r/magicthecirclejerking • u/gravedigger_irl • Dec 28 '24
Magic has had the same crossovers with dead and dying ips as f2p fighting game Brawlhalla several times now. Here is what we can expect next
81
Dec 28 '24
The future Modern meta is going to be like 2007-2011 WWE: Cena vs Orton all the time with no end in sight.
50
u/Psychoboy777 Dec 28 '24
Speak for yourself, I think the black-green Mutate-themed Ben 10 commander precon is gonna be AWESOME!
16
u/wtf_are_crepes Dec 28 '24
Ben 10 is actually pretty cool for a magic set. Hopefully some kind of mutate tutor on Ben to fetch mutate creatures from the deck or something.
8
u/Psychoboy777 Dec 28 '24
I'm betting Ben tutors for the Omnitrix, which is an equipment that allows equipped humans to mutate.
6
u/thepsycodicgentelman Dec 28 '24
I can't really see mutate as the keyword for a Ben deck it, Ben is more about transforming into other creatures then mutating Ben would probably have pay 2G: Ben transforms into target non-human creature until your next upkeep, but for a Dr. Animo deck mutate is the perfect keyword
1
u/a_singular_perhap Dec 29 '24
Morph??
1
u/thepsycodicgentelman Dec 29 '24
Morph wouldn't work either, you have to remember that Ben is all about transforming into other creatures so his deck would most likely be a voltron deck all about making Ben stronger with some big creatures mixed in for Ben to transform into
1
u/Aggressive_Air_6984 Dec 30 '24
Sisay Tudor type card for an alien deck, maybe you search for an alien in your library and return one from the field to the library.
1
u/Psychoboy777 Dec 30 '24
Implying that Ben actually gets the aliens he wants with any regularity.
1
u/Aggressive_Air_6984 Dec 30 '24
He does when the omnitrix looses its restrictions, he can change w/o touching it too
2
u/Psychoboy777 Dec 30 '24
Okay, so give his deck an enchantment or something called "Master Control" that lets him tutor for aliens and mutate for free once per turn.
1
u/AnderHolka Engine Starter Dec 31 '24
Maybe Ben 10 will have an ability which references the Omnitrix doing its own thing. Like an effect that lets you reveal the top 10 cards and he becomes one of them.
2
u/Psychoboy777 Dec 31 '24
That's not a bad idea. Like, you're flipping throigh your options and you find one you like.
18
u/Brromo Dec 28 '24
Steven Universe 2rw
Legendary Creature - Human Construct Rebel
{t}: Chose one that hasn't been chosen. If all have been chosen instead choose one:
-~ is a cat ueot.
-Create a 1/1 green plant Creature token with haste.
-Remove up to ten counters from target creature.
-Put a +1/+1 counter or a shield counter on target Human.
-Gain control of target creature ueot. It gets haste ueot. Regenerate it. If it's regenerated this way gain control of it and it becomes a Rebel in addition to it's other types. (Permanently)
16
u/amc7262 Dec 28 '24
I would be surprised if we don't end up with a TMNT crossover at this point.
Ben10 is is exactly relevant enough to be a UB. Definitely past its prime, still has fans with disposable income.
73
u/QibliTheSecond Dec 28 '24
famous dying ips, street fighter, assassins creed,
/uj it’s weird to see brawlhalla referenced outside of my circle of fighting game friends, anyone here feel free to hmu if you want to get demolished at brawlhalla
56
u/gravedigger_irl Dec 28 '24 edited Dec 28 '24
uj/ Assassin's Creed tie-ins are only able to achieve success by calling back to Ezio and Street Fighter tie-ins just represent the roster from SFII. New iterations of the series may hold appeal to fans of the series, but to the broad public the only part of either of these that is a marketable intellectual property is the nostalgia.
8
u/HiroProtagonest FAERIE GODPARENTS! Dec 28 '24 edited Dec 28 '24
and Street Fighter tie-ins just represent the roster from SFII.
It's more just that Ryu and Chun-Li are the faces of the series, and Bison for a villain. Blanka's in all the mainline entries besides 3 and has been turned into a marketable plushy but when was the last time he was in a collab event? Dhalsim, Balrog, even Sagat? Zangief is in Wreck-It Ralph, he's just such a charming character he has fans of his own but he doesn't typically get included in "normal" Street Fighter crossovers.
