[ SECRET POST #3535 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3535 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 18 secrets from Secret Submission Post #505.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Stupid things companies do.

[(Anonymous)]

Rather than ranting about my own job, I would like to talk about two things that Wizards of the Coast does with regards to their trading card game Magic: The Gathering which I think are completely, radically idiotic from a business point of view.

First of all, the digital online version of Magic - MTGO - is laughably bad, and this is a huge missed opportunity for Wizards which is leading to them getting their lunches eaten by Hearthstone (in my mind, a basically inferior game). The interface and function of MTGO, just on a basic level, is not accessible. It is hugely underfunded, famously buggy, difficult to learn and use, and generally kind of a piece of trash. This isn't the fault of the people making it, who by all accounts are tremendously underpaid; it's the result of WotC not spending enough money on the product, and more broadly, a result of them viewing digital as basically a second priority. This is just the stupidest goddamn attitude imaginable. Digital should be a goddamn gold mine for them and they're throwing it away on account of some bullshit like that. It's ridiculous. I also think their pricing decisions regarding MTGO, and some other ease of use decisions they've made wrt stuff like trades, are probably wrong, but at the end of the day, the lack of a digital platform that's reliable and easy to use is basically just throwing money away. The definition of penny wise and pound foolish.

Second, Wizards' attitude towards reprints and singles is tremendously wrong-headed. Wizards should aggressively reprint staple cards and substantially increase their availability. However, they have shown no signs of willingness to do this, which creates a huge barrier to entry for Magic, especially for older formats. This limits the popularity of the game, and also - since this is particularly true for older formats - takes away one of Magic's huge advantages over a game like Hearthstone: the fact that it has a 20-year history of cards to take advantage. And the extremely high prices of singles provide a huge incentive for counterfeiters to create fake magic cards and for players to make use of them, which is bad for Wizards.

There have historically been a number of reasons for their reprint policy. First, the idea that they don't care about supporting older formats like Modern and Legacy, and instead want to prioritize Standard, since only Standard drives pack sales. But this is obviously no longer true: Wizards now regularly prints Masters products which allow them to make money off old cards. Indeed, larger print runs and more generous decisions WRT rarity in Modern products would be one of the main methods for bringing down card prices. Second, there has been a fear of flooding the market, going all the way back to Chronicles. And that's a valid concern. But the behavior of the market for singles - in particular, the consistent price spikes for older cards, and the fact that Masters printings fail to make an appreciable dent in the price points for in-demand staple cards - strongly suggest that we are still miles and miles away from hitting that point. There is a huge gap between us and the point where flooding the market is even theoretically a concern. Third, there's the Reserve List¹. And the Reserve List is a genuinely valid concern; being unable to reprint cards on it, especially dual lands, would probably doom Legacy over the long term. But - even if the Reserve List is sacrosanct - that doesn't apply at all to Modern, and yet Modern has just as many issues with card availability and price as Legacy, with no sign of any real commitment from Wizards to bring down prices. So clearly, there's an issue beyond the existence of the Reserve List here.

At the end of the day, aggressive reprinting of staple Modern and Legacy cards would make Wizards boatloads of cash on sales of Masters packs. It would also significantly lower the barrier to entry for players and increase the player base which would promote pack sales generally. Combined with a revamped digital product, the opportunity for Magic to continue expanding is really fucking substantial. But for whatever reason (probably bullshit from Hasbro) they have shown no willingness to do any of this.

1: for those who don't follow Magic, the Reserve List is a promise never to reprint certain specific cards from the mid to late 90s which means that those cards have a finite supply. why the Reserve List exists, and whether it should be maintained, are extremely controversial topics in Magic