Except Paper Magic wasn't designed to be a "take home and play" board game
Wrong. Actually it WAS designed by Richard Garfield to be played AT HOME during Role Playing (D&D) down times if one group was separate with the DM and another group had some time to kill. It has changed from that model but it was DESIGNED as a play at home diversion. And that is what we did at the time as well. I lived it.
I take great comfort in knowing that anyone who cries the doom of paper magic has no idea how any thing actually functions and can be safely ignored.
I am starting to think along those lines as well.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Card slinger, stop jumping from doom to doom. It seems like your thinking of bad things that could happen if everything goes wrong, assume they will happen without thinking critically about it, and then come here and claim it's an inevitability. You seem to only be seeking evidence that confirms doomsday suspicions. This isn't healthy. And I'm not saying that to rag on you, but because it's a pattern of thinking that will really undermine your well being over time. You've mentioned having anxiety, and this is the sort of thing that contributes to it. Changes how you process this sort of information, and thinking critically about doomsday scenarios so you can use evidence against them to correctly evaluate their likelihood, helps a lot. And that's applicable to all aspects of life.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Except Paper Magic wasn't designed to be a "take home and play" board game
Wrong. Actually it WAS designed by Richard Garfield to be played AT HOME during Role Playing (D&D) down times if one group was separate with the DM and another group had some time to kill. It has changed from that model but it was DESIGNED as a play at home diversion. And that is what we did at the time as well. I lived it.
Well I would assume that MTG's original design in the 1990's and what it's become to the fans who've remained loyal to the game up until this point are two different, but still interconnected things. If you have the opportunity to play MTG at home you can still enjoy it in Paper. But let's be honest, it gets old playing the same person over and over unless you change decks inbetween matches. Even the same 2 or 3 people. It gets stale quickly BUT If you're able to go to your LGS weekly and play in semi serious ranked games then you can practice with your family during the week for those FNM events. In other words, "At Home" Play is completely linked to LGS Play. The one needs the other to a certain degree.
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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
Well I would assume that MTG's original design in the 1990's and what it's become to the fans who've remained loyal to the game up until this point are two different, but still interconnected things. If you have the opportunity to play MTG at home you can still enjoy it in Paper. But let's be honest, it gets old playing the same person over and over unless you change decks inbetween matches. Even the same 2 or 3 people. It gets stale quickly BUT If you're able to go to your LGS weekly and play in semi serious ranked games then you can practice with your family during the week for those FNM events. In other words, "At Home" Play is completely linked to LGS Play. The one needs the other to a certain degree.
No, "at home" play isn't "Completely" linked to LGS play. LGS play makes up a minority of games played, while "at home" numbers are hard to actually quantify and "at home" is often also counted as "Anywhere that isn't an LGS or official tournament" so the games you get in at the college cafeteria while you wait for you evening classes counts as "at home" play by most metrics.
Long story short. Don't equate LGS's presence with the frequency of play. They do serve a vital role in the tournament structure and as a place for communities to grow. But those same communities grow literally anywhere thanks to social media. LGSs just happen to sell the product that everyone is gathering for. If you are at all worried about the health of paper magic then first, don't be. Magic can't currently, nor in the foreseeable future, exist without paper magic. So instead, fear for the life of magic as a whole and you might realize how ridiculous that train of thought actually is.
Well I would assume that MTG's original design in the 1990's and what it's become to the fans who've remained loyal to the game up until this point are two different, but still interconnected things. If you have the opportunity to play MTG at home you can still enjoy it in Paper. But let's be honest, it gets old playing the same person over and over unless you change decks inbetween matches. Even the same 2 or 3 people. It gets stale quickly BUT If you're able to go to your LGS weekly and play in semi serious ranked games then you can practice with your family during the week for those FNM events. In other words, "At Home" Play is completely linked to LGS Play. The one needs the other to a certain degree.
No, "at home" play isn't "Completely" linked to LGS play. LGS play makes up a minority of games played, while "at home" numbers are hard to actually quantify and "at home" is often also counted as "Anywhere that isn't an LGS or official tournament" so the games you get in at the college cafeteria while you wait for you evening classes counts as "at home" play by most metrics.
Long story short. Don't equate LGS's presence with the frequency of play. They do serve a vital role in the tournament structure and as a place for communities to grow. But those same communities grow literally anywhere thanks to social media. LGSs just happen to sell the product that everyone is gathering for. If you are at all worried about the health of paper magic then first, don't be. Magic can't currently, nor in the foreseeable future, exist without paper magic. So instead, fear for the life of magic as a whole and you might realize how ridiculous that train of thought actually is.
Of course not everyone has access to Social Media or they don't trust it enough due to the toxicity of communities they simply try to avoid due to PC / Cancel Culture. So at best you're stuck having to rely on peoples' phone numbers and e-mail addresses for communication especially If you don't own a smartphone in order to setup playgroups for certain games.
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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
Of course not everyone has access to Social Media or they don't trust it enough due to the toxicity of communities they simply try to avoid due to PC / Cancel Culture. So at best you're stuck having to rely on peoples' phone numbers and e-mail addresses for communication especially If you don't own a smartphone in order to setup playgroups for certain games.
This may seem overly ignorant and privileged but is it actually possible to go through life as an adult right now without a smartphone? Also you may have larger problems then lack of opportunity to play a fairly expensive hobby if you can't own a smartphone.
I know a number of unemployed and underemployed people who have received free government phones. And those are capable of everything as long as you hang out near a Starbucks or some equivalent.
While I personally avoid the usual social media sites(facebook, twitter, Instagram?) for the exact reasons you mentioned even someone as antisocial as me has found places where I am comfortable communicating with others.
Of course not everyone has access to Social Media or they don't trust it enough due to the toxicity of communities they simply try to avoid due to PC / Cancel Culture. So at best you're stuck having to rely on peoples' phone numbers and e-mail addresses for communication especially If you don't own a smartphone in order to setup playgroups for certain games.
This may seem overly ignorant and privileged but is it actually possible to go through life as an adult right now without a smartphone?
Well it certainly beats having to be chemically glued to one. Before the pandemic hit I mainly borrowed other peoples' phones to call people or browse the internet for certain information since one of my LGSs has this rule about not browsing the internet outside the LGSs official website at their store. The only time I'm allowed to browse off the LGS website is when I need to send e-mails to the store to help print out card proxies. Other than that I've seen people break the rule by playing on Arena or by checking MTG card prices there. Not sure why though.
"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
If you have the opportunity to play MTG at home you can still enjoy it in Paper. But let's be honest, it gets old playing the same person over and over unless you change decks inbetween matches. Even the same 2 or 3 people.
Maybe if you are an extrovert yes. If you are introverted, its just fine. We all aren't the same. And yes my small group of family and friends have multiple decks in multiple formats. If we can't or don't afford a card we proxy it. Sharpie on a land lets you play any format you wish.
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Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
So just out of curiosity, does anyone else wonder how the reaction to COVID-19 has effected Wizards of the Coast's bottom line? Surely Paper sales are down and Digital sales are up, but have the Digital gains from Arena / MTGO been enough to counterbalance the Paper losses from not being able to play at Local Game Stores (LGSs)? Are print runs and box openings low enough to effect the Secondary Market, especially later on?
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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
there's a few things I'd consider when thinking about that. One thing is that product that has been released since the pandemic started hasn't really been opened as much, save for people buying boxes, prerelease kits or loose packs etc in order to support their local stores. On the other hand there isn't much of a demand for paper cards until the pandemic is over and we're allowed to play paper events on a more regular basis. I know some places are allowed to run events (albeit on a much smaller scale) but probably not enough to impact prices.
So I can see the lack of supply affecting prices once we get events on a more regular scale, which might not be until next year
I feel as though the people who are trying to sell people into MTG while treating the Reserve List as a stock market are doing it either because they have personal connections in regards to corporate sponsors and other big businesses or they themselves had Local Game Stores (LGSs) that are either still in business or went bankrupt and are buying out big collections in order to bring the MTG market to them just so they can sell the cards. So why was Core 2021 officially released for Paper Magic a few weeks before Wizards of the Coast suspended ALL In-Store Play / Organized Play for Paper Magic through September during Zendikar Rising Spoiler Season? Doesn't that feel a bit shady? I mean If you're a Local Game Store (LGS) Owner / Employee then you just bought a bunch of product with no players coming into your store to play with the products which means you're not going to sell it unless it's through Curbside Pickup or Online via e-commerce.