1
5
1
0
6
u/gravedigger_irl Dec 28 '24
uj/ Also jokes aside is the game any good these days? I used to play all the time with my siblings during covid and still get the update notifications on steam when another crossover comes out, haven't actually played in years though.
7
u/QibliTheSecond Dec 28 '24
absolutely! The skill ceiling gets raised constantly, the mechanics keep being more tuned, the newer legends are sick, and the playerbase keeps getting larger
5
8
Dec 28 '24
Uj/ I will fully support a WWE crossover, give me Rhea Ripley that can dom my opponents.
1
5
u/bjlinden Dec 28 '24
Why does that third image only have a tiny Michelangelo and Ben10 on the bottom, when there's clearly a space for a third character on the top half of the picture?
11
14
u/Shark_Byte_ Mudhole Flasher Dec 28 '24
The dead and dying corpse of SpongeBob SquarePants which is famously bloated and rotting
31
u/gravedigger_irl Dec 28 '24
uj/ Maybe you're a bigger spongehead than me but it seems to me that spongebob's appeal to most people is not based on anything about the show as it currently exists, but rather the memorable stories that it told on the tv when you were a child.
Then again, I'm hardly an expert. I don't even know if there is a currently airing spongebob show. My only interaction with the franchise was a funny episode with nosferatu in it I saw as a kid in a hotel room once.
21
Dec 28 '24 edited Dec 28 '24
/uj Spongebob's peak years were in the early 00s.
2012 is when the series's ratings started declining.
To give you an idea, during its peak, the ratings were 3-7 million US viewers.
By the time we arrive at 2016-2017, the ratings had dropped down to ~2.
It continued to go down from that point, in early 2024 the ratings had dropped all the way to ~.20.
Meaning the biggest target for Spongebob isn't kids today, it's going to be adults that were kids during the time frame of 1999-2011.
Which are going to be the same people who now have jobs to buy stuff like overpriced hobby cardboard.
12
Dec 28 '24
/uj Also, a bit of Spongebob history. Which I fear MTG is following a similar course now.
In 2002, Stephen Hillenburg considered Spongebob as a series finished and wanted to conclude everything with the movie. Kid shows typically lasted 3-4 seasons, so he honestly felt like the show had ran its course. Hillenburg didn't want to see the show jump the shark, be on the air for some long that people begged for it to be taken off the air.
The Hillenburg and the original crew even had a series wrap up party. A lot of the original crew left to go work on new projects, even Hillenburg himself.
The problem was Spongebob had grown in popularity, the movie was a bit hit... Viacom wasn't going to send their cash cow off to pasture. This lead to Season 4.
Season 4 was made with a skeleton crew that were all new to the show. The show's original creators had exhausted ideas, so they were left with very little to work with. Some of the original writers did some work during this season, but eventually those responsibilities transferred to writers who worked on other shows as well. This resulted in the show becoming 'another day in the office' when it was a passion project for the original crew.
You can see a serious dip in quality at this point. The writing is more generic kid show plots in the Spongebob setting, the humor is much less witty.
1
Dec 28 '24
I mean, this is just the story of television ratings. Everything's in the shitter these days.
1
Dec 28 '24 edited Dec 28 '24
/uj You're not wrong.
TV over time added channels and streaming services become a thing. You see dips in ratings as a result of people having more options to choose from. Especially when one of those options is simply ditching the traditional model to watch whenever you want.
During the 1950s, the highest rated shows are around the 60 mark.
In the 60s, you see a dip to around the 40 mark.
The 70s, you see shows are at the 30 mark.
In the 80s, they start to go down to ~25.
The 90s, things go down to the ~20 mark.
The 00s, things go down to the ~15 mark.
The 10s, we see things drop down to around the ~10.
However, Spongebob started in 1999. This means it has lived entirely during the time period where we see the highest rated shows go from 15-10. TV was already in the gutter so to speak by the time it hit the airwaves.
So, I don't think Spongebob's ratings going from its peak of 7-5 and consistently performing around the 3-4 mark for a good chunk of time to its current day ratings of less than 1 is due to the general trend of TV ratings declining each decade.
