Thread by @ghirapurigears

i think what is happening, and this is probably obvious, is that the demographics of magic players have shifted slowly but significantly over the past 10 years+, and wotc has finally decided to shift their spotlight

and the magnifying glass that pointed square at the specific format of the tournament grinder/pro player was cool for an era, but when you look outside that lens, you realize the gigantic ocean of people you missed when you were looking at this tidepool

and again, i love watching and experiencing the pro scene! but for years and years, they ignored the casual side, figuring we'd just follow along and catch up, and we kinda basically did, but it turns out that it's just easier for folks to play with their pals than on tour

the grinder life is *hard*, and requires a substantial amount of financial comfort and privilege to do. most magic players will never be able to do that. but what they can do is pick up a couple of packs and throw a deck together with their buds every once in a while

But think about it- wotc figured out in 2009 or so that maybe there are other folks out there to try to reach, and then in 2011 everything changed. We got Duals of the Planeswalkers on consoles. we got pop-culture friendly Innistrad. and we got the first commander precons.

and one thing I've noticed, and that wotc certainly noticed, is that 2011-2012 was one of the largest influxes of new and returning players in the game. combine that with the advent of streams, podcasts, protour coverage really hitting, and suddenly Magic was a brand new game

But the focus stayed on that pro circuit and those core spike players, even though the data was showing more and more folks were not getting DCI numbers, but were buying packs and precons by the pallet

and those folks were definitely playing *something*, be it 60 card whatever or 100 card singleton

and WotC does more and more data collection, tries more and more things that are cosmetic and fun and sees how they do. And what happens? Well, for one, commander 2011 sold out completely, and they didn't have a 2012, so they made arsenal

and then after 2013, there has been a commander product every single year that has sold through completely, every single time.

And suddenly stores are reporting that weirdo old cards that were dollar rares in the bulk bin are suddenly HUGE and highly sought after, and players are demanding reprints of cards no 'real' magic player had thought about for decades

And Wotc does more data collection, coupled with looking at player patterns at GPs and high level and store level events, and it's weird. suddenly we hear numbers like 11 out of every 12 players of commander is outside the official ecosystem

and then we start to see wilder and wilder experiments with fancy treatments and reprints and casual multiplayer focused sets

and people yell and scream about things like mythic editions and expeditions and yet those things end up selling like mad. and then Secret Lairs. that fucking walking dead set we killed each other for? Best selling one to date for some reason

and more and more commander and casual focused cards show up in premier sets, and more and more casual content creators are starting shows that are taking off and going nova on youtube, twitch, and podcasts

Game Knights is routinely getting million views on individual videos, eclipsing an entire year's worth of views of pro coverage

And for the true coup de gras, the fucking pandemic year, where magic by all rights should have died, because all events and tournaments and 'real play' basically disappeared, is the best year the game has ever had

and why? not because of Arena or the MPL, but because casual fans went and cobbled together an entire fucking ecosystem of hacked and taped together ways to play magic casually with each other from within our own homes

Because we all followed Olivia's lead, taped up our webcams to our monitors and stacks of books, pointed down at the table, hopped onto discord and said "your go, my dude"

Spelltable was a fan made creation specifically to allow people to play commander. Not to play 1v1 pro magic. It was so good, so effective, that wotc literally just bought them outright.

Infinitokens came out of nowhere to give us online friendly ways to make tokens and play edh with each other

CFB hosted multiple online command fests for people to play face to face that were wildly successful. More and more live edh games started streaming, and folks who resolutely avoided commander forever started coming around too

And if you were Johnny Beancounter at Hasbro and you took a look at the numbers and the play patterns and what your actual active and engaged customer base was doing with your product instead of engaging how you want them to through arena, what would you do?

Think about it- abstractly, hasbro has to hate commander. it's folks buying one of cards from eons ago that aren't buying packs and cracking packs and dealing with rotation.

But they had the flash that hey, if we made cards commander players wanted and fancy shit to make them look pretty and put them in the booster packs we'd rather they bought, we can have our cake and eat it too

Suddenly, commander legends. Suddenly Ikoria comic arts. Suddenly every secret lair under the sun. And you know what? it worked. Fans ate it up. Magic is growing and thriving in the worst kind of environment for a game that demands face to face interaction

So when we hear 'hey, we're still gonna have events and tournaments, but we're gonna focus more on the casual gathering aspects rather than funding the top tier pro program', it sucks because we've all really enjoyed those players and those stories and that climb

but when you actually take a step back and look at the entire magic experience, and what the people are actually doing, well, it makes more sense both financially for wotc, and giving the broad audience what they want

This isn't to say it doesn't hurt, or that it's a good thing to do this. I want those pro players to still be jamming games! i adore watching them on streams and vods, and i absolutely love listening to high level magic commentary

I just understand why WotC would want to change their view point to see the entire forest instead of the one specific tree they've looked at for 25 years.

That said? let's be real- magic is making money hand over fist. We've all heard the hasbro shareholder calls and stuff. Maybe this doesn't need to be an either/or, and maybe we can have both a relaxed fun magic experience and a really fantastic pro scene.

The draft environments for the past few years have been absolutely fantastic. (dream trawler aside, fuck that guy). Standard hasn't. So maybe we can figure out a way to shine the light on limited, and bring that spiky grinder experience back? Arena opens are a good start!

Realistically, we need folks like SCG and CFB to start their own pro circuits again, and create a thriving scene for competitive players. Let wotc stick to making cards, and leave the events to the people who are amazing at it

Magic isn't going to die from this. It's simply catching up to the demographic shift that happened years ago when no one was looking. This means rough transitions and tough decisions, and a lot of hurt feelings, but hopefully we can find a way forward together.

After all, it isn't Magic without the Gathering. Have a good weekend.