The MTG manga series (Destroy All Humans, They cant be regenerated) is quite good, especially if you played MTG during the 90s. Notably though, it mainly uses the card game as a plot device, it is not about the actual MTG universe. Good MTG media can be done.
As someone that half got into Magic because of this manga, yes, Destroy All Humans is the best and kinda only example of tie-in media MTG has, and that's damnation within praise I know more about LOL, Yugioh, and Warhammer through cutural osmosis, and the only time i learned more about MTG than the stereotypes of the playerbase (the incel stereotype, not the types of players on the un-set cards) was through a weird fan-translated manga that i didnt realise was about a real card game until i was already hooked
See this sounds cool. I need to read that at some point, but it also seems to prove my point. Even a manga that's not even really about the game I imagine will attract a lot of new players
There are a few options, depending on how long the runtime would be (and what is meant by anthology-every episode, or just every season?). The Brothers’ War, March of the Machine (but properly paced), the Kami War, the history of Ravnica.
I think the main difference between magic and Pokémon/ Yugioh is that magic started as a card game while for the latter two the card game is technically a tie in on its own. Pokémon is a franchise and so is Yugioh while magic is really only a card game.
I'd argue Yugioh is a pretty good analogy, because while it did start as a variety manga it hit its stride with the card game and in the popular zeitgeist everyone knows it as only the card game.
@@argothyst i'd disagree, even red bobcat knows of the anime and duel disks toys. recently it even got a mcdonalds toy with hello kitty. most people when asked usually say they know of the card game, the tv shows and maybe some merch.
@@yurisbest2892 That's true, but the anime is essentially all about the card game. I still think yugioh is a pretty good although far from perfect comparison.
@@argothyst It's chicken and egg. I'd argue that Yugioh is an anime about a card game, but not really an anime about the yugioh card game, given that the cards seen in the anime don't exist in the card game until a few months later, and the fact that everyone knows what a blue-eyes white dragon is but no one knows what a Chaos Emperor Dragon is, despite the latter being significantly more influential within the game.
Warhammer has kind of a shotgun approach to licensing, which actually works surprisingly well. If you licence out 200 video games and 190 of them are mid to dogshit, nobody's gonna care if you have those ten amazing games everyone loves. Most people are nebulously aware that most Warhammer games are bad, but functionally the only thing that does is get people hyped up way more if one of them turns out to be good.
Only something you can do when you have a very strong IP like 40k though, it makes people very tolerant of the misfires while also getting bigger studios interested. MTG is a weak IP, most people who know about it don't care about it, even most MTG players. Big studios won't buy it and too many bad games too early would tank the whole licensing idea.
I think one problem with magic stories in other media, is again the current release speed. So far this year we have had a murder mystery set on a fantasy world, a wild west heist, a quick visit to pseudo real world history (basically all of it) in assassins creed, surprise eldrazi! And whatever the lore for Nadu actually is, then small burrowing animals, and 80’s horror. If someone could write a tie-in story that could keep up with the whiplash from that release schedule, and make it even vaguely coherent they should be given a Nobel prize in literature.
Even if some could keep up with making tie in material, not every one is intrested in every setting equally or every character hell even every color, creating the issue that, lets say a show about thunder junction, there will be a sizeable part of consumers that Just dont care about x product
True, but then I think they should focus on one aspect at a time. Do the Marvel thing of Military Science, then Norse Myth, then WW2 setting and only once people are invested then cross them all over
it frustrates me to no end that the Shandalar game is such a beloved game and yet they can't even be bothered to remaster that. that being said, there ARE relavent Tie-in products to Magic: The Gathering that you have failed to mention because they exist in the same ecosystem as Magic; Tabletop games. There are Dungeons and Dragons books about Ravnica and arcavios. there's the seemingly Settlers of Catan-like Explorers of Ixalan or Cluedo: Ravnica Edition.
Oh man I did forget about a Magic board game, you're right. And I love that game! I EVEN USED AN IMAGE OF THE JACE MINI FROM IT IN THE VIDEO. How did I not connect those dots?
I really miss the planeswalker novels and with the addition of the omenpaths there's a missed opportunity to get an author to describe a story from the perspective of pretty much any character needing to traverse the multiverse
Hardcore Pokèmon fan here, it didn't start as a manga- it actually started with the games, the manga you showed onscreen came after the games but before the anime. Can't exactly remember where the tcg fits in there
Games came first, then anime/manga, then cards i reckon. Iirc the pokemon tcg hit america right around 1999 which was 1 year past red and blue's us debut. Nintendo were smart to make sure their us media assets were all lined up beforehand.
I also respect that. They have SO MANY games to choose from for so many different experiences. And the lore connected to the show and the game has a no nonsense straightforwardness in its depth, That doesn’t require the novels worth of explaining, Like each plane and set in MTG has. As an mtg who doesn’t really care so much about the lore, because of how daunting it is, Im kinda jealous of that. Like if you wanna know what the story is of a new set of MTG its a bloody 600+ page novel you have to commit to reading and learning about, just to know the motives of the people on your cards…. Yeah I don’t care what they do now, i just wanna see if they look cool
@@RedBobcatGames not quite, but it does have a bit of relation to magic in that way. Think of each of these games like a different Alchemy format. They exist in video game form.
@RedBobcatGames early on in Yugioh's life Konami was trying to take advantage of the popularity of the manga while designing the card game itself. They didn't yet know how to turn the game they were playing in the story into something actually playable (if you can just play a 3000 attack monster from your hand for free, why would you ever bother playing an 800 attack monster?). They couldn't wait for the card game designers to finish working out the kinks and salvaging a playable game so they made video games with whatever rules and limitations were needed to make it reminiscent of the show and playable. They have a lot of the same cards and stats, ripped straight from the manga, but there's a lot of wild experimentation with mechanics balanced by only throwing AI opponents at you. They also occasionally drew from other games that were depicted in the manga like Capsule Monsters, and Dungeon Dice Monsters, and experimented with things like Destiny Board Travelers, a Monopoly Clone where you summon monsters to claim spaces as you run around the board. A lot of people miss this creative era of Yugioh, which has kind of become a relic since 2010.
@@RedBobcatGames Not really, they are designed as video games that tie in to the characters/monsters etc. instead of the card game format. The state of magic spin-off games is actually a pretty reasonable comparison, except budgets were a lot more manageable at the time and the yu-gi-oh license really carried some of the more experimental stuff.
The reason magic cant crossover into Warhammer the way Warhammer did to magic is two fold first WOTC wouldn't pay for it and second GW takes its IP too seriously to do that. They have spent decades putting out New York Times best seller after New York Times best seller they are absolutely not going to let someone else come in and use that sandbox.
An Arcane style show about Chandra awakening and learning to planeswalk with Ajani (and probably Jace) sounds so awesome its no wonder that won't be what they do. And a meta cartoon about kids who play magic would be awesome. The game "Cardfight Vanguard!!" is one i havent played in a few years, but the recent revitalizing of the game had an anime made by Clamp. And the cartoons are REALLY good at learning the game. Like my friends just recommended people watch the first 3ish episodes of the original series to fully learn the game. I'd say it's more analogous to the Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon than Pokemon, literally teaching kids and new players about cards, tournaments and different formats.
funnily enough there's a perfectly good manga that they could adapt for said animated show about kids playing the game in "Destroy all humans, they can't be regenerated"
Yugioh actually has the opposite problem with it's tie in, it kind of relies on it too hard. The yugioh cultural zeitgeist boils down to 1: Cards are too long and 2: Show was cool. It took until Master Duel (online version akin to Arena) for the marketing to not completely rely on the anime. And even then issue 2 rose up because people who only knew the show walked into ranked and got blasted for essentially going to a meta commander table with a starter deck. I think magic could benefit from a tie in show that shows how the game is actually played or at the least features characters based on actual decks. That'd also be a good way to really grab people interested, "Oh you like the show? Well buy this and you can recreate your favorite scenes on the table!"
Yeah, you see that hangover a lot in marketing outside the OCG territories - there's so much awesome art and characters constantly being introduced, but 99% of the international marketing is 'Remember Blue-eyes?'
The thing with Magic as a game, at least to make it easy enough to follow for a show/comic like Yugioh and Digimon do with THEIR TCG-based comics (OCG Structures and Digimon Liberator), is that the core game is not flashy enough. At most levels of play, Magic is a grindy, slow game. Yugioh and Digimon are fast and flashy and allow big immediate plays, which lends itself to a short form format. In like 8 chapters or so of Liberator we've had like 5 full length Duels. It'd be way harder to have that pace with Magic.
One thing about yugioh is that the manga predates the card game, in the manga Duel Monsters was just meant to be a MTG parody for one arc but it was so popular that the entire series pivoted to it
@@dac314 there was an anime of yugioh made by toei that adapted that part of the story before it gets overtaken by Duel Monsters which has been called season 0, it was never released in English tho
@@dac314 it was a game of the week style story. Every chapter was a unique game. In volume 2 and 5 Yugi plays two games of Duel Monsters, both against Kaiba and both were smushed into the first episode of the anime that you knew (absolutely butchering both of the stories as a result. Like how Kaiba tears up the Blue Eyes because it cost him the game the first time, and how he got the other 3 between the first and second game, killing a man to get one of them). He plays a form of adversarial D&D against Bakura, a collectible figure chess game against Mokuba, a digital pet game, an arcade fighting game, and a whole assortment of makeshift games primarily designed by Yami Yugi. For that matter, most Shadow Games were initiated by Yami Yugi in these makeshift games.
Imagine an MTG anime arc centered around Ixalan or Capenna or Kamigawa or any of the other planes. A horror themed movie based in Duskmourn. A fantasy saga based on Eldraine. You can make a whole series with the sheer amount of Dominaria lore alone. There's just sooooooo much that WotC could do with their IP's but don't.
on note about space marine 2, ive liked warhammer lore for a few years now. but the space marine game got me into the tabletop, putting together minis while I watch this very video! they got me!
SEE! I'm right! I honestly think we'd have so many more people play Magic if they focused on the lore! Good luck with your minis. I don't know a huge amount about Warhammer but... may you have blood for the blood god(?)
@@cherry9787 or vampires, or werewolves, or Eldrazi. I'm not fussy about who or what I get to stab, so long as the Cathar I control is screaming about Avacyn/Sigarda's light. Also I really like Innistradi Gryffs.
In terms of video games, there's also Shadalar. Which you could argue is a reproduction of the card game, has a more RPG like aspect to it like many of the mid 2000's Yu-gi-oh video games like Stairway to the Destined Duel, Reshef of Destruction, Sacred Cards, est. Having you go around, fight short games of magic against enemies, venture into dungeons to battle the antagonists and get busted cards like Mishra's Workshop, Black Lotus, and Time Walk, go to towns to pick up side quests to gain more cards and special abilities to use in world. Now you're probably wondering why you've never heard of this game. Well that's because it came out in 1997, twenty-seven years ago; older then a majority of the player base. And in all that time, they've not made a single digital game that comes even close to it.
I think this proves your point as well: They did release planeswalker action figures, but didn't promote them at all. I have a Chandra Nalaar I bought off the closeout rack at a discount store. I just happened to see it because I was working the store for my job as a potato chip distributor. As you pointed out, as soon as I saw it, I wanted it just for the novelty, because I know about the game and its characters (at least up until 4-5 years ago when I tuned out). But the fact that a Chandra Nalaar figure had made it all the way to the discount store closeout table before I even heard they existed says they just weren't trying.
The Kamigawa Neon Dynasty trailer proves to me that the set lore could have been a anime even with fewer episodes than normal. And I don't know why a set like Eldraine, Innistrad or something like that couldn't be a animated series like Arcane. Sure I know these things cost money and maybe you wouldn't want to make it for every set that releases, but I think Magic IP has enough stories and planes that we could get stuff like these and not be bound by always being live action or always being animated series or anime etc. And you can adapt the artistic style of it to whatever fits best for the story, like an Phyrexian focused story probably wouldn't have the same artist style like Kamigawa Neon Dynasty or an Eldrazi story.
Magic Legends was a bad idea from a start. Why make a Diablo clone when you can remake Shandalar. Imagine a pokemon style game where you play games of MtG instead of Pokemon battles to aquire new cards. Like you encounter a minotaur and they play a red minotaur themed aggro deck, defeat him and you get him as a card. Add elements of exploration, towns where you can trade for new cards, other wizards and Planeswalkers to challenge you. Make the decks 40 cards and vintage legality, and single player only, so that it doesn't compete with Magic Arena. Would be great
I'll defend Magic Legends only so far as what it COULD have been. I rememebr being unimpressed by what it actually was though. But I think the idea is solid enough
@@RedBobcatGames i think they're different beasts. Duels of the planes walkers is a decent campaign with a bit of multiplayer with a curated card pool, which could be fun if it came out yearly, or every two years. Arena is supposed to bridge the gap between standard players and MTGO... Or the other way round, and it fails at both. It wouldn't be hard to bring out new duels of the planes walker games like new FIFA games, or better yet, as yearly DLC seasons added. Arena has a lot of work to do, of it's to become MTGO but pretty and stylish.
Great video! I love the lore of MtG and it’s definitely a shame they’ve had so much trouble making proper adaptations. I’d call the original Planeswalker novels (agents of artifice, purifying fire, test of metal) as well as the planeswalker comics tie-ins. They weren’t really part of a specific set release like the older books were from what I remember.
@@RedBobcatGames fun if you like stupid combos, not fun if you want normal puzzle quest/magic. The cards TRY to approximate mtg mechanics most of the time. One of the best cards in it is bfz bulk rare Prisim Array
Warhammer books are actually really damn good a lot of the time. Even if you don't really know anything about the setting I recommend reading some of them. The authors I'd currently recommend most are propably Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Robert Rath, Nate Crowley and Mike Brooks. Almost everything they write is absolutely peak
Took an hour ride with a friend who was listening to the Nightlords Omnibus audiobook. When we got to where we were going, we drove around the block several times to allow the chapter to wrap up.
