For the Love of the Game

Why do you love Magic?

This is a complicated question, but it's one worth asking and re-asking over the course of your life.

According to Hasbro (the company that owns WOTC), 2/3 of Magic players have been playing for over 3 years, and 1/3 have been playing for over a DECADE.

Anyone familiar with consumer behavior/marketing data or the games industry in general knows this is an absolutely absurd figure. A typical product considers a customer a massive success case if they stick around for a year. If you've been playing Magic for a year, you're still basically walking through the front door.

I only expect these figures to get more absurd as Magic continues past its 30-year history into a 50-year history, and onto 100 years. There will be people who play Magic for their entire lives. The game just hasn't been around long enough yet for them to do so.

Despite constant outcry from the community that whatever the latest design choice or marketing scam is will kill the game and despite continual "retirement announcements" and public "quitting", this is not a game in danger of dying or a game most people ever "quit".

If you're reading this, you are likely going to be playing Magic for your whole life.

Let that sink in a bit. Really sit with it.

I first realized this when I was about 15 years old, where, about 2 years into playing, I made my first, and last, social media post about Magic having jumped the shark. This was during the preview season for the original Innistrad set, when double-faced cards were revealed. They seemed like an unforgivably corny and contrived gimmick that turned the serious game I already knew I loved into some silly children's hobby.

Of course, it was always a silly children's hobby, and always a deep and complex game that I love. Innistrad turned out to be one of my favorite sets of all time, and double-faced cards were both gimmick and incredibly interesting game mechanic. Since then, Magic has "died" many times over, sometimes for legitimate reasons and sometimes for hysterical ones, but I really tried to internalize that lesson & learn to not overreact.

This should all sound both a little hopeful & a little sinister. Anything that you will spend such a significant portion of your life doing & thinking about deserves some serious reflection - we only have so much time given to us to live, laugh, & love on this green earth. You should especially reflect on anything that has the potential to become unavoidable or obsessive - and I think any player who wants to play competitively at the highest levels needs to recognize that this applies to their relationship with Magic.

So. Those of us who choose (is that the right word?) to spend large portions of our life to venture into this strange, niche, obsessive game's depths -- What do we make of it?  How should we think about Magic as it relates to us as full beings?

This is always going to be an ongoing conversation, but today I'm hoping I can share some useful reports from one person's life and their ongoing, loving relationship with Magic.

The Darkness

About a week before the Arena Championship, I accidentally went micro-viral on MTG twitter:

I post a lot and I shoot from the hip a lot. I never really know when something is going to get more than a couple likes from my friends. I try to be aware of the potential for starting meaningless fights and the inherent limitations of a 256-character medium with an algorithm that is basically designed to show you things you disagree with and goad you into responding. Key word being try.

If I had known this would get a lot of attention, I'd have probably phrased it in a slightly less flippant way - It's not really possible to "simply" stop playing Magic, a game with many addictive elements, and suggesting that is a bit unfair. I was also tweeting from an incredibly privileged position, having not been working and fully focusing on Magic in preparation for a high level tournament for the previous couple of months. Maybe some of the reason my reaction was so strong to this tweet came from a bit of insecurity around the idea that I was "wasting" my time or making the wrong choice.

Still, I largely stand by what I said, and I think the main reason I reacted so strongly was that I see this sentiment all the time in the MTG community, and I don't like belonging to a community of sad & resentful people.

Is that an accurate descriptor? Partially, I think. There's a reason this tweet got a lot of traction -- A lot of competitive players get deeply obsessed with "the grind", and often sacrifice significant parts of their life in pursuing their goals. It's very natural to wonder what your life would look like if you'd never gotten sucked into this game, or made different choices around it.

Underlying the sentiment that competitive Magic is a "waste" though, is a misalingment between expectations, values, and reality, and that's at the heart of my frustration. I don't think it's responsible or accurate to blame the game for the unhappiness that comes from pursuing it competitively at the expense of other life goals.

Underlying Mark's tweet is an implicit value judgment of what counts as "potential" and what counts as "wasting it". It's not too much of a leap to assume that what Mark means (or at least, what he will mostly be taken to mean) by "potential" is some vague, but nevertheless predictable, capitalist, American, individualist measure of one's worth - their productive or creative output.