Wizards of the Coast ended up hurting Local Game Stores by doing this. Now of course the company is going to blame it on the virus when the virus itself is being handled differently in each state / province, businesses are being handled differently by each state / province, but now there's no In-Store Play / Organized Play for Paper Magic. That's got to be very shady business and it's hard not for it to be a coincidence when just a few weeks ago Core 2021 was released, people bought the product up, wasted thousands of dollars on these cards, and now they can't even play them at their LGS unless they're at home. Then you have Arena / MTGO which is now being pushed more than ever due to being digital platforms with low overhead cost where you have to wonder whether If they have more profit tied to them. These digital platforms are still nowhere near replacing Paper Magic and unfortunately that's the only resource that players have right now.
I don't think it's any secret that Wizards of the Coast has allowed their political beliefs to affect their business decisions. In the meantime not every state in the U.S. is having a major problem with the virus where most of the activity is taking place primarily in big populated cities like Miami, Florida and Houston, Texas. Many rural areas don't have a problem at all with COVID-19 yet from a small business owner standpoint it doesn't make any sense why Wizards of the Coast is doing what they're doing. Governors in many states are allowing things in regards to business etc. to be operated on a county by county basis. Now logically that makes more sense however Wizards of the Coast made a decision based on "one size fits all" and that's just not the case with this current situation. They're just using Paper Magic to push their political beliefs and digital online platform business agendas. Why else would Wizards of the Coast want locations that aren't being impacted by the virus to not do business by holding Organized Play and Sanctioned Events at Local Game Stores?
So just out of curiosity what would happen to Paper Magic and Local Game Stores (LGSs) If there was an Internet Blackout during the middle of this current Global Pandemic we're in? The only real line of defense Local Game Stores (LGSs) have aside from community is e-commerce sales to help compete against Amazon and other online retailers / vendors. If nobody is able to show up to their Local Game Store (LGS) because of the virus preventing them from participating in In-Store Play / Organized Play then how are they going to be able to stay in business? Purchasing card singles will be more of a pain in the ass again If your Local Game Store doesn't have a particular card you need but what would be the point If the virus makes it to where you can't play? You literally would not be able to play MTG ANYWHERE either in Digital or Paper because it would ALL be shutdown. Want to play Arena / MTGO with other players online or participate in remote play? Can't do it. Want to go play EDH / Commander with your playgroups or grind in a tournament at your Local Game Store (LGS)? Can't do that either.
Look I know this is conspiratorial and I'm not trying to fearmonger anyone when I'm curious as to how people would get through this kind of crisis.
"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
Dear Christ, wtf do you mean WotC is basing their decisions on this on their political views? This is absolutely an issue in rural areas, but social distancing is more effective in rural areas because it's easier to adhere to social distancing and minimize your number of interactions. Yea, different states are handling this differently, and the ones that tried to open up early and who were less cautious are the ones currently getting hit hard and entering a second wave, while NJ, one of the most densely populated states and one that got hit hard early when the US was caught with it's pants down, has been cautious and is currently one of the states in the best shape. Large indoor gatherings in small spaces, like most LGS play, is how this virus best spreads. This isn't a political opinion, it's peer reviewed medical opinion supported by multiple high quality studies. This isn't some liberal plot to screw over small business, it's a once a century worldwide pandemic of moderate lethality and high infectivity.
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Unfortunately as long as people are stupid, policies need to be put in place assuming people are stupid. It's got nothing to do with shady business practices when it's got more to do with protecting the lowest common denominator. Each state is handling COVID-19 differently however each state isn't handling it intelligently, so Wizards of the Coast stepped in because they decided they didn't want their products associated with an outbreak. I do think that Double Masters, Mystery Booster, and Jumpstart completely devaluing the majority of Non-Reserve List cards that Local Game Stores need to make a profit from flipping card singles combined with low cash flow affecting their business during this pandemic sounds like a recipe for disaster because what good is keeping Paper Magic affordable If nobody has a place to play anymore? Organized Play for Paper Magic be damned.
Sure Local Game Stores are no longer able to run Organized Play events but that doesn't mean that they need to shutdown In-Store Play entirely for Casual players who just want to hangout with their friends and play EDH / Commander. What would give Wizards of the Coast the idea that the majority of Paper Magic players actually play at home over their LGS? I can understand If the LGS environment is toxic but that's just a false negative stereotype that EVERY LGS is like this when it isn't. Not every LGS has a loyal community (not online btw) that financially supports them especially when it's already difficult enough as it is to compete against online companies when they don't even have operational websites, no eBay accounts, or Social Media presence. Even If they do it increases online competition to the point where it's hard for these Local Game Stores to get noticed like on TCGPlayer.
"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
Unfortunately as long as people are stupid, policies need to be put in place assuming people are stupid. It's got nothing to do with shady business practices when it's got more to do with protecting the lowest common denominator. Each state is handling COVID-19 differently however each state isn't handling it intelligently, so Wizards of the Coast stepped in because they decided they didn't want their products associated with an outbreak. I do think that Double Masters, Mystery Booster, and Jumpstart completely devaluing the majority of Non-Reserve List cards that Local Game Stores need to make a profit from flipping card singles combined with low cash flow affecting their business during this pandemic sounds like a recipe for disaster because what good is keeping Paper Magic affordable If nobody has a place to play anymore? Organized Play for Paper Magic be damned.
Sure Local Game Stores are no longer able to run Organized Play events but that doesn't mean that they need to shutdown In-Store Play entirely for Casual players who just want to hangout with their friends and play EDH / Commander. What would give Wizards of the Coast the idea that the majority of Paper Magic players actually play at home over their LGS? I can understand If the LGS environment is toxic but that's just a false negative stereotype that EVERY LGS is like this when it isn't. Not every LGS has a loyal community (not online btw) that financially supports them especially when it's already difficult enough as it is to compete against online companies when they don't even have operational websites, no eBay accounts, or Social Media presence. Even If they do it increases online competition to the point where it's hard for these Local Game Stores to get noticed like on TCGPlayer.
This makes more sense.
I don't have a problem devaluing cards by printing them. The health of the game depends on accessibility, and for older formats and commander being too expensive is a bigger issue than LGS availability. Yes, LGS (and online stores like SCG) rely on the secondary market, buying cards at below market value and selling at a profit. The risk of that strategy is that it's speculation. Usually they make money from it, but there is always a risk that cards will drop in value, either due to rotation, the hot deck that needs it going out of fashion, or reprints. The LGS business model needs to adapt to where the secondary market is a supplement to their business model rather than an integral part of it. Not for any moral reason, but because doing so will make their businesses more stable and resilient to market shocks.
Why WotC thinks at home play is the majority: surveys. They do a fair amount of market research to determine how people play the game and what players like and want so they can target products to them. The reason you see premium products and stuff like that is because their market research told them a significant enough portion of the player base wants those products. You see the major commitment to EDH because they found it was the most popular format after 60 card casual, and they built brawl in the hopes of building on that. They know that at home play is still the most common way people engage with magic, with casual and EDH leading that. At home players tend to spend less on cards than FNM warriors, but there are more of them and they tend to buy packs. I think Wizards isnt about to abandon the LGS because they make money from them, tournament engagement increases the amount people spend on magic, and limited moves packs. Getting people who play at home into their local LGS makes wizards money by getting them to spend more. They want both market share and dollars per player, so both groups are important.
As for long term LGS viability, it was a struggle before COVID. Stores in big cities with a younger population do well, as do stores in college towns, because they have a large customer base to draw on. Stores in more rural areas, or smaller suburbs, struggle because there just aren't enough customers. You need a certain concentration of nerd culture involved people to serve for a nerd culture exclusive business to thrive, even when your pretty diversified within that culture and selling comics and games in addition to running DND campaigns Warhammer tourneys and Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon events. I think a plausible business model for these areas where LGS struggle is to run it as a combination business with some other sort of thing, like a bowling alley or skating rink. Most such places have sizeable party rooms that can host events, and areas that usually have pool tables and arcade games that could be retrofitted as the sales floor for product. Or a diner, I have a couple in my area that have large banquet areas that they use to host gaming clubs during the day and are usually empty at night. And by gaming clubs, I mean just old people playing bridge and stuff. One even has an area thats basically a couple chairs and some decorations that's as large as the sales floor in most LGS and off to the side. Imagine running FNM and having players order their food from you instead of bringing McDonald's. There's potential here, it just requires innovation, something that has been really lacking in the LGS sector. It's still operating under the model that worked in the 90s,
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The Meaning of Life: "M-hmm. Well, it's nothing very special. Uh, try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations"
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Whether its blue players countering your spells, red players burning you out, or combo, if you have a problem with an aspect of Magic's gameplay, you can fix it!