@@RedBobcatGames Late response but Warhammer books are a big reason why people collect specific armies in the tabletop game. As part of the 9th edition launch of Warhammer 40k, Games Workshop did a huge refresh of the Necron model lineup and did some expanding/retconning of their lore/plot to make them way more interesting and dynamic. Black Library published The Infinite and The Divine as well as The Twice-Dead King series to tie in with this refresh. The adjustment to Necron lore/plot allowed for the creation of both books but that's not the reason why both were so successful. Its the story and I can tell you that the The Infinite and The Divine would still be a fantasticly funny book with some incredibly touching moments even if you didn't know anything about Warhammer 40k. That book 100% pushed Necron models off the shelf by making them interesting to people. Which brings me to MTG's major problem: they have perfectly good lore, plot and worldbuilding but the stories are middling at best. Case in point: how many people collect plainswalkers cards, despite their huge focus throughout sets over time? Unlike One Piece or Pokemon, the entire value of a Liliana Vess or Gideon Jura plainswalker card is 1:1 tied to their playability in paper Magic. There's no emotional investment in these characters despite Wizards spending so much time and effort trying to build them into pillars of their IP. They're in a negative spiral that has led them to lean on Universes Beyond for growth since the stories being published are too weak to stand on their own without the MTG IP generating interest but the MTG IP is too weak to warrant further investment into ensuring the stories being told are actually strong enough to growth the MTG IP. The way to break out of it was to spend time and money to consistently put out strong supplementary products that weren't tied to any specific set but it seems any hope of this is dead outside of that Netflix TV show. To bring it back to Black Library, a lot of the stuff being published by Black Library aren't always there to push models. A lot of it is just published for the sake of cultivating interest in the IP. I think this gives good writers a lot of leeway to actually write good strong stories that would stand on their own without the Warhammer IP being attached to it. The First Heretic, for instance, is literally just a book about people suffering from a crisis of faith and discussion about the nature and importance of faith; the absolute worst parts of the book are when it has to fit specific parts of pre-existing canon/lore.
There was an mtg spinoff game called magic spellslingers that you missed. Not surprised you missed it though since it came out in 2020 and had absolutely no marketing surrounding it. I only found out about it in 2022 myself and it shut down just this year.
i have to say, tie ins are genuinely something that do wonders for fostering a community, i saw arcane and it led to me becoming a league player and spending like 2000ish hours on league. whereas the only reason i really got into magic and had an on again/off again relationship with it was because my friends got me into it. there really is just no other fanbase in the ip outside of the card game (the lore community are kinda working with scraps these days) whereas you compare that to league/ arcane and i have so many friends who are arcane fans but have never touched league, or most of my league group got into league because of arcane. a tie in is a powerful thing and i hope wotc can see that
I remember thinking a similar thought a few months ago when my buddy built a kethek deck. I thought that it looked like it was designed to be a boss in a video game, like something you'd see meandering an open world picking up machines and processing them into much stronger phyrexians. And then I realized, there's no games where you can play in the Magic universe. It's not an IP itself it's just a game and it's like wotc want to keep it that way for some reason.
If I remember correctly, WOTC did have a mildly successful cartoon for one of its other games back in 2002: Duel Masters. It was a tie-in cartoon for a card game that was like magic but a little different. It made use of "shields" instead of life points (the shields being face down cards from your deck). Whenever a creature hit you, you added one of your shields to your hand, turning the attack into card advantage to help you turn things around. It was a pretty neat little system. It was silly, but I enjoyed it enough to buy two starter decks way back when. Shame that Magic's story these days is so terrible that it may a well not exist. Duskmourn as random horror themed cards is way better than Duskmourn as a story.
The game is still alive and well, and in fact more popular than Magic in Japan. Aside from the original Duel Masters, they tried re-inreoducing it as Kaijudo which also failed in the West.
Duel Masters wasn't really a WOTC thing though, they only purchased English localisation rights. It was already a successful media project in Japan before then, as these things always are. There are 880-ish total episodes of various Duel Masters anime in Japan, and WOTC dropped its involvement after 2 years and about 100 episodes.
@@yurisei6732 Absolutely not. WOTC was (and still is) indeed the developer of both Duel Masters and Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters. It is the opposite of what you are saying. The distribution in Japan is handled by Takara Tomy.
The Black Library has many stories about skaven and other people that punch their ratty little noses in and that is definitely the biggest selling point. Someone else a long while back mentioned that lorekeeping and set-tie-in stories should be part of the marketing budget, and what you’ve spelled out in the latter part of the video really proves that point, I think.
I think the problem is that WotC doesn't trully sees the human value to the IP The MTG Diablo-like had core issues, but it was clear that the director had little idea of MtG and only wanted some "aesthetic" so fans would be happy. For magic books, I feel like they only see it as the promotional thing of the event (or author), they dont care the writer is mediocre at best and has half readed magic lore, they want and need a book for War of The Spark and it's future and call it a day. ((Also it feels pretty clear they wanted to cut down on writers for the weekly narratives attached to sets)) Let's look at some other nerdy IP, let's see, oh what's that? Games Workshop famous IP Warhammer 40K Let me see ¿Do you have book tie ins? What? A lot? Like a full division only to manage writers for books, rulebooks and all plots? With one of the largest (if not THE largest) sci fi saga of The Horus Heresy ? Where you seek famous authors interested in the IP and let inside workers alike try out books for your IP? That there's a big part of the community that only reads the books and even then they promote the IP like butter? And that you got motherfucking Henry Cavill helping GW get a deal with Amazon TV? Welp that's something With the videogames, I feel WotC only sees value in the "let's make players give us 5 to 15 bucks a month with the happy whales" rather than "make them pay 30$ once" Like even if you want to keep it in the card system, PLEASE WOTC GIVE ME A ROGUE LIKE WHERE I DRAFT A DECK AND PLAY GAMES AGAIN AI What I find criminal, is that there's a Magic The Gathering manga that it took it ITS WHOLE RUN to gain the interest of WotC, with some infimal marketing and promotional cards with the official english translation. MAKE A MANGA OUT OF IT And just to be clear, the manga is "two teenagers play magic, anime slice of life shenanigans happens, nothing out of this world, not big bads, no shadow dimension, only teenagers deciding that a magic duel is the best way to decide who proposses to the girl
Also I forgot to comment, but Wizards FUCK IT UP hard with Brandon Sanderson (Acording to rumors, neither WotC nor Brandon seem to have put a clear statement) Wizards approached Brandon to write a book for them, and he agreed with the condition that they would make the book available for free on their website. A few years after he wrote it, Wizards were preparing to release a physical version of the book so they took down the free electronic version from their website. And if you live under a rock, let me tell you, Brandon Sanderson is one of the most famous writers of today's time, I feel like movies/TV adaptations of his books are a matter of time. And to be clear BRANDON IS A HUGE MTG FAN AND PLAYER, motherfucker has its own Cube Draft, which was used in a Command Zone episode you can watch. While I doubt he would be open to write a giant saga of MTG books ((he's already full time writing 4 books a year)) I bet he would be willing to help write some novellas to introduce the multiverse, and even some of the already existing characters for newer people, while putting his little ideas in canon. And a MTG x Cosmere set would've sold like butter, but WotC seems unnable to not fuck it up
I was unaware of the Manga, that's something I'll have to check out. And the idea of a rogue like! YES PLEASE! I've never played one, but I know Magic put out those special decks designed to played against solo. I'd love to give that a go at some point
Regarding the singleplayer drafting game - I 100% agree. In fact I mainly play magic on simulator because there it lets me play a singleplayer progression mode. Meanwhile last week I bought - on sale, on steam - an actual yu-gi-oh game that offers that, plus draft mode, story mode and multiplayer (altho I suspect master duel has ecliped that side of it now).
Is that the board game? I have played one, and somehow both included an image of the Jace mini from it in this video, but also forgot to mention it at all anywhere else
@@RedBobcatGames nope. It's a fighting style duels game where you cast from a limited set of spells. It's actually pretty good. Still have the CD-ROM. Worth it to search for a video of it some day I think.
I know this will probably get me hate, especially for someone whose only experience is pokemon Unite, but this franchise would be set up perfectly if it wanted to enter the MOBA scene. The “champions”, items, maps, and lore are already there. Planeswalkers can be the champions and you can incorporate a card system where you can only use cards that matches your Planeswalkers color. I think it would be more expensive and less unique to go the 3D route Smite, Predecessor, and Deadlock went. Just do a top down MOBA like League or DOTA. Worse case scenario it’s a blatant cash grab with bare minimum mechanics like Unite. If League and DOTA can make a card game….why can’t Magic have a MOBA?
They could even do small stuff to improve player's interaction with the lore. They could do something very similar to Duels of the Planeswalkers, but with actual lore instead of rancom decks. Imagine an event in MtG Arena, or MtG Online, which is War of the Spark: 1) You must bring a deck with gatewatch planeswalkers. 2) You fight an Amass eternals deck, with some God Eternals, and Liliana. 3) Fight a Gruul deck and an Azorius (Dovin Baan) deck. 4) Fight Nicol Bolas. Instant lore. Bam.
I will say I have never touched the 40K game but at one point I was so into the Magic Phyrexian Lore that I wanted more, and there wasn't any more, so I asked people for books with similar vibes and many 40K books were suggested, and I read 1 or 2 and they were great but then life lifed and I haven't picked them back up but I will at some point. Still no plans to play the game but I will read more of their Lore. (this was before our latest Phyrexian set)
Also as to communication from company's be glad we get explanations, even full articles, about bannings. Because in Yu-Gi-Oh you don't get a word of their thoughts or reasoning about the bans. They just release the list. (as far as I know)
A JRPG would be cool in the Magic world. A linear character-based story that would make the player well acquainted with its main characters and explore all the different planes, and spells and monsters from the cards, that you acquire exploring these planes. I think the over-the-top style of JRPGs are well in tune with modern Magic.
1.) "manga first"? No no no; Pokemon was a *video game* before it was anything else, and even then, any proper narrative in a manga came after the anime exploded. Its greater appeal is certainly derived from the anime's long-term viability, but trying to divorce Pokemon from video games is like trying to divorce burn from monored. 2.) "Yugioh had a cartoon" These statements with regards to mythoi that reinvent themselves on the regular pain me. "Had A"? It's presently on its 8TH! More than that, depending on definition!
I do remember a pitch for a game that a random pod that I joined had. It was souls-like game with a plot similar to Deadpool kills the Marvel Universe, but you kill all legends.
I think tie-in novels woule be great to get "back" to, I'm a nerd for all the games with lore books like Warhammer and Warcraft and such, and Magic, while it does have a pretty decent backlog, would benefit greatly from it even more so, a quality TV show or a movie would go a long way. the live-action One Piece show managed to get me to watch One Piece, for crying out loud most of all, for me, a show or a movie would give me a way to get my boyfriend closer to this hobby. I talk at him enough about Magic so that he can even semi respond and hold a conversation about some aspects of it, but he's disinterested in playing it. if we could watch a show together and talk about it, that would be so fun!
There's a really good video by Raycevick called "Im jealous of Warhammer" that is tangential to this topic: how GW licenses their IP out to game studios, who flood the market with warhammer games. And even if those games are mostly butts, it doesn't discourage people from the IP at large, but gives them more and more opportunities to find an entry point to the setting. If you put out enough MEDIA, some of that MEDIA will be good, and will earn you new fans. Worth a viewing.
There is a videogame from the late 90s titled "Magic: The Gathering", but is commonly called "Shandalar", where the entire game is just walking around and dueling opponents. The game feels a lot like a beta version of MTGO. Even had Sid Meier as a designer for the game. It can be downloaded for free from archive websites since it is abandonware. Some fans even modified the game to include cards printed as recently as 2015. There is also the Duels of the Planeswalkers boardgame, which is somewhat fun to play, at least a couple of times, but the biggest downside of it is you and your friends are actively fighting each other in a free for all deathmatch.
To be I know a few boardgames for Magic, but just forgot them here. For Shandalar though, i think it's too old to count as being in the zeitgeist so didn't include it (though I wasn't 100% on that)
@@RedBobcatGames I think it not being in the zeitgeist really just has to do with WotC never making another game like it. (I do not consider the Duels of the Planeswalkers games from 2010-2013 to be even remotely comparable to Shandalar)
@@RedBobcatGames Enjoyed reading it myself, even made me curious enough to give magic a chance. Worth a try, would be interesting to hear what you think about it too
I think the lack of Magic Tie-ins, at least recently, is in part a result of being part of Hasbro. Hasbro has over decades much success with tie-ins, but that has changed lately. Many of their properties lately have profit wise stalled, likely do to recessions and people buying less toys when you have the internet(and related products) as kids entertainment. Many of the tie-ins alone are made at a loss, as you want to sell the toy, not the show. Magic on the other hand is still very profitable maybe because less money is used to create tie-ins(or that it's printed cardboard in a plastic booster and it's value is arbitrary/prone to speculative forces). Now Games Workshop has a different tie-in strategy. It only directly finances the books, comics and some of the merch, as their own animated shows(of witch you have most likely never heard thanks to being only on GWs own streaming platform and not really making a splash outside of the controversy of threating to sue fan animators if they produce free advertisement for their products). The video games aren't getting money from GW, instead they offer the license for little to nothing and only provide mandatory brand oversite and veto rights. It makes for cheap advertising and strengthens the brand(if the tie-in product is good that is. GW has had some bad experiences in the past with low afford games). I'm not sure where I going with this but I hope it's informative. Also Black Library book quality is wonky. Some are really good, but a lot of them are just meh. You can only sit thru so many generic Space Marine fight scenes before you get tired and the barrier to entry is high with all the specialized language and terms.
