The head of Wizards of the Coast has been promoted to be the president of Hasbro. That means that WotC needs a new lead and yesterday they announced who that would be.
There's something that bums me out about these appointments: Neither of these people have any experience with managing a boardgame business. All of their experience with gaming, from a business perspective, is in the digital realm.
I want to be clear; I have no inherent objections to videogames. I love videogames! I sometimes talk about them here, because it gives me more things to talk about than just Magic. I also recognize that MTG: Arena is probably the place that is acquiring more new Magic players than any other format. Between the ease of access and the pandemic, it is simply logical to want people who have some expertise in the digital realm to help shepherd where an important source of revenue is going to come from.
New players are important to Magic: without them, the game shrivels up.
However, the only experience that the two appointees have is in the digital realm. That is a strong signal, to me, about where Hasbro expects Magic to go.
I don't like playing Magic that way and I despise the Historic format they've created on Arena where they have started to tweak physical cards in the digital realm. Couple this with what is an outright miserly economy for the players to deal with and I can honestly say: I want no part of that game at all.
So long as I still have physical cards to play with, I'll likely play Magic but it's hard to look at this new leadership and think that they physical game is something they care about. It's the second-tier game now and Arena will be what matters. The quality of the physical experience will likely suffer as a result.
Which is a downer, to me. I'd like to be wrong, but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that corporations chase money over all things and the money isn't in paper Magic.
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