The speculative bubble burst really put a "once bitten, twice shy" mentality into my local shops. Even though most of the games that came out in 2022 and 2023 are play driven instead of being essentially cryptobro scams there's a new wall of convincing that needs to be scaled before people actually take a game seriously because they have bad memories of that one guy shilling MetaZoo with no intentions of it being anything other than a pyramid scheme.
As a game developer and store owner, you hit the nail on the head. I didn't go in heavy on Lorcana or Star Wars either. This is also why I have always put playability first in my own game, System Gate CCG. This was the first year that we really started to add any sort of collecability or bling into the game and I've been going strong since 2020!
With great remorse, I had bought a Wilderness 1st edition box for $102 back in mid 2022 and I ended up selling it for $55 at the beginning of March of 2023. After taxes and fees, I lost about $60 total. It wasn't much of a loss, but It's only because I bought 1 box in hopes of profit, even though I didn't like it, and my desire to flip it during a hype is what caused my loss. I did make about $23-25k from a 5k Pokemon collection that had a lot of WOTC graded cards that I collected from 2017-2020. Shit got insane, real fast in October 2020.
Video has a few inaccuracies to it but has good points to make, especially for those "TCG Investing" types.. Aoki invested more than Rudy I believe, not to mention others like King PoKeMoN basically as some grand council of investors.. Definitely not just 1 random Magic guy from UA-cam.. Didn't even mention Argos.. Though it was a huge cloud getting involved with these types with the reputations they have, it was really mismanagement and mentally unwell ownership that drove it under.. It was insane how people trying to help were pushed away... no.. legitimately Banned/Blacklisted.. Probably The biggest waste of a potential IP I will ever see in my lifetime.. Definitely some of THE wildest things i've seen happen.. Wouldn't collect a TCG without a 1st edition stamp tho.. preferably not even printing 2nd/unlimited.. Just so they can't reprint that exact thing whenever they please.. (PoKe) (Biggest shame about MetaZoo.. It was THE most inclusive and friendly TCG community I have Ever been a part of, by far...) 🃏
Open season for all the know it all I told you so-ers. Can't really say anything but 90% of these ppl don't have accurate info backing their 2-bit opinions
Universus is growing really fast now. The demand is so high that their Yu Yu Hakusho set is practically sold out everywhere. They are also adding IPs like Critical Role and Godzilla later this year. Each event I've gone too has more and more people showing up for it. The game has grown a lot since its Jasco days.
Let's hope it recovers. The MHA releases actually had good data supporting that it was being played. Unfortunately they printed too much of it. Again, probably not their fault. The speculation during the covid era was out of control.
First of all, I would like to say that I am sorry about your experience with that one customer. His behaviour was inexcusable and it seems like barring them from the store was a good move on your part. I likely would have done the same thing and maybe even sooner, so props to you for having to put up with them for so long. However, there are several innacuracies in this video that I would like to correct, mostly because a lot of people seem to share wrong information about Metazoo, often without even knowing that they are doing so. I'm not trying to argue that Metazoo really was on track to compete with MtG or run defense for Rudy & the speculators. I did not speculate on Metazoo nor do I respect those kinds of people. I do love the game though and played it competitively, which puts me in the 1% minority when it comes to the Metazoo audience. I do also have a decent amount of information to share, so let's get to it: 1:04 Regarding the artwork, I am also not a fan of it, although some pieces did grow on me over time. However, I was generally surprised by how many players (and by that I mean people like myself who did go to events and actually played the game) loved the pastel "style" of Metazoo when compared to most other TCGs, so I feel that I should point out that there was an audience for it, even if I don't include myself in it. 1:10 - 1:21 There is quite a bit to unpack here, but Metazoo plays fairly differently from Magic. It is closer in style to powerful old formats like Vintage, with extremely powerful wheel effects and other 1-of staples being run in most decks as an example, with slightly longer kill time. Having played both games at a competitive level, I feel like I can reliably assert that the actual gameplay is nothing like MtG. *However,* the very first set for Metazoo was notably awful to play with (with many effects similar to an Un-set from