‘Magic: The Gathering’ Says Less Than 10% Of Players “Strongly Dislike” Recent Rise In ‘Universes Beyond’
According to Magic: The Gathering lead designer Mark Rosewater, while he both recognizes and understands the vocal opposition towards the game’s growing emphasis on their Universes Beyond crossover sets, there’s unlikely to be any slow down to their production because the sheer amount of players who “really want” to build a deck around Frodo Baggins, Spider-Man, or Sephiroth far outweighs those that “strongly dislike” the entire idea.
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Rosewater offered this insight into Wizards of the Coast’s internal operations while addressing player frustrations regarding the recent announcement that never year’s MTG set releases were slanted 4-3 in favor of Universes Beyond, with planned crossovers for 2026 including The Hobbit, Marvel Super Heroes, Star Trek, and a yet-to-be-revealed Nickelodeon IP (currently speculated to be Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
Trying out “a new approach to explaining how [MTG] R&D handles things”, Rosewater recently polled readers of his public Tumblr-hosted dev blog as to how they would personally approach a situation where a potential game addition causes a divide among player sentiment:
“R&D tries something new. They then get feedback on that new thing. The feedback is a five-point survey. 5 means the players adore it, they’re very excited by it. 1 means the players loathe it, they don’t want it in the game.
“If 10% of the audience rates that particular aspect a 1, what percentage of the audience needs to rate it a 5 in order for R&D to do that thing again?”
After collecting over 1,500 responses to his poll, Rosewater elaborated on its premise as it related to MTG, this insight gleaned from his more than 20-years in charge of the game’s development:
“The reason I asked the question is making all of you aware that it’s not an issue of if some players will dislike something. Some players dislike everything. When making decisions, we have to look at the larger picture of how players feel across the spectrum, as players simply don’t have a unified reaction.
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“Our data says roughly 9% of the audience strongly dislikes Universes Beyond (and that data is a little old, the number is shrinking with time). For contrast, double-faced cards was at 15% when they premiered.
“Assuming the 2’s, 3’s, and 4’s are equally distributed, we would want somewhere between 20% and 30% to feel confident making more of the item in question. Now, the 2’s, 3’s and 4’s being equal isn’t usually what happens, so the answer is a little more complex in reality.
“The point of this blog is to try and give honest behind-the-scenes information about how we do what we do. You don’t have to like our decisions, but I at least want you to understand them.”
Met in turn by an unhappy MTG player who flippantly pressed him to “explain why me not enjoying [Universes Beyond] is analogous to people not being happy with card frame redesigns or the introduction of double-faced cards”, Rosewater clarified, “I’m comparing you not being happy with a change we made to other players not being happy with other changes we made.”
“The unhappiness is the similarity. We did something that changed the game in a way that saddened some players. Those players were very upset and communicated it to me.
“Now, I get that the change that made you upset is more important to you than the changes that made other players upset, but that doesn’t make those other changes any less important or any less upsetting to those other players. That’s the core of my point.
“My job isn’t avoiding making any players unhappy. My job is to try and make as many players happy as possible, but there’s no way to do that without making some players unhappy. Why? Because any action we take will make someone unhappy. How do I know this? Because I’ve been doing this for thirty years.
“I’m not trying to diminish your unhappiness. I do, in fact, understand your issue. There was a period in time where I thought as you do. But in the end, I came to realize that MTG keeps evolving towards the state that the general consciousness of the players pushes it. We have a lot of Universes Beyond sets because the players, again at large, want it.
“And I understand how the game you love evolving in a direction that you don’t like is hard. The problem is I have to serve all players, and right now, the majority of them really want Universes Beyond. I don’t know how else to voice this. It’s the reality I have to face as Head Designer. When enough players want something, we deliver it.
“As for why we don’t have a sanctioned format that doesn’t allow Universes Beyond. We went and collected data to see if there was a large enough audience to support it, and there wasn’t.”
Drawing his MTG-related thoughts to a close, Rosewater ultimately affirmed, “I’m trying to do right by the players as a whole. That’s my job.”
