Are Booster Packs Loot Boxes?

User avatar
pokken
Posts: 6283
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: he / him

Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Please understand when I say what the market will bear I mean within the very complex landscape of trying to grow a brand, maintain it for the long term, maintain a community, keep your distributors and retailers happy etc. I'm sorry if that was not clear.

User avatar
Card Slinger J
Nope Not Today
Posts: 384
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by Card Slinger J » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
I think the natural end state is some variant of wizards selling singles wholesale direct to vendors (e.g. gamestores) - and drafting moving mostly online. Every card in the history of the game available for order, longer delivery time, costs sustained by the wholesale cost from Wizards being based on demand for the card.

I have no idea if that will ever happen, and there are certainly a lot of issues with it to work out, but it's one potential end I can envision.

That's essentially what they're doing with Secret Lairs. And they could surely make it so certain cards are only available for certain time frames - or cost a premium when "out of print cycle" or whatever. Lots of ways to skin it.
That would make sense. Instead of Wizards of the Coast distributing booster boxes / sealed product to Local Game Stores (LGSs) regardless of whether or not they're a WPN store, LGS owners, employees, and consumers / players can select what card singles to acquire from Wizards of the Coast to sell to LGS consumers / players who need a place to play Paper Magic. The problem I see with this is that Wizards of the Coast could actually be publicly acknowledging the Secondary Market by distributing card singles to LGSs knowing their monetary value even though it greatly benefits the LGSs sustainability. That's why booster boxes / sealed product helps get around the Secondary Market due to their randomness factor (at least normally).

Now the question I have with this is how they'd manage the inventory to distribute these card singles to LGSs to sell to their consumers especially when it's more difficult to distribute Reserve List cards since they're not allowed to physically reprint them. People who already own Reserve List cards that are willing to let go of them aren't going to sell them to Wizards of the Coast when they're most likely going to go to someone like Rudy from Alpha Investments or Daniel Chang at Vintage MTG. Why? Because they know they're not going to get their money back from Wizards of the Coast by selling their Reserve List cards to them just to distribute to LGSs to sell to their consumers / players.
"Salvation is for those who are afraid of Hell. Spirituality is for those who have lived through it."

- Ralph Smart

User avatar
pokken
Posts: 6283
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: he / him

Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Card Slinger J wrote:
3 years ago
Now the question I have with this is how they'd manage the inventory to distribute these card singles to LGSs to sell to their consumers especially when it's more difficult to distribute Reserve List cards since they're not allowed to physically reprint th
My hypothetical assumption is that they would:
1) The first "print to order specific singles" set would estimate how many of each card would be demanded and then print those. Say 100 copies of Teferi, Time Raveler to every copy of Encase in Ice or whatever. Then take preorders on those cards, and based on where the preorder overruns happen, schedule a second print run and adjust prices.

2) "print to order" reprint "sets" would almost surely have to happen monthly or quarterly; LGS place all their orders for singles, WOTC prints them, then adjusts the price based off demand once the ordering window is closed and the next order starts.


There would need to be many adjustments to continue the collectible nature of the hobby, surely. You could do things like make limited edition prints that are only ever printed once (e.g. the showcase Eldraine stuff), or even make foils only available at during the initial print run of a card, etc.

Again I really do not present that as a fully fledged business model since there are a million factors to take into account. But I imagine Wizards selling singles would probably look something roughly like that, assuming they could get the whole order collating down somehow.

umtiger
Posts: 394
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

Card Slinger J wrote:
3 years ago
That would make sense. Instead of Wizards of the Coast distributing booster boxes / sealed product to Local Game Stores (LGSs) regardless of whether or not they're a WPN store, LGS owners, employees, and consumers / players can select what card singles to acquire from Wizards of the Coast to sell to LGS consumers / players who need a place to play Paper Magic. The problem I see with this is that Wizards of the Coast could actually be publicly acknowledging the Secondary Market by distributing card singles to LGSs knowing their monetary value even though it greatly benefits the LGSs sustainability. That's why booster boxes / sealed product helps get around the Secondary Market due to their randomness factor (at least normally).
Can't players already go to their LGS and pay money for the singles that they want to acquire? There is also a convenient online market place for this already as well.

Why is the current system not good enough? The current system is incredibly efficient.

User avatar
pokken
Posts: 6283
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: he / him

Post by pokken » 3 years ago

umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
Why is the current system not good enough? The current system is incredibly efficient.
At making a truly criminal amount of paper product and plastic waste and using up a comical number of man hours cracking boxes for singles. Sure :)

umtiger
Posts: 394
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
Why is the current system not good enough? The current system is incredibly efficient.
At making a truly criminal amount of paper product and plastic waste and using up a comical number of man hours cracking boxes for singles. Sure :)
You know that I mean the system is efficient at allocating cards to players.

If I read into it hard enough, I could surmise that you're essentially advocating for a digital only experience with no paper waste and people not using fossil fuels gather and play a luxury strategy game. /s :grin:

User avatar
pokken
Posts: 6283
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: he / him

Post by pokken » 3 years ago

umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
You know that I mean the system is efficient at allocating cards to players.

If I read into it hard enough, I could surmise that you're essentially advocating for a digital only experience with no paper waste and people not using fossil fuels gather and play a luxury strategy game. /s :grin:
I don't think the system is particularly efficient at getting cards into the hands of players; it takes likely millions of hours of labors of people cracking packs to get cards for people when the cards are printed in ratios that have nothing to do with the actual demand.