MtG) and really did turn off a lot of people as you pointed out. The game did not come onto its own until the second set, Nightfall, which drastically changed the dynamic of the game and actually made it fun. I should also point out that I do not find limited Metazoo to be a fun game, but playing with proper constructed decks very much is. 1:45 - 2:10 To my experience at least, the second set (Nightfall) actually sold extremely well and remains packed with high value cards. In fact, as of today, it is still one of the most valued metazoo set overall (if not the most), excluding speculative outliers like the Kickstarter boxes & 1st ed CN. That being said, the third set, Wilderness (the one that you are holding a precon deck from) was very poorly received and only contains a handful of real cards of value, so I can easily believe investors chased rudy promos 1 month after its release 😅 3:30 This seems just wrong, although I do not know if you are talking about people playing it in a general sense. If that is the case, then yeah, I think it is pretty obvious that Metazoo was not the most popular game out there 😅.There was an active competitive scene though, of which we have plenty of data on. The first official Metazoo tournament, the Water Tower, was intended for 160 players and actually saw a much larger audience. The last major tournament completed before the end of service announcement (Dark Tower) actually saw a turnout closer to 300 players who qualified and showed up, which I feel was pretty good for a niche competitive scene. There was also no shortage of unofficial player-run tournaments, some of which still run online to this day, three months after closure. 7:00 This is the first point that is flat wrong, on multiple fronts. Metazoo died shortly after its 7th set was released, not the 4th. And Metazoo's 4th set, UFO, was actually a large success due to the many chase cards and positive changes it brought to the game. Giving a quick reception breakdown of the main set releases, the game progressed like this: #1 Cryptid Nation (poor playability despite many staples) -> #2 Nightfall (high playability, fan favourite) -> #3 Wilderness (middling to poor reception) -> #4 UFO (high playability, fan favourite) -> #5 Seance (disaster due to mapping issues) -> #6 Native (great set with plenty of playable cards) -> #7 Kuromi (Disaster). 8:21 I think you are 100% in the right here, and the general overexpansion of Metazoo, alongside many poor business decisions, were largely responsible for its downfall. In regards to the actual audience of the game (both players and collectors), there was definitely not enough demand to justify that kind of printrun and overexpansion. 10:58 I will personally disagree here, but I do not think that there necessarily is a correct answer. The idea of a game centered around Cryptids definitely has a strong niche appeal, but whether or not it has enough to sustain a living TCG is another question entirely, especially in today's hypercompetitive market. Regardless, I find saying that Rudy was the main appeal with Metazoo disingenuous at best. Rudy certainly sold the game to a lot of investors, but I do not think I have ever met an actual player who ever cared about his promos. As an anecdotal example, I've met far more people who wanted to play petdecks based on their local cryptids that most people never heard about, or classics like the Mothman, Fresno Nightcrawlers, etc... 5:00 - 5:48 & 16:06 - end. This is a bit of a strange point and I feel like many people were under this misconception, but Metazoo only ever had an "Unlimited" style release once, for the very first set who had three editions (Kickstarter, 1st ed, 2nd ed). All other sets were actually closer to Pokemon's early sets, where they have a "first edition" label without a second edition ever existing. Well, that's about it! Sorry for the massive wall of text, with the actual community for the game being so small, I feel like most people end up unknowingly sharing wrong information and getting details mixed up. Other people who watch this video later might also appreciate the added details when information on the game becomes more and more obscure, who knows!
Metazoo is over? I kept seeing it on UA-cam but never got into it. Those dogs were so energetic that night, I love how the tennis ball rolls onto camera at 13:23
I don't blame you for your caution with SWU. Fantasy Flights track record leaves a bit to be desired, and I'm hoping that the game (and whatever "second edition" inevitably follows) succeeds enough to have it stick around for a bit. SW Destiny had a decent following in my college town when it released, and then due to lack of product collapsed immediately. I'm hoping they've learned from their continuous production mistakes and are able to lock in and get product out and in people's hands. And that the game is good, because the demo decks I tried certainly left a sour taste in my mouth.
