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Gathering understanding: players, systems and developers in Magic: the gathering

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Content

Gathering Understanding:
Players, Systems and Developers
in Magic: the Gathering
by

Calvin Liu

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATIONS)

December 2022

Copyright 2022 Calvin Liu

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ iii
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Chapter 1: Players and Space .......................................................................................................... 1
Theory ......................................................................................................................................... 1
Method ........................................................................................................................................ 9
Findings ..................................................................................................................................... 10
Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 19
Chapter 2: Players and System ..................................................................................................... 21
Theory ....................................................................................................................................... 23
Method ...................................................................................................................................... 28
Findings ..................................................................................................................................... 29
Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 41
Chapter 3: Players and Developers ............................................................................................... 42
Theory ....................................................................................................................................... 42
Method ...................................................................................................................................... 48
Findings ..................................................................................................................................... 50
Discussion ................................................................................................................................. 66
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 68
References ..................................................................................................................................... 75

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List of Figures

Figure 1: The card Dark Confidant has art in the likeness of professional player Bob Maher ... 26
Figure 2: Particularly rare and powerful cards can command extremely high prices.................. 28
Figure 3: Another power level chart, but contextualized based on deck mechanics ................... 32
Figure 4: A chart depicting deck power levels, framing them based on player intention ........... 34
Figure 5: A rights statement on the RC’s website emphasizing the site as fan content .............. 53
Figure 6: Twitter profile of Magic developer Chris Mooney ...................................................... 61
Figure 7: Twitter profile of Magic retail development specialist Mary Amiotte ........................ 62
Figure 8: A blog post from Rosewater’s blog about his relation to Magic’s business agenda .... 64

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Abstract

Systems are ubiquitous. They exist within our political and social institutions. They exist
within our technological infrastructure. Systems control the possibility space of interactions by
defining the nature of an environment and controlling the actions available (Lessig, 1999;
McLuhan & George, 2003). However, systems are not all encompassing and act in tandem with
practices. While systems define possibilities, practices provide context. Practices create
expectations and nuances for how actions within an environment are perceived (Stanfill, 2015;
Booth, 2016). Systems and practices are thus intertwined, their interactions creating context and
content (Close, 2016; Chin, 2017; Scott 2019). In this project I examine how fan communities
interact with each other through practice and space, analyzing how system affordances interact
with user generated practices. The trading card game, Magic: the Gathering is provided as a case
study for these interactions.

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Chapter 1: Players and Space

As a game, Magic: the Gathering (commonly shortened to Magic or MtG) is an
environment where organic user practices and system pressures naturally intersect. As designed
experiences, games are environments that use system architecture to shape behaviors and
interactions (Breton, 1971; Fletcher, 1971; Simon, 1972; Nardi, 2009). However, the ludic nature
of games encourages emergent behavior and playing with the boundaries of a system (Nardi,
2009; Schlenier, 2017; Shaw, 2017) Games thus provide a rich space wherein the relationships
between system and practice may be analyzed from holistic perspectives. Insights from game
systems extend beyond games. Modern technological systems are embedded in ludic forms of
interaction, play is a central part in how these systems are used (Booth, 2016). From a systems
perspective, gamification has become a more prominent way of designing systems (Bista et al.,
2014; Landers & Landers, 2014; Stanculescu et al., 2016; Pyky et al., 2017). The interactions
and systems of games thus have qualities that are readily applicable to other environments.
Theory

Negotiated Readings and Fandom
For this project I draw on Booth’s (2016) definition of fans, as people who “invest time
and energy into thinking about, or interacting with a media text: in other words, one who is
enraptured by a particular media object” (p.14). Of note, I want to push thinking about the media
object more within the context of transmedia. Specifically, by thinking of fans as people who
engage with a particular text across platforms, wherein participation plays a key role as a
consumption strategy (Scott, 2012). Fandom studies positions fans as active participants, as fans

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appropriate aspects of a media message into personalized contexts (Fiske, Jenkins 1992). These
kinds of appropriations constitute a form of negotiated reading with the text, where there is a
partial assimilation of the dominant message of a text mixed alternative meanings inserted by the
reader (Hall, 2007). Fandom studies argues that games can be treated as texts, wherein fans can
engage with negotiated readings of the game (Ndalianis, 2002; Smith, 2002; Shaw, 2017).
Different readings of a game can manifest as unique ways of playing or emergent practices in a
game (Certeau, 1988; Jenkins 1992; Schlenier, 2017; Shaw, 2017).
Jenkins (2018) notes that negotiations of texts are not necessarily taken on an individual
basis but also encapsulate “how community members negotiate interpretations (and rules for
forming interpretations) among each other. Even in a context where diversity of representation is
a goal, people have different ideas about what are appropriate ways of achieving that goal."
(p.16) This communal negotiation of texts may permit fans to discriminate between each other
freely based on their orientations to a text (Fiske, 1992; Buru, 2017). Characteristics such as
familiarity, expertise, or particular styles of reading may serve as points for othering specific fans
(Duffet, 2013). Within games fans may recognize the mechanism and intricacies of a game and
use those intricacies to articulate how they feel about particular readings of a text. For example,
labels such as “casual player” vs “competitive player” are expressions of differing kinds of
relationships to a text. Each label represents a set of interactions and expectations between the
text and the player that have particular social weights and understandings within a community.
To analyze these nuances, I ask the following research questions.
RQ 1: How do fans negotiate differing orientations within a game environment?
RQ 1a: How do fans articulate these negotiations within their communities?

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Third Place and Digital Environments
Venues of fan activity shape the possibility space of interaction and discourse (Drew,
2002; Taylor, 2006; Booth, 2016). In looking at this interaction between space and discourse I
draw on the concept of third places. Oldenburg (1996) defines third places as “a generic
designation for a great variety of public places that host the regular, voluntary, informal, and
happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work." (p.16)
Oldenburg describes eight characteristics of such spaces:
1. Neutral Ground: Inhabitants of a third place enter with a lack of obligation and
entanglement to each other which encourages informal interactions between
inhabitants.
2. Leveler: Membership and inclusion within a third place is informal. Participation
in a third place waives conventional barriers of social status such as class, rank, or
worldly status.
3. Conversation is the Main Activity: Through decentralizing social status, who may
speak in a third place is not a matter of rank as it would be in a corporate or home
setting. Levity, wit, and conversation are given an open floor.
4. Accessibility and Accommodation: Third places are easy to enter and amenable to
entrants by maintaining a form of community life.
5. Regulars: A third place’s atmosphere is defined by its regulars. These regulars
entice interaction and the recruitment of newcomers.
6. Low Profile: Third places have a plainness that discourages pretension and creates
a homely atmosphere.
7. Playful Mood: Play, wit, and group traditions among regulars are part of the
atmosphere of third places.
8. A Home Away from Home: Based on Seamon (1979), third places have five
characteristics of homeness: 1) being rooted; 2) control over the setting; 3)
restoration; 4) freedom of expression; 5) warmth.
In relation to fans, a third place facilitates a space where fans of varying orientations may
interact. Fans approach media objects with differing contexts and negotiate their position within
fan communities along blurred lines (Fiske, 1992). Third places provide opportunities to observe
how these negotiations occur in public environments. For example, fans make distinctions
between each other based on taste and the production of fan capital (Chin, 2017). The leveling