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Why WotC thinks at home play is the majority: surveys. They do a fair amount of market research to determine how people play the game and what players like and want so they can target products to them. The reason you see premium products and stuff like that is because their market research told them a significant enough portion of the player base wants those products. You see the major commitment to EDH because they found it was the most popular format after 60 card casual, and they built brawl in the hopes of building on that. They know that at home play is still the most common way people engage with magic, with casual and EDH leading that. At home players tend to spend less on cards than FNM warriors, but there are more of them and they tend to buy packs. I think Wizards isnt about to abandon the LGS because they make money from them, tournament engagement increases the amount people spend on magic, and limited moves packs. Getting people who play at home into their local LGS makes wizards money by getting them to spend more. They want both market share and dollars per player, so both groups are important.
This reminds me of a recent magazine article I read on the latest issue of National Geographic by Oliver Whang titled, "When Virtual Life Turns Into Quarantine" where it talks about how isolation from other people in a health crisis is one thing when the question we REALLY should be asking ourselves is what If we get used to living virtual lives through our electronic devices that we never want to emerge into the physical world? Does experiencing the world tell us something that we couldn't have learned by reading up on it? Things that we miss in the physical world are referred to as "qualia" and it's everywhere - in the Sun, the Earth, and other people. They're what's lacking in a strictly virtual life that isn't as fulfilling as it is in a physical world.
So the fear from the next generation isn't necessarily a fear of contracting COVID-19 but a fear that is the profound uncertainty of their future and their predecessors as well since we're ALL connected as one human race. If there's anything scarier than the possibility of COVID-19 never going away is that the ubiquity of virtual living might never go away either. There's a legitimate fear that the experience of this pandemic might convince people that we can keep living just fine while physically isolated from others where it's very easy nowadays to slip into that reality. There's days when people don't even leave their homes as their only human contact is a close family member.
In this environment something clearly is lost because people feel different when they experience things directly rather than virtually. There's some things in life that you can't stimulate like the physical presence of another human being. No computer screen will EVER replace the feeling of an arm around someone's shoulders. It's important now more than ever not to lose our physical connection to the world. The qualia. No matter how bad the world gets we ALL need to Stay Human. It's hard when you go to work having to wear a face mask unable to convey any kind of human emotion or expression, not even a smile. That's why people are so miserable with their lives lately no matter where they go because they can no longer escape.
"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
Okaaaaay then. The first-half list for 2020 is short, of course, owing to no particular disruptive events across the industry or our economy. If only that were true. What a first half of the year we've all had, and somehow the second half has not started off especially better. Small businesses have taken it on the chin, and we are here to mark the passage of some that took that blow and did not get back up.
New to this post or to The Backstage Pass? Here's what we're doing. These store closure posts are among the highest-read and highest-shared articles I write, and one would think some more official source like GAMA would take up the mantle of tracking this, but I guess not so far.
Today's list has a tag of "COVID" for stores that cite specifically the pandemic disruption as their cause of closure, or which closed during state shutdowns and were discovered not to have reopened. Obviously a store that was already in trouble might use COVID-19 as an excuse for why they failed, but for the purpose of this article, I am taking it at face value. The situation was bad for everyone except the mass market, and I see no need to flog a corpse. Moreover, stores not closing specifically due to COVID surely were done no favors by the gigantic worldwide mess the pandemic caused.
AND NOW THE LIST.
Announced or Discovered Closed:
Chain: GAME (40 stores in UK closing out of ~260)
1000 Lives Gaming (Hartsville, SC)
42 Ale House (St Francis, WI)
ABC and Toy Zone (Chanhassen, MN) COVID
Action Toys & Collectibles (Jacksonville, FL)
Advantage Games (Northglenn, CO) COVID
Aero Hobbies & Games (Santa Monica, CA)
AK Comics (Beloit, WI)
All About Books and Comics (Phoenix, AZ)
Apache Comics (Mesa, AZ)
Apex Gaming Center (Irving, TX)
Baxter's Tempe SAK Gaming (Tempe, AZ) COVID
Big Rapids Hobby Shop (Big Rapids, MI)
Board Game Barrister (Greenfield, WI) Other locations remain open
Boards & Beans (Regina, SK, Canada) COVID
Boardwalk Hobby Shop (Mount Lookout, OH)
Bonanza Books and Comics (Modesto, CA)
CCG-Singles.com (Portland, OR)
ChronoCade (Kalamazoo, MI)
Coffee With Comics (Glendale, AZ)
Collector's Edition (North Little Rock, AR)
Comic Book ER (Cadillac, MI)
The Comic Book Store (Little Rock, AR)
Comics Dungeon (Seattle, WA) COVID
Connected Gaming (Phoenix, AZ)
Corner Comics (Kirkland, WA) COVID
Critical Strike Games (Edmonds, WA)
Dice Bag Games (Duncan, BC, Canada) COVID
Dice & Donuts (Preston, Lancashire, UK)
The Dragon and Meeple (Los Angeles, CA)
Dragon's Keep Gaming and Miniatures (Portland, OR) COVID
Dragon's Lair WarGames and Hobby Supplies (Shreveport, LA)
Hidden Treasures Collectibles & Comics (Alexandria, MN) entire plaza destroyed by fire
Hillside Games and Comics (Asheville, NC)
Hobby Knights (West Bend, WI)
Hungry Hippo Board Game Cafe (Decatur, IL)
Hyperspace (Lakewood, CO)
Imagine! Hobbies & Games (Sherwood, AR)
Inconceivable Toys and Games (Monument, CO) COVID
JJGames dot com (Englewood, CO)
Joe Garage Games & More (Suwanee, GA)
Kapow Comics (Cumming, GA)
Killer Rabbit Comics & Games (Williston, VT)
Lee's Comics (Mountain View, CA) COVID
Mad Reads (Brighton, CO)
Magic Mike's (Portland, OR)
MaximuM Comics (Henderson, NV)
Nerdcore Toys and Collectibles (Ellensburg, WA)
Netherworld (Warrington, England, UK)
The Nexus 419 (Rossford, OH)
Now Playing Movies and Games (Tylertown, MS)
NuGames (Eureka, CA) COVID
Oblivion Games Inc (Mansfield, TX)
OOP Games & Hobby (Lynnwood, WA)
PlayLIVE Nation (Mission Viejo, CA) COVID, chain
The Portland Game Store (Portland, OR) COVID
Prime Time Gaming (Macon, GA)
Purple Turtle Comics (Vallejo, CA)
The Raven's Nest (Marietta, GA)
Realms Comics & Games (North Richland Hills, TX)
Revolution Video Games & Movies LLC (Tampa, FL)
Rocket's Hideout (Baton Rouge, LA) COVID
Rockhead's Comics & Games (Kenosha, WI)
Rogue Nation Games (Richmond, BC Canada)
Ronin Games (Castro Valley, CA)
San Diego Comics (San Diego, CA) COVID
Seann's Anime and Comics (Sylvania, OH)
Sho'Nuff Comics (Tuscaloosa, AL) COVID
Silver Key Lounge (Mesa, AZ) COVID, indefinite
Skol Games (Eagan, MN)
Splat! Gaming (Burleson, TX)
The Storm Crow Tavern (Vancouver, BC, Canada) COVID
Table Top Cafe (Edmonton, AB, Canada) COVID, consolidating into remaining location
Teahouse Comics (Sandy Springs, GA)
Tolly's Game Store & Lounge (West Jefferson, NC)
Toys Cubed (Toronto, ON, Canada) Erin Mills Town Centre location
Toys Cubed (Toronto, ON, Canada) Oshawa Centre location
Toys Cubed (Toronto, ON, Canada) Scarborough Town Centre location
Toys Cubed (Toronto, ON, Canada) Square One Centre location
Toys Cubed (Toronto, ON, Canada) Vaughan Mills location
Video Game Trader (Calgary, AB, Canada) COVID, 2 locations closing and 1 remains open
Video Game Trader (Forest Lawn, AB, Canada) COVID, 2 locations closing and 1 remains open
Vigilante Gastropub & Games (Austin, TX) COVID
Villains Comics & Collectibles (Monroe, LA) COVID
Wandering Havoc Games (Marysville, WA)
Warcraft Games (Mission, BC, Canada)
Weekend Warlords (Loughborough, England, UK)
Weird Realms (Cleveland, OH) COVID
Wizards Keep Games (Renton, WA)
Yellow Jacket Comics (Tempe, AZ)
At the time of publication, the list had 123 entries representing 162 stores, totaling chains and multi-location closures as noted in their respective entries. Typically after these articles go up, I receive emails and messages about stores I missed, which I do appreciate as it helps make these articles as useful as they can be in terms of reference. The overwhelming lesson of this industry through almost half a year of COVID disruption has got to be something like "You can never assume general business conditions will remain as they are." I can tell you right now that DSG has suffered for not being able to employ our single biggest marketing draw, which is organized play. What happens to a store that has little else in its toolbox? It probably ends up on a list like the one in this article.
