My Thoughts on Universes Beyond

This past weekend, we watched a Pro Tour that felt almost like a changing of the guard. While there were some familiar faces, it was mostly players making their first Pro Tour top 8, including eventual winner Michael Debenedetto-Plummer, who took it down with Belcher.

I watched Michael play Limited live on stream. From what I saw, he played nearly flawless Magic, so I'm not surprised he took it down. I intentionally skipped watching all the Modern coverage, as it's not a format I've been known to enjoy.

That said, seeing this Pro Tour top 8 of mostly newer, younger faces, I found myself thinking a lot about Magic and where it's going.

Things seem to be rapidly changing in Magic these days, and there is a lot of discourse about the direction of the game with seven Standard releases next year, a majority of which are Universes Beyond. While I'm not quite in the doomer stage of Magic, which is that it's going to be ruined forever and no one will be playing soon, I am also legitimately worried about its direction. This isn't because of what the current philosophy will do to the game. Quite the opposite, I'm worried that WotC's design philosophy is to maximize profits because it may not have a future. It's possible they think the future looks bleak, so they need to focus on generating profits now.

It reminds me of an Eminem lyric, "This is your moment and every single moment you spend / Tryna hold onto it, 'cause you may never get it again / So while you're in it, try to get as much s*** you can / And when your run is over, just admit when it's at its end."

By pumping out sets and products now, they're striking while the iron's hot and not necessarily worrying about the future because it may not last. Short-term profit seems to be more important than long-term health. We can see this in balancing issues (i.e., Vivi) and the pace of set releases.

Magic players are an aging population. Younger generations aren't as drawn to it, and many people's love for Magic is held together by nostalgia. While nostalgia sells, the reserve list makes it significantly harder for WotC to monetize the nostalgia. They tried with "reprinting" Beta with a ridiculously high price tag, and it earned them far more negative PR than it was worth.

Brand crossovers have worked for other games and popular brands, and this is their primary tool right now for new player acquisition. Arena's monetization model isn't very inviting for new players, as it can be prohibitively expensive to log on and test a bunch of finished Standard decks. Instead, you can learn the rules of the game on Arena, but you will need to invest to take it seriously. Young kids have a billion choices of games to play. Many of them will try to milk you with microtransactions, but a lot of those games do that for cosmetics rather than paying to play at an optimal level.

Universes Beyond finally gets game lovers to check out the game because they love Final Fantasy or Spider-Man so much that they're willing to buy some cards and give it a try.

People point at Universes Beyond and Spider-Man for flopping and think, "Well, this is the problem." In my eyes, the problem is deeper than Universes Beyond.

When I first started playing Magic, I quickly became immersed in the game. I wanted to play with my friends every day after school and go to the store to buy a few packs when I got my allowance from Mom. But what hooked me, and I mean really hooked me, was the competition at my LGS. I was able to play tournaments, get better, put time into something I enjoyed, and see tangible results. To me, Magic has always been about tournaments. Currently, I feel like tournaments are slowly diminishing. Organized play took such a beating during COVID that we applaud things like a recently announced "Draft Top 8" as if it were some great gift.

New players are mostly playing Commander casually, which doesn't necessarily lead to someone who will play long-term. Once they get bored, they'll likely move on to the next thing.

You should be applauding and cheering on Universes Beyond and promos at tournaments if you care about the game's health. I'm worried about product fatigue, but these are injections of outside players. They bring their disposable income, which will help our LGS's, and even as a player, our wallets. I don't know about you, but Final Fantasy Arena Directs was my favorite event that I've played outside of a handful of Pro Tours and Worlds. They were Limited events with somewhat high stakes and direct to your house. Those boxes didn't triple their value because people hate Universes Beyond. I wish they'd focus more on OP and cool tournaments rather than shiny things for players to buy.

Now, Spider-Man is definitely a strike against Universes Beyond. While Spider-Man has almost every issue you could possibly imagine as a UB set, the franchise is not to blame, but it's part of the reason. Spider-Man isn't a game. It's a character. Final Fantasy was a game that also created its own diehard fanbase and culture. These fans enjoy games, so it's a much smoother transition. Not all Spider-Man fans play games. My uncle is a massive Spider-Man fan. I've never seen him play a game in my life outside of an actual sport.

Spider-Man also came out in the fall, coinciding with the start of school and other activities. College kids are back in school, and parents have less time because they're getting their kids to school, among other caretaking responsibilities. The timing was not conducive to a massive release like Final Fantasy, which got released in late spring or early summer.

Additionally, there may even be some Marvel fatigue. It's no secret that Marvel movies have been churned out rapidly and have dominated the movie industry. However, their movie sales have plummeted, and I'm left wondering if the franchise itself has taken brand damage.

Lastly, with Spider-Man, they introduced as many variables as possible all at once. Limited is completely different, and draft is much closer to Sealed or even uncooperative Team Sealed, where you open the same amount of packs, but everyone is selfish and fights over the best cards.

Spider-Man had different names on Arena. This makes creating or consuming content about the set annoying and tedious.

Unfortunately, we have confirmation that Omenpath sets will continue to exist and replace the Marvel franchises on Arena. I can only imagine that's going to be a disaster and fuel the fire that diehard MTG players will use to blame UB in general.

Personally, I want to see more UB sets, promos, and Arena Directs for high-ticket prizes. This is all unimaginably good for us as players, especially if you can uphold a reasonable win rate to capitalize on the additional prizes.

Avatar is around the corner, and I'm curious how that will hold up. It's not a franchise I know much about, so it will feel like a normal Magic set to me, but I know it's incredibly popular. As far as I know, there will be no different names on Arena. It will be coming out at the most popular shopping time of the year, just before Christmas. I'm expecting a massive release, and if that flops like Spider-Man, then we may have something to be worried about. Until then, I'm not super worried about the current game, but I do worry about it a decade from now.

If anything, just looking at the Pro Tour top 8, the Pro Tour in general, and seeing so many great younger players, I have hope that, like me, people will still end up loving the competition that Magic provides, and maybe we have nothing to worry about.

I guess we'll have to wait and see.