We live in an unprecedented time.

The Coronavirus has completely changed how the world functions in the past few months, with our semi-quarantined state being the new normal until some sort of vaccine is developed. While this has had worldwide repercussions across all facets of how we live our day to day lives, most of which are more important than a card game, the more serious issues are for others to discuss. I'm here to write about Magic: The Gathering, a game predicated on large groups of people gathering together to play games.

Suffice to say, this is a very weird time for Magic.

Paper Magic is essentially cancelled until further notice. Huge events like Magicfests and the SCG Tour are clearly non-starters given the state of the world, but even smaller events are effected as well. Local games stores, the lifeblood of grassroots paper Magic, are considered non-essential, and realistically you aren't really playing with your paper Magic cards unless it's either in your home or on a webcam across something like Discord. This is a crazy deviation from the norm, as many Magic players plan their weeks, months, and even years around what tournaments they are going to, or even just things like Friday Night Magic at their local store or Commander night with friends.

What does this leave us with?

Online play has been a huge part of Magic for two decades, with MTG Arena being one of the biggest steps forward Magic has taken in a very long time. More games are certainly played online than in paper even under the best of circumstances due to logistics, but online play was for most a supplement to paper play. "The Gathering" is a huge part of what makes Magic, well Magic, and there's a lot more to huge events like a Magicfest or a SCG Tour stop than just the main event.

However, while online Magic has always had tournaments and events in some form, they haven't translated well in a post-Coronavirus world. Magicfest Online, ChannelFireball's attempted online replacement for paper Magicfests, has already been mothballed after a shaky start, while there have been dozens of smaller tournaments held for middling prizes and varying levels of excitement.

There are a number of reasons for this, so today we're going to go over the things that need to happen to help online play fill the void currently left by Coronavirus's impact on paper Magic.

MTG Arena Needs a Tournament Mode

This has been a need since the very beginning of MTG Arena and is part of what makes Magic Online a usable program despite being a decade out of date.

Magicfest Online was run through discord. Through Discord. This is an absurd thing to ask Magic players to do in the year 2020. Having to link up with your opponent, exchange information, and send a private challenge (without making any errors) is a completely inelegant mess that sucks a lot of the life out of a tournament experience. It also brings with it a whole host of problems, ranging from clock issues to possible computer errors, which can derail the flow of a tournament and compromise competitive integrity.

To be fair, most tournament organizers have moved to using MTGMelee.com, which is about as good as you could ask a third party tournament software to be, but the issue is that there are still many hoops to jump through and not everyone is going to be willing to overcome the learning curve. Remember, the goal here is to help provide an outlet for paper Magic players to play tournaments, not just people who are already accustomed to online play. Simplicity and ease of use is paramount!

There needs to be a tournament mode built right into MTG Arena, just like there is on Magic Online. Furthermore, tournament organizers should be able to register themselves with Wizards of the Coast just like a local store would, and given the power to make custom tournaments catered to their specifications directly in game. This way events can be run smoothly and clearly, with no additional baggage necessary. Only the absolute largest TOs would have this ability at first, but eventually if everything works well and is stable it would be very cool Wizards Play Network local stores could also have this ability as well.

Running major events like Magicfest and the Red Bull Untapped series on third party software and Discord is frankly embarrassing. Hearthstone is always looming, and Legends of Runeterra is here now as well. Neither Blizzard nor Riot Games mess around, and trying to convince paper players to jump through hoops to play online is any easy way to lose them to a different game.

MTG Arena Needs a Spectator Mode

This is largely related to having a tournament mode, as allowing the tournament organizer to pick and choose matches to spectate would make coverage a breeze, but could also be done as an interim fix just to help coverage now and allow people the ability to watch their friend's matches. Put bluntly, spectator mode literally is esports, and it is embarrassing for Magic as a whole that our million dollar World Championship last year was run with direct challenges and spliced together screen shares.

Most major esports titles have a spectator mode, which allows a third party to observe the game in progress with full information available and the ability to look at things that are relevant to what commentary is discussing as necessary. Rather than watching an impatient Kanister click fervently, move his cards around, and spam emotes, we can take a closer look at a relevant graveyard or zoom in on text of a card being discussed by coverage.

Good game observers are an important part of coverage teams in other games and this should be the way for Magic as well. Exiting beta without a spectator mode was a huge oversight.

From a non-tournament perspective, it's also just fun to watch your friend's games! Friends who want to play-test together can organize a time to play together and watch each other play just like they would at a local game store or game night.

Make the Tournaments Mean Something

This is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of online tournaments - right now they don't mean very much. The upcoming Red Bull Untapped Qualifier coming up has over 4,000 players registered right now, but the prize pool is more becoming of a large PTQ than one of the largest Magic events of all time. If you don't outright win the tournament for the qualification to the lucrative Red Bull event, you're mostly pretty unhappy. The Lotus Box Opens they have been running every other weekend has been one of the most reasonable of the bunch, resembling the SCG Tour in structure and offering a $1,000 payout for each event. They've been getting around the issue of collecting an entry fee by making it "free" for their Twitch and Patreon subscribers.

And of course, therein lay the issue.

Gambling and online gaming laws are different all over the world, which makes running cash tournaments a very suspect affair. I don't proclaim to be a legal expert so I don't have concrete solutions to this problem, but it's also not my problem to solve. Maybe online events will need to be regionally locked, maybe more clever sidesteps like the Twitch subscriber thing will have to be used, but there needs to be some sort of carrot at the end of the stick for players to reach for. Magic Online has been able to run Pro Tour qualifiers and the MOCS for years, I'm sure they can figure something out.

Try To Substitute for "The Gathering"

The most difficult thing of all to replicate with online play is "The Gathering" part of Magic. The long road trips, the after tournament meals, the artist ally, the cosplayers, and everything else that makes a large Magic event... well an event.

This one I don't have a good solution for.

Twitch streaming is probably the closest we can get to hanging out in a large group to enjoy Magic, but realistically it isn't anything we didn't have before. The feeling of isolation and cabin fever are a large part of what has made this pandemic difficult and finding any sort of outlet to help combat that is a huge win. I'm not sure exactly what could be done beyond what we currently have on Twitch, but I'm all ears in the comments if you have any ideas.

Nothing Easy Is Worth Doing

I understand that today's suggestions are not simple ones. I also understand that I don't have complete knowledge and information to work with about how MTG Arena works, nor am I a programmer.

What I do see and understand though is what MTG Arena, and online Magic as a whole, needs to help push through and not only survive but excel in this difficult time. This is an amazing opportunity for online Magic to take a big step forward and fill a void Magic players are currently experiencing, and if that's not a top priority I don't know what is. I find it hard to believe it can't be done, so the proper resources need to be allotted to see it done.