When you realize our industry has had to deal with the sudden near-total elimination of organized play and constant supply chain chaos, both factors completely upending even the most prudently planned square footage deployment (generally the most expensive and least changeable part of a store), it is not difficult to see how even a reasonably stable comic, video game, or hobby game store could find itself suddenly scratching the cloth. And in that unexpected time of peril, resources to weather the downturn may or may not be ready. DSG had a gigantic inventory to lean on. What if we didn't? What about any store that doesn't have a strategic reserve of some kind, whether it's cash, assets, favors to call in, some mixture of those, or what have you?
I have now seen enough evidentiary performance out of stores of different kinds and places that it has become fairly clear how a comic, video game, or hobby game store experiences wild success to where there is not only no danger, but considerable income for stakeholders. The answer to that question, which so many of us are so avidly chasing, is of course highly dependent on that store's specific physical, financial, and competitive circumstances! But once configured for maximum compatibility with those factors, things get somewhat more straightforward. The operational imperatives crystallize. Don't leave money on the table without getting something to make up for it. Don't spend good money chasing after bad. Don't let yourself get rolled by people who are out to gain at your expense. Get your home situation right. Most importantly, get your head right, because the action follows the thought, and the result follows the action. You will reap what you sow.
Get on with it.
Another problem I've noticed with a lot of these small Local Game Stores is that they don't have Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) when it comes to their e-commerce websites and given how low profit margins are they're unable to invest in the kind of money to even have SEO and PPC for their stores. They can't do it themselves and they can't pay any of their employees to do it for them. Online vendors like Card Kingdom have a REALLY good domination of SEO by spending thousands of dollars a month as they've dominated the Paper Magic marketing field from just a few thousand dollars a month. In other words they can sell card singles for two times as much as any Local Game Store (LGS) because these card singles show up in SEO.
"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
One of the most stressful aspects of the COVID pandemic for game stores is that it artificially amplifies constraints. Dealing with this day in and day out starts to wear on a store owner, and I start to feel like Keanu Reeves in that new Bill & Ted 3 trailer, when he says, "We've been trying to write this song and save the world our whole lives. And I'm tired, dude."
You said it, Ted "Theodore" Logan. I'm tired, dude. Tired of every business component taking more work than it should. Tired of getting chewed out by every deadbeat who thinks we should price-match limited edition product pre-orders against the smallest store in town who pre-sold-out their one case of boosters in an hour at a nickel over cost. Tired of having arrival traffic down 90% because people call to check pinpoint stock on Nintendo Switches and virtually nothing downstream of that. And tired of the vocal minority who think we're political puppets or worse for keeping the game room closed and requiring facemasks.
But I think the amplification of constraints is the most difficult thing, because it forms a vicious circle of interdependency. Here, maybe showing you the moving parts will make this clearer.
The best Dungeons & Dragons product slate ever is on store shelves today. Right now. We have the best new sourcebooks: Theros, Eberron, and Wildemount, with limited edition covers for two of them. We have a staggering variety of dice in every color and material and in every price range. We have the best miniatures the game has ever had in the WizKids Nolzur's Marvelous line, far higher quality at a lower inflation-adjusted price than even the classic Ral Partha pewters. We have maps, dice trays, dice towers, character folios, and more. And now we have Warlock Tiles, head-and-shoulders the finest immersive terrain components D&D has ever seen.
Despite all of the above, we've seen only a fraction of the sales we'd usually get in the category. Many of our regular players have been in, and their purchasing makes up essentially all the sales we've gotten of this merch. But a majority of D&D players disappeared with COVID. We don't know what this means. In-store play is, of course, not happening, and I wonder whether it will ever be back. Zoom/Skype style play seems to be thriving. Tangible game elements become somewhat less important then. I've long speculated that the "giant table-sized iPad" appliance might virtualize much of the RPG experience, but we might reach the same effective outcome because of remote play instead of digitally-augmented in-person play. I think there will be a COVID vaccine eventually or it will burn through and be subject to herd immunity, and people will come back to the table to have wonderful times adventuring together. How long before that? A year? Three years?
So since we placed orders well before the pandemic for current D&D stock, and indeed already owned the bulk of our D&D inventory well in advance of that, we now have a huge amount of somewhat illiquid merchandise, that doesn't ship that well and isn't fast-moving like video games or Magic singles, and that even generous bundle specials only modestly move the needle on. It's not a simple case of $N worth of D&D being on the shelf, where we could liquidate it and have $N. It's the frozen turn rate. We should have $N multiplied many times over as the product comes in, sells, is replaced, sells again, and so on. It's difficult to articulate just how great the scale of this can get to an outside observer.
That same effect is happening in board games as well. We saw reasonable throughput on board games on our way into the lockdown and shortly after re-opening, and board games are a commodity category for DSG anyway. That means we stock greatest hits and new hotness, and discount it all, in order to push for market share and establish a competitive position against other local stores, without risking our real meal tickets, Magic singles and video games. But now that we're kinda sorta reopened, and people are mostly back to work, the public has all the board games it needs, and is buying far fewer of them from us, even with price tags well below Amazon. They just finished a plate of steak and lobster. They don't need seconds. So it stacks up.
With the two main general tabletop categories slowing down sales, we see them overflowing their racks. And we can't get more of the kind of racks we use right now because restocks from China are still pending transoceanic shipment. So even though we're the biggest game store in the Valley, we actually don't have enough room for all our merchandise right now. Even with a giant empty floor where the game room used to be. We should use game tables to display merch, perhaps, but (1) that's awful looking, (2) it has to be taken back apart anyway once we can reopen the game room, and (3) we're buying some really nice upgraded tables so we're currently selling off the existing ones.
Less room up front and lower sales of general tabletop means we need to lean harder on singles sales, where space isn't as big of an issue. But we're also constrained on labor! Fast and furious sales via TCGPlayer since the first stimulus landed have resulted in our million-card inventory being whittled down to, as of this writing, about 450,000 cards. We're still buying every single day, for cash or credit, and it's not enough. We have at least 300k cards in the back office right now in various stages of processing that are not entered into TCGPlayer. We're losing sales every day from people who ask for cards we know we have in the next "waves" to process, but aren't done yet, and are cost-ineffective to deep dive for on an ad-hoc basis. Our existing back-office staff are running at red-line, they have almost zero slow time on the clock.
So why not add more labor? Ah, but how are we going to pay for it? Sales are coming up shallow in D&D and board games, so we don't have "overflow" revenue available to shift toward Magic labor, which is designed to cover its own normal/ordinary pace of intake and sales, and instead is overwhelmed right now. It's fairly common for a game store with large business components to take from some and give unto others, resource-wise, in an internally Marxist fashion of sorts. But when there isn't any surplus elsewhere, and every department is subsidizing every other, there's no wealth to redistribute. (There's probably a greater political lesson to be taught here, but I'm staying well clear of that.)
Thus, we have a dire shortage of Magic singles, our highest-volume category, which we actually do own but can't get processed into the system fast enough, for which we badly need labor, which we could afford if every product category were performing even at average levels, but the two general tabletop categories are both running very thin right now, constraining all parts of this resource chain. And thus it is that Griffin and I spend significant parts of our working days plugging in labor wherever it fits, so as to give both front-of-house and back-of-house staff as much unobstructed throughput as possible. And it's still not enough.
