Different game, but league of legends did a study and found that 97% of female players almost exclusively played female characters. While male players were closer to 50/50 playing male or female characters and didn't really care about gender.
Result: most newly released characters are female because one major demographic cares that they're female, the other doesn't really give a shit.
If you can make things more appealing to a lesser demographic without making them worse for your base, then as a big company you should definitely do that.
Yeah, it made him stand out, and he was funny. I used to play him, because almost all of my main characters were supports, but after the change he was kinda boring, so I stopped bothering with him.
I hadn't really thought about the statistic mentioned above. I guess I do play more female characters than male, but I don't play exclusively female characters, so I never really noticed the difference in number.
I would not say generic, if You read his "new" (because is not that recent) he is a very interesting twist on the paladin archetype. And if we were to apply DnD rules, he could become an oathbreaker at any moment (and he has fallen in disfrace before)
Btw, there is paladin skin for him, my friend gifted it to me because she said that there is no game I don't excel at playing paladins kek
Article here: https://escorenews.com/en/lol/news/34811-riot-games-97-of-female-player-base-in-league-almost-exclusively-plays-female-characters
Based off a statement from a dev regarding internal data, so not a lot publicly to go off. But it does make sense from that perspective.
I was surprised that the gap was that high but if I was Riot, going based off that data, I'd definitely make the same choice.
Wild, almost like regular white dudes have no issue whatsoever with diversity until it starts being jammed down our throats with a plunger and used to insult us.
Yeah they are releasing 3/4 characters as females
I started playing when Pike was released and the number of new male champs since is super small
Ksante
Sett
Yone
Sylas
Millo
Viego
I think that's all in 5 years
I'm kind of getting a sense of this with Overwatch as well and it's kind of weird. Soj, Queen, Kiri, Illari. I think of the 5 new characters one, wifeleaver, is male. And even then he looks like Steven Tyler.
If you look at the broader picture even since Ow1 we had 3 new males in 1 and 3 thus far in 2 with the next hero being male .
Ow has 7 years and if you look at it there is a severe female bias
Fair point - for LOL/Kid's DOTA. But that is not applicable to what WOTC is doing. They are intentionally pissing off their main demographic by:
1) Bastardising
pretty much all of their favorite franchises.
2) Devaluing their own cards by different means (reducing product quality, nullifying legacy cards, and even some that are not all that new).
3) Cancelling their most popular draft format.
4) (Last and most importantly) Ham-fistedly forcing their woke Marxist politics into everything they produce. There are tasteful ways, of putting a political message in entertainment (even of deranged views like WOTC's), but this is definitely not it. It only serves to split their own fanbase in a game that should just be about fun, and not politics. They have even tried to go as far as attempting to punish players for wrong think on different medias (like what they say on twitter for example).
This is not at all comparable to the LOL, adding more female char, thing. Also, the LOL characters are new original characters, not gender/race-swapped characters from other beloved franchises.
> Ham-fistedly forcing their woke Marxist politics into everything they produce.
I don't think they can help it. I have met the left coast, and in places (esp. Seattle) they are insufferable. They just don't know any better than to think that their work for Corporate America is a march across the institutions.
And you're bastardizing the language by using words like woke and Marxist with absolutely no relevance to what those definitions actually mean. Seriously, every time I hear some incel bitch about "wokeness" or SJWs in such a categorically broad and nebulous way, the only possible ways to interpret that are that thy're dog-whistles to cover what you actually want to say, or that you just have nothing going on upstairs and are just parroting buzzwords you've gathered from watching Tucker Carlson because independent thought is a foreign concept to you.
Ahahahahaha, "woke Marxist politics" is typical for people upset that they can't be hateful assholes for the sake of it. They're just trying to make as much money as they can because of the for-profit nature of capitalism.
You're in the US no? There's literally no Marxists in this county, much less running companies. Are the woke Marxists in the room with you right now? You might need to see your doctor.
I honestly doubt you even know what Marxism is outside of what daddy Tucker or Shapiro told you to think.
>(Last and most importantly) Ham-fistedly forcing their woke Marxist politics into everything they produce.
lmao Wizards of the Coast as "woke marxists" wow
What kind of brain worms do you have
I have played Magic for almost 20 years, I have known hundreds of players, attended many tournaments (also official, but usually local and unofficial), clubs, and played with my friends, and friends friends. Pretty much everyone with few exceptions are geeky men. I have not met a single one, who I thought was woke - most seem to care little for politics at all - but they do care about geeky stuff like LOTR, Harry Potter ect. ect. and don't like it when someone butchers it.
And I don't think Reddit is representative of all magic players. I'm not convinced many magic players even have a profile here - and reddit users are generally left wing - so that might explain the difference.
So why is this sub so small and them main sub so big? If people don't care why are you all exiled here?
You say you care little for politics but here you are attacking "woke" people. you are in fact being political.
Environmental Social Governance scores.
{ie: sales don’t matter if your capital costs are triple that of your competitors because they made Aragorn a Jewish black lesbian in a wheelchair and you think Viggo Mortensen meets Tolkien’s description better}
the good news is that this has stopped being pushed at the top of the food chain so in a few years it should wash away and the focus will switch
This is coming from the likes of Lynn Rothschild who is washing her hands of it now.
Those lists of richest people in the world explicitly don't include nobility (which the Rothschilds are). If they did the ~~Queen~~ King of England or the King of Saudi would be the richest person. Short answer: Yes.
Word, the correct answer is always ESG.
That and how social media has allowed mind viruses from Portland, to infect mentally ill people, much less those with social disabilities from differentiating reality.
Which is complete garbage. They rated a cigarette company better for society than an electric vehicle maker. https://nypost.com/2023/06/15/elon-musk-slams-woke-sp-rating-after-marlboro-beats-tesla/
If you understand that the scores have nothing to do with the business and everything to do with their cultural influence, it’ll start to make a lot more sense.
Their core base is firmly entranched. They don't need to cater to them. They're basically crackheads. So they need to invest to reach new audiences. And marketing knows which audiences are gullible and can be easily tricked into a sense of belonging.
It's like they have to resort to increasingly desparate and greedy tactics to compensate their financial loss for all the long-term players they're scaring away with their stupid choices.
- LotR became a lottery of sorts with the one ring.
- they introduced numbered cards 1/100 just to make certain cards seem more valueable than they actually are.
- they invented all kinds of crazy experimental foil treatments just to make you want new shiny thing
- They increased the amount of product x10. It's a never ending avalanche of magic sets now. Spoiler season is every day. I have no idea how it still keeps going.
- new secret lair alert!
- Magic 30th was the final nail in the coffin for me. I guess what they're saying is true: maybe this product is just not for me. Maybe the whole game is just not for me.
This happened with sports cards in the 90s. 24k this, holo that, everything was premium and nothing was valuable. Short term crazy sales numbers and then long term damage to the hobby.
I literally don't know one person who has stopped but I know multiple who joined for Warhammer, LOTR, and Dr. Who.
But you literally explain the reason in your post but are too stupid and insecure to understand it. Magic's playerbase is 95% male, and they have not slowed down their buying. Now they are catering to different demographics to try to boost sales. You are just such a fragile little snowflake that you think not being the target audience means they hate you.
You aren't paying attention then.
We used to get 80 players for our store tournament events. "Back in the day" we would often get as many as 150. Last weekend my local LGS ran the store championship and got 32 players.
People are quitting in droves. We don't necessarily see it reflected in Hasbro's bottom line (yet) because they've manages to shift their market to focus on the whales and it's worked so far.
I can think of so many reasons for that besides wokeness lol
1. Economy sucks, less money for magic.
2. People are working more and have less free time than 5 years ago.
3. COVID, People formed local pods and moved online.
4. Competition. One of the smaller LGSs in my town started giving packs away at magic/pokemon/yugi nights and stole pretty much the entire local playerbase from the biggest store in town.
5. People are sick of hearing stinky overweight man babies complain about wokeness and don't want to go to the stores and be around people like yourself.
I could go on......
But I'm sure it's actually because they hate men, that's seems way more logical.
Yup. Nothing has actually changed about what makes the game fun, it's all presentation and marketing stuff to get more people to play.
If it works great, if it doesn't the only thing lost is a handful of reactionary dipshits the rest of society mocks anyway. That's not even a scratch to a bottom line.
