Episode 22: JRB Yu-Gi-Oh! Podcast - AGOV, YCS Indianapolis, The Costs of YGO

The team quickly goes over the results of YCS Indianapolis and the impact of AGOV and then delves into the intricacies of the costs and barriers to entry of Yu-Gi-Oh and its products.

[@TJParker96]

My petition to bring back DA live streams continues.

[@House_Of_Champs]

I appear any time my win is mentioned 100% of the time ;) Also yeah the conversation has 100% been taken past its extremes and intentions on twitter imo

[@ZachButler92]

LMAO

[@TiTuS0]

WHAT’S GOOD KZbin ?!?!?!?!

[@MetaGamesGX]

people that get on you about these things are clowns stay strong king

[@CollyTV]

Invite HoC on and have a discussion!!

[@bradlopez3681]

TBH I think Pokémon and OCG yugioh has it nailed perfectly. You can build most decks check for 100-200ish dollars but you can also get upgraded rarity ,full art, or promos and have cards for those people who care to bling their decks out. Its really a great system its a low entry point for new/ returning/ budget players and there is still a high end market for shops/ collectors. But tbh yugioh isn't THAAAAT expensive IMO especially compared with past formats. Yugioh is arguably the most affordable it has ever been. Like there are several budget options to play and top with there is no reason you NEEEED to be on a deck that requires you to play 100 dollar cards especially not if your just at locals.

[@geek593]

It's reasonable to want card prices to be somewhat more clustered but that requires Konami to fix their core set design and stop printing so much crap. If S:P topped out at $20 for its base price but the rest of the set wasn't valueless junk I think people would be a lot happier since opening boxes wouldn't feel like a total waste of effort and money while not feeling like they're completely gatekept from competitive deck building. If starlights proved anything it's that rarity bumps will sell to a specific type of person who considered $130 Pots the peasant rare while slapping down his $600 starlight Pots. Other games are able to keep their prices lower by not hedging all of a set's value on one card. I'm playing Shadowverse Evolve right now and boxes are actually nice to open since you get playables out of them instead of playing the lottery to maybe pull the one or two cards in the set that you actually want. I've come to the conclusion that it's a set design issue. The EVP issue with Yugioh is crippling for stores too since a single set that fails to deliver a giga-staple is a total loss. Konami really needs to curate its set lists a lot before we can expect better prices.

[@phalmatticus5093]

Ryan is correct about the card game costs discussion applying less to most of the audience here but that was still a productive talk you all had. I hope useful discourse like that gets signal boosted to the wider community. The state/health of the current format has been a divisive issue post-Indianapolis - would be great to have you guys cover that in the next one. There are a lot of underinformed people out there who don't understand why enfranchised players have valid concerns about formats this wide. Especially as the highly varied power spikes relate to the limitations of a 15 card side deck. Should further help rescue Jeff "Let them Eat Cake" Jones from the Twitter mob.

[@geek593]

I think these guys would have a much more insightful discussion on the topic than the "too many deck lol" discussion that the format has been distilled down to. There being too many decks is just one of like five different issues with the format but it's the only thing anyone is talking about.

[@soxhater819]

Michael Albanese would be a great addition to this podcast…do you guys know him?

[@linkZABUZAriders]

Speaking of master duel, I haven’t spend money on it, so I have grind as much as I can since the very beginning, and now I own Kashtira (3 thrust), Tearlaments and purely, and have gems prepared for next pack. You just have to be a good grinder and manage your resources very well

[@dpacula63]

I get waiting out certain formats but sometimes you literally can’t, Spright blues were $80 a piece. There was no getting it early. For some people all they have is Yugioh, they don’t want to take a break. It’s not fair to say “just don’t play”.

[@diegourbina5083]

And I think Konami has the power to and the incentive to(whether they realize it or not) to want to make changes for the player base that usually has to wait those 8 months to a year to be able to afford that card that was really expensive just a bit sooner.

