Latest news with #MagicTheGathering
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Hasbro (HAS) to Cut 3% of Workforce Amid Tariff Pressures
Hasbro (HAS, Financials) said Tuesday it will lay off 3% of its global workforce in its latest restructuring move to counter higher production costs tied to U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 8 Warning Signs with HAS. The cuts, which affect around 150 of the toy maker's roughly 5,000 employees, come as part of a multi-year effort to trim $1 billion in expenses. Hasbro's ongoing reliance on Chinese manufacturing has left it exposed to trade policy headwinds. While some tariffs remain paused, cost pressures have intensified. We are aligning our structure with our long-term goals, the company told news outlets. The announcement follows broader reductions in 2023 when Hasbro cut nearly 1,900 jobs. CEO Chris Cocks had warned in April that tariffs could lead to further layoffs and higher prices for consumers. Hasbro's sales rose 17% in the first quarter, driven by strong demand for board games including Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons. The company, known for Monopoly and Nerf, is still grappling with post-pandemic softness in toy demand. This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
Gizmodo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The ‘Magic: The Gathering' Team Had to Fight to Keep One of the ‘Final Fantasy' Set's Best References
Suplex's place in 'Final Fantasy' meme history lives on, even if Square Enix would prefer you call it Meteor Strike these days. Magic: The Gathering's new Final Fantasy set is an absolute love letter to the beloved RPG series, with hundreds of cards making a flavorful nod to their source material in one way or another. But one of the most fun references in a set filled with them almost didn't make it in—thanks to a quibble between Wizards of the Coast and Square Enix's translation teams. In a fascinating new article about translating the Final Fantasy set for its English and Japanese-language versions shared on the official Magic website today, Joseph Leis, the program manager for the Final Fantasy set, explained some of the challenges facing translating several cards in the set to ensure the standards of Magic's usual international translation process, while also working with Square Enix and its own translations for Final Fantasy as a franchise. But one of the most intriguing examples concerns one of the most fun nods to Final Fantasy fandom's western history that almost didn't make it in: the Final Fantasy VI card, Suplex. Or, at least in the form that Final Fantasy VI fans would've wanted it to. A red mana sorcery card, Suplex in the set can either be used to deal three damage to a target creature (with the added bonus of exiling them if it destroys it), or exiling a target artifact card from play. This second rule is a specific synergy so that Suplex can target another card in the game, the black mana artifact Phantom Train. It's a reference to the memetic legacy of FFVI players realizing that Sabin the monk, one of the game's expansive party members, can use one of his special abilities, Suplex, to physically hoist up the giant demon locomotive and slam it back down in an absurd image, dealing a ton of damage. In the years since its release, and especially in the advent of the online age, Sabin suplexing a literal train has become a part of Final Fantasy meme culture. But the thing is, Suplex wasn't called Suplex in the original Japanese game. It was called Meteor Strike (or specifically 'メテオストライク' in katakana) back when Final Fantasy VI was first brought over to North America as Final Fantasy III (several games in the series initially missed being translated), a name that Square Enix has kept ever since. While the original translation remained for many FFVI ports, it took until 2022 when the game was re-released as part of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection for the official translation to be updated to Meteor Strike. So Wizards and Square Enix found themselves at a bit of an impasse. Where possible, Wizards prefers that translation and localizations of card names diverge as little as possible from the English-language originals: Magic sets are typically designed in English first, and then translated into various languages, but the Final Fantasy set was the first in the game's history to be developed in English and Japanese simultaneously. Square Enix wanted to keep the Meteor Strike name as the official translation of Sabin's move as that's what was it always was in Japanese, but Wizards argued that English-language fans who played VI as kids would be disappointed if the card wasn't called Suplex as tribute to the nostalgic place the fight has taken in western fandom culture. 'This was something that principle narrative designer Dillon Deveney went back and forth through multiple rounds of negotiations with Square Enix,' Leis said, 'explaining how important that scene and the name 'Suplex' would be to English-speaking Final Fantasy VI fans, how kids growing up would yell 'suplex!' at the top of their lungs while playing at the playground, and how the nostalgia of the term was something that he wanted to keep as an Easter egg for English-speaking Final Fantasy VI fans.' Thankfully, Square Enix eventually relented, and a rare divergence between the English and Japanese sets allowed Suplex and Meteor Strike to co-exist. Now you can exile that one particular artifact to your heart's content, in the exact way you'd want to.
