On Premium

Welcome again, faithful reader. Today I don’t have tales of CCG creation, I have tails of CCG fandom and its implications.

A long time ago, there was a Magic fansite called The Dojo (see a classic article here). Pros would hang out, write tournament reports and strategy articles, and it got quite a bit of attention. But after a while, Brainburst came into view and began with their own content. Please note that all of this content was free, an important distinction.

Then Brainburst decided to have a Premium Membership which gave you access to the “premium” content on that site and their network of sites (that includes information on World of Warcraft, Star Wars Galaxies, VS System, etc). Many people flocked toward the newest kid on the block: Star City Games.

Well, after years of producing nearly ad-free and quality strategy content, Star City Games surprised its entire readership on Monday by announcing Premium Articles. This meant to view certain articles you paid a monthly, quarterly, or yearly fee. The latter is $30, so “for just pennies a day” you can get the same content you were getting for free…for a price.

Now the content itself, I believe, is pretty damn good when it wants to be. There are plenty of times when I’ve read a Star City Games article and thought “Goddamn, this is going to change things.” While I think that the official Magic the Gathering site is even more influential, for obvious reasons, the fact that SCG does have so much pull is one reason they can even attempt Premium Content.

However, the happy tale ends here. Unfortunately, SCG decided to launch with articles by Tim Aten (a hilarious and sometimes brilliant MtG pop culture enthusiast…this is good) and Jim  Ferraiolo (This…is bad). Both are Pros by their own merits, and I have nothing wrong with either of their writing styles, though Jim does tend to be more “cut and dried”, as it were.

The error in SCG’s ways was simply ignorance to the community they have (ie, getting no opinions/feedback before launch), ignorance of the business sense in trying to merge into a pay-to-read site (you have two different logins, the store and the site), and ignorance in the fact that other sites give you other benefits than “Now you can see our cool, interesting text.” This includes discounts and/or network subscriptions, much like Brainburst and (I can’t help the analogy) porn sites often do.

So now they have a bunch of pissed off readers and upset community, with most of them subscribing and the vocal naysayers being, well, pretty damn vocal. Feel free to dive into the 12+ page forum post, but I thought this was interesting, found on pages 8 and 9, respectively. Here is what I posted first (there is more, but this is the gist):

Me? I gave SCG my $30 so fast my bank account could barely see it coming. Aten is pure genius most of the time, and Flores is the deal-sealer. Paskins can laugh at elves and make red decks, that's fine. Jim F is boring and so uncreative it actually hurts my bones to read his articles. Trust me, if there was a worse day to "feature" Jim as a selling point for Premium Content, today was not it. Aten, however, came through once again. Unf.

This is also the point where my wife goes “WTF?!” and will berate me for the charge. Um, let’s move on. Here is what Jim F. himself responded with (relatable parts only):

Man, the hits keep on coming on Kasey's coast to coast... I'm not worth $5 a year? God, what you people have done to my self-esteem today is shameful! Just shameful, I say!

Oh, and misterorange -- if I'm boring to you, you probably aren't reading your own blog very much. For someone who apparently conveys the illusion of being down to Earth and grounded, you sure do come off like a total prick.

To which I responded:

I admit, lamenting about the rarity levels (and explaining them) isn't exactly page-turning stuff, but in the scope of what I was trying to accomplish it was necessary.

Yes, I was harsh as hell. For the most part your articles are informative and decent reads. But today you went over how you made the same deck with the same cards with a few tweaks and how to sideboard against the usual decks.

This may be Pro Tour minutia, but that doesn't stop the fact that it is, in fact, minutia. That whole article was about the small tweak you made to a well known, well-played, well-versed, well-written about deck with just a few small changes.

You know what the worst part is? This is Premium Content! And I mean that in a good way! Yes, this is excellent Pro Tour level stuff. When I'm competing at that level, I -want- to know the things you speak of. What I have an issue with is that they launched the Premium Service on the back of Aten and yourself. You've had better articles man. If they wanted less complaining and more subscriptions, they should've thrown Flores or Osyp for branding power to come into effect. Then post your article later in the week, when it would fit perfectly into a Premium Content range.

And you thought only soap operas held so much drama. It will be interesting to see how SCG follows up all of this comment and criticism. This rebuttal supposed to appear tomorrow. Feel free to take in the thread but be wary…there’s trolls in them there bulletin boards.