"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
"G Cubed (Bunbury, Western Australia)"
Sad to lose this one :/ but small-town stores have a lot of pressure on them. I lost my localest store last year and have since completely stopped playing standard without regular tournaments. But I am happy to travel a little further for FNM drafts. I think there might have been a bit of over-expansion of game stores locally going from 1 in 2010 to 9 in 2017 and then a chain store has started to dominate the market so we are down to 4 now.
My government did its best to save businesses from the worst of the COVID. As I said earlier in the thread there is no COVID here, because the border is closed and all cases tracked and quarantined (currently 8 active). They also announced further financial aid For example: small businesses here get free electricity until September (from April) as we still have government-owned power utilities.
Perhaps you should petition your government for help for local small businesses.
My government did its best to save businesses from the worst of the COVID. As I said earlier in the thread there is no COVID here, because the border is closed and all cases tracked and quarantined (currently 8 active). They also announced further financial aid For example: small businesses here get free electricity until September (from April) as we still have government-owned power utilities.
Perhaps you should petition your government for help for local small businesses.
We have had the CARES Act and the Paycheck Protection Plan Act passed that combined is several TRILLION dollars of aid and low interest loans to small businesses. Some states have granted aid to small businesses as well. Our border is like Swiss Cheese with Mexico, covid travels freely into the country from the south and from air travel just about anywhere in the world. Western Australia I see has about 2.6 million people spread out over a HUGE area, with 2.0 million of that in Perth. (Basically a city and thousands of square miles of uninhabited bush country) Much easier for WA to contain and reduce over a population of 330 million concentrated in large cities all over the country.
Petitioning our government for help is about like pissing into the wind, near pointless as they do what they wish. And when they do something its slow and packed with pork riding legislation that increases the beuaracracy.
We lost 33% of our GDP in the second quarter. Shattering the record of the Great Depression. (Of the largest market on the planet) and we have over 26 TRILLION dollars in debt. Comparing Western Australia to the United States is like comparing raisins to grapefruit. Don't get me wrong, at this time I'd probably rather be living in rural Western Australia. Fixes here aren't simple.
Playing since 1994: Currently MAGS (HomeBrew),Standard & Pauper (Pioneer and Modern are degenerate trash formats)
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Probably a bit early to say though I'm expecting Zendikar Rising to be an At Home / Remote Play Pre-Release instead of In-Store just like Core 2021 and Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths was supposedly. Even If Wizards of the Coast decides to lift In-Store Play Suspension in September it will still be too late to save the Zendikar Rising Pre-Release for In-Store Play at Local Game Stores. Local Game Stores will miss at least two Pre-Releases and this is a pretty big deal because Pre-Releases are a HUGE way for stores to accumulate money. So there's something in marketing called "Customer Acquisition Cost" a.k.a. CAC, so how much money does it cost for me to acquire a client or customer? Well in Pre-Release terms this is a free way for Local Game Stores to acquire customers while some of them may be even long-time customers.
That's why in a Pre-Release there's a lot more people and some of these people you've never seen before whether If they've played in FNM, Commander Night on Tuesdays, or Modern, because a) these people or maybe more casual, maybe they don't have a Paper Standard deck to take to FNM Standard or maybe they don't like drafting but there's more casuals on Pre-Release so you should have the most players than you will ever have at your store for Paper Magic given how it's a Casual Event. You don't need to have a pre-made deck in order to enter after all In-Store Play was previously re-instated on June 1st and by the end of the month the situation was drastically different, so different that Wizards of the Coast felt that it was best to suspend In-Store Play again which of course shut out all the Casual Players who wanted to play EDH / Commander at their LGS.
They're monitoring the situation with COVID-19 and they said they'll make monthly updates more until then they're going to support Remote Play so we're back to Remote FNM events. Over the course of the pandemic so many of our lives has mitigated or migrated to the Internet. If the MTG Community can do the same then there are many meaningful experiences. So it's kind of as If they took semi-toxic MTG players that are naturally toxic and you put them online. What do you think is going to happen? Likewise for instance someone would never say In-Person in America that he / she doesn't enjoy America and America discusses Caucasians. They wouldn't say this to another player right? But online they would all the time because it gives them a false sense of security.
Wizards of the Coast also wants us to know that they're currently working on additional tools and resources a.k.a. Arena / MTGO to refine the Remote Play experience. So what does this mean for the Local Game Store? Missing one In-Store Play Pre-Release is pretty devastating even though it is a "Core Set" Pre-Release and honestly Core Sets are not the most powerful sets nor are they the most popular sets and it is a somewhere Pre-Release. There's a lot of reasons why Core 2021 still hurts right? Those are still really great customers and it sucks that they're not going to do it anymore but at the same time it's understandable and it's not like a giant loss okay. Core 2021 is bad but it's not a very popular set, it wasn't going to have that many people anyway. Granted it does offer some goodies for EDH / Commander players at times.
The reason Wizards of the Coast got rid of Core Sets (remember when MTG Origins was supposed to be the final Core Set ever?) is because they don't sell well. Losing money on Core Sets is fine for Local Game Stores when it comes to Pre-Releases but as long as they don't lose money on Zendikar Rising and If there's Fetchlands in it (highly doubtful) then you've just missed a HUGE opportunity to bring returning players, maybe they quit Paper Magic and are wanting to play again. Zendikar Rising should they do it correctly could be as big for the game as Return to Ravnica. Zendikar is a very popular plane, you throw in the Fetchlands of Original Zendikar / Khans of Tarkir and "BAM!" just like that you could have a Pre-Release of over 200 people. Realistically I don't see this happening knowing Wizards of the Coast's current stance on the Fetchlands.
But given the current situation with the global pandemic we know that Pre-Releases are At Home / Remote Play now. So all those potential customers that would be at a Local Game Store buying things while they take breaks from playing and or being "Hey this is a great store!" "I didn't know you had this comic / anime statue / board game!" got screwed over. It's not just as simple as there's only a few MTG events that really draw people out and In-Store Play Pre-Release is definitely the number one event when it comes to Paper Magic. Everyone and their grandmother is coming out for Pre-Release and some people who quit MTG, some people have heard about the Fetchlands being back in Standard (not gonna happen but keep dreaming) you have a lot of returning players who haven't played Paper Magic for a long time coming back to these events.
These are lifelong customers that you can make more and more money on and these events are just not happening. So losing In-Store Play for Zendikar Rising Pre-Releases is going to destroy a large majority of Local Game Stores. You can eat losing Core 2021 because Core Sets aren't that popular anyway and Summer sets aren't popular. You cannot eat Zendikar Rising down the road, you don't have this Pre-Release where you're expecting 100-200 people maybe 50% of them being new people and maybe 20% of those people come back to buy some more Paper Magic cards or "There's a Pokémon plush that my significant other would like or my kids would love" or "There's some anime things that they would enjoy". It's not as simple from a marketing perspective as it's really difficult and very expensive to acquire customers.
To get a customer in your door is very expensive and In-Store Play Pre-Releases were a fantastic way to do it for no money. These are ideal customers, these are people who live around the area, you are their Local Game Store (LGS). It's kind of a huge powwow community event to really help people and obviously help the game store. When you talk about this and you look at it this way, Zendikar Rising having to be hosted At Home / Remote Play instead of In-Store Play is a massive hit on these Local Game Stores. I don't think they can survive financially. A Local Game Store can survive not having Core 2021 In-Store Play Pre-Release events because long-term hey maybe 50 people will show up and maybe out of those 50 people 10 people were new so we lost 10 new clients and lost the revenue we had on that day / night right? Which isn't that bad...
However the lifetime revenue, the customer lifetime revenue, our lifetime value is what's most important to these stores. If a store in Zendikar Rising can bring a hundred new customers or let's say 50 new customers and half of those customers are impressed by the store and they come back then that's the definition of a community. A returning customer is a lot easier to deal with than a new customer. So the amount of money it costs to make a returning customer buy again or to advertise is probably 10% of what it costs to acquire a new customer. Companies like Blue Apron lose money acquiring new customers especially the first interaction but you're hoping this customer will buy something next month or next year or spend some Holiday money with you. Taking that luxury away from people isn't right IMO.
