The Magic: The Gathering community has been quite vocal about how prevalent Universes Beyond sets have become. While crossing over with popular IPs is always neat, things started to take a turn when Wizards of the Coast announced that Universes Beyond crossover sets will be legal in Standard, Modern, and Pioneer formats.
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Eventually, fans started voicing their concerns, worried that Universes Beyond would take precedence over the original in-multiverse sets. While sets featuring Final Fantasy characters and SpongeBob SquarePants are great, they want to see more of Wizards’ original concepts. However, MTG Head Designer Mark Rosewater has assured that this will not happen.
Universes Beyond Cannot Replace In-Multiverse Sets
“Hi Mark! How are the Magic IP sets selling compared to the UB ones? I am worried that UB’s success will lead to fewer Magic IP products,” asked a question on Rosewater’s blog.
“Universes Beyond sets, on average, sell better (there’s a lot of power in tapping into popular properties), but in-multiverse Magic sets are important to Wizards as a business for numerous reasons,” explained Rosewater, while listing the reasons.
Firstly, he mentioned that Universes Beyond sets take a lot of time to conceptualize, collaborate on, and publish. Taking approvals from the IP owner for every step takes a lot of time, resulting in these sets taking a year longer to put out than their in-multiverse counterparts. Meanwhile, Wizards can take full creative control of its own sets, without answering to a third party.
This means that in terms of long-term planning, Wizards relies on in-multiverse sets for a lot of its output. While Universes Beyond may take a lot of time, in-multiverse sets can be put out at their discretion, plugging any holes in the launch cycle. This again shows that the company is highly reliant on them.
Licensing cost is another factor which doesn’t apply to in-multiverse sets, but more importantly, Wizards has been taking steps in growing the Magic brand by itself. The Magic brand is bigger than the card game. The upcoming Netflix show is an example of this. Every time we do an in-multiverse set, we’re growing that brand. There is business equity (aka we are creating something that gains value over time) in doing our own creative,” explained Rosewater.
In terms of features and mechanics, Wizards can change them to adjust the balance anytime to better fit the needs of play on in-multiverse sets, but it’s a lot harder to do so for Universes Beyond sets due to all the approvals required at every step.
Lastly, Rosewater mentioned the people angle, saying, “Making in-multiverse Magic sets is creatively very satisfying, and the people who make Magic want to make them.”
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