Magic: The Smattering
The CCG can die in a cold fire so far as I’m concerned. I’ve never forgiven it for stealing the limelight of tabletop gaming away from RPGs in the early 1990s. Which means that I’ve been following the Convergence of Magic: The Gathering with a morbidity similar to that which I feel watching Marvel Comics choke on their adherence to the Narrative. If you are near to this sordid mess, allow Breitbart to fill you in on the details. Here’s the story in a nutshell:
Jeremy Hambly has been reported to the Wizards of the Coast Stasi by its SJW informants, investigated and found guilty of doing something that hundreds, if not thousands of millions of us do on the internet every day: bantering, shitposting, fighting snark with snark, invoking Kek and Pepe the Frog…And, instead of shrugging its shoulders, and going “Meh. This is what people on the internet do”, Wizards of the Coast Stasi has decided to confiscate his property, destroy part of his livelihood, and snatch away the hobby he loves.
Nice. I’ve already shed any desire to own WotC’s official D&D product lines thanks to the usual suspects wedging their mental-illnesses into the product line. As a non-player of M:tG, you might think I’ve nothing to withhold from the CCG line, either.
Au contraire, mon frère!
My son loves the game. My usual M:tG budget for under the tree is around forty to fifty bucks. This year – zero. The disaster at WotC has me irritated enough that I even made it a point to steer away from all Hasbro products this Christmas. Instead of Toys R’ Us, I spent my money down at the local game/comic shop on 40k items or boardgames from independent companies that I don’t know hate me.
Side note: They probably do hate me – all of tabletop gaming seems to be pandering to the tastes of the bully-nerds these days. Can’t even buy Reaper figures any more since they told me they don’t want my money. C’est la vie. Alternative Armies, Khurasan, and Ral Partha Europe have everything I need for the foreseeable future with more on the way. But at least these smaller companies, unlike WotC, don’t go out of their way to tell me to walk away from the counter and take my money with me.
Admittedly, my own small budget represents less than a rounding error for a company like Hasbro. But there are an awful lot of me out there. A few hundred bucks here, a few hundred there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money. And watch me laugh when the God Emperor fires up the anti-Monopoly machine and comes after Hasbro. Lolbertarian Jon would have defended that company loud and proud. Alt-Right Jon finds the thought of Hasbro being broken up grimly amusing.
It didn’t have to be this way, but Hasbro chose the NY cocktail party crowd over the beer and pretzel crowd. So when the profits flag and the stock dips and the predatory investors come a calling, shed no tears for Hasbro. They made this bed – they can choke on it.