For how long? And that same reasoning can be applied to a number of fields. Should Wizards make a TV show because there is money in it?
Based on Wizards track record of electronic dealings, creating an eSport product will suck up a huge sum of money, and probably not turn out all that well. If it takes Wizards 5 years to get into the market, then it releases a medicore product, and then the bubble bursts. All of that money is up in smoke, which has real costs and impacts to the paper game, and MTGO.
Would be interesting to keep chat outside of the gameplay. Just keeping the pre-made phrases like "Hello and Good Luck"/"Good Game". Keep chat only outside with friends, in trade room and public rooms. I lost the track of how many times I needed to report a player for bad conduit in the chat during a duel.
Something like "Your deck sucks or pile of garbage" or "why are you playing on Tournament Practice Room?".
Outside of casual games like commander/momir or all other kind of fun games people just use chat to complain or insult. Most of the time to complain of a hand with only lands or without any lands....
Chat is where toxicity blossoms. For every good message I see on Reddit or Twitter, there are at least 10 more omg nublets go kill yourself your deck is bad and you're bad and magic is bad messages shared.
I think the solution is the opposite, to be honest. Chat used to be a thing when you were auto-joined into rooms. I used to have actual friends I made in chat. There was lots of fun and joking in the draft rooms before new queues went up, for instance.
Wizards should not be worried to create an successful Esport game. If they want to create a new digital game first they should make It fun, interesting to play and appealing to all players new/old ones.
If it will succeed as an esport will depend just on the audience and if they want to play/watch this kind of game. The biggest problem of creating a Magic game so distinct of a magic game is how It will affect the older one. If the new "Magic Esport" with lite rules succeeds more than the paper version that we already play how it will affect the entire franchise?
If this lite Magic becomes more appealing, if I were a new player why should I start/keep buying regular booster packs and playing with normal rules since the lite version is more fun/competitive? What will happens if pros start migrating from old magic to the new esport magic? Probably the popularity of the regular product will fall and what will happen with collectors and all kind of players who invested on the regular magic?
Off course they could create a new product based on the Mtg but not create a new Magic. If they create a product that competes against It's own product they will just put a nail on the coffin. They could create a new product but not a Magic v2.0 with new rulings (or the lack of them). Otherwise a newbie will see "esport Magic" and say "-Wow that is cool!" them goes to LGS and see a bunch of players playing something different than he saw.
Killing chat functionality would absolutely murder casual magic like a shiv in the back. And that includes PRES and any kind of relationship players have with the major organizations like mtgotraders etc.
I don't think Wizards wants a *new* eSports product. I think they want *Magic* to be an eSports product. While a minor difference, it is nonetheless important.
I also agree to a certain point about the bubble aspect of eSports. IF Wizards throws a whole bunch of money to develop a new product that might just enter a failing market. Such a loss of money could easily affect MTG and MTGO.
Magic is as magic is now will not be an eSport though. There are significant barriers to entry that make that almost an impossibility, ranging from the costs of cards (both hearthstone and pokemon are incredibly cheep) to the difficulty of the game, it's not just one can pick up and play and be good at after a short tutorial.
There needs to be an almost all new version of the game to appeal to the eSport crowd.
I would like an unified product MTGO + Duels but keeping the logging/Account from MTGO. Creating a more portable game, supported for most languages and "free to play".
It would get the cool aspects of Hearthstone I mean an Arena, a story mode, and constructed formats.
For story mode Wizards could sell Dlcs and you would be playing a pre constructed deck representing a planeswalker. The Map would be something like the "puzzles" we had when Shadow Over Innistrad had an exclusive preview on MTG official site. If we were playing the Shadow's story we would be playing as Jace and searching for clues. We could have other paths playing as Sorin/Nahiri or even Tamiyo. It would help sell new sets but also and most important selling the lore of that specific set. It would be more immersive for new and old players since you will not need to focus on deck building or something like that. And you would get exclusive cards or exclusive promo versions of certain cards.
In Arena you would be playing like a draft and would build your deck choosing random cards from a pool. To not be only "another way to call draft" it would get cards from random different sets but would most of the times highlight cards from the new sets. Your prize would be treasure chests/Play Points.
And we would have the constructed formats we already have specially the leagues. Also adding a time counter just in case you keep inactive for more than 1-2 min without making no moves.
