Magic is an amazing game, its fun to play, has challengin...

[kakeboy07]

I dont have much to add to this discussion, except that it is truly one of the best (front to back) read topics that isnt about a specific deck or card or magic related idea since I have been reading this site.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on this and they all seem to have some merit and warrant inclusion. Aside from some poking at mouth, everyone whos had a chance to chime in has said something that hasnt offended everyone else, and that has remained on topic.

I am one of those who is in the boat of people who loves watching magic evolve. Sure i bring out the old "alpha only deck" once in a while, but for the most part, its all about winning. Which is why i dont think there will ever be magic on espn 2 (for an extended period of time).

Theres just too much to learn. The rules listing is already over 400 pages long, and errata and new sets make it that much harder for old players to stay caught up, while the vast card pool that has existed for 10 years makes it hard for people who are new to the game to even stand a chance against those who consider themselves to be "veterans" of type one.

I would be somewhere caught in the middle me thinks. With a modest t1 rating and attending few events in the past two years i havent contributed to type one as much as id like to, however I am an avid reader and frequent appr user, who loves to do nothing but PLAYTEST.

This hobby does exactly what i want it to in that reguard. It wastes some time and relaxes me. When i can hit up someone at 1-2am after a long night of Bio-medical engineering homework, its just the stress relief i need.

Related is the fact that i can go on this site and read high(er) quality posts about new deck ideas and discussions (like this one) that include many peoples ideas from around the world.

Winning is alot in magic, but i am one who feels that the benefits of stress relief (especially while in college) definately have outweighed the benefit of winning more p9 or increasing my vintage rating over 1950.


About the stigma question. I feel that magic, like most other "nerdy" hobbies, still encompases every walk of life and profession. I played varsity sports all through high school. I drink like a fish with my frat buddies in college, and take showers daily. Does that make me an exception??? probably not. Theres definately plenty of "closet cases" who play this game, but theres just as many "normal" and interesting people who love to play this game.

I dont think anyone could capture that "meta" correctly if they tried, as id say the age of magic players is decreasing rather than increasing as t2 is hitting its peak as far as popularity amongst players in the age range of 14-17. Still i feel it is the older players who maintain the type one community. i have no doubts there.

Only time will tell they say, and as finals week opens here at Saint Louis University, Im sure that ill spend plenty of time "recouping" by reading this site and playing some online mtg in this coming week.

Joel lamprecht (kakeboy07, tmd user)

[ampeg21]

I started playing magic in 6th grade and never remember feeling like a dork for playing.  Everyone in my group of friends played.  Now im a Junior in College and just started playing again last summer.  I felt like I had to re-learn everything because the rules changed so much.  This is one reason that magic will have a hard time becoming main streem because of the complexity and the rules (however this is one of the things that makes magic so great).

I live in a fraternity house and ironically one of the guys there used to play magic with me back in middle school.  We started playing again recently having kept all our old cards, but we never talk about the game around other people.  Its not that im ashamed to play this game, but I just don't really feel like trying to justify or explain this game to a bunch of people who dont want to understand it in the first place. ( i get enough shit in my house just because im against a war in iraq)

I only play this game during the summer or winter breaks or if i go back to my home town for a weekend away from school.  I dont even keep my cards up at my college town.  Im not going to be playing friday night magic, when i could be out at the bars.  I would like to see magic more socialy acceptable, but i dont see that happening anytime soon.  

 There is this one card store by my house that i had to quit going to tournaments there because it was just depressing. When you walk in you are hit by this god awful smell and the people that play there just so socialy inept.  I could write a paragraph about how disgusting the bathroom is, it has never been cleaned, ever.  This kind of bothers me because its places like this that perpetuate the loser image that magic has.

  But then there is another store that is much nicer and a differient group of people play there who are a few notches up in the scale of social acceptability, and the bathroom is always clean.  i only play at this store now.