I'd advocate for them printing 100 copies of Teferi, Hero of Dominaria for every 1 copy of Slippery Scoundrel so they don't waste so much cardboard, printing, delivery, and labor hours.

The entire business models of major card resellers where they buy hundreds of boxes of each set, open them, throw away all the trash, and waste hours and hours sorting them, then mail them to consumers is wildly inefficient in almost every respect.

umtiger
Posts: 394
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
I don't think the system is particularly efficient at getting cards into the hands of players; it takes likely millions of hours of labors of people cracking packs to get cards for people when the cards are printed in ratios that have nothing to do with the actual demand.

I'd advocate for them printing 100 copies of Teferi, Hero of Dominaria for every 1 copy of Slippery Scoundrel so they don't waste so much cardboard, printing, delivery, and labor hours.

The entire business models of major card resellers where they buy hundreds of boxes of each set, open them, throw away all the trash, and waste hours and hours sorting them, then mail them to consumers is wildly inefficient in almost every respect.
I see now that you are using a different meaning for the word "efficient" than I am. By efficient, I mean that the price of a card accurately reflects the general demand of a card (an economics definition). You are using efficient as in less waste.

I don't understand how your proposed system is particularly helpful for any of the stakeholders in the community, especially in the long term. Have you considered the long-term effects of a system that you're proposing?

Often in discussions like these, players would like to argue for a way for the game to be less expensive and appeal less to only "enfranchised" players. I personally don't like the term "enfranchised" because it typically devolves into "haves" and "have nots" and for other reasons as well. Similar proposals to yours do come up a lot (printing singles on demand and direct sale) as a way to create more access to cards for less "enfranchised" players. However, I find it far from that.

Consider that only an "enfranchised" player would even know which cards to purchase in the first place. How do brand new players know which cards to buy if new products were mainly or even widely distributed as such? If this was the model, I would have never started to play this game in the first place.

Somewhere along the way, too many players stop having fun and enjoying their cards (and dare I say it, cracking packs). Then start to complain about the cards that they don't have. If WOTC only sells singles, I'm sure most of my current cards would just get power-creep'd out of playability and other consequences as well.

If you want to crusade against booster packs on the basis of efficiency and waste (the literal definition), there are some many more other things that are wasteful. And like I said, at that point, you'd be arguing for MTGO or Arena to replace paper MTG.

User avatar
pokken
Posts: 6283
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: he / him

Post by pokken » 3 years ago

umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
I see now that you are using a different meaning for the word "efficient" than I am. By efficient, I mean that the price of a card accurately reflects the general demand of a card (an economics definition).
It's not really efficient in that sense either. The price of the card accurately reflects the combination of demand and artificially constrained supply, combined with the artificial cost of buying tons of garbage in booster boxes you don't want (and no one wants), plus the tendency of people to hoard cards that are unlikely to be reprinted in standard, etc.

The current system with a huge lag between potential reprints allows a lot of market manipulation to happen. WOTC is constrained in their ability to resolve supply issues by the booster box model with huge lead time for new sets and so on (2 years?).
umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
If WOTC only sells singles, I'm sure most of my current cards would just get power-creep'd out of playability and other consequences as well.
Remember, with my system anyway they also make money selling the old cards - far more than they do now, since they don't wait and cash in on reprint equity - a game store could hypothetically place an order for a crate of Oracle of Mul Daya and sell those.

It's not *all* about physical waste, and I think playing paper cards socially in person has intrinsic value.

It's also about the ethics of the current system preying on people's dopamine receptors for opening packs, and the reprint equity rules on product creation situations where people are functionally priced out of playing certain cards not because the demand is so high but because the supply is constrained.

See Runed Halo and Auriok Champion for examples of just absurd historical prices because WOTC's model makes them so dang slow to respond to supply constraints.

umtiger
Posts: 394
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
It's not really efficient in that sense either. The price of the card accurately reflects the combination of demand and artificially constrained supply, combined with the artificial cost of buying tons of garbage in booster boxes you don't want (and no one wants), plus the tendency of people to hoard cards that are unlikely to be reprinted in standard, etc.
Price as a method of allocation of cards through the mechanism of secondary market is extremely efficient. Yes, there is a lot going on that's complicated but I'll stand by that rather simple statement and it doesn't really speak to the supply part of the equation.

But you should also consider that supply is also constrained by people who have the cards and don't use them (e.g. leave in boxes or binders) and don't re-sell on the second market. If 100% of the supply was actually available, I believe that prices would drop. It's arguable that more cards are stuck in binders than resting in the hands of hoarders.

So I don't think the supply issue (of which I actually do not believe there is one) rests wholly on the shoulders of WOTC. But the community at large tends to blame WOTC for this.

And once again, this idea that boosters are full of "garbage that no one wants" is just an opinion of an "enfranchised" player. I also believe that it's also a sentiment that is incredibly insidious with disastrous long-term effects on the game.

I just started playing Pokemon with my toddler because he got Pokemon cards with his Happy Meal from McDonald's. I got a package of 2 pre-cons to play with and I will definitely let you know that he still values that random card from his Happy Meal even though it doesn't fit with our pre-cons. He also values each and every single card in those pre-cons exactly the same. So if this was MTG, he'd basically value an Underground Sea the same as a Watery Grave the same as an Island with cool art
pokken wrote:
3 years ago
Remember, with my system anyway they also make money selling the old cards - far more than they do now, since they don't wait and cash in on reprint equity - a game store could hypothetically place an order for a crate of Oracle of Mul Daya and sell those.

It's not *all* about physical waste, and I think playing paper cards socially in person has intrinsic value.

