Something new has been creeping into the forum as of late. It’s a topic everyone likes to skirt around maybe because we’re a little scared of it. A Magic playing friend of mine recently brought it up in an email after reading my last article. I kind of touched upon it there a little but, as he pointed out to me, it’s a fairly massive subject which isn’t discussed in Magic playing circles. Certainly not that I have ever seen anyway. Buckle up because we’re going in…
How addictive is Magic? How addicted to the game is the ‘average’ Magic player? Is it just the cards we get addicted to or does the game make us all that little more greedy with increasing ‘win at all costs’ attitudes? Why do we think that is justifiable to spend the time and money we do on cards and Magic Online? Do Wizards consider us as players or as addicts they need to keep hooked? Is Magic just one huge con with the Pro Tour being some kind of junkie heaven? Let’s break this down then….
How addictive is Magic?
This is a fairly open question and a lot of it comes down to the individual. But let’s look at our demograph. The vast majority of people playing this game are men from the age of say 12-30. Let’s not kid ourselves, the average Magic player isn’t the guy going to football on a Saturday or getting hammered on a Friday night or driving motorbikes at 120mph down the highway. As a collective, we’re a fairly geeky bunch and Magic is a bit of a release for us; a chance to pit ourselves in a field of mental combat with one another. And being young men, there’s a bit of testosterone, and most of us want to win, even the casual guys. Unfortunately, to be good at Magic you need to buy a lot of cards. Whether it’s getting those dual lands for your constructed deck or refining your drafting tactics my taking part in your 4th TS/TS/PC draft online that day, you need to have cards. This would be all well and good if every three months, WotC didn’t shift the goalposts by releasing a new set. And that is only considering the financial aspect. Tournaments take time. Drafting takes time. Having a free for all multiplayer game with your mates round the kitchen table takes time. This can be a far worse drain on us as people than on our wallets.
Magic is an outlet for people like me and you. It preys on our wishes to improve ourselves. How addictive is the card game we know and love? As addictive as we let it. Which is a lot.
How addicted to the game is the ‘average’ Magic player?
You’ll all be sat there thinking I’m not describing you. ‘I only play for fun!’, ‘I don’t care if I win or lose’, ‘I spend hardly anything on Magic!’…
Have you ever really wanted a Magic card? You tried to get it forever – you couldn’t afford it so you tried to trade for it, you proxied it and put it in decks? Maybe you managed to save up so you could buy it at last? This happened to me from my very first deck. Man, I wanted two more Ornithopters to go into the crappy elf / artefact 80-card monstrosity. Brining things forward, I was at Worlds with my girlfriend. We’d saved up so were in the fortunate position of having plenty of pennies. I had booked dinner with her up the Eiffel Tower. That day in the Louvre, I was PTQing. Not an issue. 0-2, drop, plenty of time to get to the venue. So it rolls around to half 6ish and I’m 4-0. She tells me not to worry about it and I stay. I made top 8 of a 256 man PTQ – my first ever ‘big’ top 8. With hindsight, I turned down dinner in the Eiffel Tower with my beautiful girlfriend for a game of cards. I ended up with a box of boosters. Seriously. It’s ludicrous when you think about it. But see when she told me I could stay, I was over the moon.
I’d like to consider myself a fairly average, grounded Magic player and the above describes two situations I’ve found myself in. I’d imagine most people can relate to one of the stories above. I’d love to think this game doesn’t have me hook, line and sinker but I’d be fooling myself. I’m a total addict.
Is it just the cards we get addicted to or does the game make us all that little more greedy with increasing ‘win at all costs’ attitudes?
This is an interesting one. If I am honest with myself, the longer I’ve played the game, and the better I’ve got at it, the more I’ve wanted to win. A lot of this can just be explained by me wanting to get something out of the time invested. But surely I should be happy just enjoying the game itself? Surely that in itself is worth the time and expense I put into the game? It makes me sad to say no. I do find myself wanting to win more, the older I get. And see if I extensively playtest before a big tournament, this I want to win twice as much.
I’d always wanted to write about Magic. I love the game. It’s a big part of my life and I honestly felt that I might have something interesting to say. Not only that but I felt I could communicate it in a way that people could relate to when they read it. Yet I never wrote anything. There’s a few reasons for this – didn’t feel experienced enough, had never done any ‘real’ writing before, I simply didn’t have a forum to put what I wanted to write. So what made me start writing here for mtgtwincast? The writing competition. I’d love to say that it was something a friend said, or a burst of inspiration but no. The writing competition and the chance to win £150 to spend on Magic wasn’t what caused me to write my first article but it was the catalyst.
It’s not something that makes me proud but there you go. Maybe as a side effect of being addicted, I do find myself looking for ways to be able to attend that big event or getting that next playset I need. I don’t feel my writing is even remotely good enough to stand up to the other guys in the competition but the slimmest opportunity of being able to write to get that playset of dual lands spurred me into action.
Does this also roll into a ‘win at all costs’ scenario? When was the last time you were at a top level event when someone wasn’t DQed? It seems to be happening more and more often. You only have to look at Worlds to see some of the problems that are going on. Numbers of players being DQed are increasing all the time and Worlds 2006 was a Pro Tour record. And when the top players, such as Bracht are doing it, what kind of example does that set to our up-and-comers? You may suggest that these are isolated incidents and are quickly stamped on but are we curing the disease or merely covering up the symptoms?
