Magic struggles for sustainability in wake of Wizards recent announcement
Every esport has a moment where the unsustainable lifestyle of its pro players takes center stage.
In 2013, Riot Games solved the problem of an unsustainable pro player lifestyle by bringing in its professional tournament circuit in house (though it also has handled some non-Western regions through regional partners). Esports has become Riot Games’ primary competitive advantage as a result — they pour millions of dollars into prize money and support to run their esports machine.
This isn’t to say that Riot runs their esports scene flawlessly, but Riot has transformed their relatively unpolished DOTA clone into the premier esport, with previously unheard of viewership. It’s honestly quite impressive.
Debate in the industry over the last few years has led to developers and communities having a more open dialog about what Riot Games has done with its tournament circuit. Communities have to ask themselves hard questions: “Do we want that for our game?” and more importantly… “Why or why not?”
Blizzard and Valve have both taken up positions of straddling the line. Both developers have control over marquee events, and invest lot of money and effort into supporting their competitive scene. But they don’t have the same level of dictator-like authority over the competitive scene as Riot does. This enables a plethora of third party organizer support, such as ESL, Dreamhack, and MLG among others.
I am not actually interested in debating which model is more successful; both models have worked out for these three companies in multiple esports titles. I am however interested in talking about how this affects Magic: The Gathering in light of the recent pro player controversy.
Platinum loses its shine
Wizards of the Coast recently announced numerous changes to their Premier Play program (what essentially amounts to their esports program for MTG). Along with announcing next year’s Pro Tour schedule and some changes to the Hall of Fame sustainability, Wizards effectively gutted their appearance fee program for Platinum Level Pros.
Those who don’t follow Magic can think of Platinum Level Pros as the ~50 best players in the world, who are regularly qualified for the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour.
Life as a Magic pro player is already perilous and unsustainable. The game is inherently filled with variance, and most of the prize pools in Magic are extremely top heavy for the Top 8 players in any given tournament. This makes full time pro players only possible through content creation, sponsorships, and other alternative revenue streams.
Sound familiar?
Wizards has supplemented income for Platinum pros by awarding $3,000 appearance fees for each Pro Tour (There are 4 Pro Tour events per year). Their recent announcement axed this. Starting in the 2016–17 Season, the appearance fee for Platinum Pros will be a meager $250 appearance fees — a loss of $11,000 per year. That’s quite a pay cut considering Magic is enjoying its most profitable time in history.
I don’t want to quote the Wizards official statement; the doublespeak actually makes this sound even worse than it is.
I want to delve into a few issues surrounding the problem of unsustainability:
“Why would Wizards do this?” and “What can anyone do to fix it?”
“We’ll check with legal…”
There has been some speculation in the community about the timing of this announcement in relation to a similar announcement that Wizards made in regards to the judge program.
I don’t want to digress too much, but essentially, Magic Judges (those who enforce rules at Magic events) are suing Wizards for owed benefits, because of a supposed Employer-Employee relationship that Wizards has failed to recognize.
The merits of the case itself I’ll leave to lawyers (though obviously I have my own thoughts), but to some in the Magic community, the Platinum appearance fee reduction seemed like a follow up on the judge announcement; essentially planting a flag in the ground, and drawing a line in the sand that definitively says, “Players are NOT employees.”
If that’s the rationale, it makes sense in a very sad way. But here is what I don’t get:
Riot has had to dance this delicate line for a long time. League of Legends pro players are not directly paid regular salaries by Riot Games. However, League of Legends pro teams have contracts with Riot Games that ensure pro players are paid a minimum salary. Pro players in turn are contracted to teams. In practice this amounts to the same thing, but there is a level of legal separation where Riot does not directly pay players whereas Wizards does.
Wizards of the Coast’s lawyers must have seen this distinction as important — otherwise I have no idea what happened here. Wizards’ relationship with its pro players is almost identical to Riot’s relationship with its players other than the layer of separation.
If Wizards feared another eventual lawsuit from Magic pro players, then they obviously had to do something. I just can’t help but think there have to be alternatives.
Supporting the pro scene
In general though, this is all bad. It’s money out of players’ pockets that really isn’t that much money to a corporation like Wizards of the Coast. I at least understand if Wizards legal counsel told them they had to do this to avoid a potential multi-million dollar lawsuit in a few years, but Wizards passion for their player base is evident in most of the things they do, particularly their Organized Play division.
Director Helene Bergeot is taking a lot of heat for this announcement (boy can I empathize with that), and I find it highly unlikely that she thought it was in the players’ best interest to announce this change without any kind of compensation for the loss. No one externally is happy about this, and I doubt people at Organized Play are either.
Bottom line, it’s not financially feasible to be a Magic pro player, and dozens of pros are making sure that Wizards knows that.
Which leads us to question two…
What can anyone do to fix this?
The most obvious answer is one I feel is less important, but I feel compelled to mention — boycotting.
Obviously pro players could blackball Wizards media, stop showing up to events, find another game, do something else with their lives. I don’t know how much it would hurt Wizards’ bottom line if Magic pros did this, or what the impact might look like. I would fully support pro players collectively walking (union style) if they feel like they are not being respected. Unfortunately, I don’t think it would really do much to Wizards profits, with all but no chance of effecting meaningful long-term change.
What I am more interested in loops back to what we opened this article with: the business models of esports companies.
Wizards runs a model that is very close to what Riot has. They run premier level circuits, dominate the market for tournaments and are almost solely responsible for the sustainability of their competitive scene. However, unlike Riot, they allow pros to play in third party tournament circuits, such as the SCG Tour.
I find it paradoxical that Magic pro players take every opportunity to denigrate the SCG Tour, often calling it an amateur circuit, and snidely implying that it isn’t worth their time. The reality is that Star City Games injects hundreds of thousands of dollars of tournament winnings into the community each year. SCG Opens award $20,000 while SCG Invitationals and the Players Championship award $50,000. Neither one of these is close to as much money as the Pro Tour, but it’s still significant, especially when considering the alternative tournament circuits.
Oh wait, there are none.
StarCityGames is the only company who runs a week-over-week major tournament circuit in the entire United States other than Wizards of the Coast themselves.
While DOTA2 and CS:GO aren’t particularly sustainable for the pros that play those games compared to League of Legends pro players, they are much closer to sustainability than pro Magic players. Imagine if outside of the majors there weren’t any tournaments with more than a $1,000 cash prize. Suddenly the pro scene would seem even less attractive.
Simply more tournament organizers filling the space would go a long way to helping sustainability in the scene. Yes, pro players would have to play more magic, but I doubt they’d mind a lot, if those tournaments were closer to their hometowns and required a 30–60 minute drive rather than a 3–4 hour flight.
I think there is ample opportunity and space for such circuits to exist. And while that doesn’t fully solve the problem of a sustainable scene for Magic: The Gathering, it would get us a little bit closer.
Maybe one day Wizards will take those few extra steps to make Magic the esport that it should be, and the community craves it to be. But for now, the community is going to have to figure out proactive solutions.
Or we can all just play Hearthstone.