It's also about the ethics of the current system preying on people's dopamine receptors for opening packs, and the reprint equity rules on product creation situations where people are functionally priced out of playing certain cards not because the demand is so high but because the supply is constrained.

See Runed Halo and Auriok Champion for examples of just absurd historical prices because WOTC's model makes them so dang slow to respond to supply constraints.
Once again, I don't understand why you would need an entirely new or different system to place an order for a "crate of generic EDH staples"? There is already a system for that. Go on EDHREC (which also feeds into people's hook on building too many decks) and see how they spoon-feed people links to tcgplayer and Card Kingdom.

If your sticking point for wanting to institute your system is that of price, that earns little sympathy from me because no one is priced out of EDH due to price. People proxy in the first place and awkwardly ask if proxies are okay? So they put you in the position of having to say "yes" regardless of how you feel about the issue or how poorly constructed their proxies are. Runed Halo and Auriok Champion are examples of cards that very few players play or even want to play. Let's face it, most of all of the arguments about price are centered on very, very obvious group of cards. Why not name those? Because simply put, there will be no $1 fetchlands from your model.

WOTC designing a product that many people want is a good thing. They want to sell through packs to make money and you call it predatory. I wonder how you feel about companies that sell actual drugs like alcohol? Let's face it, if they come out and start selling singles, people would eventually call that predatory too. Wait...isn't that already how the vocal part of the internet MTG community has reacted to Secret Lairs?

If your sticking point for wanting to institute your system is that of eliminating "draft chaff," that also earns little sympathy for me because drafting in an important facet of the game. Without which, EDH would likely not to have existed in the first place (EDH is born from judges born from competitive MTG born from competitive formats like Limited). Having a variety of cards also appeals to all the people who play, like new players most of which who don't first learn to play EDH. This system is only attractive to heavily enfranchised players.

If you want to argue "intrinsic value," Misty Rainforest doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists in a game with a complicated ecosystem of which the value is derived from many parts including cards you deem wasteful. How can you argue for the sake of the Misty Rainforest without also paying attention to the Grizzly Bear(s)? If you think social, face-to-face MTG is important enough to spend fossil fuel on. Then it's also a reasonable ask to spend some gtreesg on cards like Grizzly Bear or "garbage" like Shivan Dragon.

User avatar
pokken
Posts: 6283
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: he / him

Post by pokken » 3 years ago

umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
And once again, this idea that boosters are full of "garbage that no one wants" is just an opinion of an "enfranchised" player. I also believe that it's also a sentiment that is incredibly insidious with disastrous long-term effects on the game.

I just started playing Pokemon with my toddler because he got Pokemon cards with his Happy Meal from McDonald's. I got a package of 2 pre-cons to play with and I will definitely let you know that he still values that random card from his Happy Meal even though it doesn't fit with our pre-cons. He also values each and every single card in those pre-cons exactly the same. So if this was MTG, he'd basically value an Underground Sea the same as a Watery Grave the same as an Island with cool art
The pallet after pallet after pallet full of trash cards filling up warehouses across the country questions whether they need *quite so many* of the bulk cards.

There's nothing to say you couldn't still have packs for drafting; just in far, far smaller numbers. Like the amount people want to actually draft instead of that number times 500 as is currently done.
umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
Once again, I don't understand why you would need an entirely new or different system to place an order for a "crate of generic EDH staples"? There is already a system for that. Go on EDHREC (which also feeds into people's hook on building too many decks) and see how they spoon-feed people links to tcgplayer and Card Kingdom.

If your sticking point for wanting to institute your system is that of price, that earns little sympathy from me because no one is priced out of EDH due to price. People proxy in the first place and awkwardly ask if proxies are okay? So they put you in the position of having to say "yes" regardless of how you feel about the issue or how poorly constructed their proxies are. Runed Halo and Auriok Champion are examples of cards that very few players play or even want to play. Let's face it, most of all of the arguments about price are centered on very, very obvious group of cards. Why not name those? Because simply put, there will be no $1 fetchlands from your model.

WOTC designing a product that many people want is a good thing. They want to sell through packs to make money and you call it predatory. I wonder how you feel about companies that sell actual drugs like alcohol? Let's face it, if they come out and start selling singles, people would eventually call that predatory too. Wait...isn't that already how the vocal part of the internet MTG community has reacted to Secret Lairs?

If your sticking point for wanting to institute your system is that of eliminating "draft chaff," that also earns little sympathy for me because drafting in an important facet of the game. Without which, EDH would likely not to have existed in the first place (EDH is born from judges born from competitive MTG born from competitive formats like Limited). Having a variety of cards also appeals to all the people who play, like new players most of which who don't first learn to play EDH. This system is only attractive to heavily enfranchised players.

If you want to argue "intrinsic value," Misty Rainforest doesn't exist in a vacuum. It exists in a game with a complicated ecosystem of which the value is derived from many parts including cards you deem wasteful. How can you argue for the sake of the Misty Rainforest without also paying attention to the Grizzly Bear(s)? If you think social, face-to-face MTG is important enough to spend fossil fuel on. Then it's also a reasonable ask to spend some gtreesg on cards like Grizzly Bear or "garbage" like Shivan Dragon.
My model would enable you to essentially price-limit things a bit; maybe fetchlands aren't a dollar, and I challenge you to find where I advocate for this. But perhaps you cap them at 15 bucks wholesale, and 25 retail - or pick an algorithm that results in cards sustaining value but allows you to more dynamically control prices. Perhaps a complex algorithm where prices rise non-linearly with demand (e.g. prices don't just keep going straight up, they hit a plateau).

