Posted in: Board Games, Games | Tagged: Ixalan, Magic: The Gathering, wizards of the coast

Wizards Of The Coast's 'Magic: The Gathering' Geocaching Challenge

Josh Nelson writes for Bleeding Cool:

I'm back with a new article on Magic: the Gathering's newest set, Ixalan. I deliberately glossed over my considerations for it with my last article, knowing more would be made clear with its spoiler season.

Of course, with this spoiler season, a few things occurred. One thing was that most of the rare cards were spoiled prematurely due to a purloined uncut sheet of cards leaked onto the good-old internet. The other thing that happened this season was that Wizards of the Coast introduced a geocaching journey to its able-bodied, young and ready buyers, with the promise of spoilers if goals were reached.

Before I go on, I should probably explain what geocaching is. Geocaching is a recreational actvity where people physically move pieces of data from one place to another globally via GPS technology and other means, and storing it in a vessel known as a "cache". For the purposes of this project, the geocaching items to be moved around looked like the backs of Magic cards.

And now that I've got that out of the way, here's why it's a terrible marketing strategy.

I happen to be suffering from an injury that heavily affects my ability to walk. As such, I can't participate in this journey, despite being in one of the more populous cities in the U.S. (this has also affected my Pokémon GO gaming, but that's another story for another column). And, I'm certain I'm not alone in being unable to partake in the quest. I know quite a few people who would have relished the chance to participate and uncover spoilers for the set, but can't due to some physical impairment or another. There are more people in this camp than I wish were the case.

Did Wizards of the Coast simply choose to neglect the physically disabled when devising this activity? Or was this simply ignorance on the part of their marketing department? Signs point to the latter, I believe.

So, Wizards. When are we seeing a community-oriented spoiler activity, you know… For the whole community?

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