I lost more than that in one month of buying Magic the Gathering Packs. 10 packs sells for over $100 canadian after tax. After opening, the cards have an aftermarket value of $0.80 total. That's a loss of OVER $100.
Never got into MTG, but doesn’t mean it’s bad bcuz it doesn’t appeal to me. I’d never make a video shitting on a failed TCG that never appealed to me. Pretty scummy people in the TCG community
I don’t think this guy was “shitting” on anything, but he might have been more positive if you would have actually paid for the product he ordered you…
Was I shitting on the game here? I even said it could have been fine like a Munchkins or a Killer Bunnies, I was shitting on how idiotic people were with this game, fomoing and pumping and dumping it. I feel sorry for Metazoo, it could have grown organically, had its own little niche and been relatively successful in its own right, but it listened to the wrong people and flew too close to the sun.
@@roguedeckbuilder”didn’t like the artwork, it’s too much like MTG” then proceed to tell people “the crap” came form you making a poor business decision to take a pre-order without payment and you lost money bcuz a poor business decision. Hope you get enough views to recover your $100.00 loss
The speculative bubble burst really put a "once bitten, twice shy" mentality into my local shops. Even though most of the games that came out in 2022 and 2023 are play driven instead of being essentially cryptobro scams there's a new wall of convincing that needs to be scaled before people actually take a game seriously because they have bad memories of that one guy shilling MetaZoo with no intentions of it being anything other than a pyramid scheme.
Careful, the MetaZoo cult will come after you next.
I'd say that if you only lost a hundred bucks on Metazoo as a store, you're doing pretty well overall!
I never carried a lot of it, tried one event that failed and then just did prepay. This video was more about memeing another video.
As a game developer and store owner, you hit the nail on the head. I didn't go in heavy on Lorcana or Star Wars either. This is also why I have always put playability first in my own game, System Gate CCG. This was the first year that we really started to add any sort of collecability or bling into the game and I've been going strong since 2020!
With great remorse, I had bought a Wilderness 1st edition box for $102 back in mid 2022 and I ended up selling it for $55 at the beginning of March of 2023. After taxes and fees, I lost about $60 total. It wasn't much of a loss, but It's only because I bought 1 box in hopes of profit, even though I didn't like it, and my desire to flip it during a hype is what caused my loss.
I did make about $23-25k from a 5k Pokemon collection that had a lot of WOTC graded cards that I collected from 2017-2020. Shit got insane, real fast in October 2020.
Put the dogs in the thumbnail and watch your views increase exponentially!!
Video has a few inaccuracies to it but has good points to make, especially for those "TCG Investing" types.. Aoki invested more than Rudy I believe, not to mention others like King PoKeMoN basically as some grand council of investors.. Definitely not just 1 random Magic guy from UA-cam.. Didn't even mention Argos..
Though it was a huge cloud getting involved with these types with the reputations they have, it was really mismanagement and mentally unwell ownership that drove it under..
It was insane how people trying to help were pushed away... no.. legitimately Banned/Blacklisted..
Probably The biggest waste of a potential IP I will ever see in my lifetime.. Definitely some of THE wildest things i've seen happen..
Wouldn't collect a TCG without a 1st edition stamp tho.. preferably not even printing 2nd/unlimited.. Just so they can't reprint that exact thing whenever they please.. (PoKe)
(Biggest shame about MetaZoo.. It was THE most inclusive and friendly TCG community I have Ever been a part of, by far...)
🃏
Open season for all the know it all I told you so-ers. Can't really say anything but 90% of these ppl don't have accurate info backing their 2-bit opinions
Since it is a dead game shouldn t these be selling well to collectors now? Since those are going to become rare sets?
no, the supply of this game is massive. It was speculation that it WOULD become a playable / collectible game.
@@GoneRogueGamesI mean, it is playable, the audience for it is just incredibly niche
Universus is growing really fast now. The demand is so high that their Yu Yu Hakusho set is practically sold out everywhere. They are also adding IPs like Critical Role and Godzilla later this year. Each event I've gone too has more and more people showing up for it. The game has grown a lot since its Jasco days.