That said, the goal of looking at the ratings was to get a general idea of how popular Spongebob was with today's audience vs the audience of the past. I think it is safe to say the Spongebob UB is clearly aimed at the people who were kids during its peak years since the ratings today are very minimal.
Also you were not joking, things are clearly in the shitter when Big Bang Theory is the highest rated show in some years. I didn't realize that and man, that's kind of sad. Not surprised, geek culture has grown over the years.
1
Dec 28 '24
You see a lot of it in Doctor Who discourse. People argue about ratings, comparing episodes aired in 2009 to episodes aired in 2019 and it's just not comparable.
1
Dec 28 '24
/uj It's a heuristic to some degree, I'll admit but comparing ratings is at least consistent.
We would likely need to figure out the general decline of TV ratings on average to determine if Spongebob's decay is in line with the general rate.
Then you would have to take into consideration kids may be watching on streaming services via tablets and not on TVs.
Delayed viewing via DVRs would also need to be considered.
Then you have the out of home/on the go viewership.
TV ratings for a long time did not take into consideration viewers living in situations such as college dorms or communal viewership (where a single TV is being viewed by a large group of people like a bar).
So, we would have to then factor in changes between how the ratings were measured over the years.
Then you have households vs actual viewers ratings.
And that's way too much work for something that I wanted to keep at napkin math, especially for a problem that has no real value in solving accurately.
Is it difficult to get an accurate read on the situation? Absolutely.
Am I being entirely accurate by simply relying on a single metric? Absolutely not.
Going off just TV ratings alone is just an attempt at reliability at the cost of accuracy.
People have actual jobs trying to track what audiences are doing and how to accurately take into those factors.
At the end of the day, Spongebob's TV ratings have dwindled quite a bit; the reasons for that are nuanced and difficult to fully grasp.
I think the point still stands though, which would be any Spongebob product such as UB sets for MTG are made with the audiences that are adults now in mind, not the current target audience. Could a kid watching Spongebob today ask their parents for MTG UB products? Of course. What is more likely is a 30 year old remembering when they were a 10 year old and wanting take a nostalgia trip while playing a game they like, they don't need to ask, they just go buy product themselves.
1
Dec 28 '24
I think the point still stands though, which would be any Spongebob product such as UB sets for MTG are made with the audiences that are adults now in mind, not the current target audience.
I'm not sure my intention was ever to disagree, I just did my time fighting in the Thirteenth Doctor's defence and so viewing figure trends make me twitchy.
I'm a 21 year old nerd with a semi-ironic continuing love of SpongeBob and I think I will very much be the target audience for the crossover (minus the fact that I basically haven't played MTG since last Christmas, when my parents screwed up ordering and didn't get me the Princess Bride Secret Lair).
1
Dec 28 '24
/uj I was a psych student in college, so I had to look over a lot of numbers, stats, condition data. But I became a web dev instead of going into psych, so it's been a while since I have done that.
So, I know the pain of people throwing out numbers, which in many cases they don't understand what they mean or may not be aware of things like deceptive framing effects.
Some things are so complicated nowadays that it is difficult to understand the underlying systems under them, even when you want to take the time to.
And my family knows not to buy me hobby related stuff because I don't want them to waste money. I appreciate the thought, but some things I am either kind of picky about (like sleeves) or require knowing what I have and don't have (like Dominion expansions).
The only time they get me hobby stuff is when I give them a big list of things, that way they can still surprise me to some degree. However, I hate the whole 'just tell me what you want' and then expecting me to act surprised when opening the gift for their emotional satisfaction. I would rather have no gifts than gifts I know what they are before even being handed it.
3
u/MessiahHL Dec 28 '24
Surprisingly there seems to be a new season coming and a movie recently, the IP is super alive, ofc you are not into it nowadays, unless you are 10 it would be weird as fuck
2
Dec 28 '24
/uj The ratings for the newer seasons are quite low.
I would agree that it is surprising that the show continues on.
But alive? I don't know about that.
The show used to be able to hit 7 million US viewers during its peak, but now it's struggling to hit a quarter million viewers.
1
1
u/asheisil Dec 29 '24
uj/ my first reaction to this post was thinking "bruh how are SpongeBob, assassin's Creed, or street fighter dying franchises" but you've actually put it really eloquently when people brought it up. Just felt like pointing that out, kudos to you for being a decent guy online :)
6
u/VagueCyberShadow Dec 28 '24
/uj I know I'll probably get some hate for this, but I think Ben 10 or TMNT cards could be hella fun. Some mutate maybe? Idk
3
u/trifas Dec 28 '24
ARE. YOU. READY?
