Game designer explains How much does it cost to make a Magic card?

[@ace8099]

No they're not losing money on every bulk card they sell because they sell packs and not single cards, you buy the pack in its entirety, without knowing whats in it. The hidden nature of the pack is a key part of the gambling addiction Thats the problem, trading card games fundamentally are just gambling for kids and thats ok when its just kids with their Christmas money trading cards but its not healthy for an ecosystem for an actual competitive game. This is always the problem that it runs into with card games, pay to play is antithetical to good game play

[@iMagUdspEllr]

Every game requires payment to play. You can buy singles to get exactly what you want without gambling. The issue might be that good cards cost more money. In that regard, the game is not pay-to-play, so much as it is pay-to-win. But drafting has a flat fee, and skill can play a larger role while drafting than when you try to compete in constructed formats.

[@ChrisPete123]

@@iMagUdspEllrYou can’t eliminate the gambling by buying singles, you simply enable another persons gambling by paying out their jackpot when you buy the card from them

[@iMagUdspEllr]

​@@ChrisPete123If you are buying packs so that you can have cards to play the game, then it isn't gambling. It is buying the equipment you need to play the game. If you think you're going to get rich by buying packs, you're a fool. It isn't advertised as gambling because it isn't unless you make it out to be gambling. You aren't enabling gambling. You are paying for something you want that someone else doesn't. If there are people out there buying thousands of packs hoping for a $1000 card instead of just doing the math and buying it directly, that's on them. I have no sympathy for someone who can't do the math and realize that it's not worth buying $10000 of packs to get a card that costs a fraction of that price.

[@Medowokha-bp5lq]

@@iMagUdspEllr It's gambling and it's an artificial market to enable the gambling, gambling sells cards, gambling sells packs, rare/chase/collector/whatever you wanna call it to be flattering is just hiding the fact it's gambling. It's the wests pachinko horseshit.

[@tylerowens]

I understand and agree with all your points here, but my problem is the "premium" sets (think Horizons sets, Remastered sets, etc). By all accounts, they are not more expensive to produce than a "normal" standard set (maybe more special treatments, but also more reprints so does the art costs offset the design costs? Maybe but probably not to the extent of the price difference) but they cost two, three, maybe even five times the cost. Double Masters sounded like it was a fantastic set to draft, but I couldn't draft it because "maybe this product isn't for you." It was more expensive because they knew people would pay that much, not because it cost them that much more to make it. They've even more or less admitted it, pointing to the value of reprints as the reason for premium pricing. "You can get fetchlands in these boosters, of course they cost more." I don't mind collector boosters. I don't mind missing out on the bling. But I want to play the game. And I can't do that when WotC decides to jack up the price of a set just because they can.

[@kesswylie]

@@tylerowens I think as long as base cards are at Regualr value product that is more expensive is fine? Like if there was only collector boosters yikes. But you can just buy Regualr packs

[@tylerowens]

@kesswylie a regular booster of Modern Horizons 3 was twice as expensive (or more depending on demand) as a regular booster of a standard set. I did prerelease for Kaldheim and New Cappena, at my LGS for $25 each. MH3 prerelease was $70. It's not just the collector boosters that were more expensive. Players were arbitrarily priced out of playing the draft environment.

[@JakoWako]

@@tylerowens It’s not arbitrary if people are still buying them. Just comes down to supply and demand. Wizards has a monopoly over MTG cards so they’re able to control the supply and maximize profits. Cost will almost always create a price floor, but cost does not impact the price ceiling.

[@realname4430]

Great breakdown of the costs, very insightful, but I think theres a couple of big points that you missed. 1. The 5 dollar margin per pack is a good value that everyone is fine with paying, but it ignores the main point of contention I think that the comment is talking about, being the presence of collector boosters, which, (despite having only having 1 more card compared to play boosters) are sold at 4 times the price of the pack. I think the comment is highlighting that collector boosters are unfairly priced due to the fact its value is artifically inflated by wizard putting the "high value" cards that you talk about in the back half into those packs and not out of just having more cards in the pack. 2. I think saying the only value people get out of packs being only the tournament playable and rare cards ignores some of the other huge parts of mtg, namely pauper, a place where the common normally chaff cards are made tournament playable, and draft, a place where every card csn be given some kind of value

[@commanderpower99]

1. I don't care a rainbow-glazed-confetti card exists and costs a hundred bucks as long as there is a regular version to buy for the cheap. This js a collectibles game. You need the extra rare versions. 2. I think Kess was also referring to the valuables commons. With that said, if commons were also 3 dollars each, Pauper wouldn't be popular. It is popular bc it is accessible and cheap.

[@kesswylie]

@@commanderpower99 also the rainbow sparkles version makes the other cards cheaper

[@uiron5755]

For $20 ygo speedduel boxes are a complete tcg game for 8 players. But they don't sell as well as $200 mtg booster boxes. Buyers want things other than affordable gameplay in their games.

[@kaioxys]

And yet, you didn’t talk at all about all the actual expenses going into making the card.

[@nathancarlk]

When your teacher asks you to write a 3 page paper and you only have 3 paragraphs so you start rambling...

[@Robert-vk7je]

Sooo... How much does it cost?

[@hugofontes5708]

I don't know if it's my ears failing me or something, but I barely got any of the actual data he said. I might need this one in writing but what I did get was: The manufacture of the cardboard card itself for MTG goes around 5-10 cents per card. Distributors and actual stores take their cuts on top of it so it ends up at about 5 bucks a pack at the shops. The actual big boxes of boosters however have their value defined not by cardboard and distribution cost, but by player market value of each playable card that may be found in the box - because either people buy the box set or the single cards or something and some economical thing I couldn't hear clearly happens so that the cost of buying both a whole box or the most wanted cards as singles are economically equivalent. Kinda checks out with my old notes from Tolarian Community College: play pauper or kitchen table commander, buy singles

[@nathanpetrich7309]

The average cost of an MTG card is between 5-10 cents, but since 90% of the cards are unplayable garbage, it manufactures demand for the rare cards and inflates their value. The cost may be 5 cents, but the value may be hundreds of dollars, like with The One Ring. Cost is determined by the physical process to create the card. Value is determined by market interactions. Don't even get me started on profit and price, and how most of the price is usually not going to cost or value, but to profit.

[@cabellism]

@@nathanpetrich7309 Better job of explaining than the video did!!!

[@albertorochareyes2427]

Wrong, it costs almost nothing at that level of production....0.0000001 per card ​@@nathanpetrich7309

[@uiron5755]

They did sell $100 vip booster packs. There's something else going on there with that.

[@kesswylie]

@@uiron5755 it’s more complicated it was a bad product. But the second part of the video does a little to address that

[@cabellism]

Meh, ill stick with my Hewlett-Packard Secret Lairs.

[@uiron5755]

Step 1: stop printing low value cards. Step 2: somehow ship directly from wotc distribution. Step 3: now a booster pack costs 60% less??

[@ChaosBorg]

Your math is spot on but I think your premise is flawed in that almost every time someone makes the complaint that it costs them the same amount to print every card, it's in response to direct Wizards products like Secret Lair or the 30th Anniversary product where LGS' and Distributors are totally out of the loop and Wizards is deliberately making the products full of bad cards or obtained in bad ways.

[@Mr.CheesePoof-t3i]

3¢ per card. With all kickbacks ECT.

[@fygments]

super detailed vid nice job man

[@sirvaniss]

Amateurized?

[@tylerjenkins2271]

I'm guessing "amortized"

[@sirvaniss]

@tylerjenkins2271 Hmm, probably. Never heard that word before. Interesting.