We’re three months deep into 2024 and we’ve already seen significant changes to the Marvel Snap economy. I covered four of those changes in depth in a companion article released alongside this one. It’s my intention that you read that one first (it’s Part 1, after all), but you do you!

This article contains my interview with Stephen Jarrett, Senior Director of Product & Strategy at Second Dinner. It is focused on the changing economy and card acquisition, but we talked about a bunch of other stuff, too.

About this Interview

My interview with Stephen was split across two sessions: one in late January, and one in late February. The companion article took me a lot longer to write than expected!

Anyway, please keep that in mind while you read. Nearly all of his answers are still relevant (though it’s possible he’s found a new favorite deck since we last talked).

It was awesome to get so much of Stephen’s time. I asked a ton of questions, and he answered almost all of them!

Without further ado…

Intro

LaurenWhatevs: What do you do as the Senior Director of Product & Strategy at Second Dinner (SD)?

Stephen Jarrett: As the Senior Director of Product & Strategy at Second Dinner, I lead development of our progression, live service, and shop experiences. Some examples are the core loop of upgrading cards to get new cards on the collection track, weekly challenge and missions, the Season Pass, and the shop.

You joined SD before Snap’s closed beta. How did you find out about SD (or Marvel Snap), and what’s the story of you joining the team?

Before joining Second Dinner I led product on Fortnite at Epic Games, but prior to that, I worked at Blizzard on both the Diablo team and the New Game Incubation team. While at Blizzard, I got to know a lot of the folks at Second Dinner as friends, so when they were curious about bringing product management to SD, they called me up to share what that could look like. Before I realized what was happening, I was leaving Epic/Fortnite to work at Second Dinner!

How has the team changed since then? How do you expect the team will change in 2024?

I am proud to be the 30th employee at the company. At the time I joined, the game was missing in-depth progression or monetization. I immediately dove into working with awesome folks at SD to come up with a vision for the core progression loop and building it as soon as possible so we could take steps toward launching the game! Since then, the team has grown in size. We are more established now and Snap has had great success. With the growing size, we prioritize keeping SD a very fun place to work and full of people who respect each other and genuinely care for each other and the work they do.

What is your favorite deck to play in the live game right now? (January)

My favorite deck right now is Phoenix Force. Nothing as satisfying as getting a giant Human Torch or tons of big power Multiple Men with a Plan B of Shuri/Nimrod.

What is your favorite deck to play in the live game right now? (February)

I do have an updated favorite deck. I haven’t played Phoenix Force as much in the past couple weeks. You can share the Phoenix Force deck, too. I still love that deck.

What are your favorite cards in the game?

My favorite characters are Iron Man, Darkhawk, and Wolverine. I have a giant Iron Man statue on my desk. He is absolutely my fave Marvel character because he has no superpowers and became an Avenger because of his intelligence and heart. I grew up loving the original run of Darkhawk comics (have all of them). Wolverine was my favorite X-Men growing up in comics and the 90s cartoon, Bub!

Economy

An Extra Card Each Season

Can we expect to see a brand-new card in the Spotlight at the beginning of each season going forward?

We are experimenting with an extra card each season! We want to see how it impacts the meta and if players are excited to get an increase in options at a faster rate than before.

We noticed during the first week of the season, when the Spotlight Cache did not have a new card, that engagement with spotlights was significantly lower. Adding the new card during the first week makes opening the Spotlight Cache worth it every week.

We regularly discuss new potential ways to release new cards. We have no solid plans yet, but longer-term, we’re considering this. For example, do we add new cards as rewards for special events? Nothing concrete to share, but we’re actively discussing it.

Series Drops

What can we expect from Series Drops going forward?

My previous response can be shared more broadly.

Flexible Series Drops were introduced in May last year. How is it decided which cards will drop?

My previous response can be shared more broadly.

When Spotlights were announced, it was said that Series Drops would be announced at least two weeks in advance (for the record, we did get that heads-up for the January Series Drop).

Is there any sort of “safe window” longer than those two weeks where we can be assured a featured Spotlight card is not about to be dropped to Series 3?

During the time before Spotlight Caches when we had a scheduled monthly Series Drop, players would intentionally hold off on buying cards they wanted to play with for weeks or months solely to avoid using any Tokens in the off-chance something better was released. We are trying to create a world where Series Drops still exist but players don’t wait and hoard when there is a card they want to play, and instead get it when they want to play with it through a Spotlight Cache or with Tokens. As a result, we don’t want to leave large safe windows that could encourage players to make decisions to optimize around the economy instead of their own fun.