[Cyber_Sophist]

I think everyone has brought up some interesting points so far, but one thing I found when reading the posts was that there seems to be a division between those that think the game is unpopular because of an external influence and those that think its unpopular because of some inherent flaw in the game. Some of you have already implied that you felt one way or the other, but I think it may be productive to highlight the debate.
   So what do you all think? Is magic unpopular because of external factors not related to game play itself,  like the cost, the fantasy aspect, the stigma, and the lack of time its been around, or is the problem something more basic, something in the game play itself,  such as the difficulty to learn it, the chance involved compared to other popular strategy games, the fact that rules and sets are always changing, or the fact that with decks as varied as stompy and keeper, it can be like chess where one side has five queens and the other side only has pawns. Perhaps its even just that collectable games can never truly be as popular as a game where each player starts off with the same resources Maybe the only appeal to a certain type of individual and magic has reached its niche and, though popular in this group of people, will never spread because most people don't enjoy this type of game.
I don’t know the answer, and Perhaps it’s a mixture of each. Either way I’m eager to hear the what the rest of you think on this issue.

Additionally, due to a typo which I failed to notice until after I posted, The “barrier” in the title is misspelled. If a mod would be kind enough to fix that  I would be much obliged.

Thanks to everyone for all the great input on this issue,
Greg

[graedus]

Quote So what do you all think? Is magic unpopular because of external factors not related to game play itself,  like the cost, the fantasy aspect, the stigma, and the lack of time its been around, or is the problem something more basic, something in the game play itself...

If you stricly catalogue the game's theme as an external factor of the game, then those comments favoring this don't fit.
What gives any game sense is its theme, as simple and as dumb as it would be. If you take away the theme is like playing with pointless math, statistic and logical aguments.

That said, and placing the theme back into "something in the game", is this or the money the answer of the 64k question?

Before I expose the arguments, let me describe you the glass with which I'm looking. I'm a person who has learned to easily cope with either the turbo-geeky or the über-snob subcultures and anything in between, because simply I have lived within their boundaries or walked on their shoes at some point of my life, and has learned too when and when not to open my mouth, but choosed not to do so. Then,

Quote  [DISCLAIMER]: Didn't mean to offend anyone... and, also, incase it came across that way, I'm not a fascist or anything

The problem with magic is the problem with soccer, (sorry for those in the states who don't understand the teaching of this religion I don't believe but interact with, you may try to translate the same for football but I guess it will hardly be the same but you'll get the point).

Lets fisrt analyze the spectator side of the game. Soccer itself as any other leisure related activity has its stigmas. But this one adds socio-economic stratification.  Its not the same to go dressed in rags to a game in the cheapest and most unconfortable area in a brazilian stadium than to watch the game in the Spanish Royal Family booth at the Real Madrid's Stadium. Some of the people in the lower stratus will make the effort to get better seats, even if the household can't afford it. Likewise, some of the higer stratus will not have the household economic support, even though they can afford it. Here is the first socio-economic stigma: You will be judged not only by the way you look but by the cards you have. And yes, some people are socially inept either because they lack the cash or the manners. . Thats the way it works.

Now lets see this argument from the player's side  of the game. In soccer, you have to be good to outstand. Sure there are cindirella stories about players coming from the forgotten corners of society, but let's face it, you have a BIAS if you have what it takes and you prepare properly. And if you have access to the resources this takes (make this networking or cash) you have better chances to get to the top. This is the same case of magic. In the long run the apt player (the one with the resources available, be it cash, time, support and brains) will have better chances to be a good player than the one who lacks in one way or another those resources. See one important aspect, brains, this is no Straight A brains, is the brains that make anyone successful because he knows how to manage the resources available in a proper way. So, the ones which are apt tend to be the good players, and this is partially correlated to their socio-economic stratification, not totally, thus there is an additional stigma.

Quote  VideoGameBoy @ Oct. 30 2003,13:47
They like slapping around hundreds of dollars worth of cards, and being the subject of the envy of their peers.

Social interaction at its best.

Now, how people internalize and externalize this issues is matter of their own psychology and their level of self confidence. "You look the way you feel" many people say.

