General CBS

[Grillo_Parlante]

I'm a big fan of Kamigawa block art and lore-wise, but they definitely messed up power-level wise and with clunky mechanics throughout. I understand why they won't go back from a financial perspective because it was unpopular the first time around, but I feel like every time I read about it people are missing the reason why it failed, citing an alien setting that didn't resonate with fans with extensive Japanese lore...I think it failed purely from a gameplay perspective and that fans would be much more appreciative of such a setting nowadays. Sadly, I don't think they'll ever give it another shot. Or if they do, they won't be able to recapture the mystery and wonder that made it so compelling to me years later where I'd want to look up the historical Japanese lore behind particular depictions of spirits and demons and whatnot.

I just want to say that I agree with this. The argument that kamigawa block failed because it was set in Japanese folklore, I think is pretty laughable. Japanese/anime culture was tremendously popular in the U.S amongst the nerd crowd at the time (and I'm presuming Europe as well), and had been gaining in popularity since the 80s. I don't know where this narrative got started, but Kamigawa was a smart reflection of a very real interest in nerd culture that existed at the time.

The mechanics in that set were just really clunky, and cards like jitte and top I'm sure didn't really help.

 

[Jonas]

I feel like kamigawa failed because everyone quit playing after mirrodin since affinity was such a clusterfuck in standard

 

[Laz]

I feel like kamigawa failed because everyone quit playing after mirrodin since affinity was such a clusterfuck in standard

It certainly feels like a perfect storm of factors, and the unfortunate takeaway from Wizards seems to be that it was definitely the setting, despite the fact that the artwork and themes were really interesting. I cannot find a link to the exact post, but Chris Bateman (blog here. I recommend giving it a skim to determine if it is to your taste, I find it an excellent blog on game design) wrote something that stuck with me about 'colour in game-design' which was about the extent to which mechanics needs to mesh with the aesthetic. Essentially when you have highly abstract systems, you can make the game about anything aesthetically, as opposed to games where the systems are based heavily upon the aesthetics (i.e. if you put a gun in the player's hands, that does a lot to inform your game mechanics). I feel Magic sits very solidly in the former category, where the setting is pretty divorced from the mechanics, and the best example of this is probably Space: The Convergence. This has been a fairly round-about way to try to argue that ultimately the setting is probably pretty immaterial to the success of a Magic set, though this might not be true for a certain segment of the player base.

 

[inscho]

I feel like kamigawa failed because everyone quit playing after mirrodin since affinity was such a clusterfuck in standard

Yep, that’s when I stopped. Came back at Mirrodin Beseiged oddly enough.

 

[Rasmus Källqvist]

Ok wow Space: the convergence is amazing!

 

[Jonas]

It certainly feels like a perfect storm of factors, and the unfortunate takeaway from Wizards seems to be that it was definitely the setting, despite the fact that the artwork and themes were really interesting. I cannot find a link to the exact post, but Chris Bateman (blog here. I recommend giving it a skim to determine if it is to your taste, I find it an excellent blog on game design) wrote something that stuck with me about 'colour in game-design' which was about the extent to which mechanics needs to mesh with the aesthetic. Essentially when you have highly abstract systems, you can make the game about anything aesthetically, as opposed to games where the systems are based heavily upon the aesthetics (i.e. if you put a gun in the player's hands, that does a lot to inform your game mechanics). I feel Magic sits very solidly in the former category, where the setting is pretty divorced from the mechanics, and the best example of this is probably Space: The Convergence. This has been a fairly round-about way to try to argue that ultimately the setting is probably pretty immaterial to the success of a Magic set, though this might not be true for a certain segment of the player base.

Thanks for the blogtip, will check it out. I agree that setting does nothing for Magic, it can be set anywhere, anytime. It could have been a game about WW2, Space, farming, etc.
The pros about creating your own world comes if the fanbase connect with the material, otherwise, why bother. Apparently the fanbase didn't like the way the weatherlight saga was told on the cards, and that's why they stopped with that, so I guess that's why all the cards are about Jace now.