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effect of third places may offer a means to dispel these taste distinctions and allow fans to
engage with a media object free of entanglements. Conversely, third places may serve to further
the complexity of existing fan relationships. For example, fans police their own spaces based on
hegemonic pressures from outside of their communities (Close, 2016). Regulars in a third place
may become enactors of policy that could impose similar pressures in fan spaces.
Oldenburg (2001) noted that third places can manifest with varying levels of success
based on how well they embody their characteristics. Small, independent businesses were often
cited by Oldenburg (1998; 2001) as ideal grounds for third places. He argued that the
homogenization of public spaces and modern urbanization inhibited third spaces by removing
their individual character and accessibility. More modern scholarship has suggested that as
technology expands into the digital age, the nature of third places evolve accordingly, with
certain digital environments adopting their characteristics (Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006).
That is not to imply that the internet is unilaterally a third place, as the uses of the internet
vary between individuals and communities (Lessig, 1999). Much like physical spaces, the design
and people behind an online environment varies. Scholars have noted that MMOs, for example,
readily translate the characteristics of third spaces into a digital environment (Steinkuehler &
Williams, 2006; Taylor, 2006; Nardi, 2009). The role of digital third places become increasingly
relevant as platforms expand into online spaces.
In some cases, the movement of a practice or retail space to an online environment does
not obsolete the offline counterpart. For example, despite the development of online streaming,
movie theaters and the ethos of having a cinema experience persist. Both the cinema theater and
an online streaming party represent third spaces centered around media viewing, but their
affordances differ as do their respective appeals as third spaces. The atmosphere of a small local

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theatre lends to a homely atmosphere that contributes to a low profile. Yet theatres do not lend
themselves to conversation and restrict accessibility based around who may afford tickets and
who may physically travel to a theatre. By contrast, the nature of online streaming parties
reduces the gating caused by geography. Cues of social status such as race and class are also
obfuscated in these digital contexts giving them more potential as levelers. However, research
into digital spaces has suggested that online domains have the potential to amplify discrimination
and social differences (Jenkins, Ito, & boyd, 2015). It is thus worth considering how the
affordances of digital space may disempower aspects of third place. For example, the lack of a
permanent, physical place could disrupt the sense of homeliness or rootedness that would be
found in a local theatre.
In exploring the relationships between third place and digital domains, media richness
and SIDE theory offer usable frameworks. Media richness theory argues that the deindividuating
effects and lack of social cues in digital environments encourage people to rely on norms specific
to that digital context (Daft et al., 1987; Lea & Spears, 1991; Postmes, Spears, & Lea, 1998;
Walther, 2006). Research into media richness has traditionally been used to assess elements of
corporate trust and consumer reception (Cable & Yu, 2006; Cho, Hageman, & Patten, 2009;
Frasca & Edwards, 2017). The use of media richness to examine game interactions has been
sparse, let alone games that have transitioned from physical spaces into digital spaces (Liao,
Cheng, & Teng, 2020). Daft et al (1987) noted that the richness of a medium can be based on
four criteria:
1. Feedback: A feeling of synchronous interactions where responses and corrections
can be made.
2. Multiple cues: Messages are made of multiple cues which may include gestures,
voice inflection, graphics, physical presence, and numbers.

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3. Language variety: The ways in which language symbols can convey meaning
such as using numbers to specify precision or natural language to convey
concepts.
4. Personal focus: The infusion of personal emotions and intents into a message.
Media richness theory coincides closely with the SIDE (social identity model of
deindividuation effects) model of computer-mediated communications. The SIDE model posits
that the application and manipulation of anonymity affects an individual’s perception and
performance of personal and group identities (Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995). The
anonymity and loss of identifying cues in computer-mediated communications encourages
individuals to affiliate more strongly with social groups and group norms (Lea, M., & Spears, R,
1991; Postmes, Spears, & Lea, 1998). The intersection between SIDE and media richness comes
with the relationship between cues and anonymity. As media richness deals with the quality and
availability of personal cues, it in turn modulates the level of anonymity an individual is afforded
and the degree to which deindividuation may reinforce group effects.
As third places move into digital spaces, it is worth considering how these characteristics
of media richness interact with them. For example, a lack of cues can augment the “leveling”
characteristics within digital third spaces by obfuscating class, gender, and race; traits that would
be more readily visible in an offline space. An online third place could thus encourage behaviors
or conversations that these traits would otherwise be bar. Conversely, the same deindividuating
effects may prevent “regulars” from being identified in an online third place. The access to more
immediate and intimate feedback in offline spaces could promote a tightly knit atmosphere that
could encourage more intimate relationships compared to online spaces (Putnam, 2000).
The affordances of these third places are not separated from fan practice or fan
orientation to a space. While environments can prescribe norms and encourage certain behaviors
through their design of affordances, users come to systems with independent goals and use what

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system features are available in achieving those goals (Stanfill, 2015). Much like portions of
texts, fans poach the affordances of an environment to fit their context (Jenkins, 2012; Shaw,
2017). That is not say that fan practice is independent from their environments, as the
environment defines the possibility space for interactions (Lessig, 1999; McLuhan & George,
2003). I propose the following research question to investigate these dynamics between offline
spaces, online spaces, and communities.
RQ 2: How do shifts in communication affordances from traditionally analog practices to digital
practices affect community relationships and behaviors?
Magic: the Gathering
I use Magic: the Gathering as a case study for these questions. Magic is a trading card
game created by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) in 1993. Traditional Magic involves two players
1
using decks of cards constructed from their personal collections to play a competitive game with
a complex set of rules. Magic is a variable game that has a variety of rulesets and encourages
experimentation between its players. Games in Magic can range from sanctioned professional
play to informal “kitchen table” games between any number of players. This variability allows
Magic to cater to a swath of audiences across different dispositions and orientations. For
example, the game mode Pauper restricts deckbuilding to common cards, which in turn appeals

1
When referring to people who engage with Magic: the Gathering, I will distinctly be using the term player as the
relationship that play has to their experience is significant.