This two issues extrapolate into what the third aspect of the game becomes,  its context. Soccer, much like other sports, its criticized and depreciated by other social groups, like the geeky nerds and the artistic intellectuals,

Why this might be? Because each person is sure knows the utltimate truth, whats good, and whats wrong, and where you should spend your resources.

Quote The aspect of having to devote an insane amount of time testing, tweaking, and whatnot creates a different "effort:being somewhat mediocre" ratio.

Lets be honest about this point, Magic isn't exactly the activity that will bring you the highest satisfaction and social reward (or at least, some will argue), but just like soccer, it finds its room on what us economists define as "Utility Function", or the set of things that make you happy.

Each person evaluates every single thing based on how much satisfaction will bring, and try to measure everyone with the same ruler, and that's fine! Every single person has the right to feel whatever they like and accept or reject what they see (but not to insult it and rejecting without knowledge of cause). The way its aspects interact makes the way people look at the game, any game.

And finally, to the from the corporation's point of view, just like soccer, Magic is a BUSINESS, that is distorted by the policies that its owners implement, be it marketing, merchandizing, target consumers, trend setting and rule establishment, just to name a few.

If you pretend to make people change the way they think about magic, as any reasonable individual I would say, preach with your example, but that will be not enough. It's an issue, in the short run, very out of any individual's or group of individuals' control.

P.S. Thank God I learned Industrial Organization (an economics area of study) which has enlightened me in how to analyze and understand assymetric interactions (transactions) among individuals (agents) in a sound and methodological way.

[Shivea]

Quote (Ephraim @ Dec. 08 2003,06:52)That raises an interesting question, Puschkin. Most CCG's flare out fairly quickly. Magic has endured an impressive ten years. How long can any CCG continue to evolve, without totally changing what the game is? Five or ten years down the road, will Magic be something completely different? Will it be a constant rehash of decade-old cards (the ones least likely to be recognized, particularly by new players). Will Magic even still be around? With questions like these, does it really matter how the public perceives Magic? If it's going to go the way of Deadlands, there's really no reason to stress over it.

Magic already isn't what is was 5 years ago.  It's very apparent that ProssBloom and Zoo are outdated decks that will most likely recieve little to no attention ever again....

I think that what has really been keeping Magic going is the money formats.  The rotation and set restrictions call for some crazy innovative formats.  Type I has little innovation becasue it's just to hard to build a deck that wins without full dedication.

[DEA]

another thing to take note of is the maturity level of the players
chess builds patience and character
the magic crowd is full of whiny, loudmouthed arrogant jerks
world of difference

[Falc]

Great posts by everyone.  Kudos.

If I had to name just one thing that holds Magic back, it's the complexity.  It's not a game that you can sit down with friends and learn in a few minutes.  I remember a few years ago, I was at a New Year's Eve party and someone suggested playing "Asshole".  I'd heard of the game, but never played it.  About half of the people at the party had never played it.  The first thing out of the suggestors mouth was, "It's easy!  I'll show you."  We sat down and picked up the game in only a couple hands.  We spent the rest of the night/morning playing "Asshole" and having a grand time.  

This scenario could NEVER happen with Magic.  It takes hours or even days of explaining and playing to figure out what's going on.  Even assuming that the new player starts catching on, they'll play so poorly, that it won't be much fun.  The longer they stay in this state, the less likely they'll keep playing.  The only way to get out of this unfun purgatory between "knowing how to play" and "knowing how to play well enough to win" is to practice and learn.  That takes time.  A lot of time.  Like I said in my previous post, the only group of people with that much free time are geeks.  Geeks have poor social skills because instead of interacting socially, they have free time.  They are attracted to complex games like Magic and D&D because they fill up that free time with something interesting that quickly becomes fun.