Reading your comment reminded of how a few years back Hasbro bought that entertainment company to make movies, put out a single film and because it only did fine at the box office they sold the company off. Madness
@@RedBobcatGames that's like if you play a combo in a game, it wins you the game, but because you didn't go infinite you just abandon the deck entirely
I’ve been wanting novels for years now. Many people don’t know the lore because it’s on a website rather than a book A game as simple as a side scroller or more complicated like an action game (Space Marine 2) would be fun and I think draw in people. But more than likely a hero “shooter” like Overwatch would be more likely More toys and fun stuff like that would have people see and want to be apart of the world
Honestly for how famous DnD is for it to get one pretty ok movie and a good game in 50 years seems like Wizards is just bad with handling its IP in general.
I'd like a bring up a much smaller franchise than any mentioned here, but I think it might have valuable experience for MTG to consider. Shadowverse began as a digital Heartstone like TCG. It's original purpose was to be a side project that is also an exucse to reuse art from Cygames's (developer) other properties. The game from launch also has a story mode that features original characters and stories(about people traveling and living across the multiverse resolving the issues and conflicts of each world and stopping Thanos level deities from killing everyone). The card sets are based on other Cygames's properties(like Princess Connect Grandblue Fantasy, Rise of Bahamut), on the previously mentioned story mode and eventually they started making sets with settings, characters and lore not featured anywhere else. But on their 6th year Cygames have launched a Yugioh-like anime "Shadowverse" with teenagers playing the card game. The game depicted in the anime featured cardpool of the first sets with original cards that serve as ace monsters likw YGO's Dark Magician and Blue-eyes White Dragon.(it's also worth mentioning that Shadowverse standart format is rotation and the sets released during this time had no tie-ins with the anime as it airing). The anime itself I believe isn't cannon to the lore of Shadowverse CCG, but it is used in the anime as part of the plot. (Ex: the main villain of the anime made a deal with one of those deities and some of the main characted of the story mode guided the anime heroes to victory) After the series concluded they have released a separate RPG adaption of the anime that depicts the gameplay accurate to the anime, featuring cards depicted in the anime. And THEN they have released a Standart legal set centered around anime cards, that have been reworked to - completly powercreep the format- be viable to in the metagame of the time. I think it all worked. Even though the anime itself was terrible, it definetly was hype enough for me to notice and actually try the game. And then they made a sequel series (Shadowverse Flame) that was actually very good and ignited even more intrest in Shadowverse. And the fact that they have began a physical adaptation of the digital game definetly helped too. Not arguing that MTG should drop the Netflix series and do an animated children orianted show with a tie-in standart legal release, but an option has prooven itself to be able to work, if handled properly
They did book tie-ins for forever, but people don't read anymore xD The original series was at least 13 books long, and it was just stories that were loosely tied to the game. The first one is actually called Arena, and it's friggin' great. Also, if the books for Magic aren't tie ins to the game because they are intrinsically linked through the IP, then YuGiOh's animated series isn't a tie-in for the card game xD
god magic legends is a throooow back I played the beta on it and yeah the micro transactions were bonkers. The game used a like booster pack system and all your spells were from these booster packs and simi sorta like commander you could use spells that were within your hero color identity, but how do you get a hero? well extremely rarely from the booster packs ofcourse, like talking 200$ rarely. They then begrudgingly gave you the chance to get it from the battle pass if you finished it, but if you didnt complete the entire battle pass in time? well then 200$ boosters is the only way to play a black/blue hero
It is pretty astonishing huh, I guess I never really thought about how surprising it is that they have this truly expansive lore and well established well known and beloved characters and they've done little to nothing with them.
I think it has to do with long-term versus short-term thinking. All of the points you bring up are very vital if you want to grow a brand over the next decade. Hasbro isn't thinking in terms of decades, they are thinking in terms of next fiscal quarter.
To be fair, technically, the yugioh card game, started as a tie-in to the original anime and manga, not the other way around, but obviously, when the card game became as overwhelmingly popular as it did, they shifted focus REAL FAST to the card game, and now it's pretty much the main thing. Also funny how the first episode of duel monsters aired at almost my exact birthdate, except the anime came out 1 year later than me, lol. And yeah, considering that before the TCG, Pokemon was already very well established, first with the release of the games, then the manga, and then the anime, and pokemania was in full force in the 90's, it's no wonder the TCG exploded as it did. I mean Pokemon is literally one of, if not THE SINGLE MOST PROFITABLE FRANCHISE IN THE PLANET! THAT THING PRINTS MONEY!
They released a crappy, rushed novel that was rightfully bashed for many reasons, and their takeaway from it was that people just don't like novels. This is one of the core issues. They learn the wrong lessons from things. They seem to think that Magic is this pure, sacred thing that can do no wrong, and when something DOES go wrong, it's not because of anything to do with Magic itself, no, it's the surrounding circumstance that's the issue. It doesn't help that the story, quite frankly, sucks, and has for a decade now at the VERY least. Hard to create a quality product based on lore that isn't itself much quality.
it's quite interesting to note that DnD, the other game by WOTC, has like, so many successful tie-ins? a recent blockbuster movie, amazing videogames... ok that's what I can think of, but it is more than magic! now, yes, DnD has more critical mass of a zeitgeist, which is why the financing of these big projects was possible (from the investor's point of view, anyways), but I can't imagine Magic is not at such a point, too? especially with the tie-in DnD settings that some people mentioned, like Strixhaven. truly, what is Wizards doing
There is also a long running comic series, however its very apparent that wotc or hasbro puts pretty significant restrictions on the writers which leaves them feeling a little safe
Yes, better lore will make more money in the long term, but that's the problem: the long term, WOTC's focus is on the short term in order to satisfy Hasbro's demands, so long term be damned
We won't see planeswalkers in Warhammer since gw still has some respect for the identity of their ip. In Warhammer everyone knows the world sells the toys, the actual game itself is quite bad but magic as a game is really fun so they try to get people to play the game through ip crossovers knowing they'll stay.
This video couldn't have come at a better time. I've been thinking about the same thing but lack the ability to explain it as well as you could. For me: I enjoyed collecting Pokemon as a kid more than playing it as a TCG; after childhood I grew out of collecting it and playing it. Now I don't even know how to play it. Yugioh was the same, I liked it into young adulthood but lost interest. Now I have coworkers that still play but I have a hard time understanding modern yugioh compared to original old yugioh (gen 1). My history with Magic the Gathering only started recently and it was via other friends playing it. I know little to NOTHING about the lore. I know a lot of MtG hate universes beyond but I like it since I know those IPs and lores better than MtG's own IPs and lore. I've been playing Magic the Gathering for maybe a decade now and still know very little about it outside of EDH/Commander. Which old MtG fans hate because this format has "ruined" (in their opinion) the standard format of MtG.
I don't hate commander, it's what I play most. But I will agree WotC's attention to it has somewhat ruined basically every other format. Also, fun fact about the timing of this video. It was like 75% the way through production when the Commander Bannings news dropped and I decided to delay it to work on the videos I did about that. This should have come out like a month ago!
Those YuGiOh Duel Disks will destroy your cards faster than anything. xD I loved YuGiOh when it was the old Egyptian theme, then as soon as the pharaoh was gone man did it die fast... :^) Forbidden Memories, Dark Duel Stories, and The Scared Cards are really good games though. The other games can be pretty rough or boring at times, Reshef of Destruction is for masochists...
@@Liliana_the_ghost_cat Bandai Proplica do make newer ones that fit sleeved cards, but its... I guess idk how to explain it... the hard plastic is pinching the corners of your cards sleeved or not.
I recently read a comment that said: yugioh cards are like fighting game characters, your deck has so much personality and lore attached to it and the game is so complex that you get to be known as the "blue eyes" guy for example. That comes with the drawback that alot of decks are "xenophobic" and do not allow for other strategies outside of the intended one. Something I noticed while getting into mtg is that the magic playerbase loves deconstructing cards and their mechanics and I feel like this crashes with that "deck lore theme", I wouldnt know a solution atleast except doubling down on "what color should do what" Btw im not gonna shill but my "own warhammer lore" has strong influences from Phyrexia since it is as you said, they are a perfect fit. Warhammer greatly encourages writing your own stories and making up your own "perfect war", its one of the reasons why there is so much "loose" lore
I think leaning into creature types, lords and anthems could be a way to go? Especially if they're tied to a mechanic. For instance, my friend runs a Phyrexian Poison deck which feels very flavourful. Another has an Ikoria Mutate deck which I think works too
@@RedBobcatGames Poison was next on my list because I want rush. But I didn't know about mutate, just reading the cards was fun already + it hopefully fixes my untreated Companion Trauma (It was the last time I played/took a break). Based on the Precon, I assume, with the +1+1 cards replaced by beautiful, mutating children? Currently in the process of building a Demon deck based on Belakor from the Precon and it feels like actually selling your HP and soul to demons in order to go brrrr. Sheoldred would be a perfect fit in effect wise, but not thematically, but I am finding my peace with that. Especially after playing against Core Augur for the first time. Sheoldred theme doesnt fit because the last thing you should know when selling your soul is that "death is not the end" like bro, dont give them hope!
Another example similar to Yu-Gi-Oh would be WOTC's own attempt at cracking the Japanese market, made in collaboration with Takara Tomy: Duel Masters. Concieved as a stepping stone for children to into TCGs (thus, Magic eventually), it was designed as a card game first but also released in par with both a manga and an anime, both of which lasted for more than a decade (and with that, more merchandise that they could sell to children). Duel Masters remains one of Japan's most successful card games ever, only now losing ground to newcommers such as thr One Piece Card Game. (The less we talk about the botched attempt at release the game outside of Japan, the better).
The interesting thing about the big 3 is that Magic is the only one that started as a card game. Pokemon started as a video game. Yugioh started as a manga about high school kids playing all kinds of games with occult elements bleeding in. Yugioh was high-jacked by its card game, the entire story warping around it because it was so popular even though it was only meant to be a bare bones homage to Magic for a single chapter. The card game itself was so bad they effectively needed to add more and more mechanics that completely obliterated the core game and twisted it into something unrecognizable, but at least it's fun now. The thing that sets Magic apart to me is actually the lore. The cards in yugioh started out having very little lore, it was just the game they played in the show. It had whatever they wanted in it. Since archetypes were introduced there's some lore around the individual groups but there's no lore around how they actually all got together. There's no name for the world the monsters are from. It's all nebulous concepts about a story that happens to a particular character on a handful of cards floating off on its own. Pokemon lore is obviously just the game lore. I don't believe the card game bothers to introduce anything unique. So for Magic to have such a rich setting for the cards is a bit of an outlier for successful cards games and I think it really should lean into it now. This show is hopefully a start but there are more so many stories that can be adapted into all sorts of games. Every game seems to try to be its own thing instead of being a way to experience an iconic part of the story. Imagine a Weatherlight JRPG, a Mirrodin Besieged RTS, a western RPG set in Ravnica, a horror game or soulslike in Innistrad. There's a lot of untapped potential.
honestly the problem with a lot of the tie in material is that is just the most horribly mismanaged thing. the 2 games were horribly monetized with one of them being barely fully released and the other still in beta, the show had issue due to the constant changes to the story line which was basically shattered after the internal team that wrote a lot of the story for wizards (that were free)was thrown out to try to sell books which one was so bad that everyone basically jumped out and it never recovered. I remember watching the professor a long time ago talking about this excate subject and it really is a internal problem where unless it profitable on it own then it not worth it to them.
Yeah, you're right. I think a scatter shot approach would work best. Liscence Magic out to 100 developers, and even if only 1 game out of that is good then people will soon forget the 99. And gaming specifically is huge, and could make more than enough money to cover all of it. Look at Baulder's Gate 3 for example
Would you say the handful of dnd setting books set in magic the gathering planes would count as tie ins? There's books to help you run games set in Ravnica, Theros and Strixhaven, full of lore and mechanics to enable spells, ancestries and abilities themed to each plane. Idk where the boundaries of crossover and tie-in end but this being a primarily dnd facing product that uses magic IP definitely would help bring dnd players to magic, if only to learn the source material for why silvery barbs is such an obnoxious spell.
Oooooh, I had completely forgotten about those! And I literally ran an Innistrad campaign once too! Yes, I would count those as tie ins, and I LOVED THEM. I wish we had more stuff like that!
Chandra's personality is "every fire-based character you've ever seen in anything ever". Jace's personality is "Whatever the writers decided to do with him this month". Kaya's personality is "Doing things WotC hope you think are cool so that you'll think she's cool". I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Liliana has depth. I actually really like the turn of her being like "Forget this, I'm going to change my name and become a teacher". I think the best planeswalker might be Arlinn Kord though? Maybe, I may change my mind on this
I think part of the issue is the overall aesthetic of MtG. Unlike Pokemon and Yugioh, the creatures and characters are depicted in a realistic style that doesn't translate to animation. It could be done in a style similar to Arcane, but that series took a lot of time and money to pull off--far more than the anime of the other series. Live action would be...risky. For every IP like LotR or GoT (at least the first 6-7 seasons of it) that can get gritty fantasy right, there are many more that don't handle it nearly as well. Everything from the story to the characters to the visuals has to be on-point, or you end up with debacles like RoP, Halo, or WoT. As you noted, WotC has backed off from the lore considerably, which makes me think they don't have the creative resources on that front. Storytelling as a whole has largely taken a hit the past six years or so, and even classic IPs with decades of fandom aren't faring so well. I appreciate the desire and attempt to let WotC know the lore matters, and that fans of the game would love to spend time exploring the world in a more in-depth fashion. I also think you're right that MtG needs at least one--if not two--other sizable media endeavors to really bump the brand into the next level. I just get the feeling that WotC never really got behind the lore; it exists solely as a supplement, not a focus. If it can sell more cards, it's worth some time/effort, but investing any real assets into something that isn't the game proper doesn't seem to be enticing. Unfortunately creative bankruptcy leads to the things like UB, which is another clear avoidance of crafting characters and a world, and instead relying on the cards themselves to bring more eyes to the franchise. For what WotC paid for all these licenses, they could have put money into a film or show, or even a series of books or comics. Their choice to go this route has more/less made their future intentions painfully clear.
