I keep seeing youtubers who cover Magic making videos about this as if it's some kind of huge controversy, but does anyone really think that any company is going to actively work with people who harm their product sales? Also, why do they all think it's just a hit list? If I'm a company, and I make a product that has huge hype and then after some videos are made that tank that hype, I'd be curious as to what tanked it, not just because I'd potentially want to avoid those people but because I'd want to change the product in the future to avoid those pitfalls and feed into the hype.
It's not really a controversy, outside of the retards who stan for the Professor or whoever their favorite MTG content creators are, but rather an instance of WotC trying to kick the can a little further down the road.
This reads to me like the marketing team trying to cover their protective asses or Wizards just in general trying to cover their asses due to poor reception (which, honestly, means poor sales -- does anyone know if they've said anything about the Spider-Man set, like they did with the Final Fantasy set?)
If product does not make line go up
enough, then changes need to be made to ensure line goes up enough. This could just be preliminary shit where they're trying to argue that it isn't WotC's fault for glutting the market with their product to the point people are getting apathetic about it (ie, "research shows that content creators in the YouTube space had a significant negative impact on people's perceptions, blahblahblah..."), or it could be a precursor to them justifying paring down their marketing budget, relationships with content creators, or other changes.
It is a pretty loaded question and a better way to have gone about it would have been asking something akin to 'Did content creators influence your perception of the Spider-Man set?' with a "Didn't influence ---> Influenced a ton" sliding scale. It seems obvious there's a reason why the question is phrased the way it is.
I love how everyone says "just make a good product bro" but whenever they try to do any research into how everyone loses their shit. And I get it, WotC is ran by egotistical retards who might just use this for spite, but I'm guessing there are at least a few bean counters who will use this for something productive.
The problem is that this survey reads to me as addressing all the criticism re: the current state of Magic and just shuffling the blame off to content creators, who have been vocal about a lot of the other issues with UB sets (ie, Standard legal, rate of release, non-fantasy IPs, more UB sets than actual Magic sets) and then just lumping all criticism on the content creators. That way, if the survey produces overly negative results, they can just say it was the content creator's fault. If survey results don't reflect content creator opinions, they can basically disregard them. It's a win/win for them.
Maybe it was just a poorly phrased question, but I get the sense it was written that way on purpose. And this isn't intended to be a defense of content creators, but rather just analyzing what could be going on with WotC and their survey.
(PS, please cite Game Knights as a contributor for negative perceptions of Magic. I cannot stand those dickholes.)
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