So what is to be done? Just kill the whole game? Or maybe we could just kill the profit motive that spurs these inventions. Re-establish the game as a co-operative enterprise whose first responsibility is to the people who play it, rather than the people who own it.
What is to be done?
In this case, either spread out the drops over a greater period (likely making a similar amount of money in the long run) or spoil the contents in advance (making the product seem less predatory). In the long run, maybe hire a single psychologist as a part-time consultant to aid with maintaining a customer engagement while avoiding these problems.
If a company is incapable of turning a profit while maintaining basic ethical standards to avoid the blatant exploitation of compulsive behaviors... then yeah, cancel it.
In most cases, though, there are ways to make profit without such exploitation. I do not question that MTG’s ultimate responsibility is to make its owners money but that does not mean that all means of doing so are equally acceptable.
Another less predatory behaviour would be to not just retire the product after a day, but to leave orders open indefinitely and manufacture the products in order to ship them at set dates throughout the year, like: you can order any secret lair at any time, but it will be shipped to you only every 3 months.
Then make Secret Lairs releases accordingly to those dates, so they can manufacture and ship the new ones together with the backlog of orders for the old ones.
EDIT: it would also make things easier to evaluate how much they impact on the quarterly revenue AND at the same time allow customers to adapt to a set release schedule like every other product they make.
EDIT2: on the other hand, doing things as they are doing now means that any time they see their quarterly revenue is a little lacking, they can ***** out X more Secret Lairs and expect suckers to buy them without question in big numbers.
I think there is an intentional coinciding with the Secret Lairs and the new Pioneer format. Imagine a scenario with me
1. Eternal format players have been asking for a solution to the reprint problem for years
2. WoTC thought it could pay lip service to this need and tossed us the overpriced Masters products, trying to at least appear to save face by claiming to be addressing the reprint issue.
3. In reality it was just another way to sell non-standard Magic sets with maximized profit margins to keep the presses/supply chain of products running throughout the year
4. WoTC without saying as much, clearly had not figured out how to address the reprint issue, and it was becoming a development nightmare for future sets both Standard and Eternal.
5. The solution it turns out, according to WoTC's thinking, was to start over. To give up on the model that has failed Modern and the other Eternal formats.
Imagine how the secret lairs would have been received by Modern or other Eternal format players, if Pioneer had never existed and these products came out...
Especially after WoTC having publicly failed at addressing reprints through sets... there would have been hell to pay! The backlash would have been MASSIVE. We would have been talking about the same structural and ethical dilemmas then, as are being discussed today.
But all that is avoidable if WoTC pulls the rug out from under the expected outrage... and just kills a format or two
Hence the birth of the Pioneer format, with the always intended Secret Lairs following shortly after.
All eternal formats and their longstanding prior models for reprint supply needed a re-alignment. How do you steer that ship? Take away all that was familiar and leave no option for an alternative.
We are all along for the ride on WoTC's subversion and manipulation train. The blinders are on and we are not to look out the windows or at the past. Keep all eyes forward in the unassuming position, passengers.
Secret Lairs are here to stay, they always have been intended to stay - and their existence/profit model is the reason WoTC has justified permanent harm to the other Eternal formats. That was all a calculated hit, and WoTC already took that blow to the chin. It won't make all that for naught, and stop making Secret Lair products. They are the new paradigm.
@Rosy Dumplings, I think WoTC has had the psychologist on staff for longer than you're giving them credit for..
If a company is incapable of turning a profit while maintaining basic ethical standards to avoid the blatant exploitation of compulsive behaviors... then yeah, cancel it.
Blatant exploitation of compulsive behaviors is the central core of their business model. It's not an LCG.
Example of the two above.
The horror that comes from other consumers who want you to be silent.
To move on and talk about anything else.
Yet that is how predatory practices thrive.
When consumers tell other consumers to be silent.
Why does a card game have stock market graphs and financial trends?
Consumers who profiteer off of it, off that silence.
You can buy a pack of playing cards.
Perhaps its Disney or Cthulhu or Steampunk themed.
The rules remain the same, the faces and backs might not.
All the cards in mint condition.
Its not going to cost you more than $10 for a full deck, more likely $3 or $5.
Only expensive ones are the very vintage ones.
Never needing to spend another dime unless you like the aesthetic.
No flash sales.
Meanwhile spending $10 on a commander deck.
Cards that are mostly damaged or heavily played for their condition.
