Magic The Gathering: 40% Decline in Players

I think it has something to do with the decline. You can call it whatever but people like attractive ideal characters in their media. A "hot" wizard or generic he-man warrior sells. You can mix them in with more complex characters but even games like overwatch which have a lot of SJW stuff still have cheesecakes and 10/10 symmetric faces.

>Is it because of their political viewpoints affecting quality?

As much as I hate this sort of shit, no. Social justice stuff is a marketing stunt without an audience. The majority of people who play this game don't get invested enough to notice things like strong independent womyn, diversity and other nonsense. The rest are either an outraged minority or a minority who never played the game in the first place. The latter would rather buy a t-shirt or a mug with a dumb slogan on it than play a nerdy card game to make a statement.

What I think is the problem is the secondary market is choking the life out of the game and Wizards aren't willing to upset it. Investfags need to fuck off from this game and Wizards need to start doing good reprints. Modern is way too fucking expensive at this point and I don't want to drop a couple hundred shekels into a standard deck which will become unplayable in two years.

It's still in decline playerbase wise. The sales aren't exactly the same, standard is in a bad boring spot, and modern prices have tanked across the board.

>digital card games

As much as I would like to blame it on the SJWs, it's more likely that MtG is being out-competed by digital card games. These games are capable of generating as much cash and pulling in as many players as MtG, except have miniscule operating costs because they don't need to print and distribute cardboard.

WotC was releasing garbage sets before the boogie man ruined your favorite failed retirement scheme, user.

Nothing bad is happening. All that's going on is that the massive gain in players they had from the game becoming a sort of fad for a bit are leaving and moving on to the next fad. I'm honestly surprised that the bubble lasted as long as it did.

How awesome will it be when they just go ahead and say "Fuck it" and start putting in more cards like this one in again.

It might be too late by then, but c'est la vie.

SJW has become sort of worn out. People are tired of especially because it had some effect towards trump being elected. Still they have left money on the table by refusing to do attractive women or characters. All the art has become weirdly ugly.

markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/167602330593/urgent-the-other-day-in-your-fantastic
markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/167608590393/40-decline-in-players-20mil-down-to-12mil
markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/167628717693/could-the-8-million-decrease-be-magic-returning-to
this whole subject is just the worst meme.

>start putting in more cards like this one in again.

So this is confusing to me. Isn't putting this art on cards the same thing as increasing representation of women? What, exactly, is anti-diversity about this art? And if this art is objectionable, then does this mean that representation of women can only be achieved via non-attractive women?

I don't think it's a major contributer. I mean, yes, there are a number of ecchi playmats at my LGS every Friday night, but for every player with an ecchi playmat, there are six with normal playmats. People who buy the cards because of some subconscious psycho-sexual compulsion are the minority.

Not to mention they're mostly free to play, with guaranteed opponents, and reduced social interaction with awkward weirdos. Which means it's more compelling to use your leisure time to play them rather than heading down to the local gaming store and spending actual cash.

This is a good point.

So... women with bad anatomy?

This is not marketable for instance. It fulfills the SJW crowd but no one wants an elderly granny pirate woman. Even if it's equal sjw or whatever.

You introduce a granny pirate to any video game as a character you can pick and literally 0.1% of playerbase will play it for lore reasons.

I'm glad to see all that you taking your brain out and replacing it with old man farts was worth it.

Ah right, so he's just a low-counter. That's fair.

>I-it's fine guys, I just fudge the numbers down!

It's probably even worse than they're letting on.

Yes. The people who get really uppity about representation of women in media they don't consume also vehemently despise women looking or acting like women

>I'm gonna use MaRo's shitty off the cuff ballpark numbers to doompost even though I hate MaRo
ayy lmao

I think the diversity problems are only a subset of the main problem of attempting to "comic-ize" the MtG brand.

They've seen the success comic book movies have had and are desperately trying to apply it, completely ignoring what made MtG lore and story unique in the first place.