Old Economy vs. New Economy

In a 52-card year, 52 cards needed to drop to Series 3 annually in order for the new economy to match the old economy in raw card acquisition. In a 64-card year, that number is only 12.

The January 9th Series Drop saw 5 cards enter Series 3. Do you currently expect future Series Drops to be similar in scale? Can we expect that there will be at least 12 cards dropped to Series 3 every year?

Series Drops have undergone a lot of iteration since their introduction a few months after Series 4 and 5 were added to Marvel Snap. As I mentioned earlier, during the Tokens-only era, new cards had low ownership and play rates. This was in large part due to Series Drops and the knowledge that a card would be available to easily be claimed once it dropped to Series 3.

We expect to continue to do Series Drops to avoid Series 4 and 5 getting too large. The timing and scale of it will be determined based on ownership and play rates of cards. For the long-term health of the game, we have to continually thread the line between ensuring there are meaningful Token and Spotlight Cache experiences with Series Dropping cards at the right time.

Card acquisition rate is an important measure for a player to understand what the economy means for them. I believe knowing how many cards they will be missing in the long run is important, too.

It’s possible for the pool of Series 4/5 cards to get so big that an end-game free-to-play player (optimizing for card acquisition) would be missing more cards in the new economy than the old.

The 64-card year increases BOTH how many cards a player acquires and how many they miss.

What are your thoughts on the trade-off between acquiring more cards at the cost of missing more cards?

As a player who has hit Infinite every season since beta launch, and at CL 17k+, I have had the experience of losing to a card I did not own many times throughout my Snap gaming experience. Ultimately, what is most important is whether a player has the game pieces necessary to reach their skill limit each season. We are a card game that sells cards and cosmetics so we can keep making new awesome cards and experiences for our players.

Series 3

Series 3 growing indefinitely is a trait of both the old and new economies. I’ve seen players express concerns about Series 3 continuing to grow when it already takes so long (at least six months!) to complete Series 3.

Is the indefinite growth of Series 3 a feature or a bug?

The growth of Series 3 is a feature, but one we will have to eventually add more tools for players to engage with. We previously gave players the ability to target specific Series 3 cards with Tokens beyond the one free card per month that exists in the game today. We later added back the Mystery Series 3 card for Tokens to increase acquisition rates of Series 3 cards. More recently, we have started to provide opportunities for Series-3-incomplete players to pick up special offers to purchase cards they do not yet own. We will continue to identify and create new ways for Series-3-incomplete players to make better and more direct progress through their Series 3 journey.

Do you consider the long time it takes to complete Series 3 a problem?

We have intended it to take a long time to complete Series 3 as a core part of the game. Completing Series 3 is a huge aspirational goal! Goals like that are what inspire us all to play a game. The core loop of progressing through the collection track and acquiring an unknown card then crafting the best deck you can with it to compete is a huge part of the fresh vibe that made Snap as successful as it was at launch. Opening a Collector’s Reserve and getting a Series 3 card you have been waiting for is a huge delight moment akin to opening booster packs in other CCGs. With Spotlight Caches, we have pulled in the Series 4 and 5 experience intentionally so Series 3 players can engage with new cards immediately regardless of their Series 3 status. This enables Series-3-incomplete players to always have a way to catch up quickly.

Are there any plans to improve Series 3 acquisition?

We will continue to add new ways for players to acquire Series 3 cards as Series 3 continues to grow. We recognize how important it is for players to feel like they can compete, and we want to balance that with ensuring they always have goals to grow their collection and experiment with decks beyond what the internet says is the best possible combination.

Series 4/5

Series 4/5 growing indefinitely is a trait that’s unique to the new economy (assuming we’re not eventually getting back to the old rate of dropping cards to Series 3).

As Series 4/5 gets bigger, it takes longer to feature every card in the Spotlight rotation. The gap in collection size between free-to-play players and Season Pass buyers gets bigger, too.

To date, Marvel Snap has been quite friendly to free-to-play players — they can reach Infinite rank, win Infinity Conquest, and some have even performed well in tournaments.

Are there any concerns about Series 4/5 becoming too large? Are there any plans to address this?

