Looking at how WotC is deliberately tanking the MTG market by rereleasing old card sets removing a lot of their collectability and value + getting rid of the MTG Judge program, it seems like WotC has made the call to kill the paper card market. I could be completely mistaken but that's my opinion. A lot of hobby shops seems to be card distributorships with board games with rpg's as a very niche market. So anyone here manage a hobby shop, just curious how much of your stores sales at MTG merchandise? I'm just getting a bit nervous on hobby shops shutting down. I've heard rumors of shops tanking hard lately.
Not a shop owner, but I've been looking into it for a while. All the Magic-related LGSes in my area shut down during COVID or before, with the game stores still around focusing on some other specialty as their bread and butter. There's a retro-console store, an anime figurine store, and a board game and minis store. Most stores do carry Magic or have Magic-related events, but I'd say the support for Magic in my area is...poor. The retro-console store is probably my favorite, and has a display case with one box of booster packs which are close to rotating out and about 20 singles which I don't think have ever moved since I started going there. It's clear that Magic is not making LGSes money these days, with a lot of the people still collecting buying cards from Ebay or Amazon, undercutting the LGSes.
So...pick up additional hobbies.
That said, my area is kinda the boonies. Those four game stores comprise almost a 1 hour driving radius in all directions.
I think there's certainly interest in TCGs from hobby shop owners, but you need to make a better business argument for them to adopt them. Magic, as it turns out, has systematically chosen to put LGSes at risk. They have to spend years building relationships with distributors, but have to price compete with Amazon, which gets a lower price with zero relationship-building. They have to guess demand for the cards blind. They have to hold onto a lot of the card liquidity in the market because players aren't trading...they're buying and flipping, and of course whatever money players do make from "MTG Finance" is probably at the expense of the LGS because they match-make most card trades. Most game store owners are now wise to this and they only support Magic barely enough to get butts in the seats.
Everything about the TCG business model needs to be taken back to the foundation.
I had a chat with the owner of my FLGS a little while back and he said that pre-COVID he'd get around 150 players for a pre-release tournament. Now he's lucky if 20 people show up.
He says that during COVID lots of people started playing online via MtG: Arena... and they haven't returned to buy physical cards or play in physical events. It's just so much easier and convenient to play online.
Just from listening to what other people say about their stores in the area, they typically thrive on the most popular stuff, MTG, Pokemon, and warhammer 40k. Anything else they provide is usually because they want to provide other stuff but it isn't enough to keep the business open.
As a side note, MTG at one point nearly killed the RPG industry. This was one of the reasons for the huge problems for RPG publishers in the 90s (though many brought it on themselves, there was also a general shift towards more card games). I've been holding a grudge against MTG and WotC ever since 😄
The late 20's son of a buddy was a highly competitive ranked player, who played constantly pre-COVID. He no longer plays quite as much, and 2/3s of his playing is online now. He has discontinued buying cards as well.
A 50-something friend, who has been an avid collector since the beginning, stopped buying cards with the last round of controversy on reprints. He still buys some and plays, but his interest has dropped dramatically, and he also plays online maybe half the time he does play.
Quote from: GamerforHire on October 16, 2023, 10:13:51 AM
The late 20's son of a buddy was a highly competitive ranked player, who played constantly pre-COVID. He no longer plays quite as much, and 2/3s of his playing is online now. He has discontinued buying cards as well.
A 50-something friend, who has been an avid collector since the beginning, stopped buying cards with the last round of controversy on reprints. He still buys some and plays, but his interest has dropped dramatically, and he also plays online maybe half the time he does play.
So the deliberate destruction of the card market to grow digital sales. Great.
