I never understood why people become judges though. There are two guys in my LGS who recently STUDIED for the tests and I am absolutely bewildered at why they're doing it. I mean, they spend so much time doing the job and the compensation they receive is even below minimum wage.
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Magic: the Gathering - Battle for Zendikar |OT| Lands matter (but nothing else does)
- Thread starter SigmasonicX
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Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Because if you're committed to feeling like a special person in Magic and aren't good, there isn't a lot you can do. The game is already pay-to-win to a certain extent.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Turns out having Bitterblossom, Skullclamp, Nicol Bolas and Karn out at the same time is hard for my opponent to beat who would have thought
Really the turn 2 Bitterblossom/Skullclamp combo is unreasonable as fuck to begin with.
Really the turn 2 Bitterblossom/Skullclamp combo is unreasonable as fuck to begin with.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
Not that any of this matters when my opponent has Turn 3 Iona using Unburial, Black Lotus and Iona twice in a row. Lost the entire round in 5 minutes.
It's literally doing work for free. And these are grown ass adults with decent day jobs lol.
Those that can't play, judge.
To be less mean, you're definitely right that you don't judge for the money but it's fun if you're into that aspect of the game, especially if you're not the type to aspire to high level play. You're looking for different things in the game when you judge vs when you play, and while there is a clerical aspect to judging that isn't great (hell, when I started DCI reporter didn't even exist yet), learning the intricacies of the rules and running things smoothly is rewarding in its own way. Even things like judge calls could be compared to puzzles that the judge must figure out correctly and quickly.
For reference, I TO'ed and judged throughout high school and college and have considered doing it again once my hiatus from the game ends in a few months.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Magic made Hasbro something like $240 million last FY. I'm wondering what it'll take for the judges to realize they're not volunteering to help out some small ma-and-pa operation. Guessing about the same time the general customer base does.
Then you look at what Monopoly made and suddenly Hasbro's refusal to invest resources makes more sense. (Sadly) From a super-short term perspective, of course, but thats all public corporations think about.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Yeah, I don't think anybody will disagree that it makes sense for Hasbro and WotC to allow people to work for them for free. It's a bum deal for judges and the more money the companies make on their backs, the worst a deal it has to seem. When Magic was struggling, you know, that sense of community made sense to foster. You were helping out a LCS. Now, you're working pro bono for a corporation that records billions of dollars in revenue.
I am not getting the Monopoly analogy. What's the deal there?
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Monopoly made (off the top of my head, may be off a bit) around three times what Magic made for Hasbro.
I think it was more around 1.5x, but the gist is that Monopoly requires about $0 investment to get that return. The game prints money.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
We expect to generate operating cash flow of $500M annually - Monopoly
acheron_xl
Member
I wonder what McDonald's pays them to license it.
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
So, interesting note on their most recent investors day presentation. Magic was important enough to single out among their franchise brands, but it wasn't stable enough for Hasbro to use any empirical sales data like they did with their other big names. It's obviously important, but it's used as a hook for potential growth to get investors on board and not proof source of why they should, like the numbers backing up Transformers/NERF.
They don't even give percentages of growth, instead using language and visual clues to suggest its on the rise. Nothing in these presentations is done without a reason. If the numbers - even percentage were strong - they'd be graphing it like their other brands. Either they sunk more into development of MTGO than I thought, or the game has reached its next plateau/sustainment phase.
Slide 30 for those are interesting in the business side of the game as me.
http://files.shareholder.com/downlo...63CD4D8/Hasbro_Investor_Day_November_2015.pdf
They don't even give percentages of growth, instead using language and visual clues to suggest its on the rise. Nothing in these presentations is done without a reason. If the numbers - even percentage were strong - they'd be graphing it like their other brands. Either they sunk more into development of MTGO than I thought, or the game has reached its next plateau/sustainment phase.
Slide 30 for those are interesting in the business side of the game as me.
http://files.shareholder.com/downlo...63CD4D8/Hasbro_Investor_Day_November_2015.pdf
There's versions of Monopoly for *everything*, which constantly amazes me. We went on holiday this year to a small Hebridean Island off the coast of Scotland called Islay, and discovered there's an official version of monopoly for Islay! They must have figured out their supply chain for small orders to the nth degree to make that sort of production work.
I don't get why Wizards cares so much about their marketing. They are in a unique position that the resulting quality of their products determines public reception and not the way they reveal their products. An interesting setting, with well designed cards and good mechanics will sell better than a poorly thought out set regardless at what point the cards are revealed. Magic is game that is played and bought continuously throughout the sets availability and is different from video games where publishers (well, not all, but many) make most of their sales in the game's opening days and who are able to 'dump' a bad game through excellent marketing.