Very budgetary and in need of upgrades.
Like it were some broken car you bought at the scrapyard.
Playing cards are not the same as TCG cards. You do not buy 15 card booster packs of playing cards with some of the cards artificially made more scarce by rarity.
It sounds like you do not liek Secret Lairs or Booster Packs. If true, I highly suggest other games, like the new Legend of the Five Rings card game.
Very astute.
Playing cards are the inspiration for living card games.
The base set is all that its needed.
Expansions are fun, but unneeded.
Affordable as one time purchases.
That is where magic needs to shape up.
They will get a knocking on their door when the time comes.
Their practices seen as predatory.
Short term profits may please the shareholders.
But such things only lead to instability and mass lay-offs later.
Oh for peak sake guys if you don’t like it just don’t look into these and just move on
I only get cards or things based on what’s in it and you can just get singles as well
While it is true that no one HAS to buy these that doesn't mean that because we don't have to buy them that they are safe from criticism. I see that often when someone doesn't like something; "well just don't watch/listen/buy it" and "you can't judge it if you don't like it" like those are reasons to not criticize something that has obvious issues.
Very astute.
Playing cards are the inspiration for living card games.
The base set is all that its needed.
Expansions are fun, but unneeded.
Affordable as one time purchases.
That is where magic needs to shape up.
They will get a knocking on their door when the time comes.
Their practices seen as predatory.
Short term profits may please the shareholders.
But such things only lead to instability and mass lay-offs later.
FFG has been making LCG's for years now, hasn't put a dent in MTG's bottom line. Whatever comeuppance you've conceived is purely a figment of your imagination at this point, and if you think LCG's don't give people a reason to complain, you're mistaken there too. Having spent no small amount of time on FFG's forums, it's patently clear that folks are not happy to spend $120 on triple core sets, and the monthly releases don't do anything to assuage the same type of product exhaustion that people here are poo-pooing. Whether or not you consider the expansions "unneeded" is a matter of personal choice (and competitive inclination), but I suspect that the people complaining here about Secret Lairs are more upset about the frequency of release and truncated acquisition period than they are the mere availability of supplementary product - they're the exact same type of consumer that would be interested in buying those expansions.
Those one time purchases, by the way? Horrible for brick and mortar shops. The loyal local few buy their minimal allotment and the rest collect dust, never to be picked up by random passersby for one more glorious attempt at winning the cardboard lottery.
This comeuppance is from politicians such as those in congress.
Switching to LCG is the only way Wizards will have be able to save face from them.
The most traceable form of loot boxes in the physical is magic the gathering and gacha.
Magic the Gathering's model is cited on the basis for which the digital was used.
They both tick all the boxes for the same things like loot boxes.
Not even trading or selling is a viable excuse anymore when its still gambling with chance and randomization.
A LCG is exempt from this as its no different than buying a board game or a 54 pack of playing cards. Mox Opal before it was banned, a playset of four cards costing around $400.
A LCG that provides the whole core set for just $120 is a bargain in comparison.
Yet that is not likely.
More likely to see Secret Lairs until it stops being profitable.
Triple core sets isn't the end of the LCG purchase chain, it's the beginning. Do you realize that you just equated a pack of $4 playing cards and $120+ of LCG product, all in the same breath? Those two things are hardly the same. There's also a world of difference between non-tradeable digital content (the crux of the anti-loot box movement) and a dynamic, quantifiable secondary market driven by Magic's physical lottery model. With the recent and temporary exception of Nexus of Fate, Wizards has been fairly transparent about the odds of acquiring individual cards. If you have evidence to suggest Congress is actively eyeballing Magic with upcoming legislation, I'd love to see it - in paragraph form, preferably. Short of that, I'm afraid the "mark my words" argument falls rather flat.
Yes.
A $4 pack of playing cards is non-randomized, just like a $120 core set is non-randomized.
One is a cheap product, the other is an expensive product.
But there is no chance.
Just like how you can buy a $5 miniature or a $80 miniature.
Wwat you see is what you get.
Remember the main defense that EA had?
Most loot-boxes couldn't be traded for monetary value, so its not gambling.
Didn't stop that from getting banned in countries because those countries updated what constitutes as gambling.
How do I obtain an expensive magic the gathering card?
I either pay an exorbent price set by the secondary market, or I place a bet with a booster pack and hope to get it instead.
