Magic: The Gathering has come under fire from longtime fans in recent years due to the explosion in licensed sets everything out Transformers To The Lord of the Rings. Contrary to these critics, the card game’s lead designer says that “quick money” is not the driving principle behind decisions like these, and player research tells a different story than angry online fans.
“We’re always looking forward,” says Mark Rosewater, who worked on it MTG at Wizards of the Coast for almost 30 years, told IGN in an interview. “Our goal is not to make money as quickly as possible and call it a day.” He continued: “magic is 31 years old, we want to stay here as long as possible. That’s why we’re constantly thinking forward in the way we do things.”
A particular sore point for some fans of the game were his Universes Beyond sets These are brand crossovers that offer everything from Warhammer 40,000 And Dungeons & Dragons To Monty Python And Hatsune Miku. Additionally, the focus is diverted from the core iconography and world building MTGThe game’s own lore, relentless rhythm of new releases and coveted rarities to hunt on the used market have left some players feeling exhausted.
Back in 2022a Bank of America analyst specifically pointed this out in a report to investors. “The main concern is that Hasbro has overproduced magic Cards that have bolstered Hasbro’s recent results but are destroying the long-term value of the brand,” he wrote then. An influx of speculators during the pandemic years and a volatile second-hand market based on minimizing profits from reselling the most valuable cards between reprints have also dented morale around the game for some.
Rosewater told IGN This bad sentiment isn’t necessarily reflected in the data Wizards receives from market research and overall customer response. “People just want to attribute – I don’t know, it’s the nature of the Internet that they say, ‘You’re up to no good,’ or ‘You don’t have our problems in mind,'” he said, citing the Lord of the rings Sentence from last year as the “most successful” of all time. “It is very important to us what the players think. We do surveys and everything, we do market research. We don’t just want to do something, we want to do something that we honestly believe the players will enjoy to the core and that drives our decisions.”
The interview was published this week but was conducted before the recent controversy MTG: the ban on several powerful cards in the popular Commander format. Following an online harassment campaign against some members of the volunteer regulatory committee that issued the bans, Wizards of the Coast announced that the group would be disbanded and decisions would be made internally again to protect people from abuse. It’s still not clear how all this will ultimately play out.
In the meantime, however, there are two Universes Beyond sets scheduled for release next year that could be among the most popular yet: Maps based on both Final Fantasy games and so on Wonder Comic heroes.
