Thread by @bmkibler

So I haven’t been involved in competitive Magic for years now, but I felt compelled to comment on this, since it was such a big part of my life for so long. I am frankly not surprised to see the MPL being dissolved –

https://twitter.com/MagicEsports/status/1392857282719805449

While it was an exciting idea when it was announced, the fact that its existence meant cutting back massively on other organized play hurt interest in competitive Magic overall, and the league itself was implemented and produced so poorly that it was doomed to fail from the start

Covid obviously hurt competitive Magic overall, but it was more a matter of giving it time to bleed out from the self-inflicted wound that was the MPL. Yes, people are interested in watching top players compete, but they’re also interested in the dream of competing against them,

which in more open systems was a real possibility. The chance of watching their friends or being on camera themselves at a Grand Prix was a much bigger draw than seeing the same players compete in the same format week in and week out – prerecorded and without player cams.

While the MPL itself was an unmitigated disaster, I don’t think it’s entirely to blame for Wizards’ decision to move away from the pro Magic dream. Magic pros have been living on borrowed time for years. Remember “Pay the Pros?”

If anything, while the MPL was clearly intended to serve as marketing for MTG Arena, the league’s poor performance juxtaposed with the game’s success raised the question of how important pro play is anyway.

Supporting playing Magic professionally as a career made a lot of sense when the game needed aspirational figures to encourage others to invest time and money into the game, but not only is Magic so ingrained as a lifestyle product now...

with celebrity fans like Post Malone or Mr Beast or Hunter Pence, but MTGArena and the streaming and content creation boom it has facilitated as made more avenues for Magic stardom.

Does it make sense for WotC to pay the MPL to compete when people like Crokeyz are promoting the game as much or more and making a living doing it without them having to pay him a dime? Streamers and content creators help obsolete the previous model of pros as necessary

I’m hopeful that this isn’t the end of the dream for competitive Magic players, even if it is the end of WotC explicitly supporting the pro lifestyle. While my time as a Magic pro is long since past, I know there are a lot of people out there who love the game like I do...

and who want to throw themselves into it and get rewarded like I once was. But being a Magic pro is likely to look different in the future, and likely to be more about content creation and building a personal brand than about winning tournaments and getting that WotC paycheck.

But here's the secret: it always was. How do you think I got to where I am now?