Magic: The Gathering and how to kill product innovation

I’ve been a Magic: The Gathering player for some 25 years and counting. While I don’t currently play actively in competitive Magic tournaments and the like, the game still holds a strong place in my heart, as does the feeling and smell of opening a fresh booster pack of cards (if you know, you know). Over the years I’ve regularly listened to Mark Rosewater’s “Drive to Work” podcast, both for the Magic nostalgia and for the incredible insights this gentleman has into product design and product thinking. When I choose to recognise it, Magic has been a part of what shapes my thinking in my professional career in so many ways.

I’m also a long-time comic book nerd, not in the collecting sense but in the sense of having a deep love for the characters and their incredible back stories.

So what on earth are Spongebob and Spider-man doing on Magic cards? I mean, you’d think I’d love this, right? Well, not quite.

Surely a Marvel trading card game would appease those who wanted one. I guess not.

Magic: The Gathering is so much more than a trading card game. It is a game system which has been the baseline for pretty much every successful trading card game to follow it (change my mind in the comments below… go on). It is also a world of high fantasy, of incredible lore and intricate story.

Spongebob and Spider-man have no place in Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. They have no place in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, and definitely not in the Magic: The Gathering universe.

More than half of Magic sets released in 2025 will be characters from outside of the Magic: The Gathering universe. The community is of course in absolute uproar, with even the biggest Magic Youtubers disappointed by this decision.

My take on this comes at it from a different angle.

Putting Spider-man on a Magic card actually makes Spider-man look worse, not better. How can one possibly fit all that Spider-man is on a single Magic card? It makes absolutely no sense. Let Spider-man be Spider-man. Let Wolverine be Wolverine. Rinse and repeat this sentence for all comic book characters ever created.

Worst of all, WotC has lost confidence from the community, be it from the Commander format changes or from this cross-pollination of brands across Hasbro (owners of WotC) products.

Bring back Horsemanship and phasing, I say.

The community is creating all kinds of new play formats to get around what WotC is doing here. I do not love the idea of playing a deck with Spider-man or any other superhero, nor do I love the idea of my favourite super heroes being shrunk down to a few lines on a Magic card. These two things do not mix. If anything, combining these two worlds is a fun creative exercise where, at the end of it all, we say “well, that was interesting, lets never actually do that”. Maybe some new mechanics would be inspired by it at the minimum, but definitely not a whole set of exactly it.

If you’re looking to get into Magic: The Gathering, take my advice from 25+ years with the game; enjoy it for what it is. Enjoy the fantasy, the lore, the story, the characters. Magic is a beautiful game which I look forward to continue playing and sharing in various ways for many decades to come.