The entire "gathering" thing will be put on trial quite hard for magic especially.
There are less tournaments and basically no Grand Prix / Big events for Magic organized.
Stores will close one after another, as people buy more and more online and get it delivered.
Its a big loss to lose that social aspect of the game, it scaled down a lot to kitchen table and digital streaming (spell-table etc.).
Getting together to play in person and paper is already quite some luxury, and the less stores are around, the more it will be luxury (or gated in some private home, or just a selected few people in a group getting together, which produces a more and more sharp bubble that does not get outside opinions and fresh blood).
----
Almost a year ago i would have guessed stores to open in full again ... here we are, stores in Europe still closed and an endless amount of next waves hitting that stretch a potential proper re-opening.
There are people i havent seen for almost 2 years now ... and i formerly did see them at least each PreRelease ...
Thats quite something.
I have to say in my old LGS a bunch of people played Arena and then looked out for a paper PreRelease or simply showed up Friday Night and got to draft.
It certainly works in both directions, but the much more extreme is not remove players into digital.
And some people play a lot MORE digital than they would in paper, as its so anti-social, much quicker to leave a game and start another, if you are not winning, just leave (which produces a pretty cancerous daily routine in Arena).
Anyway, its a more approachable MTGO and its "free" to play , especially if people play PreRelease and buy paper product to get the keys to get the digital cards too (which is basically the best value for money in Arena as its just on-top, buying actual packs digital only is mindblowing for me).
----
MTG has a real need and its good that they have a digital game.
They did Xbox/playstation and PC games that worked quite well, and basically extended them with Arena.
If this entire covid scenario is over, we will see whats the aftermath of the digital route, a lot of players will rush into paper magic again, as they love it much more, but a bunch will certainly stay digital (and people that excessively play both are basically the spike players to playtest and all that, more of an exception to the rule).
The biggest issue are the people themselves and the market changes in a drastic way.
There clearly are a lot of people that just buy product online and never play anywhere outside with other people, just some selected few friends if at all.
That number is increasingly large and these people spend more money in the game.
Also, these people are "hidden" from the people that would seek out the social community of a store.
The "LGS community" is a group of players that is quite sadly dying out.
Its not growing in any big numbers, as the store itself is limited by space.
If people in a LGS dont spend much money there and only invest time, its less profitable.
If a store can ignore all that, including space for playing and just ship the product to a customer and receive cash, thats a much simpler and easier investment, so it pays in high revenue to kill the entire social aspect, as it doesnt bring in big money (while its incredible big for the health of the game to have it in the first place, people that actively want it, will bleed to keep it, but ultimately the entire game is changing away from it into a much more digital world, which frankly, is not the kind of Magic that builds a "strong" local community, its building a more broad de-socialized skeleton community).
----
Rudy is not new, and hes dealing with the Magic market in many iterations over the years and is capable to adapt to whatever is the current business model thats profitable. Some of his content videos have a lot of insight in the business that people would never get a glimpse otherwise.
He had a store as it was mandatory, now its just extra cost.
He did sell a lot of singles on ebay, now its much simpler to ship lots of sealed product (to god knows who is buying them, as i frankly dont know any Magic players that buys that many sealed product at all, so it has to go somewhere, but i cant say who exactly consumes it, as a lot of places just buy product to sell it, but someone has to be the actual end-customer to keep the product for good).
In huge areas a lot of people have to just order a bunch of sealed boxes for themselves. its private and hidden, if these players never get out to socialize in a LGS, nobody will know they exist, except the people they pay for the product.
So for a LGS community, these people basically dont exist, and the demands and needs of a LGS community basically dont exist for the hidden individuals, completely isolated groups.
----
Digital is quite frankly a different game.
I would argue the game we know as Magic is actually quite different depending on which group is playing it.
Paper Magic with actual cards in a store, has a very social community, new players, new people, for me thats much more important than the game itself.
People that like the game itself, but basically hate other players, also exist, and in the past they couldnt play the game in a LGS, so resorted to MTGO or played something else. Thats a pretty large group of people, the anti-social incels (not as a insult, but a broad description of what that group is made of).
You only really notice the existence of this group in the amount of extra revenue that WotC brings in, as you wont hear from them in a forum or anywhere else, as they actively avoid any social interactions with other people (but consume a lot of Magic online, youtube, twitch and all kinds of websites to generate traffic).
To play Magic in digital has no actual player social interaction, so that really speaks to this group, and thats a large increase of people that a former LGS net of shops simply did not speak to at all.
Tournament players that seek out competition are basically dead now, WotC scrubbed it.
Bigger tournaments in paper basically represented events like concerts, a Grand Prix was an event to meet even more people in person than a LGS.
