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One thing I initially wanted to do when the only real media talking about this art was KCW's article was to sift through the comments and determine what percentage of the total commentary totally misses the entire loving point of this conversation: that the art is needlessly sexualized. Also, sweet false equivalency, MaRo. 
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2012 18:30 |
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| # ¿ May 22, 2013 19:39 |
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Exactly. And even knowing the context behind that scene—which I absolutely wouldn't if it weren't being bandied about by people defending the art—it doesn't explain why those sexual elements exist. Like, it's be a different debate if he were just fighting her, but he's not. It's like the artist was told to depict dominance and just subconsciously integrated those elements. Also, although more tenuous than the leg configuration and her arched back, I think it's weird that he's threatening her with penetration, via his pointed bracer, not just with his fist, which better evokes his brute strength. In fact, my feelings are so strong on this issue that I found it necessary to send Mr. Rosewater a Tweet! 
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2012 18:58 |
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I... don't understand why this art thing absolutely blew up on Twitter today. The entirety of this debate seems like one side is trying to point out the sketchy elements of the art, while the other side histrionically disagrees with fallacies. I'm pretty sure this is accurate, but I feel like I'm creating a strawman. Regardless, why is this such a contentious issue. People pointed out a thing. It's a thing that's there. It's fairly observable. I don't understand. How did this result in so many people shouting false equivalencies at OM (spokesperson for women) and KCW?
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2012 23:06 |
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Mornacale posted:I guess you don't read grognards.txt. Basically this exact same thing just happened over people suggesting that D&D art should include people of various genders and ethnicities without objectifying or stereotyping them. Including nerds unironically claiming that D&D is for white men, and if minorities want to be represented in an RPG they should make their own. No, I don't read that. That sounds horrible. The main thing is, like Abey pointed out, there was no reason to do this. Why even take that risk? edit: I thought I was going to be using Twitter to shill for my publications, not Tweet to strangers about will-o-th'-whist, so I'm just @MarkBrezinski. rinski fucked around with this message at Apr 25, 2012 around 23:42 |
| # ¿ Apr 25, 2012 23:38 |
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OM is currently having a private conversation with PV and she is actually getting through to him.  No but seriously, he just seems ignorant and confused, but willing to talk about it. That's so much better than most of the people tweeting about this topic.
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2012 00:45 |
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I dunno. I asked some dude on Twitter why Garruk needed to "brace himself against her leg" for the punch when, canonically speaking, they're nonphysical entities that can choose their own form at will. Seems weird. Furthermore, punching a nonphysical entity seems weird. I spent a lot of yesterday talking to people who simply couldn't envision the fight happening in any other way.
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2012 20:11 |
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a guy in our stream posted:Why are your articles in the premium section here on SCG? Is it because you are a girl? Ockhams Machete posted:Yes. Yes, it is because I am a girl. That is the only reason I am in the premium section. a guy in our stream posted:At least you admit that. That is obvious *** and no offense, but you don't deserve to be a writer among the best in the world. Best in the world does not include Mike Flores though. Joke? Legitimate comment? I honestly have no idea, but later in the same silly, drunk, obviously not serious stream he said, "SO BAD! I can't watch this durdlefest," so I don't even know. I thought this was funny and this seemed like an appropriate place to post it.
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2012 03:27 |
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You can start by asking how he makes the jump to "you're going to ruin the game."  Then... yeah I get overwhelmed. 
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2012 13:20 |
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Brownhat posted:Wow, they didn't even think to include Jackie Lee in one of those teams... She's not writing for SCG any more. 
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| # ¿ May 8, 2012 06:16 |
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Yeah, but I don't think I'm at liberty to say at the moment. I'm sure she'll let you guys know; if she doesn't get a chance, I'll just slyly link an article when she publishes.
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| # ¿ May 8, 2012 13:36 |
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whydirt posted:How much can you make as a mid-level PT player and wizard poker writer? Not much. Not to get into too many details, but yeah, TCG basically just made a much better offer that SCG wasn't interested in matching. Additionally, TCG is apparently making a huge push to redesign everything, from their site to their tournament series to coverage, and OM had a lot of good ideas for them. From what I understand, writing behind a paywall is limiting, too: if you're not posting the latest decklists and tech, people get upset. It just seemed like a better fit for everyone. rinski fucked around with this message at May 8, 2012 around 19:16 |
| # ¿ May 8, 2012 19:12 |
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Abeya Minora posted:Speaking of Appropriate Thread Discussion, Barcelona starts up tomorrow. Aside from the artificial rivalries constructed by Rich "The Only Thing That Sounds Worse Than My Voice Is My Writing" Hagon, there doesn't seem to be much controversy or concern going on into the format. Apparently CFB found their deck very early and put the rest of the focus into draft, ST:B has two different lists they are still fighting over, and the only concerns players have is the fact that 5-3 makes Day 2 now, instead of 6-2. Apparently the French team & Jackie went through a ton of different archetypes before they finally found one they liked. I don't think I can get more specific than that, unfortunately. I'd thought the format was dominated by RW, whith a handful of other decks that were warped to fight RW. Apparently there's a ton of viable archetypes, though, assuming people don't just default to Boros.