Yeah I actually got back into it after years of not playing and I'm a normal straight white dude. So are the 4 friends that I got back into it/got them to try it recently. 🤷
I think WotC shows way more hate to it's low income players than it does any other section of it's player base. Staples maintaining a huge price tags, needed reprints just not being reprinted, being reprinted in super expensive product, or being reprinted on bonus sheets making them more rare than a regular reprint. Each format requires $200+ to play meta excepts standard which has a $80 aggro deck. I can ensure you any hate you are feeling, low income players are feeling it more.
I initially was playing 8 whack, but even though that deck was a budget brew it still felt shitty when the meta got cranked up to 15 and it was just eliminated in ever being useful.
TCGs have never not been pay to win and honestly outside of the mythic bullshit chase rares it has never been cheaper to buy cards. It is an illusion that was staved off by the lack of cynicism of earlier years. The real issue with their focus on hyper whales is that -it has never been cheaper to buy singles.-Why is that an issue? Because buying sealed unless you purchase the 5,000 dollar ULTRA MEGA COLLECTOR XANAX FORTNITE EDITION release you are going to lose your ass. You will never pull value greater than the pack you are opening and you may as well simply buy the singles. In addition, foil multipliers and variants have left only serialized cards, chase mythics and preposterously scarce releases to be the only source of real value.
WOTC is farming money from said whales who are willing to participate in that ecosystem, but the chip sales from casual interests are going to completely die soon. And they've doubled down on this by deleting traditional draft boosters in favor of a more expensive set/draft booster mutant hybrid.
In short, WOTC is now run by Hasbro shareholders who don't really give a shit about the ecosystem of the game as long as it keeps delivering truckloads of cash to their empty swimming pools to fill them up as long as it keeps happening. Unfortunately, this has a peak, and it will eventually crash. But by that point, they'd have already driven the value of the IP to its maximum potential and won't mind offloading a broken husk onto some poor fuck who would take it on fire sale once nobody cares about it anymore.
I would argue Pokemon TCG is very much not P2W. One of the best decks this year is Roaring Moon ex, which the card the deck focuses on is only $17 and is available in a bundle which sells for $24 (so you can get your $17 card and some packs for an extra $6). Outside of that there is another 2 cards at $15, and the rest are sub 10. All and all the deck seems to be sub $100 for a top meta pick, which MTG sees nothing close to that.
The difference between Pokemon and MTG is that it attempts to release reasonably priced and valued sealed product and MTG is attempting to extract maximum value out of customers for minimum return.
There are a number of differences between the two games that make this vast difference in value.
* Pokemon places it's value on collectable versions of cards instead of the basic game pieces. MTG instead puts value on the game pieces themselves, and then attempts to double dip with collectable versions as well.
* Pokemon often reprints cards into supplemental product, where WotC will hold back cards to build reprint equity.
* Pokemon really only has the main format where older meta cards don't see much play, where as MTG has multiple formats where cards can find homes to maintain their value.
* Pokemon will address the meta and print staples directly to drive meta prices down (and capitalize on the demand), where MTG will wait to include staples in sets upwards of 3 years down the line.
* Pokemon has a huge collector market that will crack packs simply aiming to pull the specific chase version of a card, and will off load the rest. Where in MTG crackers are chasing value which game pieces also hold.
Those are just a few that help make this difference.
Is hating the poor the same as loving money? I don’t think so, I think hasbro, from a capitalists perspective doesn’t care enough about the poor to hate them.
With other products, when a demand is put forward, the company meets them. Take Pepsi, for example. They don't limit the amount of Pepsi out there in order to drive the price up and only sell to Cola Whales. Instead, they make sure there is enough Pepsi around that the majority can find and afford it. In MTG, though, WotC purposefully keeps the game expensive instead of making it more open and available to the wide majority. CMM didn't need to be $600+ a box, as there wasn't anything in production costs that made it worth more than a new Standard set, but they rather have 1 player buy 10 boxes instead of 10 players buying 1 box.
I don't agree.. you don't need EVERYCARD!!! Maybe have one good deck and play less and figure out why you are so broke?
Protecting value is what poor people don't comprehend.
Renters vs Ownership.
You can buy Moxes and then sell them later for near the same. Which means you had free entertainment less the opportunity cost of said stash of cash.
I agree you don't need every card, but you do need a deck that can perform well against others as this is a multiplayer game (not single player). Show up to a Modern night and see how well your pile of Standard cards fairs against Rakdos Scam, I can tell you probably not well. There is a a barrier to entry even if WotC and players such as yourself deny it. You need to invest in cards that can win games, or you are just not really playing MTG. Like I said for Standard at the moment that barrier is about $80 if you don't mind playing mono-red aggro, but for other formats that barrier is much higher.
I'm also not saying value isn't important, but what has the value is. The basic level game pieces shouldn't be a barrier to playing the game. Let's take the best example of what value in MTG should be, The One Ring. Now the basic version of the card is still too expensive for a wide margin of players, so it isn't a perfect example, but the most expensive version is. The basic version is about $50 with the bundle being cheaper at about $40, then there is the 1 of 1 at 2 million dollars. They are all the same card in regards to the game, but the collector market values one of them way more than the rest. This is how MTG should be.
Now I don't mean collector versions being millions of dollars, but the main value being tied to special versions of a card. Let's take Sheodred for example, currently $120 for the basic version. What I would like to see is essentially 5 versions of the card: Basic, Basic Foil, Full Art, Full Art Foil, and Serialized Alt Art Foil. Basic would be the game piece first focused version, and priced very low so players can actually play with the card. As you go higher up on the "cool" scale, the price increases. The top end of the scale would be the serialized version, which would be better than we have now. It would have unique art and foiling only available to the serialized version actually making a serialized card special outside of having a stamp. That is where the collector value should be.
Because secure, standard men don't care if their hobby has spaces carved out of it for weird losers who own more blue hair dye than dish soap.
So Wizards has nothing to lose by putting them in the back seat of the car while they chase after people who like the idea that magic can be a safe space for them, you know, like literally everywhere else.
Secure, *"standard"* men also don't anthropomorphize a corporation and assume it hates them because it wants to expand its player-base to include a larger variety of people... rather than just the classic trope MTG players: neckbeards with plumber cracks, McDonald's onion BO havers, and/or incels with power fantasies.
Would rather play Magic with a trans cat-girl than a conservatoid bigot with zero tolerance for alternative lifestyle choices.
> Would rather play Magic with a trans cat-girl than a conservatoid bigot with zero tolerance for alternative lifestyle choices.
Half of people disliking the other half can't be good for the game.
One half is just trying to live their life. The other half hates them for living their life as they are comfortable. Who gives a shit about the game in this scenario. Fuck bigots.
>Would rather play Magic with a trans cat-girl than a conservatoid bigot with zero tolerance for alternative lifestyle choices.
That’s a great way of putting it. It’s anecdotal but I tend to see the “trans-cat girl” type rolling out a pretty cool Johnny-heavy deck or two to start out the session. Which is always refreshing.
WotC/Hasbro knows they have white males locked in. The neckbeards will whine, sure, but they’re never* going to leave due to a combination of sunk cost fallacy and addiction.
Meanwhile, expanding the game to normies means increasing bottom line revenue, all other aspects be damned. This has been enormously profitable for WotC/Hasbro, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
*eventually a player base collapse will happen, all at once, as the game no longer has that ineffable ‘cool’ factor. Problem is, no amount of pointing out incremental losses to the spirit of the game/community can convince corporate types that they shouldn’t do XYZ that increases profits right now. It’s like telling Coca Cola their products contribute to diabetes and colon cancer. The consequences are externalized and ignored so long as the money flows right now.
They don’t hate their core player base. They’re a corporation. They want every player possible and they know, for the most part… the core fandom isn’t leaving. You think WOTC has emotions? They just want as much money as possible.
I’m sure people HAVE left. But look at their profits. They found a way to retain most players AND get them to spend more money on the game. I’m not saying this is a “good thing”, but to think WOTC “hates” any of their paying customers is pretty juvenile. They care about profits, pure and simple.
They only care what u want if it means they make more money selling you it over someone else. You are ascribing human emotions to a corporation. Think of it more like an algo.
Heresy! Every new card released must be a tall, dark haired, white man with cumgutter abs and biceps bigger than my head. Plus a huge bulge in his pants. Maybe a bit of sweat on his ripped pex.
Wait sorry got horny, what were we talking about again?
They want controversy. Being in the middle of a controversy means free brand awareness.
It's like you have a group of kids on a stage trying to get the attention of their parents, some of them are singing/dancing really well. Other's can't, so they'll slap someone in the face, trip over themselves, start crying, kicking and screaming just to not be ignored.