The main area we watch for the size of Series 4 and 5 is how long it takes for us to be able to feature a card again in Spotlight Caches, and whether a card feels valuable enough to occupy space in a Spotlight Cache or the Token shop vs. other, more interesting cards. As time goes on and more cards are added, the game will continue to evolve. At the moment, we are not concerned about the size of Series 4 and 5, plus we are confident that we have an easy way to control that size through Series Drops.

Is it a priority for the game to remain accessible to free-to-play players? Do you monitor the ability for free-to-play players to be successful competitively (e.g., to reach Infinite)?

Over the course of the life cycle of the game we have continually made decisions in favor of helping free-to-play and low-spender players feel they can be competitive and successful in Marvel Snap. The transition to Spotlight Caches was an enormous victory for free-to-play players and lower-spending players to get their hands on new and more cards quickly. We watch how players of all levels engage with Marvel Snap, and we make new features and tuning changes to help players across that entire spectrum.

Spotlights

Is it still a goal for Spotlight Caches to provide “more cards for more players”?

The primary goal of Spotlight Caches is to get more new cards on release to more players. Spotlight Caches have met this goal. During the Tokens-only era, new cards had low ownership and play rates. We observed the most engagement happen when cards were labeled as “Big Bads”. The changes have created more conversations and excitement around every new card’s potential impact on meta. In many ways, Spotlight Caches have not only met their goals, they’ve exceeded them!

“Low-rolling” with Spotlights feels bad. Especially over multiple weeks in a row. For example, there’s only a 0.4% chance that you will need to spend four Keys to get the card you want over four Spotlight weeks in a row — but that 0.4% represents thousands of real players.

Are there any plans to mitigate bottom-tier luck with Spotlights?

We have spent an enormous amount of time and energy controlling for low-rolling in the way that Collector’s Reserves work. The result was that we also stopped high-rolling, which takes away many delight moments from the game. For Spotlight Caches, we structured it in a way that has clear bad luck protection by ensuring the new card is within spending four Keys. We want to take steps to improve the Random Series 4 or 5 item in the Spotlight Cache, and we hope that makes it feel better to open every week.

You had a fairly recent answer in the official Discord where you stated, “a large and increasing over time number of players are becoming collection complete or the equivalent of it by owning all the cards they care about”. This tracks with all the math I’ve done concerning the economy.

Do you think the system is too generous?

The current Spotlight system is the most generous progression in the history of Marvel Snap. It enables players for free-to-minimal spend to stay near collection-complete, which is potentially very challenging for the game’s business performance. The downside of the system is that the reception of it is mixed, and many players say it feels bad or scary to open. Internally at Second Dinner, we refer to it like a “cursed D4” at times when you only care about the new card. To have a system as generous as Spotlight Caches while resulting in bad feelings means it has a lot of room for improvement. We plan to focus on improving the way it feels and our ability to fill it with interesting content. Some changes I imagine we will make in the future include some forms of bad luck protection and how we select Spotlight variants. data about game performance.

Is there a length of time we can expect to pass between a Season Pass card’s release and the first time it is featured in the Spotlight?

We do not have a hard rule around the length of time for a Season Pass card’s release and Spotlight at this time. We have to ensure the Season Pass’s value is high as it is a huge part of our ability to continue to operate the game and gives players awesome goals to achieve throughout a season. This means there has to be a time delay between the season and when it first arrives in Spotlights. There is a pathway to get the card immediately after the season in the Token Shop whenever a player wishes to pick it up.

Spotlight Variants

Are Spotlight Variants still meant to be timed exclusives instead of permanent exclusives? Do you expect we’ll see any become available outside of Spotlights this year? 

They will continue to be time-limited exclusives, but we plan to make them available through other means either as a new tier of variant in the Daily Offer Shop or through a new acquisition method. We are still in the process of making that decision and prioritizing developing the right solution.

When Spotlights were first announced, there was an assurance given that the art team would be ramped up to handle the increased demand. Since then, many killer variants have been added to the game! I think the 3D and animation effects are getting better overall, too.

However, we saw one Spotlight Variant get repeated, some cards (like Knull) being featured many times, very long waits for Stegron and Howard to first be featured, and Spotlight Variants that would be Rare if they were regular store variants (like Baby M.O.D.O.K. and Dan Hipp Jeff). Additionally, many new cards have seemed to be released with very few variants.

Can you address some of these problems? Can we expect any changes in this area?