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| # ¿ May 11, 2012 02:20 |
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magic pro @prowotc posted:Wow. @JackieL33 isn't doing well against high level players? Surprised? Maybe we need an article about it #ptavr #womenarebadatmagic  Chapin, Stark, and other high profile players with similar or worse results? Haha nope, let's make refreshing, hilarious jokes because women. rinski fucked around with this message at May 11, 2012 around 14:08 |
| # ¿ May 11, 2012 14:04 |
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I know it's just a lovely troll, but stuff like this just boggles my mind. I've always been interested in gender studies and politics, so I've been aware of stuff like indignation fatigue and why "ironic" misogyny is awful, but holy poo poo. It's only been four months. Four months of lovely Kitchen Finks jokes. And at this point I'm just in this constant state of disbelief. How can people think this stuff is fresh and funny and unique and worth sharing? They're not even trying to put a clever twist on lovely misogyny, it's just baseline, lazy trolling. No wit, no subtext, no variance, just waves of people thinking they've daggered you with the same boring poo poo you've seen dozens of times. Four months. I can't loving fathom how it must feel to be the actual target of this your entire life. rinski fucked around with this message at May 11, 2012 around 14:34 |
| # ¿ May 11, 2012 14:26 |
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Man, this format seems to be kicking a lot of people's asses. I'm pretty surprised at some of the big names pretty far down the standings list after Standard. Also, I really like how on the text livestream they're talking about how they balanced Miracle. How many on-camera blowouts have there been so far with Bonfire? vvv Edit vvv: I wasn't sure about where I should post this either, but I figured here was a good bet because the other thread was talking about how wacky interrupts were instead of the PT. rinski fucked around with this message at May 11, 2012 around 18:40 |
| # ¿ May 11, 2012 16:57 |
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Star Man posted:Wonderful, now I don't feel comfortable playing cards anymore with people. I'm by no means a sociologist or debate master, but I have had this discussion, a lot, mainly with positive results. If you want to talk to your friends about this, I've found it's easiest to just start by breaking down their arguments, rather than making your own. Arguing symbolism, how painting works, and gender politics are important, but that's easier to do once you've dismantled their existing framework. Just ask a lot of questions, because chances are they just haven't thought about it that much. Ignorance is very curable! In my experience, their argument boils down to a solipsistic chain of logic followed by a lovely assertion: - I don't see anything wrong with it. I can't fathom how others could see anything wrong with it. Given this, there must be nothing wrong with it. - Since there's nothing wrong with it, you don't deserve to feel offended. That initial fallacy is just argument from ignorance, so it should be easy enough to overturn. If they insist there's literally no way anyone else could have a differing opinion of the matter, you're probably not going to get anywhere. The second part is harder to argue with some people. I've had some success by pointing out the person is essentially arguing, "you aren't allowed to feel feelings." If they actually believe that's true, I usually just advise they find a therapist, because it seems like that's a lovely assumption to live by! Maybe point to the whole debacle with Cross Assault and see how they feel about that. I think their reaction is likely just a "Censorship!" kneejerk, which is awesome, because it's easy to explain the situation to people like that. Chances are you can win those people over with the "freedom of speech vs. consequence free speech" distinction, especially if they're arguing for people to just shut up about it. From there on out just call them on slippery slope fallacies and hope for the best. v  vEdit: JerryLee posted:Thought this thread might like to have this pointed out This actually makes me hopeful, because it's such a purposeless, baseline joke: I can see it actually helping people realize that ironic misogyny isn't actually funny. rinski fucked around with this message at May 14, 2012 around 04:36 |
| # ¿ May 14, 2012 04:25 |
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For those who care, Catherine Boatman's documentary on women in Magic went up. She filmed it during PT Honolulu. I remember her interviewing a ton of people, but only like four interviews made it to the cut she published. Apparently she cut DeTora's and Oliver's interviews. Regarding the video, it's... not great. It's short, but still seems kinda unfocused. You got some "we're indie filmmakers!" noodling for the first part, then some interviews, then it ends with a Tha' Gatherin' fan video. I suppose it's ok, but I really wish she would've included her interviews with the other women who were competing. I know Jackie is putting up better numbers lately, but I don't think that's a particularly good reason for ignoring everyone else. rinski fucked around with this message at May 14, 2012 around 21:11 |
| # ¿ May 14, 2012 21:08 |
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She had me in the booth to interview and slated me, but then they started calling the draft and I didn't end up actually doing it.