There IS something marketable on that card though. It's just not the focus. That one pirate chick swinging on the nose seems cute. And so does Gingerbeard. HEll, even Cap'n Bignose on the top left is more marketable than literally the artist's mom

It's not even that. People just never really cared in the first place. It's shit that no one notices unless someone points it out.

They have a movie deal. They have had said movie deal for years. Two years past the intended release in fact, I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be out in 2015

>no one wants an elderly granny pirate woman
Sure, no one wants her sexually, but there's something compelling about the character. A hard-ass old lady who has risen to become a feared pirate captain has a certain aura about it, like a Captain Janeway done right. I don't know this character, but if she was a mythic I'd totally build a Commander deck around her.

But maybe I'm just in the 0.1% who like to think about these things rather than just drool over dem titties.

The MTG story is garbage. I wonder how much money the books and other things even make. Must be like F-tier fantasy revenue of 50k. I'd say the effort put into building up the jace-super-friends was negative value. The people who are into are the same who watch crappy DC movies, you could garbage shit into their pig trough and it would work.

I'm curious how the hell they estimated those numbers. Extrapolated from sales data maybe?

Why have you not built a commander deck around her then? Is it that she's so goddamn unremarkable that no one even fucking cares? Probably!

>the people who get really uppity about representation of women in media they don't consume
>don't consume
Women make up 25% to 35% of the playerbase.

I like to do both. Captain Granny Goodrich is awesome, but so are cards with dem tittays. I dunno why people have to be in one camp or the other. Shit's dumb yo.

It's never happening. The story is garbage. Even the worst director and producer is going to look at it and puke. The entire reason it's being made is hasbro execs pitching it. It will never ever film because the story would be that retarded.

Even if it did come out it would do 4 million dollars and quickly fail.

Not all women are uppity bitches obsessed with identity politics.

Because, as stated, I wasn't previously aware of this character. Now that I am, I probably will.

Yeah dude, old women are scary. So strong and empowered. Seriously even if you did an old women don't make her a physical fighter for god's sake.

Again, the people who are super into the whole "Diversity" camp aren't into hobby stuff generally. Complaining about lack of diversity IS their hobby.

I haven't kept up with the new sets, but are they really filling up their cards with 'ugly' women, or are they just adding a few here and there. I highly doubt that some granny pirate is massively driving down sales.

Well from what ive seen (which admideddly isnt much and im not really breaking new grounds) whenever she gets played most people instantly recognize her and just laugh and say "Granny Beckett Brass!" and we all have some fun so atleast it gives a reaction and thats better than some humdrum stuff that dosent gather any reaction.

Pay some company to make them up. All the MTG statistics they cite are random polling of people by some crock of shit company. Completely unrealistic numbers that hasbro wants to hear and put into quarterly reports. I would not believe them for a second.

Honestly, I'd prefer the angels actually look imposing. Gimme more Serra Angel and less of...whatever the fuck she's wearing. Like, what is the bit around her waist? She looks like she came off the Ravnica Mardi Gras float.

I'm pretty sure she's supposed to be the blackbeard Expy too
They fucking made the dude who went into battle with lit fuses in his beard into "Literally the artist's mom as a pirate"

Argument to moderation.

>women who care about the depiction of women on the cards they play are 'bitches'

Assumptions.

Yea. Then again serra angels are creation of a pre-mending planeswalker so they should be p. damn though.

I'm pretty sure they also make the mistake of outsourcing their market research.

>Seriously even if you did an old women don't make her a physical fighter for god's sake.

She's the Admiral. That's more a leadership/tactical role.

Deconstructivists can't create shit. What a surprise.
>Social justice stuff is a marketing stunt without an audience...
while making your current audience feel unwanted and worthless.
You can't push "a fucking white man reeeeeeee" and expect white men to keep buying your shit, specially when a large ammount of your consumer base is the kind of white man who is even playing this shit because they've been bullied out of pretty much every other hobby and social interaction.

They have the revenue/sales and organized play statistics. The polling and market research is basically voodoo science in comparison. They just want the biggest numbers possible to hype it up. Outsourcing it is important for deniability from investors.

