just the last year I've played in casual three-round GP side events with 500+ players which had to be split into separate groups)
Following the discussion I can see most of the reasonable responses pointing a finger towards two things:
1) lack of announcements on the pro play or competitive play system. Without Pro points or a protour, what exactly (besides some cash) do you get for top-8-ing a GP? The confusion and lack of information on how to progress through the competitive scene seems to have hit attendance right in the kisser.
2) sealed format. No secret that it's a higher variance format than other offerings. We don't see the same faces (the Matt Nass's) repeat-winning sealed events with fifteen rounds. As such I think it does put off the less enfranchised grinders when they have to purchase plane fare or expensive accommodation to attend, at the risk of opening a bad pool.
If anyone can expand on this with evidence and verifiable sources regarding attendance that would be great. I'm just opening the discussion with a view to finding out more. It's pretty clear what's happened I feel, so we don't need to panic at the death of paper magic or whatever. That's not happening.
I'd say that GP attendance is also still being impacted by the "higher prices, lower value" and "there's either no coverage or *****ty coverage so why keep up?" factors.
Sealed can be either really good or really bad (I once had the unfortunate displeasure of doing an Avacyn Restored Sealed GP, which was one of the worst Sealed formats of all time), but at the end of the day, prices for Sealed events going through the roof will ultimately affect attendance more than the quality of the format itself.
I feel that among people I know, there's an overall lack of interested in GP main events now. There's probably a few things that are causing this, both Magic and non Magic related.
(1) I feel that a lot of people find that the entry fees are way too high in regards to the value for it. I don't know how much American GPs are but in Canada they're around $90 and have been that way for a while now. Which is absurd. A lot of people I know going to GP Toronto still don't know if they'll do the main or sides all weekend. I did the constructed fanatic package for GP Montreal last year since I didn't wanna do a limited GP with 0 byes. The fanatic packages are insane value compared to mains.
(2) kind of related to my first point but since GPs have PTQs every day of the weekend, including the Friday, people I know are often saying that it seems easier to spike one than a GP.
(3) I feel that in my direct area (maybe my 3 main stores), Magic seems to be down as a whole. A lot of people I know show up to even FNMs kind of infrequently. A lot of the players who grinded a lot of competitive events sort of just lost interest in playing all the time and slowly stopped showing up as much. The store that runs standard FNM has had problems firing at all for the past year or two. Standard showdowns are pretty rough too. Even modern FNMs, which have traditionally been more popular aren't as big as they once were at either stores that run them
these are just a bit of things I've noticed in my general area. usually there are a lot of people that play a lot of Magic in my area but attendance has been down a lot from what I've seen. The lack of general direction from what they've down with how to qualify for the PT/Mythic Championship also doesn't help
Its discouraging going to one of these events knowing that many will start the tournament 3-0 from the comfort of their hotel bed.
It's been like that for years and GP attendance kept increasing. So, I think there's gotta be other factors.
Besides, without going into it that much, those players earned that right. I used to have 3 Byes all the time until the past 4 years or so, where it has been reduced to 2 Byes since I would have to make Silver to get 3 (I don't try that hard).
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Legacy - Sneak Show, BR Reanimator, Miracles, UW Stoneblade
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/ Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander - Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build) (dead format for me)
All talk in this thread seems odd coming off the heels of GP New Jersey, which sold out and had so many people that that they had to move the Judge tables and take down the featured match area to accommodate the amount of players that were there. Format and location has a big impact on these things.
Toronto, Modern, and likely no Coverage this weekend?
Thats how you kill anything but Arena...
I would 100% not be surprised if some Hasbro executive actually thinks Arena is the future and that paper Magic is on the way out.
Which would then become a self-fulfilling prophecy with things like high GP entry fees, better value in side events, and the overall player slump that came around the "let's ban some more cards in Standard every set" era (which certainly destroyed my confidence in Standard, to the point where I actually stopped playing it because Legacy and EDH are nowhere near as miserable as those Standard formats were) eating at the established Magic player base, leaving the focus on newer, more Arena-centric players.
