"Free advice is seldom cheap"

“Free advice is seldom cheap”

• 59th Rule of Acquisition

Magic is full of divisions, constantly caught in the battle between good and not so good. A card is playable or it isn’t. A deck is viable or it isn’t. A player is qualified or he isn’t. A card is rare or it isn’t. You’re in the top eight or the top sixty-four, or you’re not. To move something from one column to the other is to realign your thoughts about a card, a tournament, or an entire qualifier season. Despite that, all of these divisions are minor compared to the biggest division of all, and this one is far from unique to Magic.

There are the things you’re willing to pay for, and there are the things that are free.

It’s a huge divide. The best things in life are free, and there are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard. When something crosses over from the land of the free to the home of the credit card, both of which are reasonable names for the United States, there are several things that naturally go through the mind of those who have suddenly stopped being inconspicuous consumers and become potential customers. I’m glad these things happen, because it’s a big step to start charging for something that used to be free, and it should not be done lightly.

The closest model I can think of is that of the Seven Stages of Grief. Those stages are indeed appropriate, for it is a sad day when capitalism causes another free enterprise to no longer be as free. So the ultimate question should be “Is it worth it”. Keep in mind I’m taking these off a quick Google Search, so they might not technically be right, but they’ll get the job done.

Stage one is shock. Take two damage. Can you believe they’re going to be charging for Magic articles? Next thing you know they’re going to be charging for water or to enter a tournament. Maybe even software or god forbid music. Try not to think about Magic Online just yet or you’ll go blind. If you have to, take a moment. Like Homer Simpson, we’ll be going through this fast, and I vow to leave no man behind. You’re only at eighteen, it’s not that bad.

Stage two is denial. This isn’t really happening. No one would be so vile and selfish and downright commercial as to try and charge actual experimental DCI green points for nothing but a bunch of Magic articles, an add-free website and a Magic database. This Chedy just put this post onto the server for April 1 and accidentally posted it now – it’ll be down as soon as he realizes his mistake. Even if he was willing to try and do it, there’s no way it would work anyway. In a few weeks tops it’ll fail miserably, no one will pay, he’ll give up, go live on a farm and grow turnips. Scott Johns of course will come back, because there will somehow be money to pay his rent. There’s both Regionals and a qualifier to test for, and no time for such trivial details as reading about the metagame or new decks or strategies.

Next up is bargaining. This is where people start posting ideas on the net, thinking that they will have an impact. It’s where people say things like “we won’t pay, but if you don’t make us pay we’ll contribute to the site” or that the writers should just all write for free and can’t we all just get along? Isn’t there some way we can make this work? If I just write an open e-mail to Chedy he’ll see the error of his ways.

For an example of what this looks like, see Magic Online, which hopefully won’t be too big of a shock (sorry, you’re at sixteen now). Maybe they can charge ten cents a pack. Oh, all right, one dollar a pack. Maybe two dollars a pack. People will hang on to this stage for as long as possible, for several reasons. One is that it’s fun, with people who have no strategic insight and an arbitrary quantity of name recognition and writing ability getting to post their serious objections to Star City and their comical insights to MiseTings. The other is that things get a lot more unpleasant when things move on to…

Fear. Ed Fear. That’s right, you suddenly realize you’re about to be banned from the best articles on Brainburst for doing nothing but not playing by the rules the Powers That Be have declared. Drawing off of The Sideboard is legal but only works when they update, which isn’t often enough. Luckily, this time there is an easy out. Money. But it’s not time to see it that way yet. It’s more than a little terrifying to think that soon you might be missing out on much of the net’s best strategy, information that to your shameless opponents is real but to you is not. Suddenly it’s not just a slimy individual with an ugly face - now he’s got Brainburst on his side. That’s disturbing. However, don’t forget that every cloud has a silver lining. Ed’s really a cool guy (hope everyone else had a great Ed Fear Day), he’s ready to make his comeback, and you get to be in the Dave Williams Fan Club.

After fear comes anger. Your Fiery Temper comes into play and knocks you down to thirteen. How dare they decide to ban me! I wasn’t even using an AOL account! How could the site be so selfish as to cut me off when I need it most? Regionals is coming up, as is a Standard qualifying season. Surely they don’t expect me to do all my own work on Standard, it’s boring as all hell right now. This makes me angry. I think I’ll take out this wall. And that’s not all. I can take out this floor too...