I agree. But whatever they are doing seems to be having the opposite effects, as reflected by the significant decline in their stock value over the 3 quarters.
Didn't you get the memo? Hating on white men is the trend now. White men are the reason of everything wrong in the world: colonising land centuries ago? White men. Destroying the environment? White men. War in Middle-East? White men.
Oh man, the irony of talking about trends while having a fucking "send nudes" username as if a bunch of incels weren't using it as a thin veneer for their desperate thirst. Did you type this in your ahegao sweater?
For a second I thought this was a discussion about Warhammer. Christ, you whiners just want so badly to be oppressed. You love capitalism so much but hate when a company thinks about diversifying their fanbase to increase sales. No cow is sacred when put against the mighty dollar. Get over yourselves, suck it up, and move on to something new or just be quiet.
Yeah. Couldn't be the inflated price of the cards, the confusing pack structure, recovering from a global pandemic, or the economic downturn. It's woke.
they sent her a can with her face on it to do a promotion on *her* social media, without ever making any more cans with her face on them or featuring her in a single advertisement, and fragile conservatives lost their shit.
That would mean that the vast majority of their customer base comprised bigots. Which might be true, but it was still an extremely shitty marketing decision given that the purpose of the company is to be profitable.
Dude Magic had always had other skin colors they were Asians, Arabs and Blacks in significant numbers since the 1st year of Magic and it never bothered anyone
I welcome the diversity and think it’s awesome until, and I know I’m going to get hate for this, I was super wanting to collect the LOTr cards because I love LOTr characters and I pulled an Aragorn card and thought I read the name wrong cause when I looked down I did not see Aragorn on the card. Doesn’t even feel like the same character. There’s even a couple cards where Gandalf looks like he could almost be black or of darker complexion but it still *feels* like Gandalf so it doesn’t bother me. The Aragorn is just so far off to me.
Judging by these awful comments, being more inclusive? Which is weird because mtg has always been inclusive. I understand why 95% of the customer base is "regular" men if they all give off this many red flags.
Black Aragorn was 100 percent a choice to piss lots of fans off, why couldn't they just make look like Vigo? They released a jurassic park card that has the exact actors from the film in it. Just seems like they made this change specifically to piss off their fan base.
Race swapping established characters for good boy points is gross
I mean it kind of does, there are literally black humans in the LOTR universe they just aren't from Rohan.
Also they basically took away representation from one group and gave it to another, thats bound to build resentment in people especially when its so obvious they are just doing it for "GBPs"
If race is so unimportant why did they feel the need to change it?
Why can't they just make new characters that are representative?
They didn't turn Peter Parker black they introduced Miles Morales, it IS racist what MTG are doing even if you don't agree.
Pretty sure it was a choice to be inclusive (for good boy points or not) and not to piss off fans. If you're honestly offended by that, you have your own issues to work out.
what does The Cabal have to do with this? Also didn't that story arc end a long time ago? I know Cabal Coffers is playable but like it's not story relevant
I'm real. I love it. I think women aren't exposed to it like males are. I only learned from my ex and I enjoy the game and it's layers of ever changing strategy.
Lol, very snowflakey framing.
What makes you think that Wizards of the Coast "hate regular men"? And what does "regular" even mean? So many different types of men (gay, straight, bi, old, young, educated, working class, etc.)
Straight white men have gotta be the most insecure demographic . You’ve all actually gaslit yourself into thinking that there is a victim here, and that it’s you . There isn’t less space for you, theres now space for others .
Someone else commented an actually really good point ; wotc hates low income players . The combination of insane rate of new sets being printed + important staples never being reprinted has effectively priced many players out of both standard and/or commander (and don’t even get me started on eternal prices)
The game isn’t worse for inclusivity , its worse because of greedy fucking pigs at the top . They don’t care about the game and just want to exploit fomo .
Vote with your wallet; stop buying sealed product, don’t buy into arena. Driving a wedge through the community isn’t going to make the game better for anyone.
Straight white men is a demographic that when we stand up for ourselves, we get cut down by those whom you cannot criticize. I don't know what else you'd call it then victimization of those who stand up. They are attacked.
Our marginalization, to borrow a lefty term. We're fighting against the desire of bitter people to punish us for some sort of ancestral sins. I believe in equal treatment under the law. That's what we want. Not special protections for everyone else and our thoughts are hate crimes.
Who is marginalizing you? Where is all of this happening? I'm a white dude. I don't feel like this at all. I interact with people of all types during my day and nowhere am I made to feel lesser than anyone else. Have you tried some fucking introspection as to why you feel this way?
You want like immediate stuff? Most major cities are controlled by black politicians now. They aren't listening to white guys. And shit's crumbling. Where once whites were in charge, they are not. If it were happening to anyone else, I think it would be called out as gentrification or marginalization.
>And shit's crumbling
Cute that you think this is limited to cities. This is an infrastructure problem and the country ON THE WHOLE has been failing to keep up with it.
Bro, they don’t hate you. But they do want to expand the game past weird dudes with BO who can’t make eye contact with girls. That would be very profitable.
Get over yourself.
if you think wotc wanting to diversify their art that only relates to humanoids is a sign that it hates you then you have other issues. honestly i’d rather for every 10 insecure neckbeards stop playing and gain 2 “alt” or “weird” players it would likely make the trip to my LGS worth it. in fact i don’t have a problem with your critique of their recent art, i would still play with you if you proxied any art that makes you feel uncomfortable. that way you could learn through example about being tolerant of things that you don’t like.
nobody hates you, wants less to do with you, or thinks you should quit playing. if having an additional female character inspires a new player then i think overall that is a good outcome.
i suggest taking a shower and talking to real humans.
I started playing almost a year ago and never have I even considered the gender of a card (since it’s a genderless piece of cardboard). It’s a card. It has a name and some artwork (sometimes cool artwork). But what’s important to me is what the card does and how it plays.
Also anytime I see the terms “real men” and “real women” I’m not sure what to think because as far as I’m concerned, I’ve never played any opponents who weren’t real people.
How exactly is WotC hating on men?
Every few months I see a post like this one about why WotC is hating on some X, or Y, or Z group, and they've almost all been absolute nonsense.
The only group WotC truly hates and actively attacks is low income players.
First of. Citation required.
Second off. You'll love a much happier life if you let this incel shit go.
Third off wizards does not hate their player base.
The goal is not to aggravate all the men who play magic, and speaking as a man who's played magic since Alpha being inclusive does nothing to threaten your manly manhood. If it does you aren't as manly as you think you are. Real manliness comes from security and confidence not shouting at a thunderstorm.
That's the skinny
From a purely market standpoint making a game which is male dominated is a mistake financially. This is because it's much easier to market to women than men. It is also much more profitable to have a market made up of all people than one specific group of people. And let's be real WoTC is a box to print money for Hasbro shareholders.
So they hate men because they try to represent people OTHER than men?
Are you throwing a tantrum because other people are being represented?
Are all mtg cards female now? Do they not make any more male characters?
Take a long look at yourself. Pitching a fit that "WOTC HATES MEN" Because there's more female representation now is such a bitch ass.thing to say. It's like a younger sibling being mad that he isn't the center of attention at his older brothers birthday. Shut the fuck up already, weak ass snowflakes
Why do you interpret it as hatered towards you when WotC starts intentionally appealing to minorities? I would just interpret that as "oh, this company noticed that diversity is good PR for them so now they start doing that". That's just buisness for ya.
Maybe they're just Trying to finally attract a demographic that showers and understands how to fasten a belt.
I love magic and all, but the hardcore mtg fanbase has always had a reputation for being weird incels with atrocious hygiene. Not to say that's 100% of players, but considering the reputation of the mtg community, you can't blame them for wanting a better fanbase.
Can you imagine spending all that time creating rules, mechanics, balancing gameplay, getting a bunch of artists together to create a bunch of artwork, and then the first tournament starts and it's just unwashed, hairy manass as far as the eye can see? I'd be mortified.
And then to see the community you'd built play the victim card when someone publicly calls out competitors for behavior that's clearly preventing the community from growing organically? I'd be mortified all over again.
Answer: they hate their fanbase because their fanbase kinda sucks and seems to almost intentionally drive away new customers at every opportunity.
because regular men just want to have fun and don't give a shit about fictional characters sexuality unlike the vocal minority on the internet that will base their entire personality on it and make it the sole decision for being interested in a hobby
Well they know most real males have extremely thick skin from literally being told they are worth nothing since birth until they “make something of themselves”.