At the end of 2023, we increased the amount of variants we were releasing to the game to well over 80 per season. We saw the demand and did our best to maximize support. We are building back up our variant reserves and our hope is to return to releasing 70+ variants per season soon, including for newly released cards.

Misc. Card Acquisition

I’m personally a fan of how rapidly the game receives balance adjustments (three of every four weeks!). I like that it keeps the game interesting, and ensures new cards that miss too high or too low get addressed quickly.

There have been critiques that the cost of card acquisition makes quick nerfs feel bad. Do you agree? Do you have any other thoughts on the relationship between the game economy and card balance?

Competitive balance is something we actively made decisions to maintain at the expense of the game economy. This has led to many moments where new cards have trouble finding their footing compared to cards that have been in the game for a long time. We have made a goal since prior to launch to keep as many cards relevant for as long as possible, which leads to minimal power creep. This is core to the reason why Series 3 is such a crucial stage of the player journey in Marvel Snap.

Is it a goal for end-game players to have unique card collections? I think most of us love that cosmetic collections are unique, but aren’t big fans of card collections being unique.

Our goal for end-game players is for them to have unique variant and Infinity split collections. It’s exciting to be able to show off a really dope variant with an amazing split combo. One of my favorites in my collection is a Fiona Venom with ink / blue Krackle split combo.

It was previously said that about one-third of new releases would be released directly to Series 4. Lately, it’s seemed like that rate has changed to one per month.

Is there a rate at which we can expect new cards to start in Series 4?

Now that Series Drops have returned, we are moving back towards more cards releasing as Series 5 and then declining over time based on their performance and desirability. We will still at times release cards to Series 4 when it makes sense.

The Future of Snap

Is Series 5 the limit?

We aren’t planning anything over Series 5. We don’t want to throw out the possibility of it, but we don’t think the game needs it right now.

What areas of the game are you the least satisfied with?

Oh man….the thing that drives me the craziest are the black flare splits. They are the rarest and the potential to be the coolest but sadly it doesn’t pop. Hopefully we can make them cooler soon.

The other one that I passionately want to improve is to make Ultimate Variants worth it. I cannot wait until someone drops an Ultimate Variant with unique VFX, chat bubbles, and a special avatar frame!

What areas of the game are you the most satisfied with?

I am most satisfied with the team, how passionate they are about our game, and how hard they work to develop an amazing game for our players.

For features, I am proud of how we have created an innovative progression system focused on cosmetic growth. We had a vision to make a game focused on cosmetics without being a 3D avatar experience, and we were able to pull it off! Thank you to our amazing players for seeing and diving into that experience with as much excitement as us.

What upcoming features are you most excited for?

There are a lot of upcoming features that are soooo dope! Between Clans (final name TBD), Events, Custom Card, Character Mastery, and a new game mode there is a lot to be excited about on the way.

In the short term, I am pumped for Custom Card and the ability to pick my border for my favorite splits without having to stop leveling up the card. Then we will follow that up with brand new borders to go even deeper on customizing your favorite cards.

Longer term, I am most excited for Character Mastery and being able to show off which characters I love the most in my matches with unique foils, flares, borders, and reactions.

As a player, what are the top features or fixes you’d like to see added to the game?

I would love a way to condense down all the splits and variants I do not plan to use in my collection to make utilizing that screen much easier and efficient. My hope is we can pull that off later this year through updates to Custom Card to include that content into that feature instead of clogging up the collection at all times.

Any chance we’ll see some updates focused on quality-of-life features (QoL) this year?

We try to fit in QoL improvements whenever we can. The Custom Card feature is a great example of us investing in something that players have requested for a long time that had a pretty large cost to develop. We will continue to take steps to improve the player experience across the board throughout the year.

We’ve seen lots of new cards be buggy and patches introduce new bugs on systems that seemed fine before. It’s undoubtedly improved, but still fairly routine.

Is there some intention behind an apparent “move fast, break things” approach to developing the game? If not, are there plans to remedy this further?

There is a trade-off between getting new features into players’ hands and being bug-free at all times. Our strategy is to make features as quickly as we can, learn from them in players’ hands, and then continue to invest in features that resonate the most with our players. I do not see these as unforced errors, but decisions we made prioritizing what was most important in each patch. A core part of live game development is making sure the game always feels alive and is growing and changing. Waiting an extra month or two for every feature would significantly change that dynamic, and we prefer to keep the game in a constantly evolving and engaging state week to week.

Thanks so much for the time you spent answering my questions!