I do care about the setting, since theme is what drives me to buy games, which is why I have so few games about trading in the hansaitic league and so many games about Lord of the Rings. I'm not too big on Japan, so I might have gotten bored of Kamigawa even if I didn't stop playing after Mirrodin. But I do think I'm in a minority here. Theme is usually what gets me back to Magic as well. I came back for Lorwyn because of the art style (Then I quit again before shards of alara came out I think, but that was mostly because all of my money went to flames of war, but that's neither here nor there), I came back for modern masters because of nostalgia, drafted a bunch of Theros and felt meh about it. And now I'm into Dominaria again, but I don't really care about the next set, since it's not in the same setting. So I guess I do care about the familiar faces, even though I find the game fun regardless of setting, as long as there is a bunch of good mechanics around. I guess that's why I like cube.

 

[anotak]

i disagree completely!

a lot of magic's success has to do with how evocative the 5 colors of mana and many of the early cards in alpha were, and how well that interconnected with the gameplay.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

i disagree completely!

a lot of magic's success has to do with how evocative the 5 colors of mana and many of the early cards in alpha were, and how well that interconnected with the gameplay.

I agree with anotak I guess it depends on what you mean by setting. I'ld argue that Magic has a high fantasy setting with a multitude of planes that allow creative to visit a multitude of different worlds, and it's this fantasy flavor that pulls many players in at first sight, not the promise of a deep and strategic trading card game.

 

[Aston]

I think there's many levels of "theme" or "flavour" and Magic succeeds and fails at them to various degrees.

The one which I think is the most important is also the one Magic does best, which is what anotak points out - evocative cards that make sense in such a way that the theming of the card helps you interpret and remember its mechanical effect. It seems like most people think that this is limited to complex "top-down design" cards like Endless Ranks of the Dead, but it's equally true for simple cards like Fireball or Lightning Bolt. In my opinion Magic is at its weakest when it falls down on this, and it seems like supplemental sets like Commander are the worst for this (Sidar Kondo of Jamuraap is my personal bugbear in this regard, nothing about that card makes sense to me)

Then you have the setting, which I don't find especially compelling most of the time but occasionally there's something really cool. Ravnica and Innistrad are both interesting planes and the setting is reflected very well in the mechanics of the cards. This is also what I think a lot of people go to when they are discussing theme, even though in my opinion it's quite a minor part of theming.

Kind of linked to setting is characters within the setting. This is something that is sometimes done well and sometimes done poorly - recently the focus has been on the Gatewatch characters and I don't find them compelling at all, and to compound the issue they've been made the face of the game so cards which feature them tend to be very pushed, leading to Standard formats dominated by a few very powerful planeswalkers (or sometimes creatures) - Gideon, Ally of Zendikar being the most egregious recent example. I prefer the approach they had of featuring characters in flavour text or in art so that they built up a sense of character, rather than doing it via a card. Jaya Ballard is infinitely more interesting as the sassy fire mage featured on Inferno or Incinerate that she was as Jaya Ballard or Jaya Ballard, Task Mage, simply because it's hard to fit a complete sense of character into just one card.

Finally, the plot of Magic, which is by far the weakest part of it. I have read some of the story articles on Wizards and I did even try and read the Future Sight novel, as I got it for free in with a purchase of some cards, and managed about three pages before I stopped. The problem is that a trading card game is not a good way to tell a story, as your readers will all open and read the cards in different orders and try and decipher what are important plot cards and what are not. The only time I think they've pulled this off with any degree of success was Khans block, which told its story mechanically very well through the block structure. The best story card of all time is Crux of Fate, although its competition is somewhat lacking.

