This is a post about Magic: The Gathering.
Wizards of the Coast is making more money than ever with Magic: The Gathering. A big part of that is the work they’ve done to create a digital version of the game. And while we can debate the quality of their products, WotC continues to make big bucks regardless.
I have had a problem with the continued increase in the power level of cards over the years, and especially in the past few years. “Power creep” as it’s called is arguably inevitable to a degree, but the massive push in card power recently is concerning. I believe it will have a long-term effect on the quality of the game in lieu of big profits in the short term. Eventually there must be a cap to how powerful an individual card can be, or eventually we would have cards that would literally break the game.
Imagine a functional reprint of Lightning Bolt that did five damage at instant speed. Or ten damage. Power level must stop at some point, and the more they push the power creep, the closer they’ll get to reaching that maximum level that they can’t (or shouldn’t) push past.
How close are we to that point? I don’t know. But that’s not the focus of this post. I want to talk about addiction.
An addict, over time, needs more of the product they’re addicted to in order to get the same high. They develop a tolerance to the product along with a physical and/or mental dependence on it.
Magic: The Gathering is often referred to as “Cardboard Crack.” There’s even an online MTG comic with that as its name. And while most people say it jokingly, I fear there is more truth to it than the player base is willing to admit.
Players spend hundreds – even thousands – of dollars on Magic Arena alone, even though in reality these players own nothing on Arena. They can’t sell or trade the digital cards. They can’t cash out. We complain about the “economy” of Magic Arena but there is no economy. If Arena shuts down, everything a player “owns” will poof out of existence. Unlike physical cards, on Arena, Wizards of the Coast owns everything. But people keep spending all that money anyway.
Power creep, in my estimation, is a sign of WotC taking advantage of the addictive nature of Magic: The Gathering. The people who pay the most are either collectors who want to keep adding to their collection (known as “whales”), or power gamers who want the best cards to build the best decks to increase their win percentage.
And both spend a LOT of money on Magic: The Gathering.
Power creep suggests strongly that the addicts who spend all this money on the product need more to get the same stimulation. Look at how the player base complains when WotC releases an “underpowered” set. They aren’t getting their fix.
I’m not suggesting every Magic player is addicted, nor am I implying that every Magic player is a power gamer. But there are enough whales and power gamers in the MTG community willing to spend a lot of money on their addiction, and the more the power increases, the more they’re willing to keep dropping big bucks on cards, even cards they don’t and can’t ever own.
This means for the MTG community at large, we are left to deal with the ever-increasing power creep. Long-time players like me find it impossible to keep up with the sheer volume of product released every month and the rapid rise of power level of cards. I’ve played Magic: The Gathering since 1994. I consider myself a “lifer.” Yet here I am, wondering whether I will still be playing the game in a year or two.
Sometimes I wonder whether I still play the game because I’m a sucker for the sunk cost fallacy.
Power creep will have a long-term effect on the game. It’s already had negative effects on the game in the short-term (remember how great the Companion mechanic was?), but my concern, and the reason I’m writing this post, is to highlight how power creep points to the addictive nature of Magic: The Gathering, and how Wizards of the Coast relies on the effects of “Cardboard Crack” to make record profits for papa Hasbro.
I don’t know what the solution to this problem is. I leave that to more intelligent minds to figure out.
Dead-Logic 