Why do we think that is justifiable to spend the time and money we do on cards and Magic Online?
I’m going to give a very, very rough breakdown of what I think I spent on Magic in 2006.
Drafting - 5-6 times a month - £720 (£60 a month)
This includes the odd packet of new sleeves, a bite to eat during the draft, etc, etc.
Release events and Champs - £90
GP Cardiff - £400
I did this on the mega cheap with my girlfriend. We Megabus-ed it down which was over 24hrs each way from Thurso. We stayed in a nice cheap-ish hotel for 3 nights and we didn’t take a lot of spending money. Was a fun trip all the same.
2 Standard decks - £100
I trade as much as possible for cards so I need so I didn’t need to spend too much on the couple of Standard decks I built last year
Worlds at Paris - £800
Both myself and my girlfriend went but I’m not going to include costs for both of us as this was our holiday for the year as well. So I’m only including costs for myself here.
Total for the year…..
£2110
£2110!!
That works out at about £175 a month. That is a serious wedge of cash. I’m very lucky to have a decent Magic budget and a girlfriend that likes seeing new places so tolerates my hobby. But how do I justify this all to myself?
Pure love of the game. People reading this and my last article may think I have some massive downer on Magic. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love playing Magic. And I want to improve. And there’s the rub. As I mentioned earlier, I have fun sitting down and duelling. I have more fun sitting down to duel and winning. And I want to compete at the top level. I want to play Magic as a Pro. I don’t think it’s ever going to happen but the only way I’ll know is if I keep watching the best players and pit myself against them. So I go to Worlds and PTQ like crazy and I go to GPs.
These might all be reasons I use to justify an addiction, like the drunk guy who drinks all the time to forget about his problems, but that doesn’t make them any less legitimate. That drunk guy really does want to forget about his problems. And I really do want to play Magic and improve my game.
Do Wizards consider us as players or as addicts they need to keep hooked?
Firstly a quote from Old Vig in the forums…
‘One thing you did not say is that WotC are listening to the players a lot harder recently. If they are contractually bound to print more sets, they at least are trying to give us what we want. What we want does vary, so TS and coldsnap both fill niches. OTOH a lot of players are acting like junkies, and falling over themselves to grab whatever WotC throws their way. 42 at the pre-release yesterday! Many of those 42 have been saying that sets come out too fast, and yet they lap up the spoilers and turn out to the pre's, never mind if the cards are not legal for another month.’
I think we forget sometimes that Wizards of the Coast is a company. It ultimately exists to make money. Most of the things they do will be to get us to buy more cards. We don’t need to like the decisions WotC make – if they ultimately end up with us spending more money on cards then Wizards have achieved there goal. So they release four sets a year. The opinion from the forum seems to be that four is too many in one year. So what do we do? Do we not draft that fourth set? Do we forgo the Coldsnap release event? Do we choose to live without that playset of Ohran Vipers? No, we lap it up. We eat up all the snippets of news on mtgsalvation and we’re there, money in hand at the Pre-Re begging the shop owner to take those crisp notes out of our hand to play a set that we really disagree with in theory.
WotC is a business. They know we love the ‘cardboard crack’ so they give us what we want. And despite us complaining about it, we lap it up. If Wizards consider us as addicts, is it their fault for getting us addicted or our own faults for letting ourselves get that way?
But of course, we all remember the pinnacle of what Wizards and us, as players, hope to achieve…
Is Magic just one huge con with the Pro Tour being some kind of junkie heaven?
Is Magic a con? I’m not so sure. We’re all big boys and girls. As Magic players we’re meant to be an intelligent bunch yet we let Wizards take advantage of us over and over again. We are, as a group of people, clearly addicted. I guess the more important question is, as long as are enjoying ourselves without smashing up cars and hurting people, is it a problem?
It’s definitely a very well marketed game which preys on the people who play it as a demograph. Don’t look at Wizards of the Coast as some kind of almighty guardian of the game we love. They aren’t. For as long as they can they’ll keep us playing. This is actually a good thing because, for the most part, to keep us playing, they need to keep improving the game. When they start reprinting the P9, then you know we’re in trouble...
As for the Pro Tour, well lets be honest, it’s just an extension of the business plan. It gives us all the largely unattainable goal to aim for. Could there be anything better than being a Pro Magic player? The number of actual totally professional Magic players is very small. In a recent Ask The Pro question on mtg.com, Raphael Levy put the number at much less than 100. Most people have to get there through qualification in smaller events. The unfortunate fact is that for most of us, even playing in the Pro Tour off the back of a PTQ is not a cheap trip. Sure, you get your air fare but there are the costs involved with accommodation, getting a deck together, playtesting… I’ve heard of many people who have went out to Japan and the US and not had change from £1k after they totalled up all the costs of their trip. Of all the ploys Wizards use to keep money coming from our wallets, perhaps the Pro Tour is the most outright cynical of all.
And hey, as I have discussed in a previous article, maybe it is starting to backfire for the guys in Seattle. Sure, they have us, the old guard, wrapped round their little finger but it would appear in the UK that playing numbers are falling. Who knows what new tricks they may have up there sleeves. It will be interesting to see what happens in Summer ’08.
Well, I think that’s enough for another week. Remember, addiction is a disease, not a choice ;)
-Flame On-
Dave
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