Basically what I'm saying is that, from Wizards' behaviour and certain corporate rhetoric I've seen from at least one other large company with its finger in the Magic pie (can't say which one at this point in time but I can tell you it ain't SCG or CFB), it's becoming quite fashionable to see the old standbys of Magic, like GPs, pushed aside for the shiny new things like Arena.
Toronto, Modern, and likely no Coverage this weekend?
Thats how you kill anything but Arena...
I wouldn't be surprised if there was no coverage at this point It's a shame because I enjoyed watching coverage. They put a lot of effort into making it reasonable only to take it away.
Toronto, Modern, and likely no Coverage this weekend?
Thats how you kill anything but Arena...
I would 100% not be surprised if some Hasbro executive actually thinks Arena is the future and that paper Magic is on the way out.
Which would then become a self-fulfilling prophecy with things like high GP entry fees, better value in side events, and the overall player slump that came around the "let's ban some more cards in Standard every set" era (which certainly destroyed my confidence in Standard, to the point where I actually stopped playing it because Legacy and EDH are nowhere near as miserable as those Standard formats were) eating at the established Magic player base, leaving the focus on newer, more Arena-centric players.
Basically what I'm saying is that, from Wizards' behaviour and certain corporate rhetoric I've seen from at least one other large company with its finger in the Magic pie (can't say which one at this point in time but I can tell you it ain't SCG or CFB), it's becoming quite fashionable to see the old standbys of Magic, like GPs, pushed aside for the shiny new things like Arena.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone up in Hasbro thinks that paper is dying. While people stopped playing standard and are slowly starting to return to the format, I wouldn't say paper Magic as a whole is dying. But I guess it depends on what they're looking at. If they only look at standard related numbers then it's probably concerning but I don't know what else to say
I hope they don't get rid of GPs but costs have been increasing a lot over the years
[quote from="The Decepticon »" url="/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/805106-gp-attendance?comment=6"]Besides, without going into it that much, those players earned that right
Thats arguable.....but more importantly it shouldnt be something thats on the table imo. If you wanna give out other monies/prizes, fine....but everyone should have to play the same number of matches in a given tournament
[quote from="The Decepticon »" url="/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/805106-gp-attendance?comment=6"]Besides, without going into it that much, those players earned that right
Thats arguable.....but more importantly it shouldnt be something thats on the table imo. If you wanna give out other monies/prizes, fine....but everyone should have to play the same number of matches in a given tournament
</blockquote>
Agreed. It is one of the lamest aspects of Pro Magic.
Agreed. It is one of the lamest aspects of Pro Magic.
It's what you get when you want to force a more or less static "pro community" but also don't want to change your competitive events not to rely so much on variance. Something like a 60% game win rate is considered to be pro-level play in Magic, but if you propagate that over a large event... it's still not enough to ensure at least some of the usual faces are always at the top.
So they figure, hey, give up to three free wins to those players to "even" it out, while at the same time denying such opportunities to the average player (winning a GPT used to get you three byes but they cut it down to two because... I guess they just don't want to admit the system is horribly broken). Combine that slap in the face with the fact that costs are spiraling out of control, in addition to the declining quality of GP coverage, I'd say Wizards either needs to implement some kind of price control or just get rid of GPs entirely. Maybe do more PTs if they want to showcase the pros so much. But the main event of a GP will sure as **** never be worth it for most players as long as Wizards' priorities are so skewed.
Agreed. It is one of the lamest aspects of Pro Magic.
It's what you get when you want to force a more or less static "pro community" but also don't want to change your competitive events not to rely so much on variance. Something like a 60% game win rate is considered to be pro-level play in Magic, but if you propagate that over a large event... it's still not enough to ensure at least some of the usual faces are always at the top.
