Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1214: Why Is Magic So Good?

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

I do a lot of interviews. A question I often get is, "Why is Magic so good?" I have a lot of answers to that question, enough for a 30-minute podcast.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I dropped my son off at college. We all know what that means. It's time to let the drive to work. Okay so today, so I do interviews all the time and there's a common question I get asked in interviews which is why is magic such an amazing game? Like what is, what about it makes it so, such a good game? And so I've answered this question infinite times. And the reality is there's not one answer.

I think there's a mix of things. But anyway, I thought I would spend a whole podcast explaining from my personal point of view, why Magic is an amazing game. Okay, now like I said, the reason the question is a tricky one answer and why it's actually a good podcast topic is It's a complex answer I think what Richard made magic he did a whole bunch of good things First let me talk a little bit about the Golden Trifecta, which I've talked about before and I have podcasts on each of these topics

I think there's three genius ideas that Richard had when he created the game, so let's walk through those very quickly. The idea of a trading card game, so the core of this is the idea that your game doesn't, the players of your game don't need to be using the same resources. The idea that I can have a deck and you have a deck and our pieces are different. We don't need to be playing the same pieces. The idea that games don't have to have symmetry to them. Like when we look at most games the way the games are set up is people are treated pretty equally. You know we're

playing this game and you know I'll use Monopoly as my go-to just because everyone knows Monopoly. Okay well I start with the same amount of money as everybody else. I mean, we each have our own little piece that represents us, but we each get our own little piece. And we start at the same point on the board. And the idea is what separates us is the luck of the rolling the dice and such,

but not, we begin with the same thing. Now, there are some games like Scrabble where there's different tiles and there's some randomization and obviously with a deck of cards there's some randomization, but the thing about those games is we are pulling from the same resource. Yeah, I might get different cards or letters or whatever than you, but we're pulling from the same source that anything I could get, you could get. And Magic really said, I mean, Richard said with Magic, well, what if I have stuff you don't have?

Maybe hypothetically you could have it and that you have access to in the game, but when we start the game, I will have resources and things in my deck that you do not have in your deck. And that the idea that each person, like really what Richard came to was trading cards are this cool thing. Forget the game part of it. It's like, oh, well, I like this thing, whatever this thing, whatever the topic is, baseball, movies, whatever. And there are these various cards representing that thing that I can collect.

It's fun to collect, but it's randomized. I don't know what I'm getting. And Richard realized that that concept, that idea, just lent itself toward a game. And he built it. Another thing I talk about is the color pie. If you regular listeners know, the color pie to me is the most amazing thing about the game personally. Just the thing that excites me the most. The idea that your game has an ethos built into it, that different components of your game, they're not, the

colors have philosophies and they mean something and they represent something and that you can see yourself in them. The idea that we can combine colors to make guilds or shards or wedges or whatever that each has its own feel. It gives the game this real weight to it, this psychological weight that I think is important. And third, the mana system. The way the game actually works, the way that you, he created the system, because one of the big challenges of a trading card game is, and I've talked about this, how do you make it such that you just don't play

the most broken pieces? What Richard called the queen problem. I'm playing chess where I get to pick my own pieces. Why am I playing one king and 15 queens? Why would I play a bishop or a rook? Why would I play a bishop or a rook? Why would I play a pawn? Why am I playing cards that aren't as powerful? And the answer is the solution, a big part of the solution, part of it was the color pie. But another part was the idea that cars have different value at different times because of the mana

system and the way that lands work. And the funny thing about this thing, and once again I have a whole podcast on this, is that a lot of people look at sort of the downside of the mana system Which is that you know you can get color screwed or land screw I mean like games can go poorly just because you get a bad a bad mix of things But I think what people really miss is how much exciting you know It's kind of like look at all the exhausts in the air, car socks, like, well, cars do a lot of good. I'm not saying there are downside to cars, but looking at cars only through their downside, you really miss the value of cars. Like we

as a society are quite different because of the existence of cars. And yes, there are downsides of cars, there are offshoots of cars, but the manna system is the same way for me. There are a lot of game designers that I know who have tried to fix the mana system only to come back and really understand it. Once you try to... I made Duel Masters or co-made Duel Masters, and it wasn't until I made a game where I tried to fix the mana system that I truly appreciated the mana system. Okay, those are the golden trifecta. I've talked about those, but I want to talk about a few other things.

So another thing that can't be undersold, and this was an important one, is, and this is true for any game, Magic has a brilliant business model. One of the reasons Magic has been so successful is that, you know, the idea that I'm going to build a game and that game is going to keep building pieces and you the player get it invested as you want. And that this, like one of the things that when you design games, I did an article a long time ago, I'll go 10 things every game needs. And my last thing was I called it a hook.