People have mentioned "Destroy All Humans. They Can be Regenerated", and I believe stuff like that it's the way to go. It was originally a one-shot and people liked it so much it turned into a series. One can argue the series isn't really about Magic, but I wholeheartedly disagree. It is about the social aspect of Magic, the friends we make, and how cringy we can be sometimes trying to feel cool. Also about struggling to find combos or fix weaknesses within a deck. A lore series would be cool, but Kinda hard to do if the goal is to keep up with current sets and stuff.
Well you say that, but they kinda have everything they need to make it work. The cards all have new art for each set, and they have lore come out in time too. I think given a bit more love and attention to the lore, I don't see why it couldn't work
I really want to see a japanese anime style Magic anime. It should follow somewhat to the card game, kinda like yugioh. But perhaps modified slightly for a nice viewing experience. The potential for the over the top VFX and animation is limitless. It can also be an original storyline too.
If WoTC ever hired Aaron Dempsey Bowden to write a MTG book, i might actually care about lore. Played for years, know nothing about it because it's impossible to start learning without using a Wiki. If you want to get into Warhammer, everyone can tell you a single book to get you started, then you can build from there.
i dont need a tv show about my card game, i dont need cards depicting non magic stuff. im so fucking tired of this all encompassing "everything has to be everything" shit that is the current sphere of pop culture. please let magic be magic.
I agree, and the current direction of the IP makes me sad. For years i said "When they do freaking Marvel or StarWars cards, im out for good"... But the flipside is that there needs to be an inflow of new players to keep the game alive. And since WotC has shown that they cant make interesting enough things to do that without tie-ins and references, and the playerbase isnt doing it from the grassroots either - IP keyjaingling is sadly the best we have
In fairness, I kind of feel the same. But I think it wouldn't be as much of an issue if the general quality of televison was better currently better all around. Like, think about how The Office is still one of the most popular shows and they haven't made any new episodes of that in years. If there were enough solid tv shows, one about Magic wouldn't be so bad as you would have plenty of other options
Id die to live in a world where we had the MCU the magic cinematic universe There was spell slingers was a mobile app that was like the hearthstone version of magic. But that also got canned. There was also the arena of the planeswalkers board game with 2 sets and 1 expansion that i own. And i adore this game. But again they canceled it even though if they brought that back itd be my favorite aspect of mtg.
How's it going in Brazil for magic now that they've stopped supporting the language? I would imagine people have stopped playing. Has it had much of an effect on the game?
@@RedBobcatGames my city is rather small so cant say for the bigger picture but if you were already a heavily enfranchised player you kinda keep going, but it added a huge barrier for a already expansive and niche game. It kinda stifles the growth, you continue with what you already had of players, but random people who sometimes tried it now don’t even give it a shot (i don’t blame them) on a sense its only downhill from here
@@RedBobcatGames there’s also a unintentional consequence, like some of my friends do not speak English but they could use the cards because after a while you start to understand what we call “magics english” a person would know enough words to know what the card did but the ever increasing amount of text in the cards make that no longer possible or at least way less viable
Ugh, that's all awful. I'm sorry to hear all that. I'm not a fan of cards with a lot of rules text in the first place, but having to understand them in another langauge would probably make me stop playing the game. Fingers crossed WotC change their mind at some point and start printing cards for you again
I see that before I join your Patreon, I'm goinm to need an exceedingly cool name. So far the best I have come up with is Frat Boy, the Odor That Permeates All Existence.
Hasbro being a toy company wants MTG to appeal more to a younger demographic when the theme of the game was more mature since it’s origins this new shift in focus means the younger demographic doesn’t like or care about magic preferring pokemon while alienating long time magic fans that was there since the beginning
Sure, but Magic's not entierly too much for kids. Sure, certain elements would be over the line but there's enough stuff that tie-ins could work and still be for a younger audience. Kids can handle a little bit of some messed up stuff. Look at Animorphs for instance
Yugioh didnt start as a trading card game, it was originally essentialy ”what if the villian of SAW was the main character, putting people in ironic games to have them suffer come-uppance” The game “yugioh” didnt show up in the manga untill like several volumes in, and it was an homage (i believe) to the author trying out and enjoying MTG and making a fun little knock off. Then the interest in that aspect of the story became so huge that the whole series morphed into this world obsessed with the game The author didnt even figure out the rules of the TCG untill like. Way long after.
Theres so much lore in Mtg they could do every tie in for decades. And if done properly they could surpass pokemon because Mtg (at least used to ) markets itself for a more mature audience. But no. They botched every attempt they made. Hasbro being Hasbro should make this their priority instead of shoving sets and universes beyond down our throats
i don't really have anything to add (or remove?) to this conversation, but something i want to point out is that pokémon and yugioh as japanese companies they go under the "soft power kawaii" umbrella of what is the japanese government's decisions to make japan what has become today while the usa government spends their money to do more wars
Ye is a shame MTG doesn't really get out and do other projects. I could see like a RPG or story game being really easy to do and fun to play. Think unfortunately magics lore is just so dense that no one honestly can assemble it all, put it together in cohesive manner, and then make a new thing from it. Like I honestly think there is not a single person or place that all the lore of MTG sits, even in the company. Which is crazy to say, but it has been like 30+ years of lore going from the days of everything was kept in a filing cabinet or in the heads of the creators, to everything being a blog post on their site. That being said it would be incredibly successful for them to dive into this, but also risky, which I think is why they avoid it. An example of how successful it could be is Warhammer for sure. When the universe beyond for Warhammer came out I never knew anything about it, mostly ignored it. Then a year later I saw a commander from the set I wanted to build (Deathleaper, Terror Weapon) and since I like my decks having some lore relevant things in them I looked into the lore of the Tyranids. Read a ton of info online, watched videos etc. Then recently the space marine game came out, my buddy bought it, loved it, then he starts talking the lore and the stuff going on in it with me. I bond over my lore knowledge of the Tyranids, come to now we are playing Rogue Trader together and loving the lore, etc. Hasn't gotten me to buy or play Warhammer yet, and I don't think I ever would seek it out due to the complexity, but maybe id buy a cool model or a poster or a shirt etc. My buddy already bought and painted a group of models. So.. yeah it would be cool if magic had that reach and it certainly can.
And to be fair, from a business stand point even if you haven't gotten into the game itself, you have seemingly got into a bunch of the other stuff surrounding it which I'm sure has been profitable for them. WotC seem so profit driven lately, it's amazing to me they're not making good tie-ins to make some extra cash!
@RedBobcatGames very true I just love that game so much and love see it mentioned and pop up now and again. It hits the nostalgia for me in the best way.
I bought all the duels of the planeswalkers games when they each came out and now literally none of them work on modern machines. I want my money back.
The fact they're unavailable is rather odd. I can run 2013 and 2014 just fine on my xbox (can't say for PC versions but most likely runs like prepatched Fallout: New Vegas or TESIV: Oblivion, AKA like complete fucking shit)
@@cherry9787 I can install them and run them, but they just stop working. You'll get 2 turns into a game and it just stops progressing, forever locked in, without even being able to quit short of alt+f4.
My limited understanding of issues with producing movies and shows is that Hollywood and the greater movie world is a VERY complex world with a lot of private controlling interests. The end result is usually you have to sell your ideas and such to them and them allow them creative control or the film side will pull out entirely, so this screams to me of a power struggle over creative control between WotC and Hollywood. Thus strict knowledge of just Magic's history might not give you a full picture of the actual problem here. The 'cautionary tale' people generally tend to point to is the 'Sheriff of Nottingham' script that turned into another Russel Crowe being a badass vehicle, but the more recent examples are things like the Witcher and Wheel of Time series where the showrunners think they can write a better story than the beloved source material. Personally I think they're clowns and as such I straight up don't watch movies or shows anymore, not through official platforms anyway.
Well WotC have a publishing arm, as I believe they now put out their own D&D books. Maybe if they start with printing their own novels / comic books any screen adaptation will at least have something to work from (perhaps)
@@RedBobcatGames I mean that is probably the exact point they are at, though. But what I imagine is happening is they've taken it to a studio for film adaptation who then handed it off to a screenwriter who then took liberties - and because the film industry is (apparently/allegedly) staffed by nepotism this screenwriter is being backed up by the studio execs against WotC's demands that they stick to certain plot points. Casting is supposedly an entirely new layer of the same nonsense, as well.
The MTG manga series (Destroy All Humans, They cant be regenerated) is quite good, especially if you played MTG during the 90s. Notably though, it mainly uses the card game as a plot device, it is not about the actual MTG universe. Good MTG media can be done.
That series is great. Viz has gotten the rights to localize it into English in May and have already released the first volume.
As long as wizards isn't involved in making it.
As someone that half got into Magic because of this manga, yes, Destroy All Humans is the best and kinda only example of tie-in media MTG has, and that's damnation within praise
I know more about LOL, Yugioh, and Warhammer through cutural osmosis, and the only time i learned more about MTG than the stereotypes of the playerbase (the incel stereotype, not the types of players on the un-set cards) was through a weird fan-translated manga that i didnt realise was about a real card game until i was already hooked
See this sounds cool. I need to read that at some point, but it also seems to prove my point. Even a manga that's not even really about the game I imagine will attract a lot of new players
I honestly don’t see how you can make a Magic show that isn’t an anthology series.
No planeswalkers whatsoever, just a straight adaptation of the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor storyline.
There are a few options, depending on how long the runtime would be (and what is meant by anthology-every episode, or just every season?). The Brothers’ War, March of the Machine (but properly paced), the Kami War, the history of Ravnica.
A whole multiverse to pick from and you can't imagine any stories within them that could stand on their own as a series?
@@nmr7203 …yeah, exactly.
It could be a monster-of-the-week show starring the Gatewatch set between Eldritch Moon and Kaladesh.
I think the main difference between magic and Pokémon/ Yugioh is that magic started as a card game while for the latter two the card game is technically a tie in on its own. Pokémon is a franchise and so is Yugioh while magic is really only a card game.
I'd argue Yugioh is a pretty good analogy, because while it did start as a variety manga it hit its stride with the card game and in the popular zeitgeist everyone knows it as only the card game.
@@argothyst i'd disagree, even red bobcat knows of the anime and duel disks toys. recently it even got a mcdonalds toy with hello kitty. most people when asked usually say they know of the card game, the tv shows and maybe some merch.
@@yurisbest2892 That's true, but the anime is essentially all about the card game. I still think yugioh is a pretty good although far from perfect comparison.
@@argothyst It's chicken and egg. I'd argue that Yugioh is an anime about a card game, but not really an anime about the yugioh card game, given that the cards seen in the anime don't exist in the card game until a few months later, and the fact that everyone knows what a blue-eyes white dragon is but no one knows what a Chaos Emperor Dragon is, despite the latter being significantly more influential within the game.
I had 100% assumed with Yu-gi-oh the card game came first. This was interesting to read, thank you all
Warhammer has kind of a shotgun approach to licensing, which actually works surprisingly well. If you licence out 200 video games and 190 of them are mid to dogshit, nobody's gonna care if you have those ten amazing games everyone loves. Most people are nebulously aware that most Warhammer games are bad, but functionally the only thing that does is get people hyped up way more if one of them turns out to be good.
Yes! The channel "Raycevick" said exactly this in a video, i wouldn't be surprised if you had seen it already.
Only something you can do when you have a very strong IP like 40k though, it makes people very tolerant of the misfires while also getting bigger studios interested. MTG is a weak IP, most people who know about it don't care about it, even most MTG players. Big studios won't buy it and too many bad games too early would tank the whole licensing idea.
I mean, I'd be on board for 200 bad Magic games if we get 10 good ones
I think one problem with magic stories in other media, is again the current release speed. So far this year we have had a murder mystery set on a fantasy world, a wild west heist, a quick visit to pseudo real world history (basically all of it) in assassins creed, surprise eldrazi! And whatever the lore for Nadu actually is, then small burrowing animals, and 80’s horror. If someone could write a tie-in story that could keep up with the whiplash from that release schedule, and make it even vaguely coherent they should be given a Nobel prize in literature.
Even if some could keep up with making tie in material, not every one is intrested in every setting equally or every character hell even every color, creating the issue that, lets say a show about thunder junction, there will be a sizeable part of consumers that Just dont care about x product
True, but then I think they should focus on one aspect at a time. Do the Marvel thing of Military Science, then Norse Myth, then WW2 setting and only once people are invested then cross them all over
it frustrates me to no end that the Shandalar game is such a beloved game and yet they can't even be bothered to remaster that.
that being said, there ARE relavent Tie-in products to Magic: The Gathering that you have failed to mention because they exist in the same ecosystem as Magic; Tabletop games.
There are Dungeons and Dragons books about Ravnica and arcavios. there's the seemingly Settlers of Catan-like Explorers of Ixalan or Cluedo: Ravnica Edition.
There's a fan project called "forge" for android and PC, they took shandalar, modernised it a bit and added every card.
Oh man I did forget about a Magic board game, you're right. And I love that game! I EVEN USED AN IMAGE OF THE JACE MINI FROM IT IN THE VIDEO. How did I not connect those dots?
I really miss the planeswalker novels and with the addition of the omenpaths there's a missed opportunity to get an author to describe a story from the perspective of pretty much any character needing to traverse the multiverse
Yeah, agreed
If they ever animate the manga "Destroy all humanity: it can't be regenerated" it's going to be the next big thing.