While not interchangeable with the term fan, I am framing players as a subset of fans. They are still people who
“invest time and energy into thinking about, or interacting with a media text: in other words, one who is
enraptured by a particular media object” (Booth 2016, p. 14), but I specifically look at how this investment
manifests through the mechanisms of a system, as encapsulated through play.

This is an important distinction with Magic: the Gathering as there are aspects a person can engage with Magic
that are not necessarily the game system, such as the story or the art.

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to players with budgetary restrictions. Whereas Commander is a game mode that recommends
four or more players and emphasizes social interactions and power politics over the efficiency of
1v1 game modes. These variances in how to play Magic create an organic space in which fans of
varying orientations may intersect and enter in discourse both through and outside the context of
the game.
As a trading card game Magic’s history has been centered in offline play. Local game
stores (LGS) have operated as hubs for play, commerce, and discourse within the Magic
community. While LGS’s serve as potential third places, players engage with Magic in offline
and online contexts. A variety of official and unofficial digital clients exist for the game. Two
official clients of note are Magic: the Gathering Online and Magic: the Gathering Arena. Magic:
the Gathering Online (MTGO) is Magic’s premiere online client. It is a pay-to-play client that
stays consistent with paper Magic. This consistency is not just limited to the gameplay
experience. MTGO offers many events in the style of paper Magic and also has a secondary
market where players trade and purchase cards from other players. By contrast, Magic: the
Gathering Arena or simply Arena, is Magic’s more recent, free-to-play online client. Of note,
Arena diverges from paper Magic by changing the mechanics of some cards for balance reasons,
as well as introducing digital exclusive cards.
MTGO and Arena have varied ways of socializing with other players. MTGO uses an in-
game text chat. Arena’s text chat is limited to friends, but communication with strangers can
only be performed with preset expressions during matches. Unofficial digital clients of Magic
have their own forms of communication with varying levels of richness. These may range from
text chats to more visual experience such as web cam. It is worth exploring how the media
affordances and the varying levels of media richness on these platforms affect player

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experiences. There is also room to analyze how these affordances interact with characteristics of
third place in comparison to more traditional venues such as local game stores. Magic provides a
common context for these analyses. By focusing on venues dedicated to Magic, it provides cases
to organically examine how the affordances of different systems interact with player experiences
and expectations.
Method

This project consisted of semi-structured interviews of players of Magic. A total of 15
participants were interviewed. Interviewees were recruited based on convenience and snowball
sampling across online communities and local game stores within the Southern California area.
Interviews were conducted in-person, over Discord, and over text on Telegram based on
interviewee preference. Interview questions revolved around 3 primary themes: player
experiences, online versus offline spaces, and player relationships with developers. Questions
and responses represent an evolving process wherein questions were adjusted between
participants as new insights were generated from previous data.
To investigate RQ 1, the player experience theme focused on the players’ history and
goals in relation to Magic and how they negotiated the differences in their expectations of a
game versus their experiences with the game. Sample questions included “What kinds of
experiences are you looking for when engaging with Magic?” and “How do you manage
differing expectations among your playgroup?”
For RQ 2, the physical vs digital theme explored player experiences on digital clients of
Magic and how they differed between physical and digital venues. Example questions for this
theme included “Do you engage with Magic online, if so what clients do you use? How does the

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experience differ from paper Magic?” and “Do you feel local game stores play a role in your
experience with Magic? How so?”
While not a part of this chapter, the theme of player relationships with developers
examined the perceived roles of developers in player experiences. Example questions included
“Do you feel that WotC has a role in your game experiences? How so?” and “Are there
particular policies or practices from WotC or other governing bodies that influence how you
engage with Magic?” The implications of this theme are further explored in chapter 3.
Findings

Differing Expectations and Negotiating Intentions Between Players
In observing RQ 1 we see that players approached Magic from a variety of dispositions
and experiences. One player, [INTERVIEWEE E], noted that their reason for playing Magic
fulfilled multiple needs:
“I love examining metagaming
2
and being able to apply my knowledge of a format
3

in a game […] I enjoy the feeling of winning a game because I simply played better.
In that way, you could say I'm looking for a raw competitive experience. But that's
only about half the time. I also like having a game that can be played purely as a way
of connecting to other people. Making silly decks, goofy jokes, and having an
excellent social experience with them.”
In [INTERVIEWEE E’s] responses we see Magic fulfilling two kinds of experiences,
competitive fulfillment and social fulfillment. Of note, these experiences refer to aspects
inside and outside of the game respectively. We see the explicit mechanics of the Magic

2
Metagame is a term used to refer to the strategies and patterns of play within a particular game environment.
Within Magic this often refers to the cards and synergies that are popular.
3
Format refers the various rulesets that Magic can be played under.

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game manifest as the competitive experience. [INTERVIEWEE E] takes pride their
knowledge and expertise in the system’s mechanics. Alongside this we see the ways in which
the system affordances are appropriated for other purposes. “[M]aking silly decks” takes
advantage of Magic’s flexibility to create meaningful social experiences. These kinds of
interactions are not mutually exclusive as [INTERVIEWEE E] further described:
“I've had competitive games where me and my opponent are both casually chatting,
cracking jokes, and enjoying one another's company. I have also had casual games that
become very win-focused and have personally seen my own commander playgroup begin
to develop a metagame. Both modes of play can certainly co-exist, and often do without
people realizing it.”
In regarding games as texts, these examples give insights into how practices such as poaching
may be applicable to games. Like fans of media texts, players accumulate knowledge and
familiarity with particular aspects of a text (Jenkins, 2012). In the context of Magic that may
manifest as mastery over specific mechanics or knowledge about certain parts of the game. With
that familiarity they create their own texts, their own metagames.
Like fans, the ways in which Magic players draw distinctions between each other is a
constant process of negotiation made along blurry lines (Fiske, 1992). Ideas of card ownership,
deck construction, and gameplay experience carry implicit ideas about player intent and the
kinds of experiences that are encouraged or discouraged. [INTERVIEWEE E] noted how these
kinds of expectations could lead to friction:
“Wanting to own expensive and powerful commander cards can oftentimes be seen as a
bad thing for some less enfranchised players, with the word "competitive" being thrown
around less as a descriptor for what one seeks in a game, and more as a derisive term.
Building efficient decks seems to, for some players, be a misunderstanding of how the
game is meant to be played. Discussing power levels of cards, like saying how good or
bad they are, seems almost like a personal slight sometimes, and I've not figured out
why..”

