He's Right, You Know

So, Pleasant Kenobi has a long video about what the future of Magic will look like and at about 17 minutes in comes the prediction that made me sad.

The TL:DR is this-after creating waves of outrage (and attention) for what is frankly a product so greedy it is offensive, WotC will come back and say:

"Wait wait, we now have a NEW product for $500 for four packs instead of $1000."

It will work like a charm. People will have a point of comparison and that will make all the difference. The reaction to this new theoretical product that PK is talking about will be met with excitement and maybe even gratitude. 

How do I know this? 

Well, with the acknowledgement that I can't say for certain, I can tell you that I've read Predictably Irrational. That book is about how human beings make decisions and how marketers use that knowledge to influence how we choose. 

In this case, I can see a very clear path to manipulating the audience. 

Step one, make Magic 30. Here we are: the attention (predominantly negative but attention nonetheless!) to build hype, and the limitation to build FOMO. 

Because it's very clear that the product is desirable: it's merely being slagged because it's insultingly expensive and cruelly gatekept. However, for the past week that's been what the community has been talking about. I am not an exception!

Step two: The apology and new pricing. As PK points out we'll get a 'we did not expect this kind of pushback' statement or some such corpo-speak apology that doesn't mean shit. It will however come with a 'as a way to make it up to the community we're going to ______" where you fill in the blank with the new product being promoted. I'm going with a non-legal reprint of Revised (3rd Edition) because while being a bad set, was the last one where they reprinted dual lands. 

Why? Because this way no one can accuse WotC of undercutting the "value" of the Magic 30 release. But it still gives players something they want: the opportunity for lands they need to play older formats. 

Does it matter that 3rd Edition sucked? No. In the same way that it doesn't matter that the reproduced Magic 30 cards suck-Chaoslace isn't a card anyone wants, but it's still a rare being reprinted in Magic 30. (One thing to note here is that these sets were designed before draft was a thing. So while you could draft this set, your experience is likely to be awful.)

Because the other thing that WotC will do is price it less. So it'll be tiered now-"sure, you can have an opportunity for a Mox if you want to shell out $1000 but hey if you want a Tundra, we're only asking $500."

Still won't be a legal proxy for any format though. Can't do that!

However, because of the new price point, and they might (miiiiiiight, mind you) make it more widely available, people's brains will pull a trick on them-one illustrated in Predictably Irrational. The ability to compare products will get people to buy four packs for $500 because "it's a much better deal!"

It isn't. It won't be. But we'll have been duped into thinking it is. It's a marketing trick that once you see it, you can see being pulled over and over again. See also the recent Warhammer 40k Commander sets. 

Take a look at Card Kingdom's prices. The "Collector's Editions" are more than triple the cost of the regular ones. Do you think the manufacture cost triple? Or is it more likely that WotC can sell the premium product to wealthy people, and everyone else will look at a $60 price point and go: well hell, that's a value! 

Commander decks were $30 once upon a time. Again: has the cost of making Commander decks truly doubled, or do we just have price points that let us think we're getting a deal, because we have points of comparison?

That's the trick, an that's why I'm fairly certain PK is right. 

But also: Fuck all that.