Yesterday I had to miss the D&D crossover with MtG at my FLGS, and the chance to get one of those sweet lands. I’d like to say I missed the Keyforge Prerelease weekend also. But there was no such interest for the game at my FLGS. We will come back to this later in the post.

The reason I had to miss the one shot taster scenario of the up and coming Guildmasters of Ravnica was I got asked if I would take some students to a gaming conference at the University of Suffolk called GameAnglia.

Now GameAnglia isn’t a big event, say like Develop. But it’s aimed at education. There was a good range of speakers from industry doing workshops and talks. Plus an impressive range of indie/student developers showing off their creations. There was even a dexterity board game to try. Which I didn’t because well I’m not really into that genre. However my students tried it and enjoyed it.

One talk by the Media Molecule community manager and communications manager made me wonder just what life would be like if WotC hired professionals like these. There was a lot of good advice in their talk, especially about not talking about politics. I would imagine it would also go as far as not pushing a social agenda.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that whatever the community it should be welcoming and accepting irrespective of things like race,religion, gender etc etc. And that discrimination, hate, abuse, etc will not be tolerated.

However when the message that seems to be coming out of a company like WotC is that they “hate” 90% of their player base. And that they turn a blind eye to hate, and abuse if it comes from those that they agree with and it’s against those that they don’t like, then there has to be a problem somewhere at their end.

There is a sketch by the late great Bill Hicks about subliminal messages in music and the whole Judas Priest fans committing suicide court case from the late eighties, and a bit of that routine reminds me of WotC!

WARNING THIS QUOTE HAS SWEAR WORDS IN IT.

“I’m fucking sick of it, I’m fucking sick of it! Sick of it, sick of it!! What are you sick of? The whole fucking thing…; Touring, making $40000 a night, …free drugs, free booze, stretched limos, penthouse suites, …groupies blowing me dawn to dusk. I’m in a rut and I want out. And then we have a little show’s coming up. I know, it sucks… …unless… Ian, Nijo, come in! Oh shit Nijo get in. Ian, come down! I’ve had an idea, let’s kill the fucking audience. Nijo, go get a soccer ball, Ian, come here… …we’re going to kill them, and then we can get back to our day jobs. We can sell shoes again.”

It’s just that at the moment WotC are putting out their version of subliminal messages in records, they are trying to price their player base out of the game! Well banning them, and telling them they are bad people for being the wrong gender isn’t working.

I don’t care what a persons political leanings are. As far as I’m concerned a dick is a dick whether they are on the far right or the far left. Both of those extremes use the same nasty toolset to silence and bully others. Both want to force their political views on others. While the rest of us just want to buy cardboard rectangles, play a game, and the only thing we care about is whether the other person we are playing with is a dick or not.

We shouldn’t be in this mess as a community. But we are, WotC have created a large part of it, they took sides, and started promoting/pushing an agenda.

Diversity is a good thing. It enriches everyone. You can have a product that appeals to a diverse audience without handling it the way that WotC have. Maybe WotC need to look at Plaid Hat Games and learn a lesson or two from them.

In the meantime my advice to WotC, stand back, reassess the situation, employ professionals with expertise in community management and marketing, become apolitical, rebuild and unite the community (well the online side, remember the online stuff is such a minute part of your player base). Simple!

I’m not sure I articulated the above very well, or made a coherent argument. But that was the thoughts, more or less that went through my head after that talk.

So you can see that attending an event like this can be very intellectually stimulating. In the minibus on the way back, there was definitely a buzz from my students. They had really enjoyed the conference, the talks and the demoes.

I did promise at the top of this post I’d talk about Keyforge. Or more specifically the Prerelease and lack of interest at my FLGS.

For me as a player when a game like Keyforge comes out I talk to the owner of my FLGS to assataine if there have been others at the store asking about the game, asking for it to be ordered in. It gives me an idea if there would be anyone to play with if I bought into the game. For Keyforge there was nothing. Apart from me making enquiries.

Now my FLGS is a small store in a small market town in the back of nowhere in the Fens. It’s not one of these stores in a big city like London or Cambridge. A game being popular in a big metropolis or having a community playing it there doesn’t mean the game is a success.

If a game hasn’t broken through to my FLGS it tells me that despite the initial flurry of hype (and there has been to some extent online from those that attended the Prerelease this weekend) that maybe this game doesn’t have legs.

A game for me is a success if it can break into these smaller stores where they are probably more likely to only carry games they know they can sell, and have demand for. These stores have more to lose, so if they invest in it then it means there is a market for it.

Now there may indeed be a “community” for Keyforge in the area. But they are not making themselves known to their FLGS and creating a location they can play and get easy access to OP kits. Having to travel long distances to attend events, or to play tells me the game isn’t popular.

Was that worth waiting for? Probably not. But there you have my continuing thoughts on Keyforge. And in the middle why WotC will never consider me a MtG content creator.