Let's hope it recovers. The MHA releases actually had good data supporting that it was being played. Unfortunately they printed too much of it. Again, probably not their fault. The speculation during the covid era was out of control.
First of all, I would like to say that I am sorry about your experience with that one customer. His behaviour was inexcusable and it seems like barring them from the store was a good move on your part. I likely would have done the same thing and maybe even sooner, so props to you for having to put up with them for so long.
However, there are several innacuracies in this video that I would like to correct, mostly because a lot of people seem to share wrong information about Metazoo, often without even knowing that they are doing so.
I'm not trying to argue that Metazoo really was on track to compete with MtG or run defense for Rudy & the speculators. I did not speculate on Metazoo nor do I respect those kinds of people. I do love the game though and played it competitively, which puts me in the 1% minority when it comes to the Metazoo audience. I do also have a decent amount of information to share, so let's get to it:
1:04 Regarding the artwork, I am also not a fan of it, although some pieces did grow on me over time. However, I was generally surprised by how many players (and by that I mean people like myself who did go to events and actually played the game) loved the pastel "style" of Metazoo when compared to most other TCGs, so I feel that I should point out that there was an audience for it, even if I don't include myself in it.
1:10 - 1:21 There is quite a bit to unpack here, but Metazoo plays fairly differently from Magic. It is closer in style to powerful old formats like Vintage, with extremely powerful wheel effects and other 1-of staples being run in most decks as an example, with slightly longer kill time. Having played both games at a competitive level, I feel like I can reliably assert that the actual gameplay is nothing like MtG. *However,* the very first set for Metazoo was notably awful to play with (with many effects similar to an Un-set from MtG) and really did turn off a lot of people as you pointed out. The game did not come onto its own until the second set, Nightfall, which drastically changed the dynamic of the game and actually made it fun. I should also point out that I do not find limited Metazoo to be a fun game, but playing with proper constructed decks very much is.
1:45 - 2:10 To my experience at least, the second set (Nightfall) actually sold extremely well and remains packed with high value cards. In fact, as of today, it is still one of the most valued metazoo set overall (if not the most), excluding speculative outliers like the Kickstarter boxes & 1st ed CN. That being said, the third set, Wilderness (the one that you are holding a precon deck from) was very poorly received and only contains a handful of real cards of value, so I can easily believe investors chased rudy promos 1 month after its release 😅
3:30 This seems just wrong, although I do not know if you are talking about people playing it in a general sense. If that is the case, then yeah, I think it is pretty obvious that Metazoo was not the most popular game out there 😅.There was an active competitive scene though, of which we have plenty of data on. The first official Metazoo tournament, the Water Tower, was intended for 160 players and actually saw a much larger audience. The last major tournament completed before the end of service announcement (Dark Tower) actually saw a turnout closer to 300 players who qualified and showed up, which I feel was pretty good for a niche competitive scene. There was also no shortage of unofficial player-run tournaments, some of which still run online to this day, three months after closure.
7:00 This is the first point that is flat wrong, on multiple fronts. Metazoo died shortly after its 7th set was released, not the 4th. And Metazoo's 4th set, UFO, was actually a large success due to the many chase cards and positive changes it brought to the game. Giving a quick reception breakdown of the main set releases, the game progressed like this: #1 Cryptid Nation (poor playability despite many staples) -> #2 Nightfall (high playability, fan favourite) -> #3 Wilderness (middling to poor reception) -> #4 UFO (high playability, fan favourite) -> #5 Seance (disaster due to mapping issues) -> #6 Native (great set with plenty of playable cards) -> #7 Kuromi (Disaster).
8:21 I think you are 100% in the right here, and the general overexpansion of Metazoo, alongside many poor business decisions, were largely responsible for its downfall. In regards to the actual audience of the game (both players and collectors), there was definitely not enough demand to justify that kind of printrun and overexpansion.