I've heard so much about this. I really need to add it to my reading list
Hardcore Pokèmon fan here, it didn't start as a manga- it actually started with the games, the manga you showed onscreen came after the games but before the anime. Can't exactly remember where the tcg fits in there
Games came first, then anime/manga, then cards i reckon. Iirc the pokemon tcg hit america right around 1999 which was 1 year past red and blue's us debut. Nintendo were smart to make sure their us media assets were all lined up beforehand.
@@THE_BATLORD I think the TCG was before the anime, but only by a few months
This is what happens when you talk off the top of your head for a video!
What I respected about Yugioh is all the wild spin off games the series got. Duelist of the Roses is goated.
I also respect that.
They have SO MANY games to choose from for so many different experiences.
And the lore connected to the show and the game has a no nonsense straightforwardness in its depth,
That doesn’t require the novels worth of explaining,
Like each plane and set in MTG has.
As an mtg who doesn’t really care so much about the lore, because of how daunting it is,
Im kinda jealous of that.
Like if you wanna know what the story is of a new set of MTG its a bloody 600+ page novel you have to commit to reading and learning about, just to know the motives of the people on your cards…. Yeah I don’t care what they do now, i just wanna see if they look cool
I didn't know it had spin off games. Is it like how Magic has different formats?
@@RedBobcatGames not quite, but it does have a bit of relation to magic in that way.
Think of each of these games like a different Alchemy format.
They exist in video game form.
@RedBobcatGames early on in Yugioh's life Konami was trying to take advantage of the popularity of the manga while designing the card game itself. They didn't yet know how to turn the game they were playing in the story into something actually playable (if you can just play a 3000 attack monster from your hand for free, why would you ever bother playing an 800 attack monster?).
They couldn't wait for the card game designers to finish working out the kinks and salvaging a playable game so they made video games with whatever rules and limitations were needed to make it reminiscent of the show and playable. They have a lot of the same cards and stats, ripped straight from the manga, but there's a lot of wild experimentation with mechanics balanced by only throwing AI opponents at you.
They also occasionally drew from other games that were depicted in the manga like Capsule Monsters, and Dungeon Dice Monsters, and experimented with things like Destiny Board Travelers, a Monopoly Clone where you summon monsters to claim spaces as you run around the board.
A lot of people miss this creative era of Yugioh, which has kind of become a relic since 2010.
@@RedBobcatGames Not really, they are designed as video games that tie in to the characters/monsters etc. instead of the card game format. The state of magic spin-off games is actually a pretty reasonable comparison, except budgets were a lot more manageable at the time and the yu-gi-oh license really carried some of the more experimental stuff.
The reason magic cant crossover into Warhammer the way Warhammer did to magic is two fold first WOTC wouldn't pay for it and second GW takes its IP too seriously to do that. They have spent decades putting out New York Times best seller after New York Times best seller they are absolutely not going to let someone else come in and use that sandbox.
True, but that could be us! You know?
An Arcane style show about Chandra awakening and learning to planeswalk with Ajani (and probably Jace) sounds so awesome its no wonder that won't be what they do.
And a meta cartoon about kids who play magic would be awesome. The game "Cardfight Vanguard!!" is one i havent played in a few years, but the recent revitalizing of the game had an anime made by Clamp. And the cartoons are REALLY good at learning the game. Like my friends just recommended people watch the first 3ish episodes of the original series to fully learn the game. I'd say it's more analogous to the Yu-Gi-Oh cartoon than Pokemon, literally teaching kids and new players about cards, tournaments and different formats.
funnily enough there's a perfectly good manga that they could adapt for said animated show about kids playing the game in "Destroy all humans, they can't be regenerated"
@@alterist64 Thought of that one too
Embarrassed to say I forgot about any comic book / manga of magic when making this. That's the issue when you do it off the top of your head haha
Yugioh actually has the opposite problem with it's tie in, it kind of relies on it too hard. The yugioh cultural zeitgeist boils down to 1: Cards are too long and 2: Show was cool. It took until Master Duel (online version akin to Arena) for the marketing to not completely rely on the anime. And even then issue 2 rose up because people who only knew the show walked into ranked and got blasted for essentially going to a meta commander table with a starter deck. I think magic could benefit from a tie in show that shows how the game is actually played or at the least features characters based on actual decks. That'd also be a good way to really grab people interested, "Oh you like the show? Well buy this and you can recreate your favorite scenes on the table!"
I think Pokémon have that balance pretty right, so it is at least possible it seems
Yeah, you see that hangover a lot in marketing outside the OCG territories - there's so much awesome art and characters constantly being introduced, but 99% of the international marketing is 'Remember Blue-eyes?'
The thing with Magic as a game, at least to make it easy enough to follow for a show/comic like Yugioh and Digimon do with THEIR TCG-based comics (OCG Structures and Digimon Liberator), is that the core game is not flashy enough.
At most levels of play, Magic is a grindy, slow game. Yugioh and Digimon are fast and flashy and allow big immediate plays, which lends itself to a short form format. In like 8 chapters or so of Liberator we've had like 5 full length Duels. It'd be way harder to have that pace with Magic.
I physically cannot hold myself back from writing this- THE POKÉMON VIDEO GAMES CAME FIIIIIIIRST
Yeah, but they created the animated series to sell the game
Part of the issue with doing it off the top of your head
One thing about yugioh is that the manga predates the card game, in the manga Duel Monsters was just meant to be a MTG parody for one arc but it was so popular that the entire series pivoted to it
What was the Manga about before they pivoted to Duel Monsters?
@@dac314 various games like chess, poker and even video games
@DeathofHeavens lol that's weird af. Imagine if the cartoon show had an entire first arc where they played checkers instead
@@dac314 there was an anime of yugioh made by toei that adapted that part of the story before it gets overtaken by Duel Monsters which has been called season 0, it was never released in English tho
@@dac314 it was a game of the week style story. Every chapter was a unique game. In volume 2 and 5 Yugi plays two games of Duel Monsters, both against Kaiba and both were smushed into the first episode of the anime that you knew (absolutely butchering both of the stories as a result. Like how Kaiba tears up the Blue Eyes because it cost him the game the first time, and how he got the other 3 between the first and second game, killing a man to get one of them).
He plays a form of adversarial D&D against Bakura, a collectible figure chess game against Mokuba, a digital pet game, an arcade fighting game, and a whole assortment of makeshift games primarily designed by Yami Yugi. For that matter, most Shadow Games were initiated by Yami Yugi in these makeshift games.
Imagine an MTG anime arc centered around Ixalan or Capenna or Kamigawa or any of the other planes. A horror themed movie based in Duskmourn. A fantasy saga based on Eldraine. You can make a whole series with the sheer amount of Dominaria lore alone. There's just sooooooo much that WotC could do with their IP's but don't.
Yeah, Duskmourn especially screams Netflix mini-series at me
on note about space marine 2, ive liked warhammer lore for a few years now. but the space marine game got me into the tabletop, putting together minis while I watch this very video! they got me!
SEE! I'm right! I honestly think we'd have so many more people play Magic if they focused on the lore! Good luck with your minis. I don't know a huge amount about Warhammer but... may you have blood for the blood god(?)
Man all I want is a horde shooter type game set on Innistrad, how has no one at wizards managed to put two and two together and started on this yet.
Basically Warhammer: Vermintide but zombies is what that sounds like
Playable characters: cathar, werewolf, vampire, stitcher, ghoul-caller. Action is taken place during Travails.
Yes, yes, yes to all of this! Yes, sign me up. Inject it into my veins!
@@cherry9787 or vampires, or werewolves, or Eldrazi. I'm not fussy about who or what I get to stab, so long as the Cathar I control is screaming about Avacyn/Sigarda's light. Also I really like Innistradi Gryffs.
In terms of video games, there's also Shadalar. Which you could argue is a reproduction of the card game, has a more RPG like aspect to it like many of the mid 2000's Yu-gi-oh video games like Stairway to the Destined Duel, Reshef of Destruction, Sacred Cards, est.
Having you go around, fight short games of magic against enemies, venture into dungeons to battle the antagonists and get busted cards like Mishra's Workshop, Black Lotus, and Time Walk, go to towns to pick up side quests to gain more cards and special abilities to use in world.
Now you're probably wondering why you've never heard of this game. Well that's because it came out in 1997, twenty-seven years ago; older then a majority of the player base. And in all that time, they've not made a single digital game that comes even close to it.
Excellent stuff. Even a remaster would be better than nothing then I guess
You got some wires crossed. Pokemon started as a game 100%. The manga, card game, and anime all followed after. Yugioh started as a manga.
This is the risk you run doing it off the top of your head it seems
I think this proves your point as well: They did release planeswalker action figures, but didn't promote them at all. I have a Chandra Nalaar I bought off the closeout rack at a discount store. I just happened to see it because I was working the store for my job as a potato chip distributor. As you pointed out, as soon as I saw it, I wanted it just for the novelty, because I know about the game and its characters (at least up until 4-5 years ago when I tuned out). But the fact that a Chandra Nalaar figure had made it all the way to the discount store closeout table before I even heard they existed says they just weren't trying.
I didn't know this! I'd want a Sorin I think! That's so cool!
The Kamigawa Neon Dynasty trailer proves to me that the set lore could have been a anime even with fewer episodes than normal. And I don't know why a set like Eldraine, Innistrad or something like that couldn't be a animated series like Arcane. Sure I know these things cost money and maybe you wouldn't want to make it for every set that releases, but I think Magic IP has enough stories and planes that we could get stuff like these and not be bound by always being live action or always being animated series or anime etc. And you can adapt the artistic style of it to whatever fits best for the story, like an Phyrexian focused story probably wouldn't have the same artist style like Kamigawa Neon Dynasty or an Eldrazi story.
Yeah, completely agree!
Magic Legends was a bad idea from a start. Why make a Diablo clone when you can remake Shandalar. Imagine a pokemon style game where you play games of MtG instead of Pokemon battles to aquire new cards. Like you encounter a minotaur and they play a red minotaur themed aggro deck, defeat him and you get him as a card. Add elements of exploration, towns where you can trade for new cards, other wizards and Planeswalkers to challenge you. Make the decks 40 cards and vintage legality, and single player only, so that it doesn't compete with Magic Arena.
Would be great
I'll defend Magic Legends only so far as what it COULD have been. I rememebr being unimpressed by what it actually was though. But I think the idea is solid enough
Duels of the Planeswalker could do well by just being allowed back on Steam, it was fantastic fun! 😅
Yeah, I'd much rather an updated version of that than Arena
@@RedBobcatGames i think they're different beasts.
Duels of the planes walkers is a decent campaign with a bit of multiplayer with a curated card pool, which could be fun if it came out yearly, or every two years.
Arena is supposed to bridge the gap between standard players and MTGO... Or the other way round, and it fails at both.
It wouldn't be hard to bring out new duels of the planes walker games like new FIFA games, or better yet, as yearly DLC seasons added.
Arena has a lot of work to do, of it's to become MTGO but pretty and stylish.
Great video! I love the lore of MtG and it’s definitely a shame they’ve had so much trouble making proper adaptations.
I’d call the original Planeswalker novels (agents of artifice, purifying fire, test of metal) as well as the planeswalker comics tie-ins. They weren’t really part of a specific set release like the older books were from what I remember.
It was only after this went up that I remember the comics existed. Which is such an annoyance to forget something like that haha
You did miss Magic the Gathering Puzzle Quest which still exists!
I'm only just learning about that now. Is it good?
@@RedBobcatGames fun if you like stupid combos, not fun if you want normal puzzle quest/magic. The cards TRY to approximate mtg mechanics most of the time. One of the best cards in it is bfz bulk rare Prisim Array
Warhammer books are actually really damn good a lot of the time. Even if you don't really know anything about the setting I recommend reading some of them.
The authors I'd currently recommend most are propably Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Robert Rath, Nate Crowley and Mike Brooks. Almost everything they write is absolutely peak
Took an hour ride with a friend who was listening to the Nightlords Omnibus audiobook. When we got to where we were going, we drove around the block several times to allow the chapter to wrap up.
I need to get into them. I hear they're really good
@@RedBobcatGames Late response but Warhammer books are a big reason why people collect specific armies in the tabletop game. As part of the 9th edition launch of Warhammer 40k, Games Workshop did a huge refresh of the Necron model lineup and did some expanding/retconning of their lore/plot to make them way more interesting and dynamic.
Black Library published The Infinite and The Divine as well as The Twice-Dead King series to tie in with this refresh. The adjustment to Necron lore/plot allowed for the creation of both books but that's not the reason why both were so successful. Its the story and I can tell you that the The Infinite and The Divine would still be a fantasticly funny book with some incredibly touching moments even if you didn't know anything about Warhammer 40k. That book 100% pushed Necron models off the shelf by making them interesting to people.
Which brings me to MTG's major problem: they have perfectly good lore, plot and worldbuilding but the stories are middling at best. Case in point: how many people collect plainswalkers cards, despite their huge focus throughout sets over time?
Unlike One Piece or Pokemon, the entire value of a Liliana Vess or Gideon Jura plainswalker card is 1:1 tied to their playability in paper Magic. There's no emotional investment in these characters despite Wizards spending so much time and effort trying to build them into pillars of their IP.
They're in a negative spiral that has led them to lean on Universes Beyond for growth since the stories being published are too weak to stand on their own without the MTG IP generating interest but the MTG IP is too weak to warrant further investment into ensuring the stories being told are actually strong enough to growth the MTG IP. The way to break out of it was to spend time and money to consistently put out strong supplementary products that weren't tied to any specific set but it seems any hope of this is dead outside of that Netflix TV show.