And if I have to open a randomized pack for a chance at possibly getting that expensive card, its no different than gambling.
Especially when you can treat that expensive card that you might get out of a booster pack as gambling chips to cash out for real world money.
Most tabletop games don't rely on randomization as the intended method to obtain game pieces.
Yet card games with randomized game pieces, where you aren't guarnteed to get all the pieces for that purchase, that is somehow fine.
Even the creator himself wanted to reprint the cards to being affordable, at most only being twenty dollars for a single card, any higher was absurd.
That is what happened with the set chronicles.
It had a massive-sized print run.
And when most game pieces tanked in price, people complained to them about how their monetary investments were being ruined.
Which is how the reserved list was made.
An order to never reprint game pieces because people treated the game like investments.
What do secret lairs do?
It caters to short term buys that can be invested in and resold later for profit.
Flash sales for game pieces.
How about I show you my homework?
You have a hypothetical quota of 1,000,000 units from these limited-time offer sales.
This quota only needs to be filled to the exact, making excess is only for employees.
The secret lair product, Bitterblossom Dreams, on offer is $30 with 5 non-foil cards.
This can provide a return of $30,000,000 if the quota is met.
The secret lair has five new pieces of art work, one for the actual, four for tokens.
Assuming the artist charges around a $1,000 for their comission, that is $5,000 for art.
We are now at -$5,000.
Each non-premium card on a sheet is worth the equivalent of 0.04 cents.
Each uncut sheet is 11x11 or 121 cards.
A regular sheet is $4.84.
We can fulfill 24 orders with a single sheet, and for every five sheets we fulfill one more order.
To fulfill, we would need 41.666(repeating) or just 41,667 sheets if rounded up.
The cost of 41,667 sheets is $201,668.28.
We are now at -$206,668.28.
A rule of thumb of shipping is that packaging for every $11 in product, it takes $1 in material.
Packaging would cost us $18333.48.
We are now at -$225,001.76.
We pay $0 to the employee who is paid by the word for their is no flavortext needed.
Price cost unchanged.
The average cost of an employee's time at Wizards of the Coast is $45/hour.
Each employee working a 9-5 work schedule on this quota would cost $360 for a day.
Lets say that 100 employees in total are working on the printing press that day, for $36,000.
We are now at -$261,000.76
We don't factor in the price of shipping as the customer pays for that.
We pay one worker $360 for their day of work to actually do the work of making the card.
We are now at -$261,360.76.
The last cost is really the rental of a printing facility for this.
Lets just say it costs a cool million.
That puts us at -$1,261,360.76.
Now we factor in the return which is: $28,738,639.24
We have plenty to factor in the remaining 500+ employees working that day.
As Wizards HQ lists 600+ employees.
Which still nets a large return.
Even if we factored in ink, what is the price going to be? a $100,000 or $500,000 chump change for a company like Wizards?
Also that the price to produce a single unit of Bitterblossom Dreams,just for resources, is around $3.
And using only 1 million units is not unreasonable when the player base is literally in the double digits.
And even if its not equal to 1 million units = 1 million players, the most a person could have bought was 10 units.
Some even having separate accounts to buy even more.
Such as LGS's or scalpers.
Then you have players who might buy four just so they can have a playset.
Then you have collectors who might only buy one just to say they did, or put in a binder, or to frame it.
Then you have commander players who buy one because thats all they need for the format.
Some commander players buying more for each of their decks because some literally do that.
Then you have family members who buy it because they don't know any better as a gift for the holidays.
Then you have kids buying it because they are easily gullible for this stuff due to lack of discipline.
In the end, wether one likes Secret Lairs or not, it is a long known fact that WotC has become a *****ty company that is employing more and more anti-consumeristic practices to either save money or swindle more money from their addicted playerbase.
From "lower the paper quality, so we might save some money" to "rise the price on the reprints products, they will buy it anyway" to "we in R&D don't playtest cards much, it is not our job" to "we wanted to push even more monetization to Arena, but if we did it people whould be upset, so we will introduct something even more outrageous and dial it back to the point we wanted saying we are 'listening to feedback'" to "we put this card at mythic because 'artificial scarcity'" to "people who play arena will be ok paying more than other games because it is MtG".
Secret Lairs are just the Nth iteration of the player base swindling.
If that is what you want to spend your money on, it's your money, you have the rights to spend them however you want.
On the other hand, it is our right to point out the anti-consumeristic practices the company is employing to push you into spending those money.