[@NESHYBeast]

We really could have had Zenith all through 2020-21 😔 LOL TINZO

[@daxonion]

For Europe, I can usually make due with 200EUR-250EUR for full trip+hotel+food+entry Idk how different this is for different EU countries but where I'm from thats like half the average monthly income so while it cheaper than $500-700 its still very expensive for people that play here.

[@ArtemisOP]

Jeff Jones is on his villain arc

[@LMJeffJones]

🦹🏻‍♂️🦹🏻‍♂️🦹🏻‍♂️muahahahah

[@xibbas7055]

The game has gotten better. I remember starting playing when preistess and megalo were getting played and those were each $150 along with big eye and draccosac. I think what people want is basically what konami is doing with the 25th anniversary. It will let people who want to flex their money get qcr/starlight version of cards while still having a accessible version.

[@jeremiahwallace1995]

Droll, thrust, ghost ogre, winter cherries, cross out, virus cards, etc. Just to name a few.

[@Kozmojoe]

I’m so disappointed we didn’t get both artworks of Apollousa and I:P in rarity collection :(

[@jamescumblidge3064]

OCG ultis and collectors look 1,000,000 times better in person compared to pictures. You'll be impressed when you see them in person

[@KFC-Warrior]

Bohdans mic needs to be a bit louder please 🙏

[@ducky36F]

Wow I can't belive ya'll hate poor people and yugioh :P

[@YouseeMourinho]

Winning at locals gets you the expensive cards 😎 by trading, selling or pulling ( got S:p from a box tournament with dlinks😂)

[@YouseeMourinho]

i e being relatively good at yugioh

[@Zachpi]

It's me, the guy who said on twitter he had too many problems, which I'm sure is unique to me on twitter! I do wanna start by saying no, I don't think you're a pos or that you actually hate poor people, and it super s*cks that people are sending you d*ath threats, that's insanely out of pocket. That said, to the points I take issue with: On twitter you point out that you said a few times that you think Konami could do better, which is true, but there's a big messaging problem, because you say it a few times with little to no added detail besides one time saying they should be releasing fewer sets over all, but that's about 2 minutes out of an hour doing what I would generally describe as defending the high price. I am sure in your mind, you do sincerely believe that they could do better, and have good reasons/ideas about it, but those thoughts didn't make it in the podcast, so it's hard to give them much credit, because I'm just not a mind reader. Keeping product valuable: I take an issue here because the price has been high most of the time I've played in paper(I started as soon as locals opened post covid), and product has been doing pretty badly most of that time. Using the math from the Ruxin video(best source I have since I'm not really on vending at all), AGOV is still selling at a loss online(~$60 on tcg player, $55 for a box, which comes out to like $71 bucks after fees again, based on Ruxin's video), and while that's definitely better, they're losing less, they are still losing, though maybe if it's being sold in person with much lower fees they're making some money, I don't have all that info. I also don't know that it seems like that good of a product to open for an individual, since besides QCSRs you have 4 money secrets and 1 money ultra, meaning plenty of boxes will individually be going pretty negative, and unless you want to play things like Pend, Snake-Eyes, or the full armored cards, a lot of this is just filler. It also comes up with John Moore bringing this up and I think it does make sense that a lot of players don't/didn't see why this was a problem because as a consumer it's really hard to understand why it should be something you care about because honestly vendor stuff is really not super open to a general public, but it is good to have those discussions out there I think for those who do want to look into it. Cards are a luxury:I get that the game is a luxury, that is true to the definition, but I don't think it's unfair to say that there's still a level that is an unreasonable price for a luxury good, so I will try and tackle where I take issue with the comparisons here: Sports equipment can be expensive based on things like the product quality, for example after some research I was happy to spend about 200 bucks on kit to do lightly armored style HEMA/WMA longsword fencing, including a set of hockey goalie gloves, and fencing helmet, a cup, and properly weighted/balanced nylon sword. I feel like that's pretty reasonable because there are a variety of expensive materials and shipping that goes into making these things that cost significantly more than paper, and yet less than a deck. I commented on the PS5 example on twitter, and you did make reference to it in the podcast so assuming you say that I'll do a brief recap that the prices of components, engineering, and licenses for proprietary technologies from other companies explain why a PS5 is expensive. There is also the comparison of ygo cards to a video game, where a game is cents to produce a disk, and yet costs 60(to now 70) dollars to buy. This comparison falls apart because games are also much more expensive to produce the data on the disk. While Konami certainly has some amount of R&D and overhead, I very much doubt that the costs of designing the cards for a set takes nearly the budget of a AAA full price game, and the product is also sold at a higher price point than those games. A comparison I would like to extend on from here that felt like it was vaguely circled around though not directly discussed is the idea of waiting for the price to go down and getting it later, but Konami's history of reprinting a card into immediately hitting it/what it enables on the list shortly after means you're getting significantly less value from the card than you otherwise would, where as(at least most) games are as good or better after patches years down the road. There's also the example of buying a computer brought up, and while I am sure there are some people against whom this is a better point, I do actually do the research, and look for the sales and reviews, and build my own computer to save money. This argument also rubs me the wrong way because it's quite blatant whataboutism of "what about this thing you splurge on, you can't complain about yugioh being expensive". Get it twisted: I don't like recommending speculation on if certain cards/decks will get good later as a method for people with a tighter budget to play because that's essentially saying you can try to g*mble on if you can participate in the hobby a few months down the line, and as was also mentioned if you did for instance invest in something like Rescue Ace, getting new support doesn't mean you'll be able to afford it when you get stuff like diabellestar where even if you had everything to that point, it's still gonna be about 300-500 bucks to fill in the new stuff depending on when you bought things. I also thinking taking breaks is a sort of broken plan because at least as long as I've been playing, we have spent by far more time in very very expensive formats than in relatively affordable formats, you would be going on an even footing probably around a third of the time if you are what I'd call a budget player of spending ~200 or less on a deck roughly.