But what I meant is there is something about your game that has to sell the game. And now it doesn't sell the game. The other thing you want is a system by which if you sell the game, it can be profitable. And Magic, Magic having a given, Richard built it on trading cards, trading cards have an amazing business model. So I mean, he built it on,

he turned something with a good business model into a game. So, but that's another really important part. The idea that like one of the reasons magic is so amazing is it can generate so much money that we can hire a giant, giant R&D staff or not just R&D, a giant staff. I mean part of the reason magic is so good is hey, the magic mechanics are great because we have a really, really good team that has a lot of time and a lot of energy. We can, you know, I remember I worked on some other games

where I had like a month to design the game. That's not magic. I have years to design the game, and I have lots of people working with me, and you know, we have a top notch R&D team because of that. We have a top notch art team and creative team, and like all the different component pieces, the reason Magic is at the top of its game

is the idea that the business model, the game makes enough money that we really can pour a lot of money into it. And we have resources not a lot of games have, because you've got to make a lot of money to get the kind of resources we do. So the business model is really important. Another really important part of a game is, I think Richard understood the idea of different people had different things, but there is a

thing called ego investment. And what that means is humans like to feel good about themselves, right? And so ego investment means you are doing something in which you can see your own fingerprints on what you're doing so that when the thing you're doing does well, you feel proud of yourself. And that's a big part of magic. A magic deck is a very personal thing. It is not, I mean, I give in, you can buy a pre-constructed deck or whatever, but a lot of decks is I take

the deck and I put it together. I make all the choices and then I play it and I make decisions based on how it plays and I constantly tweak my deck. So there's this ownership that comes from a magic deck that's not found in a lot of games. There are now Dungeon Dragons Dragons role-playing is a good example that also has this. I build my character and the character is my creation that I made and when I'm successful, I made that character. And imagine I made that deck.

And the ego investment, the idea that I can play and when I win, I don't just feel good about the game or feel good about my skills. I just feel good about the game or feel good about my skills. I just feel good about me because the, in some ways the deck winning is showing me, you know, in a way that's very powerful. The other thing that's really, I mean, one of the things you'll realize today

as I talk for half an hour is there's endless things about magic that are really amazing. And the fact that they're all together, I'll get to that at the end. Okay the other big thing is or one of the other big things is you there's a thing that Justin Gary a former pro player he's a game designer he made Ascension and he's made a whole bunch of games Soul Forge and anyway he and I'm not sure whether the terminology is from him or from Richard Garfield.

So one of the two of them coined this. They call it your radioactive spider bite, making reference to Spider-Man. The idea is, what game was it that just infected you with a love for games? Like I know when I studied film in film school, there's the same concept for film. Like what film made you fall in love with films?

Like Star Wars is a really big example. And in games, the two ones that get sort of talked about the most are Dungeons and Dragons and Magic. Why? Because those are the two games that really, more than any other game, make you the game player, a game designer. That if I'm playing Dungeon Dragon,

especially if I'm a DM, but even if I'm just playing a character, I get to craft the character, I get to craft the campaign, or I get to craft the experience, that I, it's giving you the tools, and the game gives you the tools, but you have so much ability to craft what it is.

Like Magic, for example, is is like magic for example is a game But magic is a game like not only do people craft their own decks people craft their own formats people crack you know magic really allows people so much freedom to shape what it is they want it to be and That one of the cool things about the history of magic is Magic keeps shaping what it is. It keeps evolving. You know, in a way, in a lot of ways, like I, I often think of magic as kind of a living, breathing thing. Um, and I mean, it's shaped by the community as a whole, but the point is it just keeps

evolving and it keeps turning into the thing that people need it to be. That people use it a certain way. And as we, the makers of the game, see people using it that be. That people use it a certain way and as we, the makers of the game, see people using it that way, we lean into that. And that's one of the cool things about the history of Magic is, and the game is flexible enough to be that. The game is flexible enough that it can adapt to what it wants to be. And that's another big thing. So another big quality is it is a game that we constantly make and have constantly made for over 30 years Not a lot of games last 30 years

You know if you go looking at just in a game store at games on the shelf The number of games on the shelf that 30 years ago existed is not that large and most games once they get made Do not last 30 years, you know that that, I mean, there's some classics, obviously. But the idea that a game not only lasts 30 years, but we are still making content, in fact, more content, we are making regular content and have been every day for 30 years. And the reason that's important is,