Imagine the New Year's Eve party again, but this time imagine that I said, "Let's play Magic!"  Everyone agrees to let me show them how to play.  We sit down and I give everyone an 8th Edition pre-con deck.  How long before everyone at the table starts having fun?  How many hours would it take for me to explain to four or five people what land does, what the difference is between a Sorcery, an Instant, and an Enchantment, how to attack and block, etc?  Would it take 3 hours?  5 hours?  Now, how long would they sit there and tolerate listening to me ramble about mana and phases and not having fun?  1 hour?  Maybe?

Magic simply cannot be spread in this type of social environment.  It's too complex.  It's not something you can "pick up" at a party.  In order to learn how to play Magic, you have to have a strong desire to WANT to learn.  Most importantly, that desire has to be stronger than your desire to want to do other things.  Geeks have very few "other things" they want to do.  That's why the hobby spreads from geek to geek.  Everyone else is too busy HAVING fun to take the time to LEARN how to have new fun.

Will it ever change?  No, not in it's current form.

Now you know why geeks play Magic and why it's impossible to spread to the masses.  As for why geeks are greasy and smelly... that's a whole other issue.

- Falc

[three11rules]

For the most part, I think the problem is the money and commitment involved in becoming "good" at Magic.  I put good in quotations because lets face it, there are just some decks that given to anyone who knows how to play will just win, and wether you are Finkel, or Kai, or Joe Schmo, there are just some decks that just dont win....ever.  Ive taught many of my friends how to play the game, and they played for a while too.  The main thing that made them quit though was that they just didnt have the resources to make the game as fun to them as it was for me.  I was lucky enough to be playing for a while, so i had a respectable collection already, but my friends had collections based almost 50% on cards i gave to them.  When my friends went to shops and played, and saw how expensive cards can get, and how much money was needed to really make a deck that was competitive outside of thier five person playgroup, they got turned off, and eventually stopped playing. In addition, the points about the game taking time to learn are spot-on.  It took weeks for me to explain to every friend of mine how the basic rules worked, and for the entire time my friends played, they still had problems with card interactions, a large invesment of time and money is involved in Magic, and some people just aren't up to that commitment.

[Dream_Merchant]

a great thread, havent read something like this since ages

i think breathweapon made a good analysis and an interesting point

i was introduced to magic in my second year in university, that is i was 19 years old
beforehand i never had heard of the game, or the possibility of a collectible card game at all.

i enjoyed computer role playing games and i was introduced to ADnD 2. I became in love with it. We used to come up with a few friends and spend entire weekends at times non stop playing. Time didnt matter since i live in a small town and there is nothing much else to do anyway and even though i have had my share of "social adventures" they never really got me what i wanted. And that was mental and imaginative creativity.

Well , to cut things short, the same person that introduced me to DnD introduced me to magic. At first i thought it was cool, hey the pictures of black knight ( i still love the flavor text ), hymn to tourach etc , but soon i realised it was some kind of limited DnD.

But an addictive one.

I have read many posts that in order to make magic more widely accepted we should separate ourselves from the DnD universe and ideas. I think the opposite. There are many people which play computer games, and there are many computer games based on a DnD world, hell im still playing baldur's gate 2 on and off and have still so many newer releases ahead of me.

Now i play magic more then i play computer games or roleplay.

From Computer games to boardbased roleplaying to finally magic the gathering. Thats how new players could come.

Another person claimed that the advent of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings could have a positive impact on magic. I think not here either. LotR has its own CCG and Harry Potter is for kids who play Pokemon. If nothing, they draw potential players away from magic into other CCGs or games.

I dont know what you guys are saying but where i play its rather different. You see, there three types of magic players where i come from. One is the rich young teenage kid who doesnt know how much his LoA costs cause his daddy gave it to him as a present, or goes and buys a beta Mind Twist just because he likes the idea. These kids are very well dressed, usually they are the most social, and are as hygenic as one can be. The second is the working/studying college/university guy. Thats me . Perhaps these guys are a bit eccentric and absent minded but by no chance rude or dirty. Hell, for my first tournament i was looking better then going out for a date. We tend to ourselves when going to play/do things with magic as we tend to ourselves when going to any other social activity. How else can we earn respect from not outside our gaming circle, but even inside. The little kid or the shop owner wont take you seriously if you dont take yourself seriously. And the third type is the teenager who is always at the commons and has a few nice rares he got from a booster and everyone wants to trade it off him for a craw wurm. Then again, craw wurm IS better then a Yawgmoth's Bargain.

