Magic: The Gathering’s First Art Director Makes Statement on Booster Box Exclusive Cards

This Sunday, Jesper Myrfors made a public post on his Facebook page regarding promos that are exclusive to expensive products such as Booster Boxes. Here's what he had to say:

Jesper Myrfors is best known in Magic: The Gathering for being the first art director of the game and is responsible for much of the original look and feel of Magic. Chances are you've played with or against one of the cards he has illustrated; such as, Armageddon, Atog, Bayou, Elves of Deep Shadow, Fog, Scrubland, Tropical Island, Tundra, and more. Jesper was also the Set Director for the MTG expansion The Dark.

One thing Jesper noted in his statement was that they felt chase cards could take advantage of people with certain mental disorders. It's interesting that he mentioned this, because Richard Garfield, the inventor of Magic: The Gathering and professional game designer, made a statement in 2016 about games that exploit players with certain addictive behavior. He titled his statement A Player's Manifesto. Here's an excerpt:

"I believe that in recent years, while looking for revenue models that work for electronic games, game designers and publishers have stumbled upon some formulae that work only because they abuse segments of their player population. Games can have addictive properties – and these abusive games are created – intentionally or not – to exploit players who are subject to certain addictive behavior."

Richard Garfield goes on to say that a problem in the industry, particularly for freemium model games, is that most of the money is generated by ‘whales'. Whales are individuals who spend tens of thousands of dollars on games because of certain addictive behaviors. For example, in a freemium game, this might be because they couldn't wait for their energy bar to recharge or they wanted a powerup. You can read Richard's full statement here.

In Magic: The Gathering over the past 10 years, there's been a lot of changes with more of an emphasis on premium and rarer cards. This could be creating more whale consumers. For example, Mythic Rarity was introduced in 2008. This made the rarity of certain powerful cards much harder to obtain. In order to get them, you would have to open many times the amount of booster packs or pay expensive prices in the secondary market. This change ended up making certain cards much more expensive while reducing the overall cost of regular rares. Hence, players who needed Mythics ended up becoming more ‘whales', while those who could settle without them could pay less to play.

In 2016, MTG made another change that made certain cards more expensive. This was the introduction of the Masterpiece series. Masterpieces are cards randomly inserted into booster boxes of select sets. They are previously printed cards with an exclusive foil design. Their initial rarity was 1 Masterpiece rare for every 144 booster packs. Players who have the desire to play with premium cards would now need to buy an enormous amount of booster packs or pay very expensive prices. It was $100+ in some cases on the secondary market to add a new Masterpiece card to your collection.

In 2018, with the release of Dominaria, MTG updated their Buy-A-Box promotion to become functionally unique cards that could not be obtained in a booster pack itself. This is a further increase in card rarity. The only way to obtain them is to buy a box at a local gaming store and receive 1 of the cards from that stores limited supply. The MSRP of a Dominaria Booster Box was $99.99. This created additional costs for players who wanted to buy a functionally unique card like Nexus of Fate, which at one point cost upwards of $45 in the secondary market (such as eBay).

Richard Garfield weighed in on what new cards should cost in an interview at MTG's US Nationals in 2008 to icametogame. Here's what Richard said:

Garfield didn't have an opinion on promotional cards that have non-promotional versions available. This would be something like a Masterpiece. For functionally unique cards, he believes cards should probably cost $20 or less to make them accessible to players. Cards like Nexus of Fate and many Mythics from recent sets such as Teferi and Karn were selling for more than $20 after their release. Based on Garfield's interview, he might not like that, as he believes cards should slowly appreciate in value, like collectible stamps. To quote Richard, "For me, these $40 or $50 dollars are going out of the ballpark".

Building fun decks can be expensive if the cards are hard to obtain. One thing MTG is doing that could be positively addressing game affordability is the computer game Magic: The Gathering Arena. In Arena, you can get MTG cards for free just by playing. You can also unlock Mythics without having to shell over big amounts of cash. After a few weeks of playing in their Beta version, I managed to build a deck that would be over $200 in paper form at absolutely no cost to me. Players who want to play certain decks might be able to do so more affordably in Arena.

Are you happy with the new exclusive Buy-A-Box promos? What do you think of Jesper's statement? Leave us a comment below!