* It doesn't matter if other industries are doing things that are worse (e.g. cigarettes). You don't get a pass on doing immoral things because someone is doing worse.

* You can still have draft boxes, they're just not opened en masse because it's cheaper to get singles.

I don't know that you grasp quite the volume of bulk we're talking about here in terms of how many waste magic cards there are. We are talking probably billions of waste commons at this point sitting out there on pallets in warehouses or people's garages.

umtiger
Posts: 394
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
My model would enable you to essentially price-limit things a bit; maybe fetchlands aren't a dollar, and I challenge you to find where I advocate for this. But perhaps you cap them at 15 bucks wholesale, and 25 retail - or pick an algorithm that results in cards sustaining value but allows you to more dynamically control prices. Perhaps a complex algorithm where prices rise non-linearly with demand (e.g. prices don't just keep going straight up, they hit a plateau).

* It doesn't matter if other industries are doing things that are worse (e.g. cigarettes). You don't get a pass on doing immoral things because someone is doing worse.

* You can still have draft boxes, they're just not opened en masse because it's cheaper to get singles.

I don't know that you grasp quite the volume of bulk we're talking about here in terms of how many waste magic cards there are. We are talking probably billions of waste commons at this point sitting out there on pallets in warehouses or people's garages.
1.) At this point, I'm not sure you have a complete "model" laid out. You're only providing certain details of your "model" to answer certain talking points. For example, you bring up that your hypothetical model has an "algorithm" but don't provide the algorithm. So I'm not sure any discussion about your "model" is going to be fair. But I do understand the gist of what you're trying to say.

2.) I agree that one thing being comparatively much, much more addictive and much, much more physically damaging (i.e. nicotine and alcohol) doesn't absolve anything else. But have you clearly established that the current model with booster packs is immoral? I mean, eating too much of a certain food can be a poor choice for one person (or cracking too many packs) but another person can eat that same certain food in moderation and make good dietary choices (buying a fat pack as a gift). But that is not my point.

3.) My point when bringing up other negative externalities is that I do understand the scale of "waste" that you're talking about but it just kind of rings hollow. In the grand scheme of things, MTG is minuscule. I just don't think this is a good enough talking point. Because if you think the waste of MTG is immoral, but don't also take a similar stance against packaging from fast food or plastic bottles (just a couple of examples) then it just doesn't make sense. If you think selling packs is immoral because it's potentially addictive, but don't take a similar stance against alcohol and nicotine, then it just doesn't make sense.

I mean one thing doesn't excuse the other, but it doesn't seem very genuine of you to use this as a talking point when there are other more important things to take a similar stance on. It just feels like a convenient point for you to take up just so you can have cheaper cards for yourself.

I mean, you're saying that you're not okay with millions of pallets of bulk sitting in warehouses at Card Kingdom or ChannelFireball on moral grounds. But you are okay with thousands of individuals in hundreds of cities driving to LGS's to play paper MTG when there is a digital platform available for use?

It might have been lost because there have been many posts, but I enjoy Magic and have played for a long time. Starting out a few boosters at a time in middle school to stopping for 7 years in between to picking it up again and drafting and trading for playsets to trying to foil my EDH decks. I have yet to see or hear anyone with any model better than the current model.. It's because, almost all of the time, the alternative models suggested are self-serving and geared towards individual wants rather than an actual, coherent plan to serve the community as a whole.

User avatar
pokken
Posts: 6283
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: he / him

Post by pokken » 3 years ago

umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
I mean, you're saying that you're not okay with millions of pallets of bulk sitting in warehouses at Card Kingdom or ChannelFireball on moral grounds. But you are okay with thousands of individuals in hundreds of cities driving to LGS's to play paper MTG when there is a digital platform available for use?
I have lots of answers to this but I'll just say that I do not find any form of whataboutism to be particularly useful to discourse, and leave it at that.

re: Gambling

Gambling is definitely addictive; peddling gambling to children who are not old enough to make informed decisions is almost as filthy as peddling nicotine to children in my opinion.

If you don't think marketing booster packs to children is wrong, that's fine, I think we've reached an impasse.

umtiger
Posts: 394
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
I have lots of answers to this but I'll just say that I do not find any form of whataboutism to be particularly useful to discourse, and leave it at that.

re: Gambling

Gambling is definitely addictive; peddling gambling to children who are not old enough to make informed decisions is almost as filthy as peddling nicotine to children in my opinion.

If you don't think marketing booster packs to children is wrong, that's fine, I think we've reached an impasse.
Another impasse is that no one here has actually established opening packs as gambling. So yes, gambling is addictive and opening packs can be addictive. No one has disputed that. However, they are not the same.

Not to equate legal as right, but I'm not sure the arguments presented here for boosters as gambling would hold up in court. Day-trading stocks can also be addictive and also has a more explicit link to wagers placed for financial gain (gambling) but is not gambling (b/c ironically it is even more uncertain than literal gambling). I feel that boosters aren't marketed as lotto tickets or scratch-offs to obtain certain singles, but instead to broadly obtain game pieces to play MTG. Packs have intrinsic value.

Marketing gambling to children is wrong, but opening packs is not gambling. So don't try to make me feel bad with that last statement. :)

I do not find the current system of boosters anymore predatory than how a chef tries to make their food taste good. For the record, I would like people to know that I care about all people. For instance, I feel that the practice of peddling nicotine to both children and adults is "filthy."