That certain cards from the set got leaked before they wanted doesn't really matter since the end result will remain the same. The playerbase judges sets on their whole and if they don't like it, this results in less-frequent drafts and thus lower sales. If they like it, it spreads through word-of-mouth to other, more dormant, players and potentially new players. I hope they understand that the poor reception for BfZ was due to the set's design and not the way it was marketed.
That certain cards from the set got leaked before they wanted doesn't really matter since the end result will remain the same. The playerbase judges sets on their whole and if they don't like it, this results in less-frequent drafts and thus lower sales. If they like it, it spreads through word-of-mouth to other, more dormant, players and potentially new players. I hope they understand that the poor reception for BfZ was due to the set's design and not the way it was marketed.
At the local level it isn't that strange. If you're already going to LGSes a lot and happen to the be the person that knows the answers to rules questions it probably wouldn't be that tough to get your L1. Then you can probably get free FNM entry or a few packs a week or whatever from the store owner and keep doing exactly what you were doing anyway along with responding to like 1 or 2 judge calls a night. If it ends up that you're running all of a stores events or something like that you should definitely try and get actual payment.
It gets a little weirder when you get higher in the program and start running large volunteer projects or traveling for weekend events. In that case you should at least be getting compensated enough to make up travel expenses, even if you aren't making a ton. At that point you are certainly doing it because it is a thing you enjoy doing.
divisionbyzorro
Member
I'm on vacation right now, so I don't have time to properly articulate my feelings on this. But even after a night to mull it over and cool down, I'm still super pissed. And I'm not even a judge! Why would you indiscriminately punish a group of people who do a ridiculous amount of work for you for free? And after you dropped the one decent compensation program you had?
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/c..._l3_judges_in_the_southeast_us_region/cy7koa0
https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/c..._l3_judges_in_the_southeast_us_region/cy7koa0
This is incredibly short sighted. They make a lot of sales on presales hype. One of the ways to increase hype is to strategically spoil certain cards to generate hype to the peak around the times of being able to reserve product.
They probably lost some viewership on spoilers that were gonna be streamed. Now I don't think this number is big by any means, but whatever count they can get means ad money.
Work time but yeah, presales matter to any company.
A Serious Man
Member
What is "Magic Digital Next"? A new project or am I misreading that slide?
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
"Why do we care about marketing, our product sells itself" is the death knell for untold millions of companies and LLCs throughout history. No product sells itself. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, then who the fuck is going to buy the lumber? I could go into extremely long details about this particular topic, but just a couple of things to [[Ponder]]
- What purpose did the Stainless Duels games serve? Who was the target audience there?
- When did the game really begin its new golden age, in which every single year (with the exception of maybe this year) was more financially successful than the last?
- What drove non-core products like the Commander Arsenal, precogs and event decks?
- Why the continuous focus on Jace and Co.?
- Why do you think we got a set based on angels and a block around dragons?
- Why do we have a renewed focus on non-game related, branded items, from hats to board games?
No doubt word of mouth is extremely important. That's why MaRo continues his blog well past the time it had to have stopped being fun. That's why Reddit has its own community managers. That's why they're quick to talk about success and slow to talk about failures.
But if word of mouth was the alpha and omega of selling their game, then Avacyn Restored would have stopped selling after the first 2 weeks.
In the previous year's roundup they talked at great length about how they were going to revitalize the flagging MTGO community. 'Digital Next' is just their internal corporate speak for 'hey, we sunk money into this, which you as investors hate, but we promise there will be financial growth in FY16. See how many things have not sucked about MTGO? Please don't sell your stocks."
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
That's the same excuse they give if you suck and they don't want to hire you but think you're a nice person or it would be bad PR to not hire you though
Still making $240,000,000 on pieces of cardboard is pretty good. The profit level would have to go down by what, 200,000,000 or so for them to start second-guessing whether its worth having as a brand, I imagine.
Yeah, maybe I expressed myself wrong. I did not mean to say they had to abandon any kind of marketing. But they have to realise that they are more doing informative marketing rather than 'convincive' marketing. People still need to know about the upcoming products and sets, so they still have to get ads out, posters, sponsor events, do some previews so it's natural that they still do this marketing.
But the whole hype building with the story they are doing serves no practical use to the sales. Maybe it's just because they are poor at it, with the grand picture of their worldbuilding feeling wonky. That's why I think they shouldn't care about their marketing if it doesn't turn out as they have planned. I think the growth of the game can also be attributed to market research resulting in more accesible rules, sets and side products. Someone isn't going to start playing Magic if they at least don't know some other people who play Magic, so in a way positive reception of the state the game is in clearly helps to attract more customers.
