Dear Mr. Garfield,
I know you don't know me, but you've made a large impact on my life. Almost ten years ago, you created a game called Magic: The Gathering.
It was like nothing I had ever played before. The game was simple, yet elegant.
I remember reading about you and the people who first developed the game. People who played it for the love of the game.
Magic has come a long way since then, but I believe at the heart of it all - the important people who bring this game to us still feel the same way. We play the game because it's fun.
The development of Magic Online is an important step in the future of Magic. This program brings your game to life much as I imagine you envisioned it in your wildest, most hopeful dreams ten years ago.
It has the interaction, the feel, the just plain fun I felt when I opened my first pack almost eight years ago.
Right now, the beta server is packed with people playing Constructed, Sealed, and Draft versions of your wonderful game - while still at home with their friends and family.
This version of the game even lets me play with the friends I have thousands of miles away - and allows me to make new friends from new cities, states, and countries.
In short, I know this is something you had be dreaming of when you were writing names of cards on little tattered slips of paper less than a decade ago. Bringing people together to play a game. Young people, old people; people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and creeds.
But alas, the project is doomed to failure. Doomed by corporate executives who, while claiming to care for the game, are out of touch with the people who play and support it.
Those people who now control the rights to the game you created, while bringing it to the digital world, want to price it out of reach to all but the most serious or wealthy player.
How? By charging full retail price for virtual cards online.
I'm not into market research and the dynamics of costs of server operation, but I do know that $3.29 for a pack of virtual cards makes the game, from an economic standpoint, out of reach for me and my family.
I don't pay near that much for the real cards. Plus, with the real cards, I have them forever. These cards are at the whim of a server thousands of miles away from me.
There's no printing press needed, no shipping, no handling, no middleman in Magic Online... Yet these digital representations of the cards you created are being sold at literally thousands of times the cost they take to produce.
I know you're not the sole decision-maker for Magic anymore. But your voice is still louder than mine where it counts - in the halls where the decisions are made that effect the game we both love so well.
Please; I ask that you come and visit the virtual version of your game. Take the time and play and enjoy it like us beta testers are now. Tell us how close this vision currently is to what you dreamed of.
Then help us save it from the bean counters and market consultants who, while making the decisions, are grossly out of touch with the game's audience.
That's all I ask.
Please help.
Sincerely,
Don Perrien
DonTheMage in Magic Online Beta
donistdy@hotmail.com
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