Reid Duke’s a real swell guy & I too am quite into event coverage when coverage was existent & good, e.g. pre-CoViD SCG circuits. But this line, this… “Would Vein Ripper have "10X'ed" in price in a matter of days if competitive play didn't have some far-reaching impacts?” Is Reid sure he’s tryin to warm up casual players to the idea that competitiv scene is also very important for every1? Am I missin somethin here?
I’m with Reuben on the star power of people like Huey. I’ve been a commander player primarily since 2010, before the pre-cons, but I still love watching pro coverage. It’s where I started, and it was LSV’s 16-0 PT run that got me back in. Lots of people who weren’t great on camera were still great to watch. Travis Woo was/is a complete weirdo (in a nice way), but I guarantee you that when he did the Living End deck tech for the first time, people’s minds were blown. The teams really made it so that anyone could be a “star” - your Frank Karstens got as much love as your Kais because you need those brewers, numbers guys, etc. Every Pro Tour felt like a small grade heist film, with these Oceans 11 teams all trying to grab the hardware. Very exciting. Side note: I think commander has become actively worse since Wizards started designing cards for it. Cards like Voja and Toxrill come out and no one can understand how they made it out of the conceptual phase.
WotC is the only company that treats it's competitions as marketing cost rather seeking out sponsors and don't understand that aspirations matter. SC2 has huge partnerships with companies that make WotC look like mom and pop shops. But we can't have MTG protour coke....
Exactly; the problem has never been about what competitive magic does for wotc’s bottom line not being enough, the problem comes back to wotc themselves refusing to have a wider vision for mtg. their conservativeness towards everything that isn’t related to making the actual cards continues to self sabotage them to this day. The explosion of commander wasn’t even wotc’s idea, just them rolling along with the tides unlike 30 years ago when they actually had some compulsion to take Magic to a different level than just what it was potentially gonna be in 1994, a fad, a gimmicky thing for DnD nerds to mess with because it didn’t have real rules or a reason to buy more new cards.
I do feel bad for the up and coming generation of Magic players who don't have the same competitive environment. But I understand that it's not the current culture.
I think the problem with the ROI for competitive magic was that the only group that grew because of it were the players while wotc themselves neglected on utilizing competitive magic to its fullest. It’s the exact same situation when it comes to digital magic, wotc simply refused to engage with alternative medias properly even to this day where MTG arena’s potential has been undeniably squandered; I don’t care how much revenue it’s been able to make despite their incompetence.
I'm with Reuben. When Sideboard was coming in my letterbox in Ireland in the 90s I dreamt of being Kai or Jon. I've played a lot of EDH and I've never watched one EDH stream - the reason is you can never improve watching a co-op game.