[@Zachpi]

Locals: I also don't really like the idea of just playing whatever garbage you can afford at locals because "it's low stakes". It's not out and out wrong, but I think winning is generally more fun and when I roll up to the function with a $40 floo deck because I can't justify spending that much again on each copy of prosp and twice that much again on each copy of thrust, and I am losing to bricking because I can't afford the consistency cards, and getting my board broken because my opponent thrusts for evenly going second, it's very hard sit there and think the main thing I should have done better was some particular technical play aspect when the most obvious reason I lost was because I entered with a deck I know s*cks because I can't afford anything I would actually feel good about playing. YCS: I am more behind the idea of traveling to a YCS being a luxury, because there are better inherent reasons for things like flights, hotels, and restaurants being expensive. Skipping the event to buy the deck makes sense, but if we take that example of it's like 3-500 dollars isn't even buying you a full deck at the minute, the average topping list from Indy was 740 bucks, based on the prices listed on ygoprodeck for the deck lists at time of writing so you're gonna be skipping like 2 events, and a lot of formats won't have that many events left after you've missed two. Playing online: I think there are strengths to online play as a budget option, but I also think that defaulting to it means you lose one of the core valuable pieces of playing a paper tcg which is the getting out and meeting people. It's definitely nice to play online to test and tweak lists to save money and decide on if you like the playstyle of a deck and what techs/engines/etc you wanna play before you click buy, but it really isn't the same experience as you get by going to a real event. OCG Card Prices/Rarities: I'm not totally certain I understood the point here very well because while it's true that the gap between OCG little knight and the next highest super is comparable to the TCG little knight and the next secret, 780 yen is like 5 dollars, a price that I and most people would have far less of a problem paying. I do not know enough about Konami's financials to say if it'd be sustainable to implement the OCG style of set rarities in the TCG, but if we're subsidizing it, then I am going to say I feel insanely justified in complaining about our card prices, because that would literally mean that our prices are being artificially inflated to compensate for the OCG. Rarity: I am really not the target for this one because I really don't care about rarities beyond that I generally prefer matching rarities, I honestly think that a lot of Supers/Ultras/Rares look better than a lot of secrets/ghosts/etc. I wonder if there is some variant of how ygo could be handled such that it could have more of a pokemon style collectable market subsidizing affordable competitive play, but I'm not sure how exactly it would get there because a lot of Konami's ideas that seem to try and do that have absolutely flopped. Expensive doesn't stop people from playing: This is unfortunately true, but I literally am not going. I cannot afford the price to play so around POTE I just gave up. I was so excited because YCS Minneapolis was like, within half an hour of me, but over the release of POTE/DABL, I was completely priced out so I went and played side events and then I basically stopped playing paper until mp23, when I picked up floo because advent finally got reprinted like two years after it released making the deck about as cheap as can be. I am complaining because me not going actually doesn't affect the secondary market, and at least some portion of people complaining about the price are in fact just not playing for that exact reason. I didn't buy one of those 38 little knights, and I'm not going to. I might go to locals to hang out with the guys, I might