I talk a lot about iteration, right? Well one of the ways that you improve games is iteration, and that's within designing the game itself. But the very nature of the game itself gets iterated. I talk about the flux of the game, and that part of that is we, the game designers, design things, we get a lot of feedback, and then we take that feedback and change future design. Malcolm Gladwell did a book, what was it called, Outliers? Talking about how someone gets good at something. And basically, it was like, what you need is 10,000 hours

with lots of feedback. Meaning, just the way you get really good at something is just doing it a lot, doing it in a way that somebody is giving you feedback on it and adjusting to the feedback. And the reality is, Magic has got its 10,000 hours plus. Way, way, way past that. And so a lot of the cool things about Magic is, it's just evolving at a pretty fast rate. Meaning, it has the business model to allow a really good R&D team, and it has the system by which we keep making more of it so we keep getting iterate on it and we have a great feedback system with the

audience because it's a very large a it's a very large audience and b the I mean part of it is the nature of the day the internet and stuff but we have a lot of connection to our fan base if our players believe something we have a lot of connection to our fanbase. If our players believe something, we have a lot of connection with them when we hear that. And like I said, part of that is the magic has always been very outreaching. I mean, I had a big hand of just, we spend a lot of time and energy, me especially, like

communicating what we're doing and what we're up to and sharing vocabulary with our audience and just doing a lot of things so that our vocabulary is very knowledgeable of the game itself so that they have a lot of, they can recognize what they like and not like and give feedback. And I think that's another big part of why Magic, one of the great elements of Magic is you know, when Magic first came out, I think it was a really great game. But you know what? It's a lot better.

And this is not remotely a knock against Richard. It's just, we spent 30 years, a lot of great minds, including Richard, has spent 30 years just figuring out how to improve upon things. And so we've learned a lot. And there's a lot of things in the early days. It's funny. One of the things I always talk about

is when you look at like, pick cars. Like when you look at the Model T, in a modern day perspective, it seems kind of quaint, but there are a lot of things that the Model T did right, and a lot of things were built off the Model T that ended up where you get modern cars today, you know? And that I look back at old designs, and I shudder sometimes at lessons we hadn't learned yet,

but I now realize that we did learn them, and they led us to figuring those things out and so That's another giant part of magic is the fact that it's just constantly evolving with a lot of insight you know like we are the We are sort of primed for that sort of the outliers like we constantly do things We constantly get feedback we constantly make more things and so the game keeps evolving like that Another big thing that I think makes magic magic is the art Magic has and this well, I mean in the very very beginning when rich rich zone

The design story of magic is Richard and his friend Mike Davis Davis come to pitch RoboRally to Peter Atkinson for Wizards to make. Wizards is too small company, can't handle RoboRally. The component pieces are just too much. But he says, hey, I got a printer in Belgium, Cartamundi. I know a school of artists. You know what I can make? Cards.

And that's got Richard down the path of trading cards and such. But one of the things that magic had very early on is there's something having a strong visual component is a big part of the game and there's something very personal about art. And the fact that Magic from its beginning like from the very nature from ground one was able to have art like one of the things about Magic Cards, when you first look at a Magic Card,

for 99% of the people, it's the art that grabs you when you first look at it. And just like we've evolved and we've iterated on the mechanics of magic, we've done so on the creative of magic. Art has had iteration, just world building, card concepting, names and flavor text, and that there's a lot of component pieces going on. And then another thing that makes magic

really exciting is that when you see just a single card, there's a world that sucks you into, you know, and that, that is exciting. And so I think one of the big things, another big thing that just makes magic magic is the fact that the very nature of design allows the art to play such a large role. And we've leaned into that. I mean, with booster fun, stuff like that. I mean, right now, I mean, there's never been more time where if you like a card, especially one that's popular,

that, hey, there's lots of opportunities for different things. We can get all sorts of of opportunities for different things. We can get all sorts of artists and do different things. There's just so many different visuals we can do. Another thing about Magic is its adaptability. It is a robust game system. One of the things that happened early on, and I'll admit, if you had talked to me back

in 1995 when I first came to work at Wizards and you said to me how many years of design is there in magic I think I would have said you know many tens you know 30 40 but I'm not sure if I even understood then what I know now which is humanity will die out before magic runs out of things it can do. There is so much, I mean, now, I'm not saying, I mean, the, we eat through the simple stuff, so definitely there's the issue of, but the one thing about magic is there's no reason we can't just do things we've done before.