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| # ¿ May 14, 2012 22:10 |
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I husband competitively, sure, but I'd say I'm semi-pro, honestly.
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| # ¿ May 14, 2012 22:20 |
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Lone Goat posted:Am I the only one that caught the juxtaposition between the GAMER GIRL title card and a girl in a bikini swimming through the frame? Yeah, that's the woman who made this. She's also a gamer but we never hear anything about her, just watch her test her water-proof point-and-shoot. I pretty much agree with everything brownhat mentioned. I know she got interviews with Melissa and Carrie, so it seems weird she cut those. I'm not sure if it was in lieu of the crazy GP results Jackie put up sense or what, but between the title and just Jackie being featured, it makes it seem like she's the titular gamer girl... But that's not the case, and of it were, the narrative is really meandering. I dunno, I think parts were well-made, but this video doesn't really add anything to the narrative and actually makes it seem like there's fewer women playing at a high level than there actually are.
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| # ¿ May 15, 2012 00:21 |
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I guess it's a step forward that they at least aren't l knocking her playskill for no reason? I dunno. I agree, it is super telling that the only way they can parse her is whether they would or would not have sex with her. That seems really depressing and lonely. I'm looking forward to watching the stream when she's doing commentary. That should be fun. Some Magic: the Gossiping: we went out on a party bus with Chapin and sundry pros. It was fine until Radha started barfing because she's like 12. Later, Tom Martell asked someone for a cigarette and apparently got a joint instead. We last saw him back at the hotel watching an EDH match and talking about how he had no idea what was going on. Pretty surreal night.
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| # ¿ May 28, 2012 08:41 |
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Ugh. Stop talking over my stream with spoilers, OM. This lag is ruining the experience for me.
rinski fucked around with this message at Jul 19, 2012 around 02:12 |
| # ¿ Jul 19, 2012 02:10 |
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FordCQC posted:I'm honestly surprised no one else has commented on it before me. what even is the beginning of this video That guy seems like he means well, but I think Wizards marketing is leaning on him hard to focus on women playing high-level Magic. I do think this video was trying slightly too hard, but I don't think it was crazy. I actually don't know how many women were in the field, but judging from the shots it did seem to be slightly misrepresentative.
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| # ¿ Jul 20, 2012 20:37 |
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So, last night Sam Black did a stream with Jackie Lee. Towards the end it went about as well as any given SCG stream chat. The important difference here, though, is Sam really noticed the difference between his normal streams and this one and brought it up on Twitter, which has sparked a bit of dialog. Jackie replied to one pessimistic Tweet ("Unfortunately, some gamers are horrible sexist pigs. Any SCG streams showing Jackie have similar problems.") by pointing out how relatively inoffensive TCGPlayer's streams have been by comparison. I'm pretty sure the reason for that has largely been the regulars of both my stream and Jackie's stream, which is largely you guys. I just wanted to say thanks to all of you for helping to be agents of positive change. Moderating a stream only goes so far towards quashing lovely attitudes: it requires a number of vocal people to shift a zeitgeist and you all have been absolutely integral in that regard. Last night was just a very public reminder of how stark the difference is between a stream full of randoms and a stream full of our regulars: if not for you guys, it'd be stale, lovely jokes all the way down. 
rinski fucked around with this message at Aug 23, 2012 around 16:51 |
| # ¿ Aug 23, 2012 16:39 |
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I think you're underestimating just how important "not being reprehensible shitlords" actually is, at the moment. I just thought that this whole thing was a really interesting, positive example of the difference a community can make, and I'm really glad Sam decided to talk about it instead of just ignoring it. We're winning, you guys. 
