‘Magic: The Gathering’ Devs Respond To Criticisms Of ‘Universes Beyond’ Crossover Sets: “Our Goal Is Not To Make A Quick Buck”
It started with The Walking Dead, and has since come to include such IPs as Street Fighter, Doctor Who, Fallout, and even Hatsune Miku, with Final Fantasy and Marvel sets fast approaching.
However, while some Magic: The Gathering players have loved the expansion of the trading card game into such ‘Universes Beyond’, a significant amount of their peers are growing tired of what they see as a cheapening of their hobby in favor of cashing in on recognizable IP.
Given how long-raging the debate surrounding the continued production of these crossover cards has been among players, it comes as little surprise that the game’s dev team is well aware of the controversy.
But in contrast to the accusations of their more fervent critics, the game’s devs say that not only is the Universes Beyond initiative far from a ‘cash grab’, but also that sales data proves the entire idea has been a rousing success.
Pressed on these fan concerns by IGN‘s Tom Marks during a recent roundtable interview with various members of Magic‘s development team (which notably occurred prior to the recent Commander ban, and thus did not discuss this matter at all), Rosewater affirmed that “the data does not remotely back up” the belief that Universes Beyond have been a critical failure.
“We are always forward facing. Our goal is not to make the quickest buck we can and call it a day,” said the designer. “Magic is 31 years old, we plan to be here as long as we can. And so we are constantly forward thinking in how we do things.”
Asserting that Magic is “a game all about change,” Rosewater then declared that “there’s no other way to grade” Universes Beyond as anything but a “runaway success.”
“[Players] bounced off it when it first happened, no question,” he recalled. “We made The Walking Dead cards and we had a lot of the audience respond they were not happy. But then Walking Dead went on to be the most successful Secret Lair we ever did, and Lord of the Rings is the most successful single set we ever did.”
However, curiously, Rosewater clarified that “successful” doesn’t just refer to “profit”, as “there’s lots of ways to look at something. We care about all of that.”
To this end, he further posited, “People just wanna attribute – I don’t know, it’s the nature of the internet of, like, ‘they’re up to no good,’ or, ‘they don’t have our issues in mind’. [That’s not true,] We very much care what players think. We do surveys and everything, we do market research. We don’t wanna just make something, we wanna make something we honestly believe that the players to their core will enjoy, and that drives our decisions.”
Adding to his colleague’s sentiments, Global Play Lead Ken Troop likewise asserted, “For Magic, typically we do see that when things don’t sell well, that is a really good proxy of audience dislike. There’s very few things that I can point to sustainably over time that have sold well, but it wasn’t popular. Or conversely, things that people say are popular but don’t sell well. Magic typically is a really good converter of joy to economic engagement.”
“We really do try to look at what’s going to make Magic have its best chance of lasting for a very long time,” he said. “Sometimes we get that wrong, but that is our motivation every time.”
The next Universes Beyond set, based on the entirety of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy franchise, is set to hit some time in 2025.
NEXT: Bank Of America Market Analyst Warns Hasbro’s Greed Is “Killing ‘Magic: The Gathering’”
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