Magic the Gathering's Creator Wants to Create an Even Better Game

Tracy Alloway (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:14)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:16)

Joe, did you ever play Magic the Gathering?

Joe Weisenthal (0:19)

No.

Tracy Alloway (0:20)

Really?

Joe Weisenthal (0:21)

I've never played it.

The only game I know, I mean, I spent some time playing chess. Yeah, as we've talked about on the show before. And then outside of that, it's like I never had the capacity in my life to like really learn a new game. So it's like, you know what, I'm gonna play chess, try to get better at it, play on my phone. But I've never like then, it's like, oh, I wanna play some other game.

Tracy Alloway (0:44)

Man, you need to branch out.

Joe Weisenthal (0:47)

Well, I just don't wanna start, you know what the thing is? I don't wanna start from the beginning. I'm just like, I'm like too old for that.

Tracy Alloway (0:53)

That's how you learn new things. Okay, well, speaking of being old, I spent countless hours in middle school playing Magic the Gathering. It was a huge thing in, let's see, this would have been around 94, 95

And almost everyone I knew at the time was playing it.

Joe Weisenthal (1:12)

Where were you living in 95?

Tracy Alloway (1:14)

I was in Chicago, Chicago. So that's partly why. And every recess was taken up with Magic the Gathering tournaments.

And I really enjoyed playing, but for me, the collectibility of the cards was probably more interesting. I was obsessed with the cards.

Joe Weisenthal (1:33)

One of my best friend's younger brother was like really obsessed with the cards in the game. He's like, oh, I got the wall of brambles or whatever it is. Is that a card?

That's not?

Tracy Alloway (1:45)

I don't think so. Although it sounds like it could be, to be fair.

I remember I had-

Joe Weisenthal (1:50)

No, it is.

Tracy Alloway (1:51)

Is it?

Joe Weisenthal (1:51)

There's a card called wall of brambles.

I think. Anyway, I just remember that, you know, I think it's, oh, look, you can buy one for 20 cents. So I guess it wasn't a very valuable card. Anyway, I was like around people who were really into their cards. I was Magic adjacent. I have had friends who play it.

I didn't realize up until you played it. I was like, sometimes when I would go like to like the bookstore and play chess or the game store, there would be other people playing. So I was around the game, but I just never played it myself.

Tracy Alloway (2:17)

And I spent so much time. I had so many cards. I had valuable cards. I had a Siobhan Dragon at one point. And I really, thanks Joe.

Okay, but this brings me to a serious, Odd Lots-esque topic, which is Magic the Gathering is really interesting, not just because it was one of the, possibly the most successful card game of all time, but it had a lot of sort of economic aspects to it. So there was the card collection. And then you can imagine within the card collection aspect of it, obviously the goal is to play.

And win the game. But then you had this whole sort of market spring up around these super valuable cards. And there was a big discussion about whether or not the value of the cards was actually making the gameplay worse.

Joe Weisenthal (3:14)

Yeah, so this I'm familiar with. And intuitively you could sort of like get this phenomenon, right? Because a card can be useful in the game, but a card could also just be like a valuable thing that people buy and sell on eBay or Magic the Gathering online exchange, things like that.

But then the question is like, do they align? Does the collection of the cards lead to optimal gameplay, suboptimal gameplay, et cetera? Like you could see how like the value of a card from a monetary standpoint and the value of a card from a gameplay standpoint might be like linear related, but might not be like perfectly aligned.

Tracy Alloway (3:52)

Right, and the other interesting thing is Wizards of the Coast, the company that actually made Magic. At various times, they tried to fix this problem. So they almost acted like a central bank of the cards in terms of issuance, like they would increase the supply of cards or decrease the supply of rare cards as needed to make the game more interesting. So that's kind of fun too.

But anyway, I could go on about Magic for many hours still, but I am very, very excited to say that today we're going to be speaking with the creator of Magic the Gathering. We have Richard Garfield on the line all the way from Sydney, Australia. And we also have his colleague, Arka Ray, the president and technical director of Popularium, which is the new gaming company that he's setting up with Richard. So very excited to have them both on the show. Richard and Arka, thank you so much for joining Odd Lots.