Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history • Hacker News Board

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#101

Post by prepend » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 12:20 PM UTC

Imnimo wrote: post #2

One piece of Magic history that is still well-preserved is the ancient usenet groups: https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.deckmaster https://groups.google.com/g/rec.games.trading-cards.magic.mi... The most recent posts are spam, but if you use the advanced search to go back to 1994/1995, it's fun to read about the way people looked at the game nearly 30 years ago. You can find people selling Black Lotuses (now wort…

I used to sell magic via Usenet auctions and made enough to pay my tuition and rent.

It’s funny because when eBay was released I thought “why needs that? Anyone can just do their own with excel and Usenet.”

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#102

Post by onetrickwolf » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 12:31 PM UTC

totetsu wrote: post #6

Its something to reflect on, that those small nonmainstream groups, communities, cultures that you might be a part of everyday are mostly completely empherial. Records of what people did and said are bound to be lost, noone is going to curate or summerise the history. I faced this when yahoo groups was deleted. I found many messgae boards of a the transient 'teaching abroad in japan' local communities from ten or mor…

I'd like to see something like torrenting for websites. Just a way that if a certain site is important to you, you could seed it yourself and 1. Help with the hosting costs and 2. Preserve it if the original hosts decides to take it down or change it.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#103

Post by pluc » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 12:49 PM UTC

WOtC is on a real charm run eh?

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#104

Post by toast0 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 12:55 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #88

shostack wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Between this and the recent attempt at looting the D&D community for all it's worth that horribly backfired ( https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/01/dd-maker-retreats-fro... ) what is there not to hate? As far as I'm concerned I'm done being charitable to them. They've never been fantastic, and Hasbro has clearly been demanding their dues forcing this. My biggest hope is the Magic community has a great open alternati…

> what is there not to hate? Presumably what monero-xmr means is: If you're MTG fan, the thing not to hate is MTG, and MTG+WOTC are a package deal. Much like Star Wars fans have learned to put up with Disney's attempts to wring every last dollar out of the franchise.

> Much like Star Wars fans have learned to put up with Disney's attempts to wring every last dollar out of the franchise.

They're just continuing in George Lucas' footsteps. IMHO, either you accept the money grabs, or your acknowledge only the two films, Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back; even Return was money grubbing.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#105

Post by Ekaros » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 12:57 PM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #48

blockwriter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory is that they also killed competitive magic due to the MeToo movement and the various other social causes that sprang up in the last 6 years. Wotc and its corporate parent cannot control who the winningest players are, and their old tournament structures more or less simply rewarded, and therefore promoted, those that did the best in tournament play. One individual, who frequently won or was in the running a…

I'm sure plenty of people at Wizards were concerned that the public faces of magic were not on their payroll, with all the risk that that entails. I think the bigger factor is that they were trying to push more of the franchise and business Online. That way they don't have to cover the cost of physical Goods and split any profits with local game stores and Merchants.

On other hand I would find it kinda worrying if the top competitive players were on the payroll. As that opens up a lot of questions about integrity of the game and scene from those still outside and coming in.

Same really goes for most media production too.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#106

Post by Ekaros » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 1:03 PM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #55

beebmam wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have plenty of friends who are emotionally and physically invested in MtG and they certainly want to hate WotC. People love to hate things, especially gaming communities, in my experience. Hating something invigorates a community. Game companies need to make serious plans to not anger their players.

> People love to hate things, especially gaming communities Video gaming communities seem to only hate in the lightest sense of the word. I think it was quite a shock for WotCBro to see that TTRPGs players actually put their money where their mouth is, instead of just talking.

I think reality is that bad products can simply just be ignored or not bought.

The insane level of overreach that might destroy all other content, yeah that is something that might really hurt. And fundamentally TTRPG is community of content creation, even if only for private use. Now company like WoTC somehow owning it or taking stupid cut. That really riled up the players.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#107

Post by anthk » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 1:03 PM UTC

I feel your pain.. Not on MtG, but the loss of fora. Back in the day the Spanish speakers in Spain had a literal Slashdot clone in Spanish, Barrapunto. The server shut down a few years ago and just a very little of it has been preserved under archive.org. A great loss.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#108

Post by Ekaros » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 1:06 PM UTC

adql wrote: post #84

vlunkr wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they really pay influencers? I’m skeptical. There seem to be a limitless supply of megafans who will defend the bad decisions of corporations because they’ve invested their personality in it, not because they’re getting paid.

Payment doesn't neccesarily need to be money. Send some pack here, give early access to some info there and it's really easy to cajole average youtuber to shill for you just because they want to keep the priviledges of getting the stuff early to review (as that keeps viewers on channel)

When you think about it, exclusivity of early access to information is essentially free advertising for these companies. Just break up your next product into chunk and distribute it to those eager to do free work and advertisement for you. Just for a chance to get that first chunk of audience.

Actually it is kinda genius. And then on the other side you have those that are potentially manipulating the market for their gains, who don't need that access.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#109

Post by thom » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

Sad if nobody manages to archive this all properly. Obviously a huge part of Magic culture is the tournament report, which became something of an art-form at its peak:

https://amzn.eu/d/3TcYK4o

I used to be an avid follower of tournaments online, moreso than playing once I was a bit older. A lot of old pros got into gambling and hedge funds, and there’s even an overlap with the sports analytics industry I work in now - my cofounder used to travel the world running Pro Tour coverage. I’m hoping some of the old magic returns with this year’s big tournaments. Still, Magic memory is pretty good. You can still find archives of stuff like The Dojo out there:

https://www.classicdojo.org/

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#110

Post by logical_proof » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

riskycodes wrote: post #72

EamonnMR wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very hard to do an open alternative to MTG. MTG's ecosystem is very closely tied to the economics of the physical cards driving the development and community (ie card shops.) Tools for playing magic without cards of course exist, but the vitality of the community depends on the constant refreshing of the environment tied to carefully balanced development.

I think this was true in the past, but communities like Premodern, cEDH and, of course, Old School, have managed to sidestep this issue: in the case of Premodern and Old School by sidestepping new releases, and for cEDH by being lenient on proxies. I don't think Magic will ever _die_, but if it did, these communities could well go on for a lifetime longer.

Let me introduce you to the Star Wars Customizable Card Game by Decipher. It lasted from 1995 until 2001 when Lucasfilm sold toy rights to… Hasbro. Hasbro made a terrible card game to replace it for Episode 2 that has fallen into obscurity. The original game still lives on with a Players Committee and new virtual sets. Compared to Magic the game was a niche of a niche and still exists. If magic ever ‘dies’ I am sure there will be a huge community that steps up to keep it alive.