CNET
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
Getting Beaten by Magic: The Gathering's Final Fantasy Set Designer Was a Wild Ride
In an air-conditioned tent on a sweltering Los Angeles day at Summer Game Fest, I sat down to play a hand of the card game Magic: The Gathering and drew a handful of characters from Final Fantasy. Sitting across from me was the man who oversaw the process of turning some of the world's most beloved video game characters into playable cards for what's shaping up to be Magic's most popular set ever -- already a best seller a month before its release. Magic: The Gathering is a storied collectible card game made by Wizards of the Coast that's arguably more popular than it's ever been since it debuted in 1993. In recent years, the game has ventured into the mainstream by adapting the most popular nerd properties, like Marvel superheroes, Warhammer 40K and Lord of the Rings, into playable cards. These Universes Beyond sets, as they're called, have had special releases that make them legal only in select formats of the game -- meaning you couldn't bring them to play in tournaments with the most recent sets. That all changes with the Final Fantasy set, whose cards feature every mainline game from the original Final Fantasy first released in 1987 to Final Fantasy 16 from 2023. The new set is being released in the Standard format, which means players will be able to bring the most famous characters, like Cloud, Sephiroth, Yuna, Lightning, Noctis and Y'shtola, in their decks to play in regular competitions alongside the other newest sets. I'm no Magic scrub, but it's been years since my teen days when I started collecting during the Urza's Saga and Sixth Edition sets. The game has changed a lot since then, with new keywords and more powerful cards than ever, but the basics remain the same: Take a deck of cards with a mix of mana-generating lands, creatures, artifacts and other spells to battle against your opponent. Untap, upkeep, draw, play, combat, end phase. As I sit across from Gavin Verhey, principal Magic: The Gathering game designer and set design lead for Final Fantasy, I'm daunted by the task of playing someone who literally oversaw the development of every card in my hand. But I'm comforted that, like me, he's a huge fan of the Final Fantasy games, as was everyone on the team. "The good news is we've been doing the homework for the past 30 years of our lives," Verhey said. "I mean, we did play through the games, we all revisited the old ones." Though not everyone on Verhey's team had played every one of the series' games, collectively they'd covered them all. For instance, he's never played the massively multiplayer online Final Fantasy 14, but he pointed to a colleague across the tent at a different table -- "Dylan over here, he's played thousands of hours of 14," Verhey said. The Final Fantasy Starter Kit includes two 60-card decks that each feature a hero from Final Fantasy 7, including Cloud (pictured) and Sephiroth cards. David Lumb/CNET Turning Final Fantasy icons into playable cards The first official Universes Beyond set was Warhammer 40K in 2021, but Verhey told me Wizards of the Coast has been working on the Final Fantasy set for about five years, requiring a lot of back-and-forth from the card game maker and Square Enix to get all the details and translations right, along with the extensive design process to adapt the venerable property. "What really helped us out was that Square Enix has huge Magic players," Verhey said. One of the challenges was to incorporate Final Fantasy 16, which was released in mid-2023, years into the Final Fantasy Magic set's development. Verhey's team had precious little time to incorporate the game. "When it came out, we had a marathon weekend where we're all gonna play through," Verhey said. "We're putting in the chat, we should make this a character, and this a card, and this a card. It was super fun." In preparation, Verhey had saved 10 card slots out of the 310-card set for Final Fantasy 16 cards. Their goal was to make sure every game had at least 10 cards and at least one of rare quality, to make sure fans could find some representation from their favorite games. Of course, some more-popular entries in the series got more cards, leading to more from Final Fantasy 6, 7, 10 and 14 -- games that make their way on the lists of the best RPGs of all time. David Lumb/CNET But there were design directives Verhey held to make sure that players would recognize staples of the series even if they hadn't played every game. "When I was designing the set of common and uncommon cards, especially common, I wanted to put in things that were generic across many Final Fantasy games, so no matter which ones you played, you'd find a thing you recognize," Verhey said. "If you've played any Final Fantasy game, or even any RPG, you're like, Yep, there's the weapons vendor, the item person, there's the person greeting you when you come into town." Many of the most recognizable heroes, like Cloud and Sephiroth, are reserved for the rare and mythic rarity character cards, which are intentionally powerful, yet the latter of which show up only in one of every eight packs of cards. It's a tough balance, Verhey said -- but to make sure players still get these popular heroes in their decks, they splashed them into the art of common and uncommon cards for different spells, artifacts and enchantments. These often depict memorable moments in the games, including, perhaps most infamously, in Final Fantasy 6 where a martial arts character suplexes