You don't make mythic cards around non-exceptional characters. No one's suggesting that all the old ladies are scary, strong, and empowered. But this one is, and that's an interesting story around which to build a deck.

It's becoming harder and harder to just write off that as an assumption though. I mean, Look what happened to marvel when they started to listen to go all in with identity politics

Because standard sucks.
The top decks are all pay to win and too good for casual players bringing in their amateur-but-still-themed deck to compete with.
I know when I first started playing ( Khans) I tried making an outlast deck. Then I tried to make a 1/1 counter focused deck. It just doesn't fucking work.
When a whole new archetype printed is trash outside of draft, you know you fucked up.
The powerlevel of cards is fucked. If you're not mostly playing mythics and rares, your deck can't compete because your cards aren't "complex" (read: mana efficient and generally useful) enough.
Another thing is that in order to play standard, you basically HAVE to buy from the second hand market. It's not even because it's cheaper and more efficient. There are so many trash rares/mythics that even if you buy a box or two ( no casual is going to do this ) you're still hard pressed to get a playset of all those rares you need. Transitioning from draft to standard is still expensive whilst also drawing your attention to how worthless most of the cards are.
You draft 15 times and then try to get into standard only to realize "holy shit I don't even have a playset of fucking uncommons that are standard competitive" and you basically have to buy into standard wholesale anyways no matter how much you drafted previously. Of course, all those cards you already drafted to the point of having multiple playsets? Worthless, not even used at all.
Basically, the powerlevel of cards is too uneven within a set. WotC didn't stick to their statement that rarity =/= power level. No point in buying packs because too many cards are worthless. Even if you do buy into standard those cards become worthless when they rotate because even the standard-strong cards are too weak to last in any eternal format.

I'd say they've pretty much removed most attractive women from cards and intentionally make ugly ones. So I'd say 80% reduction in attractive females, and a sizeable increase in "warrior women", aka male armor with a female head and long hair.

They give art directions like "This character should be a tough looking PoC woman soldier ....."

Nigger shut up. The only thing forcing artists to make characters ugly did was run away people like Swanland, Chan, Chippy and Ortiz.
If you care so much about poor opressed minorities go be a teacher in one of the hundreds of understaffed black-majority schools. Cardboard and internet whining doesn't save lives.

Yall 40% spammers are actually retarded, and not even on the active playerbase vs total customers distinction (12 mill vs 20 mill). This is a common sense issue:

You can't lose almost half the player-base but somehow have tournament attendance stay equal (which it has), there is no shock that large which somehow only affects casual players.

A drop in playerbase that drastic would inevitably come with a large drop of revenue, but the Hasbro quarterly reports for the past three years are like "and MtG growth offset losses in other departments" (search "Magic" in the Q4 reports: investor.hasbro.com/results.cfm); the remaining player base is not suddenly spending 66% more without a drastic sales restructure.

Online retailers like CFB and SCG, along with everyone with a significant finacial stake (Reserve List squatters), would have reacted to this way, way sooner. Probably with a shit ton of panic..

HEY
HEY
REMEMBER HOW A FEW YEARS AGO WHEN YOU DID THE SET REVIEW SURVEYS ON WIZARD'S SITE, IT WOULD LITERALLY KICK YOU OUT OF THE SURVEY IF YOU PLAYED THE GAME TOO MUCH?

It's not an interesting story. It's not exciting in the list.

"Pirate but it's old and grandma" is the laziest sjw design ever. She is boring.

I would say it's one of the laziest designs ever.

>I mean, Look what happened to marvel when they started to listen to go all in with identity politics

The good characters sold well, the bad characters sold poorly? Miles Morales sold like hot cakes becuase he was done with good writers and good artists. Marvel's issue is (And has been for decades) quality control, knowing when to go 'This doesn't work for putting to our name'. Like the basic idea of a girl as Thor? Yeah, that's fine. It totally works (I mean, at this point there has been 3 or 4 people who've had the power of Thor at one point or another). Th implimentation? Hahahah, god no.

It's less that it's about such characters and more that Marvel is doing exactly what they did in the 90s, just throwing stuff out and going 'Yeah, this is good enough'.