Quote from: Trond on October 16, 2023, 09:31:29 AM
As a side note, MTG at one point nearly killed the RPG industry. This was one of the reasons for the huge problems for RPG publishers in the 90s (though many brought it on themselves, there was also a general shift towards more card games). I've been holding a grudge against MTG and WotC ever since 😄
I wasn't in the RPG and tabletop game scene during the 90s, but I was under the impression that the big shakeup in the RPG scene was TSR going bankrupt and being bought by Wizards, so the RPG market suffered from bad leadership until the OGL. While I stick to my opinion that most RPGs of this time period are obsolete, the 90s saw 3 editions of Call of C'thulu, 3 editions of Traveller, 2 editions of Shadowrun, and pretty much all of White Wolf's relevant work. I can see an argument that the D20 market was unhealthy, but I was under the impression that this was because TSR was threatening to sue a lot of people before they went bankrupt. Regardless, the non-D20 RPG market looks to me like it was going just fine.
I was also under the impression that we wouldn't have anywhere near as many LGSes without Magic. LGSes are no longer making enough money from Magic to support it like they used to, but once upon a time it was the bread and butter of LGS income. As much as I think Magic especially is a deeply flawed game and that WotC is led by a bunch of Kool-Aid guzzling lemmings, I find it hard to imagine running an LGS without some kind of a card game as a mainstay revenue stream.
Quote from: Fheredin on October 16, 2023, 12:01:35 PM
Quote from: Trond on October 16, 2023, 09:31:29 AM
As a side note, MTG at one point nearly killed the RPG industry. This was one of the reasons for the huge problems for RPG publishers in the 90s (though many brought it on themselves, there was also a general shift towards more card games). I've been holding a grudge against MTG and WotC ever since 😄
I wasn't in the RPG and tabletop game scene during the 90s, but I was under the impression that the big shakeup in the RPG scene was TSR going bankrupt and being bought by Wizards, so the RPG market suffered from bad leadership until the OGL. While I stick to my opinion that most RPGs of this time period are obsolete, the 90s saw 3 editions of Call of C'thulu, 3 editions of Traveller, 2 editions of Shadowrun, and pretty much all of White Wolf's relevant work. I can see an argument that the D20 market was unhealthy, but I was under the impression that this was because TSR was threatening to sue a lot of people before they went bankrupt. Regardless, the non-D20 RPG market looks to me like it was going just fine.
I was also under the impression that we wouldn't have anywhere near as many LGSes without Magic. LGSes are no longer making enough money from Magic to support it like they used to, but once upon a time it was the bread and butter of LGS income. As much as I think Magic especially is a deeply flawed game and that WotC is led by a bunch of Kool-Aid guzzling lemmings, I find it hard to imagine running an LGS without some kind of a card game as a mainstay revenue stream.
TSR didn't cause the collapse of gaming in the 1990s. TSR suffered a collapse because they stopped innovating new rules. TSR milked the existing ruleset for about 20 years with 1E being equivalent to 2E. TSR implemented heavy censorship of content. And White Wolf came out with Vampire the Masquerade which injected LARPing with RPG, which was new and people switched away from D&D. New ideas, led to new markets while D&D had its water flow cut off by internal censorship and poor leadership.
If you want to see the modern equivalent of it, see WotC today and how they are censoring Magic and D&D content, poor management (rereleasing old magic cards to stop the collectibility) and going fully to digital expecting that will lead to more sales. I for one now have to deal with asshats who expect Matt Mercer and just saw a posting in my area for a player who just got done playing Baldur's Gate 3 and is now interested in D&D. DM's have only so much of their time to give to their hobby and trying to write like a multimillion dollar voice actor led firm and now an entire video game company is not on my plate. I have like 3-5 hours a week if that to prepare and create maps.
I for one predict WotC will have killed off MTG and D&D as profitable brands by 2028-2030. Those brands are going full Disney. Never go full Disney.
WOTC is doing whatever they can to chop off the FLGS that has been promoting their products for years, off at the knees as fast as possible because these stores manage to squeeze a tiny bit of profit for themselves and WOTC wants that tiny bit too.
Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 16, 2023, 03:02:54 PM
WOTC is doing whatever they can to chop off the FLGS that has been promoting their products for years, off at the knees as fast as possible because these stores manage to squeeze a tiny bit of profit for themselves and WOTC wants that tiny bit too.
This is precisely why I think that WotC is loading the deck against themselves for disruption.
I mentioned on the Shaman thread I was working on a MTG competitor. The basic idea is to let LGSes print cards on demand via Staples or Office Depot and send a revenue split upstream. This does forfeit card consistency from one LGS to another and means that you will always have some proxy piracy problems. But that is, in fact, a good trade, because the LGSes desperately need less risk exposure and this business model exposes them to...zero. They don't have to pay a dime until they make a sale. The business model sells itself, especially in a context where WotC is intentionally stabbing LGSes in the back to make quarterlies.
Quote from: Fheredin on October 16, 2023, 12:01:35 PM
Quote from: Trond on October 16, 2023, 09:31:29 AM
As a side note, MTG at one point nearly killed the RPG industry. This was one of the reasons for the huge problems for RPG publishers in the 90s (though many brought it on themselves, there was also a general shift towards more card games). I've been holding a grudge against MTG and WotC ever since 😄
I wasn't in the RPG and tabletop game scene during the 90s, but I was under the impression that the big shakeup in the RPG scene was TSR going bankrupt and being bought by Wizards, so the RPG market suffered from bad leadership until the OGL. ....
Why do you think TSR were losing money? I remember that at the time, a lot of people pointed to a shift among gamers to MtG and similar card games as the reason. ICE also tried to get on the card bandwagon, only to not be able to sell as much as they hoped, and they went bust too.
Quote from: Trond on October 16, 2023, 05:15:59 PM
Why do you think TSR were losing money? I remember that at the time, a lot of people pointed to a shift among gamers to MtG and similar card games as the reason. ICE also tried to get on the card bandwagon, only to not be able to sell as much as they hoped, and they went bust too.
As a freelancer who was burned by the ICE bankruptcy I can tell you that isn't what busted ICE. I was a litigant in the bankruptcy proceeding and saw all their financials. It was because the Saul Zaentz company demanded ridiculous royalties from the Middle Earth line because the New Line Cinema Lord of the Rings movies were getting made and they thought they could demand that. Middle Earth was ICE's bread & butter.
Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 16, 2023, 03:02:54 PM
WOTC is doing whatever they can to chop off the FLGS that has been promoting their products for years, off at the knees as fast as possible because these stores manage to squeeze a tiny bit of profit for themselves and WOTC wants that tiny bit too.
It is FLGS that run the local tournaments, and foster the local gaming communities that buy WotC products. Games without community are dead. So WotC screwing FLGS for every little penny is killing their business.
Quote from: Thor's Nads on October 16, 2023, 05:25:57 PM
It is FLGS that run the local tournaments, and foster the local gaming communities that buy WotC products. Games without community are dead. So WotC screwing FLGS for every little penny is killing their business.
If WOTC is betting their entire farm on digital then their communities will be online. They no longer think that they need physical gathering places for communities. When you have suits who use terms such as under-monetization and have likely never played an rpg in their lives making the decisions for a gaming company you end up with shit like this. If these idiots knew anything about the actual TTRPG community then they would know that VTT play is what you settle for when you can't get or are unable to attend, a face to face group. So they are making their primary market focus, the second tier "good enough" option of the whole hobby.
Quote from: Trond on October 16, 2023, 05:15:59 PM
Quote from: Fheredin on October 16, 2023, 12:01:35 PM
Quote from: Trond on October 16, 2023, 09:31:29 AM
As a side note, MTG at one point nearly killed the RPG industry. This was one of the reasons for the huge problems for RPG publishers in the 90s (though many brought it on themselves, there was also a general shift towards more card games). I've been holding a grudge against MTG and WotC ever since 😄
I wasn't in the RPG and tabletop game scene during the 90s, but I was under the impression that the big shakeup in the RPG scene was TSR going bankrupt and being bought by Wizards, so the RPG market suffered from bad leadership until the OGL. ....