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| # ¿ Aug 23, 2012 18:23 |
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I know I didn't get this typed out fast enough to capitalize on the discussion, but hopefully this giant wall of text can reignite it a bit?? So ever since my wife has been trying this whole "professional wizard" thing, I've found myself getting more involved in this game as well. More tournaments, streaming, being more active in the community, and just paying more attention to Magic and Wizards of the Coast in general. As a result, I've been seeing a lot of problems with the game, and with how Wizards promotes it—many of which, to my chagrin, Cedric scooped me on in his article. Regardless, he really didn't offer any solutions and didn't get at the heart of the issue. Anyway, Jackie got me in touch with some people at WotC who were interested in my ideas and I've been working on a small presentation to go over some of this stuff. I know most of the discussion here has been focused on coverage at large, but I was hoping to broaden up the discussion by sharing some of what I'd come up with and seeing what you guys think. In the interest of keeping discussion focused, I'm just going to outline four talking points. Better utilizing and supporting pros and community leaders This is something you guys have been talking about that I think everyone pretty much agrees upon. Personalities give people someone to identify with, a career to follow, a player to root for, etc. Currently, the pros people are most familiar with have taken it upon themselves to get their faces out there. They fly out to GPs, stream, are active in the community, and actively search out additional opportunities to build their own brand. Most players have no incentive to do this. If you don’t have a game you want people to buy or an article to push eyeballs to, it’s a ton of work for no payoff other than internet fame. I know there’s the Pro Player’s Club, but Platinum is the only tier that rewards the player: Gold just gives you the opportunity to buy airfare and accommodations for the Pro Tour, and Silver is like some weird novelty joke tier. One thing I've learned is being a pro is expensive. Between travel, acquiring the cards for multiple formats, having no additional income, and payouts being what they are, it's basically unfeasible. If Wizards actually sponsored professional players and good players who were interesting or otherwise could be leveraged to build WotC’s brand, it’d solve a ton of problems. First of all, good players would actually have something to shoot for other than a weekly article on a 3rd party site. Secondly, it gives WotC a degree of quality control over who they’re pushing in front of cameras and what those people say. Players get other players into the game, and a good community gets players to stick around. By guiding these public figures to shape the overall zeitgeist of the game, you’re going to see a lot of previously-alienated people getting back into card shops. You’d also be giving higher-profile players additional reasons to not be vocal shitheads. Thirdly, having players on their payroll opens up a ton of content opportunities. How is there not a weekly stream of pros casually drafting and shooting the poo poo? There should be new video content daily, with Sam Black and Tom Martell debating draft picks, or Kibler doing a breakdown of a decklist. This is the advertising WotC should be investing in, not Here, I Rule. Better tournament structure/payout This is closely tied to the above, but I think WotC has been investing in all the wrong things lately. Their tournaments keep setting records for attendance, and good players routinely aren’t making money. As someone who’s getting more into the tournament scene myself, it seems pretty hopeless. Currently the payout for GPs is to the top 64; GP Boston had 1800 people there. Day 1 is currently a 9–10-hour day, sometimes ending near midnight, with Day 2 starting at 9am. Even if you make day 2, you aren’t guaranteed to cash, and losing in the last round can mean dropping two or more payout grades. Today’s large tournaments are a huge slog, totally unforgiving, and success feels more like throwing statistics at a wall than outplaying your opponents. At GP Boston, the winner had never attended a GP before and WotC marketed it as an inspiring story. For pros, grinders, and others who dedicate a lot of time and money to the game, it’s anything but. I understand WotC has to dodge gambling laws, but there are ways to scale payouts within that structure. As it turns out, increasing tournament payouts is also a great marketing strategy. Additionally, there are a lot of holes in their tournament offerings. Other than GPTs and PTQs, the next biggest tournament WotC offers is… a 1000+ person GP. Right now third parties like SCG and TCGPlayer are filling those gaps with 1ks and 5ks, but there’s no reason WotC can’t offer similar, competing tournaments to better fill in the gaps. They can also explore different tournament structures: I’m not sure the level of variance in Magic is best served by jamming a bunch of best-2-of-3 matches. Coverage strategies You guys mainly discussed this, so I’m really not going to get into it much. The one thing I will say is, while a lot of these suggestions are interesting, many don’t have the best cost–benefit ratio, or enough value add to merit implementation. What they do need are more/better camera angles, someone at the helm who knows both Magic and has experience with coverage, and commentators who stick to their roles within the broadcast (informative, color, etc.). I actually don’t think players should be the focus during the match itself; I think they should do more with them before or after, but during the match should be the commentator’s domain. Ideally, players would be more chatty, but I just don’t think it’s realistic. I think that content needs to be it’s own product. Actually, I have a lot to say about that: WotC needs to better look at the editorial product they’re producing and better skew it towards their intended audience. There should be content aimed at newer players, advanced players, casual players, and pro hopefuls, as they’re totally different markets with different content needs. Better retailer evaluation I’m going to keep this short, since it’s more esoteric, but it’s also an area where anecdotal evidence might be interesting. Basically, WotC distributes product based on some poorly though-out rules that differentiate “good” stores from “bad” stores. Unfortunately for them, these rules are also really easy to game. This leads to an awkward system where WotC needs to dedicate resources towards policing stores on their distribution list. If they do catch a shady store owner breaking the rules, it ends up ruining Magic for the community. The policy seems bad for everyone. Between streaming and social media, stores have a lot of options for doing WotC’s marketing for them. Again, it's nothing you guys haven't already been discussing (because I wanted to keep it to generalizations), but I wanted to use this framework to get the discussion going again, with the promise someone might actually hear it. Do you guys even bother going to 1ks? Would you be interested in watching Tom Martell and Kibler Winston draft with packs of Homelands? If you stopped going to FNMs, what could your store change to make it more appealing for you? Basically, I have the opportunity to pass up your grievances and ideas, so let me know what they are. If you have a burning issues I didn't outline above, just send me a PM or an email; again, I'd like to keep this focused. Who knows—maybe with your help, Jackie's connections, and my astounding presentation skills, we might actually be able to get some of this stuff fixed. 