10:58 I will personally disagree here, but I do not think that there necessarily is a correct answer. The idea of a game centered around Cryptids definitely has a strong niche appeal, but whether or not it has enough to sustain a living TCG is another question entirely, especially in today's hypercompetitive market.
Regardless, I find saying that Rudy was the main appeal with Metazoo disingenuous at best. Rudy certainly sold the game to a lot of investors, but I do not think I have ever met an actual player who ever cared about his promos. As an anecdotal example, I've met far more people who wanted to play petdecks based on their local cryptids that most people never heard about, or classics like the Mothman, Fresno Nightcrawlers, etc...
5:00 - 5:48 & 16:06 - end. This is a bit of a strange point and I feel like many people were under this misconception, but Metazoo only ever had an "Unlimited" style release once, for the very first set who had three editions (Kickstarter, 1st ed, 2nd ed). All other sets were actually closer to Pokemon's early sets, where they have a "first edition" label without a second edition ever existing.
Well, that's about it! Sorry for the massive wall of text, with the actual community for the game being so small, I feel like most people end up unknowingly sharing wrong information and getting details mixed up. Other people who watch this video later might also appreciate the added details when information on the game becomes more and more obscure, who knows!
I love ur dogs!
date is wrong in the video.
Metazoo is over? I kept seeing it on UA-cam but never got into it. Those dogs were so energetic that night, I love how the tennis ball rolls onto camera at 13:23
I don't blame you for your caution with SWU. Fantasy Flights track record leaves a bit to be desired, and I'm hoping that the game (and whatever "second edition" inevitably follows) succeeds enough to have it stick around for a bit. SW Destiny had a decent following in my college town when it released, and then due to lack of product collapsed immediately. I'm hoping they've learned from their continuous production mistakes and are able to lock in and get product out and in people's hands. And that the game is good, because the demo decks I tried certainly left a sour taste in my mouth.
id like to know your opinion on Altered TCG. The Kickstarter Phenom
The perils of investing in printed card stock
I lost more than that in one month of buying Magic the Gathering Packs. 10 packs sells for over $100 canadian after tax. After opening, the cards have an aftermarket value of $0.80 total. That's a loss of OVER $100.
The artwork in Metazoo was the huge red flag to me. It just seemed too basic to last.
I got burned on FAB and Grand Archive. Like both games but didn't like the direction they started in
Haha the title after Rudy’s video
puppy!
Should say 100% loss
Best fire starters. Glad I never touched and warned everyone not to. Especially after that owner did that crazy interview.
I wonder if that individual watches your vids?😅
Let's hope!
I only play zoo
you seem awfully happy over someone else's miserable experience in metazoo.
Never got into MTG, but doesn’t mean it’s bad bcuz it doesn’t appeal to me. I’d never make a video shitting on a failed TCG that never appealed to me. Pretty scummy people in the TCG community
I don’t think this guy was “shitting” on anything, but he might have been more positive if you would have actually paid for the product he ordered you…
@@sideshowonacid 😂 he never ordered anything for me. Don’t companies require you to pay for pre-orders 🤔
Was I shitting on the game here? I even said it could have been fine like a Munchkins or a Killer Bunnies, I was shitting on how idiotic people were with this game, fomoing and pumping and dumping it. I feel sorry for Metazoo, it could have grown organically, had its own little niche and been relatively successful in its own right, but it listened to the wrong people and flew too close to the sun.
@@roguedeckbuilder”didn’t like the artwork, it’s too much like MTG” then proceed to tell people “the crap” came form you making a poor business decision to take a pre-order without payment and you lost money bcuz a poor business decision. Hope you get enough views to recover your $100.00 loss
@@CryptidKeeperTCG you read way too much into this video dude, take a breath. It was mainly a joke directed at another video... sheesh
Rudy reminds me too much of a used car salesman. Can’t trust him.
You open a shop for Demonic based card games in Utah the center of Mormon cultural influence and you wonder why no-one is interested 😂
Tell me you don't know anything about Utah without telling me you don't know anything about Utah...
Imagine blaming a singular customer for holding a bag 😂 stay mad. I hope that guy never supports you again.
He is banned for life