Over the years the Magic: The Gathering multiverse has appeared in quite a few different mediums, but the granddaddy of all trading card games has struggled to find success in video games. Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast released a handful of digital interpretations of the game but most of these have been disappointing, to say the least.

That all changed with the release of Magic: The Gathering - Arena. Not only has the game been a massive success, but it was also actually Hasbro's biggest earner of its most recent earnings quarter.

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MTG Arena

Originally developed to be something to occupy D&D players when they were waiting at conventions, or simply didn't have time for a full game session, Magic: the Gathering caught fire with teenagers and nineties kids. Since then it has become a massive industry with a global player-base, pro-players, content-creators, and massive conventions all it's own. The game pits players against each other as planeswalkers, powerful wizards who travel the multiverse and summon spells, creatures and powerful artifacts to defeat their enemies.

In Hasbro's official fourth-quarter earnings statement, the company showed 2019 Entertainment, Licensing, and Digital segment net revenues increased 22 percent to a total of $434.5 million compared to $356.3 million in 2018. Further details from the statement make it clear that not only does Magic: The Gathering - Arena account for a significant portion of this growth, but loss of revenue from digital streaming offsets these numbers a bit and downplays the positive growth that the Magic has brought to the company. As of now, players have played 1.8 billion games and the player base has seen an overall growth of 72 percent in its first year.

This is good news for long time Magic players and new fans alike, but it doesn't stop there. The resurgence of popularity in tabletop gaming has fared quite well for Magic in its paper form too, with more players buying their first Deck Builder's Tool Kits, Bundles, Boxes and Booster Packs. As a whole, the franchise has grown 30 percent in 2019, and this growth has been met with more announcements such as an upcoming mobile game, Magic: The Gathering Mana Strike, and the release of the first gameplay trailer for Magic: Legends, the new Diablo-like MMO set in the Magic multiverse.

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Magic: The Gathering - Arena was released last year, and was the first of Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro's digital offerings to gain any sort of following since 2002's Magic: The Gathering Online. MtG: Online has been relatively unchanged since release, adding to the feeling held by many that Magic was very much of the past. This was remedied by Arena, which successfully combines the depth of strategy and complexity of card interactions of magic with the stylistic flair of games like Hearthstone.

The swift return of Magic is hard to account for as there are likely a handful of factors. In the past decade or so, board games and tabletop games have come back into popularity and Magic is certainly riding that wave. Some of these factors include nostalgia for the bygone nineties, the desire for in-person experiences over virtual ones, the nerd renaissance that has been happening since the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Game of Thrones took over our world. But just as it accounts for a good deal of Hasbro's earnings, Magic: The Gathering - Arena also accounts for a great deal of the game's growth in that it makes it easily accessible and free to play for many people who may not have otherwise experienced the joy that is a good old game of Magic.

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