I’ve read a lot of articles over the past few days that have ranged from concerned optimism to fire-and-brimstone prophecies of the end of days. The Pro Tour Players Club and the traditional model of the World Championships are gone, but it isn’t the end of the Magic, or even competitive Magic. It is the end of these two programs as they exist today, which is something that is (at least for me) sad, but it won’t prevent me from playing Magic. It may change some of my habits, or my goals, but it won’t keep me from the game. I just love it too much.
I don’t know what precipitated these changes at Wizards of the Coast—whether it was market research, an effort to cut costs, or a decision to change how the Pro Tour is used to promote the game—but the changes are significant and cause a dramatic shift to the system we are so accustomed to. While there were certainly problems with the previous system, it was a system that worked and cultivated a long history and a great culture. I do not want to see those die off in the future; I want to see them continue and grow.
To that end, I am writing Wizards of the Coast a letter, posted below as an open letter. What’s important, though, is that I’m mailing this out. Not through email, but honest-to-god snail mail letter, and I’d recommend that you do the same. Sending in your opinions the old-fashioned way may not be the most efficient way to do it, but it should help to show just how much this means to you, especially if you are outside of the US. This is important to us, and this is something we care about. Email is a wonderful tool, but it is ephemeral. It’s quick and easy to send out electronic correspondence, and it goes into an inbox that just ticks up by one more unread. A physical letter is something real that can be held in your hand and (because of the relative rarity of paper correspondence these days) is far more notable than what amounts to just another electronic correspondence.
The reality is that Magic: The Gathering could exist without the Pro Tour, but not without the vast majority of “kitchen-table” Magic players. The Wizards of the Coast sponsored Pro Tour exists as a marketing tool and a way to promote Magic, but it isn’t the only one. From a straight accounting perspective, each dollar spent on Duels of the Planeswalkers is probably far more effective than each dollar spent on supporting the Pro Tour. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t exist, or wont’ exist in the future. The Pro Tour is an important part of their marketing strategy, but how that strategy is being implemented is being changed.
Especially after the recent barrage of tweets from Aaron Forsythe about these changes and how it was a Wizards decision, not Hasbro, I believe that it is important as a community to let Wizards of the Coast know how much the current Pro Tour system means to us, and what our concerns are with the changes to the Organized Play system. I don’t believe this is the correct venue to throw out apocalyptic predictions about how these changes will kill Magic, or threaten leaving the game over this—I don’t think they will help. I think it’s important to voice in a positive way what the parts of the system that have been cut from the 2012 season concern us and why they matter, so that Wizards can create a new system that incorporates those elements.
So, if you care as much about professional Magic as I do, make sure that you tell Wizards directly. Send Aaron Forsythe and Mark Rosewater e-mails, or do what I am doing, and send them a letter. Make sure they know that a strong professional tournament system is important for the game, and what that system means to you, especially if you aren’t a professional player. If you are just a fan of the game, and the coverage and history of the Pro Tour keeps you playing, then let Wizards know that. They need to know that this isn’t an issue that only affects the few hundred players a year that attend Pro Tours; this is an issue that impacts players at all levels. Without a strong Professional system, our game can exist, but it will lose something that makes it special.
An Open Letter to Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast
1600 Lind Ave SW Ste 400
Renton WA 98057
Samuel Stoddard
[address]
[email]
Dear Wizards of the Coast,
As a player of Magic: The Gathering for seventeen years, I was alarmed by the recent announcement of changes to Organized Play—namely, the removal of the Pro Tour Players Club in its current form, as well as the changing of Worlds from a Pro Tour-style tournament to a 16-player tournament. Without any information on what is replacing this system, I am very concerned about the future of professional-level Magic and for the players who make their livelihood largely, or solely, by playing Magic: The Gathering.
Professional-level Magic matters to me. I don’t know that I would still be playing today if the Pro Tour didn’t exist. It gave me an outlet for my competitive urges for many years and gave me a dream of what I could accomplish as a player—I could travel across the world, I could compete against the superstars of the game that I had read about, and I could even become a Pro Tour Champion. I wanted to one day be able to play Magic full-time as my sole source of income. I wanted to become the best in the world. While I managed to accomplish some of my goals, many are left unrealized and may well be forever. I will probably never be the best player in the world, and I may never win a Pro Tour, but the fact that I have known other people who have achieved that dream gives me the fortitude to keep trying.
The changes as they have been announced do not remove those chances for a player, but I fear they will weaken the level of professional-level play, and unless suitable alternatives are added for the 2012-2013 Pro Tour Season, we may see the number of full-time Magic players drop significantly as they search out more steady sources of income. While I currently have no ambitions of joining their ranks, it heartens me that there are people who were able to succeed and achieve the dream that I was not able to. While these players may make up an almost infinitesimal fraction of the total Magic-playing community, their existence provides many players like myself continued justification for hours of playtesting, so that we can one day match our skills against this caliber of opponent.
Without a strong system to reward players for high-level play throughout the year, and without some kind of guaranteed money at each event, it isn’t hard to imagine that many top-level players will be unable to afford to continue playing the game and seeing the world. There is a real risk that competitive Magic will become far more regionalized and that it will become far more United States-centric, which I believe would be a great loss.
Those concerns are only heightened by the change to Worlds. While an understandable business decision, it also cuts off many of the opportunities for players in countries other than The United States to compete at the professional-level. For many players outside of the United States, Pro Tour qualifiers are very few and far between, and only offer a few slots per country per year. Nationals gave a way for three to four players in a given country to travel to play the game and gave the other members of their country someone to cheer on.
From the very beginning of my Magic career, I was enthralled by the idea that Magic was a global game. I sought out cards printed in foreign languages. When I began talking to people on the internet about Magic, I found out just how far reaching the game was. The Internet Relay Chat room I frequented was full of people from Europe, Asia, and South America.
As a youth of around sixteen, I remember working on a deck with another player from Hong Kong for his upcoming participation in the 1997 World Championships. I remember talking to him in the chat room and getting a first-hand account of the changeover of Hong Kong from British rule to Chinese rule and seeing how different his account was than the account I was seeing on television. This was an eye opening experience for me and one that I never would have had without the common bond of Magic to connect us.
While I understand that these changes were made with sound business reasons behind them, and I look forward to the improvements in coverage they offer, I also fear that they threaten to weaken the current status of Magic as a game with elite global competition.
I hope that moving forward, you will be able to create a new system that allows for a class of professional Magic players, as well as provide a way to bring in talent from all over the world. I believe that these elements are crucial for making Magic that outstanding game it is today, and for its continued growth as a competitive game in the future.
Sincerely,
Samuel Stoddard
DCI#650313
Cc:
Greg Leeds
Hélène Bergeot
Mark Rosewater
Aaron Forsythe