There's a lot of things WOTC is doing that I'm not happy about, but selling singles when they could be selling more gambling boosters is perhaps a step in the right direction for the physical game. The secrecy around the cards is a predatory tactic, however, giving consumers the least amount of time to make a decision. You can just hear the people in the WOTC offices saying "FOMO" repeatedly in their board meetings.
Yes.
A $4 pack of playing cards is non-randomized, just like a $120 core set is non-randomized.
One is a cheap product, the other is an expensive product.
But there is no chance.
Just like how you can buy a $5 miniature or a $80 miniature.
Wwat you see is what you get.
Remember the main defense that EA had?
Most loot-boxes couldn't be traded for monetary value, so its not gambling.
Didn't stop that from getting banned in countries because those countries updated what constitutes as gambling.
How do I obtain an expensive magic the gathering card?
I either pay an exorbent price set by the secondary market, or I place a bet with a booster pack and hope to get it instead.
And if I have to open a randomized pack for a chance at possibly getting that expensive card, its no different than gambling.
Especially when you can treat that expensive card that you might get out of a booster pack as gambling chips to cash out for real world money.
Most tabletop games don't rely on randomization as the intended method to obtain game pieces.
Yet card games with randomized game pieces, where you aren't guarnteed to get all the pieces for that purchase, that is somehow fine.
Even the creator himself wanted to reprint the cards to being affordable, at most only being twenty dollars for a single card, any higher was absurd.
That is what happened with the set chronicles.
It had a massive-sized print run.
And when most game pieces tanked in price, people complained to them about how their monetary investments were being ruined.
Which is how the reserved list was made.
An order to never reprint game pieces because people treated the game like investments.
What do secret lairs do?
It caters to short term buys that can be invested in and resold later for profit.
Flash sales for game pieces.
How about I show you my homework?
You have a hypothetical quota of 1,000,000 units from these limited-time offer sales.
This quota only needs to be filled to the exact, making excess is only for employees.
The secret lair product, Bitterblossom Dreams, on offer is $30 with 5 non-foil cards.
This can provide a return of $30,000,000 if the quota is met.
The secret lair has five new pieces of art work, one for the actual, four for tokens.
Assuming the artist charges around a $1,000 for their comission, that is $5,000 for art.
We are now at -$5,000.
Each non-premium card on a sheet is worth the equivalent of 0.04 cents.
Each uncut sheet is 11x11 or 121 cards.
A regular sheet is $4.84.
We can fulfill 24 orders with a single sheet, and for every five sheets we fulfill one more order.
To fulfill, we would need 41.666(repeating) or just 41,667 sheets if rounded up.
The cost of 41,667 sheets is $201,668.28.
We are now at -$206,668.28.
A rule of thumb of shipping is that packaging for every $11 in product, it takes $1 in material.
Packaging would cost us $18333.48.
We are now at -$225,001.76.
We pay $0 to the employee who is paid by the word for their is no flavortext needed.
Price cost unchanged.
The average cost of an employee's time at Wizards of the Coast is $45/hour.
Each employee working a 9-5 work schedule on this quota would cost $360 for a day.
Lets say that 100 employees in total are working on the printing press that day, for $36,000.
We are now at -$261,000.76
We don't factor in the price of shipping as the customer pays for that.
We pay one worker $360 for their day of work to actually do the work of making the card.
We are now at -$261,360.76.
The last cost is really the rental of a printing facility for this.
Lets just say it costs a cool million.
That puts us at -$1,261,360.76.
Now we factor in the return which is: $28,738,639.24
We have plenty to factor in the remaining 500+ employees working that day.
As Wizards HQ lists 600+ employees.
Which still nets a large return.
Even if we factored in ink, what is the price going to be? a $100,000 or $500,000 chump change for a company like Wizards?
Also that the price to produce a single unit of Bitterblossom Dreams,just for resources, is around $3.
And using only 1 million units is not unreasonable when the player base is literally in the double digits.
And even if its not equal to 1 million units = 1 million players, the most a person could have bought was 10 units.
Some even having separate accounts to buy even more.
Such as LGS's or scalpers.
Then you have players who might buy four just so they can have a playset.
Then you have collectors who might only buy one just to say they did, or put in a binder, or to frame it.
Then you have commander players who buy one because thats all they need for the format.
Some commander players buying more for each of their decks because some literally do that.
