Is Mainstream Magic possible?

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Hetemti

Guest
Woah, hold on now.

That...being...is not "darling."

...she's the g--d---m-----f------c---s------a--r-----t--l------spawn of SATAN himself! Just the thought of that wide-awake-nightmare makes me want to take corkscrews and jab them into my eyes savagly and repeatedly until I'm bleeding from every orifice.

Nada mas.


And yes, Magic coverage leaves much to be desired.
 
Z

Zadok001

Guest
Originally posted by Duel
Magic is not a spectator sport.
On the contrary! :) Magic is a wonderful spectator sport, if you know how to play. I could probably sit for hours watching two people play the same decks over and over and over again without getting bored!

It's really rather silly, to be able to watch a game that closely, but it's FUN. I can't imagine how people could not like to watch Magic. Two people facing off in a creative mind game. Watching their reactions, thoughts, emotions, etc, is just FUN!

I'm completely serious!
 
D

Duel

Guest
Originally posted by Duel
Magic is not a spectator sport. Unless you are VERY into the game, it doesn't make for good viewing.
Read the rest of the quote, Zadok. I love watching magic, it's often just as much fun, if not more, as playing it.
BUT
I don't know anything about football, however, I can turn to a football game and know the general idea. Same with bowling. Same with CURLING, for god's sake. Magic, on the other hand, is different, because it requires an intense knowledge of the cards to play.
 
G

Gerode

Guest
Curling is cool! I watch it every time I go to Canada! :)

Okay, gotta say something now so that wasn't spam...

I agree that Mr. Joe Average would have no clue on what's going on, other than the person with the most cards in play is winning. But I haven't seen the ESPN2 tournaments except for a Tempest one before I really knew a lot about Magic.
 
D

Duel

Guest
The problem was, people who don't play aren't gonna watch. And people who do play are gonna be annoyed because they keep explaining about the 20 life, and don't show 1/3 of the matches.....
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I don't think Magic can be mainstream, to echo some sentiments, because it's a rather specialized niche of gaming AND requires a wee bit more effort to understand and follow, if you are just to be a spectator. And the satanic association will always be with it, like it or not...
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I think Riggo kinda hits it as being stigmatic but even if it wasn't, it still wouldn't really go mainstream. I mean, the World Monopoly championship isn't stigmatic but you don't see 50 million people watching it and have advertisers pay $20 million during it. It's such a specialized niche, like what Magic occupies.

Remember the Cog and Zog article too and WHAT a response it got... :rolleyes: "I'm not Cog! I'm not Zog! Who'd want to live in a computer? I have a life, you know!" Sheesh...
 
D

Duel

Guest
Right, Magic has it's corner of society. Just think, there is a huge section of the population who WILL NEVER EVEN HEAR THE NAME "JAMIE WAKEFIELD".

Subcultures are so cool!
 
M

Mars

Guest
1) The Rare card concept. Therefore, it's too EXPENSIVE for mainstream. Thank God there's an outlet for that, and that's: Apprentice. You needn't own a single card to play.

And the Rare card concept is a necessary "evil" to keep profits optimized at WotC, to make the Pro Tour possible which brings in advertising dollars, etc., and keeps these cards in production.

2) The rules are just too complicated (not complex) for 96% of the human race. Try printing out the rules. It's a quarter inch stack of paper. That's quite intimidating to the mainstream. Monopoly, another Hasbro game, it ain't.

So congratulations. If you're reading this or play Magic, then you are probably in the top 4% of humans in terms of intelligence. Consider it a gift; don't get cocky. Gizmo is purportedly in the top 0.2%, and Finkel is just sick that way. :)

3) Magic is arithmetical in play and mathematical in design. Many can master arithmetic (bookkeepers), few, Math. Math is creative. Roughly 20% of the world's people are creative (the top 20% in fact....think about it.......keep thinking), and roughly 20% are arithmetically inclined. 20% times 20% equals 4%. Congratulations, you win. Unless you play with Cameos.

