By [ad_1]
Magic: The Gathering’s first digital-exclusive set is proving to be controversial, combining a variety of the digital platform’s existing issues.
Magic: The Gathering‘s latest set is Jumpstart: Historic Horizons. Billed as a follow-up to last summer’s Jumpstart, Historic Horizons operates in a similar way, asking players to combine two semi-randomized “packets” to create a ready-to-play deck. The big difference is the set’s release structure. Historic Horizons is exclusive to the game’s digital client, Magic: The Gathering Arena, drawing its name from Arena‘s popular Historic format.
As an Arena exclusive, Historic Horizons can pull off some flashy tricks, with digital-exclusive cards operating on mechanics that aren’t feasible in paper. “Seek” searches the deck without either players knowledge, “Perpetually” alters a card’s qualities for the rest of the game and “Conjure” pulls nontoken cards out of thin air. However, these have already proven to be controversial for myriad reasons.
For one, the digital-only approach represent what some feel is a Hearthstone-ification of Magic. Hearthstone is one of Magic‘s greatest competitors in the digital card game market, and one of the trendsetters for the genre as a whole. Arena takes several cues from Hearthstone in terms of structure and visual design, but had previously clung to being a faithful recreation of paper Magic. It might have used fancy animations or locked-in monetization, but at the end of the day, it was simply another way to play the same game.
Jumpstart: Historic Horizons changes that. It introduces 31 new cards that will only be released on Arena, 28 of which have effects only possible on the digital platform. Historic is now a format that can never be reproduced in paper, making Arena and paper Magic two parallel tracks that overlap but are not entirely the same.
Of course, digital-only cards are nothing new. 1997 introduced Astral cards, which were created for the MicroProse PC game Magic: The Gathering. These cards took advantage of their digital space in the exact same way, using “random” effects that would be difficult or impossible to accomplish on paper. However, digital-only cards are far more visible and prominent now than they were 24 years ago.
Magic: Arena is also a very different game from its predecessor. After all, the Astral cards could be bought for a single flat fee. The 1997 game wasn’t free-to-play, but buying a copy granted access to each and every card in the game. In contrast, Arena is free-to-play, but the cards contained within will cost extra. It’s possible to obtain them all without spending a single cent, but doing so requires incredible amounts of time, patience and skill.
Arena‘s biggest issue is its economy, due in no small part to the difference between physical and digital games. While paper Magic can be pricy, there’s always to option to sell your cards and recoup some value. This doesn’t make the game free, or even cheap, but the option to cash out isn’t available in Arena.
Each new set represents spending more time or money on the game rather than a potential investment. Players can either spend hundreds of dollars buying “gems” with which to buy packs, or they can spend day after day grinding through drafts, hoping to “go infinite” and win back their entry fee. For players who enjoy drafts, this can be a workable system, but Jumpstart: Historic Horizons makes Arena‘s already-tenuous economy even less feasible.
Jumpstart‘s structure is simple. Players pay in 2,000 gold, or the price of two packs. For this entry fee, they receive two packs at random, which they combine to make a 40-card deck. Playing until they reach two wins will grant an additional two rares at random, but there are no other prizes for the event; it’s impossible to “go infinite” playing Jumpstart. To make matters worse, Jumpstart‘s structure makes it harder for players to pull the cards they need.
Normally, opening a pack has a random chance to pull any rare from the set, but Jumpstart‘s packet structure means that certain rares only come in certain packets. Players are even more likely to simply not see certain packets, even if those are the ones with the cards they need for their Constructed Historic deck. Jumpstart: Historic Horizons isn’t an entirely new frontier for digital Magic, but instead of being an exciting rediscovery of a decades-old idea, it exacerbates all the issues of Arena‘s monetization.
About The Author
[ad_2]