And a lot of modern magic design is saying, hey, we have all these tools. Like one of the things about doing magic design is there's a lot of craftsmanship to it and the reason is we've made so many tools over the years so many mechanics so many like one of the things that's really interesting is when somebody pitches a new idea it's almost seen in in of elements we've done before like it's almost impossible to come up something nowadays and go we've never even thought of that before maybe we haven't made it yet there's a lot of ideas where I go oh we've done before. It's almost impossible to come up with something nowadays and go, we've never even thought of that before. Maybe we haven't made it yet. There's a lot of ideas where I go, oh, we've tried that but haven't found the right way to do it yet. But we've probably tried it

just because we spent 30 years doing this. And magic as a game system is so, so, so robust. There's so much there. And part of it is we've spent a lot of time and energy like figuring out how like Richard made a system that like he made it to be open-ended but we spent a lot of time adapting things like like me personally spent a lot of time on the color pie and that there's a really cool core ideas to the color pie but trying to figure out okay we want to make a game what are the strengths what are the weaknesses what can blue or white or green, you know,

and we have a whole council of colors now. We have an entire team whose job it is, is to monitor this very complex system to make sure that we are staying true to it. And that is just true on many levels, just on the costing system, on just different mechanics. There's just so many elements we have access to and that magic is super robust and for example universe is beyond one of the reasons universe beyond has proven so successful

is magic as creative paint as a way to capture something really good like one of the things I'm constantly amazed by doing universes beyond design is okay we're trying to capture this thing the thing we're trying to capture is locked we can't change what it is it is what it is and how magic is so good at finding ways to capture things in very very clever ways. For example like I'll just get this is a not universe beyond this is normal magic but I'll just give one example of like the genius that magic can be. I remember I was making a holiday card,

which was called Snow Mercy, which was a take on the card No Mercy. And the card No Mercy shows the Phyrexians in a time bubble. So because we were trying to make a cutesy holiday card, we put them in a snow globe because it's called Snow Mercy and they were in the snow globe. And then we realized, I think Matt Tabak came up with this, the idea that the activation costs, we have tap symbol, but we also at one point made an untapped symbol.

And so the activation cost is tap, untapped, tap, untapped, mean you're shaking it. Oh my God. Until we put those pieces together that say, oh we can combine the tap and the untap symbol to shake something. Just the idea that magic has those moments that you can do things like that. The robustness, that's another big thing. The idea that magic, like part of the way we approach new magic sets is let's try to do something we've never done and see what magic does with that. It's really intriguing.

I love saying, okay, how does magic represent this thing? How do they represent that thing? And it's really neat because magic is so flexible that it can do it. And I'm not saying it can do everything. There's things, you know, some areas are harder than others, but the robust system of the mechanics and what it's capable and how flexible it can be is a huge part of it.

And another big part of magic is the community. That one of the things that's really amazing about magic, like it is fun if you've never been to a Magic Con, I recommend going to a Magic Con, I recommend going to a Magic Con. One of the amazing things about going to a Magic Con is you have so many different people that all love Magic and there's so many, there's, I mean,

there's a main community, there's sub communities, there's like, Magic has permeated itself. Like one of the things that makes me very proud to work on magic is I like to say how many friendships were formed because of magic? How many relationships were formed become of magic? You know what I'm saying? Like one of the things I get all the time

is people writing to me and sharing what magic meant to them. And that, I mean, the endless stories of, I met my best friend, I met my romantic partner, I discovered something important about myself. It led me to a job, you know, it taught me skills that proved to be important. I mean, there's a number of people, for example, who, like I remember Chris Bacula is a pro player and I remember he went somewhere where he

was working on like financial things and his employers were so happy that he was a professional magic player because it represented all these skills that he had that were exactly what they needed for the job. And this idea that Chris spent years as a professional magic player and then a job that had nothing to do with magic Per se I mean wasn't wasn't a game But the idea that the skills he had in magic that his employer was so impressed by it They was like, do you know other pro players? Can you find me other players that have this skill set that you have? and that magic

it the the community of magic and the And that magic, the community of magic and the means that magic, what it's been able to do, hearing from people. So I guess these are two different things. One is the community. The idea of all these people coming together and sharing and there's so many creative videos and there's just magic inspired so much creativity, not in the making of it, I mean that too, but in the expression of it, in the playing of it, in the talking about it. And the other thing is, I think magic has imbued in people these set of skills that

have proven to be life affirming, life important skills. And so many people are like, Hey, I was playing magic. I mean, I think this is true of games in general. I think games teach a lot of important skills, but magic in general. I mean, the number of times, I mean, teachers coming to me and saying, you know, or people conveying, parents conveying, how teachers came to them saying, your child's improved in reading or socially or something. Like, why? What happened? And like, oh, it was magic. So there is that community aspect there is the the skill in potent leg