rinski fucked around with this message at Sep 9, 2012 around 00:21 |
| # ¿ Sep 8, 2012 23:41 |
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meanolmrcloud posted:Expecting big (even moderate) changes from large, profitable businesses dosen't usually end happily. I'd rather not get too into specifics, but the long and short of it is I have no idea if they'll care. What I do know is some people were willing to listen to my suggestions and I'll be providing them with a plan backed up with data. It does come down to money, which is ultimately how I'm phrasing everything: there are some easy revenue streams here they're just ignoring. More and more people have been questioning their strategies, but nobody has bothered offering up answers. If I was just shouting criticism at them, I wouldn't have much hope; if you provide solutions to an obvious problem, with an easy-to-follow roadmap, people tend to listen more carefully. It might not do anything, no, but I wanted to try. rinski fucked around with this message at Sep 9, 2012 around 01:18 |
| # ¿ Sep 9, 2012 00:25 |
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meanolmrcloud posted:Yea, its absolutely worth a shot and I would pursue it fervently. You never know, saying the right things to the right people might lead to some very cool opportunities. Your right shooting criticism isn't a great idea, but, I think if you highlight big enough problems, you have a better chance at getting their attention. This involves speaking somewhat delicately, knowing what to emphasize and most importantly (and out of your control) hitting a nerve with something they wanna get moving on. So maybe, try to mine whoever you can and really press the cutting edge things (bringing up the popularity of SCG/TCG events and other streams) but really i dunno where else to press. I think a big enough thing to point out is how pretty much every forum that talks about Magic notices this stuff. I have screenshots for days. Vanilla Bison posted:Please tell me this is on her business cards. Not yet. Not yet. rinski fucked around with this message at Sep 9, 2012 around 01:25 |
| # ¿ Sep 9, 2012 01:19 |
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Sorry for another wall of text, but you guys are making good points.  Karnegal posted:Regarding the retailer level: one of the biggest problems we have locally is that we get a ton of guys who only ever show up for pre-releases and thing like magic celebration. The reason for this is that our shop has a very competitive core, and if your magic investment isn't significant, you are about to have 0 fun at anything of FNM level or higher as the rest of us run a train on you with $400 decks. It's no fun for anyone, good players don't get anything out of crushing a guys "black cards I like" deck with bonfires and titans, and the casuals see the game as unapproachable outside of their kitchen table. They need to figure out how to better promote limited formats. They tried out the battle packs thing with M12, but I think they need to role it into FNM or something as a sanctioned format. I know that most people will just say do a draft, but I've got to say that casuals never win and then they just get their packs. It's a really hard problem to tackle because you don't want to segregate skilled players and new/bad players, but you also want to make the game welcoming for new players. Yeah, this is exactly what I was talking about when I said they need to diversify their tournament offerings. There are a lot of different demographics within the Magic community, and trying to shoehorn them all into the same tournament structure makes no sense. I recently did a 2v2 sealed tournament with Jackie for the prerelease, and it was super nerve-wracking because almost all of our games were going to time as our opponents read and reread cards. I personally don't have a ton of fun in very low-level competitive environments, but they used to be the only tournaments I'd attend. Karnegal posted:The other thing that they could really benefit from is consistent quality of their events. Mirrodin Besieged pre-release was great, Ravnica looks great, Avacyn Restored was terrible. The build up was nowhere near the payoff. They could also really stand to make some more relevant gateway stuff. Did anyone care about the human/wolf token they gave out? Would it have cost any more to make an actual alt-art common from the block? People would have been way more excited for an alt-art delver. WotC wouldn't be hurting secondary market prices, people would come to the store to get it, and casuals would have a piece of trade bait that could be used to get something significantly more useful for their decks. It just seems like there is no quality control - Magic M&Ms? Those were a slap in the face compared to the player rewards program that got cancelled. The AVR prerelease was grossly mishandled. Only giving some stores the god-promos was a terrible error. What they want to do is create the sense that YOU got something special that's very rare. What happened is tons of people didn't get anything and felt left out and let down. Why not create a few different promos that all have a very limited print run? That way everyone gets something that's unique and rare. It's more of an investment, maybe, but it also has a better payout in player (and vender) satisfaction in the long run. Karnegal posted:I'd 100% agree on the