So they figure, hey, give up to three free wins to those players to "even" it out, while at the same time denying such opportunities to the average player (winning a GPT used to get you three byes but they cut it down to two because... I guess they just don't want to admit the system is horribly broken). Combine that slap in the face with the fact that costs are spiraling out of control, in addition to the declining quality of GP coverage, I'd say Wizards either needs to implement some kind of price control or just get rid of GPs entirely. Maybe do more PTs if they want to showcase the pros so much. But the main event of a GP will sure as **** never be worth it for most players as long as Wizards' priorities are so skewed.
I get the distinct impression that GPs are on the way out anyway and we are simply in the transition year between the old system and the new system.
The problem is that if a business wants to maintain a good reputation, then it should be providing consistent quality right up until the cancellation date. Dropping GP quality when they're on the way out is not a way to inspire confidence in the future.
I sure hope that they don't get rid of GPs as I really enjoy attending them but it sure seems like that's what they'll be doing at some point soon. At this point I don't have much confidence in what they'll do
I would 100% not be surprised if some Hasbro executive actually thinks Arena is the future and that paper Magic is on the way out.
Which would then become a self-fulfilling prophecy with things like high GP entry fees, better value in side events, and the overall player slump that came around the "let's ban some more cards in Standard every set" era (which certainly destroyed my confidence in Standard, to the point where I actually stopped playing it because Legacy and EDH are nowhere near as miserable as those Standard formats were) eating at the established Magic player base, leaving the focus on newer, more Arena-centric players.
Basically what I'm saying is that, from Wizards' behaviour and certain corporate rhetoric I've seen from at least one other large company with its finger in the Magic pie (can't say which one at this point in time but I can tell you it ain't SCG or CFB), it's becoming quite fashionable to see the old standbys of Magic, like GPs, pushed aside for the shiny new things like Arena.
How could Paper Magic be on it's way out when it's the last remaining defense from being regulated out of existence for being a physical loot box? Now some could argue that the business model is dated, archaic, and a relic of the 90's but at least you can say that people will come up with other ways to use these physical goods with friends beyond the original design of the game itself. Digital loot boxes on the other hand don't share that type of luxury compared to Physical loot boxes where you physically own the product. One way or the other there's going to be multiple crises affecting the Gaming Industry as a whole starting with the "Crisis of Realization" where adult responsibility takes on a much higher priority than free time since the age of an average gamer is someone in their mid to late 30's.
It's a self actualizing moment when people start to really understand what they've been doing all this time which will hit the industry hard If it hasn't already with Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games becoming more casual than competitive, GameStop going out of business, as well as the current Triple A Video Game Market Crash. The second crisis is obviously any form of Economic Recession since the first thing to go is usually luxury spending where gambling on Loot Boxes (regardless If it's physical or digital) including Video Games is a Luxury. Anyone still spending money on this luxury while they're descending into poverty on these products has an addiction. That's when you create an issue of needing a regulatory force due to the psychological manipulation being created.
"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
Trust me, I used to think that way too... then I listened to some corporate bull***** about why Arena should be a certain company's priority (not Hasbro or Wizards) because those non-Magic-playing decision makers "understand" Arena better since it fits into a better known business model. It's very easy to see some decision-maker at Hasbro pushing Wizards a certain direction because they too want to go with something they "understand" even if it's complete nonsense. There's a very clear disconnect between the people at Wizards who care about the game and genuinely want it to grow and the people who sign their paychecks, who just treat Magic as another product in a portfolio.
The lootbox issue is certainly something to consider in terms of analyzing the market (I even had plans to write a Magic Market Index about it back before I was blackballed in a rather Jim Sterling-ish manner, so I'm drawing on my preliminary notes for that to make this point), but it's not really something that's going to affect Hasbro even in the near to mid future. Countries like Belgium might be moving to regulate lootboxes, but the odds of America following suit within even the next 5-10 years are vanishingly small. Magic is more likely to die a natural death than to see itself get caught up in lootbox regulations. And that's not my typical bearish approach to the Magic market speaking. Functional legislation to limit online gambling through such means as lootboxes, gacha, and other predatory practices will have to be pioneered by another entity, probably the EU. Just look at how inept American legislation surrounding online casinos is if you want to see how much of a non-threat legislation is to lootboxes and especially to Magic.