But 4% is still a large percentage of 6 billion people. And very few of the 6 billion in that 4% range can afford Magic. Again you win.

Good News: 4% of the world's women are in the top 4% in terms of beauty and overall quality. Beautiful women of quality and intelligent men. Seems like a natural "combo" to me. ;-)

4) WHITE is the color of EVIL. What Would Satan Do? The Coward would hide behind circles of protection, give himself life because he needs it since he's so weak, inspire you to be a Rebel and challenge the established order, disguise his demons as angels and give them swords, and generally give himself a "nice guy" image.

God forbid he should nobly sacrifice life and cards, playing his life with restrictions and drawbacks, send his forces in to fight the good fight with Mercenaries, or GOOD guys, whom he would strongly get you to disparage by painting them BLACK. And God forbid he would try to DISCARD or DESTROY evil creatures.

5) The only card I have a problem with is "Demonic Attorney," which is redundant. "Attorney" would have been sufficient, or "Hasbro Accountant." Either one works for me. And the picture on Earthbind and the upside-down pentagram on Unholy Strength didn't help us much.
 
H

Hawaiian mage

Guest
Your not the top 4%, just the 4%.

-Hawaiian "reality sucks" mage
 
M

Mars

Guest
Reality does indeed suck compared to fantasy, Hawaiian Mage, but "reality" doesn't TOTALLY suck completely, does it?

OK, maybe it does, mostly. But we all have an oasis of happiness now and then, don't you think? Depends on the given person, I guess, and their (current) lot in life. Remember what the Quakers said when they said you can't appreciate the good without the bad. All is relative.

If you can play Magic expertly but design poorly, or design well but play poorly (and I assume you've tried to play a lot), then you may be only in the top 20%, according to my figures. But my figures are merely arbitrary, insert you own as you wish.

Regarding religious fanatics, I've found that if you ignore them, they'll go away. If you can't ignore them, then my heart goes out to you because you have a long road to hoe until you CAN be away from them and then ignore them, which eventually you will, and I know, it won't be too soon. Just hang in there. You'll be fine.

My teammate at Team Hacked, Digby Carter, revealed to me recently that his local elementary school banned Magic thanks to the card Demonic Tutor. Oh my God, that's soo lame. But never underestimate the role of mothers in our culture, especially young ones, who tend to be paranoid in the extreme. Be nice to them, be patient, and explain, for as long as it takes.

For me, surrounded by women as much as I am on a daily basis (and God love them), it's quite refreshing to get out once in a while "with the guys." And that's all Magic is really, male "bonding" (a word I despise, but it fits), and mostly a chance to get out and hang for a while with OTHER intelligent men, which is quite refreshing compared to the number of idiots (not women, NO!) we have to deal with on a daily basis.

We're not Satanists, we're not hanging out at our weekly cabal meetings sacrificing a sheep or somebody's wife (for shame!) or something .....we're just a bunch of intelligent guys hangin' with a bunch of other intelligent guys, and it beats the hell out of a Mensa meeting. In fact, it's quite LIKE a Mensa meeting, only instead of eating canapes and standing around playing mindgames by comparing how relatively large our intellectual penises are, we're actually sitting politely across from each other doing gentlemanly battle, and proving it.

Peace, my brothers and few sisters in Magic, Peace.

As Ben Franklin said, "If we don't hang together, we will surely hang separately." :)

God bless Magic! I'm sure He does. It beats the hell out of drugs, eh?

[Edited by Mars on 01-15-01 at 10:59 AM]
 
F

FrigginRizzo

Guest
Hola in general,

Why the hell would we want Magic to go mainstream? At it's root, Magic is an intellectual game; it doesn't seem to me that much of society can be considered intellectual. I don't mean to sound harsh (hell yeah I do), but mainstream anything = death. When the vox populi jumps on the bandwagon, we might as well give the game up, because it will then suck beyond belief.