payoff for events compared to the cost to enter/travel. I've pretty much stopped going to WotC events outside of Legacy GPs. I'll travel for an SCG open, but it's bit cheaper and our local group has a pretty good record of putting people into the money in those. The prize support for PTQ's is particularly abysmal. Top 16ing a 250+ person constructed PTQ should pay out a hell of a lot more than 8 packs or something like that. Again, I don't want to get into specifics, but as I learned from Jackie's experience, trying to be a pro is... expensive. Prohibitively expensive. It seems like Wizard's strategy at the moment is incredibly short-sighted, as they're over-valuing establishing newer players and pushing established players to the side. I know Zac Hill recently left WotC, but I think this quote of his is actually pretty telling of WotC's strategy at the moment: Zac Hill posted:....the StarCityGames.com audience is very different from the DailyMTG.com audience, and a lot of the comments in this thread stress things that (in my opinion) are likely to alienate the less-enfranchised audience. What's the end-game here? You focus all your efforts on getting new players and then... disregard them? It looks like they're more focused on short-term growth of the game and not the bigger picture, when a better plan would focus on both. This is actually something I could talk about for ages, as loss aversion strategies are a mainstay of larger companies, but ultimately what's dooming them to fail. I work for a media company that was recently acquired by a large corporation, and I see the same patterns there, causing them to hemorrhage money. BXCX posted:I'm the kind of player who makes a serious attempt to go to every pre-release and any other non-constructed event that is held on the weekends. The reason I don't play constructed is that I don't have the budget to put in to buying singles and I don't open near enough packs to build up a good collection of trade stock. It's hardly ever fun having my bestI'vegot.dec getting rolled by a well-tuned Delver or Pod deck, so I skip things like Game Day and serious constructed events. With today's larger tournament turn-outs, it's significantly +EV for the majority of players to just sell their constructed decks rather than compete for any given standard season. BXCX posted:That being said, I really do enjoy limited. I would like to draft more often, but the problem for me is that drafting seems relegated to FNM for the most part. It's hard for me to make it to FNM on time regularly because of my job and commute. When combined with having a regular social life where my wife and friends want to hang out on Friday nights, I need to have a lot of things line up for me to be able to play with magical cards. If they had more weekend limited events I would be all over it, something like a once or twice monthly limited event on Saturdays would do a lot for people like me to come in and give Wizards more money. Yup. Magic is getting older and most people don't have infinite time to play any more. I don't understand why FNM is getting pushed to the exclusion of other sanctioned events. It's like they got it in their head that creating scarcity will drive players to conform to their schedule, when that's simply not tenable to the average teenage or adult player. BXCX posted:The FNM's I've been to have been all over the place in terms of quality too, I've found a place that I like that I'll be sticking to until I move again, but it would be nice if Wizards had some kind of quality control system in place so that you could expect a certain kind of experience when you use the tournament locator service. I know that each store probably has it's own culture in terms of how competitive it is, but something as simple as posting the payouts to expect on the tournament locator could give people some idea of what to expect in terms of general competitiveness. I think part of the problem is the reality of gaming stores. People who have business savvy don't make a game store because the cost:benefit ratio is so low. People who make gaming or hobby stores do so because it's something they care about. Most gaming stores have Magic because it makes them enough money to pay the bills, but they don't necessarily care about it. For example, one of the biggest Magic shops in Boston is Pandemonium, and it's solely popular because of its player-base: the owner is a bookworm, wanted a book shop, and gives zero shits about Magic. If it weren't for community support and a few players basically helping him run his store, it would've folded a long time ago. I think this problem is actually a fairly complex one, since Wizards likely doesn't have the resources to run each and every store. I do think a good short-term solution would be to provide a feedback service so people could rate stores on their event locator, or maybe give stores that have proven to be on the level preferential treatment in the search results. There's things they can do, but until gaming hits that threshold where it's financially viable to have chains of higher-quality shops, I think they're going to have to make compromises. I think it'd be cool if they created an initiative program to help smaller stores redesign themselves, so people wouldn't associate "playing Magic" to "huddle around a bunch of smelly nerds in the humid basement of a hobby shop" but that's a super long-term goal.
