Your Foundation is Rotten
On Magic's relentless crossovers and the erosion of good faith
The Walking Dead was the canary’s call that we were told to ignore. We were accused of overreacting – it was just five cards, and they weren’t good enough to be relevant anywhere, and but neither was the television show at that point, so the concept felt a little odd and out of place, all things considered. When the set did gangbusters, we were lectured about invisible people who care about Magic beyond our little internet bubbles. The gas burns brightest from street lamps just above your wary head.
Four years have passed, the boundaries between our game and their media franchises have melted away, and Magic is now designating itself an “IP” within its own flagship presentations.
What are we doing here?
“We want to bring more people into Magic”
This is the most innocent of all the arguments. Magic has always had a high barrier to entry and everyone needs a way in. There are traceable success stories of Tolkien fans who have embraced Dominaria because of the printing of Witch-king of Angmar.
If the goal is to invite more people into Magic, then what do you do once they’re here? How do you separate your own signals from your own noise? What happens when that Lord of the Rings fan is ambushed by Captain America and Wolverine in the next fiscal year? What do you say to the Warhammer 40,000 players who were lured in by the sci-fi trappings of Abaddon the Despoiler, only to be winked at by the single eye of a homunculus wearing a Stetson?
How do you address, in earnest, the good ole fashioned Liliana fans who have never heard of any of these characters?
How many more times must you qualify Magic to the people who built and funded the empire you’ve put up for sale?
“Fans of Magic have natural overlaps with other franchises”
This is the most tenuous of all the arguments. You can paint the patterns of nerd culture with giant brushes, but it all becomes amorphous when filling in the tiny details. Is common interest in a mutual hobby enough justification to force two friends to date?
I don’t need Wander on a Magic card to validate how much Shadow of the Colossus meant to me. Wasted is time spent pointing at the facsimile in my command zone and repeatedly nudging the player next to me, wondering if they, too, were once moved by art.
“We want to grow the business and the brand”
This is the most cynical of all the arguments. If the goal is to make more money, what happens when that money is just being spent on more crossovers? At that point, isn’t the proverbial ouroboros just eating its own tail?
Following this claim, what exactly is the Magic you want to promote and grow? Is it The Brothers’ War? Is it the Gatewatch? Is it Basking Rootwalla and Hurloon Minotaur and Serra Angel? Is it Neon Dynasty? Is it the 1-of-1 The One Ring? I suppose the Netflix show will eventually answer this question. Regardless, why does Magic remain completely irrelevant to the world beyond its own game stores and tournament halls? Why do my friends and family still think I play Pokémon?
Pokémon, by the way, surpassed Mickey Mouse and became the most valuable media franchise in the history of the world without compromising an ounce of its identity. There are no Space Marines to be found with yellow borders.
“Don’t yuck my yum!”
This is the most exhausting of all the arguments. For four straight years, my yum for Magic has been repeatedly yucked by Booster Fun and Special Guests and Universes Beyond and everything else that requires learning the keyboard shortcuts to produce the trademark™ icon. My dismay for these decisions has always been met with a frown. “You have to let people like things.”
This argument is exactly why The Walking Dead Secret Lair became Magic Foundations. When you actively silence the warnings of malignancy, you allow the zombification to spread. Cut it out!
Biting the Hand that Feeds
I have working relationships with everyone involved in this weekend’s presentation and plenty more with artists and and writers and developers behind the curtains. I’ve sat with them in production meetings and I’ve raised glasses with them after shows. I have befriended and championed and celebrated Wizards employees at every pay grade. I have often wondered what working in the building would be like, and I’ve declined soft offers to find out firsthand.
I have also taken many interviews from outside journalists to relentlessly defend R&D’s stewardship of Magic against the doomsayers, chalking up these crossover initiatives to a hostage scenario with the suits at Hasbro. I have fallen on swords for their decisions. I have led the Lord of the Rings and Assassin’s Creed panels myself and I have spoken directly with everyone who gave life and energy to those cards. And they’re all passionate people. We’re all passionate people here.
At this point, I do not know who or what to defend anymore. And I’m tired.
To stick my neck out further and run my risks – where is the integrity? What happened to holding the line against the endless encroachment of bloodthirsty enterprises? Who gave in? Who sold the power and toughness box to all these sponsors? What was the price? These are no longer rhetorical questions – the cat is so far out of the bag that it donned a striped hat and started spitting limericks.
Little Plastic Figurines with Big Giant Heads
It’s almost too poetic that the current CEO of Funko, Inc. is Cynthia Williams. I’ve long joked that the ultimate show of irony would be to print a Secret Lair of the Lorwyn Five, except will illustrations of their Funko Pop equivalents still sealed in the plastic boxes. Even better if the cards shipped in the same packaging.
What is the function of Funko Pop if not to perpetuate the relevance of other multimedia icons? What does a Funko Pop of a Funko Pop look like? The company does not have a mascot or a message – it just sells a mold, a silhouette, the outline of a knick-knack.
If we’re really going to keep doing this, just change the card back already. You’ve lost the spirit of the game and the rights to its legacy. I can’t imagine how Garfield feels.
Well, thank god a content creator, a voice in the hobby, someone louder than me has articulated what it feels with the glut of cross IP content.
I have mostly been an omni tcg player. I love it when IPs find their place in the tcg market with their own game rules, where mechanisms are interesting and tied closely to the theme.
I like mtg, I love its lore, and I enjoy it when someone at the table does something weird and almost nonsensical. But I've been playing against hobbits and the brotherhood of steel and they just take me out of the game this time. And I hate the feeling because I love lotr and fallout. I just don't want to play them in the same multiverse, they could (or are) so much more as different card games.
I've come to accept that this game is likely no longer for me as a new wave of players enter the game thanks to UB.
For all the shouting and complaining we do online and as loud as our voice is when these announcements are made, we appear to be the minority now when it comes to the profit that Hasbro and WOTC can make.
Simply saying "I want Magic the Gathering to be Magic the Gathering, not a pop culture pool of what's popular from other IPs" invokes responses of ridicule and contempt for "Ruining the fun of others." "Just let people enjoy things!" "The game still plays the same, so what's the problem?"
Why has it become so wrong to say that I do not want other brands planting their flags down and staking a claim in my own hobby?
I feel this current perception among many players who love UB that MTG is simply a rule set and design philosophy centered around the color pie that can be applied to anything if you want, completely overlooks everything about the game previously. MTG has its own history, its own universe, its own characters, its own style, its own feel to the cards, its own way of playing. All of the parts that made something a true part of the Magic the Gathering world.
Before UB, if someone presented a Spongebob or Captain America MTG card, we would all acknowledge that it it might be unique or have fitting mechanics that flavorfully represent the character, but that it had no place in the game. It was missing that fundamental piece of flavor that's so hard to describe, but that made it a true Magic the Gathering card, even if mechanically, it was no different from any other card. But now that flavor is lost. These UB cards are no different than the custom cards of those characters that our own community would make as a joke so many years ago.
Now here we are. Our game has been sold out to the highest bidder and become something unrecognizable, converted into a cheap pillar meant to prop up a dying company with mindless product consumption until the people at the top have prepared their golden parachutes and jumped off to the next thing they can ruin. My own local community is completely devastated these days as the older players, some of which who had been playing for 20+ years, have silently quit or retreated into personal playgroups that let them preserve the game they loved.
Perhaps it is finally time to join them.