What a depressingly stupid machine, and it isn’t even run by Wizards. In other words, despair. How can life go on? Will I have to enter the real world? Fortunately this isn’t all that serious an issue, so there won’t really be all that much despair. The despair will be from the people who can’t figure out how they’re going to pay for Magic Online, or those who suddenly realize they’ve missed their shot at a witty post. Then again, there will be those who think the Magic world is dying and this is a sign of the end times. The terrorists have already won. There’s no such thing as a free lunch anymore. The horror, the horror.

Finally, there is acceptance. Things aren’t so bad. You still have thirteen life points, and that was only one random discard and four mana. So you have to pay the three dollars. By definition, you can’t be more than three dollars worse off than you were before. No one’s being greedy here. Webmasters have to make a living too. In addition, it makes the information more valuable. One of the problems with going to the top strategy website is that everyone else reads the same article you do. In the top eight of that qualifier, everyone has that information. Now, it’s very possible that some people won’t. In addition, having a site without ads is kind of nice, and it’s very possible that there will be additional premium services added if this plan works out.

From here on in, I’m going to ignore the issues of moral outrage and focus in seriously on the real issue: We’ll be providing a service here. You can scream all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that something’s got to pay for it. In the end, either the readers are going to pay in one form or another, whether it be from ad revenue or a linked store or a subscription. Besides, whether or not you decide that this is worth it for you, you can’t deny that a valuable service is being provided. Many hours of thought and playtesting and writing have gone into making the content you’ll be reading, and that content will often help you win. The money will go to those who run the website and those who write the articles, allowing them to conduct themselves in a more professional manner, which means better and continuing content to match.

How much are these Premium articles worth? In my opinion, they’re worth a lot. In the world of Magic, three dollars a month is nothing. It’s a single booster pack. Each time a Magic expansion comes out, many Magic players will pay hundreds of dollars to assemble the cards they need to be competitive in Standard play. Each draft you enter costs at least five or six dollars and may well cost as much as twelve. A Friday night Sealed Deck might run fifteen. Entering a qualifier might be twenty, and often players will spend that much again buying the singles they need.

At the high end of the spectrum, the difference between winning and losing the semi-finals of a PTQ is several hundred dollars, as is traveling to a Grand Prix or a Pro Tour. The bottom line is that for anyone who regularly attends qualifiers, if the information offered here wins you even one match every several months then it was worth it in expected prizes at that qualifier alone. Winning an extra round in an eight-man draft every month and a half would also get the job done.

And that doesn’t even begin to cover the benefits. Many of these articles will be fun and interesting reading. I know one of the things I look forward to every day is being able to enjoy all the new articles posted on various websites. For all of you traders, consider that by getting the strategic information first you gain insight into not just what cards you’ll need to acquire but where card prices are likely to go. If an article had prompted the purchase of four copies of Call of the Herd back when they were reasonably priced, that could well be the cost of a year’s subscription right there. To summarize, Magic is an expensive habit, and players think nothing of sinking large amounts of money on the game. Paying for Brainburst Premium is likely not only to help your game and give you better decks, it will actually likely pay for itself through prizes and on the trading floor and/or secondary market.

Beyond all that, there are distinct advantages to the Premium format that we’re only just beginning to explore. I’ve already touched on the big one. When an article goes on the net normally, it instantly becomes Free Tech available to one and all. It’s a level playing field, and those who don’t utilize the technology will know the decklist and often the decks’ strengths and weaknesses. Often a complete article will end up equipping opponents with the tools they need to defeat the new strategy it describes.

With Premium services, all of that changes. Let that slimy individual with an ugly face be you, minus the slime and the ugly. Betray your friends, destroy your enemies, control the world, drink some coffee. Or skip that one morning coffee to pay for a whole month of Brainburst. The new information you’ll read about will be available only to a fraction of the Magic community. That can be a tremendous advantage. It also makes me a lot more willing to part with my technology. Instead of just advancing the level of overall Magic knowledge I’m helping out the same people paying for Brainburst. I love the idea of only helping a select group of people, then letting them introduce everyone else to my latest discovery.

There is also the great potential interactivity. Right now I’m looking at a Q&A column (Ask Zvi!). Giving this kind of invitation to the general community results in a torrent of mail, but within a Premium service it would likely draw out a much better set of questions. Similarly, I’ll be much more welcoming of reader feedback under the new system. You’re paying, so that makes us accountable. In the future, there may well be other things can be done to add value to Brainburst Premium services. The move from free to pay changes things on our side as well as yours. Payment means the incentive and the means to go the extra mile to provide subscribers with what they want and what they need. Could this lead to such things as Magic teaching or tutoring? With capitalism, anything is possible.

• Zvi Mowshowitz