Why do you think TSR were losing money? I remember that at the time, a lot of people pointed to a shift among gamers to MtG and similar card games as the reason. ICE also tried to get on the card bandwagon, only to not be able to sell as much as they hoped, and they went bust too.
Aggressive litigation burning down community good will. TSR sued all sorts of people in the late 80s and early 90s, ranging from Mayfair games to Gygax himself and sent cease and desist orders to fans. When Magic came around, LGSes intentionally pushed MTG instead of D&D, in part because they could get more revenue from MTG at the time and in part as a form of retribution for man-handling the community.
I don't think that MTG displaced D&D's revenue; I think that LGSes wanted to protest TSR's behavior and picked MTG for their protest vote instead of another RPG because they could make more revenue with MTG. LGSes picked the winner.
Quote from: Exploderwizard on October 16, 2023, 05:43:27 PM
Quote from: Thor's Nads on October 16, 2023, 05:25:57 PM
It is FLGS that run the local tournaments, and foster the local gaming communities that buy WotC products. Games without community are dead. So WotC screwing FLGS for every little penny is killing their business.
If WOTC is betting their entire farm on digital then their communities will be online. They no longer think that they need physical gathering places for communities. When you have suits who use terms such as under-monetization and have likely never played an rpg in their lives making the decisions for a gaming company you end up with shit like this. If these idiots knew anything about the actual TTRPG community then they would know that VTT play is what you settle for when you can't get or are unable to attend, a face to face group. So they are making their primary market focus, the second tier "good enough" option of the whole hobby.
First, I 100% agree with Thor's Nads that screwing over the FLGSes is business suicide.
Second, while I understand the logic of pushing these games online, I think it's moronic if you actually think about it. Online gaming exposes you to ctompetition from video games , which makes it practically impossible to grow a player base while online. I think that WotC's own VTT is probably going to end poorly because Baldur's Gate 3 costs about as much as their VTT's subscription and there's already rumors of a VTT mod for BG3. The only future left for WotC is to slowly bleed players, both on D&D and MTG, because these games simply can't compete in the online space.
I sort of recall the TSR collapse as a combination of things. First off, the early 80's D&D bump was always a fad and TSR saw itself scrambling to return to that era of sales in the late 80's/early 90's. One response was a massive glut of material being created and released. Some good(Dark Sun, Birthright, Planescape), but a lot was pretty bad. Meanwhile Waldenbooks and B Dalton were in death spirals for their own reasons and then Magic sucked all the oxygen out of the gaming market. So when Walden/B Dalton decided to return all the unsold TSR stock back to help their own financials, that bankrupted TSR.
Even the warehouse book stores are basically dead these days. We can probably thank Magic that LGS have stayed around as long as they have. If WoTC abandons them(which looks like what will happen), I'm not sure how they'll evolve. The Games Workshop stores and places that focus on 40k/Fantasy Flight Games stuff(Netrunner, Star Wars) will likely do okay.
Quote from: Dracones on October 16, 2023, 11:40:06 PM
I sort of recall the TSR collapse as a combination of things. First off, the early 80's D&D bump was always a fad and TSR saw itself scrambling to return to that era of sales in the late 80's/early 90's. One response was a massive glut of material being created and released. Some good(Dark Sun, Birthright, Planescape), but a lot was pretty bad. Meanwhile Waldenbooks and B Dalton were in death spirals for their own reasons and then Magic sucked all the oxygen out of the gaming market. So when Walden/B Dalton decided to return all the unsold TSR stock back to help their own financials, that bankrupted TSR.
Even the warehouse book stores are basically dead these days. We can probably thank Magic that LGS have stayed around as long as they have. If WoTC abandons them(which looks like what will happen), I'm not sure how they'll evolve. The Games Workshop stores and places that focus on 40k/Fantasy Flight Games stuff(Netrunner, Star Wars) will likely do okay.