To bring it back to Black Library, a lot of the stuff being published by Black Library aren't always there to push models. A lot of it is just published for the sake of cultivating interest in the IP. I think this gives good writers a lot of leeway to actually write good strong stories that would stand on their own without the Warhammer IP being attached to it. The First Heretic, for instance, is literally just a book about people suffering from a crisis of faith and discussion about the nature and importance of faith; the absolute worst parts of the book are when it has to fit specific parts of pre-existing canon/lore.
There was an mtg spinoff game called magic spellslingers that you missed. Not surprised you missed it though since it came out in 2020 and had absolutely no marketing surrounding it. I only found out about it in 2022 myself and it shut down just this year.
Was that the game with robo-Gideon?
To be fair, Magic Spellslingers was a shit Hearthstone clone >6 years after Hearthstone first appeared. It just wasn't a good idea in the first place.
Wait, that does ring a bell. But when i think about it all I can picture is Mana Strike
It should either be an anthology of the individual stories of various planes or a retelling of the story of Nicol Bolas and the gatewatch.
Yes, but why stop there? Do that first and then give us a bit of everything else too!
i have to say, tie ins are genuinely something that do wonders for fostering a community, i saw arcane and it led to me becoming a league player and spending like 2000ish hours on league. whereas the only reason i really got into magic and had an on again/off again relationship with it was because my friends got me into it. there really is just no other fanbase in the ip outside of the card game (the lore community are kinda working with scraps these days) whereas you compare that to league/ arcane and i have so many friends who are arcane fans but have never touched league, or most of my league group got into league because of arcane. a tie in is a powerful thing and i hope wotc can see that
Red Bobcat, Scrap Fanatic!
I remember thinking a similar thought a few months ago when my buddy built a kethek deck.
I thought that it looked like it was designed to be a boss in a video game, like something you'd see meandering an open world picking up machines and processing them into much stronger phyrexians. And then I realized, there's no games where you can play in the Magic universe. It's not an IP itself it's just a game and it's like wotc want to keep it that way for some reason.
Yeah, I have some ideas for games that I'll list in a video at some point. But honestly the thought they don't make them is madness to me!
If I remember correctly, WOTC did have a mildly successful cartoon for one of its other games back in 2002: Duel Masters. It was a tie-in cartoon for a card game that was like magic but a little different. It made use of "shields" instead of life points (the shields being face down cards from your deck). Whenever a creature hit you, you added one of your shields to your hand, turning the attack into card advantage to help you turn things around. It was a pretty neat little system.
It was silly, but I enjoyed it enough to buy two starter decks way back when.
Shame that Magic's story these days is so terrible that it may a well not exist. Duskmourn as random horror themed cards is way better than Duskmourn as a story.
The game is still alive and well, and in fact more popular than Magic in Japan. Aside from the original Duel Masters, they tried re-inreoducing it as Kaijudo which also failed in the West.
Duel Masters wasn't really a WOTC thing though, they only purchased English localisation rights. It was already a successful media project in Japan before then, as these things always are. There are 880-ish total episodes of various Duel Masters anime in Japan, and WOTC dropped its involvement after 2 years and about 100 episodes.
@@yurisei6732 Absolutely not. WOTC was (and still is) indeed the developer of both Duel Masters and Kaijudo: Rise of the Duel Masters. It is the opposite of what you are saying. The distribution in Japan is handled by Takara Tomy.
Yeah, as I understand WotC even intended the games to cross over. That's why Magic cards say "Deckmaster" on the back
The Black Library has many stories about skaven and other people that punch their ratty little noses in and that is definitely the biggest selling point.
Someone else a long while back mentioned that lorekeeping and set-tie-in stories should be part of the marketing budget, and what you’ve spelled out in the latter part of the video really proves that point, I think.
Yeah, I'd love to see it done too. Some ties in I can imagine would be fantastic. I'm quite looking forward to pitching the ideas in the next video
I think the problem is that WotC doesn't trully sees the human value to the IP
The MTG Diablo-like had core issues, but it was clear that the director had little idea of MtG and only wanted some "aesthetic" so fans would be happy.
For magic books, I feel like they only see it as the promotional thing of the event (or author), they dont care the writer is mediocre at best and has half readed magic lore, they want and need a book for War of The Spark and it's future and call it a day. ((Also it feels pretty clear they wanted to cut down on writers for the weekly narratives attached to sets))
Let's look at some other nerdy IP, let's see, oh what's that? Games Workshop famous IP Warhammer 40K
Let me see ¿Do you have book tie ins? What? A lot? Like a full division only to manage writers for books, rulebooks and all plots? With one of the largest (if not THE largest) sci fi saga of The Horus Heresy ? Where you seek famous authors interested in the IP and let inside workers alike try out books for your IP? That there's a big part of the community that only reads the books and even then they promote the IP like butter? And that you got motherfucking Henry Cavill helping GW get a deal with Amazon TV? Welp that's something
With the videogames, I feel WotC only sees value in the "let's make players give us 5 to 15 bucks a month with the happy whales" rather than "make them pay 30$ once"
Like even if you want to keep it in the card system, PLEASE WOTC GIVE ME A ROGUE LIKE WHERE I DRAFT A DECK AND PLAY GAMES AGAIN AI
What I find criminal, is that there's a Magic The Gathering manga that it took it ITS WHOLE RUN to gain the interest of WotC, with some infimal marketing and promotional cards with the official english translation. MAKE A MANGA OUT OF IT
And just to be clear, the manga is "two teenagers play magic, anime slice of life shenanigans happens, nothing out of this world, not big bads, no shadow dimension, only teenagers deciding that a magic duel is the best way to decide who proposses to the girl
Also I forgot to comment, but Wizards FUCK IT UP hard with Brandon Sanderson (Acording to rumors, neither WotC nor Brandon seem to have put a clear statement)
Wizards approached Brandon to write a book for them, and he agreed with the condition that they would make the book available for free on their website. A few years after he wrote it, Wizards were preparing to release a physical version of the book so they took down the free electronic version from their website.
And if you live under a rock, let me tell you, Brandon Sanderson is one of the most famous writers of today's time, I feel like movies/TV adaptations of his books are a matter of time. And to be clear BRANDON IS A HUGE MTG FAN AND PLAYER, motherfucker has its own Cube Draft, which was used in a Command Zone episode you can watch.
While I doubt he would be open to write a giant saga of MTG books ((he's already full time writing 4 books a year)) I bet he would be willing to help write some novellas to introduce the multiverse, and even some of the already existing characters for newer people, while putting his little ideas in canon. And a MTG x Cosmere set would've sold like butter, but WotC seems unnable to not fuck it up
I was unaware of the Manga, that's something I'll have to check out. And the idea of a rogue like! YES PLEASE! I've never played one, but I know Magic put out those special decks designed to played against solo. I'd love to give that a go at some point
Regarding the singleplayer drafting game - I 100% agree. In fact I mainly play magic on simulator because there it lets me play a singleplayer progression mode. Meanwhile last week I bought - on sale, on steam - an actual yu-gi-oh game that offers that, plus draft mode, story mode and multiplayer (altho I suspect master duel has ecliped that side of it now).
Poor M:tG Battlegrounds gettting forgotten again... Makes me sad.
Preach, that game was really fun.
Is that the board game? I have played one, and somehow both included an image of the Jace mini from it in this video, but also forgot to mention it at all anywhere else
@@RedBobcatGames nope. It's a fighting style duels game where you cast from a limited set of spells. It's actually pretty good. Still have the CD-ROM.
Worth it to search for a video of it some day I think.
I know this will probably get me hate, especially for someone whose only experience is pokemon Unite, but this franchise would be set up perfectly if it wanted to enter the MOBA scene. The “champions”, items, maps, and lore are already there. Planeswalkers can be the champions and you can incorporate a card system where you can only use cards that matches your Planeswalkers color.
I think it would be more expensive and less unique to go the 3D route Smite, Predecessor, and Deadlock went. Just do a top down MOBA like League or DOTA. Worse case scenario it’s a blatant cash grab with bare minimum mechanics like Unite. If League and DOTA can make a card game….why can’t Magic have a MOBA?
Unsure why that would get you hate, because people really LOVE those games. I'd give a Magic MOBA a go for sure!
They could even do small stuff to improve player's interaction with the lore. They could do something very similar to Duels of the Planeswalkers, but with actual lore instead of rancom decks.
Imagine an event in MtG Arena, or MtG Online, which is War of the Spark:
1) You must bring a deck with gatewatch planeswalkers.
2) You fight an Amass eternals deck, with some God Eternals, and Liliana.
3) Fight a Gruul deck and an Azorius (Dovin Baan) deck.
4) Fight Nicol Bolas.
Instant lore. Bam.
I agree, theres so much lore for them to work with how hard can it be to make a film or series or a video game
Very hard apparently
I will say I have never touched the 40K game but at one point I was so into the Magic Phyrexian Lore that I wanted more, and there wasn't any more, so I asked people for books with similar vibes and many 40K books were suggested, and I read 1 or 2 and they were great but then life lifed and I haven't picked them back up but I will at some point. Still no plans to play the game but I will read more of their Lore. (this was before our latest Phyrexian set)
Also as to communication from company's be glad we get explanations, even full articles, about bannings. Because in Yu-Gi-Oh you don't get a word of their thoughts or reasoning about the bans. They just release the list. (as far as I know)
Yeah, that's what I understand too. WotC are at least good like that
A JRPG would be cool in the Magic world. A linear character-based story that would make the player well acquainted with its main characters and explore all the different planes, and spells and monsters from the cards, that you acquire exploring these planes. I think the over-the-top style of JRPGs are well in tune with modern Magic.
Seeing monsters on other planes and then summoning them yourself could work a bit like the GFs did in FF8
1.) "manga first"? No no no; Pokemon was a *video game* before it was anything else, and even then, any proper narrative in a manga came after the anime exploded. Its greater appeal is certainly derived from the anime's long-term viability, but trying to divorce Pokemon from video games is like trying to divorce burn from monored.
2.) "Yugioh had a cartoon" These statements with regards to mythoi that reinvent themselves on the regular pain me. "Had A"? It's presently on its 8TH! More than that, depending on definition!
Feedback heard and taken on board
Warhammer did have a card game; Warhammer Conquest and it was glorious.
I played that Warhammer MMO once upon, and that was pretty rad too
Black Garden putting you off because of how much text rather than what the card itself does is very funny to me
In fairness I know very little about Yu-Gi-Oh
I do remember a pitch for a game that a random pod that I joined had. It was souls-like game with a plot similar to Deadpool kills the Marvel Universe, but you kill all legends.
Oh now that would be fun!
I think tie-in novels woule be great to get "back" to, I'm a nerd for all the games with lore books like Warhammer and Warcraft and such, and Magic, while it does have a pretty decent backlog, would benefit greatly from it
even more so, a quality TV show or a movie would go a long way. the live-action One Piece show managed to get me to watch One Piece, for crying out loud
most of all, for me, a show or a movie would give me a way to get my boyfriend closer to this hobby. I talk at him enough about Magic so that he can even semi respond and hold a conversation about some aspects of it, but he's disinterested in playing it. if we could watch a show together and talk about it, that would be so fun!
Yeah, exactly that. And you're not alone, this could potentially bring in soo many new players too
There's a really good video by Raycevick called "Im jealous of Warhammer" that is tangential to this topic: how GW licenses their IP out to game studios, who flood the market with warhammer games. And even if those games are mostly butts, it doesn't discourage people from the IP at large, but gives them more and more opportunities to find an entry point to the setting.
If you put out enough MEDIA, some of that MEDIA will be good, and will earn you new fans. Worth a viewing.
I'll check it out, thank you
Funnily enough this video awakened a memory of me playing MtG: Tactics which i greatly enjoyed
I'm unfamiliar with it. It sounds like a GBA game
That's why I'm loving the new mtg manga being localized here in the states. "Destroy all humans, they can't be regenerated"
I've heard of this, I need to check it out
Mate your videos is just so good.
Thank you very much
I miss Legends
I really liked the concept for it, would love to see it done justice
There is a videogame from the late 90s titled "Magic: The Gathering", but is commonly called "Shandalar", where the entire game is just walking around and dueling opponents. The game feels a lot like a beta version of MTGO. Even had Sid Meier as a designer for the game. It can be downloaded for free from archive websites since it is abandonware. Some fans even modified the game to include cards printed as recently as 2015.
There is also the Duels of the Planeswalkers boardgame, which is somewhat fun to play, at least a couple of times, but the biggest downside of it is you and your friends are actively fighting each other in a free for all deathmatch.
To be I know a few boardgames for Magic, but just forgot them here. For Shandalar though, i think it's too old to count as being in the zeitgeist so didn't include it (though I wasn't 100% on that)
@@RedBobcatGames I think it not being in the zeitgeist really just has to do with WotC never making another game like it. (I do not consider the Duels of the Planeswalkers games from 2010-2013 to be even remotely comparable to Shandalar)
Makes me think of the ''Destroy all humans. They can't be regenerated'' manga
I've seen a couple of comments about that. I'll have to check it out. Is it good?
@@RedBobcatGames Enjoyed reading it myself, even made me curious enough to give magic a chance. Worth a try, would be interesting to hear what you think about it too
I think the lack of Magic Tie-ins, at least recently, is in part a result of being part of Hasbro. Hasbro has over decades much success with tie-ins, but that has changed lately. Many of their properties lately have profit wise stalled, likely do to recessions and people buying less toys when you have the internet(and related products) as kids entertainment. Many of the tie-ins alone are made at a loss, as you want to sell the toy, not the show. Magic on the other hand is still very profitable maybe because less money is used to create tie-ins(or that it's printed cardboard in a plastic booster and it's value is arbitrary/prone to speculative forces). Now Games Workshop has a different tie-in strategy. It only directly finances the books, comics and some of the merch, as their own animated shows(of witch you have most likely never heard thanks to being only on GWs own streaming platform and not really making a splash outside of the controversy of threating to sue fan animators if they produce free advertisement for their products). The video games aren't getting money from GW, instead they offer the license for little to nothing and only provide mandatory brand oversite and veto rights. It makes for cheap advertising and strengthens the brand(if the tie-in product is good that is. GW has had some bad experiences in the past with low afford games). I'm not sure where I going with this but I hope it's informative. Also Black Library book quality is wonky. Some are really good, but a lot of them are just meh. You can only sit thru so many generic Space Marine fight scenes before you get tired and the barrier to entry is high with all the specialized language and terms.