User avatar
pokken
Posts: 6283
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: he / him

Post by pokken » 3 years ago

umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
Another impasse is that no one here has actually established opening packs as gambling. So yes, gambling is addictive and opening packs can be addictive. No one has disputed that. However, they are not the same.

Not to equate legal as right, but I'm not sure the arguments presented here for boosters as gambling would hold up in court. Day-trading stocks can also be addictive and also has a more explicit link to wagers placed for financial gain (gambling) but is not gambling (b/c ironically it is even more uncertain than literal gambling). I feel that boosters aren't marketed as lotto tickets or scratch-offs to obtain certain singles, but instead to broadly obtain game pieces to play MTG. Packs have intrinsic value.

Marketing gambling to children is wrong, but opening packs is not gambling. So don't try to make me feel bad with that last statement. :)

I do not find the current system of boosters anymore predatory than how a chef tries to make their food taste good. For the record, I would like people to know that I care about all people. For instance, I feel that the practice of peddling nicotine to both children and adults is "filthy."
I'm not trying to make you feel bad - I'm telling you we have an ethical difference that is going to preclude us getting anywhere further in the discussion. You obviously acknowledge that legal and just are not equivalent so I am not sure how the court room factors in at all.

I don't know that it matters how booster packs are marketed either; they didn't market cigarettes as addictive either, they marketed them for how sweet they make you look and how they take the edge off after a long day driving around in your Camaro.

In my experience most people who open packs know that cards have serious value and are often after specific or chase cards. All you need to do is hang around the gamestore for a day and you'll hear some kid bragging about his foil Ugin or whatever sick pull he had.

If we agree that trying to hook kids on gambling is wrong - and frankly I would argue that if there were an app that let kids day trade that would be pretty bad - we differ on whether booster packs are gambling.

I think that booster packs as gambling is pretty well trodden ground and most people agree that they are - did you want me to try to convince you?

(historically, as far as I am aware, the CCG industry has won its lawsuits, but loot boxes in games also passed legal challenges in many places but are now being recognized as gambling - suspect it is only a matter of time before the science shifts opinion on that front).

User avatar
Card Slinger J
Nope Not Today
Posts: 384
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by Card Slinger J » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
(historically, as far as I am aware, the CCG industry has won its lawsuits, but loot boxes in games also passed legal challenges in many places but are now being recognized as gambling - suspect it is only a matter of time before the science shifts opinion on that front).
Politicians these days seem to only go after issues they understand more than what they don't understand which explains why when it comes to the issue of loot boxes that they've only been going after video games while tabletop board games often get ignored because of how it's similar to the LCG (Living Card Game) model when the CCG (Collectible Card Game) industry is a whole different beast entirely due to its connection with the Secondary Market.

This lack of oversight into the CCG industry when it comes to loot boxes is costing the mental health of consumers who have been addicted to gaming hobbies like MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Pokémon TCG for years who are spending more than they should when they really could've put that money to better use. There's absolutely no reason why players should be spending millions of dollars on cardboard rectangles when it should be a one in done deal similar to LCG's.
"Salvation is for those who are afraid of Hell. Spirituality is for those who have lived through it."

- Ralph Smart

onering
Posts: 1227
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 1
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by onering » 3 years ago

Its a joke to suggest that 500x the number of people who draft do so primarily to open packs rather than to draft. As I said before, phantom drafts on mtgo fire as often as actual drafts and cost nearly as much, and you don't keep what you open. Its pretty clear that people are paying for the experience of drafting foremost. The easiest way to get me to only buy singles is to make me dislike the draft format. Do not discount the impact of draft and sealed on WotC bottom line. They spend the most energy and hours in R&D focused on draft formats for a reason, it's added value that moves packs as much as the chase rares.

Another interesting thing is that it's actually very easy to buy the playset of each card from a new set online from bots for far less than you would spend getting there by cracking packs. The inclusion of alt arts, foils, etc in packs makes the game cheaper for people who are buying cards solely for their practical uses as game pieces.

LCGs also aren't some magically ethical alternative to TCGs. They often still have premium cards and alt arts which command premium prices in the secondary market and bring back the "gambling" element, and they trade randomized product released a few times a year for smaller releases more frequently for more money, and typically faster rotations and reboots to keep people buying cards. It's easier to take a break from magic and come back ready to play than to do so with LCGs, especially when it comes to something like commander. LCGs use an aggressive subscription model as their way of making money, They are even more prone to power creep than magic has been since they need players buying product every month to make up for the limited amount of product they are buying.

onering
Posts: 1227
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 1
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by onering » 3 years ago

So I did some interesting math using mtgo prices for Ikoria, and here's what I found.

Mythics $76.55 total to buy one of each that comes in packs. $612 perfectly statistical packs, $306 buying a playset directly from bots

Rares about $25, so $100 buying playsets directly,

Uncommons and commons: negligible, but lets say another $50 to get a playset

So, what I mean by statistically perfect packs is that I'm operating in an ideal world for someone trying to get every card by opening packs. Mythics occur in 1 out of every 8 packs, excluding foil mythics which replace the token. Thus, in a statistically perfect set of packs a person opening packs with the intent to open every card would open a unique mythic every 8 packs until he or she opened every mythic, and would open rares, uncommons, and commons the same way. In this incredibly unlikely scenario, this person would spend $612 on packs to get every mythic in the set, and in the process would also get at least one of every other card, assuming they are buying packs for $4 each. Meanwhile, in the online secondary market, they could have purchased a full playset of each mythic for $306 dollars, as well as a playset of each rare for a total of around $100, and a playset of each common and uncommon for another $50 (likely far less as most are sold for one cent, but since I didn't want to scroll through all that I wildly overestimated the price). Thus, to get a playset of every card in Ikoria, you'd spend about $456 buying singles, and that's with likely a massive overestimation on anything less than rare and a significant overestimation on rare (I added up $10 looking at rares before the cards got below 10 cents a piece, so I just guessed another $15).

