Hi Mark, this will likely be a long one, so I hope you'll bear with me. First of all I want to thank you for all you've done over the years to make the game that is so precious to me as good as it's been for so long. I've made life-long friends and cherished memories of late nights spent with them, fnm invariably turning into team drafts in college dorms and all-night diners. I've found a safe place to land and meet new people at the local game store in a new city several times now. I even met my fiancee after I noticed her Phyrexian symbol tattoo and we just ordered our wedding rings with MTG engravings - a matching set, hers will say PERSIST and mine UNDYING, to say something hopefully about the nature of our love, and also that we wouldn't have met had we not first separately persisted through some real hardships - in my case mostly that I've refused to let my body kill me though the bastard keeps trying, after a large cyst in my brain as a child, an ensuing seizure disorder I have to this day, and testicular cancer, most recently.
But I have to tell you, Mark, I had some reservations about those engravings, and that doubt makes me sad.
Which brings me, of course, to Universes Beyond. I know you've had some vocal critics of the idea on this blog and I've even seen many of them get pretty mean about it, and for all of that you've had to endure I am truly sorry. I'm sure there's plenty worse you get that you don't publish that are outright abusive. I want to be clear that I'm not endorsing that behavior. But I also understand where it's coming from and think it should be acknowledged.
I know I'm frustrated by the game I've loved for so long appearing to have sold out its artistic integrity in pursuit of short-term dollar signs. I'm further disappointed by the reversal on your promise that these sets would never be standard-legal, making your assertion that players like me could "engage with the parts of the game that appeal to us" ring hollow.
I used to really enjoy playing standard constructed, and my fiancee and I had even planned on introducing our kids to the game through what was once its most accessible format, but with the current ubiquity of Final Fantasy cards and the promise of more UB on the horizon, with its greater-than-usual price barrier and card availability issues we're afraid that won't be feasible or even enjoyable for any of us.
Even modern, the format I have been passionate about since its inception feels like it has an expiration date on it, that I'm just marking time until the format I love is too inundated with IPs that don't resonate with me that it's unrecognizable and I can no longer take any joy in it at all.
Again, I'm not apologizing for the people who are harassing you. I wish they wouldn't. But I understand feeling dejected by all this, and powerless. And I know you get the brunt of our frustrations because you're the only avenue many of us can think of where we can voice our concerns. I know you've said you're responding to the same talking points over and over again, but I think that's because we're hoping, praying, that if enough of us tell you we're concerned and disturbed by all this, maybe you'll finally listen before it's too late. Especially as you tell us again and again how there aren't enough of us who feel this way for us to matter, what recourse do we have but to keep sending you our little messages, hoping if enough of us do the same that maybe you'll rethink those numbers? (Sidenote, where did this nine percent number come from in the first place and are we sure it's reliable? I know I never saw any survey.) I want you to know I've loved this game for decades and never before have you all made a creative decision that is so distasteful to me I've felt the need to create a Tumblr account just to attempt to make you understand how I feel.
I love this game, Mark. And I eventually decided I'm glad I'll soon forever have a reminder of all it's meant to me over the years around my finger, linked to the woman I somehow love even more. But I'm still scared. How long will it take before someone, somehow, reads the inscription on the inside, says "Oh Undying! Is that a reference to... Oh man I used to play that! The Doctor Who-Spiderman-Nickelodeon Cartoon game? What was that called again?"
It's all so undignified. I don't want to ever be embarrassed by this game, Mark. I love it. And I want to forever. Thanks for listening.
You had a long ask, so it's only worthy of a long reply. Like you, I've been playing Magic for a long time. I started playing with Alpha in August of 1993 (the month the game came out), and have been paying continually ever since. And like you Magic is the very core of my social existence. I met my wife through working on Magic. I've made endless friends through Magic. It has given me my dream job, and is directly or indirectly responsible for most of the highlights of my life. I truly love Magic to its core. The game is quite important to me.
The essence of Magic's identity is one of change though. October marks my 30th year working at Wizards making Magic, and in that time I have seem Magic go through metamorphosis after metamorphosis. As it evolves, it often zigs when I expect it to zag. As someone who's job it is to make Magic, it has continued to humble me.