Reading your comment reminded of how a few years back Hasbro bought that entertainment company to make movies, put out a single film and because it only did fine at the box office they sold the company off. Madness
@@RedBobcatGames that's like if you play a combo in a game, it wins you the game, but because you didn't go infinite you just abandon the deck entirely
I’ve been wanting novels for years now. Many people don’t know the lore because it’s on a website rather than a book
A game as simple as a side scroller or more complicated like an action game (Space Marine 2) would be fun and I think draw in people. But more than likely a hero “shooter” like Overwatch would be more likely
More toys and fun stuff like that would have people see and want to be apart of the world
The problem is that they released a couple of novels that were panned for being bad, and WotC took that to mean that people simply don't like novels.
Yeah, realistically the lesson should be what I've said here. "Focus on the lore and make better novels". Real shame
Honestly for how famous DnD is for it to get one pretty ok movie and a good game in 50 years seems like Wizards is just bad with handling its IP in general.
Yeah, and I actually really liked that movie. It came out when the world was in a bit of a weird place, so I'm not surprised it didn't do well
I'd like a bring up a much smaller franchise than any mentioned here, but I think it might have valuable experience for MTG to consider.
Shadowverse began as a digital Heartstone like TCG. It's original purpose was to be a side project that is also an exucse to reuse art from Cygames's (developer) other properties. The game from launch also has a story mode that features original characters and stories(about people traveling and living across the multiverse resolving the issues and conflicts of each world and stopping Thanos level deities from killing everyone).
The card sets are based on other Cygames's properties(like Princess Connect Grandblue Fantasy, Rise of Bahamut), on the previously mentioned story mode and eventually they started making sets with settings, characters and lore not featured anywhere else.
But on their 6th year Cygames have launched a Yugioh-like anime "Shadowverse" with teenagers playing the card game. The game depicted in the anime featured cardpool of the first sets with original cards that serve as ace monsters likw YGO's Dark Magician and Blue-eyes White Dragon.(it's also worth mentioning that Shadowverse standart format is rotation and the sets released during this time had no tie-ins with the anime as it airing). The anime itself I believe isn't cannon to the lore of Shadowverse CCG, but it is used in the anime as part of the plot. (Ex: the main villain of the anime made a deal with one of those deities and some of the main characted of the story mode guided the anime heroes to victory)
After the series concluded they have released a separate RPG adaption of the anime that depicts the gameplay accurate to the anime, featuring cards depicted in the anime. And THEN they have released a Standart legal set centered around anime cards, that have been reworked to - completly powercreep the format- be viable to in the metagame of the time.
I think it all worked. Even though the anime itself was terrible, it definetly was hype enough for me to notice and actually try the game.
And then they made a sequel series (Shadowverse Flame) that was actually very good and ignited even more intrest in Shadowverse. And the fact that they have began a physical adaptation of the digital game definetly helped too.
Not arguing that MTG should drop the Netflix series and do an animated children orianted show with a tie-in standart legal release, but an option has prooven itself to be able to work, if handled properly
Yeah I agree. I think they could do both, and more honestly
They did book tie-ins for forever, but people don't read anymore xD The original series was at least 13 books long, and it was just stories that were loosely tied to the game. The first one is actually called Arena, and it's friggin' great. Also, if the books for Magic aren't tie ins to the game because they are intrinsically linked through the IP, then YuGiOh's animated series isn't a tie-in for the card game xD
god magic legends is a throooow back I played the beta on it and yeah the micro transactions were bonkers.
The game used a like booster pack system and all your spells were from these booster packs and simi sorta like commander you could use spells that were within your hero color identity, but how do you get a hero? well extremely rarely from the booster packs ofcourse, like talking 200$ rarely. They then begrudgingly gave you the chance to get it from the battle pass if you finished it, but if you didnt complete the entire battle pass in time? well then 200$ boosters is the only way to play a black/blue hero
I only vaugly rememebr playing it, but yeah that does all sound about right. Gross
It is pretty astonishing huh, I guess I never really thought about how surprising it is that they have this truly expansive lore and well established well known and beloved characters and they've done little to nothing with them.
Yeah, it's crazy. And they seem so focused on making as much money as possible, I don't know why they don't do more
I think it has to do with long-term versus short-term thinking. All of the points you bring up are very vital if you want to grow a brand over the next decade. Hasbro isn't thinking in terms of decades, they are thinking in terms of next fiscal quarter.
@@jiffyb333 Yeah, what makes money now is more important even if it means less money tomorrow. Crazy really
To be fair, technically, the yugioh card game, started as a tie-in to the original anime and manga, not the other way around, but obviously, when the card game became as overwhelmingly popular as it did, they shifted focus REAL FAST to the card game, and now it's pretty much the main thing.
Also funny how the first episode of duel monsters aired at almost my exact birthdate, except the anime came out 1 year later than me, lol.
And yeah, considering that before the TCG, Pokemon was already very well established, first with the release of the games, then the manga, and then the anime, and pokemania was in full force in the 90's, it's no wonder the TCG exploded as it did. I mean Pokemon is literally one of, if not THE SINGLE MOST PROFITABLE FRANCHISE IN THE PLANET! THAT THING PRINTS MONEY!
Yeah, you're right. And I believe given some love and attention to the lore, Magic could be in a similar situation
"Im lazy" *looking at the Serialisation video where you cover several cards and all their printings* "press X to doubt"
Haha, fair. I FEEL lazy!
They released a crappy, rushed novel that was rightfully bashed for many reasons, and their takeaway from it was that people just don't like novels.
This is one of the core issues. They learn the wrong lessons from things. They seem to think that Magic is this pure, sacred thing that can do no wrong, and when something DOES go wrong, it's not because of anything to do with Magic itself, no, it's the surrounding circumstance that's the issue.
It doesn't help that the story, quite frankly, sucks, and has for a decade now at the VERY least. Hard to create a quality product based on lore that isn't itself much quality.
Yeah, completely my point. You're right, and I believe if they put the lore front and foremost then the rest of it would fall into place
it's quite interesting to note that DnD, the other game by WOTC, has like, so many successful tie-ins? a recent blockbuster movie, amazing videogames... ok that's what I can think of, but it is more than magic!
now, yes, DnD has more critical mass of a zeitgeist, which is why the financing of these big projects was possible (from the investor's point of view, anyways), but I can't imagine Magic is not at such a point, too? especially with the tie-in DnD settings that some people mentioned, like Strixhaven. truly, what is Wizards doing
Yeah, I just don't get it either
Hey Red you left out the mobile game: Magic Puzzle Quest. It's the strange MTG version of Candy Crush...
I've not heard of it, but if I had to guess I'd assume it's both not very good and yet makes millions of dollars. How close am I?
@@RedBobcatGames 🤣 You're too close!!!
There is also a long running comic series, however its very apparent that wotc or hasbro puts pretty significant restrictions on the writers which leaves them feeling a little safe
Yeah, I completely forgot about it till after this video went live. Real slap my forehead moment
Yes, better lore will make more money in the long term, but that's the problem: the long term, WOTC's focus is on the short term in order to satisfy Hasbro's demands, so long term be damned
Sadly, very very true
We won't see planeswalkers in Warhammer since gw still has some respect for the identity of their ip. In Warhammer everyone knows the world sells the toys, the actual game itself is quite bad but magic as a game is really fun so they try to get people to play the game through ip crossovers knowing they'll stay.
Still, I'd like to see some more tie in stuff though. Maybe this Netflix show is a start to that
This video couldn't have come at a better time. I've been thinking about the same thing but lack the ability to explain it as well as you could. For me: I enjoyed collecting Pokemon as a kid more than playing it as a TCG; after childhood I grew out of collecting it and playing it. Now I don't even know how to play it. Yugioh was the same, I liked it into young adulthood but lost interest. Now I have coworkers that still play but I have a hard time understanding modern yugioh compared to original old yugioh (gen 1). My history with Magic the Gathering only started recently and it was via other friends playing it. I know little to NOTHING about the lore. I know a lot of MtG hate universes beyond but I like it since I know those IPs and lores better than MtG's own IPs and lore. I've been playing Magic the Gathering for maybe a decade now and still know very little about it outside of EDH/Commander. Which old MtG fans hate because this format has "ruined" (in their opinion) the standard format of MtG.
I don't hate commander, it's what I play most. But I will agree WotC's attention to it has somewhat ruined basically every other format. Also, fun fact about the timing of this video. It was like 75% the way through production when the Commander Bannings news dropped and I decided to delay it to work on the videos I did about that. This should have come out like a month ago!
Those YuGiOh Duel Disks will destroy your cards faster than anything. xD I loved YuGiOh when it was the old Egyptian theme, then as soon as the pharaoh was gone man did it die fast... :^)
Forbidden Memories, Dark Duel Stories, and The Scared Cards are really good games though. The other games can be pretty rough or boring at times, Reshef of Destruction is for masochists...
Do they still work if you sleeve the cards? Will that save them?
@@RedBobcatGames Naw, to hold the cards in place you gotta slip the corners of your cards under little plastic edges which just chew them up.
@@DigitalinDaniel they should probably make duel disks that fits sleeved cards, that would be really cool (if they haven't already that is).
@@Liliana_the_ghost_cat Bandai Proplica do make newer ones that fit sleeved cards, but its... I guess idk how to explain it... the hard plastic is pinching the corners of your cards sleeved or not.
@@DigitalinDaniel oh wow
I recently read a comment that said: yugioh cards are like fighting game characters, your deck has so much personality and lore attached to it and the game is so complex that you get to be known as the "blue eyes" guy for example.
That comes with the drawback that alot of decks are "xenophobic" and do not allow for other strategies outside of the intended one. Something I noticed while getting into mtg is that the magic playerbase loves deconstructing cards and their mechanics and I feel like this crashes with that "deck lore theme", I wouldnt know a solution atleast except doubling down on "what color should do what"
Btw im not gonna shill but my "own warhammer lore" has strong influences from Phyrexia since it is as you said, they are a perfect fit. Warhammer greatly encourages writing your own stories and making up your own "perfect war", its one of the reasons why there is so much "loose" lore
I think leaning into creature types, lords and anthems could be a way to go? Especially if they're tied to a mechanic. For instance, my friend runs a Phyrexian Poison deck which feels very flavourful. Another has an Ikoria Mutate deck which I think works too
@@RedBobcatGames Poison was next on my list because I want rush. But I didn't know about mutate, just reading the cards was fun already + it hopefully fixes my untreated Companion Trauma (It was the last time I played/took a break). Based on the Precon, I assume, with the +1+1 cards replaced by beautiful, mutating children?
Currently in the process of building a Demon deck based on Belakor from the Precon and it feels like actually selling your HP and soul to demons in order to go brrrr. Sheoldred would be a perfect fit in effect wise, but not thematically, but I am finding my peace with that. Especially after playing against Core Augur for the first time.
Sheoldred theme doesnt fit because the last thing you should know when selling your soul is that "death is not the end" like bro, dont give them hope!
Ha! That sort fo thinking is why I love flavour decks so much!
Manastrike looks like it was supposed to be a Clash Royale clone.
Yeah, it was VERY much a mobile game in every sense of the word
Magic media should be about people playing the card game, not about what the cards depict.
I think we can have both honestly. There's room for a bit of everything
Another example similar to Yu-Gi-Oh would be WOTC's own attempt at cracking the Japanese market, made in collaboration with Takara Tomy: Duel Masters. Concieved as a stepping stone for children to into TCGs (thus, Magic eventually), it was designed as a card game first but also released in par with both a manga and an anime, both of which lasted for more than a decade (and with that, more merchandise that they could sell to children). Duel Masters remains one of Japan's most successful card games ever, only now losing ground to newcommers such as thr One Piece Card Game.
(The less we talk about the botched attempt at release the game outside of Japan, the better).
Yeah, I had heard that before. As far as I understand, that's why magic cards say Deckmaster on the back of them
@@RedBobcatGames I think I heard there were other Deckmaster games initially but MTG was the only one or at least the main one that survived
The interesting thing about the big 3 is that Magic is the only one that started as a card game. Pokemon started as a video game. Yugioh started as a manga about high school kids playing all kinds of games with occult elements bleeding in.
Yugioh was high-jacked by its card game, the entire story warping around it because it was so popular even though it was only meant to be a bare bones homage to Magic for a single chapter. The card game itself was so bad they effectively needed to add more and more mechanics that completely obliterated the core game and twisted it into something unrecognizable, but at least it's fun now.
The thing that sets Magic apart to me is actually the lore. The cards in yugioh started out having very little lore, it was just the game they played in the show. It had whatever they wanted in it. Since archetypes were introduced there's some lore around the individual groups but there's no lore around how they actually all got together. There's no name for the world the monsters are from. It's all nebulous concepts about a story that happens to a particular character on a handful of cards floating off on its own. Pokemon lore is obviously just the game lore. I don't believe the card game bothers to introduce anything unique.
So for Magic to have such a rich setting for the cards is a bit of an outlier for successful cards games and I think it really should lean into it now. This show is hopefully a start but there are more so many stories that can be adapted into all sorts of games. Every game seems to try to be its own thing instead of being a way to experience an iconic part of the story. Imagine a Weatherlight JRPG, a Mirrodin Besieged RTS, a western RPG set in Ravnica, a horror game or soulslike in Innistrad. There's a lot of untapped potential.