Then you have family members who buy it because they don't know any better as a gift for the holidays.
Then you have kids buying it because they are easily gullible for this stuff due to lack of discipline.
Do you see the horror I been talking about yet?
$120 is a 3,000% increase in price over $4, and - as I've mentioned at least twice now - that's only the beginning. FFG's release schedule extends into perpetuity, so there's no theoretical backstop for card ownership or expenditure. Moreover, it appears you're suggesting that any price markup is tolerable, so long as the means of delivery is transparent. You know what only costs $30, and tells you exactly what you're getting in advance? Secret Lairs.
On the other hand, it is our right to point out the anti-consumeristic practices the company is employing to push you into spending those money.
Pretty, uh, impotent.
Yeah, I feel like applying the basic economic principles of supply/demand and marketing are inherently "consumeristic," not the other way around.
People do have a right to complain, of course, but that doesn't automatically make their whinging reasonable. And if the major complaint here is "the release schedule is too fast for me to afford them all," then I would say that the compulsion to own everything is not only unreasonable, but indicative of an underlying problem with the consumer as well.
There's a lot of things WOTC is doing that I'm not happy about, but selling singles when they could be selling more gambling boosters is perhaps a step in the right direction for the physical game. The secrecy around the cards is a predatory tactic, however, giving consumers the least amount of time to make a decision. You can just hear the people in the WOTC offices saying "FOMO" repeatedly in their board meetings.
If you offer people unlimited time to purchase a premium product, they are less likely to actually purchase the item because they will put off actually spending the money indefinitely.
If you put a time limit on the sale of the premium item, sales spike because people are forced to "buy now or never have the chance to buy it again". Loads of companies use this marketing gimmick. Funko sells con-exclusive Pops. Games Workshop makes limited edition versions of their newest rule books. Forge World (and GW) come out with sales of out of production models that will be made to order but only available for purchase over the course of a single weekend.
There's a lot of things WOTC is doing that I'm not happy about, but selling singles when they could be selling more gambling boosters is perhaps a step in the right direction for the physical game. The secrecy around the cards is a predatory tactic, however, giving consumers the least amount of time to make a decision. You can just hear the people in the WOTC offices saying "FOMO" repeatedly in their board meetings.
If you offer people unlimited time to purchase a premium product, they are less likely to actually purchase the item because they will put off actually spending the money indefinitely.
If you put a time limit on the sale of the premium item, sales spike because people are forced to "buy now or never have the chance to buy it again". Loads of companies use this marketing gimmick. Funko sells con-exclusive Pops. Games Workshop makes limited edition versions of their newest rule books. Forge World (and GW) come out with sales of out of production models that will be made to order but only available for purchase over the course of a single weekend.
Talk about perspective. Someone in this thread is upholding miniatures as an example of marketing transparency; I just dropped $1,200 on an Adeptus Titanicus commission, 4 models in total. At least I'm not playing the cardboard lottery, right? ... right?
If you offer people unlimited time to purchase a premium product, they are less likely to actually purchase the item because they will put off actually spending the money indefinitely.
If you put a time limit on the sale of the premium item, sales spike because people are forced to "buy now or never have the chance to buy it again". Loads of companies use this marketing gimmick. Funko sells con-exclusive Pops. Games Workshop makes limited edition versions of their newest rule books. Forge World (and GW) come out with sales of out of production models that will be made to order but only available for purchase over the course of a single weekend.
Of course they do, which doesnt make it any better.
Banking on people buying your product uninformed just means your product is shady at best.
Good product sells no matter what, bad product requires some shady actions to move.
Doing so is ANTI-consumer and it means the company values its customers less, overall bad business practice (but if enough customers let themselves rip off, it pays of).
In the end you can always buy it later, as the vast majority of orders is to flip the boxes anyway, which just artificially inflates the price of an already overpriced product (and some will buy into this too much, not flip it for profit and run themselves down).
Its flat out bad business practice to make up time pressure to buy a product.
Good products dont need it, only bad product does.
Your straw man fails to make me feel bad about taking a passive role in the production and/or acquisition of cardboard.
---
#BLM
#DefundThePolice
Then make Secret Lairs releases accordingly to those dates, so they can manufacture and ship the new ones together with the backlog of orders for the old ones.
EDIT: it would also make things easier to evaluate how much they impact on the quarterly revenue AND at the same time allow customers to adapt to a set release schedule like every other product they make.