I do have to admit that they are streamlining their marketing game and in some ways it's for the better. But that recent article about the leaks provokes a knee-jerk reaction out of me where they have to realise that their marketing is not the one and all. The set will turn out perfectly fine in sales figures if they can make this a good set.
You'll also see that bad products have a delayed response in sales figures, where a customer 'doesn't want to be fooled' again. Making a good product is the only way to restore some faith. Take Assassins Creed: Syndicate for example, it was totally hampered by how Unity was received. I think Oat can suffer from this even though I believe it can turn out very decent. And aside from that, I've seen a very small turnout for BfZ FNM drafts, with usually only one table instead of three. Surely a weekly FNM draft continuing for three months is as important as all the sales on day one?
That sounds amazing. Is Lagavulin Distillery Boardwalk?
I think she'd be wording things differently if it were a different issue. At the very least, it's what she was led to believe.
I don't really have sympathy for the judges if the group was repeatedly having cards leak out of that specific facebook group.
divisionbyzorro
Member
I'm looking forward to the next episode of Judgecast. That's when we will hear the other side.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Yeah if it was a consistent issue out of that one group and they only got to the bottom of it now...well, I want to hear the other side also
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
I would like to reiterate hat Opposition shouldn't be in any cube.
And yes I'm already prepared for Firemind to furiously type "b-b-b-b-b-but blue doesn't have tokens someone has to pass you squirrel nest!"
And yes I'm already prepared for Firemind to furiously type "b-b-b-b-b-but blue doesn't have tokens someone has to pass you squirrel nest!"
SigmasonicX
Member
Didn't New Phyrexia have a worse prerelease attendance than expected precisely because all of its cards were leaked early? That was considered a well-designed set.
divisionbyzorro
Member
The only card in all of Magic that is a cube no-no is Time Vault. Opposition is fine; it's a great weapon for aggro strategies to shut down control.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
It's a great weapon to make the game miserable
I really don't care if its good against anything in particular
I had Opposition in my last draft. It did fuck all except one game where I tapped four goblin tokens because he didn't want to overcommit all his tokens into a Tinker'd Blightsteel Colossus.
I even had the Bitterblossom, but not everyone has the luck to cast it on t2.
Oh and Deranged Hermit. And the Cradle. And two Moxes. Opposition was like my 25th best card.
I even had the Bitterblossom, but not everyone has the luck to cast it on t2.
Oh and Deranged Hermit. And the Cradle. And two Moxes. Opposition was like my 25th best card.
"God's Beard!"
Member
Yeah judging doesn't make sense to me. It's not like the FGC where you're running community events, these tournaments have companies like CFB and SCG running them with the prize pot provided by Wizards directly.
I had some interest in it a while back because some of the local shops don't have a judge, but after talking to an L2 and finding out that they basically get nothing for it I gave it up on the spot.
I had some interest in it a while back because some of the local shops don't have a judge, but after talking to an L2 and finding out that they basically get nothing for it I gave it up on the spot.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
[QUOTE="God's Beard!";190180763]Yeah judging doesn't make sense to me. It's not like the FGC where you're running community events, these tournaments have companies like CFB and SCG running them with the prize pot provided by Wizards directly.
I had some interest in it a while back because some of the local shops don't have a judge, but after talking to an L2 and finding out that they basically get nothing for it I gave it up on the spot.[/QUOTE]
You're saying you don't like working for free
no way
I had some interest in it a while back because some of the local shops don't have a judge, but after talking to an L2 and finding out that they basically get nothing for it I gave it up on the spot.[/QUOTE]
You're saying you don't like working for free
no way
But from what I could find on the internet it seems that the secondary market sold very well, which is a major part of the sales of sealed product. It was probably heavily drafted too, even though this is different because it was a small set. I think we have to know what the weight of prerelease sales versus normal sales is to make a good call on this.
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
http://apps.magicjudges.org/
Because it's WOTC, it turns out the judge organizing site is run by a third-party and they're refusing to run it in protest.
Because it's WOTC, it turns out the judge organizing site is run by a third-party and they're refusing to run it in protest.
Is this as funny to anyone else as it is to me?
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
For some reason I can't get the image of a man professionally calling himself Trick sitting in his office with the smuggest expression.
A Serious Man
Member
What a fucking mess this is.
ThLunarian
Member
What did the magicjudges.org site do? What service did they provide to WOTC, and how does its discontinuation affect them?
It's the site where judge teams for big events are recruited, organized, and communicated to. Also has stuff like peer reviews for judges and discussion topics.
Basically if there's a big event that's going to happen that needs a bunch of judges the TO finds a judge manager and then that judge uses JudgeApps to put up recruitment post that describes the events, compensation for it, and other details. People that want to judge it then put in applications.
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