Sure sometimes we dont shave or we orgy out all night but i guarrantee you, go out in a club at night and youll smell far worse after being exposed to cigarette smoke for several hours and having some drunk friend half throwing up on you talking about his latest "romantic" achievement.

Someone said that he took his wife at a tournament and all that was remarked was the rude bad smelling people. Im sure it was failed to see the extreme curtsey when two professional players meet, shake hands, wish each other good luck and play with a deck of cards filled with pictures drawn from professional artists while taking notes and decesive actions... its the same as watching a chess game between two masters or a game of tennis, elegant and interesting.

You see people, it takes so much hard work to earn a good reputation but a few bad elements can ruin it totally. And yes, magic is for nerds, smelly guys, kids and its something to do with pokemon and people with too much money who are also on drugs and are antisocial.

But its also for everyone else, same with chess. It just needs people to bury their misconceptions. But then again, we didnt really abolish racism, ignorance or war or any other of the human vices which plague us since our emergence on this planet, did we?

[ElricDjinn]

I am not sure if it is possible to isolate how each factor contributes to Magic's popularity.  For example, how would you tell how the complexity of the game, cost of playing (and cost of making really good decks), collectable nature of the game, potential social stigma and everything else influence Magic’s popularity?  

I suppose if you found an area where no magic players were associated with the negative stereotypes of magic players, you could see if magic was much more popular there.  For the complexity of the game, you could sort of look at Portal and similar sets, although those sets might not be as much fun once you master the rules.  

To cut costs, you could teach people to play and then tell them to make proxies instead of buying rares/out of print cards, but this might also detract from the fun of the game.  To avoid the collectable element, you could try playing with the same relatively small sets of cards (which you own plenty of) for a long time.
 
 Still, none of these would really give you the exact answer that you are looking for.

I liked Breathweapon’s analysis as well.  He touched on another aspect but didn’t go into it directly- the emotion associated with the game.  Spassky-Fisher is an example of the social context of chess, but it has a personal emotional value as well.

Who here remembers beating their dad (or grandfather) at chess for the first time?  I still remember beating my grandfather at chess for the first time, even though it was around 10 years ago.  For me at least, magic has never had that intrinsic emotional value.  

Chess, on the other hand, is eternal.  In the same way that you once beat your father/grandfather, you hope that someday your son/grandson will beat you.  Describing a chess game doesn’t require any knowledge of different cards, decks, formats, complex rules (think Dragon!) or metagames.  You just have to know how to play chess.  The Vienna Game (an example of a famous chess game) can be enjoyed by all chess players.

One thing that I don’t think anyone has mentioned is the gender ratio.  When any game gets this few female players, it needs to have a lot of tradition to supply it with value.  

Lastly, has anyone played Knightmare Chess?  It is a game that attempts to bring Magic-style card playing to chess (by Steven Jackson games, I think).  You have a deck of cards that have cool effects on the chess game (switch two pieces, explode a piece to kill everything around it…).  I don’t think it is still in print, but it’s a lot of fun.  

It allows you to play chess with an element of luck and more variability, which is good when you have players of very different skill levels, since the weaker player has a fighting chance.  You can just play out of a common deck and it is relatively easy to learn.

[Meddling Mage]

I once attemtped to start a Magic based club after school at my high school, we had already gotten together after school and played a few games. We had enough people interested in the formation of the club to attempt to get official recognition as a club. It was put before the student council and passed unanimously, the popular folk had no gripes with me and a few friends playing magic in a room that would be empty anyways. Unfortunately, the bill was shot down by none other than our dean of students.
I arranged a meeting hoping to sway his opinions. The first thing he did was sit at his desk and began playing a message from his voicemail mailbox. Apparently a concerned parent had called up to let the school know about how "unchristian" magic is, with such evil cards as "Demonic Tutor" and "Dark Ritual".
He proceeded to let me know about how tarnished the school's image would be by such a club, and how he refused to let the school endorse a particular company.
I knew him to be an avid chess fan, so I questioned him about why both a chess team and a chess club were totally allowable, but a magic club was out of the question. He informed me that chess had ample educational value and that magic obviously had none.