But when the inevitable recession does wind up hitting (economically speaking it's a matter of "when" instead of "if"), triple-digit GP entry fees with no EV unless you luck out or start with byes are going to look mighty unattractive to all but the most dedicated of grinders. That'll make for an easy corporate decision to throw them out along with other things that don't fit a non-Magic-player's idea of what the future of Magic is.
As a note, I’m doing GP Toronto this weekend and I’ll only be using my constructed fanatic package. I wouldn’t touch the main event because it’s cost is basically the same as doing side events all weekend (with my package) and at least I know I can win a couple side events and get me some nice prize wall loot. HOPEFULLY ;_;
Trust me, I used to think that way too... then I listened to some corporate bull***** about why Arena should be a certain company's priority (not Hasbro or Wizards) because those non-Magic-playing decision makers "understand" Arena better since it fits into a better known business model. It's very easy to see some decision-maker at Hasbro pushing Wizards a certain direction because they too want to go with something they "understand" even if it's complete nonsense. There's a very clear disconnect between the people at Wizards who care about the game and genuinely want it to grow and the people who sign their paychecks, who just treat Magic as another product in a portfolio.
There is a very troubling concern that Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro might stop manufacturing cards for the Paper TCG in favor of Arena given that they haven't disclosed a full release schedule like they've done in the past on the Mothership. We know that War of the Spark and the next line of Challenger Decks are coming down along the pipe with no word as to whether there will still be an annual Commander Precon let alone a new Core Set since they're done releasing new Masters sets for the "time being". When the Professor from Tolarian Community College interviewed Gavin Verhey of Wizards of the Coast R&D, Gavin did give some hints as to what's possibly in store for the Paper TCG contradicting what Hasbro Corporate has been saying about Magic as of late as disclosed by Rudy from Alpha Investments.
The lootbox issue is certainly something to consider in terms of analyzing the market (I even had plans to write a Magic Market Index about it back before I was blackballed in a rather Jim Sterling-ish manner, so I'm drawing on my preliminary notes for that to make this point), but it's not really something that's going to affect Hasbro even in the near to mid future. Countries like Belgium might be moving to regulate lootboxes, but the odds of America following suit within even the next 5-10 years are vanishingly small. Magic is more likely to die a natural death than to see itself get caught up in lootbox regulations. And that's not my typical bearish approach to the Magic market speaking. Functional legislation to limit online gambling through such means as lootboxes, gacha, and other predatory practices will have to be pioneered by another entity, probably the EU. Just look at how inept American legislation surrounding online casinos is if you want to see how much of a non-threat legislation is to lootboxes and especially to Magic.
I think it really all depends on whether or not the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is as committed to investigating physical loot boxes as they currently are with digital loot boxes where they view Video Games' influence on underage kids/teens being more damaging toward their mental health than Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games from the perspective of mainstream media. It isn't surprising given how niche of a gaming genre Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games are compared to Video Games where it doesn't have the exact same appeal yet that's what makes it so unique and I think Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro lost sight of that by trying to break that niche with their recent push for e-Sports with Arena. Quite frankly I'm not even sure If the niche can be broken as a means of becoming more mainstream.
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America Bless Christ Jesus
"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
"Physical" loot-boxes in the form of booster packs are pretty much proven over time to not be a problem.
In the end, people get value from it, and the people that go on a rampage to buy booster packs are extremely rare.
The people that are "addicted" to physical packs are quite small, vast majority of people will ignore them at some point and simply buy the cards they specifically want (with a secondary market in the real world).
Any "collectable" game will have some form of addictive nature, if the people want to have all the stuff, they will hunt the cards.
Booster packs are not really aggressively promoted and the game itself does not really mention booster packs at all (the inserted "advertisement" cards in the packs might be an issue regarding that to some degree, and i would love to see them gone, as inserting this kind of advertisement is a disgrace and a giant waste anyway).
