You can’t beat plain text. No, not even with a crowbar. Also, don’t try this at home. Or at your friendly strategy website.
Someone once said that the pen is mightier than the sword. I don’t know who that person was, but I’m taking 10:1 odds (no Craig Wescoe need apply) that whoever said that first probably wasn’t the equity holder of the local sword-making factory and most likely wasn’t much of a Myrsmith. While that could be potentially true, today’s conflict or clash, if you will, is between the common keyboard and the common video camera.
We interrupt this program for an important announcement: “Dear author, please start talking about Magic. Like… NOW!”
Right, so — the first magicians or wizards in medieval society appeared around the ninth century AC, mostly taking the form of crowd entertainers, but were of course the direct descendants of shamanistic cultures, a direct transposition into…
“We meant Magic: The Gathering.”
Oh, right.
This is my first article, and it’s supposed to be about having fun, so I thought I should entertain you with bad puns. They’re the epitome of fun, after all. But as I gave the matter some thought, I figured out that I’m no LSV (this actually took an ID check in addition to the regular memory one), so terrible puns and bad jokes won’t get me anywhere. At least not anywhere I’d like to be.
After that the process of selecting a topic went very smoothly. I wanted to write about winning the Draft Challenge at Worlds, as that was a time in my life when I had the most fun playing Magic. Unfortunately the rules of competition don’t allow for this article to be a tournament report, so I won’t be able to tell you how I kept a one-land hand with triple Vampire Lacerator (quadruple total in the deck) and missed my second land-drop, only to win a couple of turns later after playing said Lacerators, two of my four Kor Hookmasters, and two of my three Disfigures (still had all these). This was in the quarters, game 1 against an opponent whom I knew to have an insane R/G deck. The fun times continued after I trampled my final’s opponent over after he played a Disfigure, Surrakar Marauder, Vampire Nighthawk, a four-drop I don’t remember, and a Malakir Bloodwitch in that order on turns 1 to 5. Unfortunately I cannot talk about that now, as it would be in fact a tournament report and thus a direct violation of rules and procedures.
The next best thing I could do (other than shamelessly call on myself and pat myself on the back) is give competition a hard time. I mean — people submitting video materials probably have a head start on me, so I thought I’d cut into their chances of winning.
No, I’m so not joking. Today I’m going to bash strategy videos as a learning tool for Limited.
And here I’m taking a called shot. Couple of months from now, people will no longer love video-articles the way they used to love them before. Sure they’ll still like them — who doesn’t? People would most likely watch one when the appropriate occasion presented itself. When they’re not too busy doing something else. When they have the time to carefully follow every second of it on screen.
My point — simply put, now that we finally come to it, is this — plain text is indestructible as an article format, hence Draft videos generally suck.
“But, Kaloyan,” you’d say (actually you wouldn’t, you’d probably say something like “K… Ka… Kay…low…” No, don’t sweat it — you can just call me Kyle), “Draft videos are the stone blade, the nut high, the bee’s knees. What reasons could there possibly be?”
Well…
Reason #1: Time constraints
Reason #2: Marginal utility as a learning tool
Reason #3: Low expected value
Reason #4: It’s all about the fun, fun, fun
Time constraints and you
Video-recording technology is accessible. Web storage capacity is sufficient. Bandwidth is operational. Why wouldn’t we want to record our games of Magic?
The truth is that we do. We want to record them, and we want to watch them. With strategy videos being such a novelty, Limited articles have lost some of their appeal. It’s much harder to follow ‘what happens’ in a text play-by-play form. Limited articles remain in text form for set reviews and pretty much for paper tournament reports. The problem with video material is that it’s only readily available for things we don’t really want to watch.
Do you really want to spend two hours of your day, every day, on watching a full 8-man draft on MTGO? Instead of, say, dedicating said two hours to actually playing Magic? I mean — you probably don’t want to take any part in the exchange of lines such as the following: “Hi. I’m [insert your name here], and I watch draft videos four to six hours a day.”
Or “Hey, did you do your homework? And what about that term paper we had for this week?”