EDIT2: on the other hand, doing things as they are doing now means that any time they see their quarterly revenue is a little lacking, they can ***** out X more Secret Lairs and expect suckers to buy them without question in big numbers.
1. Eternal format players have been asking for a solution to the reprint problem for years
2. WoTC thought it could pay lip service to this need and tossed us the overpriced Masters products, trying to at least appear to save face by claiming to be addressing the reprint issue.
3. In reality it was just another way to sell non-standard Magic sets with maximized profit margins to keep the presses/supply chain of products running throughout the year
4. WoTC without saying as much, clearly had not figured out how to address the reprint issue, and it was becoming a development nightmare for future sets both Standard and Eternal.
5. The solution it turns out, according to WoTC's thinking, was to start over. To give up on the model that has failed Modern and the other Eternal formats.
Imagine how the secret lairs would have been received by Modern or other Eternal format players, if Pioneer had never existed and these products came out...
Especially after WoTC having publicly failed at addressing reprints through sets... there would have been hell to pay! The backlash would have been MASSIVE. We would have been talking about the same structural and ethical dilemmas then, as are being discussed today.
But all that is avoidable if WoTC pulls the rug out from under the expected outrage... and just kills a format or two
Hence the birth of the Pioneer format, with the always intended Secret Lairs following shortly after.
All eternal formats and their longstanding prior models for reprint supply needed a re-alignment. How do you steer that ship? Take away all that was familiar and leave no option for an alternative.
We are all along for the ride on WoTC's subversion and manipulation train. The blinders are on and we are not to look out the windows or at the past. Keep all eyes forward in the unassuming position, passengers.
Secret Lairs are here to stay, they always have been intended to stay - and their existence/profit model is the reason WoTC has justified permanent harm to the other Eternal formats. That was all a calculated hit, and WoTC already took that blow to the chin. It won't make all that for naught, and stop making Secret Lair products. They are the new paradigm.
@Rosy Dumplings, I think WoTC has had the psychologist on staff for longer than you're giving them credit for..
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/334931-what-is-the-most-pimp-card-deck-youve-seen-or?comment=5361
Commander
RGOmnath, Locus of Rage Grenades! EDHGR
UWSygg's Defense, EDH - Voltron & ControlWU
BUGMimeoplasm EDH ft. Ifnir Cycling-discard comboBUG
WBTeysa, Connoisseur of CullingBW
BWSelenia & Recruiter of the Guard suicice combo EDHWB
UBRWGO-Kagachi - 5 Color Enchantments - EDHUBRWG
Blatant exploitation of compulsive behaviors is the central core of their business model. It's not an LCG.
I only get cards or things based on what’s in it and you can just get singles as well
According to some who have already responded in this thread will have you believe, you’re part of the problem too if you think this way.
The horror that comes from other consumers who want you to be silent.
To move on and talk about anything else.
Yet that is how predatory practices thrive.
When consumers tell other consumers to be silent.
Why does a card game have stock market graphs and financial trends?
Consumers who profiteer off of it, off that silence.
You can buy a pack of playing cards.
Perhaps its Disney or Cthulhu or Steampunk themed.
The rules remain the same, the faces and backs might not.
All the cards in mint condition.
Its not going to cost you more than $10 for a full deck, more likely $3 or $5.
Only expensive ones are the very vintage ones.
Never needing to spend another dime unless you like the aesthetic.
No flash sales.
Meanwhile spending $10 on a commander deck.
Cards that are mostly damaged or heavily played for their condition.
Very budgetary and in need of upgrades.
Like it were some broken car you bought at the scrapyard.
It sounds like you do not liek Secret Lairs or Booster Packs. If true, I highly suggest other games, like the new Legend of the Five Rings card game.
Playing cards are the inspiration for living card games.
The base set is all that its needed.
Expansions are fun, but unneeded.
Affordable as one time purchases.
That is where magic needs to shape up.
They will get a knocking on their door when the time comes.
Their practices seen as predatory.
Short term profits may please the shareholders.
But such things only lead to instability and mass lay-offs later.
While it is true that no one HAS to buy these that doesn't mean that because we don't have to buy them that they are safe from criticism. I see that often when someone doesn't like something; "well just don't watch/listen/buy it" and "you can't judge it if you don't like it" like those are reasons to not criticize something that has obvious issues.