a train. (I'm not kidding. It's really a card in the set.) As I draw more cards, Verhey points out the many details his team made sure to pack into them, including a small indicator near the artist credit that says which game they came from. Even the simplest card in the game, a mana-producing land, evokes the moments and settings from Final Fantasy games -- when I drew a basic plains (white) land, it showed the iconic car from Final Fantasy 15, the Regalia, driving up a road. I was instantly brought back to playing the game and its boys road trip adventure (which kicks off with one of the greatest intros of the series). Every card in the Final Fantasy Magic: The Gathering set references a moment, character or location from the games. On the bottom-left corner is an indicator of which game the card's art is from -- this one says "FFXV" for Final Fantasy 15. David Lumb/CNET Designing Final Fantasy for Magic: The Gathering newcomers If you have a friend who's been into Magic: The Gathering, you've probably heard a lot about the Final Fantasy set already, and many newcomers are being drawn in by all the hype. I asked Verhey what design decisions they made to make the set as welcoming as they could for folks who've never played a game of Magic before (indeed, in addition to the interview, I and other Summer Game Fest attendees were offered introductory demos to learn Magic if we were totally new to the game). "One of the things with Final Fantasy, and any Universes Beyond IP, that I think is amazing is we just start that conversation a little further down the road, because if you play Final Fantasy, I don't need to explain health and mana and strategy and goals as much," Verhey said. Verhey also notes that the Starter Kit for the Final Fantasy set is a great entry point for new players, including two premade 60-card decks that are themed around Cloud and Sephiroth, as well as codes to redeem the decks in the Magic: The Gathering Arena online digital version of the game. But the team also made design decisions to make the Final Fantasy set easier to grasp for newcomers, too. "The mechanics in the set, many of them are things that are very approachable, like flashback [being able to cast some spells twice] and landfall mechanics [effects that trigger whenever you play land cards] that players know and have played with for ages," Verhey said. "The new mechanics are stuff like job select, which is a riff on living weapon from [Magic expansion] Mirrodin, which is kind of simple to understand: You get a token and put this [weapon] on it, right?" Verhey continued. "But the flavor really helps you with this because, Oh, it makes sense that a samurai katana would have a hero that comes with it and is holding the katana." One of the set's new mechanics is job select, which creates a basic creature to attach the weapon to when it enters play. David Lumb/CNET That doesn't mean the design process was seamless. Adapting some famous Final Fantasy heroes into a card game was occasionally tricky as Verhey's team decided how best to translate their abilities onto a card, often going to the teammate who knew that particular game best. Verhey gave an example he had "a heck of a time with": Kain Highwind, the best friend of the protagonist of Final Fantasy 4, who keeps switching sides with and against the party. After six different attempts at design concepts, he went to a co-worker who knew that game backward and forward, who sent Verhey a design that same day that ended up in the set: If the Kain, Traitorous Dragoon card deals damage to a player, they get control of him. Elegant. Of the 310 cards in the set, there are some that Verhey is particularly proud of. Esper Terra is a version of the heroine of Final Fantasy 6 and one of the first Saga creatures, a new card type combination introduced in the set, which switches back and forth between normal hero and pumped-up esper (think summons or guardian forces in other FF games) for some turns. Another card, a version of Sephiroth (Fabled Soldier, which flips over to transform into One-Winged Angel), leaves a permanent emblem on the board to represent his lingering presence in Final Fantasy 7, always needling the heroes in that game. James Bricknell/CNET How they balanced Final Fantasy cards for all Magic: The Gathering formats Clearly, Magic can get complicated, and this intrinsic complexity of cards and interactions is a hallmark of high-tier play and fascinating deck strategies. By making the Final Fantasy set legal in Standard format, Wizards of the Coast is enabling it to affect mainstream play, including competitive tournaments that feature the latest sets before and after Final Fantasy. This includes debuting the aforementioned Saga creatures, which Verhey's team developed as a way to embody some of the most powerful of Final Fantasy party abilities, like summons, that make a flashy impact for a turn or two. In development, the team tried out a "vanishing" mechanic where a summon-like creature would slowly die over several turns, which was read as a downside. Instead, Saga creature cards balance that big impact with temporary presence, dependably swinging the pendulum of pressure back to your opponent -- after all, you paid mana for something that goes away eventually -- but presents an interesting dilemma: Does your opponent block it? Kill it? Spend a spell on it? "We balanced [Saga creatures] using the power, toughness and abilities to make sure it would be appropriate, but I think more interesting is, once they're in play, what happens? They really make gameplay