Wizards of the Coast has been making a push to make the Pro Tour more appealing to the average player. They’ve replaced monetary awards with travel vouchers, booked several Pro Tours in highly desirable travel locations (the Louvre, Prague, Hawaii), issued Pro Tour Player Cards, and began the Magic Hall of Fame. These innovations have been coupled with changes to the Pro Tour itself – Player of the Year payouts replaced by Pro Player tiers with appearance prizes/fees, a Pro Player’s lounge at events, and other smaller niceties. Webcasts of the Pro Tour are now standard fare. Have these tactics worked to pull the non-Pro player into the world of the pro?
Not as much as Wizards would have liked.
Let’s face it – the average Magic-playing Joe still doesn’t given two hoots or two hollers about the Pro Tour. He’s playing in high school/at college/after work with friends, couldn’t tell you which one is Olle and which one is Darwin, and thinks that Pro Player cards were the biggest waste of cardboard ever printed – why couldn’t they have gotten a nice token creature at the prerelease instead of some dude named Tim Aten?
Wizards, you’re trying. But you’ve had the same general idea for a decade now – build up the talent and culture behind the Pro Tour to attract players towards a more competitive style of play. More prizes equals more players. More fame equals more players. More players equals more money spent on your game of Magic: The Gathering.
Then something like affinity happens, and suddenly your tournament base falters (Friday Night Magic), people begin flocking away from tournament play in droves – and an unpopular release (Kamigawa block) kicks competitive Magic while it’s down.
Please note that this is not to say that Magic is in trouble – far from it, Magic is thriving thanks to a strong Ravnica release, coupled with a majority of sales going towards non-competitive players.
A quick clarification before I proceed. When I mention the non-competitive player, I mean a player who does not regularly attend Pro Tour Qualifier level tournaments/does not have aspirations to reach the PTQ/Pro level. There are some Friday Night Magic players who show up weekly just to play, and some who show up to try to win – the latter type usually graduate to PTQ play.
In the United States, there has been a rash of low tournament attendances. Extended Pro Tour Qualifiers were down across the board from last year (noticeably at Grand Prix events), and State Championship attendances were far below where they should have been. Both Standard and Extended are extremely healthy and robust formats, with tons of room for innovation and deck choice. People are still avoiding Constructed tournaments thanks to Mirrodin (overpowered) and Kamigawa (underpowered and badly-named cards) blocks. Meanwhile, prerelease and “casual” formats are thriving.
In November, Wizards held a round of Two-Headed Giant championships. These tournaments were by-and-large successful, even though the prizes and design of the tournaments left something to be desired.
I present to you the ZHG hat. Not the 2-HG hat, the ZHG hat. Move ZHG, for great justice! Prizes included a deck box (for first place), foil Underworld Dreams promo cards (see tomorrow’s article), and packs (to be determined by the TO). Despite the flotsam thrown at the ZHG players, teams still showed up in droves just to play the team format.
Which brings me to the topic of today’s article – Wizards of the Coast is throwing their money at the wrong end of the game. Think about it – the largest tournament attendances are prereleases, by and far. This applies across the board for all the major Trading Card Games – appeal to the casual player and you’ll appeal to the largest segment of your audience.
If you’re not a casual player, I want you to put yourself in the shoes of the casual player for a moment. It’s Saturday, and you have a lot of things you can do with your time. There’s a Pro Tour Qualifier in your town, and the format is Ravnica Block Constructed. Your choices are:
- Play in the Qualifier, face opponents who are much more dedicated to you, have practiced a lot more than you, will “rules-cheese” you (please note that this is a matter of perspective here), and are generally not sociable.
- Play in the Qualifier, with the expectations of just going to play, without a care about winning – for $20.
- Stay home and play a group game with friends.
- See a movie.
Based on attendance figures, choices A&B just aren’t happening at astronomical rates. If they were, we’d be seeing PTQ figures that are closer to prerelease and States figures instead of PTQ figures that are half/a third/a quarter of State Championship attendances.
What’s the solution? It came to me on the way to the Ravnica prerelease. We’d scheduled sealed Two-Headed Giant and sealed Team events for our prerelease, and we expected them to have strong attendances (they did). We predicted that most players wouldn’t care about the Pro Player cards (positively or negatively) thanks to the strength of Ravnica (they didn’t), but that the negative online buzz about the Player cards distracted from people concentrating on just how good a set Ravnica was (it did).
Wizards is simply going the wrong way about promoting the games. Instead of trying to make competitively players out of non-competitive ones… They should be structuring their “prize” tournaments around the casual player.
Think of it this way – Wizards of the Coast will give out $240,245 in prizes at Pro Tour: Honolulu. This does not include the money they will pay out for Level 3+ Pro Tour players, the expenditures for PTQ winners (who receive free travel to Honolulu), or any other Pro Tour benefits (the Player’s Lounge, for instance).
Meanwhile, the qualifier round for Honolulu was down from last year’s Extended season – despite the prizes for winning being better, the location of the Pro Tour being better, and the format being healthier and more fun to play than last year’s Extended. [This isn’t entirely true – PTQ attendance at the end of the season was very very strong in many areas. – Knut]
Wouldn’t it make sense of Wizards ran a separate-but-equal amateur-type Pro Tour event simultaneous to the Pro Tour itself? The prizes at the even itself wouldn’t even have to be that great (witness the ZHG prizes), because people would be tripping over themselves to win free trips to exotic locales!
Picture this: Wizards of the Coast announces a round of Two-Headed Giant qualifiers, for a Two-Headed Giant World Championship to be held at Pro Tour: Honolulu. This would discourage any Pro Tour players from trying to qualify, since they wouldn’t be able to play in both events. In fact, you could probably bar any qualified players from playing in Two-Headed Giant PTQs if you wanted, without any ill effects.
The Two-Headed Giant qualifiers would have the following prize: A trip for four (the two winners, plus an additional person for each player) to Honolulu, including a paid 3 day/2 night hotel stay (Friday-Sunday). The prizes at the Honolulu tournament wouldn’t have to be big money – the expense went into getting the casual players there to begin with, so Wizards could give out “Magic for a year” (the winning team gets two cases of every new release for the next calendar year), special Promotional cards (give these players the Alternate Art Exalted Angel instead of giving them to judges), and other low-cost, high-desire prizes.
For those who are the type of casual player I’m talking about, which would you rather play in?
- A Pro Tour Qualifier, as they exist now (airfare to Hawaii), with a chance to win cash at the Pro Tour
- A Two-Headed Giant qualifier, where you and a friend could win a trip for you and a loved one to Hawaii (airfare and accommodations), with a chance to win a ton of sealed product and/or unique promotional cards?
I think “B” would appeal to vastly more players than “A”, would drive tournament attendances for “Qualifier-level” events through the roof, and would revitalize competitive Magic – albeit at a fewer-pressures, more casual-player-friendly level.
I say lop $100,000 off of the Pro Tour and send fifty Two-Headed Giant teams and their loved ones to Hawaii. The players you’d lose from the Pro Tour would pale in comparison to the rise in tournament play that would be seen from the lower tier of players – enough so that within two to three years, the added revenue could be put back into the competitive Pro Tour…with interest.
Ben
Tomorrow: What the hell is going on with Promo cards?