Digital loot-boxes however prove to be a much bigger problem, as losing control over buying something digital is much easier than doing so with a physical product you receive (as you "see" if you go too extreme as you are flooded with product in your home).
Some people buy digital product and completely lose the overview of what they spend and what they actually get from buying that stuff.
And in the most aggressive form of lootboxes sold in mostly free to play games, its a fundamental part to actively force an addictive nature on a game as an added element on a market that "traditionally" did not do that (videogames like 10-15 years ago, currently almost every game will push micro transaction ingame shops and lootboxes to bite and pick pieces of money everywhere and do so in a more and more aggressive manner).
There is much to gain to prevent an excess of digital lootboxes and regulating ingame shops.
There are already many laws and changes implemented for digital games to fix these problems.
For example they have to make visible what the "odds" are to get something and show everything you can get from a product (so no hiding).
----
This will be a big topic for the industry and its important to find good regulative solutions to balance the needs of the industry to make money and the aggressive nature of promoting an addictive behavior, especially targeting kids.
I think it really all depends on whether or not the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is as committed to investigating physical loot boxes
As long as moneyed interests can lobby the government, we're not going to see restrictions on digital loot boxes, let alone long-established things like trading card packs (which have cultural relevance due to things like baseball cards, and TCGs just piggyback off that nostalgic zeitgeist). Companies like EA are not going to give up their cash cows lightly, and it won't take much money being siphoned to the current FTC (the one that opposes net neutrality, so you know they don't care about the public interest) to get them to ignore the problem.
I think Wizards of the Coast / Hasbro lost sight of that by trying to break that niche with their recent push for e-Sports with Arena.
It's genuinely hard to tell ahead of time what will stick and what won't. Everyone makes fun of Blockbuster for getting pushed out of the market by Redbox, Netflix, and others, but at the same time, everyone's making fun of Wizards (and at least one company in the Magic fandom) for pushing the new digital option.
Now, I'm not going to pretend that physical trading cards are at all like tapes and discs, but it's at least fair to say that having a robust digital option available to complement the physical option is a good idea for Wizards. The problem is that they'd be better served by fixing up MTGO, not pushing Arena, but as I've said before, Arena is something non-Magic-playing corporate types "understand" more than MTGO, and actually playing the game is beneath most of the higher-ranking decision-makers.
I am, however, very glad that MTGS resisted the temptation to include Arena in its front page articles, videos, streams, casts, and other such content. That's the sort of move that promotes the physical game over the new monetization structure. I always considered Arena outside my mandate back when I was content manager for this site (MTGO was not, but Arena just targets a different audience than Magic traditionally does) and the current administration is continuing to follow in my lead.
"Physical" loot-boxes in the form of booster packs are pretty much proven over time to not be a problem.
Well, no, that's the is-ought fallacy speaking. Physical "loot boxes" like trading card packs have exactly the same problems as digital loot boxes. Being forced to try your luck because you want a specific rookie card and don't want to pay a hugely inflated market price for it has existed as long as the collectibles market for sports cards. Magic simply adds a functional game aspect to the equation (there's no reason a card like Surgical Extraction should command the price it does, other than it being released in relatively small numbers and even then only infrequently).
There are games where you can buy the product and have all the cards needed to play. Magic intentionally eschews this model in favour of something that makes customers have to spend more to get what they want. It's ultimately an issue of capitalism encouraging predatory behaviour, but the relevant part here is that booster packs directly work to obstruct players from getting complete sets of cards in the interest of making Wizards (and later Hasbro) more money. Draft (and Sealed for that matter) can easily be done with cube packs, so that doesn't justify randomized sealed packs from the manufacturer.
Booster packs are not really aggressively promoted
There are multiple formats that expect you to buy boosters merely to play them, and boosters are an extremely common form of prize support for sanctioned and unsanctioned tournaments. How are they not being aggressively promoted? Because there's a secondary market? Cards only really enter the market through opened product (discounting specific promos and the like but those aren't going to be enough to build your decks for you).