Like you said in your article I think we need a bridge between real and digital Magic. Giving Play Points in booster packs to redeem in MTGO. Would be something like 2-10 Play Points so new and curious players would/could try the online version. Spending a certain number of play points to try Arena and start an online collection after winning some prizes.
I think we need to sell Magic as Magic is and not creating a lite version of It. What differs Magic from Hearthstone are instants and all sort of cards we have. You have "secrets" in Hearthstone but they are triggered in a random way that is frustrating some times. I think we could get all the magic phases and gameplay style but we need a better AI. Something more fast but at the same time intuitive.
I can understand the desire to move into eSports though, as there is so much money involved with it.
And I don't think WotC has an issue with marketing to the younger crowd, because well, the game has picked up as that crowd has gotten older and started to receive expendable income.
What I see when I look at the eSports arena is the success of MOBAs, without Dota, League and Heroes, and I guess to a point Starcraft (though it's not really a moba) and pvp in wow, I see a bunch of games the rely on dexterity. Those games are exciting, fast, can turn in an instant, they feel like actual sports games.
Hearthstone, Clash Royale (which is weird typing to me) don't have that dexterity. They feel very similar to where Poker was with the ESPN broadcasts and such.
If I were wotc and looking to get into the eSports market, I would make a MOBA, and I would make a fast paced easy to pick up card game, based on it's Magic IP. Those two things seem to be where the money is.
They don't have to do anything to Magic, either in paper or digital form, for it to be successful, because as you said, Magic has been around for decades, it's already been successful, it will continue to be successful.
I don't think they should be worrying about moving into eSports at all. eSports is just a bubble. Magic has been here for 23 years, it withstood 99% of its imitators collapsing, it remains profitable with its current sales model while all the lesser competition switched to the Fantasy Flight LCG model, and it remains the best-designed CCG product on the market by a wide margin. It was profitable in 2009 *before* the player boom, in fact. Did Duels help fuel that? Absolutely. Can a new digital product cause another boom? Somebody there must think so, but it sure seems like the market is saturated the game has peaked to me.
Right now there seems to be a craze of "how do we market to millenials??!!" Sure they watch eSports apparently, but they don't have money, and not everything has to be about them anyhow. This is an example of somebody trying to catch the tail of a marketing trend way after the correct time. If you aren't one of the first people in the pyramid scheme, you don't join it. By the time you're asking how to market to group X, it's already too late to market to them and you should be solidifying the market you DO have or looking in a direction nobody's looked yet.
I only interacted with Worth very slightly (an abandoned game years ago and a commander game in the commander product beta that was a blast for all) so I can't really attest to his likability at a personal level but the man has been in the trenches with us for a long long time.
"Hamtastic" had only good things to say about him (ofc Erik was kind to all but he didn't talk about everyone.) The forums post where WOTC was constantly barraged with complaint after complaint (many not only justified but not even loud enough in retrospect, imho) he posted and responded and stuck in there where others fled.
He was responsible (at the urging of many of the forum members) for pushing Power online. Maybe he didn't do it exactly how I would have, and maybe there were some aspects of his job I felt he could have done better/differently, and maybe he alienated a good portion of the community with certain policies and the tightlipped responses to the outcry from those policies but I think he was a good captain of the MTGO ship.
I say he will be missed. I am also gravely concerned about what his firing means for us. Will MTGO remain a staltwart program (such as it is) in this era of slash and burn everything? Or will it go the way of Appr32 to be replaced by MTGOjr? Only time will tell but this kind of worry makes me wish for stability not change.
Do you think there would even be modo without the paper version of Magic: The Gathering?
I don't understand your problem. I read the whole article to understand your problem to find a single sentence 'promoting' LGS play. It's under Opinion Section: Bannings for a reason. It gives information or opinion about why cards were banned in Standard. Paper Magic and online play use the same rules and B&R lists. The paper players are the driving force. There's way more of them and keep the game alive. If players won't be coming to LGSs to buy product and participate in organized play what is going to happen to Magic? What do you think? Some LGSs seriously need support. I've run a store for few years and it's not easy, especially during certain periods (pre-rotation) and when some are 'artificially' created and last long everyone suffers from it. WotC, players, stores and it also affects Magic Online. Even though I don't play much paper anymore even I could see the attendance waning. From 25 players Standard events to events that do not even fire. Lowest attendance PPTQs in the history of all stores in our country (our city -> 28 players in one store, 8 in another, 10 in the last one? Seriously? 54 player RPTQ!).