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[INTERVIEWEE E] notes various microaggressions outside of the game context. For example,
“power levels” refer to how effective a card is. This effectiveness tends to also correlate with the
card’s price on the secondary market. The tension that [INTERVIEWEE E] notes on power
levels highlights how Magic contextualizes frictions in access and how those frictions manifest
in game pieces
4
. As physical cards, Magic cards are collectible items with a robust secondary
market. Powerful and rare cards can command prices of hundreds of dollars
5
. This creates issues
in what kinds of players can access Magic. As [INTERVIEWEE TM] noted:
“Utilizing proxies
6
, you probably shouldn’t bring that to a setting where people could get
upset. That being said the idea of “this is the real card versus this is the fake card” is kind
of classist, right? Like, I spent $2000 on this card to win the game? Realistically you set
an environment where it ices out new players, it ices out players from years 1 – 5, cause
they’re not gonna drop that much money without being committed to the game.”
[INTERVIEWEE TM]’s account highlights how expectations to own the official Magic cards
creates barriers of exclusivity among players. These issues of exclusivity provide context on the
microaggressions [INTERVIEWEE E] observed about power levels. Given that powerful cards
tend to also demand high prices, conversations about power levels highlights tensions about
access and who is allowed to participate and succeed in games of Magic. Despite the tension,
players have different expectations on how these issues should be handled. As [INTERVIEWEE
ME] noted:
“[Ownership] sets a fair standard. The card’s level of power is to some degree correlated
to the price tag of it, so by owning it you put some effort into making your deck more
powerful. If you proxy it, I feel like it’s kind of a low blow to the other person if they
didn’t do that. So as long as you both agree to [proxying]. I just feel like it’s one of those
interactions that is rough with strangers.”

4
The relationships between player expectations and system mechanics is further explored in chapter 2.
5
https://www.tcgplayer.com/product/6883/Magic-urzas-saga-gaeas-cradle?Language=English
6
A proxy or the act of proxying is the use of an unofficial substitute for a Magic card, typically players do this for
cards they do not own.

13

[INTERVIEWEE ME] sees card ownership as a form of standardization that streamlines the play
experiences. In trying to navigate issues of accessibility, proxying creates its own barrier, where
players need to negotiate their respective expectations for the game. Notably [INTERVIEWEE
ME] brings the subject of proxying beyond issues of access. They note how the collection of
cards highlights personal expenditures of effort, with proxying diminishing the efforts of
individual players to improve.
In respect to RQ 1 we see that player approaches to Magic are not monolithic. Players
engage with Magic for a variety of purposes ranging from socialization to deep investment in the
game’s mechanics. In pursuing these goals, players engage in subtle ways of articulating their
different relationships to the game and each other. For example, in-game practices such as
proxying make visible the external constraints that players face in participating with Magic, such
as access and wealth inequality. These same practices demonstrate how those external
constraints may be reconciled within the context of the game system, with disparities in access
becoming markers of in-game acuity and investment. Yet this recontextualization does not
diminish the discontent around these constraints but serve to frame them through more subtle
community mechanisms. The nuances and implications of these mechanisms are further explored
in chapter 2.
Digital vs Physical
For RQ 2, interviewees noted a difference in experiences and expectations with Magic
based on venue. For some interviewees, local game stores served as a center of community
building and interaction with Magic. [INTERVIEWEE L] noted:

14

“A lgs in my opinion is critical to Magic’s success. Let's say you pick up a few precon
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decks and everyone sitting around your kitchen table know the general rules, but those
people are probably the only people you'll ever play Magic with. With an lgs, you can
meet dozens or even hundreds of local people who also play Magic and will help fact
check you to make sure you’re playing the game correctly and you’ll meet a community
to play with and possibly to get involved into events and make a true hobby of it.”
[INTERVIEWEE L] mentioned that corrections were part of the community experience. Within
the context of Magic these corrections go beyond a sense of providing information but also hints
at a dispelling of pretension. There is a sense of playfulness and homeliness where mistakes are
opportunities for growing knowledge and participating within a community. Of note
[INTERVIEWEE L] highlighted events as one of the primary draws of game stores, valuing
aspects of socialization as part of the experience.
Socialization in this context is not limited to conversation. Local game stores provide
players the space to socialize through commerce and rituals. These rituals may include,
modifying decks, purchasing cards, discussing strategies, trading cards, etc. As [INTERVIEWEE
ARG] notes:
“I feel that the local game store plays a much heavier role in keeping players invested in
Magic. Because not only are you able to purchase the cards, packs, singles
8
and whatever
you’d like to do that you could also do in a digital store front, you also get to build the
relationship between yourself and the store, especially in a smaller game store. And also
as well you get to meet local players and interact with them. […] You can continue to
build your collection and entry into the game by interacting with players that are more
readily available there.”
The amenities and affordances of local game stories provide common means for players to
engage with each other. One participant [INTERVIEWEE CAG], was located in Finland and

7
Precon stands for preconstructed, which are decks with a set collection of cards that WotC sells as complete,
playable decks.
8
Singles refer to a singular card

15

noted the importance of local game stores in maintaining communities whose languages are less
supported by Magic:
“For the more engaged players, a good local game store is sort of home in a way at least
when it comes to Magic. It’s where the community is, it’s where you play, it’s where you
trade, it’s where you get new deck ideas. […] Especially in countries that are smaller and
don’t necessarily have a lot of Magic content being made in local language, it feels more
important to have that sense for those sorts of communities.”
Of note, practices of trading, playing, and deck construction were also prevalent themes in
[INTERVIEWEE CAG’s] response, highlighting how the affordances of local game store
contextualize rituals as socialization. The interviewee also mentioned the local game store as a
home for Magic. The game store provides a sense of stability by offering an anchored place to
engage with Magic. This sense of place is particularly salient in an area where support for Magic
feels more precarious due to language barriers.
These experiences in local game stores stand in contrast to participant experiences in
digital spaces. [INTERVIEWEE ARG] noted the following about Arena:
“Magic Arena, without any kind of chat function unless you and that person exchange
friend IDs, there’s no real interaction between you and that opponent besides
preprogrammed emotes and callouts. So you can’t build a community between you and
another player as well as a local store could.”
When framed alongside media richness theory, [INTERVIEWEE ARG]’s experience notes a
lack of cues and language variety on Magic Arena, particularly textual cues or the ability to
communicate precisely. They also noted how the lack personal focus impeded their ability to
draw social value from the platform:
“I’m usually looking for the same things on Arena, I’ve found I try to recreate decks I’ve
made in person. Or I can sometimes make different decks that I want to make but am not
able to because lack of the available cards to me in person without spending more money
on it. I can emulate the same experience but it’s also different because I don’t get that

