In a recent earnings call, where Magic: The Gathering’s record-breaking sales were discussed, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks also spoke about plans for MTG Arena and other digital versions of the game. According to the CEO, the strategy for digital Magic includes capitalizing on the things that have made Magic as a whole so successful recently, and this includes implementing “more tradability”.
That’s an exciting word, given that the lack of any way to transfer or trade your collection on MTG Arena has long been lamented. In fact, unlike other online TCGs, there’s not even a way to break down your cards into crafting materials or in-game currency in Arena, to turn the playing pieces you don’t want into others that you do.
Arena has seemingly become a proportionally smaller part of Magic’s business over the years, as other areas have seen more growth. Cocks explains that this is primarily because it was designed for Standard.
He adds, “A lot of Magic’s growth has been through collectability, through things like we’ve done with collector boosters and Secret Lair, as well as more socially oriented play like we’ve seen with Commander, which is now the most popular format of play in Magic.”
Right now, none of that transfers well to Arena, but this is something the CEO hopes to rectify, “in new digital iterations of Magic, both on Arena and outside of Arena”.
In particular, he highlighted the company’s desire for “more Universes Beyond, more collectability, more tradability, and more social kind of multiplayer-oriented play” on digital platforms, adding that these were being worked on and would “roll out” over the next couple of years.
There have been rumblings about a digital version of Commander for a few years now, so ‘multi-player oriented’ is no mystery, but these other aspects are intriguing.
Collectibility is an interesting dilemma when it comes to a digital product. The question is: can WotC make fans interested in special variants of digital cards, the way they can charge more for collector boosters and Secret Lairs?
Personally, I suspect no, at least not to the same degree. Any digital version of a Magic card is going to be dependent on WotC continuing to update the game it’s found in, whereas you’ll still be able to trade your bits of cardboard after the collapse of civilization (though I’m not sure how the fall of humankind would affect card prices). But if fans were at least able to trade the shiny cards they collected, like they can on MTGO, that might go some way towards making them feel more genuinely valuable.
Source: Wargamer