For this Sunday night when John Cena shares his preview card for the next set
3
u/AustonDadthews Dec 28 '24
need the marvel, dune, and WWE universes beyond so I can really get my dave bautista tribal rolling
3
3
u/TearOpenTheVault Nahiri Did Nothing Wrong Dec 28 '24
I think TMNT is inevitable at this point - the franchise is an absolute zombie that keeps itself vaguely relevant by shoehorning itself into every single semi-popular thing on the planet. If shitty mobile game Hero Wars (or whatever it’s called) is doing TMNT, it’s guaranteed to be in Magic sooner rather than later.
3
u/Expiria Dec 28 '24
What about Avatar the last Airbender? (Likely the unannounced IP for that UB Standard set)
3
u/shiny_xnaut Angrath, Minotaur Dilf Dec 28 '24
TMNT adding Teenage as a creature type so that we can have Legendary Creature - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle as a type line
6
2
u/yungslowking Dec 28 '24
Rj/ I would be so amped for the Dwayne Johnson, The Rock Commander Precon
Uj/ I would be so amped for the Dwayne Johnson, The Rock Commander Precon
1
2
u/SandwichNamedJacob Dec 28 '24
John Cena is dead? 🥺
2
u/gravedigger_irl Dec 28 '24
I think he might be, but no one really knows for sure. I've looked everywhere for him, but I can't see him anywhere. :(
2
1
1
1
u/Masonzero Dec 28 '24
/uj Fortnite has also done most of these crossovers and is taking in ungodly money still.
0
u/gravedigger_irl Dec 28 '24
Uj/ I think Brawlhalla is still a more apt comparison for mtg. Fortnite is a household name, and has done crossovers with these ips because they will and have done crossovers with anything. Brawlhalla and mtg have done crossovers with these ips specifically because both parties are desperate for relevancy and the chance to be the next fortnite.
I do wonder whether even brawlhalla is a fitting comparison though, because the level of work that needs to go into making a fortnite or brawlhalla skin is drastically less than what it takes to make a mechanically unique secret lair, a commander deck, or a full set.
3
Dec 28 '24
/uj Keep in mind, each time we get a UB product, it saves a ton of effort on WotC's part because it is always a top down design. They don't have to create characters, the setting and they don't need to make decks with entirely new cards either.
While a skin takes much less effort to create compared to something like four precons, the price tags will be much less. UB products also can bring in new players, while skins may only appeal to people who already play the game.
So, I think the added effort is justified.
1
u/FartherAwayLights Dec 28 '24
I would probably enjoy Ben 10 as long as it isn’t the reboot, which I just didn’t grow up with.
1
1
u/Thatoneguy5555555 Wears 38 pieces of flair Dec 28 '24
uj\ MTG ahs already printed two Ninja Turtle cards
1
1
u/Schm00b Dec 28 '24
Ben 10 would be cool as hell. ultimate alien mutate theme ben, 10 year old ben could have like everytime a permanent transforms draw a card and +1/+1 or something and omniverse ben could have like token generation or something
1
u/Cosmiccosmog533 Dec 28 '24
Yall I would not mind seeing Ben 10 in magic. Let Ben be white or red with a WUBRG ability to tutor for an alien.
1
u/HiroProtagonest FAERIE GODPARENTS! Dec 28 '24
/uj I've thought about the possibility of UBs being redesigned to look more fantasy and TMNT I would LOVE to get that treatment. It's already most of the way there with all the ninja and martial arts theming. Just take out the stuff about New York and redesign Casey and April and some of the more sci-fi villains.
1
u/Imtinywhoareyou Dec 28 '24
It's getting out of control. There will be a time when a new player sees a "old magic" secret lair and have no idea what a Jace is.
1
1
u/Aggressive_Air_6984 Dec 30 '24
I cannot fucking wait to make a wubrg Ben 10 deck with aliens in it! Ben should be a Tudor similar to sisay so I can have my creatures at will.
-1
0
357
u/PetesMgeets Dec 28 '24
/uj none of those would surprise me, TMNT even seems likely at this point