WOTC *Does* like casual players!

[Spiderman]

Mark's article today

I didn't really doubt it, but posting just because it's always slow here...

Myth #3 – R&D Doesn’t Care About Casual Players

I think this myth comes when players look at how much Wizards does for competitive play. Why can’t casual play get that kind of support? The simple answer to this is – how? How exactly does Wizards support casual play?

R&D does its job. We go out of our way to design cards that cater to casual players. We make lots and lots of Timmy and Johnny cards. We make cards with an eye toward multiplayer play. We make coin-flipping cards and many other cards that actively upset our tournament players.

Back to the first question. What can we do to encourage casual play? For competitive Constructed play there’s an easy answer. We’ve created an entire organized play structure to make sure that there are tournaments and events constantly to allow competitive players to have a place to play. And we try to make casual-friendly tournaments. We run prereleases and release tournaments. We run Friday Night Magic. We’ve been encouraging events like Two-Headed Giant that take some of the pressure off of the individual player.

But here’s the Catch-22. The casual players are defined by their lack of desire to want to play in structured events. It’s hard to make events for the true casual player because the mere act of making a formal event makes it by its nature less casual. We'd love to find ways to support the games played around the kitchen table more, but other than making cards for that style of play, we are caught in a paradox. If you have any ideas how to break out of it, please let me know.

R&D cares a great deal about casual players. We know that they make up a significant portion of the audience and we want to make them happy. The hard part is that this group is very tricky to track. Because the true casual gamer is playing with friends around the kitchen table and isn’t necessarily all that involved with Magic Internet sites, they’re a hard group to involve in other programs. We do our best, though. And we do care. But, by their very nature, casual gamers interact with the game through the cards, not events or promotions. Like I said, that makes casual players a pretty tricky group to cater to, so any feedback on this topic is appreciated.

 

[orgg]

I was hoping for a link to the main site, myself, when I saw that heading.

 

[Spiderman]

Why the main site when it's Mark who's saying it?

 

[Limited]

I think orgg means our main site: the CPA!

 

[Spiderman]

Ooooh.

Yeah, but look at how many active members/activity we have... linking to our site might give people the impression that casual Magic is pretty dead

It might *give* us traffic though...

 

[Oversoul]

What he's saying is true. It's not like they can offer the same things to casual players that they can with competitive tournament players. But where did he get this "myth" in the first place?

 

[Spiderman]

It's probably the impression he gets from countless emails and observations and statements made to him from players...

 

[Ferret]

Ooooh.

Yeah, but look at how many active members/activity we have... linking to our site might give people the impression that casual Magic is pretty dead

It might *give* us traffic though...

That would be nice, but for the most part WotC's been ignoring our requests for afiliation (or at least a link) for some time. Sure, we've actually been mentionned in a couple of articles and we've (when I say "we", I mean TheOrggg) even interviewed some of the biggest names in the game, but in the end The CPA is not that important...

-Ferret

...just like the Casual Player...

 

[Spiderman]

Who's been making the requests, to whom at WOTC, and how often?

If you're saying WOTC is ignoring the CPA and "the casual player" (which again I think is a bit misleading since look at how many active members we've had compared to how many Magic players there are), I think it's we who dropped the ball. Yeah, orgg interviewed some big names and we may have gotten some traffic due to it, but did we ever do anything with those new members? Have some sort of continuing mission or drive going? Organize anything and kept the momentum? I would say not... so really, the CPA doesn't really warrant any attention from WOTC, in my opinion. Why would they consider us when there's plenty of other Magic sites who probably have more active users and voices and probably have a good casual presence, even if it doesn't explicitly say so in their name. Heck, WOTC's own Magic forums probably qualify as such...

 

[Nightstalkers]

FNM is T2 competetive in just about every place I've seen, not casual.

 

[TomB]

Who's been making the requests, to whom at WOTC, and how often?

If you're saying WOTC is ignoring the CPA and "the casual player" (which again I think is a bit misleading since look at how many active members we've had compared to how many Magic players there are), I think it's we who dropped the ball. Yeah, orgg interviewed some big names and we may have gotten some traffic due to it, but did we ever do anything with those new members? Have some sort of continuing mission or drive going? Organize anything and kept the momentum? I would say not... so really, the CPA doesn't really warrant any attention from WOTC, in my opinion. Why would they consider us when there's plenty of other Magic sites who probably have more active users and voices and probably have a good casual presence, even if it doesn't explicitly say so in their name. Heck, WOTC's own Magic forums probably qualify as such...

Spidey, this place turned into a coffee house for casual gamers about 6 years ago, and none of the founding members wanted to keep that from happening at that time, IIRC. To try and change anything now, I think, would be futile, if you could even find an issue to try and rally support behind in the first place. Honestly, can you think of anything that's wrong with the game right now, aside from the fact that only a handful of us still play it on a regular basis? Anything at all that we could all say needs to be fixed?

I doubt it...

 

[Spiderman]

You misunderstand (I think).

From what I'm reading, Ferret has been saying that WOTC's been ignoring us, meaning the site and I guess casual players in general.

I'm saying that we, as a site, have done nothing really to warrant WOTC's attention in the first place and despite our name, are not truly representive of any casual voice, at least enough to be paid attention to, and that there are other sites who probably better represent any casual voice.

I'm not trying to change this place right now. If others want to, they're welcome to. But let's not fool ourselves into thinking that we're "deserved" something from WOTC when we're really not.

That's all I was trying to say.

 

[Nightstalkers]

WotC has definitely abandoned casual players in mainstream and promotes sales of T2 product more religioiusly.

I mean, come on WotC, saying that you approve of FNM T2 is about as bad as saying "we only run T2 in all our mainstream tournaments." Well jumping gee horsey parts, why not? Why can't we just open the frellin' doors to these kids who have decks made up of five or ten sets that don't have any real cohesion... why not let the ****s'n giggles players in and have a more casual experience?

Here's an idea: Get creative and toss together another one of them "collectors" sets only this time put it in as a "tournament" set? We'll make it one set made up of three sets and run with that. You get your bloody product pushing and we get some hillarious and mind blowing fun. Guess what WotC.... YOU SEE THIS HAPPENING WITH FUTURE SIGHT!

 

[Ferret]

Who's been making the requests, to whom at WOTC, and how often?

Well, I know that I was sending them requests every three or four months (this was about three years or so ago) and I know that do acknowledge our presence because we've been mentionned in one or two articles...

I also recall in the early days that there was someone from WotC that used to monitor the Dojo's forums saying that she was "watching the formation of the CPA", but also mentionned that she wasn't going to actively post (mostly because she didn't want to cause a conflict of interest). They've known we existed all along. They just don't care.

The same can be said for their general attitude towards Casual Players in general. Sure, we represent a bulk of their primary market sales, but we're not exactly something you would use as a marketing tool...it's like using street basketball players to promote the NBA...

-Ferret

...although, a "Street Magic" computer game would be cool...imagine the trash talking...

 

[Spiderman]

Who were you sending it to? Honestly though, they probably get tons of requests from websites asking to be "linked to". Depending on who you sent it to, they probably just considered your request like any other. Pretty much what we do when we get someone posting "Link to me!"

And I remember that person, but that was like seven years ago. A lot's changed in seven years... namely any relevance the CPA might have had compared to when it started out to now.

I think Mark said it pretty well, especially the Catch-22 they have with FNM.