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| # ¿ Sep 9, 2012 23:03 |
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Stinky Pit posted:Wouldn't increasing the payout structure benefit current pro-players and make breaking into the highest levels of the game even harder. Hell they already get to start 4 rounds in which already gives them a big advantage. If just about every pro had enough money to travel to every event It'd be even harder to break in. I don't see how this improves the game. I've been knocked out of Day 2 contention by much fresher Pros who'd played half as many games a few times. That's fine, it adds something to the GP atmosphere. I can't imagine how fast I would quit Magic if the same thing constantly happened at every 1K, 5K, and Invitational I went to. I don't think it'll only benefit current pro-players: I think it tosses a bone to the grinders that aren't pros yet, but are still chasing that star and placing in the top 5-10% consistently. Payouts at GP Boston were to the top 3.5%. I do agree that an increased payout doesn't fix the problem, as it leaves out players that want a higher level of competition but are still learning. That'swhy I think they need to add more tournaments that cater to different player types. Not every tournament should be high-stakes, winner-takes-all, or even payout to top 128: I think there's a lot of space in between. Currently WotC only really runs PTs on their own, they promote Magic Celebration, Game Days, Prereleases, FNMs, GPTs, and PTQs, and they give GPs to large Tournament Organizers. They have a very hands-off approach, which I think is to their detriment. WotC is basically ceding the middle ground to SCG Opens and whatnot. I think it's kind of absurd that there's enough of a market for Magic tournaments that SCG and TCGPlayer can successfully run their own tournament series and WotC just isn't even trying to compete in that space. I think 1ks are pretty decent for the space they occupy, since they're not worth the travel for anyone but locals, but again, WotC doesn't offer those. I also think a paper version of MODO Swiss would really fit the demographic it appeals to: you report a win, you get a pack. Instant, tangible rewards for your performance. rinski fucked around with this message at Sep 10, 2012 around 03:00 |
| # ¿ Sep 10, 2012 02:55 |
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In case you guys are interested, Community Cup superstar Jackie Lee responded to the internet's double-dog dare and attempted to write a non-lovely dating article. There's a bunch of Ravnica puns so I guess it's topical in that way too. One of our friends described it as "better than Darwin's." High praise indeed.
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| # ¿ Sep 19, 2012 16:48 |
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AnacondaHL posted:haha rinski you were the Brass Man note kid weren't you Nah, that was some other kid who ended up being really creepy, I believe. The story of how we met is much cuter, imo.
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| # ¿ Sep 19, 2012 17:57 |
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Star Man posted:I'm going to make a wild wild guess and say it went down like this: Your fanfic is utterly absurd as Jackie would crush me without hesitation. Anyway, I thought she posted it before, but here's the summary. We met at Pax 2008 in the finals of a ZZW draft. I crushed game 1 and she was slow to shuffle up for game 2: she wanted to figure out if she could join the Team Minimasters tourney that was starting soon. She asked a bunch of her friends who all said no. I offered to team up, since I'd lost one the day before (paired with my buddy, who lost a match by a wider margin than I could win by; life totals were tiebreakers). She accepted, and after a few rounds of the best Magic I ever played, we're undefeated and heading into the finals versus Darwin and Rada. First place prize was a set of iPod Nanos and second place prize was two uncut foil sheets of Worldwake. Fortunately for us, they really wanted those iPods. We have a picture from the day we met of both of us holding up our foil sheets of Worldwake. Since it was such a randomly awesome day, she asked for my Facebook info and I wrote it on a Pulse Tracker. Then we stayed in touch and hung out and watched a bunch of bad movies and played Magic and now we're married and I'm telling the internet about it. Edit: kingcobweb posted:Or Magic. True, but it's in a place where Magic people might actually read it. The jokes and references are the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. VVV Edit VVV: If you think that's cute, check out her blurb on the Community Cup announcement page. 
rinski fucked around with this message at Sep 19, 2012 around 20:31 |
| # ¿ Sep 19, 2012 19:40 |
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kingcobweb posted:I can't imagine falling for someone over ZZW draft. I'd subconsciously associate them with mediocrity and/or moving too fast. I was playing Allies~ Ockhams Machete posted:No, he's a nice guy! I just never ended up making good on the date for unrelated reasons which I later regretted. And I thought myself a Jackie Lee scholar. 
