drdoug's 'Beliefs which I once held which I now think are wrong' meme

[lovingboth]

The big one is "That no-one would buy Magic: The Gathering."

I can't find it on google groups, but there was a post way back on rec.games.design (or r.g.d.board) from someone called Richard who said something along the lines of 'I have this card game that people seem to like and we're thinking of selling if we can raise the money. You both have a subset of cards from a very large deck - which you don't have all of and will have to buy in small pieces, like trading cards - and you don't know what the other has, so there are plenty of surprises. Oh, and if you lose, you have to give them some of your cards.'

I thought, "No-one's going to want to play that, never mind buy it. Where's the fun in being trumped by a super-whizzo card you've never even heard of? Where's the skill element? You can't be sure of getting any particular card - you can bet they're not going to let you pick which you get in the packs. And after splashing all that money, you have to give the cards away?? Nah."

Several billion card sales later...

... I'll confess I still can't see the appeal. There are lots of better card games out there. But I was wrong. And had I put up the some of the money he was looking for...

Oh, another belief is that "People will not pay large sums of money to have a crap website."

Comments

[elves-uk.livejournal.com]

Oh, another belief is that "People will not pay large sums of money to have a crap website." that comes from what we call "in flight magazine mentality". Some boss takes a first class flight, reads something in the mag, next thing you know it stuck to your monitor with a fibgre tip note saying "do this"

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

While I agree with you on both counts, I'd be interested to know if you held any beliefs that you think were wrong about :-)

[lovingboth]

That I am always right, evidently :)

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Several billion card sales later...

This is one I guessed right about! I only came across the game once it was established, but it seemed to me to be a fiendishly clever way of selling a lot of cards. Even if you have a lot, you can probably improve your selection by buying even more. And new cards keep coming out so you have to keep buying just to stand still. Once you're over the having-enough-people-who've-bought-some-already barrier to start with, I can quite see how it runs and runs.

Plus the game itself is pretty interesting, but so's backgammon, and few fortunes have been made from selling backgammon sets.

And had I put up the some of the money he was looking for...

All through the worst excesses of the tech bubble I was convinced I'd missed several chances to make a fortune. I suppose I could have if I'd sold at the peak, but I never believed in the rise anyway so timing a sale would've been too difficult. It was the bubble bursting that convinced me that large companies can spend shedloads of money on entirely daft things that were never going to make money!

[lovingboth]

I an see how it works as Magic: The Addiction. I think I won by declining to play. Not least because...

the game itself is pretty interesting

... I don't even rate it as a game, just as I don't rate Trivial Pursuit - "It's an expensive quiz book, you morons!"

There are/were a couple of good game CCGs. I'd buy Middle Earth, if it came as a complete set, for example.

If you ever see a copy of Dished! have a read: it's the story of BSB. Incredible wastage of other people's money, even worse than OnDigital. If they'd been a bit more careful, they'd have taken over Sky rather than the other way around.