It's actually the same as the case with Worth. Yes, some people will be glad about him being let go. But it is something that will affect Worth's life and family. The LGS owners struggle now as well. While prerelease events are one of the most lucrative events they can't even make up for Standard and Modern events that struggled to fire for quite a long time. This means that some stores struggle to even stay open.
I didn't play Standard much on modo, only played because of PPTQs and such but lately I started to play and when normally I don't play against the same person twice in a month or even a year, and now I got to play against 3 same people in three Leagues, 3 times! I've played matches against others twice. This may not be objective way to see how many players play, but certainly is not something that should be happening in a format that is the most played one. I practically know Vintage players and Legacy players are the same as well. But in Standard??
As for promoting paper play. Wizards of the Coast actually promoted play in stores at several occasions on Magic Online. That does not bother you?
Shouldn't we all strive to keep the game alive? And if we want our digital version, we need to keep the paper version alive.
While some are happy that Worth is gone, and I guess it's understandable, I would like to remind you that Worth losing his job not only affects his family, so let's uh, keep the joyous celebration out of it.
Having met Worth and PTQ'd with him in the long long ago, I found him to be a good person, and having empathy for him is fine during this life change.
The problem with not promoting paper play is that MTGO is the digital version of MTG. Paper play and digital play are linked, because they are the same game.
Also: Worth was fired last week, good riddance and he won't be missed. Also: stop promoting paper play, I'd be happy if every "LGS" burns to the ground. This site is called "pure" MTGO for a reason.
Or even only humans not originally printed in the Scourge expansion or earlier can be played. (Conversely, if it was originally printed in 8ED or later then it cannot be played)
For how long? And that same reasoning can be applied to a number of fields. Should Wizards make a TV show because there is money in it?
Based on Wizards track record of electronic dealings, creating an eSport product will suck up a huge sum of money, and probably not turn out all that well. If it takes Wizards 5 years to get into the market, then it releases a medicore product, and then the bubble bursts. All of that money is up in smoke, which has real costs and impacts to the paper game, and MTGO.
Ok, I'll give you that. Having chat among friends would be fine, it's just dang bad in game.
Would be interesting to keep chat outside of the gameplay. Just keeping the pre-made phrases like "Hello and Good Luck"/"Good Game". Keep chat only outside with friends, in trade room and public rooms. I lost the track of how many times I needed to report a player for bad conduit in the chat during a duel.
Something like "Your deck sucks or pile of garbage" or "why are you playing on Tournament Practice Room?".
Outside of casual games like commander/momir or all other kind of fun games people just use chat to complain or insult. Most of the time to complain of a hand with only lands or without any lands....
The ones who say something positive just say GG.
Discords are springing up, just have the players use those for PREs.
Chat is where toxicity blossoms. For every good message I see on Reddit or Twitter, there are at least 10 more omg nublets go kill yourself your deck is bad and you're bad and magic is bad messages shared.
Sports franchises are buying into eSports. Heck one of the former hosts of Freed from the Real is a eSport employee of the Houston Rockets right now.
There is, I guess an incredible amount of money to made if it is done right.
Wanting magic as is to be an eSport is a failing proposition though. It's just too complicated of a game to find reach among a new audience.
I think the solution is the opposite, to be honest. Chat used to be a thing when you were auto-joined into rooms. I used to have actual friends I made in chat. There was lots of fun and joking in the draft rooms before new queues went up, for instance.
Wizards simply hid chat, and now it is not used.
Wizards should not be worried to create an successful Esport game. If they want to create a new digital game first they should make It fun, interesting to play and appealing to all players new/old ones.
If it will succeed as an esport will depend just on the audience and if they want to play/watch this kind of game. The biggest problem of creating a Magic game so distinct of a magic game is how It will affect the older one. If the new "Magic Esport" with lite rules succeeds more than the paper version that we already play how it will affect the entire franchise?
If this lite Magic becomes more appealing, if I were a new player why should I start/keep buying regular booster packs and playing with normal rules since the lite version is more fun/competitive? What will happens if pros start migrating from old magic to the new esport magic? Probably the popularity of the regular product will fall and what will happen with collectors and all kind of players who invested on the regular magic?