That's why the In-Store Play Pre-Release is so important for Paper Magic because it's not for the money you make that day / night when it's for the future of your business. So let's say a customer hears about Zendikar Rising and they played in the previous Zendikar Pre-Releases when they were younger and now they have money, they're interested, they want to go. They go to Pre-Release, they have a good experience, and meet some new people and they're like "Hey I'm getting back into Paper Magic again!" They will go back to that store because it's probably the closest store to where they live. That's how people go to Pre-Release. Maybe they'll buy comics and figures for their friends, maybe buy Holiday gifts. That's why it's important. It's something that a lot of people take for granted far too often.
The importance is not how much money you've made that day / night when the importance is how many new people will come back to your store or even your old returning customers will have a good experience. Maybe they want to get out of quarantine to spend their Stimulus money on XYZ after being away for 5-6 months. So whatever Local Game Stores hold In-Store Play Zendikar Rising Pre-Release events later this year against Wizards of the Coast's In-Store Play Suspension are going to dominate for the next few years. Those that follow the rules are more than likely going to go bankrupt unless entry fees are paid to these LGSs via Remote Play on Arena though that didn't seem to be the case for Core 2021 or Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths this year. I bet the profits were significantly lower than what these stores would've accumulated via In-Store Play though.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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
One of the two stores in my area is running in store events right now, so I can see them running some kind of pre-release for Zendikar Rising. I think that we'll probably get more information in regards to what will happen with these events over the next few weeks, as the events will probably be late September.
I myself will probably be playing paper Magic for the first time since the lockdown started next Friday, assuming everything goes acording to plan for myself and my buddy who will be driving. I'm pretty excited to meet the new owners for that store, as the store changed owners back in January, so this nonsense was probably brutal on them
My government did its best to save businesses from the worst of the COVID. As I said earlier in the thread there is no COVID here, because the border is closed and all cases tracked and quarantined (currently 8 active). They also announced further financial aid For example: small businesses here get free electricity until September (from April) as we still have government-owned power utilities.
Perhaps you should petition your government for help for local small businesses.
We have had the CARES Act and the Paycheck Protection Plan Act passed that combined is several TRILLION dollars of aid and low interest loans to small businesses. Some states have granted aid to small businesses as well. Our border is like Swiss Cheese with Mexico, covid travels freely into the country from the south and from air travel just about anywhere in the world. Western Australia I see has about 2.6 million people spread out over a HUGE area, with 2.0 million of that in Perth. (Basically a city and thousands of square miles of uninhabited bush country) Much easier for WA to contain and reduce over a population of 330 million concentrated in large cities all over the country.
Petitioning our government for help is about like pissing into the wind, near pointless as they do what they wish. And when they do something its slow and packed with pork riding legislation that increases the beuaracracy.
We lost 33% of our GDP in the second quarter. Shattering the record of the Great Depression. (Of the largest market on the planet) and we have over 26 TRILLION dollars in debt. Comparing Western Australia to the United States is like comparing raisins to grapefruit. Don't get me wrong, at this time I'd probably rather be living in rural Western Australia. Fixes here aren't simple.
I live in the capital city and I was talking about that, just the store that closed was in the country.
Federally sure politics is trash, ours isn't great but at least took COVID threat seriously since March. I am suggesting you go to your State and even local governments they are much more responsive to citizens. They need to keep their small business running or they might never recover.
How to stop the spread: 2 months lockdown, everything except supermarkets/pharmacies closed, 2 person groups only, mask orders. I am not sure if the USA constitution allows the closing of state boarders, but there needs to be people checking every single border and giving out 2 week stay at home orders.
Once you stop community spread you can start testing and carefully tracking sporadic outbreaks that will continue. locking down apartments and suburbs following the persons travel history to find where they got it from. Test and Track. just doing testing isn't enough you need to track where they got it from. The testing needs to be free or people won't get it done.
A further 2 months of slowly allowing more businesses to open and larger groups to meet.
The economy is just gone its too late to save it, forget it! save lives instead. You effectively need to hibernate the economy until the emergency is over. No rent, no rates, no power or water bills, no one gets fired but everything is closed. You need to have your local small business to still be there when you get out of lockdown so their bills need to go away until they can open. The economy is dead just go into however much debt is required to solve the problem, doing nothing or doing a huge amount are both bad but only once saves lives.
Not sure If anyone's heard about this yet however there were some YouTube videos recently of a group of doctors in front of the U.S. Supreme Court including Stella Immanuel claiming that she had cured COVID-19 in 350 patients at her clinic using a combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin, and zinc and that public health measures such as wearing face masks and social distancing were no longer necessary. Apparently the antimalarial medication hydroxychloroquine had previously had its emergency use authorization for COVID-19 removed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which said it had not been proven to be an effective treatment for the virus. Even If it hadn't been proven yet that still doesn't give them the right to silence these doctors from getting the information out there to test whether or not If it is an effective treatment against COVID-19.
These big pharmaceutical companies only want to prolong this pandemic as much as possible so they can turn a profit off of a sick society. It does make you wonder just how expensive a future cure / vaccine for COVID-19 really is for these companies to maliciously prolong this pandemic to their own benefit. They're even turning it into some sick competition where the first country to find a cure / vaccine for COVID-19 will be rewarded a Noble Peace Prize even though peoples' lives are at stake. By the time they find a cure / vaccine for COVID-19 over half of the worlds entire population will probably already be wiped out from existence as they won't have as many patients left to show for it. Since when has self engineered genocide been a viable alternative to war? It's not unless you're some kind of rich billionaire who has ties to the World Health Organization (WHO) by paying them to promote germ warfare.
"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
Wrong. Actually it WAS designed by Richard Garfield to be played AT HOME during Role Playing (D&D) down times if one group was separate with the DM and another group had some time to kill. It has changed from that model but it was DESIGNED as a play at home diversion. And that is what we did at the time as well. I lived it.
I am starting to think along those lines as well.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
"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
Long story short. Don't equate LGS's presence with the frequency of play. They do serve a vital role in the tournament structure and as a place for communities to grow. But those same communities grow literally anywhere thanks to social media. LGSs just happen to sell the product that everyone is gathering for. If you are at all worried about the health of paper magic then first, don't be. Magic can't currently, nor in the foreseeable future, exist without paper magic. So instead, fear for the life of magic as a whole and you might realize how ridiculous that train of thought actually 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
I know a number of unemployed and underemployed people who have received free government phones. And those are capable of everything as long as you hang out near a Starbucks or some equivalent.
While I personally avoid the usual social media sites(facebook, twitter, Instagram?) for the exact reasons you mentioned even someone as antisocial as me has found places where I am comfortable communicating with others.
"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
Maybe if you are an extrovert yes. If you are introverted, its just fine. We all aren't the same. And yes my small group of family and friends have multiple decks in multiple formats. If we can't or don't afford a card we proxy it. Sharpie on a land lets you play any format you wish.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
"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
So I can see the lack of supply affecting prices once we get events on a more regular scale, which might not be until next year
Wizards of the Coast ended up hurting Local Game Stores by doing this. Now of course the company is going to blame it on the virus when the virus itself is being handled differently in each state / province, businesses are being handled differently by each state / province, but now there's no In-Store Play / Organized Play for Paper Magic. That's got to be very shady business and it's hard not for it to be a coincidence when just a few weeks ago Core 2021 was released, people bought the product up, wasted thousands of dollars on these cards, and now they can't even play them at their LGS unless they're at home. Then you have Arena / MTGO which is now being pushed more than ever due to being digital platforms with low overhead cost where you have to wonder whether If they have more profit tied to them. These digital platforms are still nowhere near replacing Paper Magic and unfortunately that's the only resource that players have right now.
I don't think it's any secret that Wizards of the Coast has allowed their political beliefs to affect their business decisions. In the meantime not every state in the U.S. is having a major problem with the virus where most of the activity is taking place primarily in big populated cities like Miami, Florida and Houston, Texas. Many rural areas don't have a problem at all with COVID-19 yet from a small business owner standpoint it doesn't make any sense why Wizards of the Coast is doing what they're doing. Governors in many states are allowing things in regards to business etc. to be operated on a county by county basis. Now logically that makes more sense however Wizards of the Coast made a decision based on "one size fits all" and that's just not the case with this current situation. They're just using Paper Magic to push their political beliefs and digital online platform business agendas. Why else would Wizards of the Coast want locations that aren't being impacted by the virus to not do business by holding Organized Play and Sanctioned Events at Local Game Stores?