The result is that even with a goldilocks scenario for opening packs, and a an overestimation on my part for the cost of buying a play set of each card, a player whose goal is to get a play set of every card in Ikoria would spend about $150 less buying directly from bots than they would spend opening just one of each mythic by cracking packs. Achieving a playset of mythics this way, in a goldilocks scenario with no repeats, would cost $2,400 in packs.

Whats more, these bots are selling a booster of Ikoria for $3.00 (leading to spending $459 if you get the above goldilocks scenario opening packs to open one of each mythic with no repeats). Most people on mtgo buy their packs from the secondary market, because they are usually significantly cheaper than buying from the client store at msrp. This is not unique to ikoria, which actually has a fairly average secondary price for its packs. Sometimes packs sell for around $3.50 from bots, typically sets with more value in the cards and more demand for draft, and some sets sell rather low, sometimes sub $2.00 even when they are still being drafted if they lack valuable cards and/or have bad draft formats (Dragons of Tarkir boosters, for instance, sold for less than the cumulative value of its cards would predict, because people didn't want to draft that %$#% and went straight for singles).

So how do we end up in this situation, where the secondary market regularly sells packs for $1 less than wizards sells them directly to customers? How can adding a 3rd party that operates by selling product for more than they pay for it actually lower the price of a product?

The answer is draft and sealed. These formats pay out packs as prizes, as well as play points (used to enter events in place of packs). Most players open packs by drafting or playing sealed. Many players win some amount of prizes, which they can put towards the cost of the next draft, thus making each event cost significantly less than the price on the box, typically about half. Players that win often actually end up with an excess of product they'll never open, and thus sell it to bots, who then resell it to other players significantly under msrp, but at a profit. These players then use those reduced cost packs to make up the difference between the prizes they won and what they need to play the next draft. Win 2 matches in Swiss, spend $3 on a pack and $2 on the entry fee and draft again, making the effective cost of cracking a single pack come to a whopping $1.66. Meanwhile, those same players who are selling packs to bots are also opening a %$#% of product. They end up being the primary source of singles available for sale by bots. Magic online ends up being unique in that the whales, the ones who open the most product and spend the most time playing, actually make money on it. They simply grind out wins in limited and end up with more product than they need to "go infinite" and keep playing endlessly for free, which enables them to sell product to bots for tickets, and then sell those tickets back to bots for cash (or bitcoin). Despite the massive amount of product they open, they are significantly outnumbered by normal players, so you only actually run into them once every few drafts or so, meaning that so long as the draft format is moderately popular most players get to just draft like normal and only occasionally get an L against a whale. These whales actually are so consistent in their winning that they are in practice mining magic cards. This means that the business model of magic online, in contrast to the business models of games that use loot boxes problematically, is based on selling a couple hundred dollars or less of product to a broad swath of its player base, the moderately or lightly engaged players, while the most engaged players end up in a free to play zone, whereas problematic loot box models rely on the inverse, the most engaged players spending thousands of dollars while moderately engaged players spend merely dozens and the least engaged players spend nothing. From what I gather, the same pattern is in play on Arena, but I don't play Arena and thus cannot speak to it.

So, what is the point of this post? Well, the central point is that the secondary market is fairly efficient, at least online, at providing value to players by providing a cheaper and more reliable way to get cards. The secondary point on this is that there is clearly a large amount of value in the packs unrelated to the value of the cards themselves, even when adjusted for the reduced price of packs on the secondary market. To get a playset of every single in Ikoria, you spend $456, while to do the same opening packs and getting lucky enough to get at least 4 of every card with the minimum amount of packs opened (512 packs, mythics being in 1/8 of packs, it would take 128 to get 1 of each mythic if you got a different mythic each time, and 512 to get 4 of each this way, again a comically unlikely best case scenario) would cost $1,536. Conservatively, that means that about 2/3rds of the value of a pack derives from something OTHER than the normal cards needed to play the game. Some of this is from the increased value of foils, especially foil mythics, and alt art cards. Foil mythics average about twice as much as their non foil counterparts, though with a great deal of variation in individual cards. The more expensive non-foil mythics see the least amount of increase in price when they go foil, while the least expensive ones see the highest increase in cost (Foil Fiend Artisan commands a mere $2 premium while Zilortha sees a nearly $12 premium because the nonfoil costs a quarter), but it averages to about double the cost over the non foil version. Foil mythics are only present in very small amounts, so the value of opening a foil mythic is nowhere near enough to triple the expected value of a pack. Between alt arts and foils (not limited to mythics, though non mythic foils are typically less than a dollar more expensive than non foil versions, and sometimes priced the same), when added to the expected value of the pack based on non foil cards alone, I'd estimate that you only reach about half of a pack's value. The other half HAS to come from something other than the actual product, and limited play is the obvious candidate, with plenty of evidence for it that I've already discussed in earlier posts. Since resale value of a pack is driven entirely by demand, the demand for the pack which is itself derived from the demand for both the potential cards within and the demand for events that use packs for play, the portion of a packs value derived from a booster's potential for use in limited can be a proxy for the extent to which limited determines demand for packs, and thus the extent to which limited drives sales of booster packs. I think, based on the very rough numbers I've discussed, its safe to say that, for mtgo at least, limited play drives at least half of booster sales.