16

same face to face reaction I could get from my opponent seeing me do those same novel
plays and strategies.”
Despite the lack of social affordances, the interviewee did note that Magic Arena offered more
accessibility in the kinds of decks they could play. This would imply Arena offers accessibility to
its users but does not maintain a space for conversation. This lack of conversation was not
uniform among platforms as [INTERVIEWEE ARG] recalled their experience with Cockatrice,
a free, fan made, online client for Magic:
“I have done Cockatrice and I have done some webcam duels with some of my cousins
that live out of state before. But at the same time it’s a lot more similar to the in person
experience than Arena could offer. But it is also still not the same because even on
something like Cockatrice you have a text box and not as much as that face to face,
seeing their reaction where they type in “wow” as opposed to seeing the wow on their
face.”
We see that as more cues are introduced, the social value of the experience increased for the
interviewee. Cockatrice’s text chat offered more language variety, permitting more nuance in
expressions compared to Arena’s emote based communication. However, Cockatrice still lacked
the personal focus to imbue reactions with emotional weight. This pattern continues as
[INTERVIEWEE ARG] describes their experiences with webcam Magic:
“[Webcam Magic] allows for more audio input which adds that extra level to the cues,
but most of the time the webcam is pointed at the field rather than the person. It doesn’t
offer as much but still offers more than what Cockatrice would.”
Within each case we see a disconnect between the experiences [INTERVIEWEE ARG] sought
and their experiences on the digital platform. However, these disconnects lessened as the media
richness behind these platforms increased. Other participants noted how online platforms lacked
a sense of social accountability, wherein players could leave matches on a whim.
[INTERVIEWEE S] noted:

17

“Sitting across from someone and playing is a million times better than MTGO or Arena,
you can talk about strategies and learn a lot more than someone just conceding and going
into the next game”
Participants valued social intimacy as part of playing Magic. Whether that social intimacy acted
as a way of encouraging engagement or discouraging disengagement. Social intimacy appeared
tied to the media richness of a particular platform. [INTERVIEWEE E] noted the following
about webcam Magic in comparison to other platforms:
“Webcam is a very social experience, as you're typically also chatting over a voice call while
playing. It's about the closest I feel one can get to an in-person game online. Cockatrice and
Arena do offer something that webcam doesn't as easily, and that is anonymous, quick to
pick up games. Joining a queue on Arena or an open room on Cockatrice is a good way to
just play fast games without having to organize something with friends. Arena however lacks
any good features for playing directly with friends. It has a friends list and a direct challenge
function, but no ingame chat, spectator mode, or the ability to join a queue with friends all
seriously limit it in this aspect.”
Of note, while [INTERVIEWEE E] valued the social intimacy provided by webcam Magic, they
cited the accessibility of other platforms. Different aspects of third place were fulfilled by
different platforms based on their affordances. Arena lacked the social richness to create a
ground for conversation but provided accessibility to its users by allowing anonymity and the
ability to enter and leave matches without investment. By contrast more media rich platforms
such as webcam Magic allowed for conversation but required more social intimacy and
obligation.
The more socially rich platforms also allowed participants to interact beyond the
boundaries of Magic games. [INTERVIEWEE To] noted that their engagement with Magic was
primarily through opening booster packs and conversing over Discord:
“Whenever I used to play paper Magic, it was fun, with new people it was fun. But I had
seen with a lot of people at my LGS, not necessarily directed at me but there was a lot of
salt. There wasn’t a lot of conversation outside of the game. […] But in the Discord,

18

actually it’s gotten to be, we mainly just hang out, sometimes crack packs
9
, sometimes
talk about different things, and we only play games about 5 – 10% of the time we hang
out in Discord.”
A high level of media richness allowed for [INTERVIEWEE To] to engage with Magic in ways
that would be more common in offline settings. Interestingly, [INTERVIEWEE To] noted being
more comfortable with these kinds of interactions in the online space as opposed to their local
game store. The local game store gave [INTERVIEWEE To] opportunities to meet new players
but as the space grew familiar, social pressures began to mount. However, it is important to
consider that these social pressures may not have been the result of the local game store’s third
place characteristics but how Magic as a system may be adversarial to third place.
As a game, Magic makes visible differences in class, rank, and worldly status that are
normally hidden in third places. As [INTERVIEWEE E] detailed, the disparities between the
ownership and use of powerful, expensive cards can lead to an adversarial environment. Yet the
game aspect of Magic encourages the ownership and use of powerful card. This not only
incentivizes pursuing gaps in class and rank, but also encourages demonstrating these differences
as markers of success and prowess. In this way, the game logics can coopt the third place
affordances of local game stores. Interviewees noted commerce as part of the local game store
experience. The purchase, trading, and use of cards are rituals of socialization within local game
stores, but these rituals carry implicit markers that are disruptive to third place.
That is not to say third places cannot manifest respective to Magic as evidenced by
[INTERVIEWEES CAG, and L]. However, as seen in [INTERVIEWEE To’s] experience,
aspects of third place may not be tied to a physical or digital venue but rather a set of community

9
Cracking a pack is another way of referring to opening booster packs.

19

practices and expectations. In respect to RQ 2 that is not to imply that digital and physical
practices are equivocal, but that their respective affordances are part of larger, more nuanced
relationships.
Discussion

In exploring RQ 1 we found that players engage with Magic with differing expectations
and goals. These may range from socialization, engaging in competition, to demonstrating
mastery over the game. Yet, in meeting these goals players engage in a variety of more subtle
dialogues that highlight their relationships to each other. These dialogues demonstrate how
player traits from outside of the game context can be articulated through the game’s mechanics
and artifacts. Magic’s system encourages players to acquire powerful, expensive cards to succeed
in the game. This highlights differences in class, rank, and investment which spurs
microaggressions between players. In circumventing these differences, players may develop
novel practices such as proxying as ways retaining access to their communities. At the same
time, we see how these disparities are contextualized within the logic of a system. The collection
of expensive rare cards is reframed as a mark of acuity or expertise in Magic. More broadly this
research can be applied to how users appropriate system affordances as ways of negotiating their
relationships with their communities. As well as how those same appropriations and
communities can be coopted by system logics.
In exploring RQ2 we see how the affordances of differing online clients affect not only
the ways players engage with Magic but also the possibility space of interaction. Less media rich
environments such as Magic Arena denied players the ability to fulfill their social goals such as
conversing about the game or provoking emotional reactions. As media richness expanded,