So just out of curiosity what would happen to Paper Magic and Local Game Stores (LGSs) If there was an Internet Blackout during the middle of this current Global Pandemic we're in? The only real line of defense Local Game Stores (LGSs) have aside from community is e-commerce sales to help compete against Amazon and other online retailers / vendors. If nobody is able to show up to their Local Game Store (LGS) because of the virus preventing them from participating in In-Store Play / Organized Play then how are they going to be able to stay in business? Purchasing card singles will be more of a pain in the ass again If your Local Game Store doesn't have a particular card you need but what would be the point If the virus makes it to where you can't play? You literally would not be able to play MTG ANYWHERE either in Digital or Paper because it would ALL be shutdown. Want to play Arena / MTGO with other players online or participate in remote play? Can't do it. Want to go play EDH / Commander with your playgroups or grind in a tournament at your Local Game Store (LGS)? Can't do that either.
Look I know this is conspiratorial and I'm not trying to fearmonger anyone when I'm curious as to how people would get through this kind of crisis.
"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
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Sure Local Game Stores are no longer able to run Organized Play events but that doesn't mean that they need to shutdown In-Store Play entirely for Casual players who just want to hangout with their friends and play EDH / Commander. What would give Wizards of the Coast the idea that the majority of Paper Magic players actually play at home over their LGS? I can understand If the LGS environment is toxic but that's just a false negative stereotype that EVERY LGS is like this when it isn't. Not every LGS has a loyal community (not online btw) that financially supports them especially when it's already difficult enough as it is to compete against online companies when they don't even have operational websites, no eBay accounts, or Social Media presence. Even If they do it increases online competition to the point where it's hard for these Local Game Stores to get noticed like on TCGPlayer.
"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
This makes more sense.
I don't have a problem devaluing cards by printing them. The health of the game depends on accessibility, and for older formats and commander being too expensive is a bigger issue than LGS availability. Yes, LGS (and online stores like SCG) rely on the secondary market, buying cards at below market value and selling at a profit. The risk of that strategy is that it's speculation. Usually they make money from it, but there is always a risk that cards will drop in value, either due to rotation, the hot deck that needs it going out of fashion, or reprints. The LGS business model needs to adapt to where the secondary market is a supplement to their business model rather than an integral part of it. Not for any moral reason, but because doing so will make their businesses more stable and resilient to market shocks.
Why WotC thinks at home play is the majority: surveys. They do a fair amount of market research to determine how people play the game and what players like and want so they can target products to them. The reason you see premium products and stuff like that is because their market research told them a significant enough portion of the player base wants those products. You see the major commitment to EDH because they found it was the most popular format after 60 card casual, and they built brawl in the hopes of building on that. They know that at home play is still the most common way people engage with magic, with casual and EDH leading that. At home players tend to spend less on cards than FNM warriors, but there are more of them and they tend to buy packs. I think Wizards isnt about to abandon the LGS because they make money from them, tournament engagement increases the amount people spend on magic, and limited moves packs. Getting people who play at home into their local LGS makes wizards money by getting them to spend more. They want both market share and dollars per player, so both groups are important.
As for long term LGS viability, it was a struggle before COVID. Stores in big cities with a younger population do well, as do stores in college towns, because they have a large customer base to draw on. Stores in more rural areas, or smaller suburbs, struggle because there just aren't enough customers. You need a certain concentration of nerd culture involved people to serve for a nerd culture exclusive business to thrive, even when your pretty diversified within that culture and selling comics and games in addition to running DND campaigns Warhammer tourneys and Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Pokemon events. I think a plausible business model for these areas where LGS struggle is to run it as a combination business with some other sort of thing, like a bowling alley or skating rink. Most such places have sizeable party rooms that can host events, and areas that usually have pool tables and arcade games that could be retrofitted as the sales floor for product. Or a diner, I have a couple in my area that have large banquet areas that they use to host gaming clubs during the day and are usually empty at night. And by gaming clubs, I mean just old people playing bridge and stuff. One even has an area thats basically a couple chairs and some decorations that's as large as the sales floor in most LGS and off to the side. Imagine running FNM and having players order their food from you instead of bringing McDonald's. There's potential here, it just requires innovation, something that has been really lacking in the LGS sector. It's still operating under the model that worked in the 90s,
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
So the fear from the next generation isn't necessarily a fear of contracting COVID-19 but a fear that is the profound uncertainty of their future and their predecessors as well since we're ALL connected as one human race. If there's anything scarier than the possibility of COVID-19 never going away is that the ubiquity of virtual living might never go away either. There's a legitimate fear that the experience of this pandemic might convince people that we can keep living just fine while physically isolated from others where it's very easy nowadays to slip into that reality. There's days when people don't even leave their homes as their only human contact is a close family member.
In this environment something clearly is lost because people feel different when they experience things directly rather than virtually. There's some things in life that you can't stimulate like the physical presence of another human being. No computer screen will EVER replace the feeling of an arm around someone's shoulders. It's important now more than ever not to lose our physical connection to the world. The qualia. No matter how bad the world gets we ALL need to Stay Human. It's hard when you go to work having to wear a face mask unable to convey any kind of human emotion or expression, not even a smile. That's why people are so miserable with their lives lately no matter where they go because they can no longer escape.
"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
https://dsgcw.blogspot.com/2020/07/hobby-comic-and-game-store-closures.html Another problem I've noticed with a lot of these small Local Game Stores is that they don't have Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) when it comes to their e-commerce websites and given how low profit margins are they're unable to invest in the kind of money to even have SEO and PPC for their stores. They can't do it themselves and they can't pay any of their employees to do it for them. Online vendors like Card Kingdom have a REALLY good domination of SEO by spending thousands of dollars a month as they've dominated the Paper Magic marketing field from just a few thousand dollars a month. In other words they can sell card singles for two times as much as any Local Game Store (LGS) because these card singles show up in SEO.
"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
https://dsgcw.blogspot.com/2020/07/constraints.html Amen brother.
"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
Sad to lose this one :/ but small-town stores have a lot of pressure on them. I lost my localest store last year and have since completely stopped playing standard without regular tournaments. But I am happy to travel a little further for FNM drafts. I think there might have been a bit of over-expansion of game stores locally going from 1 in 2010 to 9 in 2017 and then a chain store has started to dominate the market so we are down to 4 now.
My government did its best to save businesses from the worst of the COVID. As I said earlier in the thread there is no COVID here, because the border is closed and all cases tracked and quarantined (currently 8 active). They also announced further financial aid For example: small businesses here get free electricity until September (from April) as we still have government-owned power utilities.
Perhaps you should petition your government for help for local small businesses.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
We have had the CARES Act and the Paycheck Protection Plan Act passed that combined is several TRILLION dollars of aid and low interest loans to small businesses. Some states have granted aid to small businesses as well. Our border is like Swiss Cheese with Mexico, covid travels freely into the country from the south and from air travel just about anywhere in the world. Western Australia I see has about 2.6 million people spread out over a HUGE area, with 2.0 million of that in Perth. (Basically a city and thousands of square miles of uninhabited bush country) Much easier for WA to contain and reduce over a population of 330 million concentrated in large cities all over the country.
Petitioning our government for help is about like pissing into the wind, near pointless as they do what they wish. And when they do something its slow and packed with pork riding legislation that increases the beuaracracy.
We lost 33% of our GDP in the second quarter. Shattering the record of the Great Depression. (Of the largest market on the planet) and we have over 26 TRILLION dollars in debt. Comparing Western Australia to the United States is like comparing raisins to grapefruit. Don't get me wrong, at this time I'd probably rather be living in rural Western Australia. Fixes here aren't simple.
STOP using "dude/bro" as a pejorative or insult. Grow up.
Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.”
Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Martin Luther King Jr.: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
That's why in a Pre-Release there's a lot more people and some of these people you've never seen before whether If they've played in FNM, Commander Night on Tuesdays, or Modern, because a) these people or maybe more casual, maybe they don't have a Paper Standard deck to take to FNM Standard or maybe they don't like drafting but there's more casuals on Pre-Release so you should have the most players than you will ever have at your store for Paper Magic given how it's a Casual Event. You don't need to have a pre-made deck in order to enter after all In-Store Play was previously re-instated on June 1st and by the end of the month the situation was drastically different, so different that Wizards of the Coast felt that it was best to suspend In-Store Play again which of course shut out all the Casual Players who wanted to play EDH / Commander at their LGS.