Today people play digital and cant even know if the opponent is not just a bot, or halve asleep, or goes afk in the middle of the game, its not social at all, its just a time-wasting mechanism like so many mobile games and a lot of the computer game industry shifts into that gear already for quite some time.
----
What really boggles my mind is the fact that an LGS even has to go over a distributor at all, its completely avoidable today.
To compete in price tags with Amazon and the like is not working, and a LGS can really only provide one thing that Amazon is not, and thats the space to play the game.
WotC is not providing any support for stores to do that, and they lost any financial incentive to do so as well, and the LGS that still exist either have a extremely strong community with lots of disposable income, or they simply bleed money till they are gone.
----
For a lot of people that play Commander you can also cut them into subgroups that have different interests.
The nostalgic players dont really buy new product, just very few singles for a existing deck.
The revenue these players bring in is minimal.
Completely new players at least buy a bunch of product and if they are not aware to efficiently buy singles, they buy a lot of sealed product as they simply dont know better (yet, as very learns at some point, or leaves the game).
So yes, for WotC its much better to simply abandon existing players and seek out new players.
Its long time quite destructive to piss off old players, but the deal is, the old players are not the whale customers.
And then we get the increasingly more expensive "premium" products that is leeching even more money from people.
A lot of people had a mentality of "buy a box of a new set" and thats about it, they never spend more money on a set.
Some of them now buy a collectors box of a set, thats already more expensive and then they buy all Commander decks of a new set, thats like 4x the amount they spend before, and then they order some SecretLair boxes, and what not ... and if any of that money would actually be funneled into an LGS it would help a lot, but its quite simply not cutting, as WotC is at the same time taking customers away from a LGS with their own product (assume you have advertisment for digital in a LGS, like what?).
----
So the "endgame" is probably going to be that Magic is losing the LGS and WotC as a game will sell product themselves.
At that point, someone else might take over the LGS, might even be a new card game (which is hard to sell for nostalgia players, as abandoning a game you played for 20years is quite heartbreaking and nothing you just do out of the blue).
We already have new games that are quite profitable already.
Flesh and Blood is pushing in the LGS-market for Magic (but sadly i just dont like the game, so its not for me).
With rent going up for all city-areas having a space to play Magic is expensive.
People play in restaurants, fast-food chains, or anywhere with a table and space.
Its certainly not the same as a central hub LGS that acts like the defacto-go-to location for everyone.
There are less tournaments and basically no Grand Prix / Big events for Magic organized.
Stores will close one after another, as people buy more and more online and get it delivered.
Its a big loss to lose that social aspect of the game, it scaled down a lot to kitchen table and digital streaming (spell-table etc.).
Getting together to play in person and paper is already quite some luxury, and the less stores are around, the more it will be luxury (or gated in some private home, or just a selected few people in a group getting together, which produces a more and more sharp bubble that does not get outside opinions and fresh blood).
----
Almost a year ago i would have guessed stores to open in full again ... here we are, stores in Europe still closed and an endless amount of next waves hitting that stretch a potential proper re-opening.
There are people i havent seen for almost 2 years now ... and i formerly did see them at least each PreRelease ...
Thats quite something.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
It certainly works in both directions, but the much more extreme is not remove players into digital.
And some people play a lot MORE digital than they would in paper, as its so anti-social, much quicker to leave a game and start another, if you are not winning, just leave (which produces a pretty cancerous daily routine in Arena).
Anyway, its a more approachable MTGO and its "free" to play , especially if people play PreRelease and buy paper product to get the keys to get the digital cards too (which is basically the best value for money in Arena as its just on-top, buying actual packs digital only is mindblowing for me).
----
MTG has a real need and its good that they have a digital game.
They did Xbox/playstation and PC games that worked quite well, and basically extended them with Arena.
If this entire covid scenario is over, we will see whats the aftermath of the digital route, a lot of players will rush into paper magic again, as they love it much more, but a bunch will certainly stay digital (and people that excessively play both are basically the spike players to playtest and all that, more of an exception to the rule).
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
There clearly are a lot of people that just buy product online and never play anywhere outside with other people, just some selected few friends if at all.
That number is increasingly large and these people spend more money in the game.
Also, these people are "hidden" from the people that would seek out the social community of a store.
The "LGS community" is a group of players that is quite sadly dying out.
Its not growing in any big numbers, as the store itself is limited by space.
If people in a LGS dont spend much money there and only invest time, its less profitable.
