Think of the Poor Europeans: Why Ameritrash Isn't Just America

Sure I've had a bad run for a while trying to come up with some decent threads and something decent to say about my hobby, but here's some shiz that went down if not a week ago then very recently that slipped under the radar. Some of you may not be interested in the whole international aspect of what I'm talking about but I think it's interesting and important enough to really get a handle on, as it explains the problems that occur to a games company that ignores an international audience. I'm talking about why Ameritrash isn't just America any more, and in a way should never have been focused on just the USA.

In case you haven't heard, one of my favourite Ameritrash games has been affected by this, you can hear the UK perspective on it via the Deck Construct podcast linked here, or you can read the decidedly not TOS forum thread about it here. That latter link was from MTG Salvation - who I want to credit as an additional source to this since this is a big change that will affect international tournament organisation of Magic: The Gathering events.

Essentially, from what I can read there, all future Friday Night Magic and Pre-Release events must be sanctioned by a store and not an independent organiser such as a campus club or society TO or chairman. While this may work in America, where game stores are very large and prominent, it won't work overseas, where many Magic players have a culture of playing on their campus or at a pub or just a youth center. There's also the problem that many overseas game stores aren't big enough to hold these events, American stores like Star City Games are much, much larger and can accommodate more players than the much smaller international stores like in Australia and the UK, which are far and few between.

I love Magic as a game, it's a design that's stood the test of time and has even become a staple of my gaming hobby. What bugs me about these WPN changes are that Wizards of the Coast appear to be a game company that hasn't really thought out how these changes will affect their international audience who struggle to make it to a game store that is often three to four hours away from where they live.

For all the hatred that goes towards Wizards for axing Heroscape, that seems to be the symptom of a deeper problem, Wizards make choices that favour brick and mortar game stores in America over how things are organised overseas, and that's a big problem for people who are not Americans who play their games. It's a big mistake to assume the only people who play Ameritrash games are actual Americans.

Ameritrash should be for everyone, like, dare I say it, Eurogames once came out to the public and became for a while. Hate on the Eurogames all you want, but at least Eurogame makers don't assume you don't exist as a customer because you're not American.

Dare I say it, even Fantasy Flight Games hasn't gone that far as to shut out their international audience - Z-Man doesn't do this either and his games are readily available if not in the few Australian FLGS's then online on sites here like Milsims. The big mistake of any businessman is to assume that an audience outside your product's origin doesn't have an audience, if that is to say people outside your country have a cultural use for it.

I haven't been in the board gaming hobby for very long compared to other blokes on here, and I'm nowhere near as jaded as somebody who's been doing this since 2000, but I reckon unless games companies stop neglecting non-American audiences in some cases like Wizards of the Coast for example, those companies will lose money on a product they might have seen a profit on with international sales. It's like Hollywood assuming just because a movie doesn't make millions on its opening weekend in the United States, that movie's automatically a failure. It just doesn't work that way in our postmodern, post-GFC world. The days when America can just ignore the fact that there exist people in overseas countries who want their products is long over. Media companies like MTV are probably losing money by not releasing things like the Daria DVD box set to places like Australia and elsewhere just because they think there's no money in chasing non-American audiences.

Ameritrash has something to offer everybody, Monopoly was once Ameritrash for example, and while I have controversial feelings towards it I still maintain to an extent that it's stood the test of time because for all its special edition whoring there was legitimate attempts to adapt the game to worldwide audiences, as seen in the Australian and UK editions with more familiar streets than the American ones on the American editions of the game.

By not limiting your audience to just what you think are Americans who you imagine would like your game, consider that there are many countries, dozens in fact, which deserve attention in making games that reach them as well. There's a whole wide world out there and sometimes big companies like Wizards forget they're living in one that doesn't just have America in it.