So what should wotc do with secret lair? Make them a FTV series that scalps everyone and can be either over or under printed? Only to benefit parasitic “investors”?
What should they do?
Stop making them and put these reprints in a $4 booster set. Like they should do with ALL cards.
So they should discontinue all non flagship products and only release things as though they were standard legal sets? I've seen some ridiculous asks here but this one is leagues beyond the others.
MTG is many things to many people so finding the best(Yes, 'best' includes making money for the company that makes this game. If they don't make money they don't keep making the game) way to get the people the things they want is tricky. It is impossible to print everything in a $4 booster because that implies a lot of things about print runs and distribution that they only do standard releases. They can't release every product like that because they are already filling the year with those 4 products.
we like to think this, but what magic players are in the game strictly for X format?
its a misconception. even the people who strictly draft often buy limited release product. the people who play commander are into everything. legacy players will pick up what they need from new sets. yes, there are a wide array of ways to play magic, but magic players gobble up everything thrown at them. even more so when you start planting cards for other formats in products. we like to think they don't market products at the entire market, but they really do and we eat it up.
how many commander precons have sold because of a legacy plant. how many secret lairs sold because people liked the art, or are into goblins. the grim reality is magic products are aimed toward magic players. its our own little bubbles that make us think they're not aimed at us, or a particular subset of players.
hell that doesn't even account for the lotto aspect of things. how many packs have you seen cracked playing the *insert card name* lotto.
they want dollars. they're not going to design and release products aimed squarely at one audience when they can aim it all of them. the minute we start accepting that fact we can stop fooling ourselves and push for legitimate change.
Its not a misconception. While there are definitely people who buy everything Magic as I pointed out in my earlier post there isn't actually that many. When I started I was a standard only player. Then I became a standard and Commander player who had no interest in any masters set because they didn't have things I wanted for commander. Now I'm a strictly arena player so no physical products appeal to me. Further you only have to look at this forum discussing Unsanctioned to see a massive number of people whom it isn't for. The same for the previous secret lair. Within the first 10 posts at least 3 say the product isn't for them. So its rather ridiculous to say every magic product is for every magic player.
The sad truth is, Magic doesn’t just have to sell well. It must continue to sell better than it previously did. Otherwise, Hasbro will trim its funding. And that means layoffs. I have a sad feeling these are genuine artists who do love this game, simply fighting for survival against corporate demand.
Frankly, with every horrid, insidious and deliberately evil thing I had seen Konami get away with in my 12 year tenure in Yugioh, believe me when I insist that Secret Lair, Masters sets, product fatigue, and literally every plausible complaint a Magic player could possibly conceive is vastly mild in comparison. I cannot stress this enough.
While I don't know everything Konomi did I know their general trend was awful. But while there are similarities in what magic is doing there is one HUGE difference between these games that makes what they are doing radically different. Yugioh only has one real format(as far as I can tell) which makes all of their products targeted at the same audience. Magic has over a 11 official constructed formats plus a dozenish variations on those formats. Meaning that not all of their products are aimed at the same people. I can understand that some people see release after release and are overwhelmed but when you realize the different targets it doesn't seem so saturated. If you look at the last two releases you can immediately see this. Theros and Unsanctioned. While there might be overlap their actual targets are radically different. Next up is Secret Lair and that could target Commander or Legacy or Modern players so once more a completely different target. If you are one of those who falls under "anything magic" then yes you are hit by a lot of splash damage but people aren't supposed to be "anything magic related"; they are expected to fall into a few categories but not all of them.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
All holidays are made up. Belittling Valentine's Day by saying its made up is the same as belittling Monday because it ends in Day.
MTG is many things to many people so finding the best(Yes, 'best' includes making money for the company that makes this game. If they don't make money they don't keep making the game) way to get the people the things they want is tricky. It is impossible to print everything in a $4 booster because that implies a lot of things about print runs and distribution that they only do standard releases. They can't release every product like that because they are already filling the year with those 4 products.