Off course they could create a new product based on the Mtg but not create a new Magic. If they create a product that competes against It's own product they will just put a nail on the coffin. They could create a new product but not a Magic v2.0 with new rulings (or the lack of them). Otherwise a newbie will see "esport Magic" and say "-Wow that is cool!" them goes to LGS and see a bunch of players playing something different than he saw.
Okay, I have to ask. Why does Magic need to be an eSport? It makes money as is, and supports a much wider swath of people financially.
Killing chat functionality would absolutely murder casual magic like a shiv in the back. And that includes PRES and any kind of relationship players have with the major organizations like mtgotraders etc.
I don't think Wizards wants a *new* eSports product. I think they want *Magic* to be an eSports product. While a minor difference, it is nonetheless important.
I also agree to a certain point about the bubble aspect of eSports. IF Wizards throws a whole bunch of money to develop a new product that might just enter a failing market. Such a loss of money could easily affect MTG and MTGO.
Magic is as magic is now will not be an eSport though. There are significant barriers to entry that make that almost an impossibility, ranging from the costs of cards (both hearthstone and pokemon are incredibly cheep) to the difficulty of the game, it's not just one can pick up and play and be good at after a short tutorial.
There needs to be an almost all new version of the game to appeal to the eSport crowd.
I would like an unified product MTGO + Duels but keeping the logging/Account from MTGO. Creating a more portable game, supported for most languages and "free to play".
It would get the cool aspects of Hearthstone I mean an Arena, a story mode, and constructed formats.
For story mode Wizards could sell Dlcs and you would be playing a pre constructed deck representing a planeswalker. The Map would be something like the "puzzles" we had when Shadow Over Innistrad had an exclusive preview on MTG official site. If we were playing the Shadow's story we would be playing as Jace and searching for clues. We could have other paths playing as Sorin/Nahiri or even Tamiyo. It would help sell new sets but also and most important selling the lore of that specific set. It would be more immersive for new and old players since you will not need to focus on deck building or something like that. And you would get exclusive cards or exclusive promo versions of certain cards.
In Arena you would be playing like a draft and would build your deck choosing random cards from a pool. To not be only "another way to call draft" it would get cards from random different sets but would most of the times highlight cards from the new sets. Your prize would be treasure chests/Play Points.
And we would have the constructed formats we already have specially the leagues. Also adding a time counter just in case you keep inactive for more than 1-2 min without making no moves.
Like you said in your article I think we need a bridge between real and digital Magic. Giving Play Points in booster packs to redeem in MTGO. Would be something like 2-10 Play Points so new and curious players would/could try the online version. Spending a certain number of play points to try Arena and start an online collection after winning some prizes.
I think we need to sell Magic as Magic is and not creating a lite version of It. What differs Magic from Hearthstone are instants and all sort of cards we have. You have "secrets" in Hearthstone but they are triggered in a random way that is frustrating some times. I think we could get all the magic phases and gameplay style but we need a better AI. Something more fast but at the same time intuitive.
I can understand the desire to move into eSports though, as there is so much money involved with it.
And I don't think WotC has an issue with marketing to the younger crowd, because well, the game has picked up as that crowd has gotten older and started to receive expendable income.
What I see when I look at the eSports arena is the success of MOBAs, without Dota, League and Heroes, and I guess to a point Starcraft (though it's not really a moba) and pvp in wow, I see a bunch of games the rely on dexterity. Those games are exciting, fast, can turn in an instant, they feel like actual sports games.
Hearthstone, Clash Royale (which is weird typing to me) don't have that dexterity. They feel very similar to where Poker was with the ESPN broadcasts and such.
If I were wotc and looking to get into the eSports market, I would make a MOBA, and I would make a fast paced easy to pick up card game, based on it's Magic IP. Those two things seem to be where the money is.
They don't have to do anything to Magic, either in paper or digital form, for it to be successful, because as you said, Magic has been around for decades, it's already been successful, it will continue to be successful.
I don't think they should be worrying about moving into eSports at all. eSports is just a bubble. Magic has been here for 23 years, it withstood 99% of its imitators collapsing, it remains profitable with its current sales model while all the lesser competition switched to the Fantasy Flight LCG model, and it remains the best-designed CCG product on the market by a wide margin. It was profitable in 2009 *before* the player boom, in fact. Did Duels help fuel that? Absolutely. Can a new digital product cause another boom? Somebody there must think so, but it sure seems like the market is saturated the game has peaked to me.