It's hard to specify exactly the measurement being made here, because it's slightly different for everyone, but it's definitely a clear cultural definition of "potential", & one that I can easily point to by listing the types of things it values:

• Educational achievement

• Net worth/Income

• Popularity/"clout"

• Prestigious/well-recieved creative output

• Stable, aesthetically appealing monogamous partnership

• Artistic taste & style

• Competitive achievement

If you view your own "potential" or value in the world as some kind of weighted sum of these things, competitive Magic is going to look like a rotten deal almost every time. Almost everyone who is good at Magic could go much further in achieving some or many of these things if they spent the time they spent on Magic pursuing them instead.

We all value these things, and we should. They are not inherently bad, many are very admirable goals. But tying them to our value as beings is a recipe for unhappiness - especially if we're intent on pursuing them through Magic.

I strongly believe that the darkness we often see in the MTG community is not driven by the game itself, but by the broader cultural forces which push these metrics as tools for comparing ourselves to others. Magic happens to be a fascinating, wonderful, and beautiful game whose competitive scene & cultural context is quite bad at setting up its players for success in most of the traditional notions of "productivity" & "success".

This is not, at all, to say that Magic players aren't the kind of people who can succeed in these areas - far from it! Most Magic players are kind, interesting, intelligent, creative, resourceful, and appealing people. But it is to say that if these are the things you use to measure your own value, and Magic is one of the areas you intend to pursue them in, you are pretty likely to end up in a dark place.

Before getting into what we should be valuing instead, I want to dive a little more into the aspects of competitive Magic that make things difficult.

Success = Status = Self Worth

The Magic community is obsessed with status and perceived intelligence.

Of course, most communities are obsessed with status - but as someone who's existed in the competitive scene for over a decade, it's hard to overstate how many interactions, online and in person, are guided by the perceived skills of the players interacting.

Competitive people want to win. Why? In a game like MTG, which mostly tests strategic/cognitive ability, the answer is obvious - They want to feel smarter than their opponent.

I'd be really hard pressed to find a Magic player for whom this isn't the main underlying reason they like winning - either it makes them feel smart, or (more likely), it specifically makes them feel smart in comparison to others.

I will admit this is undoubtedly true for me. I have a very strong desire to be the best Magic player in the world, and at the heart of that is the desire to prove that my brain is more capable of understanding the game than anyone else's. Maybe I'm projecting a little - But I really don't think so, and for something so universal, we as a community hardly ever talk about it openly.

When I was 15 and in the finals of my FNM Innistrad draft playing against MTG Hall of Famer Darwin Kastle, you bet your ass I wanted to win because I wanted to believe I could one day earn the same place of respect that Darwin had in my LGS from his Pro Tour success.

The thrill of success against quality competition is, I think, one of the strongest aspects of Magic when it comes to hooking new players, and it certainly worked on me. It tricks you into thinking you are at their level or at least close to it. It makes you think "that could be me".

It also unlocks status. Succeeding at Magic is pretty much the only surefire way to gain access to the competitive scene's social circles. Many high-level players don't want to prepare with, let alone hang out with or talk to, players that they don't see as competitive equals. Don't get me wrong, most high level players are perfectly nice people and will be cordial, but you're not going to be able to really join the in-between-round table talk or the testing team unless you're seen as a peer.

Never has this been more clear to me than since I qualified for & got to the finals of the Arena Championship. Of course some of this is just the visibility of being on stream during the tournament and being able to talk about our testing process with someone like Ethan who has a lot of credibility in the community, but I mainly think the result/Worlds qualification itself is what has been causing folks to come up to me at tournaments/on social media more and seek out my opinions/approval on things.

I'm far more "popular"/high-status in the community now (I don't mean to overstate things, I'm still pretty unknown), but I'm largely the same player, person, and thinker I was in the decade before I happened to spike a few high-level tournaments in a row. Yes, I've been able to focus on competitive Magic almost full time since the beginning of this year, and that's certainly raised my level of play, but I think I could have reached this level, given the time to focus on the game, at pretty much any point since I started playing online during college if I'd had the time to dedicate to it.