interesting," Verhey said. As it was the first Universes Beyond set to be legal in Standard play, Verhey acknowledged that there was pressure to make sure they balanced it well. That meant putting it through the same play design process of other sets, like the recent Tarkir Dragonstorm, with ex-pro Magic players play-testing and iterating the cards. "We put our whole team on it for the balance portion," Verhey said. This process will be used for all future Universes Beyond sets, like the upcoming Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender sets, which will be similarly balanced and legal for Standard and other formats. Wizards of the Coast could always change their mind and pare this back for future sets, but making these new IP adaptations ready to play in tournaments and beyond is the plan for now. These Cloud, Midgar Mercenary and Sephiroth, Fabled Soldier cards are different than the Cloud and Sephiroth cards included in the Final Fantasy Starter Kit. James Bricknell/CNET How Final Fantasy pushes Magic: The Gathering into the future Unsurprisingly, it's challenging to pick the IPs to adapt. A separate team from Verhey and his designers chooses which recognizable properties to pick, and one of their filters is deciding whether it's possible to bring to Magic in the first place. While harmonious, ambitious, aggressive and smart characters match white, black, red and blue mana identities, respectively, some IPs don't have much to offer green, the color of earth and nature. Other requirements include enough characters and monsters that can make small, medium and large creatures or can fit Magic staples like flying creatures, which are important for supporting play environments like drafts. Verhey and his team learned a ton from developing the Final Fantasy set, including tackling the arduous task of filtering all the characters into all five colors of mana in Magic, which define play-style and strategy. In the years developing this set, Verhey pioneered what he calls the "snapshot moment," picking a crucial time in that character's story for the card they're making. For example, there are multiple Sephiroth character cards. One is included in a Commander premade deck and is white and red mana, depicting a pivotal moment in Final Fantasy 7's backstory when he discovers his past and angrily burns the town of Nibelheim to the ground. Another, a black mana card, is the Sephiroth that players encounter during the main plot of Final Fantasy 7 as the evil one-winged angel trying to destroy the world. "They're two very different moments of Sephiroth's story that let us show different colors through them, and that separate method is what we're going to definitely take forward and use in future Universes Beyond sets," Verhey said. It's a perfect moment in our real-world game of Magic as I sit across from Verhey: He, running the blue and black deck of the Starter Kit, plays his Sephiroth creature card. Noticing he used all his mana, I use an instant spell to kill the villain on his turn, and a turn later, I play my Cloud card, swaggering with confidence that I turned the tide. Sadly, Verhey notices I overcommitted and plays a Magitek Scythe on one of his other creatures, which forces my Cloud to block and get killed. A turn later, he uses a spell card to resurrect Sephiroth to the battlefield and quickly overwhelms me -- a fitting, Final Fantasy 7-appropriate end to our match. Over the weekend, Verhey played a lot of Magic matches with many other Summer Game Fest attendees -- some veterans, some newcomers to the game. And what he's been noticing, this weekend and in the monthslong lead-up to the set's release, is the joy when fans see cards of their favorite characters and moments from the games. "I think the biggest thing is remembering that everything has fans," Verhey said. "There's 16 games we're trying to cover here, and every game, people are like, Oh my gosh, this card from Final Fantasy 2 is in here. Or, I can't believe this card from Final Fantasy 7 is in here. Or, I wish this character from Final Fantasy 8 was in here. People really do care about it, and the missing stuff is really noticed, is really relevant." Unfortunately, that meant cutting cards even Verhey wanted, like one for Eiko from Final Fantasy 9, as well as others left on the cutting room floor from Final Fantasy 4 and 5. (I was personally hopeful for more Final Fantasy 8 cards myself.) But within the tight constraints of trying to represent 16 games in a 310-card set, they still managed to cram in enough iconic scenes that respect the beloved idiosyncrasies of a video game series nearing its 40th birthday -- things like, yes, being able to kill Final Fantasy 6's Phantom Train with the Phoenix Down card. "In this set, [someone asked,] 'Hey, can you remove -- I don't know why it's even there -- killing an undead thing on your Phoenix Down?'" Verhey said. "I'm like, 'Absolutely not. That is critical. You cannot touch this.'"
CNN
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Summer Game Fest Play Days features ‘LEGO Party,' and new ‘Magic: The Gathering' expansion
A new LEGO game and 'Final Fantasy'-themed 'Magic: The Gathering' cards were among games featured at the annual video game event. Rick Damigella reports.
CNN
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Summer Game Fest Play Days features ‘LEGO Party,' and new ‘Magic: The Gathering' expansion
A new LEGO game and 'Final Fantasy'-themed 'Magic: The Gathering' cards were among games featured at the annual video game event. Rick Damigella reports.