I talk a lot about how the game continually reinvents itself. That keeps it from getting boring, but also can often be a challenge to design it. Things that worked for years, all of a sudden, don't work any more. And how I see the game has to be re-evaluated as the game keeps adapting.
There comes a point in many Magic player's life cycle which I call the Dark Night. It's when the game starts changing in a way that fundamentally conflicts with how you perceive it. For you, the Dark Night is Universes Beyond. It's about internal integrity. It's about flavor consistency. It's about the game being its own thing.
I very much understand where you are coming from. My back ground is in writing. I appreciate the value of story and environment, of creative continuity. There was a point in time I was in charge of the story (along with my friend Michael). I am sympathetic to your issue. But that wasn't my Dark Night.
I'm a life-long gamer. I'm a game designer. I am very particular about how a game functions. I truly believe Magic is the best game ever made, but, to me, Magic is the ultimate strategic game. So, when Commander first appeared, it really wasn't my thing. It's a political game, which fundamentally means it's less about playing the cards and more about playing the people. I don't have to have the best deck, I just need to convince the other players that I'm not the threat.
Hey, there's lots of ways to play Magic. I didn't need to enjoy them all. Then Commander started to rise in popularity. I had to start designing for it. That was fine. My job is to design for all sorts of players that enjoy different things than me. Commander continued to grow, and started to become a larger share of the audience.
I had spent the last thirty years constantly improving the game through iteration after iteration. The most dominant format became one defined by all my (and my coworkers) mistakes, things that would never leave.
Magic was slowly changing into something that contradicted my view of what Magic was. It caused a lot of despair for me. Like you, Magic has been a source of so much goodness in my life, that I didn't like the idea of it becoming something that I couldn't connect with. It was my Dark Night and caused much anguish.
What brought me around was the players. I kept getting posts about players excited by Commander, so I dug in and started to learn more about why Commander was so valuable to them. The very thing that I disliked about it was the thing most exciting to them. The fact that the game could focus not on how well you knew the cards, but on how well you could interact with the people was a big draw.
My bug was their feature. Commander allowed Magic to grow and change and become something bigger than it was. And that new thing was the impetus for a whole new generation of players to fall in love with Magic just as I had. They could meet people and do activities and experience things that would define their life just like Magic had done for me and you.
That's when I had an important realization. Magic doesn't just change randomly. It adapts to the need of the audience. Commander become popular because there was a need for what it provided. And yes, there was a discomfort for me, because that metamorphosis was changing the game away from what I fell in love with. That was my Dark Night. The fear that the game that meant so much was becoming something different than what drew me into the game, what made it such an integral part of my life.
When you face the Dark Night, there are just two answers. You either walk away because the thing isn't what you fell in love with, or, you start to understand what made it change. You look deeper into the game and understand that what makes Magic so special is that it keeps adapting to the needs of its players. You come to accept that its evolution is core to why you fell in love with it in the first place, because it adapted for you. You have to learn to let it also adapt for other people. And as it does so, Magic grows bigger and bigger as more and more players find it.
I get the cynical take that this is all just a money grab, but who are all these people buying the product? It's not just scalpers and fans of the properties that don't care about the game. It's first and foremost Magic players, (a *lot* of them) the majority of which are current players, but it's also doing a great job of bringing back lapsed players and is the strongest tool we've ever had for bringing in new players. I always talk about how the greatest problem Magic faces is it's barrier to entry. How do you get people get over the hump of learning? Give them something they already love that encourages them to stick with it.
Having been through my own personal Dark Night, I get it. It is soul searching and scary. Magic means so much that the idea of it becoming something different is intimidating. The solution to making it through the Dark Night is learning about why it is changing, who is it changing for.
I just came back from MagicCon Atlanta, where I talked to hundreds and hundreds of players. To most of them, Universes Beyond was this exciting thing that was making them more excited than ever to play Magic. Many of them were drawn in or drawn back by a Universes Beyond property that they adored.
There is a real and tangible audience that is to you what the Commander players were to me. I had to understand who they were and why Commander was so exciting to them to pull me through my Dark Night. I hope the fans of Universes Beyond can do the same for you.
Thanks for writing in.