Right now there seems to be a craze of "how do we market to millenials??!!" Sure they watch eSports apparently, but they don't have money, and not everything has to be about them anyhow. This is an example of somebody trying to catch the tail of a marketing trend way after the correct time. If you aren't one of the first people in the pyramid scheme, you don't join it. By the time you're asking how to market to group X, it's already too late to market to them and you should be solidifying the market you DO have or looking in a direction nobody's looked yet.
++100% this comment.
I only interacted with Worth very slightly (an abandoned game years ago and a commander game in the commander product beta that was a blast for all) so I can't really attest to his likability at a personal level but the man has been in the trenches with us for a long long time.
"Hamtastic" had only good things to say about him (ofc Erik was kind to all but he didn't talk about everyone.) The forums post where WOTC was constantly barraged with complaint after complaint (many not only justified but not even loud enough in retrospect, imho) he posted and responded and stuck in there where others fled.
He was responsible (at the urging of many of the forum members) for pushing Power online. Maybe he didn't do it exactly how I would have, and maybe there were some aspects of his job I felt he could have done better/differently, and maybe he alienated a good portion of the community with certain policies and the tightlipped responses to the outcry from those policies but I think he was a good captain of the MTGO ship.
I say he will be missed. I am also gravely concerned about what his firing means for us. Will MTGO remain a staltwart program (such as it is) in this era of slash and burn everything? Or will it go the way of Appr32 to be replaced by MTGOjr? Only time will tell but this kind of worry makes me wish for stability not change.
Best or worst worker possible it should be, writing "best or worst person" is being ludicrous i agree.
Worth could be the biggest jerk or the best person imaginable.
We dont know, no lgs owner knows, and no random profile commenter on puremtgo knows.
All the bad stuff wotc has done they have done as a team. Paper/digital side is the same. The board decides.
Wotc are idiots and will probably continue to be idiots...
Do you think there would even be modo without the paper version of Magic: The Gathering?
I don't understand your problem. I read the whole article to understand your problem to find a single sentence 'promoting' LGS play. It's under Opinion Section: Bannings for a reason. It gives information or opinion about why cards were banned in Standard. Paper Magic and online play use the same rules and B&R lists. The paper players are the driving force. There's way more of them and keep the game alive. If players won't be coming to LGSs to buy product and participate in organized play what is going to happen to Magic? What do you think? Some LGSs seriously need support. I've run a store for few years and it's not easy, especially during certain periods (pre-rotation) and when some are 'artificially' created and last long everyone suffers from it. WotC, players, stores and it also affects Magic Online. Even though I don't play much paper anymore even I could see the attendance waning. From 25 players Standard events to events that do not even fire. Lowest attendance PPTQs in the history of all stores in our country (our city -> 28 players in one store, 8 in another, 10 in the last one? Seriously? 54 player RPTQ!).
It's actually the same as the case with Worth. Yes, some people will be glad about him being let go. But it is something that will affect Worth's life and family. The LGS owners struggle now as well. While prerelease events are one of the most lucrative events they can't even make up for Standard and Modern events that struggled to fire for quite a long time. This means that some stores struggle to even stay open.
I didn't play Standard much on modo, only played because of PPTQs and such but lately I started to play and when normally I don't play against the same person twice in a month or even a year, and now I got to play against 3 same people in three Leagues, 3 times! I've played matches against others twice. This may not be objective way to see how many players play, but certainly is not something that should be happening in a format that is the most played one. I practically know Vintage players and Legacy players are the same as well. But in Standard??
As for promoting paper play. Wizards of the Coast actually promoted play in stores at several occasions on Magic Online. That does not bother you?
Shouldn't we all strive to keep the game alive? And if we want our digital version, we need to keep the paper version alive.
Agree.
While some are happy that Worth is gone, and I guess it's understandable, I would like to remind you that Worth losing his job not only affects his family, so let's uh, keep the joyous celebration out of it.
Having met Worth and PTQ'd with him in the long long ago, I found him to be a good person, and having empathy for him is fine during this life change.
The problem with not promoting paper play is that MTGO is the digital version of MTG. Paper play and digital play are linked, because they are the same game.
Also: Worth was fired last week, good riddance and he won't be missed. Also: stop promoting paper play, I'd be happy if every "LGS" burns to the ground. This site is called "pure" MTGO for a reason.
Or even only humans not originally printed in the Scourge expansion or earlier can be played. (Conversely, if it was originally printed in 8ED or later then it cannot be played)