“No, man. I was too busy watching draft videos.”
“Well, did you at least get any playtesting done for the PTQ?”
“Nope. Them draft videos…”
How about spending that time on tournament preparation instead? When you sit down to draft in that first draft at Day 2 of the GP, when you look at the booster pack you just opened, does the following thought go through your head? “Oh, man, this looks just like that pack in the draft video I watched the other day.” I don’t know about you, I’d rather be the guy who goes like, “I’ve done this a hundred times now; I’ll just stay focused.”
Memory is a funny thing. We tend to remember what we’ve experienced ourselves more vividly and with greater detail, compared to other people’s experiences, even though we may have “watched” a YouTube video about it. In-game learning isn’t the same as watching strategy videos, and by that I mean it’s much better.
On the other hand, the time it takes to read an article on Limited strategy (varying with the article) is 5-10 minutes. In some cases, you also take the time to fiddle with that Limited pool of theirs that they posted. Or to solve the puzzle. Or to think about the sample situation presented in the article. But — and this is important — never more than fifteen minutes.
Now let us walk through a draft video on one of the popular websites. Drafting and deckbuilding — 16 minutes. Match 1 — 19 minutes. Match 2 — 12 minutes. Match 3 — 34 minutes. Total — one hour and twenty-one minutes. It takes six to eight times longer to watch this average strategy video than to read an average strategy article!
Let’s look at another one — an hour and a half total. Another one — an hour and eleven minutes. That is a
lot
of time and no mistake. And we know why it’s so valuable — because time is mana.
Draft videos have marginal utility as a learning tool
I just watched a draft video. The author kept a fine hand on the draw, and his opponent played a two-drop, then missed his third land drop for a couple of turns and got tempoed out. That took four minutes total.
I want my four minutes back!
Seriously. We spent four minutes watching this video intently, dedicating our full focus and giving our full attention. We spent four minutes watching this video, while we could’ve done other things, such as — I don’t know —
read almost an entire article
. In return for our time, we get to learn how getting mana-screwed is bad and tends to lose you games. Like we didn’t know that before. Also sometimes we get a few words out of the author, something along the line of, “That was an unreasonable keep.” It helps us enjoy the commentary even more, but more on that later.
And speaking of references, how do they know if this was an unreasonable keep or not anyway? Maybe they get to see that guy’s hand off-camera or the contents of that guy’s deck? No, they most certainly don’t. The opponent may’ve needed just the third land to cast that Cultivate and then proceed to stomp the author with Titans of all different varieties. Which at the time of making that video, they’ve been  hopelessly cluttered in the opponent’s hand.
Every once in a while, there’s a genuinely useful and interesting situation. Every once in a while, an opportunity presents itself that the draft video could really be of use to the people spending their time watching it. Like once per match. Or once per tournament. And we probably missed that, because we were doing something else while the draft video was playing in the background. We waited forty minutes to see this exact moment, follow this exact line of thought. We’re about to gain great utility and learn from one of our betters! And… we just missed it. The author’s monotonous tone of commentary did not change, and at that exact time, we were just checking our e-mail for a few seconds.
Draft videos have low expected value
Draft videos provide an opportunity for the author to demonstrate and illustrate a point. Authors of draft video articles have been known to keep questionable hands with an “I will get there” attitude and have their excuse at the ready when they rip the lands or spells they need in the exact sequence. “I won, so big deal.” Well, yeah. It is a big deal. You shouldn’t have kept. Had this not worked out for you, you’d probably be saying how it was wrong to keep.
Winning is an entirely different matter, though. It makes everyone so results-oriented. I’ve heard the phrase, “I’ll just have to draw well/get lucky” or something similar quite a lot in draft videos. And now that it’s so easy to demonstrate how you can “just get there,” people are prone to do it more often.
When writing a Limited article about a tournament report, an author doesn’t think whether it will
work out for the report
said author will be writing eventually.
When discussing or considering a possible theoretical hand, an author will give the matter enough thought and make a thorough analysis of the situation.
