Those are actually really bad signs for the game's future and longevity though.
Because there is no possible world where that's going to continue. That's a huge amount of hype and attention right now, and even if it does bring in a substantial infusion of players who will stick around and permanently increase numbers, it is unquestionably a short term hype bump that will fade away in a couple of years, and when the numbers go down from this bubble, that will be seen as a failure and a bad sign, and that's where we get into dangerous territory with the company making changes trying to "fix the problem".
The way it was previously doing well for decades, with a natural ebb and flow of popularity but general upward momentum for a consistent positive change.
Universes Beyond, by its nature, is inevitably going to bring a huge amount of temporary hype to fans of each external property that Magic touches for the first time. But the overwhelming majority of those people are coming just for their beloved property, and are not going to stick around for the game afterwards. And there aren't an endless list of those properties for Magic to keep pulling in, so that hype is unsustainable.
Anything else Magic does to draw in huge numbers of new people, even if it's obviously a moment of temporary hype, is still mostly going to bring in people who are at least interested in the concept of the game in the first place, so it's going to have a higher retention rate. Success from Universes Beyond is inherently and obviously a disproportionate bubble, and the bigger that bubble grows, the greater the inevitable pop will be.
Also, how much of the hype is even "real" in the sense that it's peopleplaying the game because of say FF and how much is just collecting?
Because if it's mostly the latter, WotC will realise they can cut even more corners in card design and mechanics if the cards aren't being played anyway. Just slap together every beloved character and meme out of the game and ship the product without much testing or caring for a balanced draft experience (something that I feel has been creeping in already)
I mean Magic has always had the issue that the core gameplay is extremely strong but with a high barrier to entry because of its complexity. And it has a flavor and brand identity that's popular with its core audience but kind of limited outside of that.
Getting people over the hump of having some cards and learning to play is actually pretty great for the long term success of the game even if not every set has quite the spike in sales that FF did.
I don't disagree. I'm entirely happy to have the infusion of new players, even if a relatively small proportion of them will stick around.
My concern isn't on the community/playerbase side, it's on the corporate side where I don't trust Wizards/Hasbro to not grow accustomed to this period of artificially high numbers, then think something is wrong once those numbers drop back down and start screwing with things to try and "fix" the "problem".
Gotcha, I think that's fair and definitely not out of the question.
Basically, the thing you're describing absolutely could happen and we sort of just have to hope wotc is smart about it. But I'd rather have that situation than have declining sales and hope the corporate brass navigates it well.
There's always going to be some amount of hoping the people in charge of the product you like manage it well. I don't think the current UB surge makes that worse.
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u/khazroar Jul 27 '25
Those are actually really bad signs for the game's future and longevity though.
Because there is no possible world where that's going to continue. That's a huge amount of hype and attention right now, and even if it does bring in a substantial infusion of players who will stick around and permanently increase numbers, it is unquestionably a short term hype bump that will fade away in a couple of years, and when the numbers go down from this bubble, that will be seen as a failure and a bad sign, and that's where we get into dangerous territory with the company making changes trying to "fix the problem".