Magic: The Gathering is enjoying great popularity in 2024, even after over 30 years. Recently, however, players were worried that the company behind the game wanted to make quick money with the game. In an interview, one of the bosses now tries to calm things down.
What happened last at the card game? Magic: The Gathering has been releasing crossover sets with other series, film and game universes since 2020. Universes Beyond collaborations in recent years include:
These collaborations were not always well received by the community, which is repeatedly brought up on Reddit, among other places. But there is also always uproar because of the regularly rising prices for boosters and card sets: Magic: The Gathering is becoming more and more expensive – players find a creative solution: “Cardboard is cardboard”
At the end of 2022, an analyst from Bank of America even spoke out: Hasbro would oversell Magic The Gathering cards and destroy the long-term value of the company (via CNBC). In this video, we show you the three most expensive cards in Magic: The Gathering according to sales value:
Magic The Gathering: The 3 most expensive cards by highest sales value
More videos
The head designer in conversation
Who is speaking? As part of a roundtable interview with IGN and several other outlets on August 29, 2024, current head designer Mark Rosewater spoke about the game. Rosewater has worked for Wizards of the Coast since 1995. He has been designing cards for Magic: The Gathering since 1996. That means he has 28 years of working on Magic under his belt.
IGN questioned whether Wizards of the Coast’s data since the launch of Universes Beyond collaborations would be cause for concern and how the developers define success after some players worried these collaborations could be the foundation of Magic: The Gathering undermine.
It is very important to us what the players think.
What does the boss say about that? Mark Rosewater states very firmly that this concern is not even remotely reflected in the data.
We always look forward. Our goal is not to make money as quickly as possible and then call it a day. [Magic: The Gathering] is 31 years old and we plan to stick around as long as we can. So we’re constantly thinking ahead about how we approach things.
Magic is a game about change. He understands that people often have negative reactions when their favorite things change. But it’s also Wizards of the Coast’s job to ensure that the game continues to evolve to find what works best overall.
Of course, when the first Universes Beyond set with The Walking Dead was released, some players dropped out and there was negative feedback. Overall, the collaborations are a complete success for her.
To the second part of the question about how they would measure said success at Wizards of the Coast, he says there isn’t just one metric like profit. You would look at a lot of different things like internal market research, digital data, and even Google Trends.
Finally, Rosewater says:
People just want to say – I don’t know, it’s the nature of the internet – “They’re up to no good” or “They don’t have our problems in mind.”
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 make something, we want to make something that we truly believe players will enjoy, and that is the basis of our decisions.
Mark Rosewater makes it a point to make it clear how important the continued existence of Magic: The Gathering is to the team, but also very important to Wizards of the Coast. The opinion of the players will continue to be important.
Magic: The Gathering is alongside the Japanese top dogs Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! one of the biggest TCGs in the world. In 2019, Magic was given a very special title: We now know what the most complex game in the world is – and you know it