What were you doing five years ago, in the fall of 2012? The answer for a small group of Magic the Gathering grinders based out of Brooklyn was that we were playing Magic regularly at a little LGS called Twenty Sided Store sowing the seeds of what would become Hipsters of the Coast. Little did we know where playing Magic five nights a week would take us.
Everything begins with Zac Clark (2012 – Present) taking a four-part look at the impending Standard rotation that would come with Return to Ravnica. Over the next few months Hipsters of the Coast grew exponentially. In October the blog doubled in size with the addition of Matt Jones (2012 – 2016). November saw the staff more than double as Li Xu (2012 – 2013), Giaco Furino (2012 – 2015), and yours truly (2012 – Present) signed on. By the time 2012 ended Jess Stirba (2012 – 2017) joined the party as well.
In five years more than 50 contributors have produced 2,730 pieces of published content for Hipsters of the Coast. With 376 of them myself it’s easy to feel a very personal connection to the site and to everyone else who has been gracious enough to contribute from Jess Stirba’s 226 articles to Paul Jordan’s single contribution. Every single one of them has gotten us to this, the 2,731st published article on Hipsters of the Coast.
But let’s not forget you, dear reader, because without you none of this is possible! In July of 2013 we began tracking our site stats through Google. In the four years and two months since then there have been over 900,000 users who visited our humble site and over five million page views. We’ve also managed to gather nearly 500 followers on Facebook and we’re closing in on 1,900 on Twitter.
About a thousand people a day visit this site. That’s amazing. This is a place that began as community collaboration between a bunch of nerds who all loved playing the same card game at the same store. Over the years it grew into a prominent voice in the community thanks to amazing content.
What really makes Hipsters of the Coast special in my opinion is the breadth of content we provide. Tournament reports? Metagame analysis? You got it. Commander and Legacy content? We have some of the best in the business. Need to get your Vorthos fix? You’ve come to the right place? Unparalleled editorial content and journalism the likes of which don’t exist anywhere else in the Magic community? Welcome to Hipsters of the Coast.
I want to wrap up this sentimental look back by talking about what the future holds for this small five-years-young content shop. The past few months have been a glimpse into our expansion process as we’ve added two podcasts to our roster (Leaving a Legacy and Magic Minute) and just this weekend at HasCon produced our first streaming videos, our first video interviews, and dived deeper into video games with Magic the Gathering: Arena and Magic the Gathering: Puzzle Quest.
As we continue to grow both in content breadth and medium versatility we look forward to your feedback and the amazing support we’ve received from the community for the last five years. While it’s perhaps a relatively small number, it’s a humbling thought that a thousand of you take time out of your busy schedules every single day to check out the latest and greatest content from our small amateur blog.
Thanks for reading, listening, and watching, and I can’t wait to be writing another one of these in five more years.
Rich Stein is the CEO of Hipsters of the Coast and is honored to serve at the mercy of one of the finest if not the most fickle community in all of fandom.