Deepening MTG Story & Insight Sought

 Saw your report on MTG with Hasbro,

I saw a report by Jason Haas on MTG. 

Some thoughts to "deepen" the story for analysts--and in exchange, a request [to the person this was shared with] for insight... 

If this seems a little long please forgive me--it is "reduced-thorough" to be thorough in my own autistic(ish) sort of way, but to be (I hope) not-overwhelming, and actually worth your time (the first part anyway).

I was a player a long time ago, learning (badly) MTG from a friend in my middle school days.

By high school, given limited resources to buy any cards, I would use statistical tests (playing self and computing from results the effects resulting from adjustments to decks) to help compile cards into very effective decks with a very limited set of cards.

I was that poor kid with the same (varying only slightly) deck for YEARS who...kept beating the kids with decks of cards that could rival the cost of a car (average, used, at that time).

By the end of my sophomore year, however, I had begun experimenting and changing-up decks. I walked into a tournament once where it was a 20-on-20 free-for-all. I won in just a couple of turns, against more monied opponents and against far-longer-term players (more experience) than I.

This is what made MTG so grand: they all LAUGHED about this (I beat them with a deck of creatures whose type was...squirrels). It was an ultra fun, free-wheeling, inclusive, non-judgmental community (even if the occassional "very serious player(TM)" got very upset after losing despite that his deck cost $700): I, a nobody with no income or money to speak of and only a very slowly built, questionable collection, could stomp 20 other players with far more money (read, intact families! typically), time, experience, collections, and decks to pull from... and yes, it was surprising to them that I had, but not because that was unlikely: it was COMMON to be surprised like this... A peer at our school jumped-in on a game one day, pulling together haphazardly a deck from cards he borrowed, and beat us all with "commons" and "uncommons" cards -- that was surprising given what other people had (carefully curated decks with expensive choice cards), but not uncommon in MTG where skill mattered (he had a LOT of prior experience) and where how even those not-rare, not-expensive cards could be used together in a skillful way.

By my college days MTG was changing. I had stopped playing to focus on studies. Over a break visiting friends, I noticed a deck that was "broken"--all the cards seemed to work together TOO well and easily, and that was ALL of them doing that. I would examine this card then that card that was being played--their "mana costs" were quite low, and even if the creature stats weren't all that high, they were filled with special abilities and effects--and they weren't even rare much of the time.

It wasn't long after, on another visit to my hometown with buddies, I saw this again...and again. "It doesn't seem like they're prioritizing BALANCE anymore--I could have never afforded to play this game in high school. Heck, I couldn't afford to play it now. You would just constantly have to buy more cards, not because they're cool or exciting or special or well thought of, but because all your old cards will no longer have even the slightest chance in a game with those who have bought the new cards. They've turned the game into[ the] Yu-Gi-Oh[ card game]."

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The "deepen" bit is the over-issuance of cards and players finding they "can't keep up" is not new--it is a predictable, emergent phenomenon of throwing-out the old principles that made the game so welcoming and inclusive. From releases and individual cards being carefully crafted/tailored, tested, etc. so they were "balanced" in play, to that care leading to releases being not too frequent, and extending even to the numbers of cards issued or not, and re-issued, as as not to "break" the game.

It was HARD to make decks that had effects, special "combos", and other violations of expectations of players: Magic was a game for normies, geeks, gamers, even hackers, all alike--someone with powerful cards could be overcome through someone with junk they got partly from a lost and found, partly from a donor box, partly from a thrift shop, "playing the rules." (We would actually do events where rules were, you had to have a card from each of the sources mentioned--sources like these!) Fast-forward and the game's new ownership was simplifying the rules heavily (things like "mana burn", which are literally expected/assumed by older cards, or mentioned by them, etc., were eliminated).

It isn't obvious to an outsider, but a game like MTG is an passionates', artisal game: the kind of thing you would get at the dingy nerd-and-gamers-and-readers-and-records combination shop that's a dingy place a couple of suites down from the local abortion mill (aka "makes rent cheap), stacked with old things and has the aisle for new board games that happen to be completely unheard of in the mainstream, which arises from carefully deliberated discussion by the kinds of people in those places, who want to be as inclusive as possible (it is, after all, their livelihood)... the kind of place that does game nights for promos.

When MTG was sold, it eventually leaked that the new persons doing the crafting inside basically hated their audience--this alone drove a lot of people to stop buying new cards. Why give money to people who despite you but pretend otherwise? But...it showed in the decisions being made, you could tell players could feel it even when they didn't see those leaks. And when a company has a product they sell to people they don't particularly empathize with they...are tempted to milk their audience for all they are worth: I'm not alone in being someone who hasn't played with any newer cards for many years unless they were gifts from a friend. I figured it would go on a while because young kids would think the packs looked cool in the aisles at target...but they think the same thing of e.g. Yu-Gi-Oh!, and they always drop that after a few years for the same "broken" reasons.

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The reason to reach was to not just provide this deeper dive, but also this: I haven't seen an "analyst" in years who seemed to be aware of more than spreadsheets or conventional, formal matters of interest to suits and understandable to them. It is remarkable to see a little more than that--e.g. not just that people are talking of the ruin of value as the market is flooded by Hasbro, but the players' frustration that they cannot keep-up unless they play a "format" that makes old cards viable: Commander.

In fact, two weekends back I played with two buddies (only the second time in several years) using a deck built by one of them playing...Commander. It has not been worth it (to really anyone) to play "real Magic" for years. We ONLY ever play Commander anymore.

What intrigued me is that your analysis went beyond superficial, can-put-it-on-a-spreadsheet analysis. 

I am a ...slightly?... autistic (the kind who tries to accommodate rather than ask for accomodation--it makes one grow and fits much of the advice you get from e.g. Temple Grandin) semi-wonky guy who stares in awe whenever I'm in a big firm and see...how badly everything seems to go and yet firms can skate through reviews by investment analysts as golden. 

I've had a thought for several years to "work to where I can save back, go finish school, then perhaps go into the financial space" due to this--nobody seems to be looking under the right rocks, they look under the well-crafted false rocks put in aesthetic places to seem like they're running as smoothly as a monk's mood in a Zen garden. Everything to do with actual operations and other important factors (morale, the "in the trenches" knowledge and tribal knowledge of the foot soldiers and the technicians and the engineers, etc.), go completely missed.

So seeing you go beyond just financials and scarcity and mentioning players' thoughts and feelings...puts you vastly ahead of other analysts in terms of quality of the reporting. Have you any ideas or recommendations or insights into how one can become and work in analysis in this space in a more non-traditional manner?

Perhaps putting it another way: managment knows what gets analyzed, so they optimize for those things -- but per Goodhart's law, that means that those things which we measure cease to be valid measures. From my own experience, I know I need to work on some issues of verbal processing, as well as "import" from domains that provide some incredibly useful analogies to aspects of operations, and to hammer these out into formal papers or descriptions that others could review and use and understand, which takes time. But once I do, there will be a new approach to reviewing firms for their investment and future potential.

What I have never run into though is this info: how one then finds people to work with using that kind of thing. It is, after all, talk of new approaches... and at that point you're talking about something that people will have a hard time with hearing and evaluating, much less understanding any of it! (Then, layer-on the communications issues!)