pick up some RC prospies, but there's just not a world where I am in anyway determining the secondary market value. Miniatures: As someone who has a few 40k minis, you are aware that people complain about prices for these models all the time right? Also on a technical side the resin for them is actually quite a bit more expensive than average plastic, but that's kind of neither here nor there really. My kind of closing thoughts are while you guys aren't totally wrong on all points, there are also a series of points that I really dislike and are pretty simply why even after listening to this people are coming away with the take away that you do just hate poor people(again I get that isn't the case but I can explain why I think people think it is). You recommend skipping events to buy the deck if it's too expensive to do both. Then you say "These are people we won't see at a ycs, so the price of a card shouldn't matter", and while both points are reasonable on their own, if you step back and look what you're saying it's "If you can't afford to go build a deck and go to events, you shouldn't go and because you're not going, you shouldn't care if the card is expensive" which is this super circular argument that really does come across as saying "If you're can't afford it, maybe try shutting up". Lastly, I also wanna say that it s*cks that every affordable deck that tops is just always a stun deck, really sh*tty that the only cheap decks that can keep up involve doing your level best to play no yugioh.

[@JRBPod]

Our suggestions as to what Konami can do to improve products were not as detailed in this episode because unfortunately I think about 30% of all things we have discussed on this podcast in its entirety has been complaining X product is bad and Y product could do better (similar to our comments on the Rarity collection, a set that is viewed generally favorably) and we really didn’t want this to get bogged down in specific points of specific sets, but definitely should have included a broad stroke tl;dr explanation of our previews views on the subject. I don’t expect you to go back and watch all 40 hours of our views on the subject now, but it’s there if you ever feel so inclined. It is somewhat unfortunate that due to the current discussion on the topic this episode in particular will likely be viewed with a narrow lens, and us labeled as shills or defending all of these practices, when in reality (unfortunately) a majority of all the podcast’s content feels like it’s complaining about product composition. I appreciate the thought out response on the subject instead of jumping to personal attacks like so many others have. Everyone’s situations and viewpoints are different on these topics, and while we definitely can’t catch everything and make everyone happy we’re merely trying to provide one formed by decades of exposure to the game and the business model surrounding it. -Ryan

[@diegourbina5083]

@@Zachpithis was really really good. I’m like 42 mins in and I take issue with some of the same things you said you took issue with like the “well just wait it out” or “invest in a deck early” because I also do those things and they do not always work out. They released part 2 today so I’m hoping they talk about some of your counter points.

[@zacharyportnoy7618]

The reason the ocg can have all the rarity’s and cool figures and playmate and stuff is because they do not have to provide products to that many people. The ocg is minuscule compared to the tcg. The ocg can afford all these more luxuries things because Konami doesn’t need to print like it for like billions of people they only need to supply Japan, South Korea, and some of china like it’s a extremely small area logistical. Even down to like the better card board the ocg can afford to use it’s budget to give them better products because they don’t need to supply so much people

[@Mr_Ozone]

You know, that's a good point, I hadn't actually thought of that.