TheKingofSprings posted:

So can anyone tell me what sweet card they accidentally spoiled on the mothership for Magic: Origins

Did they finally print Goku?

Five Things Wizards of the Coast could do to get more women into Magic.
1. Change the name.

If you show the title of this article to a woman on the street she’ll think you’re interested in getting her to do magic tricks. This is the year 2015 and women play video games, card games, board games and role playing games in vast numbers. The difference between these games and Magic: The Gathering? These games have catchy names and acronyms that don’t sound pathetic when you say them out loud. D&D, LoL, DoTA, and so forth.

Solution? Take Rob Hunsaker’s advice and rebrand the game as “MTG”.

2. Change the tournament structure.

There’s no reason to attend a large tournament for more than two or three hours unless you’re interested in competing in the main event. I’ll admit I don’t blame people. These events bring out the worst in me. You’re often in a terrible location, without options for healthy or satisfying food and you’re put through incredible stress for days at a time. There’s tournaments where I’m lucky to get water and others where I’m lucky to get four hours of sleep. Tournaments have been held in open barns with dirt floors. I’ve even been to a PTQ that was held in a garage that was open to snow and a freezing Canadian winter.

Tournaments are cutthroat, multiple-day affairs with several thousand people that culminate in a single top 8. They pay out an insignificant amount of what they bring in. This encourages only the most doggedly antisocial players to compete, as it simply isn’t worth the time of normal, everyday people. People who have jobs, hygiene, and regular sleep schedules are at a severe disadvantage when asked to spend their weekends playing out 15+ rounds of magic at a high level.

Women have shown a willingness to attend gaming and anime conventions, comic conventions, pretty much any large gathering of nerds *except* Magic tournaments. Is the magic community really more toxic than the comic or gaming communities? I contend the issue is with how events are structured and the incentives for attending.

Solution? Make larger tournaments more friendly to people with regular and healthy lifestyles. Give us a lunch break. Give us real lunch options, not just a cart selling hot dogs and french fries. Pay out more prizes, have more side events, and have more attractions for people who aren’t playing the main event. Stop wasting space by having single elimination top 8s that take up 8 tables while an entire convention center goes unused. Don’t start the tournament at 9 AM and end it at 10 PM. Give us time to shower and put on deodorant in the morning before we take a taxi from our airport motel. Make it so that i don’t have to be a weird freak to want to attend a magic tournament.

3. Explain the rules to people when you introduce them to the game.

Wizards wants to make the game inviting to new players, and I understand why. Magic is a complicated game and it takes a very long time and much personal dedication to learn the rules. Even when you’re familiar with the rules it isn’t always easy to tell what should happen when difficult interactions come up. Because of this, Wizards has wisely decided to make their introductory products like Duals of the Planeswalkers very simple. They also omit discussions of complex rules issues like the stack or layers unless you’re willing to go looking for them.

Why do new players have a bad experience when they compete at competitive REL for the first time? Is it because serious players are jerks who can’t give them a break? I don’t think so. It’s because no one prepared them for competition amongst players who are familiar with high level game concepts. This leads to negative experiences for both casual and competitive players when competitive players are put in the sensitive position of having to explain the rules for the first time during a competitive tournament. I’ve seen a lot of hurt feelings and a lot of people quitting the game because the competitive experience they had was so different than the casual experience they enjoyed playing kitchen table magic. Invariably, they blame the competitive players for taking the game too seriously.

When players have this kind of experience at competitive REL only the most persistent will return. Most will go back to kitchen table magic where they can continue to play the game the way they feel it ought to be played, that is to say, often they continue to play the game incorrectly.

Solution? Wizards should make more resources available to prepare casual players for their large events. The structure of tournaments is brutal and Wizards has made it clear that at competitive and professional rules enforcement you need to be vigilant if you want to do well. This encourages negative interactions between inexperienced players and people concerned with doing well at the event. More resources need to be made available as to the working of game mechanics and more incentives ought to be put in place encouraging judges and game store owners to introduce new players to what is expected of them at comp REL.