If a store can ignore all that, including space for playing and just ship the product to a customer and receive cash, thats a much simpler and easier investment, so it pays in high revenue to kill the entire social aspect, as it doesnt bring in big money (while its incredible big for the health of the game to have it in the first place, people that actively want it, will bleed to keep it, but ultimately the entire game is changing away from it into a much more digital world, which frankly, is not the kind of Magic that builds a "strong" local community, its building a more broad de-socialized skeleton community).
----
Rudy is not new, and hes dealing with the Magic market in many iterations over the years and is capable to adapt to whatever is the current business model thats profitable. Some of his content videos have a lot of insight in the business that people would never get a glimpse otherwise.
He had a store as it was mandatory, now its just extra cost.
He did sell a lot of singles on ebay, now its much simpler to ship lots of sealed product (to god knows who is buying them, as i frankly dont know any Magic players that buys that many sealed product at all, so it has to go somewhere, but i cant say who exactly consumes it, as a lot of places just buy product to sell it, but someone has to be the actual end-customer to keep the product for good).
In huge areas a lot of people have to just order a bunch of sealed boxes for themselves. its private and hidden, if these players never get out to socialize in a LGS, nobody will know they exist, except the people they pay for the product.
So for a LGS community, these people basically dont exist, and the demands and needs of a LGS community basically dont exist for the hidden individuals, completely isolated groups.
----
Digital is quite frankly a different game.
I would argue the game we know as Magic is actually quite different depending on which group is playing it.
Paper Magic with actual cards in a store, has a very social community, new players, new people, for me thats much more important than the game itself.
People that like the game itself, but basically hate other players, also exist, and in the past they couldnt play the game in a LGS, so resorted to MTGO or played something else. Thats a pretty large group of people, the anti-social incels (not as a insult, but a broad description of what that group is made of).
You only really notice the existence of this group in the amount of extra revenue that WotC brings in, as you wont hear from them in a forum or anywhere else, as they actively avoid any social interactions with other people (but consume a lot of Magic online, youtube, twitch and all kinds of websites to generate traffic).
To play Magic in digital has no actual player social interaction, so that really speaks to this group, and thats a large increase of people that a former LGS net of shops simply did not speak to at all.
Tournament players that seek out competition are basically dead now, WotC scrubbed it.
Bigger tournaments in paper basically represented events like concerts, a Grand Prix was an event to meet even more people in person than a LGS.
Today people play digital and cant even know if the opponent is not just a bot, or halve asleep, or goes afk in the middle of the game, its not social at all, its just a time-wasting mechanism like so many mobile games and a lot of the computer game industry shifts into that gear already for quite some time.
----
What really boggles my mind is the fact that an LGS even has to go over a distributor at all, its completely avoidable today.
To compete in price tags with Amazon and the like is not working, and a LGS can really only provide one thing that Amazon is not, and thats the space to play the game.
WotC is not providing any support for stores to do that, and they lost any financial incentive to do so as well, and the LGS that still exist either have a extremely strong community with lots of disposable income, or they simply bleed money till they are gone.
----
For a lot of people that play Commander you can also cut them into subgroups that have different interests.
The nostalgic players dont really buy new product, just very few singles for a existing deck.
The revenue these players bring in is minimal.
Completely new players at least buy a bunch of product and if they are not aware to efficiently buy singles, they buy a lot of sealed product as they simply dont know better (yet, as very learns at some point, or leaves the game).
So yes, for WotC its much better to simply abandon existing players and seek out new players.
Its long time quite destructive to piss off old players, but the deal is, the old players are not the whale customers.
And then we get the increasingly more expensive "premium" products that is leeching even more money from people.
A lot of people had a mentality of "buy a box of a new set" and thats about it, they never spend more money on a set.
Some of them now buy a collectors box of a set, thats already more expensive and then they buy all Commander decks of a new set, thats like 4x the amount they spend before, and then they order some SecretLair boxes, and what not ... and if any of that money would actually be funneled into an LGS it would help a lot, but its quite simply not cutting, as WotC is at the same time taking customers away from a LGS with their own product (assume you have advertisment for digital in a LGS, like what?).
----
So the "endgame" is probably going to be that Magic is losing the LGS and WotC as a game will sell product themselves.
At that point, someone else might take over the LGS, might even be a new card game (which is hard to sell for nostalgia players, as abandoning a game you played for 20years is quite heartbreaking and nothing you just do out of the blue).
We already have new games that are quite profitable already.
Flesh and Blood is pushing in the LGS-market for Magic (but sadly i just dont like the game, so its not for me).
With rent going up for all city-areas having a space to play Magic is expensive.
People play in restaurants, fast-food chains, or anywhere with a table and space.
Its certainly not the same as a central hub LGS that acts like the defacto-go-to location for everyone.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