I would like to respectfully disagree on some of the points made in your tweet thread (and apologize for the atrocious formatting of my reply).

I do not believe MTG has a public awareness issue. From my personal experience, when mentioning Magic in various random conversations with people a typical response is "I've heard of that game." or "I/someone I know used to play that.”. While my data is an extremely small sample set, I am sure others can comment with similar experiences. 

 

I cannot speak much regarding the financial differences between the three games mentioned (Pokémon TCG, Y-Gi-Oh! TCG, and Magic: The Gathering TCG). From my best attempt at research, and I am by no means an expert, it seems that both The Pokémon Company and Konami have grouped their respective TCGs into groups with additional products, making sales data on those specific products difficult to find. Someone with more knowledge than I may be able to find the specifics though.

 

I also would not say that Magic is a better game than Yu-Gi-Oh!; but rather a different game. Certain mechanics and goals are similar, in that both players use resources to defeat their opponent(s) by reducing their life points to zero or having them draw a card with an empty library.  I feel that the ways to accomplish those goals are unique enough to each game that they provide different experiences. Pokemon has different circumstances to win a match, aside from the empty library, so I do not feel it can be directly compared fairly in this instance.

 

I think the fact that Magic has been around for 28 years and has not become mainstream yet, despite the increase in popularity and general acceptance of “nerd/geek culture”, shows that perhaps it is not supposed to be mainstream.  Magic has always been sort of a niche hobby amongst niche hobbies, in a similar way to various tabletop and deckbuilding games. Part of both the appeal and detriment of Magic has always been the complexity of the rules.  We have seen WoTC try to simplify them over the years to appeal to a broader audience. Whether or not this has been good for the game is a different debate unto itself. I know that for me it feels like it takes something special, some of the “magic” if you will.  The decks that I enjoy playing have varied over time and changed as I gained more knowledge and experience with the game. I do not currently have a standard deck but enjoy decks like Burn and Storm in Modern and previously played Burn in Legacy as well.  Unfortunately, it seems like WoTC is trying to steer the game away from decks that win in ways other than smashing big creatures into each other until one player’s life points are at zero.  Again, whether this is good for the game overall is a debate itself, but I feel that overall removing non-creature-based win conditions from the game is detrimental and alienates members of both new and long-time players.

 

 

Something that both Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon have an advantage over Magic in is what I will refer to as complimentary media.  Both have a wide variety of products tied into their respective franchises, cartoons, video games, apparel, etc... Magic has tried over the years to enter these markets as well, with little to no success.  In more recent times Secret Lair tie-ins have shown to be very profitable, with an expanding list of IPs WoTC will collaborate with in the future.

 

 

To be honest, I could continue for at least a few more pages comparing the differences between the three games. I will end here though, as I merely wanted to express why I disagree with the aforementioned tweet thread points. In the end we all want the game and community to be the best that it can.

 

Best regards!