20

players not only found more rich social engagement with others, but also used that richness to
interact beyond the game of Magic. The focus shifted from the game to conversation and acts
entirely separate from the game such as opening booster packs. As the affordances of the
medium expanded, players appropriated those affordances to fulfill goals that were not possible
in less rich media. While the capacity to experience third space qualities varied with media
richness, they were not exclusive to online or offline spaces. A greater barrier to third space
interactions may have been the system of Magic which made differences in status and class
visible through the scarcity of rare and powerful cards. By using Magic as a common baseline
between online and offline context, this research provides insight into how the affordances of
platforms interacts with a system and its users.
Chapter 2 will expand upon how player relationships are articulated through game
interactions with particular focus to the role of system artifacts such as cards. Chapter 3 will
explore the how relationships between players and developers are negotiated in and out of the
context of the Magic game.

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Chapter 2: Players and System

The previous chapter explored relationships between fans
10
and creators and how fan
relationships are managed between spaces and each other. This chapter will focus on interactions
between fans, systems, and fan organizations. As objects of fandom, it is worth considering how
game systems can be repurposed and poached in much the same way as fan texts. Game systems
such as Magic serve as grounds for studying how fans treats texts as filtered through a system
with set rules and interactions. These interactions can provide glimpses into forms of mediated
interactions such as games and politics.
Magic: the Gathering and Commander
WotC has encouraged players
11
to engage with Magic their own way and has sanctioned
a variety of rulesets and styles of play, known as formats (Wizards of the Coast, 2019). For this
study I focus on the format, Commander. Commander is currently one of Magic’s most popular
formats
12
. Commander was originally named Elder Dragon Highlander (EDH), a community-
created format conceived by volunteers at officially sanctioned MtG events in the early 2000s
(David-Marshall, 2016). WotC would officially sanction the format and rebrand it as
Commander a decade later (Rosewater, 2011). Unlike conventional Magic, EDH is a multiplayer

10
Fans in this context refer to people who “invest time and energy into thinking about, or interacting with a media
text: in other words, one who is enraptured by a particular media object” (Booth, 2016, p.14)

11
For this chapter I will be using the term fan when referencing more broad fan theory, however when referring to
people who engage with Magic, I will be using the term player. Within fan studies, the term fan places focus on
how texts are reappropriated outside of the text’s content and into personal contexts (Jenkins, 2012). Fans can
engage with Magic on many levels outside of the game system, but as this chapter will be focusing on a microcosm
of that engagement based on system interactions and play in Magic, I will be using the term players.
12
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/189015143473/re-the-majority-of-players-dont-play

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format that recommends 4 players in a free-for-all environment. This setup encourages social
dynamics between players that would otherwise be absent in 2 player games. These social
dynamics give further insights into the kinds of relationships that players have with each other
and Magic as a game system.
WotC still maintains a distanced relationship in terms of regulating Commander. Unlike
other formats, the rules of Commander are managed by a group independent of WotC, known as
the rules committee. This rules committee is composed of the founding members of the format.
When asked why regulation was led by a community body, lead designer of Magic, Mark
Rosewater stated the following:
“It’s not our format. We didn’t create it and wanted to let it stay in the hands of the
people that made and nurtured it into what it’s become.”
13

Rosewater’s comments feed into a narrative of Commander being defined by its practitioners.
This philosophy is further reflected in the rules committee’s stated goals for the format. An
excerpt from the rules committee’s (2019) philosophy on Commander is as follows:
“It is played in a variety of ways, depending on player preference, but a common
vision ties together the global community to help them enjoy a different kind of
magic. That vision is predicated on a social contract: an agreement which goes
beyond these rules to includes a degree of interactivity between players. Players
should aim to interact both during the game and before it begins, discussing with
other players what they expect/want from the game.”
While many formats emphasize defeating your opponent, the free-for-all environment and social
nature of Commander leads to differing forms of interactions. Players act in accordance to
visible and invisible social contracts, where bargains, alliances, and betrayal are negotiated
through in game actions. These new social dimensions are balanced with Commander still being
a game of Magic: the Gathering. As a game, Magic encourages certain strategies to achieve

13
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/135194462243/so-mark-something-that-has-been-bugging-me-for

23

victory, yet in Commander these strategies are balanced with the social contracts drafted between
other players. This study looks at how players of the Commander format negotiates the behaviors
encouraged by the game’s system, the social relationships between players, and how elements of
the system itself such as the physical cards interact with these relationships.
Theory

Norms and Subcultural Hierarchies
Psychology argues for normative influence as “an influence to conform with the positive
expectations of another” (Deutsch & Gerard, 1955, p. 629). These influences have been
identified as being injunctive or descriptive. Descriptive norms are “what is typical or normal. It
is what most people do, and it motivates by providing evidence as to what will likely be effective
and adaptive action,” whereas injunctive norms are “rules or beliefs as to what constitutes
morally approved and disapproved content” (Cialdini & Kallgren, 1990, p. 1015). Stanfill
(2015) observes how these norms conjoin within the affordances of technological systems.
Norms on these systems operate off a combination of what the believed (injunctive norms) use of
a system is, combined with the hardcoded elements (descriptive norms) of the system. Stanfill’s
work considers how systems and rules can be proxies for creating normative hierarchies. As both
a practical game and a social activity, Magic represents a space where these two types of norms
intersect through game actions.
From a fandom perspective, norms may manifest through a mixture of participatory
practices and pressures from hegemonic powers. Chin (2017) notes how fandoms adopt their
own forms of social capital among fandoms. These forms of fan capital mimic more macro forms
of cultural hierarchies built on the exchange social capital and taste distinctions. Close (2016),

