Why hasn't another company come along and started their own magic pro tour scene? Would be pretty epic if WotC got snipped from their own card game due to incompetence. "Oh no it's not 'sanctioned' with DCI...
For what purpose? Tournaments are a vehicle for WotC to promote their product. So it would have to be Magic-related. SCG is probably the only company who does something like that and they're in cahoots with WotC. And Wizards could probably throw in all kinds of legal stuff to hinder it since it's their brand.
It's honestly probably not worth it. Magic doesn't get enough twitch viewers to warrant an outside company to sponsor a huge event with a big pay out. I mean SCG kind of, but they're already invested in the game. Every day when iI get home from the gym magic is like the 5Oth ranked game on twitch on a weekday. I'm sure a weekend can't be that much better even during a major event
Edit: kind of ninja'd
I wonder how good Netrunner with good casting and a hole cam would be.
Originally Posted by Lemnear
Hey man, if the money's not there maybe stop pretending your hobby is your profession and get a real job? The rest of us do.
They did...because it wasn't profitable as a Living Card Game.
I worry that Wizards are going the way of Konami, constantly printing more insane and stupidly-powerful cards...whilst not catering to long-time players. Abusing short-termism from Pro chaser and Pro players to keep them in, whilst ignoring the newer players.
I suspect that the reason MTG will never be as popular as other games is because the player base is too fractured, so many players don't care about limited formats, likewise there are some that only play limited/ standard and dont play eternal formats, not to mention casuals and kitchen table players that dont care about either. If WOTC has an event, they are essentially only 1 format (with the exception of the team events), and everyone that doesnt care about that format just doesn't pay attention to it. Instead of other competitive games where everyone essentially plays the same 'format', their viewership/ fanbase isnt segregated in the same manner.
At the same time though, WOTC is notoriously cheap and they dont seem to know how to market the products they have. They rely heavily on other people marketing for them. In a way it gives off cultish vibes.
Cost does play some of a factor, as competitive paper magic is probably one of the worst EV competitions with everything factored, but there are formats like pauper where you can buy a deck for less that what Overwatch costs, you can even play online in casuals so you don't even pay tournament fees, or you could even make money in tournaments if you wanted to compete and were good at it. This is just one a many different formats that are in the game, one that a fraction of mtg players play or even know about because WOTC barely acknowledges its existence and all of its growth is entirely from the community itself. There are many ways to play MTG for fun and competitively, but everyone that plays overwatch essentially plays the same game. This applies to most popular sports and competitive video games as well.
There is no single format that everyone plays, and no one single format that everyone that plays magic cares about, but WOTC only advertises Standard, Limited and some Modern, leaving all the other formats, both casual and sanctioned, to their own devices. In general I think it factors down to general incompetence from WOTC; say they don't like expensive cards that are cost prohibitive, but do little to keep prices in check because they are afraid to collapse prices, even in formats they have 100% control over like modern. There is little exposure to any other formats outside of Standard, Limited and Modern, they could take the tiniest initiative to just use their twitch channel that essentially sits empty most of the time that to showcase other formats but they choose not to. They only stream events because Rashad Miller was passionate enough to stream games early on, including MTG, by himself on his own time, the super league series only exists because Randy Buehler streamed rotisserie draft from someones garage for fun, before making a vintage super league because he was passionate about that format, and even then they still have to resort to running a patreon to keep it going because WOTC is too cheap to throw them a bone for advertising the game on their channel with some of the best players of all time. None of the relevant content they produce came from their own initiative. When they try to promote the game themselves, we get examples like the Silver Showcase which just further demonstrates how out of touch they are with reality. The game is basically kept alive by nature of it being exceptionally well designed by Richard Garfield, current R&D doesn't really even care about constructed formats anymore, even standard was a complete mess for years, maybe it is a blessing in disguise that WOTC basically keeps their hands off all the other formats. They may like to showcase how great of a community MTG players have, but they do very little to help foster these communities, especially if it doesn't directly benefit their bottom line (product sales).
Well said.
As the bolded part, a huge problem for the game is that WotC prioritizes collectors over actual players (see: RL, upshifting high demand reprint cards to mythic solely for secondary market price reasons), even though they don't openly admit it. Players vs. Collectors and Paper vs. Digital are two conflicts that hold the game back as a whole.
I wonder how popular MTG would be as an esport if WotC had ever actually released and supported a competent digital game. Or if they knew how to market and whatnot.
If you really sit down to think about it, the amount of success they've had in spite of themselves is really pretty mind blowing.
A search for Bertoncini on his blog doesn't turn up anything. Granted, I've had it miss things before in searching, but I would like to see where he said this to confirm this isn't some kind of urban legend.
The Silver Showcase was almost comical in how badly thought out it was, especially considering how much money they sunk into it.
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Rosewater was talking about Mike Long, not Bertoncini. But the point stands regarding storytelling.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/article...e-2006-08-14-0
Ctrl+F: Mike Long.
Thanks. I probably mixed it up when the argument got reheated during the return of Bertoncini.
He did? The shittiest comments related to Legacy from Maro I can remember are
1) replacement duals that get around the RL would break Legacy (because two playsets would do so much when most decks don't even run one )
2) TNN's bullshit ability is well within the color pie since blue is the best color for non-color protection (factually wrong).
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