 

[sigh]

I think Kamigawa failed setting-wise in some larger part due to the part Aston mentions above about characters. I very commonly see discussed the point about how the card names were very complicated, and didn't resonate well at all with western audiences. What exactly is "It that was Taken".... supposed to be?? Is a Honden a creature? A zubera is...

An unfortunate casuality, IMO, of the era where they went deep with their top down sets, but ended up sacrificing too many game components in the process of trying to be very top-down.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

I think Kamigawa failed setting-wise in some larger part due to the part Aston mentions above about characters. I very commonly see discussed the point about how the card names were very complicated, and didn't resonate well at all with western audiences. What exactly is "It that was Taken".... supposed to be?? Is a Honden a creature? A zubera is...

An unfortunate casuality, IMO, of the era where they went deep with their top down sets, but ended up sacrificing too many game components in the process of trying to be very top-down.

That also translated over mechanically too, when you went to fill out a tournament list. The actual flavor made the act of playing the set feel even more clunky.

The little things...

 

[Chris Taylor]

One of the things mark rosewater bemoans about planeswalkers is that there's no room for flavor text, especially since they're the cards trying to hard to need one.

 

[inscho]

I'm bored and want something to tinker around with. Someone pick two blocks in the history of magic and I'll try to make a cube out of it.

 

[Dom Harvey]

it's a fundamental flaw and the only answer is to remove planeswalkers altogether, it's a shame but there's no other choice

 

[safra]

Just a thought, but is it possible that Kamigawa failed for a number of reasons and Wizards of the Coast have decided to say that it was only the flavor, maybe because they look better that way? Woe is us, we were too good at it for you rubes. Jesse Mason points out sometimes that Maro is one of the only historians Magic has, and that the feedback he provides on sets that didn't do well is subject to pressure from corporate.

I'm bored and want something to tinker around with. Someone pick two blocks in the history of magic and I'll try to make a cube out of it.

Onslaught and Khans.

 

[inscho]

Onslaught and Khans.

Spicy and affordable! Thanks!

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Just a thought, but is it possible that Kamigawa failed for a number of reasons and Wizards of the Coast have decided to say that it was only the flavor, maybe because they look better that way? Woe is us, we were too good at it for you rubes. Jesse Mason points out sometimes that Maro is one of the only historians Magic has, and that the feedback he provides on sets that didn't do well is subject to pressure from corporate.

Can we confirm that they viewed it as a failure only due to flavor?

They were increasingly more conscious of mechnical complexity being an issue during that period, and didn't hide from that reality after Lorwyn block.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

I'm bored and want something to tinker around with. Someone pick two blocks in the history of magic and I'll try to make a cube out of it.

Invasion and Alara.

 

[inscho]

Invasion and Alara.

wooo....might like this one a little more. I loooooove invasion block.

 

[Aston]

Just a thought, but is it possible that Kamigawa failed for a number of reasons and Wizards of the Coast have decided to say that it was only the flavor, maybe because they look better that way? Woe is us, we were too good at it for you rubes. Jesse Mason points out sometimes that Maro is one of the only historians Magic has, and that the feedback he provides on sets that didn't do well is subject to pressure from corporate.

Another thing that Jesse points out is that their metric for success or failure of a set is primarily linked to sales, so a well designed set that sold poorly (Time Spiral) is viewed as a failure, and a poorly designed set that sold well (Zendikar) is viewed as a success, even though there are many factors which affect the sales other than the design.

So Kamigawa was a "failure" because it didn't sell well, but was that because the set wasn't fun, or because the flavour was off-putting, or because we'd just had a year of Affinity and 10 cards had to get banned in Standard to combat it? There's not really any way of knowing.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Another thing that Jesse points out is that their metric for success or failure of a set is primarily linked to sales, so a well designed set that sold poorly (Time Spiral) is viewed as a failure, and a poorly designed set that sold well (Zendikar) is viewed as a success, even though there are many factors which affect the sales other than the design.