It is there's so many cool things within magic that you can learn. There's a lot of skills that you can learn oh Another thing that I'm 25 minutes in 25 minutes in and I haven't said this it's a really really good game it is a fun fun game I am a game connoisseur I played lots and lots and lots of games and magic is my number one game not even close now I mean the caveat is okay I might have spent my life in magic so I I mean magic is meant to me a lot personally. But on some level, I mean, this ties back what I'm just saying is, okay, magic gave me my dream job. I met

my wife, I met many of my friends and like, you know, magic sort of was this touchpoint for me. And I always talk about, we talked about this in R&D, that we believe magic is a force of good. And that just does so much good in the world And part of our job is overseeing that force of good. Anyway, sorry But beyond that Just the act the actual playing of a game acts the game forget all the other component pieces Just as a game just as I'm playing this game. How fun is this game? Holy moly, magic is a fun game. I mean, there's so many stories, you know, be it I, you know, gaining 55,000 life when I was showing off

a preview card at a world championship, or, you know, just playing a game, just, you know, the idea that I randomly do something that is unthinkable, but I happen to be there and do it or or just like I'm you know, there's just endless stories like one of the things I talk about is a concept called narrative equity. And the idea of narrative equity is people value stories. People value like the idea that something can happen to me and that's so enjoyable or such an interesting thing that happened that for the rest of my life I can share the story of what happened that that has a lot of weight and importance to people and magic is dripping with narrative equity like I have so many stories of just just stories of here are magic games I played maybe maybe

one day I should do that as a podcast here are magic games I played just those stories of magic games I played but the fact that I can do that is another great selling point. But anyway, so I keep trying to figure out how awesome a game magic is just as a game, and I keep getting pulled off, which is an interesting tell on itself. But just literally as the act of playing as a game,

and it is robust, it is flexible from how you can play it. So like, you know, for example, I at the last year at the Magic Con, I played in game nights live, one of my favorite memories playing commander, and I'm not even the biggest commander fan. But you know what, that experience was amazing. And playing commander in front of 1500 screaming people, you know, running around and gaining whatever it was, 78 life, high fiving people. It was really, I mean, magic is just super fun.

Anyway, I'm wrapping up here. So I think that the thing that's amazing is everything I said today, everything is true. It's a game in flux. It's super amazing. It's fun to play. It's got amazing creative. It has an awesome community. It keeps evolving and it's got a great business model. So we have a great R&D team and great art team and we can keep making even better and you know the there's 30 years of evolution and it's got the color pie and the mana

systems and just trading card games I mean all of it all that ego investment like all that like that's the amazing thing about magic is that many of these concepts that I'm talking about today I can and have spent an entire podcast I I've been color pie as an example I have probably spent 20 podcasts maybe more than that you know I could go I could each of these items I can go on and for a long time talking about the element of it and that's the amazing thing about magic that it's all these things that it's not just one thing it's not just an amazing business model it's not just an. That it's not just one thing. It's not just an amazing business model. It's not just an amazing community.

Not just an amazing game. It's not just an amazing color pie. It's all these things together and that it comes together to make truly something amazing. Like one of the things like as you get older in life, you have a tendency to want to look back at your life and you wanna sort of say, what have I done? What have I done with my life? You know, what role did I play?

And part of it is you look personally like, oh, I found this person and we got married and we had a family and there's a lot of personal, which is a great joy for me. But from a professional standpoint, one of the things that makes me very proud is, look, I had a giant hand in magic. I was not alone.

There was thousands of other people that did this with me and millions of people out there playing the game and giving us feedback. But just the fact that I had the influence I've had on magic, it makes me super happy. It makes me feel like it's a life well lived. You know, I've done something that I'm super, super proud of. And, and a lot of that is I'm really proud of what magic is and what magic can be and what magic can do. And the fact that I've had a hand in that, you know, that's, that's a life well lived. So anyway, why is magic a great game? All these reasons, All these reasons the great game.

And you know what? There's things I didn't hit upon. 30 minutes was not enough. So there's lots of other facts. I hit upon the main points. But anyway guys, that's my topic today. Why is magic a great game for so, so many reasons? And it was fun today.

It's fun sharing that with you and I hope you guys appreciate at least some of the things that I appreciate. But anyway, that is my answer in long-winded 30-minute form of why magic is a great game. But I'm now at work, and we all know what that means. That instead of talking magic, which is super fun, I have to make magic, which is also super fun. So I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.