I agree, and also you were right. That was interesting!
honestly the problem with a lot of the tie in material is that is just the most horribly mismanaged thing. the 2 games were horribly monetized with one of them being barely fully released and the other still in beta, the show had issue due to the constant changes to the story line which was basically shattered after the internal team that wrote a lot of the story for wizards (that were free)was thrown out to try to sell books which one was so bad that everyone basically jumped out and it never recovered. I remember watching the professor a long time ago talking about this excate subject and it really is a internal problem where unless it profitable on it own then it not worth it to them.
Yeah, you're right. I think a scatter shot approach would work best. Liscence Magic out to 100 developers, and even if only 1 game out of that is good then people will soon forget the 99. And gaming specifically is huge, and could make more than enough money to cover all of it. Look at Baulder's Gate 3 for example
Would you say the handful of dnd setting books set in magic the gathering planes would count as tie ins? There's books to help you run games set in Ravnica, Theros and Strixhaven, full of lore and mechanics to enable spells, ancestries and abilities themed to each plane. Idk where the boundaries of crossover and tie-in end but this being a primarily dnd facing product that uses magic IP definitely would help bring dnd players to magic, if only to learn the source material for why silvery barbs is such an obnoxious spell.
Oooooh, I had completely forgotten about those! And I literally ran an Innistrad campaign once too! Yes, I would count those as tie ins, and I LOVED THEM. I wish we had more stuff like that!
I couldn't tell you a single aspect of any of the character's personality, and I've been playing for years.
Chandra's personality is "every fire-based character you've ever seen in anything ever".
Jace's personality is "Whatever the writers decided to do with him this month".
Kaya's personality is "Doing things WotC hope you think are cool so that you'll think she's cool".
I could go on, but I'm sure you get the idea.
Liliana has depth. I actually really like the turn of her being like "Forget this, I'm going to change my name and become a teacher". I think the best planeswalker might be Arlinn Kord though? Maybe, I may change my mind on this
The old mtg comics were really cool, I've found a few at bookstores
I had completely forgotten about those when I made this. Poor old Dack Fayden
I think part of the issue is the overall aesthetic of MtG. Unlike Pokemon and Yugioh, the creatures and characters are depicted in a realistic style that doesn't translate to animation. It could be done in a style similar to Arcane, but that series took a lot of time and money to pull off--far more than the anime of the other series. Live action would be...risky. For every IP like LotR or GoT (at least the first 6-7 seasons of it) that can get gritty fantasy right, there are many more that don't handle it nearly as well. Everything from the story to the characters to the visuals has to be on-point, or you end up with debacles like RoP, Halo, or WoT. As you noted, WotC has backed off from the lore considerably, which makes me think they don't have the creative resources on that front. Storytelling as a whole has largely taken a hit the past six years or so, and even classic IPs with decades of fandom aren't faring so well.
I appreciate the desire and attempt to let WotC know the lore matters, and that fans of the game would love to spend time exploring the world in a more in-depth fashion. I also think you're right that MtG needs at least one--if not two--other sizable media endeavors to really bump the brand into the next level. I just get the feeling that WotC never really got behind the lore; it exists solely as a supplement, not a focus. If it can sell more cards, it's worth some time/effort, but investing any real assets into something that isn't the game proper doesn't seem to be enticing. Unfortunately creative bankruptcy leads to the things like UB, which is another clear avoidance of crafting characters and a world, and instead relying on the cards themselves to bring more eyes to the franchise. For what WotC paid for all these licenses, they could have put money into a film or show, or even a series of books or comics. Their choice to go this route has more/less made their future intentions painfully clear.
People have mentioned "Destroy All Humans. They Can be Regenerated", and I believe stuff like that it's the way to go. It was originally a one-shot and people liked it so much it turned into a series. One can argue the series isn't really about Magic, but I wholeheartedly disagree. It is about the social aspect of Magic, the friends we make, and how cringy we can be sometimes trying to feel cool. Also about struggling to find combos or fix weaknesses within a deck. A lore series would be cool, but Kinda hard to do if the goal is to keep up with current sets and stuff.
Well you say that, but they kinda have everything they need to make it work. The cards all have new art for each set, and they have lore come out in time too. I think given a bit more love and attention to the lore, I don't see why it couldn't work
I really want to see a japanese anime style Magic anime. It should follow somewhat to the card game, kinda like yugioh. But perhaps modified slightly for a nice viewing experience.
The potential for the over the top VFX and animation is limitless. It can also be an original storyline too.
Yeah, and imagine the tie in games we'd get. I'd play magic in VR where the creatures are summoned in front of me! That sounds sick!
If WoTC ever hired Aaron Dempsey Bowden to write a MTG book, i might actually care about lore. Played for years, know nothing about it because it's impossible to start learning without using a Wiki. If you want to get into Warhammer, everyone can tell you a single book to get you started, then you can build from there.
I don't know who that is, but I'm jealous the 40k has enough works that people can actually have a favourite author!
I got into MTG by playing demo of Microprose "Shandallar" game. :) But it was in 1997
I hadn't forgotten it, but I think it was so long ago that it's probably not in the Zeitgeist anymore
i dont need a tv show about my card game, i dont need cards depicting non magic stuff. im so fucking tired of this all encompassing "everything has to be everything" shit that is the current sphere of pop culture. please let magic be magic.
I agree, and the current direction of the IP makes me sad.
For years i said "When they do freaking Marvel or StarWars cards, im out for good"...
But the flipside is that there needs to be an inflow of new players to keep the game alive.
And since WotC has shown that they cant make interesting enough things to do that without tie-ins and references, and the playerbase isnt doing it from the grassroots either - IP keyjaingling is sadly the best we have
In fairness, I kind of feel the same. But I think it wouldn't be as much of an issue if the general quality of televison was better currently better all around. Like, think about how The Office is still one of the most popular shows and they haven't made any new episodes of that in years. If there were enough solid tv shows, one about Magic wouldn't be so bad as you would have plenty of other options
Id die to live in a world where we had the MCU the magic cinematic universe
There was spell slingers was a mobile app that was like the hearthstone version of magic. But that also got canned.
There was also the arena of the planeswalkers board game with 2 sets and 1 expansion that i own. And i adore this game. But again they canceled it even though if they brought that back itd be my favorite aspect of mtg.
I cannot believe I forgot about the board game, and I even use a picture of the Jace mini in the vid too!
@RedBobcatGames i freaking loved that board game. I wish there was more expansions
Avacyn was a playable character if I remember, and I would LOVE to own it for myself for that reason alone
@RedBobcatGames no she was a summon. One each color had a legendary summon in the shadows of evil expansion
I have next to no access to warhammer here in Brazil, but i still enjoy warhammer solely based on the lore and some games
How's it going in Brazil for magic now that they've stopped supporting the language? I would imagine people have stopped playing. Has it had much of an effect on the game?
@@RedBobcatGames my city is rather small so cant say for the bigger picture but if you were already a heavily enfranchised player you kinda keep going, but it added a huge barrier for a already expansive and niche game.
It kinda stifles the growth, you continue with what you already had of players, but random people who sometimes tried it now don’t even give it a shot (i don’t blame them) on a sense its only downhill from here
@@RedBobcatGames there’s also a unintentional consequence, like some of my friends do not speak English but they could use the cards because after a while you start to understand what we call “magics english” a person would know enough words to know what the card did but the ever increasing amount of text in the cards make that no longer possible or at least way less viable
Ugh, that's all awful. I'm sorry to hear all that. I'm not a fan of cards with a lot of rules text in the first place, but having to understand them in another langauge would probably make me stop playing the game. Fingers crossed WotC change their mind at some point and start printing cards for you again
I see that before I join your Patreon, I'm goinm to need an exceedingly cool name. So far the best I have come up with is Frat Boy, the Odor That Permeates All Existence.
Hey, if it works!
Did part 2 ever come out?
Hasbro being a toy company wants MTG to appeal more to a younger demographic when the theme of the game was more mature since it’s origins this new shift in focus means the younger demographic doesn’t like or care about magic preferring pokemon while alienating long time magic fans that was there since the beginning
Sure, but Magic's not entierly too much for kids. Sure, certain elements would be over the line but there's enough stuff that tie-ins could work and still be for a younger audience. Kids can handle a little bit of some messed up stuff. Look at Animorphs for instance
Yugioh didnt start as a trading card game, it was originally essentialy ”what if the villian of SAW was the main character, putting people in ironic games to have them suffer come-uppance”
The game “yugioh” didnt show up in the manga untill like several volumes in, and it was an homage (i believe) to the author trying out and enjoying MTG and making a fun little knock off. Then the interest in that aspect of the story became so huge that the whole series morphed into this world obsessed with the game
The author didnt even figure out the rules of the TCG untill like. Way long after.
That's fun. I bet they never expected it to be as big as it is now either
Theres so much lore in Mtg they could do every tie in for decades. And if done properly they could surpass pokemon because Mtg (at least used to ) markets itself for a more mature audience.
But no. They botched every attempt they made. Hasbro being Hasbro should make this their priority instead of shoving sets and universes beyond down our throats
100%! Completely, yeah
Destroy All Humans. They Can't Be Regenerated. ongoing manga with 16 volumes (just started getting published in english).
I've heard of this. I still need to check it out
i don't really have anything to add (or remove?) to this conversation, but something i want to point out is that pokémon and yugioh as japanese companies they go under the "soft power kawaii" umbrella of what is the japanese government's decisions to make japan what has become today while the usa government spends their money to do more wars
Well now this has made me wonder about Loot who was introduced in OTJ. Maybe Loot was intened to be Magic's pikachu?
@@RedBobcatGames maybe, everyone wants to make their pikachu
Ye is a shame MTG doesn't really get out and do other projects. I could see like a RPG or story game being really easy to do and fun to play. Think unfortunately magics lore is just so dense that no one honestly can assemble it all, put it together in cohesive manner, and then make a new thing from it. Like I honestly think there is not a single person or place that all the lore of MTG sits, even in the company. Which is crazy to say, but it has been like 30+ years of lore going from the days of everything was kept in a filing cabinet or in the heads of the creators, to everything being a blog post on their site.
That being said it would be incredibly successful for them to dive into this, but also risky, which I think is why they avoid it.
An example of how successful it could be is Warhammer for sure. When the universe beyond for Warhammer came out I never knew anything about it, mostly ignored it. Then a year later I saw a commander from the set I wanted to build (Deathleaper, Terror Weapon) and since I like my decks having some lore relevant things in them I looked into the lore of the Tyranids. Read a ton of info online, watched videos etc.
Then recently the space marine game came out, my buddy bought it, loved it, then he starts talking the lore and the stuff going on in it with me. I bond over my lore knowledge of the Tyranids, come to now we are playing Rogue Trader together and loving the lore, etc. Hasn't gotten me to buy or play Warhammer yet, and I don't think I ever would seek it out due to the complexity, but maybe id buy a cool model or a poster or a shirt etc. My buddy already bought and painted a group of models. So.. yeah it would be cool if magic had that reach and it certainly can.
And to be fair, from a business stand point even if you haven't gotten into the game itself, you have seemingly got into a bunch of the other stuff surrounding it which I'm sure has been profitable for them. WotC seem so profit driven lately, it's amazing to me they're not making good tie-ins to make some extra cash!
You forgot magic shandalar as far as tie in games go for mtg
Kind of, but it's from so long ago I don't think it can really still be counted. It certainly isn't part of the zeitgeist any more
@RedBobcatGames very true I just love that game so much and love see it mentioned and pop up now and again. It hits the nostalgia for me in the best way.
I like all the Red Bobcat's videos
Why thank you very much!
I bought all the duels of the planeswalkers games when they each came out and now literally none of them work on modern machines. I want my money back.
The fact they're unavailable is rather odd. I can run 2013 and 2014 just fine on my xbox (can't say for PC versions but most likely runs like prepatched Fallout: New Vegas or TESIV: Oblivion, AKA like complete fucking shit)
@@cherry9787 I can install them and run them, but they just stop working. You'll get 2 turns into a game and it just stops progressing, forever locked in, without even being able to quit short of alt+f4.
To put my tin foil hat on, maybe they don't want to fix the issue to try and force peopel to play arena
Burning question here. Does Egg Boy, the Particle That Permeates All Existence ever post here? Do you know anything about him?
Amazing question, and I must admit I actually have no idea. There's some golden names on my Patreon though
My limited understanding of issues with producing movies and shows is that Hollywood and the greater movie world is a VERY complex world with a lot of private controlling interests. The end result is usually you have to sell your ideas and such to them and them allow them creative control or the film side will pull out entirely, so this screams to me of a power struggle over creative control between WotC and Hollywood. Thus strict knowledge of just Magic's history might not give you a full picture of the actual problem here.
The 'cautionary tale' people generally tend to point to is the 'Sheriff of Nottingham' script that turned into another Russel Crowe being a badass vehicle, but the more recent examples are things like the Witcher and Wheel of Time series where the showrunners think they can write a better story than the beloved source material. Personally I think they're clowns and as such I straight up don't watch movies or shows anymore, not through official platforms anyway.
Well WotC have a publishing arm, as I believe they now put out their own D&D books. Maybe if they start with printing their own novels / comic books any screen adaptation will at least have something to work from (perhaps)
@@RedBobcatGames I mean that is probably the exact point they are at, though. But what I imagine is happening is they've taken it to a studio for film adaptation who then handed it off to a screenwriter who then took liberties - and because the film industry is (apparently/allegedly) staffed by nepotism this screenwriter is being backed up by the studio execs against WotC's demands that they stick to certain plot points. Casting is supposedly an entirely new layer of the same nonsense, as well.
Cool cool cool. Gotta love Hollywood!
There was a MTG manga starring young Chandra, but I think that got axed pretty fast...
That's such a shame