If you are dissatisfied with the recent changes being made to the Pro Tour as detailed in Brian David-Marshall's article last week on Wizard's site, and/or are concerned about the impact this will have on the game's growth, I encourage you to check out mtgplayersunion.com .
What exactly is the gripe? What is wrong with their changes?
Here is the article for the lazy.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/bd315There's a very lengthy and detailed discussion of whats going on regarding the changes to the pro player's club and 2008 schedule which can be found if you take a look at the "discuss this in the forums" link at the bottom of BDM's article.
In a nutshell, WOTC has:
1. Changed the payout structure of the pro player's club, detrimentally affecting a significant chunk of players.
2. Cut a PT.
3. Eliminated JSS.
4. Made nationals "matter" by awarding pro points for high finishes.
5. Slightly increased the payout and frequency of GPs.
6. Changed the level system.
7. Made all of these changes very abruptly and without notice which unfortunately has 'people' talking about a potential declination of consumer confidence in Hasbro and their product.
This list doesn't actually do justice to the issue(s) in entirety. I strongly suggest reading the article, wizards' forum discussion regarding the article, as well as forum discussion on mtgplayersunion.com .
BDM's articleWizards' forum board discussionMtg Player's Union forum boardOne of Frank Karsten's posts in the Mtg Player's Union forum boards which puts many aspects into perspective which have most likely slipped by the average person is the following:
by FrankKarsten on Wed Jan 23, 2008 3:32 pm
Eelco asked for a discussion of the mission statement of the Pro Tour. Let me try to take the viewpoint of Wizards and speculate on Wizards' vision of professional play and what they are trying to accomplish with the Pro Tour (based on some quotes from BDM's article and from my own observations). I could go into Organized Play as a whole, but let me stick to the Pro Tour at first. The ultimate goal is to increase sales of Magic booster packs via marketing. It achieves this via multiple goals. First, it gives people entertainment (matches to watch), and keeps the game dynamic (lots of new deck tech). Thereby, the Pro Tour enhances the value of Magic cards by offering free benefits to those players who keep up with the game, just like the free columns on Magicthegathering.com. Furthermore, big tournaments with big money may inspire newspapers to cover them, offering free marketing. Furthermore and probably more importantly, decent players dream of reaching the Pro Tour lifestyle, see the world, and even make a living of it. By giving these decent players a dream to live up to, they have an incentive to play more Magic and more tournaments in order to become a better player, and if they want to post good results at tournaments they need enough cards, which encourages demand for booster packs. Furthermore, the Pro Tour gives credibility to the game, as you can win a lot of money at a Magic tournament. Pro players and wannabee pros are the game's ambassadors that market this vision of a credible game for free via word-of-mouth. Rather than paying for expensive ads on TV, the players advertise Magic themselves for free by talking about the Pro Tour. I'm sure there are some players who were first reluctant to start playing Magic, viewing it as a childish card game, until they were told about pro players who make a living off the game at big tournaments with a big prize pool. Similarly, teenagers can use the Pro Tour as an argument that Magic it is a skill-intensive mental sport in order to convince their parents to allow them to buy packs. So through these mechanisms (and I'm sure there are more), the Pro Tour motivates players to buy more packs of Magic, where Wizard's profits of course eventually lie.
These mechanisms, are enhanced by the bigger prize pools at the Pro Tour (as this encourages pro players more and thereby is likely to offer the credibility that a couple top players consistently place highly in these tournaments and make a living off it) and by smart allocation of the budget (how many Pro Tours, how much prize pool per Pro Tour, price of locations, additional benefits such as the Pro Club etc.). In a sense, Wizards could forecast the demand for Magic booster packs as a function of the budget of the Pro Tour and its allocation. Once the budget gets high enough, eventually marginal benefits in terms of booster sales will become lower than marginal costs in terms of Pro Tour budget, so what I'm trying to say is that there is an optimum budget that maximizes Wizard's profit. With a sound underlying model that forecasts booster pack sales through Pro Tour budget and allocation and their effects on eventual customer demand, Wizards can view the effects of budget and allocation changes. It doesn't have to be an advanced mathematical model; just a qualitative understanding that explains the main mechanisms by which Pro Tour budget enhances booster pack sales is also fine.
Now, clearly Wizards has lately chosen to cut the budget and has allocated nothing to a sound communication strategy. I think that the gains made by budget costs will be much lower than the resulting drop in booster sales volume. As pro players can now no longer make a living off Magic and have lost faith in Wizard's communications credibility, eventually boosters sales will drop through the mechanisms that I have explained. I do not believe that Wizard's understanding of the effects of their weak communication policy and buget cuts is accurate enough. So I guess we could try to explain our view of these effects to Wizards and give constructive feedback about it; more communication could easily make everyone happy.
-Le Tanc
