Burning Questions 4/1

Welcome back to Burning Questions, your weekly romp through the topics that are burning up the Marvel Snap community! This week Second Dinner dropped a massive OTA and there were some notable changes at Second Dinner. Let's dive in!

1) Who is the biggest beneficiary of the OTA?

Whenever the top predators are taken out, it leaves space for previously hunted decks to take over.

When Gambit, Horseman of Death was first released, it was a dominant deck with a high play rate. A few things happened to change that. Gambit was nerfed, as was Star-Lord for a second time on March 26th. This gave Shou-Lao all the space he needed to become Gambit’s top predator. At the top of the ladder, Shou-Lao was keeping Gambit's play rate low, while in the middle of the ladder 5/8 Star-Lord was proving to be a resilient combo piece and Doom 2099 was more prevalent. So at all spots on the ladder, the meta has become more unfriendly to Horseman Gambit and his play rate wasn't able to recover from his slight nerf to needing 6-Cost worth of created cards (alongside a small nerf to Frigga).

The Timeline

1/29 Shou-Lao nerfed
1/29 Doom 2099 buffed
02/03 Moondragon released
2/26 Star-Lord’s first nerf
3/10 Gambit released
3/26 Star-Lord's second nerf
3/26 Horseman Gambit nerfed to 6-Cost of created cards

Now, we've got Mother Askani, points have been taken out of the Shou-Lao decks, and Star-Lord has taken a sizable nerf. Doom 2099 is still a problem for Gambit decks, but the Horseman of War is primed for a resurgence.

The space left open for Gambit is so obvious, in fact, that I think the development team made a mistake not nerfing this card alongside Shou, SLMotS, Foom, and FS Invisible Woman. The card has absolutely one of the least pleasant play patterns ever and I would much rather face point slam Shou-Lao decks or Star-Lord combo decks than double or triple Gambit, Horseman of Death decks. Maybe he'll get hit in next week's OTA? That OTA is likely already locked in, but perhaps it was pre-planned.

2) What is going on at Second Dinner?

Two of the most public-facing Second Dinner employees have left in the last couple of weeks.

A few weeks ago, Glenn Jones announced on Twitter that he was leaving Second Dinner.

Then yesterday we got the shocking news that community manager Griffin Bennett had been laid off.

Content creator Regis Killbin indicated that the layoffs were wider than just Griffin. How much is due to budget constraints? How much is down to further AI replacement of coding positions?

Here are my thoughts on all of this:

Don't connect the Glenn and Griffin situations. Glenn left for another job voluntarily. All indications are that it is a positive opportunity for Glenn.
Remember that layoffs are typically corporate cost-savings measures and are not firings m There is absolutely no indication that Griffin or anyone else was let go for performance reasons.
There is absolutely no indication behind the scenes that Second Dinner is “winding down” or “sunsetting” Marvel Snap. Games do have life cycles, but there is still active development and I'm seeing and hearing continued commitment from my personal contacts at Second Dinner.
Be sensitive to the human beings at the center of this. The gaming industry is notoriously volatile and it always sucks when people unexpectedly lose their jobs. Layoffs are also always difficult on the people that were kept – they have more work and their friends lost jobs.
I was personally a big fan of how both Griffin and Glenn related to the community and the openness of their communication. I'm sad to see them go. However, neither was at the core of development and gameplay. Glenn had indicated multiple times how his role had been spread out to other employees over the last year or so. The gameplay will survive without them, even if community engagement is worse off.
I shared a lot of game design philosophy with Glenn and I know Griffin was a positive force for proper monetization behind the scenes. The game is definitely worse off without these two, even if it doesn't mean the game is “in trouble” or anything.
Corporate layoffs aren't necessarily an indication of a company doing badly. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't. It's possible that these changes are in some way connected to the massive layoffs at Disney and Marvel in some way. Perhaps the licensing fee increased. Second Dinner has always been a little cagey about both their connection to Marvel and their internal structure. In other words, we don't know what we don't know. Be wary of anyone attempting to interpret what is happening with incomplete information.

What should Second Dinner do?

Glenn and Griffin weren't just the public face of the game, they worked in tandem to create the most open and responsive presence I've ever seen from a game. That going away so quickly is absolutely going to cause anxiety amongst players. Couple in the fact that Ben Brode is less and less public-facing for Marvel Snap and you have a game without a face. Glenn wasn't answering so many questions in the Discord and on social media because it was his job, he just did it of his own volition. But the result was a game that felt open and responsive. In the short term, Second Dinner needs to find ways to assuage the community about the state of the game and the company's future. In the long term, they also need to find new people to be public facing. Not every game needs to have such an approachable public presence, but it's not the kind of toothpaste you can put back into the tube. Players have become accustomed to Glenn and Griffin and a total disappearance of public community connection could have a negative affect on community sentiment.

3) What's the best Grand Arena Portal pull?

There's always a top target and one to dodge. This time my goal is to pull the awesome golden Iron Man and leave the weird gladiator Captain America behind.

That's it for this week! Come back next time for more Burning Questions! Have a Burning Question of your own? Come join in on the conversation in the Burning Questions channel on the Fourth Location Discord server!