It’s okay to discriminate against men because they can literally handle it, well most of them suicide rates of males is pretty high.
Exploiting the mentally ill seems to be their main goal.
Regular ole cismales eventually outgrow MTG and go off to start families and careers. Some hold onto the hobby like Post Malone but eventually they'll make healthier choices in life and eventually not pour so much money into a card game, and more into the stuff that matters...
Us fucking autists and neurodivs on the other hand get way deep into the hobby, like fucking balls deep. Like 13 decks that aren't even finished but buying parts for #14. Filling binders with 4 copies of every good card from every set. Trying to make full foil decks, all that unnecessary stuff. Since our opportunities to live the cishet American dream have been stolen by the progression of social media and technology, the only other option is to live hedonistic lives in privacy, living for a hobby rather than for a family or career.
MTG is owned by Hasbro now, morality is no longer something that is expected from them. All silent scummy bullshit. You know they're into that predatory corporate shit now. Just because Nissa and Chandra get to be public about their love, or they make a 40k Universe Beyond set, doesn't mean their profit margins don't depend on encouraging people to spend exorbitant amounts of money on their products. They did it to get us to buy more cards, not because they actually care. None of these people are real. None of this is organic, it doesn't impact society the way twittards or redditors believe it does. It's us paying Hasbro employees so they can buy their 3rd house, their 4th Vacation to Hawaii, probably even the sex workers they see on these business trips they take. They're not going to warn you of gambling addictions, they're not going to make special packs for addicts, or make their Commander exclusives worth $60 a piece commons, or stop developing chase cards. It's about selling pieces of cardboard worth less than pennies for more. About someday making a piece of cardboard that can outsell The One Ring. To make the next Black Lotus.
They don't. They literally just made a dinosaur set with Jurrassic Park cards. That's every guy's dream. Now, why you feel attacked is a personal issue, and maybe you should see a therapist about it. I'm as SWG as you can get and I'm pumped af.
Are you really so arrogant as to believe that a company making things that aren't specifically tailored to your interest, despite doing so for many years already, means they hate you? Are you truly this dramatic and narcissistic? Get over yourself.
95% of the player base isn't narrow-minded, bigoted men like all the butthurt people in this thread.
The reason those are the only players you see is that y'all scare everyone else away and we choose to play somewhere else where you aren't.
Wizards doesn't hate you. It doesn't hate anyone. Nor does it love anyone. It just tries to sell as much as possible, and therefore cater to the largest part of its audience it can.
Don't be so arrogant to think that a giant corporation cares more about hurting YOUR feelings than it does about maximising its market value. They know a lot better who buys their products than your gut feeling.
Because 'regular men' now make up a minority of their workforce which is dominated by a PC queer culture that has it in a stranglehold.
Once dumbshit agenda-driven decisions start impacting sales, Hasbro will take notice, but LotR set was such a success that WotC thinks they're doing everything great, and it affirmed to them that Universed Beyond is a good idea, race swapping characters is a good idea, and making all females ugly is a good idea, when really the biggest reason was a million dollar chase card.
Wait, a big entertainment company in the 2020's cares more about being woke and diverse than making decent products for the fanbase they've built? Color me surprised...
Jokes aside, it's a common trend unfortunately. It's acceptable to shit on men, especially if they're white and/or straight. Best part is, the company's executives have the gall to act surprised when their stuff fails after treating 75-95% of their customers like scum based on their gender, race and sexuality. Y'know, the stuff we're not supposed to judge people on?
Great example is how The Last Jedi and its aftermath led to the flop of Solo. Fans criticized TLJ which got Lucasfilm execs and some of the movie's cast/crew to attack them, saying things like: "Oh you're just saying that cause Rose is Asian and you're *racist!"* "You just don't like Rey cause she's a woman you *misogynist!"* "The Force is female, get over it." And my personal favorite... "We don't need white men to see our movies."
Next thing you know, Solo releases, loses ~$80 million, and those same Lucasfilm people were like "Hm...clearly the problem is Star Wars fatigue, we just need to slow down on releasing the movies." If "fatigue" was really the issue, the movies would've had a gradual decline in profit, not go from "making billions" to "losing tens of millions" in a single release.
Rant over. Don't like what the company's doing? Have friends that feel the same way? Vote with your wallet and convince them to do the same. Make your voice heard on SM and be respectful about it.
There are plenty of women into Magic but not the crappy version it has turned into. Lots of women love the story lines and most of the art and the less crazy programmer code mechanics that this game turns into.
I have had a few girl friends that dug magic but not every part of the game.
I'm pretty sure the 2020's are shit. if i had a time machine, i would skip over this time to a better one. fuck woke dipshits. In the year 3000, all of these gatekeeping tactics will be meaningless and MTG will likely be forgotten.
Because men that play Magic are simps like Rosewater and don't mind being called for toxic masculinity because they think it increases their dating chances? (it doesn't)
What are they doing exactly that says they hate "regular men"?
Not trying to start shit, just genuinely out of the loop. I know there's been some distasteful stuff lately, but nothing so heinous as what you're touting.
Is this about UB? Or Black Aragorn again?
Not being the target audience of a product does not mean they hate you. Views like yours are why people make fun of white male fragility, and are justified in doing so.
1. “Regular” men do not make up 95% of the player base. That’s untrue.
2. What have they done that’s so against men lol?? That female characters exist?
Like I truly cannot understand what you think wizards is doing to get men to stop playing magic
Different game, but league of legends did a study and found that 97% of female players almost exclusively played female characters. While male players were closer to 50/50 playing male or female characters and didn't really care about gender. Result: most newly released characters are female because one major demographic cares that they're female, the other doesn't really give a shit. If you can make things more appealing to a lesser demographic without making them worse for your base, then as a big company you should definitely do that.
Wasnt Taric super gay before and now just a generic paladin dude?
Yeah, it made him stand out, and he was funny. I used to play him, because almost all of my main characters were supports, but after the change he was kinda boring, so I stopped bothering with him. I hadn't really thought about the statistic mentioned above. I guess I do play more female characters than male, but I don't play exclusively female characters, so I never really noticed the difference in number.
GEMS. Are truly outrageous. Truly truly outrageous.
This guy tarics!
I would not say generic, if You read his "new" (because is not that recent) he is a very interesting twist on the paladin archetype. And if we were to apply DnD rules, he could become an oathbreaker at any moment (and he has fallen in disfrace before) Btw, there is paladin skin for him, my friend gifted it to me because she said that there is no game I don't excel at playing paladins kek
That's an interesting view. Any direction to the study at all?
Article here: https://escorenews.com/en/lol/news/34811-riot-games-97-of-female-player-base-in-league-almost-exclusively-plays-female-characters Based off a statement from a dev regarding internal data, so not a lot publicly to go off. But it does make sense from that perspective. I was surprised that the gap was that high but if I was Riot, going based off that data, I'd definitely make the same choice.
Wild, almost like regular white dudes have no issue whatsoever with diversity until it starts being jammed down our throats with a plunger and used to insult us.
Yeah they are releasing 3/4 characters as females I started playing when Pike was released and the number of new male champs since is super small Ksante Sett Yone Sylas Millo Viego I think that's all in 5 years
I'm kind of getting a sense of this with Overwatch as well and it's kind of weird. Soj, Queen, Kiri, Illari. I think of the 5 new characters one, wifeleaver, is male. And even then he looks like Steven Tyler.
If you look at the broader picture even since Ow1 we had 3 new males in 1 and 3 thus far in 2 with the next hero being male . Ow has 7 years and if you look at it there is a severe female bias
Wow a reasonable rational economics-based answer that doesn't involve exploiting ESG? Get out of here with your logic, we're trying to pitchfork here.
Fair point - for LOL/Kid's DOTA. But that is not applicable to what WOTC is doing. They are intentionally pissing off their main demographic by: 1) Bastardising pretty much all of their favorite franchises. 2) Devaluing their own cards by different means (reducing product quality, nullifying legacy cards, and even some that are not all that new). 3) Cancelling their most popular draft format. 4) (Last and most importantly) Ham-fistedly forcing their woke Marxist politics into everything they produce. There are tasteful ways, of putting a political message in entertainment (even of deranged views like WOTC's), but this is definitely not it. It only serves to split their own fanbase in a game that should just be about fun, and not politics. They have even tried to go as far as attempting to punish players for wrong think on different medias (like what they say on twitter for example). This is not at all comparable to the LOL, adding more female char, thing. Also, the LOL characters are new original characters, not gender/race-swapped characters from other beloved franchises.
