"Why players quit Magic the Gathering Part 1."

"Why players quit Magic the Gathering Part 1."

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. MD

Why do players quit the wonderful game of Magic:The Gathering? What makes them wake up one day and say to themselves. "Nah , I don't really want to play this game anymore". Or "why did I even bother playing it in the first place."

There are multiple reasons why players from all over the world decide to sell all their cards or shelf them until the time that they decide to come back or when they do decide to come back.

Here are a couple of things that you as a player might have already seen or experienced and some things that we could do to address it. Let us start with two.

1) "I simply have no time..."

Sometimes it not a lack of desire to play but simply we all get caught up in the schedules of our lives. I remember talking to Aster of Spiral back when they were still in Monumento and I asked him if Magic was simply going to vanish if we do not get new players. He answered me quite simply. "I dont think so. The reasons why people are not around is because they have things in their lives that demand more attention. It might be that they do not have time now but A Magic player would always come back and play."

I must agree with Aster on this.New experiences and new things might stop us from playing Magic for awhile but that desire to play is in all of us.We just have to be patient for time to open up or we force it to open. Like in my case , I work in various clinic 6 times a week and find that I am too poofed to play or even get out on Sundays. However since I have been adjusting more to the schedules and work I found that I have more energy and can schedule things more properly. I am raring to go back and smash a few heads.

2) "Bad experiences..."

Every new player goes through something traumatic in their magic journey. It might be an awful combo that makes them think why they started playing in the first place.(The reason why exposing new players to Legacy is a hit or miss. They might like it and get hooked for life or think that this is insane how can I compete).

It might be the ultra rare jerk that reared his or her ugly head and ruined a potentially fine magic player. 

It might be that the new player is too trusting and lent some very expensive cards that was never returned. The list of horrific experiences are endless and these are things that we have no control over but it is important however that when these things happen that we could help our new players. 

While it is true that we cannot control the experiences of others. We as people have the ability to control our own actions. It is good to have different decks when we start playing with a new player. These guys would later on be hungry for new deck techs and might even pick up from the simple decks that you teach them with and build on that.

Let us not take advantage of others and let them suffer for being naive. Let us guide them so that in turn they might bring about new players that could grow us and not divide us.

Tell me what you think about this? What other reasons do you think might cause a player to quit Magic? Thanks for reading. Keep on brewing. Keep on playing.