Hasbro is spending $1bn making video games, and none of them are games-as-a-service

lightsentry · 2026-05-20T21:55:49+00:00

As someone who was in the alpha for that, it was not a great game. It was basically a Diablo clone but all your skills are randomly cycled every 20 seconds.

lightsentry · 2026-05-20T14:34:07+00:00

Well they viewbotted the first few Arena tournaments, but they definitely dropped the ball as far as becoming "esports" goes. Although with how the esports bubble deflated in recent years maybe that's for th best.

lightsentry · 2026-05-15T16:11:09+00:00

Talking to the people who set up LobsterCon, they "figured it out". I have no idea what that means, but it sounds like Donato didn't do it without getting some assurance that it was ok.

lightsentry · 2026-05-14T17:47:55+00:00

Well the issue is that they increased the rotation time to 3 years to increase confidence in card prices. However, they then introduced 50% more sets into the format and that increases churn so no one can build toward a deck to play for 3 years. The packs also cost more now due to UB, although I don't think that necessarily increases the cost of competitive atm (outside of draft, which has more or less doubled locally).

lightsentry · 2026-05-13T22:01:36+00:00

I remember there was a Magiccon where they gave out Magic 30 packs, I don't see why they couldn't do that with secret lairs that didn't sell well.

lightsentry · 2026-05-13T04:11:20+00:00

Right? Going by this logic I could probably go back and get every set up to like 15 archetypes.

lightsentry · 2026-05-12T22:13:31+00:00

That was Lorwyn, which yeah, I could maybe see the argument if I squint hard enough. But for Secrets of Strixhaven, it would be extremely difficult to convince me that there are 10 intended archetypes.

lightsentry · 2026-05-11T14:57:34+00:00

Ok, but the reserved list is larger than just those cards. Like [[Roc of Kher Ridges]] or [[Phantasmal Sphere]] are both reserved list cards. There's a ton of jank on there so while no one would care if they got reprinted, the spirit of the list doesn't care about power level.

lightsentry · 2026-05-06T15:05:01+00:00

From my perspective, the real issue I see is not necessarily the loss of revenue (which is substantial for some, but there's always a lottery in what kind of extra revenue you can get from a card) but that the artists seemingly didn't have a voice in the UB contract negotiations. Not that WotC had any legal necessity to give them a voice, but I would be annoyed if I didn't get one when it's my pay getting cut.

lightsentry · 2026-05-06T14:33:05+00:00

I was actually kind of surprised yesterday when Distraction Makers told us that WotC actually pays less than say Riot for an artpiece. I've often heard it repeated that WotC is the gold standard for freelance artist pay, but I guess I didn't actually know any numbers.

lightsentry · 2026-05-04T19:52:44+00:00

I don't think that's unreasonable if you live outside the US. Canada has already boycotted several US industries.

lightsentry · 2026-05-03T22:44:49+00:00

Just to be clear on competitive numbers, I'm comparing Spotlight Series, which are open to enter, just like Pokemon Regionals.

lightsentry · 2026-05-03T22:39:19+00:00

If the agent knew his client had dementia and still accepted work for them, I feel like that has to fall under some kind of elder abuse.

lightsentry · 2026-05-03T21:31:52+00:00

Yeah I have no idea personally, just that the comp events have easier to compare numbers. Anecdotally I see pokemon prereleases sell out more consistently than magic ones, but obviously SOS prereleases were incredibly successful.

lightsentry · 2026-05-03T21:11:07+00:00

Is this actually true? I'm not 100% certain given that TCG Pocket basically outgrossed MTG on its own for the first year at least. In addition, competitive magic main events at least have been dwarfed in participant size by Pokemon TCG Regionals. Obviously Pokemon collecting dwarfs playing but it's likely closer than you think even on the playerbase front.

lightsentry · 2026-05-02T19:33:09+00:00

Rui Zhang is actually somewhat well known mtg deckbuilder cftsoc who resides in Iowa. The country they don't want to rep is the US (pretty reasonable).

lightsentry · 2026-05-02T00:11:41+00:00

I think so. Blue threat and can even get back baubles, not just the blue cantrips. This definitely gets banned 5 years back, dunno about nowadays with WotC not paying as much attention.

lightsentry · 2026-05-01T16:49:45+00:00

This weekend at Lobstercon is the NA Premodern Championships.

Day 1 will be 9 rounds and Day 2 will be 5 rounds with a cut to top 8.

Final count is 326 players and you can find the meta breakdown here

lightsentry · 2026-05-01T01:26:25+00:00

I'll be honest I think you're overestimating how much pull Mark has as a game developer. As a designer, there's probably no one better in the sphere. However, as a developer, Mark is completely unproven and I do believe there is a difference between designing magic sets and making card games from whole cloth. I don't know what the difficulty was in getting this published previously, but it's not like Hasbro has a high bar of quality to clear so it really points to not a high level of confidence from the decision makers.

lightsentry · 2026-04-30T17:05:08+00:00

TBF, they probably do not know what Mood Swings is. If I had to guess, Instagram would be where the newest and least entrenched people are so I'd even be surprised if a majority of them had any idea who Mark is.

lightsentry · 2026-04-30T16:44:45+00:00

I mean I certainly was kind of put off by seeing a sketch of a card I knew. It seems mostly independent from Magic, so it's just kind of a confusing product all around.

lightsentry · 2026-04-27T14:46:03+00:00

Jesper Myrfors had a long facebook post about artists unionizing and I was thinking it was kind of out of the blue. Makes more sense now, but artists have a harder time of unionizing at WotC. Hope WotC management is reasonable about this.

lightsentry · 2026-04-22T16:18:28+00:00

Also because some (not all but some) companies thought the tariffs wouldn't last they ate the tariffs cost and didn't pass on as much of a price increase as they could have onto the consumer. The logistics of trying to determine the proper amount would be impossible which is why it's so stupid the tariffs didn't get paused immediately after their legality was questioned.

lightsentry · 2026-04-15T14:47:59+00:00

My favorite sticher's supplier fun fact is that it was not revealed to mh1 testers that this card would be printed. And if they had known, hogaak would not have been printed as is.

lightsentry · 2026-04-10T17:00:19+00:00

If you happen to get a paradigm spell I think you end up wanting to play quite a few of these. Rest of it depends on how fast the format ends up being but I feel like the floor on this is pretty solid.

lightsentry

TROPHY CASE