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Also similarly, the Modern PPTQ held at the event is reported to have gained only around 60 players. (by way of comparison and scale, on more than one occasion in just the last year I've played in casual three-round GP side events with 500+ players which had to be split into separate groups)
Following the discussion I can see most of the reasonable responses pointing a finger towards two things:
1) lack of announcements on the pro play or competitive play system. Without Pro points or a protour, what exactly (besides some cash) do you get for top-8-ing a GP? The confusion and lack of information on how to progress through the competitive scene seems to have hit attendance right in the kisser.
2) sealed format. No secret that it's a higher variance format than other offerings. We don't see the same faces (the Matt Nass's) repeat-winning sealed events with fifteen rounds. As such I think it does put off the less enfranchised grinders when they have to purchase plane fare or expensive accommodation to attend, at the risk of opening a bad pool.
If anyone can expand on this with evidence and verifiable sources regarding attendance that would be great. I'm just opening the discussion with a view to finding out more. It's pretty clear what's happened I feel, so we don't need to panic at the death of paper magic or whatever. That's not happening.
Here's a community-shared megathread currently for the GP and SCG Baltimore:
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/am02d7/scg_open_baltimore_and_gp_sydney_discussion/?utm_source=reddit-android
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
Sealed can be either really good or really bad (I once had the unfortunate displeasure of doing an Avacyn Restored Sealed GP, which was one of the worst Sealed formats of all time), but at the end of the day, prices for Sealed events going through the roof will ultimately affect attendance more than the quality of the format itself.
(1) I feel that a lot of people find that the entry fees are way too high in regards to the value for it. I don't know how much American GPs are but in Canada they're around $90 and have been that way for a while now. Which is absurd. A lot of people I know going to GP Toronto still don't know if they'll do the main or sides all weekend. I did the constructed fanatic package for GP Montreal last year since I didn't wanna do a limited GP with 0 byes. The fanatic packages are insane value compared to mains.
(2) kind of related to my first point but since GPs have PTQs every day of the weekend, including the Friday, people I know are often saying that it seems easier to spike one than a GP.
(3) I feel that in my direct area (maybe my 3 main stores), Magic seems to be down as a whole. A lot of people I know show up to even FNMs kind of infrequently. A lot of the players who grinded a lot of competitive events sort of just lost interest in playing all the time and slowly stopped showing up as much. The store that runs standard FNM has had problems firing at all for the past year or two. Standard showdowns are pretty rough too. Even modern FNMs, which have traditionally been more popular aren't as big as they once were at either stores that run them
these are just a bit of things I've noticed in my general area. usually there are a lot of people that play a lot of Magic in my area but attendance has been down a lot from what I've seen. The lack of general direction from what they've down with how to qualify for the PT/Mythic Championship also doesn't help
It's been like that for years and GP attendance kept increasing. So, I think there's gotta be other factors.
Besides, without going into it that much, those players earned that right. I used to have 3 Byes all the time until the past 4 years or so, where it has been reduced to 2 Byes since I would have to make Silver to get 3 (I don't try that hard).
Premodern - Trix, RecSur, Enchantress, Reanimator, Elves https://www.facebook.com/groups/PremodernUSA/
Modern - Neobrand, Hogaak Vine, Elves
Standard - Mono Red (6-2 and 5-3 in 2 McQ)
Draft - (I wish I had more time for limited...)
Commander -
Norin the Wary, Grimgrin, Adun Oakenshield (taking forever to build)(dead format for me)(Also known as Xenphire)
List of Grand Prix Events with attendance numbers, somewhat sortable.
Thats how you kill anything but Arena...
Spirits
I would 100% not be surprised if some Hasbro executive actually thinks Arena is the future and that paper Magic is on the way out.
Which would then become a self-fulfilling prophecy with things like high GP entry fees, better value in side events, and the overall player slump that came around the "let's ban some more cards in Standard every set" era (which certainly destroyed my confidence in Standard, to the point where I actually stopped playing it because Legacy and EDH are nowhere near as miserable as those Standard formats were) eating at the established Magic player base, leaving the focus on newer, more Arena-centric players.
