Online, Offline?

I was reading about the status of Magic the Gathering in Singapore reported on Straits Times newspaper Lifestyle section. They were saying that a good number of older players are still playing MTG, and they are making the game still vibrant and viable (business-wise) in Singapore. Carol from Comics Mart kinda disagreed, saying that more and more players are now switching to online MTG instead of spending more money playing it physically. Well, one thing's for sure, MTG is not as big as it was before~

I recalled Patrick telling me about some sort of playing Vtes online. I'm a big fan for playing things face to face - a firm believer that online games are generally a waste of time that:

1. Rewards time spent way more than skill of the player

2. Playing with invisible people allows one to more readily ignore manners and ettiqutte and

3. Removes much incentive to be creative since resources (CCG wise) is much more abundant (and cheap)

Of course, online versions have their merits. But they just don't sing the right tune to me. It is however, still a challenge to keep players in the physical Vtes games now that an online version is available. In online games you don't really have to spend money to buy expensive cards, many of those are either prohibitively expensive, or even outright unavailable. You can have as many decks as you have time to build, and in any combination as you like, whereby in real life it is quite impossible to have every deck the way you want it. Online games are technically easier to coordinate, since you do not need the players physically at the playing ground to play. Given that Vtes games usually last hours, online versions gave the players much easier access to players. But nothing beats actually playing with friends across the table. I may be old school, but I think that social aspect of the game cannot be duplicated in the online version. Moreover, Bann told me that the online version still has much room for improvement. It is slow, and sometimes unwieldy. Games last even longer and players just drop out of games sometimes, which happen a lot less in real life, and even when that happens the deck is usually picked up and played by somebody else that happens to be around, ensuring that the game on the table don't just end. Not so for the online version. Maybe someday I'll go try the online version to see if it actually may interest me. But at the moment, I think I'm happy with the Tuesday Vtes nights. (o.o)y