FFG has been making LCG's for years now, hasn't put a dent in MTG's bottom line. Whatever comeuppance you've conceived is purely a figment of your imagination at this point, and if you think LCG's don't give people a reason to complain, you're mistaken there too. Having spent no small amount of time on FFG's forums, it's patently clear that folks are not happy to spend $120 on triple core sets, and the monthly releases don't do anything to assuage the same type of product exhaustion that people here are poo-pooing. Whether or not you consider the expansions "unneeded" is a matter of personal choice (and competitive inclination), but I suspect that the people complaining here about Secret Lairs are more upset about the frequency of release and truncated acquisition period than they are the mere availability of supplementary product - they're the exact same type of consumer that would be interested in buying those expansions.
Those one time purchases, by the way? Horrible for brick and mortar shops. The loyal local few buy their minimal allotment and the rest collect dust, never to be picked up by random passersby for one more glorious attempt at winning the cardboard lottery.
---
#BLM
#DefundThePolice
Switching to LCG is the only way Wizards will have be able to save face from them.
The most traceable form of loot boxes in the physical is magic the gathering and gacha.
Magic the Gathering's model is cited on the basis for which the digital was used.
They both tick all the boxes for the same things like loot boxes.
Not even trading or selling is a viable excuse anymore when its still gambling with chance and randomization.
A LCG is exempt from this as its no different than buying a board game or a 54 pack of playing cards.
Mox Opal before it was banned, a playset of four cards costing around $400.
A LCG that provides the whole core set for just $120 is a bargain in comparison.
Yet that is not likely.
More likely to see Secret Lairs until it stops being profitable.
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#DefundThePolice
A $4 pack of playing cards is non-randomized, just like a $120 core set is non-randomized.
One is a cheap product, the other is an expensive product.
But there is no chance.
Just like how you can buy a $5 miniature or a $80 miniature.
Wwat you see is what you get.
Remember the main defense that EA had?
Most loot-boxes couldn't be traded for monetary value, so its not gambling.
Didn't stop that from getting banned in countries because those countries updated what constitutes as gambling.
How do I obtain an expensive magic the gathering card?
I either pay an exorbent price set by the secondary market, or I place a bet with a booster pack and hope to get it instead.
And if I have to open a randomized pack for a chance at possibly getting that expensive card, its no different than gambling.
Especially when you can treat that expensive card that you might get out of a booster pack as gambling chips to cash out for real world money.
Most tabletop games don't rely on randomization as the intended method to obtain game pieces.
Yet card games with randomized game pieces, where you aren't guarnteed to get all the pieces for that purchase, that is somehow fine.
Even the creator himself wanted to reprint the cards to being affordable, at most only being twenty dollars for a single card, any higher was absurd.
That is what happened with the set chronicles.
It had a massive-sized print run.
And when most game pieces tanked in price, people complained to them about how their monetary investments were being ruined.
Which is how the reserved list was made.
An order to never reprint game pieces because people treated the game like investments.
What do secret lairs do?
It caters to short term buys that can be invested in and resold later for profit.
Flash sales for game pieces.
How about I show you my homework?
You have a hypothetical quota of 1,000,000 units from these limited-time offer sales.
This quota only needs to be filled to the exact, making excess is only for employees.
The secret lair product, Bitterblossom Dreams, on offer is $30 with 5 non-foil cards.
This can provide a return of $30,000,000 if the quota is met.
The secret lair has five new pieces of art work, one for the actual, four for tokens.
Assuming the artist charges around a $1,000 for their comission, that is $5,000 for art.
We are now at -$5,000.
Each non-premium card on a sheet is worth the equivalent of 0.04 cents.
Each uncut sheet is 11x11 or 121 cards.
A regular sheet is $4.84.
We can fulfill 24 orders with a single sheet, and for every five sheets we fulfill one more order.
To fulfill, we would need 41.666(repeating) or just 41,667 sheets if rounded up.
The cost of 41,667 sheets is $201,668.28.
We are now at -$206,668.28.
A rule of thumb of shipping is that packaging for every $11 in product, it takes $1 in material.
Packaging would cost us $18333.48.
We are now at -$225,001.76.
We pay $0 to the employee who is paid by the word for their is no flavortext needed.
Price cost unchanged.
The average cost of an employee's time at Wizards of the Coast is $45/hour.
Each employee working a 9-5 work schedule on this quota would cost $360 for a day.
Lets say that 100 employees in total are working on the printing press that day, for $36,000.
