Magic Pro League player (MPL) and 2016 Magic: The Gathering World Champion Brian Braun-Duin (BBD) recently responded to controversy about competitive advantage in Magic Organized Play (OP) following the controversial banning of Grand Prix Dallas Champion Austin Bursavich for leaking the information about tournament changes before Wizards of the Coast officially announced it.
Over on Twitter, BBD wrote a series of tweets explaining why the issue of competitive advantage was "massively overblown" and how the Wizards of the Coast employees that they work with care about doing the best job they can for the community. You can read BBD's statement from his tweet thread below:
"There's a lot that's wrong with the recent portrayal of events on social media. The MPL/Rivals are heavily comprised of veterans of the game who have been playing for a large part of their lives and who deeply love and care about Magic," BBD said. "We've had open communication with WotC through discord and meetings online and in person over the last 1.5 years, many of those meetings were us wasting countless hours arguing with WotC to change OP structures to help out the same people currently shitting on us on social media."
"There was a meeting last year where many of us argued that they should pay us less money to spread that money out to other people in the OP system," BBD added. "We do have our personal biases, but I believe painting us as greedy corporate shills is an unfair characterization. A lot of what we say gets ignored or brushed aside. In many cases it feels pointless for us to even bother when it seems many of our suggestions and pointed out flaws aren't acted upon, but there have also been times where WotC has listened to what we've said and made changes. I can think of a few situations offhand where we pointed out flaws in structures and they actually changed the structures to account for what we told them. I believe that having an open line of communication between pros and WotC has been a net good for Magic as a whole. While a lot of MPL/Rivals players disagree on exactly what OP systems should look like, the genuine theme among the group is that we care about fair tournament structures, and a sustainable OP system that has a clear path for players to succeed in the system. I also believe that the WotC employees we interact with are people who care about doing the best job they can and who also do care about having good OP structures. I think their hands are often tied from powers higher on the corporate ladder than they are. I was personally surprised about the reaction toward us getting a competitive advantage because that wasn't even something that was on my radar. A lot of the information we get is for things far out in the future. The final product often looks nothing like the proposals we see.
"I don't know of anyone who is personally acting on the information we get because they'd just be wasting time and money," BBD wrote. "Preparing for events that are probably gonna change three more times or get scrapped altogether by the time things roll around is just a massive spew. If anything, we spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about knowing nothing and having things sprung on us, same as the community at large. In hindsight, I will admit that the most recent situation is one where there is a possibility for competitive advantage. Learning of a tournament a little earlier when it's 5 weeks out is relevant because of the shorter turnaround time. At the same time, that level of competitive advantage is massively overblown. The Standard format changes day to day. The recent ban announcement nullifies any possible gameplay advantage could have gleaned from that extra week of knowledge. I've never once been on a testing team in my entire Pro career that starting testing for an event more than 2-3 weeks out, and in fact testing that early for a format that is going to change consistently by the time the event starts is usually a massive spew and detrimental.The advantage lies not in gameplay, but in being able to get teams together, get an Arena account set up with cards, and set aside the time to play in these events. Pro players already have all of these things in place and already have this advantage, privileged info or not. The advantage isn't that we knew before you did, it's that you only had 5 weeks to learn about these events, because we didn't and couldn't really use that extra week in any meaningful way. That's on WotC for not announcing this sooner and has nothing to do with us. We don't want insider information that gives us a competitive advantage. We just want fair OP systems and fair tournament structures. Our line of communication with WotC has been currently severed, but I think that's a net negative for Magic as a whole and I'm disappointed. The reason many of us aren't saying anything on Social Media about this is because there's so little to gain. There's a huge us vs. them divide in the community surrounding the MPL/Rivals vs. outsiders and we mostly just get shit on when we do comment on stuff. Most of my close friends in the Pro community have basically detached themselves from commenting on stuff like this anymore for the sake of their own sanity and mental health, myself included. Twitter just sucks as a platform for this and it's not worth it. 'm saying something here because I feel checked out enough to where I'm ok dealing with some social media shit over this for the sake of people in the MPL who are genuinely awesome people, passionate about Magic, who don't deserve the level of bullshit you all subject them to."
Youc an tell that BBD, like many MTG pros and content creators, has passion for the game, and I appreciate his honesty in his Twitter thread. While it's true that telling the MPL potentially advantageous competitive relevant information before other players is unfair, what BBD said about the info not being reliable anyway because it's subject to change makes sense.
What do you think about BBD's response to the competitive advantage controversy? Let us know in the comments section below.
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