Basically what I'm saying is that, from Wizards' behaviour and certain corporate rhetoric I've seen from at least one other large company with its finger in the Magic pie (can't say which one at this point in time but I can tell you it ain't SCG or CFB), it's becoming quite fashionable to see the old standbys of Magic, like GPs, pushed aside for the shiny new things like Arena.
Who formatted these dates? Why would you put the day first? This makes no sense. It should be ordered by Year->Month->Day
I wouldn't be surprised if there was no coverage at this point It's a shame because I enjoyed watching coverage. They put a lot of effort into making it reasonable only to take it away.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone up in Hasbro thinks that paper is dying. While people stopped playing standard and are slowly starting to return to the format, I wouldn't say paper Magic as a whole is dying. But I guess it depends on what they're looking at. If they only look at standard related numbers then it's probably concerning but I don't know what else to say
I hope they don't get rid of GPs but costs have been increasing a lot over the years
Agreed. It is one of the lamest aspects of Pro Magic.
It's what you get when you want to force a more or less static "pro community" but also don't want to change your competitive events not to rely so much on variance. Something like a 60% game win rate is considered to be pro-level play in Magic, but if you propagate that over a large event... it's still not enough to ensure at least some of the usual faces are always at the top.
So they figure, hey, give up to three free wins to those players to "even" it out, while at the same time denying such opportunities to the average player (winning a GPT used to get you three byes but they cut it down to two because... I guess they just don't want to admit the system is horribly broken). Combine that slap in the face with the fact that costs are spiraling out of control, in addition to the declining quality of GP coverage, I'd say Wizards either needs to implement some kind of price control or just get rid of GPs entirely. Maybe do more PTs if they want to showcase the pros so much. But the main event of a GP will sure as **** never be worth it for most players as long as Wizards' priorities are so skewed.
I get the distinct impression that GPs are on the way out anyway and we are simply in the transition year between the old system and the new system.
It's a self actualizing moment when people start to really understand what they've been doing all this time which will hit the industry hard If it hasn't already with Trading Card Games / Collectible Card Games becoming more casual than competitive, GameStop going out of business, as well as the current Triple A Video Game Market Crash. The second crisis is obviously any form of Economic Recession since the first thing to go is usually luxury spending where gambling on Loot Boxes (regardless If it's physical or digital) including Video Games is a Luxury. Anyone still spending money on this luxury while they're descending into poverty on these products has an addiction. That's when you create an issue of needing a regulatory force due to the psychological manipulation being created.
"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
The lootbox issue is certainly something to consider in terms of analyzing the market (I even had plans to write a Magic Market Index about it back before I was blackballed in a rather Jim Sterling-ish manner, so I'm drawing on my preliminary notes for that to make this point), but it's not really something that's going to affect Hasbro even in the near to mid future. Countries like Belgium might be moving to regulate lootboxes, but the odds of America following suit within even the next 5-10 years are vanishingly small. Magic is more likely to die a natural death than to see itself get caught up in lootbox regulations. And that's not my typical bearish approach to the Magic market speaking. Functional legislation to limit online gambling through such means as lootboxes, gacha, and other predatory practices will have to be pioneered by another entity, probably the EU. Just look at how inept American legislation surrounding online casinos is if you want to see how much of a non-threat legislation is to lootboxes and especially to Magic.
But when the inevitable recession does wind up hitting (economically speaking it's a matter of "when" instead of "if"), triple-digit GP entry fees with no EV unless you luck out or start with byes are going to look mighty unattractive to all but the most dedicated of grinders. That'll make for an easy corporate decision to throw them out along with other things that don't fit a non-Magic-player's idea of what the future of Magic is.
"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
In the end, people get value from it, and the people that go on a rampage to buy booster packs are extremely rare.
The people that are "addicted" to physical packs are quite small, vast majority of people will ignore them at some point and simply buy the cards they specifically want (with a secondary market in the real world).