But when an author is recording, he or she will get the feedback immediately and is therefore much more tempted to just keep the bad hand and see what happens. Physics teaches us that the act of observation changes the event that’s being observed. Well, sure. What people seem to forget though is that it also changes the observer. And not necessarily in the most positive way.
I’ve watched masterful players play badly and make stupid mistakes when “on camera.” Even though it’s their home camera, and they’re not really visible. While 60% of the ability of the best pro player might just be enough, most often it won’t be, and we again spend time on something which has low expected value.
When you’re watching a game, you have two reasons to watch it. Entertainment and training. I’m surely having much more fun when I’m playing Magic: the Gathering on my own, and I won’t learn anything useful if the opponent is at eight and forgets to block the Ulamog Crusher, because he thought he was at eighteen.
It’s all about the fun, fun, fun
Listening to the article author commentating on the draft process and the games is pretty fun. No argument there. Sometimes authors become too inbred with their comments, but we would all be, if we had to go through the ordeal of talking non-stop for two hours straight. Unless we’re Kibler, in which case it wouldn’t make any difference. Then again, we have stand-up comedians just a click away. LSV could probably support his own real-life gig, but other than that, the quality of jokes drops quickly and significantly.
If you’re making draft videos, though, this also means the following will
not
happen to you:
Followed swiftly by: “You say I had Negate in hand and tapped out, but I was instead holding…
insert an entirely-different-story-that-makes-people-wonder-if-it-was-the-same-match-tournament-or-even-the-same-game-and-not-say-a-game-of-snooker here.”
Were this a text report, both the author and said opponent would at this juncture, start going at it in the forums for the next couple of hours, and overall much joy would ensue. Videos, however, have this trend of being — well — accurate. I can’t argue about ‘what happened’ in a video article. I can’t make lame excuses in a video article. I mean — people will still troll, but trolling on the forums ain’t what it used to be. Now you get to have your credentials handed to you.
I’ll get my hands dirty here, and I’ll make a football reference. I live in Europe, so actually for all of you US people this would be ‘soccer.’ So here it goes. Whenever I have time for a soccer game I want to watch, I’d prefer to watch my favorite team playing. That’s natural. But I’d also want to watch my favorite team playing for something important. The more important the game, the more there is “at stake,” the more fun and enjoyment I get out of it. If I watch the finals of the Pro Tour live with commentary, I’m willing to give up my time, often with a sleep schedule disturbance thrown in for good measure. Getting to watch a guy I don’t know much about play against other guys I know even less about with eight packs at stake…?
I now get to leave you with:
Le Grand Finale
Don’t get me wrong. I know how excited I was when the whole thing was new. Man, I remember how enthusiasm carried me over from one draft video to another. And then to some Constructed videos! It was like Christmas break had come early (and I’ve skipped the months in between from watching draft videos all day). But now the feeling of exultation has finally started to wear off, and the flash player “play” button has lost its magic (and Magic) appeal.
I hope my self-alleged “clever” use of cunning
Sparkmage
arguments has left you, readers, convinced, and you’e now sharing my (strictly non-camera bound) point of view.
Bonus Section
In which the reader gets to learn how I stopped worrying and learned to love strategy videos.
So we all said a lot of things I’m going to regret. But I don’t want to just be negative. Draft videos have their use and utility. They just need time to evolve as a content format. Time
and
effort of people who are conceptually creating their own content. Effort like SCG’s own “The Magic Show.” Efforts like Wizards of the Coast’s live Pro Tour elimination matches broadcast. Efforts like the GGsLive website. The Magic TV series of CFB. Lucas Siow’s legendary format preview videos.
Video content is a niche, and it’s a good niche. I just hope it will be used appropriately. For example I’d love getting video spots in the middle of an article, illustrating a point that the author has made. For example — “blue Leyline is bad; now you get to see why,” or “It’s important to have at least two combat tricks in your deck, as illustrated here.” This would be awesome! Unlike watching boring stuff for forty minutes just to miss the single important moment because you had to use the bathroom.
That being said, vouch for me, and I promise you I won’t
only
make terrible jokes. I’ll put them totally out of context as well!