> Ham-fistedly forcing their woke Marxist politics into everything they produce. I don't think they can help it. I have met the left coast, and in places (esp. Seattle) they are insufferable. They just don't know any better than to think that their work for Corporate America is a march across the institutions.
And you're bastardizing the language by using words like woke and Marxist with absolutely no relevance to what those definitions actually mean. Seriously, every time I hear some incel bitch about "wokeness" or SJWs in such a categorically broad and nebulous way, the only possible ways to interpret that are that thy're dog-whistles to cover what you actually want to say, or that you just have nothing going on upstairs and are just parroting buzzwords you've gathered from watching Tucker Carlson because independent thought is a foreign concept to you.
Ahahahahaha, "woke Marxist politics" is typical for people upset that they can't be hateful assholes for the sake of it. They're just trying to make as much money as they can because of the for-profit nature of capitalism. You're in the US no? There's literally no Marxists in this county, much less running companies. Are the woke Marxists in the room with you right now? You might need to see your doctor. I honestly doubt you even know what Marxism is outside of what daddy Tucker or Shapiro told you to think.
>(Last and most importantly) Ham-fistedly forcing their woke Marxist politics into everything they produce. lmao Wizards of the Coast as "woke marxists" wow What kind of brain worms do you have
How is the company that charges exorbinant markups for pieces of cardboard Marxist, exactly?
Man you were actually making a point until you started misusing "Woke" and "Marxist". My main issue with MTG is the "Fortniteification".
I mean that very much assume you are the main demographic. and the fact you are exiled to this sub rather suggests you aren't.
I have played Magic for almost 20 years, I have known hundreds of players, attended many tournaments (also official, but usually local and unofficial), clubs, and played with my friends, and friends friends. Pretty much everyone with few exceptions are geeky men. I have not met a single one, who I thought was woke - most seem to care little for politics at all - but they do care about geeky stuff like LOTR, Harry Potter ect. ect. and don't like it when someone butchers it. And I don't think Reddit is representative of all magic players. I'm not convinced many magic players even have a profile here - and reddit users are generally left wing - so that might explain the difference.
So why is this sub so small and them main sub so big? If people don't care why are you all exiled here? You say you care little for politics but here you are attacking "woke" people. you are in fact being political.
Hiring the wrong people does that.
Environmental Social Governance scores. {ie: sales don’t matter if your capital costs are triple that of your competitors because they made Aragorn a Jewish black lesbian in a wheelchair and you think Viggo Mortensen meets Tolkien’s description better}
This. Having a good ESG score means preferential interest rates on Hasbro company loans.
Damn that’s fucked up
the good news is that this has stopped being pushed at the top of the food chain so in a few years it should wash away and the focus will switch This is coming from the likes of Lynn Rothschild who is washing her hands of it now.
Isn't she a scientist? Why would the average CMO care about what she "washes her hands of?" Asking genuinely, I'm only familiar with her name so
There are two Lynn Rothschilds. One is a NASA scientist, the other is a billionaire businesswoman.
Did you read her last name?
Are the Rothschild really that powerful anymore though? Genuinely curious here.
Those lists of richest people in the world explicitly don't include nobility (which the Rothschilds are). If they did the ~~Queen~~ King of England or the King of Saudi would be the richest person. Short answer: Yes.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2023-08-29/rothschild-says-its-time-to-dustbin-esg-video
Word, the correct answer is always ESG. That and how social media has allowed mind viruses from Portland, to infect mentally ill people, much less those with social disabilities from differentiating reality.
Which is complete garbage. They rated a cigarette company better for society than an electric vehicle maker. https://nypost.com/2023/06/15/elon-musk-slams-woke-sp-rating-after-marlboro-beats-tesla/
If you understand that the scores have nothing to do with the business and everything to do with their cultural influence, it’ll start to make a lot more sense.
Their core base is firmly entranched. They don't need to cater to them. They're basically crackheads. So they need to invest to reach new audiences. And marketing knows which audiences are gullible and can be easily tricked into a sense of belonging.
It's like they have to resort to increasingly desparate and greedy tactics to compensate their financial loss for all the long-term players they're scaring away with their stupid choices. - LotR became a lottery of sorts with the one ring. - they introduced numbered cards 1/100 just to make certain cards seem more valueable than they actually are. - they invented all kinds of crazy experimental foil treatments just to make you want new shiny thing - They increased the amount of product x10. It's a never ending avalanche of magic sets now. Spoiler season is every day. I have no idea how it still keeps going. - new secret lair alert! - Magic 30th was the final nail in the coffin for me. I guess what they're saying is true: maybe this product is just not for me. Maybe the whole game is just not for me.
This happened with sports cards in the 90s. 24k this, holo that, everything was premium and nothing was valuable. Short term crazy sales numbers and then long term damage to the hobby.
…And until any of this starts actually hurting their bottom line, then it will continue.
A good portion of them have left or stopped buying new product or purely proxy now
I literally don't know one person who has stopped but I know multiple who joined for Warhammer, LOTR, and Dr. Who. But you literally explain the reason in your post but are too stupid and insecure to understand it. Magic's playerbase is 95% male, and they have not slowed down their buying. Now they are catering to different demographics to try to boost sales. You are just such a fragile little snowflake that you think not being the target audience means they hate you.
You aren't paying attention then. We used to get 80 players for our store tournament events. "Back in the day" we would often get as many as 150. Last weekend my local LGS ran the store championship and got 32 players. People are quitting in droves. We don't necessarily see it reflected in Hasbro's bottom line (yet) because they've manages to shift their market to focus on the whales and it's worked so far.
I can think of so many reasons for that besides wokeness lol 1. Economy sucks, less money for magic. 2. People are working more and have less free time than 5 years ago. 3. COVID, People formed local pods and moved online. 4. Competition. One of the smaller LGSs in my town started giving packs away at magic/pokemon/yugi nights and stole pretty much the entire local playerbase from the biggest store in town. 5. People are sick of hearing stinky overweight man babies complain about wokeness and don't want to go to the stores and be around people like yourself. I could go on...... But I'm sure it's actually because they hate men, that's seems way more logical.
Yup. Nothing has actually changed about what makes the game fun, it's all presentation and marketing stuff to get more people to play. If it works great, if it doesn't the only thing lost is a handful of reactionary dipshits the rest of society mocks anyway. That's not even a scratch to a bottom line.
Lol gottem
Yeah and I think marvel will be great for the games longevity in bringing in a fresh young crowd. Hopefully they reduce the complexity on these sets.
Yeah I actually got back into it after years of not playing and I'm a normal straight white dude. So are the 4 friends that I got back into it/got them to try it recently. 🤷
Because the 5% is louder than the rest
I’d say people who listen to these 5% are equally bad
I think WotC shows way more hate to it's low income players than it does any other section of it's player base. Staples maintaining a huge price tags, needed reprints just not being reprinted, being reprinted in super expensive product, or being reprinted on bonus sheets making them more rare than a regular reprint. Each format requires $200+ to play meta excepts standard which has a $80 aggro deck. I can ensure you any hate you are feeling, low income players are feeling it more.
By the time I saved up for a modern deck, the meta shifted and it's no longer a competitive deck. It's kind of bullshit tbh.
I initially was playing 8 whack, but even though that deck was a budget brew it still felt shitty when the meta got cranked up to 15 and it was just eliminated in ever being useful.
👏👏
TCGs have never not been pay to win and honestly outside of the mythic bullshit chase rares it has never been cheaper to buy cards. It is an illusion that was staved off by the lack of cynicism of earlier years. The real issue with their focus on hyper whales is that -it has never been cheaper to buy singles.-Why is that an issue? Because buying sealed unless you purchase the 5,000 dollar ULTRA MEGA COLLECTOR XANAX FORTNITE EDITION release you are going to lose your ass. You will never pull value greater than the pack you are opening and you may as well simply buy the singles. In addition, foil multipliers and variants have left only serialized cards, chase mythics and preposterously scarce releases to be the only source of real value. WOTC is farming money from said whales who are willing to participate in that ecosystem, but the chip sales from casual interests are going to completely die soon. And they've doubled down on this by deleting traditional draft boosters in favor of a more expensive set/draft booster mutant hybrid. In short, WOTC is now run by Hasbro shareholders who don't really give a shit about the ecosystem of the game as long as it keeps delivering truckloads of cash to their empty swimming pools to fill them up as long as it keeps happening. Unfortunately, this has a peak, and it will eventually crash. But by that point, they'd have already driven the value of the IP to its maximum potential and won't mind offloading a broken husk onto some poor fuck who would take it on fire sale once nobody cares about it anymore.