24

examines how norms in cosplay are managed by systems outside of fandoms. In Close’s case,
cosplay that did not conform to traditional ideas of gender roles were permitted within the
fandom yet articulated in ways that conformed to hegemonic structures of gender. In these cases,
the injunctive norms of fan practices brushed against the descriptive norms set by hegemonic
powers. These intersections promote subcultural divisions.
Within Magic these frictions can be seen in the interactions between player-generated
practices, the administrative practices of the rules committee, and practical game rules of the
Magic: the Gathering. In looking at norms as they relate to Magic, we can see the potential for
norms generated by a system to interact with community practices. Commander in particular
creates an environment where norms formed by the game engage with social playgroup norms,
and community policy. I thus propose the following research question:
RQ1: How do the norms imposed by a system interact with community practices?
Subculture Hierarchies and Differential Practices
Hierarchical structures in fandoms also manifest through differential practices of meaning
making. Bury (2017) frames participation in fandoms as existing on a continuum. The
knowledge, experience, and orientation a fan has to a subculture is not unilateral and reflects a
complex series of relationships between the fan and their object of fandom. These relationships
enable individualized fan habitus where “[f]ans discriminate freely: the boundary between what
falls within their fandom and what does not are sharply drawn” (Fiske, 1992, p. 34). Subcultural
hierarchies are embedded in the negotiation of differences in a fan continuum.
These negotiations may create practices where fans balance discrepancies between a
shared cultural identity and the breadth of relationships to that identity. Practices such as

25

othering, wherein fans alienate people based on a different understandings of a text, may aim to
legitimize certain relationships to fandom through the delegitimization of other relationships
(Duffet, 2013). Paratextual assemblages, where groups claim understanding of a text solely from
paratextual sources rather than the actual corpus, represent another practice for how fans may
negotiate the breadth of relationships to a fandom (Scott, 2019).
Within Magic, these negotiations strategies of fan habitus play out through discussions of
player archetypes, the philosophy of the game versus the function of the game, and how players
navigate markers of decorum, experience, and preference through expressions in and outside of
the game environment.
RQ2: How do communities negotiate differences through the affordances of a system?
The Physicality of Practice
In looking at these negotiations of differences, it is important to consider the role of
physicality in enforcing and constructing subcultural norms and hierarchies. Fan habitus is
embodied not only in practice but through the physical artifacts attached to those practices.
Holland et al. (1998) argue for the idea of figured worlds which are a “socially and culturally
constructed realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognized”.
Figured worlds become “evoked, collectively developed, individually learned, and made socially
and personally powerful” through artifacts. In this model, physical artifacts bring focus to
people’s relationships to that artifact and that artifact’s communities. Magic cards for example,
evoke not only the recognition of game mechanics but also recognition of the value of the cards
in cultural, financial and game contexts. For example, the card Dark Confidant (Figure 1) is
commonly known as “Bob” within the Magic community. This is due to the artwork on the card

26

being drawn in the likeness of professional player Bob Maher. Maher was given an opportunity
to design a card with his likeness on it after winning a high profile Magic tournament, ultimately
resulting in the card Dark Confidant. Dark Confidant and player’s acknowledgement of its
nickname Bob demonstrate layers of collective understanding of Magic’s history condensed into
a physical card. By evoking these understandings, cards gain significance outside of their role as
a game pieces. For Dark Confidant in particular, it evokes Magic’s involved history with
competitive play, the celebrity status of professional players, and the level of overlap between
players and designers.

Figure 1: The card Dark Confidant has art in the likeness of professional player Bob Maher
Cards can also act as an orienting point for perceiving larger systems. In his study of
collectors of baseball cards, Bloom (2002) notes the ability for such physical practices to
construct symbolic orders where “general arrangement and understanding of cultural symbols in
a society in a way that gives that society and the universe surrounding it an appearance of unity
and coherence” (p. 83). In looking at Magic cards, the cards act as symbols implicitly tied to

27

systems outside of the game. The existence of the secondary market allows concepts of access
and privilege to be unified and represented by a physical object, the card. In contrast to figured
worlds, symbolic orders position the artifact as a common mediator of practice. Rather than
evoke the differences in orientation, artifacts serve as unifying points to a shared cultural
understanding. These models are ways in which different spectrums of fan habitus are engaged
and how the physicality of fan practice may simultaneously encourage unification and hierarchy.
As a physical game, Magic engages with both Bloom (2002) and Holland et al.’s (1998)
lenses. At once, Magic cards represent a shared social reality embodied by the cards’ practical
applications as game pieces. The physical cards enforce a shared reality about their function
through the game’s rules. Conversely, individual cards can evoke varied relationships that
players have to Magic as a whole. For example, Underground Sea (Figure 2), is a particularly old
and rare card from the first sets printed in Magic. For enfranchised players, Underground Sea
may represent a mode of nostalgia from a particular era of Magic. Other players may see
Underground Sea as a powerful game piece. For collectors of Magic cards, Underground Sea can
be seen as a coveted item or a financial investment. Cards can hold individualized meanings to
players that highlight specific relationships to the community. I propose the following research
questions to explore these relationships:
RQ3a: How do physical artifacts mediate community relationships and practices?

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Figure 2: Particularly rare and powerful cards can command extremely high prices.
Method
I performed a discourse analysis of the EDH subreddit, a subreddit board dedicated to the
Commander format. The subreddit vaguely positions itself as “Reddit’s #1 source for EDH and
Commander content” (r/EDH, 2019). This subreddit was chosen as it is not connected to WotC
or the Commander rules committee. Reddit as a platform encourages a constant refreshing of
discourse, as the structure of the platform constantly pushes old content down and highlights
newer posts.
However, Reddit’s refreshing of discourse is influenced by the rating system, which
highlights popular ideas with high amounts of agreement. This system does not necessarily
promote the most contested ideas where divisive discourse would take place. To compensate for
this, I did not consider upvotes in my selection of threads and instead focused on the comment
count, analyzing threads that had at least 30 posts. To address the research questions, I focused
searches on the terms “casual,” “competitive,” “fun,” “contract,” and “cedh” (competitive EDH).
From the results I chose threads that engaged in conversations of group rules, the appropriateness
of certain forms of play, and how to define rules between groups and playstyles. In total, I
collected 8 viable threads and analyzed their opening posts and their responses.