We are now at -$261,000.76
We don't factor in the price of shipping as the customer pays for that.
We pay one worker $360 for their day of work to actually do the work of making the card.
We are now at -$261,360.76.
The last cost is really the rental of a printing facility for this.
Lets just say it costs a cool million.
That puts us at -$1,261,360.76.
Now we factor in the return which is: $28,738,639.24
We have plenty to factor in the remaining 500+ employees working that day.
As Wizards HQ lists 600+ employees.
Which still nets a large return.
Even if we factored in ink, what is the price going to be? a $100,000 or $500,000 chump change for a company like Wizards?
Also that the price to produce a single unit of Bitterblossom Dreams,just for resources, is around $3.
And using only 1 million units is not unreasonable when the player base is literally in the double digits.
And even if its not equal to 1 million units = 1 million players, the most a person could have bought was 10 units.
Some even having separate accounts to buy even more.
Such as LGS's or scalpers.
Then you have players who might buy four just so they can have a playset.
Then you have collectors who might only buy one just to say they did, or put in a binder, or to frame it.
Then you have commander players who buy one because thats all they need for the format.
Some commander players buying more for each of their decks because some literally do that.
Then you have family members who buy it because they don't know any better as a gift for the holidays.
Then you have kids buying it because they are easily gullible for this stuff due to lack of discipline.
Do you see the horror I been talking about yet?
From "lower the paper quality, so we might save some money" to "rise the price on the reprints products, they will buy it anyway" to "we in R&D don't playtest cards much, it is not our job" to "we wanted to push even more monetization to Arena, but if we did it people whould be upset, so we will introduct something even more outrageous and dial it back to the point we wanted saying we are 'listening to feedback'" to "we put this card at mythic because 'artificial scarcity'" to "people who play arena will be ok paying more than other games because it is MtG".
Secret Lairs are just the Nth iteration of the player base swindling.
If that is what you want to spend your money on, it's your money, you have the rights to spend them however you want.
On the other hand, it is our right to point out the anti-consumeristic practices the company is employing to push you into spending those money.
$120 is a 3,000% increase in price over $4, and - as I've mentioned at least twice now - that's only the beginning. FFG's release schedule extends into perpetuity, so there's no theoretical backstop for card ownership or expenditure. Moreover, it appears you're suggesting that any price markup is tolerable, so long as the means of delivery is transparent. You know what only costs $30, and tells you exactly what you're getting in advance? Secret Lairs.
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#DefundThePolice
Pretty, uh, impotent.
Yeah, I feel like applying the basic economic principles of supply/demand and marketing are inherently "consumeristic," not the other way around.
People do have a right to complain, of course, but that doesn't automatically make their whinging reasonable. And if the major complaint here is "the release schedule is too fast for me to afford them all," then I would say that the compulsion to own everything is not only unreasonable, but indicative of an underlying problem with the consumer as well.
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#BLM
#DefundThePolice
If you offer people unlimited time to purchase a premium product, they are less likely to actually purchase the item because they will put off actually spending the money indefinitely.
If you put a time limit on the sale of the premium item, sales spike because people are forced to "buy now or never have the chance to buy it again". Loads of companies use this marketing gimmick. Funko sells con-exclusive Pops. Games Workshop makes limited edition versions of their newest rule books. Forge World (and GW) come out with sales of out of production models that will be made to order but only available for purchase over the course of a single weekend.
Talk about perspective. Someone in this thread is upholding miniatures as an example of marketing transparency; I just dropped $1,200 on an Adeptus Titanicus commission, 4 models in total. At least I'm not playing the cardboard lottery, right? ... right?
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#BLM
#DefundThePolice
Of course they do, which doesnt make it any better.
Banking on people buying your product uninformed just means your product is shady at best.
Good product sells no matter what, bad product requires some shady actions to move.
Doing so is ANTI-consumer and it means the company values its customers less, overall bad business practice (but if enough customers let themselves rip off, it pays of).
In the end you can always buy it later, as the vast majority of orders is to flip the boxes anyway, which just artificially inflates the price of an already overpriced product (and some will buy into this too much, not flip it for profit and run themselves down).
Its flat out bad business practice to make up time pressure to buy a product.
Good products dont need it, only bad product does.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
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You're not a business major, I take it.
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#BLM
#DefundThePolice
I sell product to people that make responsible decisions.
Not everyone has to be shady and piss on customers to make a living.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