That last part is the key here. With limited play being responsible for such a high portion of sales of boosters, and limited play being dependent on randomized boosters (with the exception of cube, which tends to be a different experience than traditional draft), it should be easy to see why the randomized booster model isn't going anywhere, and how it differs dramatically from predatory loot box models, not just in theory but in practice.

umtiger
Posts: 394
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

pokken wrote:
3 years ago
I'm not trying to make you feel bad - I'm telling you we have an ethical difference that is going to preclude us getting anywhere further in the discussion. You obviously acknowledge that legal and just are not equivalent so I am not sure how the court room factors in at all.

I don't know that it matters how booster packs are marketed either; they didn't market cigarettes as addictive either, they marketed them for how sweet they make you look and how they take the edge off after a long day driving around in your Camaro.

In my experience most people who open packs know that cards have serious value and are often after specific or chase cards. All you need to do is hang around the gamestore for a day and you'll hear some kid bragging about his foil Ugin or whatever sick pull he had.

If we agree that trying to hook kids on gambling is wrong - and frankly I would argue that if there were an app that let kids day trade that would be pretty bad - we differ on whether booster packs are gambling.

I think that booster packs as gambling is pretty well trodden ground and most people agree that they are - did you want me to try to convince you?
Booster packs as gambling is an opinion. It doesn't matter that many people agree with that opinion. I understand why people draw the comparisons.

I believe that there is a important point in bringing up the distinction between legality and morality. You haven't convinced me that booster packs are gambling morally AND none of the points brought forth explains that boosters is gambling legally either.

In my experience, people also get excited about what they open in their packs when they draft cube even when they have to return all of the cards at the end! Drafting is a legit way to experience MTG.

I do think that it's fair that you accused me about whataboutism when I bring up alcohol and nicotine. But I only did so, because I feel that when you're discussing your side boosters=gambling you use the appeal of "what/think about the kids?" I find that the concept of having to "protect" children from Boosters is ridiculous.

On a separate note about cigarettes, my point isn't that I find "how" /the way companies market cigarettes disdainful (e.g. towards children). I find the product itself disdainful. There is definitely a reason why cigarettes aren't even allowed to be marketed at all on TV.
onering wrote:
3 years ago
That last part is the key here. With limited play being responsible for such a high portion of sales of boosters, and limited play being dependent on randomized boosters (with the exception of cube, which tends to be a different experience than traditional draft), it should be easy to see why the randomized booster model isn't going anywhere, and how it differs dramatically from predatory loot box models, not just in theory but in practice.
The uncertainty of MTG is definitely an important aspect in the fun. The randomized content of boosters to the variance in gameplay. I appreciate how when you presented your points, that you didn't shy away from the aspect of uncertainty. Some people feel that when they make the case that Boosters are not gambling, they have to play down that part. Uncertainty does not equal gambling.

User avatar
pokken
Posts: 6283
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: he / him

Post by pokken » 3 years ago

onering wrote:
3 years ago
Its a joke to suggest that 500x the number of people who draft do so primarily to open packs rather than to draft.
I think you misinterpreted my statement re 500x. 500x the number of packs are opened per set than are opened in drafts, because the various retailers (cfb, scg, csi, etc.) open boxes by the truckload to create singles.

If you dispute my 500x number I could agree, I think it might be low, it's probably more like 1000x the number of packs opened outside of draft vs. in draft.
umtiger wrote:
3 years ago
Booster packs as gambling is an opinion. It doesn't matter that many people agree with that opinion. I understand why people draw the comparisons.

I believe that there is a important point in bringing up the distinction between legality and morality. You haven't convinced me that booster packs are gambling morally AND none of the points brought forth explains that boosters is gambling legally either
I agree, I think our entire dialog hinges on whether you think booster packs are gambling.

Part of our inability to come to any agreement there is that you seem to think (see previous quotes) that how WOTC markets boosters has anything at all to do with whether they are gambling.

The legal and lay definitions of gambling, respectively:
Legal wrote: Gambling is accepting, recording, or registering bets, or carrying on a policy game or any other lottery, or playing any game of chance, for money or other thing of value. Title 18, U.S.C., Sec. 1955, makes it a federal crime or offense for anyone to conduct an 'illegal gambling business.'
I AM NOT A LAWYER

Whether buying boosters is a lottery or not legally hinges on whether it is considered a policy game, a lottery or a game of chance.

My opinion is that the best way to approach that is to find other things that are considered games of chance.

The 'rewards' for opening packs absolutely meet the 'thing of value' criteria (by being randomly way more or less than the money invested).

Scratchers, for example, are commonly accepted as gambling, and have very many things in common with booster packs

* Random value with known odds
* Reward things of value
* EV is below purchase price

My opinion is that given that 1) scratchers are gambling (legal fact), and 2) loot boxes are considered gambling legally (a form of betting) even without the items being redeemable for cash, that it is obvious that booster packs are gambling. They are *more* gambling than loot boxes because they have an obvious value.