>thinking I'd listen to anything you have to say satan

There is panic though.

Khans was actually the last good block. Outlast was just gimped from the get go.
Oh yeah, And lets not forget, regular banning of cards in standard

No, you shut up you retarded faggot and take your stupid whining somewhere else.

Most people who play the game aren't even aware of the diversity angle they're pushing. At most, they see a black lady in a card's art, peruse over the mechanics and quickly forget it. I'm telling you man, you can't lose eight million players over asinine and unnoticeable shit like this.

She doesn't look badass though, her outfit is cool but that face really doesn't. I'm not saying an old lady can't look badass she can but that art just doesn't evoke that feel.

>and a sizeable increase in "warrior women", aka male armor with a female head and long hair.

I honestly like that more than the utter nonsense of . I mean, this is rather nice art of a female character.

>Argument to moderation.
So? It's nice that you read a tutorial on debate/argument, but invoking it in a meaningless way makes you retarded, user.

Hasbro's total gaming category grew 4% to $424.8 million, including revenue growth from MONOPOLY and an expected decline in MAGIC: THE GATHERING.

>decline
what does this mean m8?

Also haven't they been pumping out a fuck ton of extra sets and products compared to normal?

Funny story. When I first saw Samut's original card I thought that she was a girl, but when I saw the card in person I thought that she was too damn ugly to be a girl and had to be a guy. It wasn't until her card in HOU was spoiled that I realized that, no, she is a girl, but her art was just SO UGLY that I was CONVINCED that she was a man.

>You can't lose almost half the player-base but somehow have tournament attendance stay equal

I'd imagine you can. Tourney players are the most invested and so the least likely to quit.

I think they recently reworked their distribution chain (Read: Fucked it up)
Boy do I have a story about that

idk what tourney he is talking about though

FNM and releases are the tourney attendance that mtg cares about in relation to playerbase flux.

So yeah you were right, I went through the whole Ixalan preview and it was full of women in armor and pants. Like the other user said, not a huge deal as a lot of people already complained about "impractical" tits armor in the first place.

However seeing all the Asian and African women pirates is kind of hilarious. That probably won't go away either as even video games are going the route of absurd diversity (COD WW2 and For Honor). Sucks, but at least the games are still fun

post it. I love shit like that. The most amazing thing is hasbro's stock value isn't half what it is given how bad they are at anything digital.

WotC's largest playerbase increase coincided with Heartstone's release.
I can't believe Gwent stole more players from Magic than Heartstone.

Magis is in decline by a combination of all of the following:
>Increase in competition
>Nerd fad ending
>SJW bullshit making grognards feel unwelcome, so they take their neetbucks somewhere else
>SJW bullshit having a detrimental effect on card art, making the people who collected for the art lose interest and take their neetbucks somewhere else
>"Investors" making it harder for young and low-budget players to become enfranchised by entering the competitive scene
>Decrease in card stock quality
>Excessive ammounts of product giving people decision anxiety and having them not buy anything at all
>Latin America and East Asia (2nd and 3rd largest markets who don't have product avaliable anywhere but LGS) WPN regional coordinators closing hundreds of stores for not "living up" to Card Kingdom's standard. Because all of the world is Seattle, right?

It's the western game thing. Every game now has a black woman with an ugly face and dumb looking huge afro. They all just went for the most SJW design together instead of even daring to have a black woman with straight hair or a somalian style facial structure. Instead across the board it was what africans would consider an ugly nigerian woman with a mad looking face

It's a visual story in four parts about my experience buying a sealed case of the latest four commander decks
Images might be in the wrong orientation, but i'm going to give the same amount of effort to fix them as was put into QC on this product

>does this mean that representation of women can only be achieved via non-attractive women?
Yes, Social Justice Warriors are 80% insecure ugly women, 15% beta orbiters, 4% trolls, 1% innocent people who genuinelly believe they're fighting for a possitive change by whining on the internet about tits made of polygons and ink.

Tumblr is /r9k/ for fujos.