They're monitoring the situation with COVID-19 and they said they'll make monthly updates more until then they're going to support Remote Play so we're back to Remote FNM events. Over the course of the pandemic so many of our lives has mitigated or migrated to the Internet. If the MTG Community can do the same then there are many meaningful experiences. So it's kind of as If they took semi-toxic MTG players that are naturally toxic and you put them online. What do you think is going to happen? Likewise for instance someone would never say In-Person in America that he / she doesn't enjoy America and America discusses Caucasians. They wouldn't say this to another player right? But online they would all the time because it gives them a false sense of security.
Wizards of the Coast also wants us to know that they're currently working on additional tools and resources a.k.a. Arena / MTGO to refine the Remote Play experience. So what does this mean for the Local Game Store? Missing one In-Store Play Pre-Release is pretty devastating even though it is a "Core Set" Pre-Release and honestly Core Sets are not the most powerful sets nor are they the most popular sets and it is a somewhere Pre-Release. There's a lot of reasons why Core 2021 still hurts right? Those are still really great customers and it sucks that they're not going to do it anymore but at the same time it's understandable and it's not like a giant loss okay. Core 2021 is bad but it's not a very popular set, it wasn't going to have that many people anyway. Granted it does offer some goodies for EDH / Commander players at times.
The reason Wizards of the Coast got rid of Core Sets (remember when MTG Origins was supposed to be the final Core Set ever?) is because they don't sell well. Losing money on Core Sets is fine for Local Game Stores when it comes to Pre-Releases but as long as they don't lose money on Zendikar Rising and If there's Fetchlands in it (highly doubtful) then you've just missed a HUGE opportunity to bring returning players, maybe they quit Paper Magic and are wanting to play again. Zendikar Rising should they do it correctly could be as big for the game as Return to Ravnica. Zendikar is a very popular plane, you throw in the Fetchlands of Original Zendikar / Khans of Tarkir and "BAM!" just like that you could have a Pre-Release of over 200 people. Realistically I don't see this happening knowing Wizards of the Coast's current stance on the Fetchlands.
But given the current situation with the global pandemic we know that Pre-Releases are At Home / Remote Play now. So all those potential customers that would be at a Local Game Store buying things while they take breaks from playing and or being "Hey this is a great store!" "I didn't know you had this comic / anime statue / board game!" got screwed over. It's not just as simple as there's only a few MTG events that really draw people out and In-Store Play Pre-Release is definitely the number one event when it comes to Paper Magic. Everyone and their grandmother is coming out for Pre-Release and some people who quit MTG, some people have heard about the Fetchlands being back in Standard (not gonna happen but keep dreaming) you have a lot of returning players who haven't played Paper Magic for a long time coming back to these events.
These are lifelong customers that you can make more and more money on and these events are just not happening. So losing In-Store Play for Zendikar Rising Pre-Releases is going to destroy a large majority of Local Game Stores. You can eat losing Core 2021 because Core Sets aren't that popular anyway and Summer sets aren't popular. You cannot eat Zendikar Rising down the road, you don't have this Pre-Release where you're expecting 100-200 people maybe 50% of them being new people and maybe 20% of those people come back to buy some more Paper Magic cards or "There's a Pokémon plush that my significant other would like or my kids would love" or "There's some anime things that they would enjoy". It's not as simple from a marketing perspective as it's really difficult and very expensive to acquire customers.
To get a customer in your door is very expensive and In-Store Play Pre-Releases were a fantastic way to do it for no money. These are ideal customers, these are people who live around the area, you are their Local Game Store (LGS). It's kind of a huge powwow community event to really help people and obviously help the game store. When you talk about this and you look at it this way, Zendikar Rising having to be hosted At Home / Remote Play instead of In-Store Play is a massive hit on these Local Game Stores. I don't think they can survive financially. A Local Game Store can survive not having Core 2021 In-Store Play Pre-Release events because long-term hey maybe 50 people will show up and maybe out of those 50 people 10 people were new so we lost 10 new clients and lost the revenue we had on that day / night right? Which isn't that bad...
However the lifetime revenue, the customer lifetime revenue, our lifetime value is what's most important to these stores. If a store in Zendikar Rising can bring a hundred new customers or let's say 50 new customers and half of those customers are impressed by the store and they come back then that's the definition of a community. A returning customer is a lot easier to deal with than a new customer. So the amount of money it costs to make a returning customer buy again or to advertise is probably 10% of what it costs to acquire a new customer. Companies like Blue Apron lose money acquiring new customers especially the first interaction but you're hoping this customer will buy something next month or next year or spend some Holiday money with you. Taking that luxury away from people isn't right IMO.
That's why the In-Store Play Pre-Release is so important for Paper Magic because it's not for the money you make that day / night when it's for the future of your business. So let's say a customer hears about Zendikar Rising and they played in the previous Zendikar Pre-Releases when they were younger and now they have money, they're interested, they want to go. They go to Pre-Release, they have a good experience, and meet some new people and they're like "Hey I'm getting back into Paper Magic again!" They will go back to that store because it's probably the closest store to where they live. That's how people go to Pre-Release. Maybe they'll buy comics and figures for their friends, maybe buy Holiday gifts. That's why it's important. It's something that a lot of people take for granted far too often.
The importance is not how much money you've made that day / night when the importance is how many new people will come back to your store or even your old returning customers will have a good experience. Maybe they want to get out of quarantine to spend their Stimulus money on XYZ after being away for 5-6 months. So whatever Local Game Stores hold In-Store Play Zendikar Rising Pre-Release events later this year against Wizards of the Coast's In-Store Play Suspension are going to dominate for the next few years. Those that follow the rules are more than likely going to go bankrupt unless entry fees are paid to these LGSs via Remote Play on Arena though that didn't seem to be the case for Core 2021 or Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths this year. I bet the profits were significantly lower than what these stores would've accumulated via In-Store Play though.
"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
I myself will probably be playing paper Magic for the first time since the lockdown started next Friday, assuming everything goes acording to plan for myself and my buddy who will be driving. I'm pretty excited to meet the new owners for that store, as the store changed owners back in January, so this nonsense was probably brutal on them
I live in the capital city and I was talking about that, just the store that closed was in the country.
Federally sure politics is trash, ours isn't great but at least took COVID threat seriously since March. I am suggesting you go to your State and even local governments they are much more responsive to citizens. They need to keep their small business running or they might never recover.
How to stop the spread: 2 months lockdown, everything except supermarkets/pharmacies closed, 2 person groups only, mask orders. I am not sure if the USA constitution allows the closing of state boarders, but there needs to be people checking every single border and giving out 2 week stay at home orders.
Once you stop community spread you can start testing and carefully tracking sporadic outbreaks that will continue. locking down apartments and suburbs following the persons travel history to find where they got it from. Test and Track. just doing testing isn't enough you need to track where they got it from. The testing needs to be free or people won't get it done.
A further 2 months of slowly allowing more businesses to open and larger groups to meet.
The economy is just gone its too late to save it, forget it! save lives instead. You effectively need to hibernate the economy until the emergency is over. No rent, no rates, no power or water bills, no one gets fired but everything is closed. You need to have your local small business to still be there when you get out of lockdown so their bills need to go away until they can open. The economy is dead just go into however much debt is required to solve the problem, doing nothing or doing a huge amount are both bad but only once saves lives.
Pioneer:UR Pheonix
Modern:U Mono U Tron
EDH
GB Glissa, the traitor: Army of Cans
UW Dragonlord Ojutai: Dragonlord NOjutai
UWGDerevi, Empyrial Tactician "you cannot fight the storm"
R Zirilan of the claw. The solution to every problem is dragons
UB Etrata, the Silencer Cloning assassination
Peasant cube: Cards I own
These big pharmaceutical companies only want to prolong this pandemic as much as possible so they can turn a profit off of a sick society. It does make you wonder just how expensive a future cure / vaccine for COVID-19 really is for these companies to maliciously prolong this pandemic to their own benefit. They're even turning it into some sick competition where the first country to find a cure / vaccine for COVID-19 will be rewarded a Noble Peace Prize even though peoples' lives are at stake. By the time they find a cure / vaccine for COVID-19 over half of the worlds entire population will probably already be wiped out from existence as they won't have as many patients left to show for it. Since when has self engineered genocide been a viable alternative to war? It's not unless you're some kind of rich billionaire who has ties to the World Health Organization (WHO) by paying them to promote germ warfare.
"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