State of the Game 2024 — Magic

A vessel for other IPs, a trick it learned from so many xCGs of Japanese lineage. A floating buoy in a sea of red, propping Hasbro all by itself. Our lingua franca, the shade outside the window that we know, without speaking, we will have to contend with every time we step out of the door. The barometer of past and future for the form, and now it's swinging hard into casualness, into churn, into acquisition, into an uncertain future.

Nothing made me more aware of just how small everything else is than the relative Google search volume infographic in that article:

A graph showing xCG franchises by Google search volume. Magic's volume is more than twice every other xCG, combined. The only three brands that appear in the graph are Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and, very distant third, Lorcana, with everyone else relegated to a tiny 'Other' sliver.

We are puny in this land of exponential capitalistic excess.