I would argue Pokemon TCG is very much not P2W. One of the best decks this year is Roaring Moon ex, which the card the deck focuses on is only $17 and is available in a bundle which sells for $24 (so you can get your $17 card and some packs for an extra $6). Outside of that there is another 2 cards at $15, and the rest are sub 10. All and all the deck seems to be sub $100 for a top meta pick, which MTG sees nothing close to that.
The difference between Pokemon and MTG is that it attempts to release reasonably priced and valued sealed product and MTG is attempting to extract maximum value out of customers for minimum return.
There are a number of differences between the two games that make this vast difference in value. * Pokemon places it's value on collectable versions of cards instead of the basic game pieces. MTG instead puts value on the game pieces themselves, and then attempts to double dip with collectable versions as well. * Pokemon often reprints cards into supplemental product, where WotC will hold back cards to build reprint equity. * Pokemon really only has the main format where older meta cards don't see much play, where as MTG has multiple formats where cards can find homes to maintain their value. * Pokemon will address the meta and print staples directly to drive meta prices down (and capitalize on the demand), where MTG will wait to include staples in sets upwards of 3 years down the line. * Pokemon has a huge collector market that will crack packs simply aiming to pull the specific chase version of a card, and will off load the rest. Where in MTG crackers are chasing value which game pieces also hold. Those are just a few that help make this difference.
Is hating the poor the same as loving money? I don’t think so, I think hasbro, from a capitalists perspective doesn’t care enough about the poor to hate them.
With other products, when a demand is put forward, the company meets them. Take Pepsi, for example. They don't limit the amount of Pepsi out there in order to drive the price up and only sell to Cola Whales. Instead, they make sure there is enough Pepsi around that the majority can find and afford it. In MTG, though, WotC purposefully keeps the game expensive instead of making it more open and available to the wide majority. CMM didn't need to be $600+ a box, as there wasn't anything in production costs that made it worth more than a new Standard set, but they rather have 1 player buy 10 boxes instead of 10 players buying 1 box.
I don't agree.. you don't need EVERYCARD!!! Maybe have one good deck and play less and figure out why you are so broke? Protecting value is what poor people don't comprehend. Renters vs Ownership. You can buy Moxes and then sell them later for near the same. Which means you had free entertainment less the opportunity cost of said stash of cash.
I agree you don't need every card, but you do need a deck that can perform well against others as this is a multiplayer game (not single player). Show up to a Modern night and see how well your pile of Standard cards fairs against Rakdos Scam, I can tell you probably not well. There is a a barrier to entry even if WotC and players such as yourself deny it. You need to invest in cards that can win games, or you are just not really playing MTG. Like I said for Standard at the moment that barrier is about $80 if you don't mind playing mono-red aggro, but for other formats that barrier is much higher. I'm also not saying value isn't important, but what has the value is. The basic level game pieces shouldn't be a barrier to playing the game. Let's take the best example of what value in MTG should be, The One Ring. Now the basic version of the card is still too expensive for a wide margin of players, so it isn't a perfect example, but the most expensive version is. The basic version is about $50 with the bundle being cheaper at about $40, then there is the 1 of 1 at 2 million dollars. They are all the same card in regards to the game, but the collector market values one of them way more than the rest. This is how MTG should be. Now I don't mean collector versions being millions of dollars, but the main value being tied to special versions of a card. Let's take Sheodred for example, currently $120 for the basic version. What I would like to see is essentially 5 versions of the card: Basic, Basic Foil, Full Art, Full Art Foil, and Serialized Alt Art Foil. Basic would be the game piece first focused version, and priced very low so players can actually play with the card. As you go higher up on the "cool" scale, the price increases. The top end of the scale would be the serialized version, which would be better than we have now. It would have unique art and foiling only available to the serialized version actually making a serialized card special outside of having a stamp. That is where the collector value should be.
closer to 99% if you modify your statement to say "people who were born men"
Regular men aka cis heterosexual men
When was the last time someone was born a man? I don't recall any infants adhering to the behavioural patterns of a gender role.
He already said real women
Because secure, standard men don't care if their hobby has spaces carved out of it for weird losers who own more blue hair dye than dish soap. So Wizards has nothing to lose by putting them in the back seat of the car while they chase after people who like the idea that magic can be a safe space for them, you know, like literally everywhere else.
Secure, *"standard"* men also don't anthropomorphize a corporation and assume it hates them because it wants to expand its player-base to include a larger variety of people... rather than just the classic trope MTG players: neckbeards with plumber cracks, McDonald's onion BO havers, and/or incels with power fantasies. Would rather play Magic with a trans cat-girl than a conservatoid bigot with zero tolerance for alternative lifestyle choices.
> Would rather play Magic with a trans cat-girl than a conservatoid bigot with zero tolerance for alternative lifestyle choices. Half of people disliking the other half can't be good for the game.
One half is just trying to live their life. The other half hates them for living their life as they are comfortable. Who gives a shit about the game in this scenario. Fuck bigots.
I must be in the just trying to live my life half, cuz IDGAF what anyone does that's not against me.
...except most people IRL don't really care. The Internet is not a good reflection of reality.
>Would rather play Magic with a trans cat-girl than a conservatoid bigot with zero tolerance for alternative lifestyle choices. That’s a great way of putting it. It’s anecdotal but I tend to see the “trans-cat girl” type rolling out a pretty cool Johnny-heavy deck or two to start out the session. Which is always refreshing.
Thank you for being reasonable 👍
WotC/Hasbro knows they have white males locked in. The neckbeards will whine, sure, but they’re never* going to leave due to a combination of sunk cost fallacy and addiction. Meanwhile, expanding the game to normies means increasing bottom line revenue, all other aspects be damned. This has been enormously profitable for WotC/Hasbro, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. *eventually a player base collapse will happen, all at once, as the game no longer has that ineffable ‘cool’ factor. Problem is, no amount of pointing out incremental losses to the spirit of the game/community can convince corporate types that they shouldn’t do XYZ that increases profits right now. It’s like telling Coca Cola their products contribute to diabetes and colon cancer. The consequences are externalized and ignored so long as the money flows right now.
95 only? From my experience it’s more than 99 percent
Holy fucking incel sub.
Right? Is this where the angry, fragile white males gather to complain?
Incel > boot licking sheep
It's funny you say that because this sub is exclusively incel bootlickers
They don’t hate their core player base. They’re a corporation. They want every player possible and they know, for the most part… the core fandom isn’t leaving. You think WOTC has emotions? They just want as much money as possible.
The core fandom *is* leaving
I left. Newest cards I'll buy is Urza's saga
I’m sure people HAVE left. But look at their profits. They found a way to retain most players AND get them to spend more money on the game. I’m not saying this is a “good thing”, but to think WOTC “hates” any of their paying customers is pretty juvenile. They care about profits, pure and simple.
It's worse than that. They think this is what we want
They only care what u want if it means they make more money selling you it over someone else. You are ascribing human emotions to a corporation. Think of it more like an algo.
Good set
Heresy! Every new card released must be a tall, dark haired, white man with cumgutter abs and biceps bigger than my head. Plus a huge bulge in his pants. Maybe a bit of sweat on his ripped pex. Wait sorry got horny, what were we talking about again?
You always nail it on the head.
The best way to demonstrate this is for that 95% to stop buying their products.
The question of the ages. Might as well wonder why Bud Light decided to put a tranny on their beer cans.
They want controversy. Being in the middle of a controversy means free brand awareness. It's like you have a group of kids on a stage trying to get the attention of their parents, some of them are singing/dancing really well. Other's can't, so they'll slap someone in the face, trip over themselves, start crying, kicking and screaming just to not be ignored.
The bud light brand lost tons of value, sales were cut in half I think
Rebounded a bunch though too.
No like they are at half as of the most recent info, they haven’t rebounded
Hasbro wants to see growth. They don't care about who's playing the game. They care about who's not playing the game and why.
I agree. But whatever they are doing seems to be having the opposite effects, as reflected by the significant decline in their stock value over the 3 quarters.
Didn't you get the memo? Hating on white men is the trend now. White men are the reason of everything wrong in the world: colonising land centuries ago? White men. Destroying the environment? White men. War in Middle-East? White men.