I left offended and I felt like I had been disregaurded as simply a nerd. I found it quite ironic that in the next brochure from my school it listed the school as having a "role playing club", a remnant of a club that had dissolved some years prior due to lack of interest, and nobody had updated the manual. I took great joy in sending him the brochure with the club's name circled in red ink, as he could be sure that the error would be corrected and the school's image wouldn't be tarnished. He was an ass.

added some paragraphs
-Puschkin\n\n

[Smash]

Quote (Meddling Mage @ Dec. 11 2003,03:40)I once attemtped to start a Magic based club after school at my high school, we had already gotten together after school and played a few games. We had enough people interested in the formation of the club to attempt to get official recognition as a club. It was put before the student council and passed unanimously, the popular folk had no gripes with me and a few friends playing magic in a room that would be empty anyways. Unfortunately, the bill was shot down by none other than our dean of students. I arranged a meeting hoping to sway his opinions. The first thing he did was sit at his desk and began playing a message from his voicemail mailbox. Apparently a concerned parent had called up to let the school know about how "unchristian" magic is, with such evil cards as "Demonic Tutor" and "Dark Ritual". He proceeded to let me know about how tarnished the school's image would be by such a club, and how he refused to let the school endorse a particular company. I knew him to be an avid chess fan, so I questioned him about why both a chess team and a chess club were totally allowable, but a magic club was out of the question. He informed me that chess had ample educational value and that magic obviously had none. I left offended and I felt like I had been disregaurded as simply a nerd. I found it quite ironic that in the next brochure from my school it listed the school as having a "role playing club", a remnant of a club that had dissolved some years prior due to lack of interest, and nobody had updated the manual. I took great joy in sending him the brochure with the club's name circled in red ink, as he could be sure that the error would be corrected and the school's image wouldn't be tarnished. He was an ass.

Fight the system  


You should have gone to the school board/super intendant and made an educated pitch for your cause. Go over his head. A lot of the times, they will be willing to listen to a logical reasonable argument.

[Dream_Merchant]

tell him dark ritual and demonic tutor are old cards and have been banned in the current format

which wouldnt be too far from the truth

[Meddling Mage]

@merchant: I don't think my dean of students really understood the whole magic formats system, and even if he did, I didn't think he'd care, like I said, an ass.

@smash: believe me, I tried, unfortunately I went to a private catholic high school, and the headmaster (the only one with the authority to directly overrule him) was pretty lethargic on the matter and understandably didn't want to fight with his administration to further the game of Magic: the Gathering, a Richard Garfield game.

[Charlie Yu]

It's far too expensive.

[Magimaster]

Why am I only reading this thread right now?

It is so excellent!


All the points about "the stigma" are spot on. Magic tourney's consist of nerds, fat people, people who smell, dress like they live in the east side, I mean it's disheartening. Don't get me wrong, these people are nice. If you get to know them, they are really good natured, friendly people. but somehow, they turned off the section of the brain that aids them with the social aspects of life. I don't want to say anything, because I know people from my store browse TMD, but I see this all the time I go to play magic, and those times are becoming far and fewer in between (combination of shitty metagame, LACK OF metagame, school + life catching up with me, money + time being reallocated elsewhere, among other things).

I mean seriously, this one guy I always run into, he wears sweatpants, hiking boots and the same damn sweater EVERYTIME I see him. PLEASE try and look fashionable. There was a point where I had no qualms about wearing sweatpants any and everywhere. Now, I wouldn't be caught dead in them in public, unless they were those damn trendy Ecko cargo sweatpants. WHY DOES MAGIC ATTRACT THESE KINDS OF PEOPLE?!?!