This focus on status through achievement, the way most of our social systems work, is kind of fucked up.

I, personally, have behaved and thought in ways I regret because of it. My roommate, Mora, is one of the best and most brilliant Magic players I know. They have played in a MOCS and a Pro Tour, and done decently well in both, and she has some real success in Set Roulette tournaments, the favorite format of Simon Nielsen, arguably the best player in the world right now. Today, I respect Mora's MTG opinions above most others'.

But this wasn't always the case. Mora & I were part of a Magic friend group during high school and college where they were one of the worst players, from a competitive standpoint (at this point in their life, they were more of a casual player). I don't remember much specifically, but Mora has been pretty open with me about how they felt looked down on within that group and not treated with the same level of respect as others. They say I wasn't quite as bad, but I think I was definitely a part of this dynamic. I remember thinking less of them because they weren't as good as Magic as me. That's a shitty thing to admit, but it's true.

If you can think these things about others, it's very difficult to not think them about yourself.

We haven't really addressed this yet, but everyone knows Magic is a game with huge amounts of variance. This is what allows less experienced players to beat better players at a predictable rate, it's what let me beat Darwin at FNM, and it's why I got 2nd at the Arena Championship instead of Jesse Hampton or Arne Huschenbeth.

Tying your self-worth to the high ends of variance will give you the sweetest ego boosts you've ever had, but besides being an obstacle to improvement, it's also a very easy way to slip into self-loathing when things swing the other way.

Competitive Magic is structured, materially and socially, to entice you into chasing this self-esteem roller coaster.

We need to acknowledge this directly, because it's the reason so many players who are chasing things like status and self-worth fall into the dark, resentful place of claiming that the game they love and choose to spend their time on has "wasted their potential".

These folks aren't paranoid, they're not stupid, and they're not un-insightful. They're recognizing a real part of how this game & community operate.

However, they are missing the ways they have agency over their relationship with the game & the choices they make around it, their role in the community, and their ability to work together and forge a better environment for all of us.

Let's talk about it.

Loving the Game, Loving Each Other, Loving Ourselves

Part of the reason I wanted to write this piece was that I saw the movie Challengers earlier this week (despite my earlier dig at monogamy, this isn't going where you're thinking, but spoilers ahead).

I loved the movie, but didn't love most of the reviews of it I read afterwards. Most centered around the idea that the movie uses tennis as a metaphor/vehicle for talking about the sexuality of its characters and their attraction to each other. I saw it the opposite way -- I think Challengers uses the sexual dynamics between its characters to talk about Tennis, and more broadly, elite competition -- How it can warp us into chasing goals that we don't truly want, and how it can bring us closer together.

Challengers follows 3 main characters: Tashi, Art, and Patrick who all compete at the highest levels of professional Tennis. Tennis is a bit different from competitive Magic in that the rewards for success, and therefore the stakes, are slightly more pronounced - The world's best Tennis players are true celebrities and become exceedingly wealthy & famous. Tennis, for better or worse, also has a significantly more physical, tactile & sensual element than Magic; professional athletes are undeniably "sex symbols".

The movie definitely leans into this, and throughout I was constantly thinking about the famous quote (which apparently comes from Oscar Wilde??):

Everything in the world is about sex — except sex. Sex is about power.

I think people tend to remember this quote as being 'about' sex, but of course, they forget the last part. Transitive property, baby! (You could replace the word 'power' with 'status' and have the meaning mostly hold).

Being compelling characters, Patrick, Tashi and Art are motivated by the same things we all are - power, status, and a desire for belonging & acceptance. Throughout the movie, they pursue professional success and each other as means through which to achieve these ends.

On the first night the three meet each other, Tashi tells "the boys" that they don't understand what Tennis is. "It's a relationship", she explains, saying of her opponent that "it was like we were in love".

This pretty much goes right over Art & Patrick's heads, and the rest of the movie is an attempt to get them to understand what Tashi sees in Tennis - an opportunity for connection through the fire of competition. While the boys are busy in the following years fighting over her as an object that represents success & status, she is constantly, consciously or subconsciously, trying to get them all to see each other again as full people and rediscover the reason why they all presumably were attracted to the game in the first place - that intimacy that competing your absolute hardest at something against someone who pushes you further than you thought possible can provide.