The market size for card games increased massively since hearthstone came out. MTG has lost huge market share but that doesn't always matter if the sector grows 50x in playerbase size.

They've probably missed out on at 400 million in revenue that a decent MTG digital game would have made by now.

>However seeing all the Asian and African women pirates is kind of hilarious. That probably won't go away either as even video games are going the route of absurd diversity (COD WW2 and For Honor).
>For Honor

Literally one of the factions in that game was the Japanese. Of course they had Asian people.

EVERY

Gotta agree here. Her face is way too smooth. She rather looks like some kind of C-List celebrity with a bad botox job

What I can't understand is how a badass grandma kind of character is supposed to be sjw pandering. Although I'm not american, so what do I know abozr that anyway

SINGLE

>What I can't understand is how a badass grandma kind of character is supposed to be sjw pandering.

>Is it a woman
>Is it not white

If either is true, it's social justice warrior pandering. If MTG was released for the first time today, the fact that angels are almost all women would be called SJW pandering.

RARE

In Ixalan, the latest set. Every attractive female character is either a native-american or a vampire. And they're apparently the villains of the set.
The pirates who get all the lore dick sucking are all ugly and multi-ethnic.

Because SJW design is braindead and non-imaginative. Just go ahead and think of the wierdest minority and then shoe horn them into a male boring trope.

>It's a knight but it's a transexual female one.
>It's a pirate but it's an old female one
etc. It's not based on a good idea, imagination, or developing a character. The SJW points are maximized then it's shoehorned into something boring.

The fantasy of some 11/10 attractive elf that calls on huge green creatures like mayael the anima is never considered. That design is too imaginative. It has to be "This woman is actually trans male but is a warlord"

The new Magic Arena app is looking like a desperate attempt to seduce players from games like hearthstone, shadowverse, yugioh and others to theirs, but not by direct competition. Instead, it looks again like another MtG digital simulation only to serve as a bridge for new players to divert into their real life cash grab.
They have to change the whole game to properly fit an online medium and tackle the competitors. They need to get rid of mechanics, make new ones, make QoL changes and more. Nobody born after 2000 wants to play a simulation of a 20 year old card game in their smartphones. Get fucking real.

I guess the weird thing about it too is how anti-diverse it is. I mean what if every society was this perfect mix of ugly and diverse people. All with the same history (we were all pirates, knights, samurai, indians, bedouins, egypts, greeks, romans, ming china). Could their be a world more plastic, boring and lacking in life?

Tempest (or which every one had the suq'ata) was a much better 'diversity' set. It was SJW before SJW was a thing: lets make a set based around only arabs and east africans. It set out to do those people justice and it was a much much more creative set of art then this appalling Ixalan design.

Also, someone should make Mark Rosewater answer for while all the peoples in the native faction all look like like real world natives, but the pirates faction is so diverse. Why weren't the natives allow the same kindness that was shown the pirates?

Probably because it's shitty gambling for shit that doesn't have any real value.

Honestly, all of the factions are decently sympathetic (If less so in the case of some of the pirates and the vampires). It's not perfect but they've done a pretty good job with all of them.

Ok, so what you're saying is that everyone who partakes in sjw stuff, be it against or for it, is simply retarded.

The Blackbeard expy is a minotaur and planeswalker.

I'm personally convinced that the only reason SJW character design is popular is cause it's a crutch. You can make the laziest, shittiest character ever but as long as they tick enough of the check boxes, NO ONE can call you out on your shit cause there's an army of people who don't even care about your game/book/whatever willing to defend you from people who do

Hasbro has no vision. They've had mtgo well before hearthstone came out. They never made a good digital product because they are too afraid to cannibalize. They aren't a good company. They just license big brands and make toys. It's outside of their capability to compete with any video game company.

It's not just MTG either, the entire company of hasbro has nothing but terrible digital experiences. Software dev is too complex for a mongoloid filled company to pull off.

An old female pirate honestly sounds like a pretty good idea. It's one of the most interesting historical pirates and female pirates in art are 99% of the time 'Less than 30'. People get old and an old pirate should be intimidating.