I agree, it was a combination of things that brought down TSR, not just MtG cards and the explosion of its popularity.
Petersen and Riggs in their histories of TSR make a very convincing, evidence-backed argument that the TSR under Lorraine Williams was arguably better-run than under the profligate spending and chaotic management styles of Gary & Co., but that their product publications of the late 1980's and 90's really sank the company. The actual, end cause of the collapse was the handling of their distribution agreement which caused a huge cash crunch at the end, but the profitability of TSR had already dropped precipitously and into the red due to a lousy publication strategy.
Riggs lays out with sales numbers that all of those wonderful settings and creative publications put out by TSR in second edition did not sell well at all, and were in the aggregate financial losers—despite all of our collective love of those products. Campaign settings are not money-makers at all, and divided the TSR customer base into tiny slices. The Buck Rogers experiment was a huge failure that not only lost TSR money on sales, but saw big money paid to the Williams family for the license, in a nifty insider profit scheme. Spellfire could have worked, but TSR only put enough resources into the game to lose money and did not support it well enough to compete with MtG. Dragon Dice was another hugely expensive flop. Books kept the company afloat in terms of profits during these years, but TSR did a lousy job of actually managing that division by screwing talent and not recognizing the actual dynamics of running a publishing house. As a game company trying to make actual profits off of their products, TSR was a really bad company all during second edition, despite how great it may have been creatively.
Quote from: Trond on October 16, 2023, 09:31:29 AM
As a side note, MTG at one point nearly killed the RPG industry. This was one of the reasons for the huge problems for RPG publishers in the 90s (though many brought it on themselves, there was also a general shift towards more card games). I've been holding a grudge against MTG and WotC ever since 😄
MTG at one point was keeping my FLGS afloat, while the comics market was going through a crash, and RPGs were in their usual doldrums.
The 1990s were a rough time for publishing in general.
There were widespread paper shortages that made the cost of paperbacks and comics more than double.
RPG books did not shoot up in price, perhaps due to a perception that the market would not bear it. I suspect that profit margins dropped instead.
In the sci fi book market, they basically doubled down on their a-listers to shore up profits, with the unfortunate side effect being that they stopped elevating writers from the midlists, with the exception of big fat fantasy writers. Writers like Walter Jon Williams, who should have been elevated to grandmaster status, instead found themselves struggling to stay afloat. Midlist authors like Jack Chalker found that their comfortable niches no longer existed.
Marvel Comics went into bankruptcy, and it was only their movie licenses that kept them afloat.
I've seen people saying that Disney's Lorcana (or whatever it's called) might be the white knight that can save the FLGS by filling the void left by MtG. Not sure I'd want to get into bed with Disney given what they're going through, but it's better than closing the doors...
Quote from: Fheredin on October 16, 2023, 12:01:35 PM
I wasn't in the RPG and tabletop game scene during the 90s, but I was under the impression that the big shakeup in the RPG scene was TSR going bankrupt and being bought by Wizards
No this was something very real that happened 2-3 years before any visible problems with TSR. In my city a lot of gamers just stopped playing RPGs and became MTG players. It was pretty spectacular actually. Complete change in the hobby, around '94 or '95. White Wolf was off the boil as well after being the huge fad preceding this one, so it felt like the whole RPG hobby imploded.
Quote from: HorusZA on October 16, 2023, 08:53:34 AM
I had a chat with the owner of my FLGS a little while back and he said that pre-COVID he'd get around 150 players for a pre-release tournament. Now he's lucky if 20 people show up.
He says that during COVID lots of people started playing online via MtG: Arena... and they haven't returned to buy physical cards or play in physical events. It's just so much easier and convenient to play online.
Wait till WotC shuts down those online servers. Because it WILL eventually happen. The MTG players just have not yet gotten the wakeup call other online CCG players have gotten. That these things are ephemeral and then all that money you spent on electronic cards is gone and you dont even have the cards.