I see so many similarities between the false goals the characters in this movie chase and the goals people pursue in Magic that are never going to lead them to happiness. Sure, the cultures of each game are different in meaningful ways, but at the core of any game that humans want to compete in (including social and sexual ones) is the desire to achieve status through success.

Secretly, though, status alone isn't enough to make us happy. What we actually crave is love & acceptance - It's just that status seems like one of the more predicable ways to achieve those things. Don't get me wrong, it certainly helps, and I think the movie does a good job of portraying how much easier Art's life is compared to Patrick simply because he makes it a bit further in the professional Tennis world - But at the end of the day, both characters are not very happy people throughout most of the movie.

This only changes, theoretically, in the final scene, where in the heat of competition (of more than one type), Art & Patrick 'lose themselves' in the moment as each pushes the other further and further. The final shot is Tashi screaming "COME ON!!!!" in the same tone we heard from her earlier at the peak of her playing days. She's fired the fuck up, and despite all the toxicity and cruelty that led up to this point, something undeniably has shifted. Something decidedly like love is happening on that court.

Importantly, I don't think this story works nearly as well if Patrick & Art are simply bitter rivals who hate each other. So much of the movie focuses on their intimacy, as friends, competitors, and potentially more. The reason Tashi screams "COME ON!!!" in the final scene is not because she's excited for one man to triumph over the other and win her like a prize -- She's excited because two people she loves are sharing a moment of deep connection with each other for the first time in a long time.

Patrick & Art have a deep connection, attraction and respect towards each other, and it's only when they finally allow themselves to let go and compete with their whole beings, stripped of external goals and distractions, that they rediscover this.

Competition brings out the worst and the best in us. It can trick us into pursuing goals that don't make us happy and hating ourselves when we fall short. But it can also bring out the best in us and connect us more deeply to each other than we ever thought possible.

I want the Magic community to realize that viewing competitive success as a measuring stick for self-worth and a way to gatekeep status is a recipe for a deeply unhappy and unwelcoming community.

It's totally fine to want to play against the best possible competition, and it's totally fine to want to get better at the game. In fact, these things are highly encouraged, and we may end up making choices geared towards them that look a lot like the choices we make today!

But it's a fine line, one that is hard to monitor externally, between healthy and toxic competition. In trying to win, you shouldn't be viewing your opponents as obstacles or enemies - they are people who you can learn from and connect with, and competing (intensely) against them is merely an opportunity for that intimacy and growth.

It's trite, but there's a reason so many of the best players say it -- The true opponent in Magic isn't your fellow players, but yourself. If there is an individually-focused goal in competitive MTG (IE, a goal beyond forging community & connection to others), it should be self-improvement and actualization - not tournament success.

Magic is a game that is tremendous at testing your own thinking and learning abilities, and one that I will confidently say has made me a significantly better person. It is a constant opportunity to introspect and figure out blind spots & opportunities to expand my capacity for strategy, analysis, empathy, and managing my own emotions.

Thinking about the game this way instead of always judging yourself for your most recent performances takes constant effort and refocusing. It's not easy, but then again that's the point. Nothing worth doing is.

When you start seeing things this way, you start pursuing different goals. Winning still feels good - we all need evidence of progress sometimes. But sometimes, it feels even better to catch the magic of a well-fought game that pushes you past your comfort zone and teaches you something you'd never thought of before -- even if you lose.

One thing that helps keep me in this headspace is seeing the people I compete against as whole beings who are inherently valuable because of their unique perspectives and ability to learn.

Even if someone is less experienced than me, they may still have a higher capacity for learning the game than I do, and that, my friends, is a truly valuable opponent. Even if they aren't looking for the same things out of the game as I am, they are still a great resource for expanding my thinking, and of course, possibly making a friend!

Most importantly though, seeing other players in a compassionate and loving light also helps a tremendous amount in not beating up on myself when my own results are disappointing.

I am, after all, like those people that I love.

Isn't that what is meant by our "potential"?