Actually they took into account tournament attendence as well. The mechanical complexity of the set was off-putting to alot of players, which played into why they considered time spiral a failure. Something that we all know, from our own experiences, is that increasing game complexity can be off-putting.

This is one of the reasons why I don't like his pieces. He's too much of a pundit to be objective.

 

[Chris Taylor]

There was a worlds game (IIRC) decided by someone being rules goofed in Kamigawa.

Kodama's Reach, splice on Glacial Ray targeting your guy.
I'll respond, blessed breath, call....red.

Like sure that's just one game, but a misunderstanding like that at the literal highest levels of play probably doesn't say good things.

 

[shamizy]

So Kamigawa was a "failure" because it didn't sell well, but was that because the set wasn't fun, or because the flavour was off-putting, or because we'd just had a year of Affinity and 10 cards had to get banned in Standard to combat it? There's not really any way of knowing.

The most distressing thing to me about WOTC's whole Kamigawa Never Again stance is that we constantly see them making these same shortsighted decisions and calls without really understanding the reason why certain things might have not worked out.

This goes beyond unsuccessful set design with MaRo playing spin doctor while it's in print and then apologizing a year later for basic marketing goofs that they've had recently like turning FNM promos into tokens then reverting back b/c they realized that people have better things to do than play for fucking tokens on a Friday night. Or when they were reducing the benefits that Pro players were going to receive after achieving certain levels/statuses over a season and just cutting them off right away only to roll back on this a week later. Or when they wanted to make FNM a environment where people could play their cat decks by push their dedicated playerbase to Saturday showdown to sate their competitive urges because fuck having any plans during the weekend. Or all of their precious and vague market data showing certain trends that do not jive with anything that I've witnessed in reality while actively playing the game for much of the last 5 years. They make a great game that I'm very fond of, but it seems more like they are successful in spite of themselves. Richard Garfield is truly a god of game design.

I mean the most egregious thing to me right now is Wizards' take on Buy-A-Box promos. They're going to keep up the campaign because of the success of Dominaria thus far, but it's a TERRIBLE case of correlation not implying causation ala ice cream and Polio. People want to draft Dominaria because the set is pretty fun, there are interesting cards, and it's way better than the garbage formats we had in IXN and Rivals. They also ran a promotion where you could buy a box from your LGS a week before it was actually released. These factors (along with some pricey chase cards) have led to massive sales of the set thus far, not the shitty BaB promo. In fact, how long is it going to be until they release a promo that is not actively terrible and actually good? It wouldn't be the first time they've missed a stupid combo like Saheeli/Felidar or missed the impact that a supplemental card would have in a format like Flusterstorm or True-Name in Legacy. All it takes is one missed evaluation to have a chase limited promo that ends up a 4 of in something relevant and shoots to upwards of 60-70 dollars due to scarcity.

Excuse the rant, I'm still pretty heated after reading the bullshit spin posted on Reddit yesterday.

 

[Grillo_Parlante]

Yeah, they are showing signs of the death spiral. Its unfortunate.

I thought Rudy did a pretty good job covering some of the problems a few weeks ago, but thats a good summary. I'm a little surprised you left out the card quality thing though.

I did find a post though about kamigawa, where they acknowledged the mechanical problems with the set as being part of why it failed. I also found some interesting commentary about the direction they took with the sets flavor, and the problem they had with executing it, which is probably why they are reluctant to approach the world again. I'm hesitant to post it though, as it suggests the root of the problem is more multi-faceted than just corporate greed.

 

[anotak]

Actually they took into account tournament attendence as well.

it's important to consider there are many factors which affect tournament attendance other than design as well. it is an obvious fact that sales or attendance often does not even remotely reflect the quality of the cultural artifact involved. if you doubt this, consider the state of things in the world at large outside of magic. otherwise we'd have to accept that bing crosby's white christmas is the best piece of music of all time.

however, i still think kamigawa is one of the worst blocks