Perhaps it's the "comraderieship"(sp?). These people (me included) were probably outcast in the beginning of their early highschool days, and they needed some common bond to band together. I was never any good at sports, so I played magic in the library during recess/lunch. SHIT SHIT SHIT I can still recall those days, fuck I look back at the person I was and the one I am today, and it's almost as if they're 2 totally different people. If I hadn't developed friendships with certain people during my last days in highschool, I might've ended up being one of those people who post on mymiserablelife.com saying how they're 30 year old virgins who live in their parents basement and have no friends and all they look forward to is coming home from their shitty minimum wage job at burger shit-hole so they can jack off all night.

I joke with my close friends about my MTG addiction. I tell them stuff about the latest tourney, they just smile and nod, but they understand and they don't really care. However, there's this girl in my comp class who is SMOKIN and I've become good friends with her, run into her @ the gym quite a bit and work on our projects together and stuff. She asks what I did on the weekend. DAMN HELL I aint tellin here I went to a PTQ (wtf is a PTQ?). Why should I care? Because of this underlying fear that she will automatically group magic players into the fat smelly geek type, and my mentioning of partaking in that activity defaults me into that group. Maybe not, but even still that fear exists. Magic just has that much of a "reputation" going for it.

I don't even know why I play magic anymore. I swear it's the crack they rub into the cardboard.

- Magic is full of the fat/smelly/nerdy/socially impotent person(combination of any of these factors). Why it is this way, I don't know, but to be "good" at this game means dealing with these types of people.

- Anyone who is "good" at Magic is a geek. Plain and simple. By good, I mean you have a trade binder, keep up with the latest sets, and go to the local cardstore atleast once every other week.

- Magic in its current structure will never be rid of these types of people. The only way to get rid of these people would be to completely change magic until it wasn't magic anymore.

- Change in Magic would have to come from the top (WotC). I doubt there's much a person or a group of people could do at their local card store.

- If you think you're normal, but you play magic, I'm sorry. You are not normal. You are a geek. I am a geek. We are all geeks. Some people accept this, some do not. Some don't care.

- Anytime anyone tries to justify Magic as any other game like Chess, just present to them the fat nerdy smelly people argument. You can't lose. It is infallable.

- Magic will never become socially acceptable anytime within the next 25 years. YOU CAN QUOTE ME ON THIS. Many valid points have been raised, about cost and time spent at being good at it. WotC likes to get lots of $$$ and the best way is by leeching it from the socially inept of the world. To try and change that is to kill the game itself.

- If you disagree with something I have presented here, you are wrong. I am right. Go suck a rock.


God I don't even know what I'm typing anymore, this insomnia is killing me. But that was good, I think I can go to sleep now.

[Goblin Headbanger]

When I mention Magic to someone who doesn't play, the response is almost invariably a sneer and, "isn't that like Dungeons and Dragons or something?"  Whether you're talking about Magic, D&D, or whatever, being a gamer has negative connotations for a lot of people.  Throw in the connection to "kiddie games" like Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon, and now your friends and parents wonder why you won't grow up and go buy some Enron stock or something instead of wasting money on 14-karat cardboard.  

Down here in the Bible Belt, cards like Demonic Tutor sure don't help, either.  Most of the local social life is church, so it's hard to drum up interest in Magic when the preachers say it will send you to hell.  I guess Magic isn't the fun in fundamentalist.

[Charlie Yu]

Goblin Headbanger: Your point is good. Kids like 6-8 play Yugioh and MOZ here far more than the number of local magic players, and people are unable to distinguish between them and we are considered stupid  

And well I don't understand why you say Magic discourage social interaction. Doesn't we make new friends in local stores?

[Jakedasnake]

Yea, smelly, ugly, fat, socially inept friends.  

This whole situation seems foreign to me. Perhaps it is the amount of good weather year round, but Magic players here in Hawaii don't smell bad, and most have good social skills.

It's interesting to read about what you guys write. I love this thread.