The only legal decision I can find declined to engage with whether it was gambling or not - there was a motion to dismiss that was granted and basically they said there was not enough harm done to give grounds for a civil lawsuit -- you can read about it here and maybe a legal professional will weigh in. Basically they got bounced on technicalities to do with how RICO violations work not whether it was or wasn't gambling.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/ap ... 83/545861/
Mumbo jumbo wrote: A card purchaser buying a pack of cards enters into a bargain with the licensors and manufacturers whereby in return for payment the purchaser will receive a random assortment of regular cards and a chance to receive an insert card. This bargain delivers actual value to each party because the chance itself is of value regardless of whether or not the card purchaser later suffers a "loss." The bargain is not for a phantom chance. Just as a card purchaser may realize a gambling loss, so a card purchaser may also find an insert card and sell it or keep it for value. The chance is real, and having paid for it and received it, the card purchaser has not suffered any financial loss or RICO property injury.
So they didn't get hurt enough to have standing to file that specific kind of lawsuit. No statement on if it's gambling criminally.

---------------------------------------------------

One of the other legal "loopholes" is what the intent is of the action - that is, are you intending to increase your wealth or get cards to play a game and to what extent?

I think that's probably the easiest legal out for whether packs are gambling; you need to decide what the goal is in opening packs.

It's also the most difficult to discuss/argue, because understanding people's motivations and what not.

But given how highly publicized and informed the general magic audience is as to the value of cards, it's my opinion that most people who open packs are probably trying to build their collection of cards more than anything; that is, they're trying to get cards that are valuable more than they are trying to get specific cards they are going to play with.

I would be willing to dive into this topic quite a bit more as I think it's probably the most important point though -- are most people opening packs to play draft? or are they opening packs to hopefully add more value to their collection than they put in? I think that's hard to know.

Anecdotally I have seen many people on both sides - those who are treating it like a slot machine and people who are drafting or people who keep all their cards.


----------------------------------------------------

As to whether it's morally gambling or not, I guess we can use the lay definition of gambling:
Dictionary wrote: Gambling
1. play games of chance for money; bet
2. take a risky action in the hope of a desired result
Definition 1 - It's a game if a slot machine is; you open a pack of random stuff (chance), you don't know what's in there, functionally no different than a slot machine, scratcher, or any other game of pure chance. You get something of value.

Definition 2 - 100%

--------------------------------------------------------

TL;DR that's still two or three paragraphs

Sorry this one got away from me. Fundamentally I think the issue is going to hinge on whether the whole thing with lootboxes steamrolls or not. Lootboxes and CCGs both have the same response to whether they are gambling, which is to say "no, they aren't, because people are using them primarily to play the game."

I think it is very clear that at the minimum many people do open packs to try to win money, basically, whether that money is in the form of cards they can trade for things of value they want. And for those people it is clearly gambling - they're trading money for a chance at more money. There are clear alternatives to get the cards they want.

It'd be interesting to see if there were any other things considered gambling that have multiple purposes like CCG packs do - e.g. drafting. I can't think of any offhand.

umtiger
Posts: 394
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by umtiger » 3 years ago

I'm not a lawyer either. But anyways, here's my response to the definitions that you brought up:

I find too many meaningful differences between boosters and scratch offs. For instance, buying a scratch off is literally the game part of scratch off's. Opening boosters is not the game part of MTG, but rather a means to obtain game pieces. In MTG, you don't have to trade, you don't have to crack packs, you don't even have to purchase singles.

In the lay definition of gamble, the second part of the definition is not monetary. It just means taking ANY RISKY ACTION. As in, resolving the card Gamble is a literal gamble. But even in using the second part of the lay definition in terms of money, examples where you risk money for gain are still not necessarily gambling (e.g. daytrading).

I mean, speculating and buying out foil Japanese Lurrus of the Dream-Den is "gambling" but not come close to being classified as gambling.

User avatar
pokken
Posts: 6283
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: he / him

Post by pokken » 3 years ago

Ultimately I think you either believe there is a roulette/scratcher-like minigame in opening boosters or you don't and that'll probably define whether you think it's gambling or not.

Having started playing as a kid and playing that minigame of cracking revised packs to try to get expensive dual lands and shivan dragons and then watched multiple generations of game store kids treat it the same way, I think that it definitely is that for some people.

onering
Posts: 1227
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 1
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by onering » 3 years ago

That's an important distinction, Pokken, about the 500x number referring to retailers. I have no idea if it's anywhere near accurate, but even if it is it's not relevant to whether it's gambling, only to the efficiency of the secondary market in paper (online obviously doesn't have that). Packs cracked en masse by resellers do not qualify as gambling, because they are cracking such a vast number of packs that they are garuanteed to get the cards they want to sell, and they do so at a markup. Once you get to the scale that say scg operates at, it's more akin to Bitcoin mining. What it translates into is the singles retailer passing on the cost of the product to the singles buyer with a mark up added for profit. This is concentrated on the highest value cards, which have the effect of subsidizing the creation of the lower value cards. Basically, it allows magic to release far more cards than an LCG typically does, which creates more uncertainty in formats and more variance in gameplay.

When it comes to regular players opening packs, I'd say that draft likely outstrips just cracking packs by a fairly large margin. Even when I do buy a box, I always open it via draft.

User avatar
pokken
Posts: 6283
Joined: 4 years ago
Answers: 2
Pronoun: he / him

Post by pokken » 3 years ago

I doubt that drafting outstrips personal pack openings. Most people I know open a box or so every set and sometimes more, while maybe one in ten drafts. Drafting casually in paper was out of fashion here before the virus due to rampant cheating in the community from what I can tell.

Not sure how it is elsewhere.

Any shop owners or former employees care to speculate?

I would guess that the packs sold at non card shops probably dwarf the volume of draft packs. Remember Walmart and target and Walgreens sell individual packs at absurd volumes.

Post Reply Previous topicNext topic

Return to “Commander”