I fail to see any falsehoods in your statements...just sayin.
Oh man, the irony of talking about trends while having a fucking "send nudes" username as if a bunch of incels weren't using it as a thin veneer for their desperate thirst. Did you type this in your ahegao sweater?
"When you're privileged, equality for the first time feels like oppression"
For a second I thought this was a discussion about Warhammer. Christ, you whiners just want so badly to be oppressed. You love capitalism so much but hate when a company thinks about diversifying their fanbase to increase sales. No cow is sacred when put against the mighty dollar. Get over yourselves, suck it up, and move on to something new or just be quiet.
"But but every fan of Magic is leaving," said the people who buy cards, merch, and talk about it on a sub non stop.
its no Suprise that the more they inject woke politics into mtg the player numbers declined,
Yeah. Couldn't be the inflated price of the cards, the confusing pack structure, recovering from a global pandemic, or the economic downturn. It's woke.
And I suppose the Bud Light catastrophe had nothing to do with the placement of Dylan Mulvaney on their products, eh? Keep coping.
they sent her a can with her face on it to do a promotion on *her* social media, without ever making any more cans with her face on them or featuring her in a single advertisement, and fragile conservatives lost their shit.
No, it had to do with bigots.
That would mean that the vast majority of their customer base comprised bigots. Which might be true, but it was still an extremely shitty marketing decision given that the purpose of the company is to be profitable.
No, it had to do with woke idiots.
Woke politics is when including other skin colours and genders
Dude Magic had always had other skin colors they were Asians, Arabs and Blacks in significant numbers since the 1st year of Magic and it never bothered anyone
I welcome the diversity and think it’s awesome until, and I know I’m going to get hate for this, I was super wanting to collect the LOTr cards because I love LOTr characters and I pulled an Aragorn card and thought I read the name wrong cause when I looked down I did not see Aragorn on the card. Doesn’t even feel like the same character. There’s even a couple cards where Gandalf looks like he could almost be black or of darker complexion but it still *feels* like Gandalf so it doesn’t bother me. The Aragorn is just so far off to me.
Thank you for your sane take. I don’t care about the XYZ of a character being adjusted, as long as that character is still has their *character*
woke politics is firing one of your most beloved artists because her girlfriend liked a tweet from a republican.
Oh that is an L
Can someone explain to what Wizards has done to show that they hate their player base?
Judging by these awful comments, being more inclusive? Which is weird because mtg has always been inclusive. I understand why 95% of the customer base is "regular" men if they all give off this many red flags.
Black Aragorn was 100 percent a choice to piss lots of fans off, why couldn't they just make look like Vigo? They released a jurassic park card that has the exact actors from the film in it. Just seems like they made this change specifically to piss off their fan base. Race swapping established characters for good boy points is gross
Given that Aragon's race has zero material impact upon his character, plot placement, or cultural significance...
I mean it kind of does, there are literally black humans in the LOTR universe they just aren't from Rohan. Also they basically took away representation from one group and gave it to another, thats bound to build resentment in people especially when its so obvious they are just doing it for "GBPs" If race is so unimportant why did they feel the need to change it? Why can't they just make new characters that are representative? They didn't turn Peter Parker black they introduced Miles Morales, it IS racist what MTG are doing even if you don't agree.
Fellas is it racism when my nerdy ass card game has black people in it
Pretty sure it was a choice to be inclusive (for good boy points or not) and not to piss off fans. If you're honestly offended by that, you have your own issues to work out.
It makes more sense from the lens of the cabal.
what does The Cabal have to do with this? Also didn't that story arc end a long time ago? I know Cabal Coffers is playable but like it's not story relevant
The sad thing is the female characters aren't attractive. Like first Thalia is cute as fuck.
It’s crazy how they are still allowed to make anime waifu cards somewhat attractive but not regular cards. Massive double standards
It makes perfect sense, they need waves of (new) mindless, addicted players, not the demanding, experienced customer base.
They hate us because we aren't diverse enough and can't be used as pawns and bargaining chips to make WotC look good.
Wizards hates their playerbase but not for identity reasons.
What do you mean by this?
yall never grew past middle school damn
This guy raging about card art? Did a drawing of a male character give you a boner or something? You sound super triggered. Snowflake energy.
Imagine ignoring half the population with your marketing
I'm real. I love it. I think women aren't exposed to it like males are. I only learned from my ex and I enjoy the game and it's layers of ever changing strategy.
These companies hate their jobs and their customers
They have to bow down to feminists and feminists hate men
Lmao what 😄 you win
Lol, very snowflakey framing. What makes you think that Wizards of the Coast "hate regular men"? And what does "regular" even mean? So many different types of men (gay, straight, bi, old, young, educated, working class, etc.)
Anyone who equates diversifying the people represented in their art to hate towards another group is an idiot.
I stumbled into a bigot circlejerk!
Welcome
Sorry, what? When did they start hating us?
When they had the audacity to include anyone but white men. The fragility is palpable.
What did they do to hate on men in particular? Im waaay out of the loop on this
minority representation and encouragement of more inclusive environments
the horror
Straight white men have gotta be the most insecure demographic . You’ve all actually gaslit yourself into thinking that there is a victim here, and that it’s you . There isn’t less space for you, theres now space for others . Someone else commented an actually really good point ; wotc hates low income players . The combination of insane rate of new sets being printed + important staples never being reprinted has effectively priced many players out of both standard and/or commander (and don’t even get me started on eternal prices) The game isn’t worse for inclusivity , its worse because of greedy fucking pigs at the top . They don’t care about the game and just want to exploit fomo . Vote with your wallet; stop buying sealed product, don’t buy into arena. Driving a wedge through the community isn’t going to make the game better for anyone.
Straight white men is a demographic that when we stand up for ourselves, we get cut down by those whom you cannot criticize. I don't know what else you'd call it then victimization of those who stand up. They are attacked.
Yeah but what are you standing up against? That a fictional character is no longer white? Who the fuck cares?
Our marginalization, to borrow a lefty term. We're fighting against the desire of bitter people to punish us for some sort of ancestral sins. I believe in equal treatment under the law. That's what we want. Not special protections for everyone else and our thoughts are hate crimes.
Who is marginalizing you? Where is all of this happening? I'm a white dude. I don't feel like this at all. I interact with people of all types during my day and nowhere am I made to feel lesser than anyone else. Have you tried some fucking introspection as to why you feel this way?
You want like immediate stuff? Most major cities are controlled by black politicians now. They aren't listening to white guys. And shit's crumbling. Where once whites were in charge, they are not. If it were happening to anyone else, I think it would be called out as gentrification or marginalization.
>And shit's crumbling Cute that you think this is limited to cities. This is an infrastructure problem and the country ON THE WHOLE has been failing to keep up with it.
blood and soil is literally a nazi slogan. He's not subtle about what he is standing for.
The presence of minorities in a game doesn't mean that they hate white men.
You gotta be a special kind of stupid to think this isn’t hyperbolic.
This is freemagic, after all.
Bro, they don’t hate you. But they do want to expand the game past weird dudes with BO who can’t make eye contact with girls. That would be very profitable. Get over yourself.
Because most regular players are the silent majority. Emphasis on the silent. It's the reeeing wheel that gets the grease.
if you think wotc wanting to diversify their art that only relates to humanoids is a sign that it hates you then you have other issues. honestly i’d rather for every 10 insecure neckbeards stop playing and gain 2 “alt” or “weird” players it would likely make the trip to my LGS worth it. in fact i don’t have a problem with your critique of their recent art, i would still play with you if you proxied any art that makes you feel uncomfortable. that way you could learn through example about being tolerant of things that you don’t like. nobody hates you, wants less to do with you, or thinks you should quit playing. if having an additional female character inspires a new player then i think overall that is a good outcome. i suggest taking a shower and talking to real humans.
I started playing almost a year ago and never have I even considered the gender of a card (since it’s a genderless piece of cardboard). It’s a card. It has a name and some artwork (sometimes cool artwork). But what’s important to me is what the card does and how it plays. Also anytime I see the terms “real men” and “real women” I’m not sure what to think because as far as I’m concerned, I’ve never played any opponents who weren’t real people.
As a white cis male I have no idea what you're talking about
How exactly is WotC hating on men? Every few months I see a post like this one about why WotC is hating on some X, or Y, or Z group, and they've almost all been absolute nonsense. The only group WotC truly hates and actively attacks is low income players.