4. Make coverage relatable.

This goes hand-in-hand with the last point. Magic coverage, in particular the Wizards coverage team, does a terrible job at presenting the game to people who don’t already play. I’ve watched magic coverage with many women who do not play magic and they invariably have the same questions; what’s going on? Why is everything so small? Who are these people? Why are there so many commercials?

The problem is that even as a player who knows what is happening I often have the same questions. The screen is cluttered, the presenters are clueless, there’s too much dead air. Most people I know end up muting it.

Even worse, have you ever seen a woman doing magic coverage? I can’t recall a time when that’s happened. It’s always the same men, including one who was an outspoken twitter men’s rights activist until WoTC made him scrub his twitter account.

Solution? If you want to attract people to play your game you have to make it appealing. Stop picking coverage presenters based on nepotism and personal associations and make a concentrated effort to having professional standards for your coverage. This doesn’t mean dressing everyone in poorly-tailed suits but instead making an honest-to-god effort to have people who understand the format and can explain what is going on.

And considering putting even a single woman on camera during coverage of large events.

5. Write a real story.

Magic has made significant strides when it comes to presenting nontraditional characters are role-models. I want to make it clear that I am in full support of their decision to make characters of diverse races, sexes, orientations and so forth prominent in the story. My beef is with the stories themselves; why are they written so poorly? From what I can tell the majority of magic fiction isn’t even being written by professional writers. I’m not certain where the storyline comes from, but as far as I can tell, much of it is dreamed up by marketing and branding professionals or is written by amateurs who hold other positions at wizards. If you’re going to go through the trouble of appealing to females you can’t insult their intelligence with this kind of crap.

Solution? Hire professionals. Don’t half-rear end it. Give people some credit for their intelligence. No more “Nymphs of Theros” for christ’s sake. No long stories about Narset sorting apples. Make the women in these stories interesting and dynamic characters so that women genuinely want to relate to them.

Chill la Chill posted:

Our store has a women-only RPG night. I should ask why they don't have a similar women-only magic night.

Fuzzy Mammal posted:

Anyways here's a decent post from a buddy of mine on how to actually get more balance in players of our terrible hobby game for children:

Fuzzy Mammal posted:

You guys should go to the yugioh equivalent of a ptq. It's a real eye opener.

Anyways here's a decent post from a buddy of mine on how to actually get more balance in players of our terrible hobby game for children:
[url="http://legendstech.tumblr.com/"]

Fuzzy Mammal posted:

Even worse, have you ever seen a woman doing magic coverage? I can’t recall a time when that’s happened. It’s always the same men, including one who was an outspoken twitter men’s rights activist until WoTC made him scrub his twitter account.

TheKingofSprings posted:

Point 1 doesn't really seem like it could ever work out because all it takes is one look at a card back to see the actual name they're using the acronym to embellish.

Zoness posted:

Why does that matter? It's just common parlance that matters with regards to branding.

D&D and LoL still have things they stand for that are seen on the product and DotA can still be traced back to Defense of the Ancients even if that's mostly been phased out.

Although I usually hear people say "League" rather than "LoL" in common parlance so I dunno.

Fuzzy Mammal posted:

You guys should go to the yugioh equivalent of a ptq. It's a real eye opener.

Anyways here's a decent post from a buddy of mine on how to actually get more balance in players of our terrible hobby game for children:
[url="http://legendstech.tumblr.com/"]

quote:

Even worse, have you ever seen a woman doing magic coverage? I can’t recall a time when that’s happened. It’s always the same men, including one who was an outspoken twitter men’s rights activist until WoTC made him scrub his twitter account.

Ramos posted:

It might be fake, I can't be totally sure.

TheKingofSprings posted:

LoL shorts to something convenient that's already known and D&D flows a lot better than "Em Tee Gee"

Fuzzy Mammal posted:

This is all we could find now. He's been pretty thorough...

TheKingofSprings posted:

Point 1 doesn't really seem like it could ever work out because all it takes is one look at a card back to see the actual name they're using the acronym to embellish.

Irony Be My Shield posted:

Everyone already ignores the word "Deckmaster" and the pen scribble, this would just be another thing to not notice.