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| # ¿ Sep 19, 2012 20:02 |
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Based on a few conversations I had with her, it happened once, and when it happened the second time, she though, "oh, this is just going to keep happening," so she called the judge. That's the main thing I don't get. She called the judge. To correct a game state she recognized was erroneous. And that's fraud. I'm obviously biased and admittedly tilted over this—which is probably why I'm focusing on two week's worth of "testing, can't talk, sorry" texts, the thousands of dollars of flights/rooms/foregone paychecks/other expenses, how she feels personally responsible for letting down the dozens people who have thanked her for being a role model for them or their kids, the MRAs dusting off their finest jokes for the barely-moderated Pro Tour stream chat, etc.—but I'm inclined to believe a DQ is a pretty harsh punishment for a self-reported mistake. Oh well. It's just a card game. rinski fucked around with this message at Oct 20, 2012 around 17:47 |
| # ¿ Oct 20, 2012 08:20 |
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Pretty much. I'd expect a game or, hell, a match loss. I understand that mistakes need severe punishment at high REL, but being labeled a cheater for misunderstanding the rules seems really, really harsh. I mean, it's not like she's going to quit or anything, but goddamn, what a downer.
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| # ¿ Oct 20, 2012 21:08 |
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I talked to Jackie last night and apparently just about everybody discussing this online (myself included) have a bunch of facts wrong. What actually happened is significantly more complex and, to wax editorial, really loving stupid. I'd get into more details, but 1.) I don't want to accidentally misreport the situation, again, and 2.) I don't want to scoop her article. Barring the details, one of the main things I think needs to be examined is the whole "cannot be downgraded" stipulation. From talking to other judges about this scenario, many of them have a story about disqualifying a casual player at FNM because, despite whatever extenuating circumstances were at play, there was no option to react in any other way. This seems like a bad policy for a lot of reasons, the biggest of which is it discourages newer players from competing. If you went to FNM and got a DQ because section 2.14, paragraph 3, verse 20 states YOU ARE A CHEATER, you're probably going to say "gently caress this game" and walk away.
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| # ¿ Oct 23, 2012 14:19 |
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Stinky Pit posted:I get that this DQ must be pretty heart breaking for you and Jackie and it is definitely a good opportunity to talk about what can be improved about the Competitive REL and Tournament policy in general. I don't think any judge would say it was perfect. But any issues with Competitive REL are issues that are only affecting players at a significantly higher level than the average. Let's not pretend this is a serious issue that has wide ranging implications on the FNM crowd. I wasn't interested in belaboring Jackie's DQ: it's not my story to tell. I was trying to use it as a segue to talk about this policy of "penalty can't be downgraded," which I was ignorant of until now. Secondly, I misspoke: I was unaware FNM were at a different REL than 1ks, GPTs, etc., probably because I haven't been to an FNM in years. I'm going to guess the judges I spoke with are more aware of REL than I am, and I erroneously lumped what I see as "local, non-GP" tournaments into the same category. Clearly I'm not fluent in this area of Magic rules. And that's the point I was trying to make. I almost exclusively play at competitive REL. I enjoy the competition. I'm definitely not a pro-caliber player, but I've won a few 1ks and GPTs and have a few t8 appearances at that level. I think I have a pretty decent understanding of the rules of the game. Despite this, I'm pretty ignorant of infractions, penalties, and other rules that, to me, exist outside the game. I know the basics: when I misregister my deck or get three GRVs, I can expect a game loss. Some of the more serious stuff, though, is also the hardest to understand. I've known a lot of people at my level of play who have gotten DQs because they didn't know how to properly negotiate a split, because they had a misunderstanding of the game rules, because they didn't know what they could or couldn't say during a certain time, or because they didn't notice they were putting their deck into sequentially miscut sleeves. Once you start getting into competitive REL, there's a ton of stuff you need to be aware of that I consider "outside the game." It's weird, because in order to play at that level, knowing these "meta-rules" is more important than knowing the "actual" rules. If I unintentionally misplay, I get a GRV warning with the option to appeal. If I make any of the mistakes I mentioned above, I run the risk of getting DQ'd, regardless of the circumstances. I guess I just don't understand the reason behind why some penalties "cannot be downgraded." I know this wasn't always the case: judges used to have far more latitude in determining the punishment for an infraction. Why did this change happen? What was it meant to accomplish? With a game as complex as Magic, do you really want to add another, scarier barrier to entry?
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| # ¿ Oct 23, 2012 17:01 |
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DontMockMySmock posted:I still prefer rules where each infraction has a fixed penalty, regardless of extenuating circumstances. Fair enough. My local judge is impartial as heck (and an awesome judge in general ), so I hadn't even considered this. That being said, while I agree rules like this can be helpful for FNMs, 1Ks, and other local level tourneys, is this still an issue at GP-level or higher?
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| # ¿ Oct 23, 2012 19:08 |
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| # ¿ May 22, 2013 19:39 |
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Just to play Devil's advocate, XSplit and other streaming software packages do have the option to simultaneously record a local copy. This being said, yes, it would still take forever and be a courtesy only afforded to feature matches.
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| # ¿ Oct 24, 2012 03:47 |
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