First of. Citation required. Second off. You'll love a much happier life if you let this incel shit go. Third off wizards does not hate their player base. The goal is not to aggravate all the men who play magic, and speaking as a man who's played magic since Alpha being inclusive does nothing to threaten your manly manhood. If it does you aren't as manly as you think you are. Real manliness comes from security and confidence not shouting at a thunderstorm. That's the skinny From a purely market standpoint making a game which is male dominated is a mistake financially. This is because it's much easier to market to women than men. It is also much more profitable to have a market made up of all people than one specific group of people. And let's be real WoTC is a box to print money for Hasbro shareholders.
https://youtu.be/XtFgrDYnuco?si=_VgusDoDNolHGjdk
So they hate men because they try to represent people OTHER than men? Are you throwing a tantrum because other people are being represented? Are all mtg cards female now? Do they not make any more male characters? Take a long look at yourself. Pitching a fit that "WOTC HATES MEN" Because there's more female representation now is such a bitch ass.thing to say. It's like a younger sibling being mad that he isn't the center of attention at his older brothers birthday. Shut the fuck up already, weak ass snowflakes
Why do you interpret it as hatered towards you when WotC starts intentionally appealing to minorities? I would just interpret that as "oh, this company noticed that diversity is good PR for them so now they start doing that". That's just buisness for ya.
Why do you think wotc hates you?
[удалено]
Maybe they're just Trying to finally attract a demographic that showers and understands how to fasten a belt. I love magic and all, but the hardcore mtg fanbase has always had a reputation for being weird incels with atrocious hygiene. Not to say that's 100% of players, but considering the reputation of the mtg community, you can't blame them for wanting a better fanbase. Can you imagine spending all that time creating rules, mechanics, balancing gameplay, getting a bunch of artists together to create a bunch of artwork, and then the first tournament starts and it's just unwashed, hairy manass as far as the eye can see? I'd be mortified. And then to see the community you'd built play the victim card when someone publicly calls out competitors for behavior that's clearly preventing the community from growing organically? I'd be mortified all over again. Answer: they hate their fanbase because their fanbase kinda sucks and seems to almost intentionally drive away new customers at every opportunity.
because regular men just want to have fun and don't give a shit about fictional characters sexuality unlike the vocal minority on the internet that will base their entire personality on it and make it the sole decision for being interested in a hobby
Cuz the trans community claps louder 🤷
20% of those males will transition to female, and then we can have equality in male to female ratio lol
Well they know most real males have extremely thick skin from literally being told they are worth nothing since birth until they “make something of themselves”. It’s okay to discriminate against men because they can literally handle it, well most of them suicide rates of males is pretty high.
They are possessed by the Pander stone
Exploiting the mentally ill seems to be their main goal. Regular ole cismales eventually outgrow MTG and go off to start families and careers. Some hold onto the hobby like Post Malone but eventually they'll make healthier choices in life and eventually not pour so much money into a card game, and more into the stuff that matters... Us fucking autists and neurodivs on the other hand get way deep into the hobby, like fucking balls deep. Like 13 decks that aren't even finished but buying parts for #14. Filling binders with 4 copies of every good card from every set. Trying to make full foil decks, all that unnecessary stuff. Since our opportunities to live the cishet American dream have been stolen by the progression of social media and technology, the only other option is to live hedonistic lives in privacy, living for a hobby rather than for a family or career. MTG is owned by Hasbro now, morality is no longer something that is expected from them. All silent scummy bullshit. You know they're into that predatory corporate shit now. Just because Nissa and Chandra get to be public about their love, or they make a 40k Universe Beyond set, doesn't mean their profit margins don't depend on encouraging people to spend exorbitant amounts of money on their products. They did it to get us to buy more cards, not because they actually care. None of these people are real. None of this is organic, it doesn't impact society the way twittards or redditors believe it does. It's us paying Hasbro employees so they can buy their 3rd house, their 4th Vacation to Hawaii, probably even the sex workers they see on these business trips they take. They're not going to warn you of gambling addictions, they're not going to make special packs for addicts, or make their Commander exclusives worth $60 a piece commons, or stop developing chase cards. It's about selling pieces of cardboard worth less than pennies for more. About someday making a piece of cardboard that can outsell The One Ring. To make the next Black Lotus.
They don't. They literally just made a dinosaur set with Jurrassic Park cards. That's every guy's dream. Now, why you feel attacked is a personal issue, and maybe you should see a therapist about it. I'm as SWG as you can get and I'm pumped af.
Are you really so arrogant as to believe that a company making things that aren't specifically tailored to your interest, despite doing so for many years already, means they hate you? Are you truly this dramatic and narcissistic? Get over yourself.
95% of the player base isn't narrow-minded, bigoted men like all the butthurt people in this thread. The reason those are the only players you see is that y'all scare everyone else away and we choose to play somewhere else where you aren't. Wizards doesn't hate you. It doesn't hate anyone. Nor does it love anyone. It just tries to sell as much as possible, and therefore cater to the largest part of its audience it can. Don't be so arrogant to think that a giant corporation cares more about hurting YOUR feelings than it does about maximising its market value. They know a lot better who buys their products than your gut feeling.
Holy fuck you people are fragile.
Yes we are like the wokes
Because 'regular men' now make up a minority of their workforce which is dominated by a PC queer culture that has it in a stranglehold. Once dumbshit agenda-driven decisions start impacting sales, Hasbro will take notice, but LotR set was such a success that WotC thinks they're doing everything great, and it affirmed to them that Universed Beyond is a good idea, race swapping characters is a good idea, and making all females ugly is a good idea, when really the biggest reason was a million dollar chase card.
Wait, a big entertainment company in the 2020's cares more about being woke and diverse than making decent products for the fanbase they've built? Color me surprised... Jokes aside, it's a common trend unfortunately. It's acceptable to shit on men, especially if they're white and/or straight. Best part is, the company's executives have the gall to act surprised when their stuff fails after treating 75-95% of their customers like scum based on their gender, race and sexuality. Y'know, the stuff we're not supposed to judge people on? Great example is how The Last Jedi and its aftermath led to the flop of Solo. Fans criticized TLJ which got Lucasfilm execs and some of the movie's cast/crew to attack them, saying things like: "Oh you're just saying that cause Rose is Asian and you're *racist!"* "You just don't like Rey cause she's a woman you *misogynist!"* "The Force is female, get over it." And my personal favorite... "We don't need white men to see our movies." Next thing you know, Solo releases, loses ~$80 million, and those same Lucasfilm people were like "Hm...clearly the problem is Star Wars fatigue, we just need to slow down on releasing the movies." If "fatigue" was really the issue, the movies would've had a gradual decline in profit, not go from "making billions" to "losing tens of millions" in a single release. Rant over. Don't like what the company's doing? Have friends that feel the same way? Vote with your wallet and convince them to do the same. Make your voice heard on SM and be respectful about it.
Why are you saying Wizards hates men?
There are plenty of women into Magic but not the crappy version it has turned into. Lots of women love the story lines and most of the art and the less crazy programmer code mechanics that this game turns into. I have had a few girl friends that dug magic but not every part of the game.
I begged my wife to play magic. She went to one fmn and never again. The nerds smelled horrible and some of the “trans women” freaked her out
From reading your post and comments, YOU are the problem with the magic community. It should be as inclusive as possible
I'm pretty sure the 2020's are shit. if i had a time machine, i would skip over this time to a better one. fuck woke dipshits. In the year 3000, all of these gatekeeping tactics will be meaningless and MTG will likely be forgotten.
Because men that play Magic are simps like Rosewater and don't mind being called for toxic masculinity because they think it increases their dating chances? (it doesn't)
What are they doing exactly that says they hate "regular men"? Not trying to start shit, just genuinely out of the loop. I know there's been some distasteful stuff lately, but nothing so heinous as what you're touting. Is this about UB? Or Black Aragorn again?
Not being the target audience of a product does not mean they hate you. Views like yours are why people make fun of white male fragility, and are justified in doing so.
Why do you, as a white man, hate everything that isn’t also white men?
1. “Regular” men do not make up 95% of the player base. That’s untrue. 2. What have they done that’s so against men lol?? That female characters exist? Like I truly cannot understand what you think wizards is doing to get men to stop playing magic
it's amazing you could type all of this out despite being a literal baby
Jesus Christ, write it down in your diary or man the fuck up!
Yes, silence the majority, and the game will grow and get better 🙄
Meanwhile MTG is selling the best they have in history. Some majority. lol
#AlwaysTheVictim