For years, we have prided ourselves on being innovators within our industry, but when it came to our website – the fuel that powers every aspect of our business – we continually came up short in the innovation department.
Today, I am excited to unveil the first step towards changing that.
The launch of our new website marks a new era for our company, and establishes an incredibly strong foundation upon which we have begun constructing a massive home for the Magic: The Gathering community.
Let’s take a tour, shall we?
SHOP
Our new shopping cart software is far more robust than its predecessor, and will enable us to offer fans a significantly improved shopping experience. Upgraded Search, Sort, and Filter options will help you find what you’re looking for as quickly as possible, while state-of-the-art e-commerce security will continue to ensure that you can safely do so . In addition, we now have the ability to offer a much wider variety of sales, coupons, discounts and promotions. To celebrate the launch of our new website, I invite everyone to take advantage of one of the biggest sales we’ve ever offered in the history of our company!
- 5% discount on all Magic: The Gathering sealed products
- 10% discount on all Magic: The Gathering single cards
- 15% discount on supplies
Although this sale ends at 11:59pm ET Friday evening, read on to learn how you can receive these same discounts year round! (Update) Due to some issues we experienced with our new shopping cart software once it was actually live, we have decided to extend this sale through Wednesday 11/27 at 10:59am!
NEWS
We have already begun increasing the amount of Magic: The Gathering content published on Star City Games, and will continue to expand our offerings with a specific focus on four areas; daily reporting (News), original text-based content (Premium), live streamed video (Twitch) and prerecorded video (YouTube).
Our News section will be updated multiple times a day with the latest Magic: The Gathering-related announcements and news stories from throughout the community. However, if you come across a Magic: The Gathering-related announcement or news story that we may have missed, I invite you to Submit News to bring it to our attention!
PREMIUM
One of the most significant changes we’ve made as part of our website redesign was to redistribute the ways in we offer each piece of content that had previously been published under the “Select” umbrella.
Video content is now published in its own section, and we plan on significantly increasing our video offerings on both Twitch and YouTube. More on this below.
We will continue to sponsor third-party podcasts such as those operated by our friends at Arena Decklists and Lords of Limited, but will no longer be spotlighting such programs on our own website due to our plans to significantly increase our own content offerings combined with a lack of available real estate.
All original text-based content will now initially be published as part of our Star City Games Premium membership service, including articles by Emma Handy, Shaheen Soorani, Ryan Saxe, Ben Friedman, Sheldon Menery, and Bennie Smith, all of which had previously been published under our Select label. This change has enabled us to better compensate many of the aforementioned creators, while ensuring that our Premium roster continues to be home to as many of the games’ best players and most popular personalities as possible. After seven (7) days, each Premium article will automatically be unlocked so that those without a Star City Games Premium membership can see what they missed.
If having early access to more quality Magic: The Gathering content than ever before isn’t enough, I’m excited to announce that we have increased the discounts offered to Premium members from a flat 5% to the following:
- 5% discount on all Magic: The Gathering sealed products
- 10% discount on all Magic: The Gathering single cards
- 15% discount on supplies
To celebrate the launch of our new website, the same discounts we’re offering to everyone until 11:59pm Friday evening. (Update) Due to some issues we experienced with our new shopping cart software once it was actually live, we have decided to extend this sale through Wednesday 11/27 at 10:59am!
I invite you to check it out, and see how much money you could be saving by being a Star City Games Premium member!
VIDEO
Although we already provide live coverage of every SCG Tour event on Twitch and publish several weekly YouTube programs, we will soon be expanding both the quantity and variety of video content offered on both platforms. In addition to expanding our volume of Premium content, we also want to significantly increase our catalog of content that is always free to access. Twitch and YouTube are the platforms on which we will be doing so.
EVENTS
When it comes to our event offerings, our efforts have primarily been focused on continuing to improve the experience for both our attendees and viewers throughout the world. As a result, this section of our website has not yet been fully integrated into our new website framework. That, plus the addition of a number of new event-related resources and features, is currently scheduled to take place sometime early next year.
In the meantime, I hope you’ve already made plans to join us at December 13-15’s CommandFest Washington DC, because it is shaping up to be an amazing event!
DECK DATABASE
We have big plans for our deck database, but this part of our website will be updated, and significantly upgraded, along with the Events section sometime early next year. In the meantime, our deck database has already been updated to include Magic: The Gathering’s exciting new Pioneer format, and populated with the top Pioneer decklists from last weekend’s Star City Games Invitational.
MOBILE
One of the most frequently received pieces of feedback we’ve received was regarding our website not being mobile friendly, so we made sure that we prioritized addressing that issue as part of the first stage of this redesign. Whether you’re reading this on your phone, tablet or desktop, you have probably already noticed that our new website is finally optimized for viewing on each of those platforms!
Today’s launching of our new website is only the first step in a much longer journey, and thinking about all of the new resources and features that we will be debuting in the months to come has me as excited as I was when I cracked opened that Revised booster pack more than twenty years ago, and finally got that Shivan Dragon I’d been wanting to add to my dragon deck for what felt like forever at the time. In hindsight, I wish I would have kept all of the dual lands I opened during my quest for that elusive 5/5 flyer, but I guess you’ve got to start somewhere, right? 🙂
Happy shopping, and enjoy the new Star City Games!
** To report an issue or bug, please email [email protected].