Zoness posted:

magic cards have backs?

mr. mephistopheles posted:

80 new posts I wonder if there's a new Origins spoiler!

Oh... oh god

Madmarker posted:

gently caress no............ really? Man, now I have to stop listening to Limited Resources...........

And LSV is on it too...............please don't tell me he's an MRA as well, that would be just too much.

Fuzzy Mammal posted:

This is all we could find now. He's been pretty thorough...

Madmarker posted:

gently caress no............ really? Man, now I have to stop listening to Limited Resources...........

And LSV is on it too...............please don't tell me he's an MRA as well, that would be just too much.

Fuzzy Mammal posted:

Yeah possibly. I personally have played with Marshall pretty frequently and he's a good guy who takes his role as magic ambassador pretty seriously.

quote:

Give us a lunch break. Give us real lunch options, not just a cart selling hot dogs and french fries.

Cactrot posted:

Good god, this.


If I could only change one thing about large tournaments, it'd be the food and how you have to scarf it down between rounds. Oh, you went to time in a round? Hope you weren't hungry when you started, because you're loving starving now.

Cactrot posted:

Good god, this.


If I could only change one thing about large tournaments, it'd be the food and how you have to scarf it down between rounds. Oh, you went to time in a round? Hope you weren't hungry when you started, because you're loving starving now.

Wezlar posted:

I know they said something like 3% of their listeners to LR were female? its interesting that that number is so consistent with the number of women who responded to the DOTA2 reddit survey (~900/30000)

remigious posted:

I just wanted to chime in as a lady magic player that used to work in a game store and ran tournaments and stuff. The biggest barrier by far that keeps women out of the game is the attitude many (not all, mind you, but many) guys have towards women in a tournament. I didn't really encounter the leering pervy types as much as one might think, the problem is that men HATE losing to a girl. I ran a fun minotaur deck that kicked rear end a while back and and became known as "queen of the cows" henceforth at out standard tournaments. Real nice. They get so loving salty and disrespectful that myself and a few other ladies I know would rather just not deal with them. Which is bullshit.
I have no idea how to even approach a solution to this problem. I think the Lady Planeswalkers Society is fantastic, I only wish they were bigger or I could make the time commitment to possibly setting a chapter up where I live. I love playing Magic, I hate having to deal with jerks that either hate losing to me or think I am just there to "turn cards sideways, how cute."

Dr. Stab posted:

and dota requires you to use a microphone.

En Fuego posted:

If you're interested in starting an LPS, or know someone who is, you should check out that FB page. I know you say you don't have enough time to make a commitment to do it yourself, but I am sure Tifa has information on how to make it happen. She's super happy to facilitate a welcome environment.

remigious posted:

I have no idea how to even approach a solution to this problem. I think the Lady Planeswalkers Society is fantastic, I only wish they were bigger or I could make the time commitment to possibly setting a chapter up where I live. I love playing Magic, I hate having to deal with jerks that either hate losing to me or think I am just there to "turn cards sideways, how cute."

Zoness posted:

This really isn't true at all but that's off topic.

DotA's representation with regards to females in casting/event hosting is pretty bad too (I'm pretty sure it's still just Sheever).

remigious posted:

I just wanted to chime in as a lady magic player that used to work in a game store and ran tournaments and stuff. The biggest barrier by far that keeps women out of the game is the attitude many (not all, mind you, but many) guys have towards women in a tournament. I didn't really encounter the leering pervy types as much as one might think, the problem is that men HATE losing to a girl. I ran a fun minotaur deck that kicked rear end a while back and and became known as "queen of the cows" henceforth at out standard tournaments. Real nice. They get so loving salty and disrespectful that myself and a few other ladies I know would rather just not deal with them. Which is bullshit.
I have no idea how to even approach a solution to this problem. I think the Lady Planeswalkers Society is fantastic, I only wish they were bigger or I could make the time commitment to possibly setting a chapter up where I live. I love playing Magic, I hate having to deal with jerks that either hate losing to me or think I am just there to "turn cards sideways, how cute."