Any "collectable" game will have some form of addictive nature, if the people want to have all the stuff, they will hunt the cards.
Booster packs are not really aggressively promoted and the game itself does not really mention booster packs at all (the inserted "advertisement" cards in the packs might be an issue regarding that to some degree, and i would love to see them gone, as inserting this kind of advertisement is a disgrace and a giant waste anyway).
Digital loot-boxes however prove to be a much bigger problem, as losing control over buying something digital is much easier than doing so with a physical product you receive (as you "see" if you go too extreme as you are flooded with product in your home).
Some people buy digital product and completely lose the overview of what they spend and what they actually get from buying that stuff.
And in the most aggressive form of lootboxes sold in mostly free to play games, its a fundamental part to actively force an addictive nature on a game as an added element on a market that "traditionally" did not do that (videogames like 10-15 years ago, currently almost every game will push micro transaction ingame shops and lootboxes to bite and pick pieces of money everywhere and do so in a more and more aggressive manner).
There is much to gain to prevent an excess of digital lootboxes and regulating ingame shops.
There are already many laws and changes implemented for digital games to fix these problems.
For example they have to make visible what the "odds" are to get something and show everything you can get from a product (so no hiding).
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This will be a big topic for the industry and its important to find good regulative solutions to balance the needs of the industry to make money and the aggressive nature of promoting an addictive behavior, especially targeting kids.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
As long as moneyed interests can lobby the government, we're not going to see restrictions on digital loot boxes, let alone long-established things like trading card packs (which have cultural relevance due to things like baseball cards, and TCGs just piggyback off that nostalgic zeitgeist). Companies like EA are not going to give up their cash cows lightly, and it won't take much money being siphoned to the current FTC (the one that opposes net neutrality, so you know they don't care about the public interest) to get them to ignore the problem.
It's genuinely hard to tell ahead of time what will stick and what won't. Everyone makes fun of Blockbuster for getting pushed out of the market by Redbox, Netflix, and others, but at the same time, everyone's making fun of Wizards (and at least one company in the Magic fandom) for pushing the new digital option.
Now, I'm not going to pretend that physical trading cards are at all like tapes and discs, but it's at least fair to say that having a robust digital option available to complement the physical option is a good idea for Wizards. The problem is that they'd be better served by fixing up MTGO, not pushing Arena, but as I've said before, Arena is something non-Magic-playing corporate types "understand" more than MTGO, and actually playing the game is beneath most of the higher-ranking decision-makers.
I am, however, very glad that MTGS resisted the temptation to include Arena in its front page articles, videos, streams, casts, and other such content. That's the sort of move that promotes the physical game over the new monetization structure. I always considered Arena outside my mandate back when I was content manager for this site (MTGO was not, but Arena just targets a different audience than Magic traditionally does) and the current administration is continuing to follow in my lead.
Well, no, that's the is-ought fallacy speaking. Physical "loot boxes" like trading card packs have exactly the same problems as digital loot boxes. Being forced to try your luck because you want a specific rookie card and don't want to pay a hugely inflated market price for it has existed as long as the collectibles market for sports cards. Magic simply adds a functional game aspect to the equation (there's no reason a card like Surgical Extraction should command the price it does, other than it being released in relatively small numbers and even then only infrequently).
There are games where you can buy the product and have all the cards needed to play. Magic intentionally eschews this model in favour of something that makes customers have to spend more to get what they want. It's ultimately an issue of capitalism encouraging predatory behaviour, but the relevant part here is that booster packs directly work to obstruct players from getting complete sets of cards in the interest of making Wizards (and later Hasbro) more money. Draft (and Sealed for that matter) can easily be done with cube packs, so that doesn't justify randomized sealed packs from the manufacturer.
There are multiple formats that expect you to buy boosters merely to play them, and boosters are an extremely common form of prize support for sanctioned and unsanctioned tournaments. How are they not being aggressively promoted? Because there's a secondary market? Cards only really enter the market through opened product (discounting specific promos and the like but those aren't going to be enough to build your decks for you).