See if you can follow a few pretty shaky examples: Do we want the kind of guy who gets drunk and starts a fight at a friggin' football game? Do we want trendy suburbanites coming to PTQ's in their friggin' SUV's? Maybe we would like people to turn off Survivor and Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire and run out and buy boosters. Perhaps we look forward to welcoming the exact types of people that we try to get away from by playing this game.

Okay, we are an all-inclusive club here, chief, but you can call me a **** if I would like Magic to remain a little exclusive, because adding too many "regular" people to the mix will only help to make our game a little less appealing to the true Magic players. Maybe I'm wrong, but I say that Magic should be a back room game that has a little bit of a stigma - that way we only get the players who really WANT to be a part of the game, not those who figure they should "give it a try for the hell of it" because everyone else is doing it.

We don't need to build walls to keep people out; the walls are already there. Magic isn't for everyone, nor should it be.

Go ahead and come with the "Rizzo must love Pat Buchanan" rips, but if you think about it for a while, I think you'll see that our game is OUR friggin' game; adding people that don't give a rat's behind about what this game really is about have no place at the table.

Or something.

John Friggin' Rizzo

[Edited by Spiderman on 01-16-01 at 07:26 AM]
 
M

Mars

Guest
Most middle-aged American Men just LOVE Pat Buchanan, don't they John? I call it anti-feminist movement backlash. Me, I'm a Naderite, probably because I loved Greg Bear's novel, "Eon."

Not that you're middle-aged or anything, John Friggin. English Demographers define "middle-age" as beginning at age 36, and you're younger than that, amiright?

Your points are well said and taken, and like I said, we don't have to worry about Magic becoming Mainstream anytime soon, like....never.

Or do we? I love WotC but I REVILE the Hasbro Accounting Department to the highest extreme. My greatest fear is that Hasbro Accounting will convince Habsbro Management that Magic can lose the making of new sets and be sold at Toys'R'Us, minus Black and White the controversial colors, and minus artifacts, in a box set of 400 cards for $80 or some other such trash. If that happens, then I will forcibly take over Hasbro, buy out Mattel and Parker Brothers, fire all the accountants and replace them with smarter (duh) Magic Players, then give the whole empire to Gizmo to run at his whim, and retire to a love shack in the Smokies.

regarding SUV's:
Q: Who are middle-aged American Baby Boomer women driving around in their "I Am Insecure" rollover SUV's while talking on their brain-cancerous cell phones, actually talking to?
A: Other middle-aged American Baby Boomer women drivng around in their SUV's talking on their cell phones, as they endanger us all.

Except I hope this doesn't happen in New Zealand or Australia, Planet Earth's coolest countries. Does it? If so, I'm moving to Tokyo, where I will play nothing but APAC Jank.
 
H

Hetemti

Guest
Well said. I was curious who would be the first to address the true heart of this matter.

Now, to fix the Shivan hellkites...
 
M

Mars

Guest
Because we submitted responses almost simultaneously, I think Hetemti was reffering to JohnFriggin's response, not mine.
 
F

FrigginRizzo

Guest
Hola, just Hola,

Mars seems to have a point that we don't have to worry about mainstream Magic, even though he tries to plant doubt about that issue. We don't ever have to worry about a mainstream explosion for one reason: this game take effort. If there is one thing you can count on, it's that people are inherently lazy as all hell. Oh, they're not? Do any of you know anyone who has home gym equipment that is nothing more than a clothes rack? Or a TV in every friggin' room?

Magic will stay underground (and I'm not sure if WotC wants it that way or not) because it is a huge effort just to friggin' learn. Not to mention how long it takes to figure out all the little things that we take for granted.

Here's to lifting a glass in a toast to the laziness of the human race. Long live Magic and it's societal outcasts; those who "fit" into society can just keep playing with their palm pilots while figuring out how to spend their IRA's on a bunch of stuff that they don't need and can't afford.

And stuff.

John Friggin' Rizzo
John seems to very protective of a "kids game" for a 31 yr old, married with eggs, self employed, loser. Because he is.

[Edited by Spiderman on 01-16-01 at 07:27 AM]
 
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