29

Post data are supplemented by interview studies from the same batch conducted in
chapter 1. Interview questions focused on player experiences, particularly in how players
navigated frictions between game experiences and social experiences. Example questions
included “Have you encountered frictions in your games” and “How do you navigate between
the differences in your expectations of a game versus how a game actually plays out?”
Findings

Governing Narratives of Community and Play
In addressing RQ1, it was important to consider the role of governing bodies such as the
rules committee through system and policy. Historically, the Commander rules committee has
pushed towards individual sociality as part of the play experience, encouraging players to
develop their own house rules for their play groups. This narrative of self-regulation was
expressed in their 2019 philosophy doctrine:
Commander is for fun. It’s a socially interactive, multiplayer Magic: the Gathering
format full of wild interactions and epic plays, specifically designed as an alternative
to tournament Magic. As is fitting for a format in which you choose an avatar to lead
your forces into battle, Commander focuses on a resonant experience. Each game is
a journey the players share, relying on a social contract in which each player is
considerate of the experiences of everyone involved--this promotes player interaction,
inter-game variance, a variety of play styles, and a positive communal atmosphere. At
the end of an ideal Commander game, someone will have won, but all participants
will have had the opportunity to express themselves through their deck building and
game play” (Sheldon, 2019).
As the rules committee acts as the governing body for Commander, their policies (or lack
thereof) have reverberating effects on how these “resonant experiences” are negotiated. By
creating a narrative around community-based solutions and drafting social contracts, the

30

injunctive norms of individual play groups become the processes to achieve these resonant
experiences.
That is not to say the rules committee is a passive agency. The committee is responsible
for maintaining a banlist of what cards, and by extension what strategies, are legal within
Commander. This complicates how resonant play experiences are managed as Commander
players do not represent a homogenous population. The existence of labels such as “casual” and
“competitive” Commander alone indicate a group with varied expectations and goals. Yet, these
groups share a space governed by the rules committee. One post noted the overlap as such:
I realize the ban list is expressedly not for regulating competitive balance in EDH, and
I've seen arguments that if we ban flash, what are those crazy doofuses playing cEDH
going to break next and then force us to ban?
This post references a community anxiety of how the differing expectations and goals between
players may not be accurately represented or considered in policy and practice. Different players
orient themselves to Magic based on their player experience, playstyle, accessibility to cards, and
social relationships to others within the Magic community. Players also approach Magic with
differing goals and stakes. Yet in sharing a game space, the various relationships and stakes are
not immediately visible between players until a violation occurs.
Magic then becomes the means through how these violations are translated and perceived
between groups. The descriptive norms of Magic¸ the rules of the game, become a proxy for
resolving differing cultural and social relationships. These relationships are not only
encapsulated through play, but also through deck building and the physical element of the cards.
Magic as a practice becomes a text that translates these interactions into statements of intent,
decorum, and experience.

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Codifying the Injunctive
In exploring RQ1 and RQ2, there were themes of how players utilized in-game
mechanics to signify differing relationships. The popularity of Commander promotes frequent
intersection of differing norms as strangers attempt to assimilate into unfamiliar play groups.
Players are conscious of these interactions and have developed practices to negotiate the
differing norms such as assigning power ratings to decks:
When I sat down, one of the players asked what level of deck we were all playing.
One said 6, another said 4, and I said yes. He explained, and I understand the concept
of the power level of decks, but my question is how you calculate them. How can I
tell if my deck is a 3 instead of a 7?
Power levels refer to a scale from 1 to 10 that rates the efficiency, ability to win, and power of a
deck. This scaling is far from universal, as each number on the scale refers to a heuristic.
Assessment of these levels also relies on individual judgement and experience (Figure 3 &
Figure 4). However, this scale represents a process in which the Commander players codify
elements of practice into a system for regulating injunctive norms between groups. This heuristic
acknowledges the complexities of individual group dynamics. By leveraging the game rules,
players have developed this scale to abstract articulation of these dynamics through practices
found within the game. Notions of “what is permissible” are actualized as a mixture of
descriptive game norms and the physicality of the decks. Thus, the features and affordances of
the system become the means through which players enforce relationships between each other
(Stanfill, 2015).

32

Figure 3: Another power level chart, but contextualized based on deck mechanics
14

These heuristics also manifest through more ephemerally defined systems, such as the
distinction between casual and competitive Commander. The terms casual and competitive are
meant to heuristically define certain injunctive norms. As one player states:
Competitive EDH is a multiplayer format with the same rules as normal commander,
sharing the same ban list. It differs from casual commander in that it does not have
budget, power level, or social contract restrictions on the strategies it employs.

14
Accessed on 7/21/22 https://imgur.com/OcMdyUH

33

Here, competitive Commander is positioned as the suspension of social contracts in favor of
pursuing optimum strategies. It is a suspension of injunctive norms and emphasizes the practices
built through the descriptive norms of game rules. However, these heuristics may still be mapped
within personal levels of understanding. One player’s idea of a power level of 7 may translate to
a power level 10 to another player. Similarly, the characteristics of casual versus competitive
play may be relative to individual playgroups or players.
Once I was going out of town and the LGS
15
near where I was traveling said they had
a regular cEDH group. However after about a game and a half I realised what they
said was cEDH was very powerful magic but not quite the legacy lite
16
EDH I tuned
the deck for.
These discrepancies are further complicated by practices of paratextual assemblages and
othering. For example, one thread voiced frustration towards a group of players “pubstomping,”
deliberately taking powerful decks to play against weaker players. A response in that thread was
as follows:
cEDH players and being jerks, name a more iconic duo I'll wait.
cEDH refers to “competitive EDH.” Of note, cEDH is often differentiated from “normal”
Commander. Many conversations around Commander do not typically specify if they are casual,
yet cEDH tends to be much more explicitly labeled. The use of a distinct title implies an effort to
alienate players who participate in competitive play. The quote above demonstrates a much more
explicit othering of competitive players, articulated through a paratextual understanding of the
term “competitive”. Here, competitive is understood through its relationship to achieving victory
and is not engaged through the more nuanced understandings that some players construct for

15
Local Game Store
16
Legacy refers to another variant of Magic that is known to play extremely tuned and powerful cards.

34

cEDH. For the speaker, the othering creates a unified vision between their paratextual
understanding of cEDH and the discrepant practices of cEDH players which suspends “budget,
power level, or social contract restrictions on the strategies [cEDH] employs.”

Figure 4: A chart depicting deck power levels, framing them based on player intention
17

The othering of competitive play also brings up negotiations of privilege and class. Magic
cards are typically acquired on the secondary market, where individual cards have their price
determined by demand, power, and supply. Cards that perform well or are known to be powerful,
typically demand higher prices on the secondary market. One characterization of cEDH decks is
their access to a collection of the most powerful and most expensive cards. The following post is
a response that explained why the speaker felt their opponent was playing a cEDH deck. Note
that much of the jargon in the following quote refers to the names of extremely powerful and rare
cards that individually command hundreds of US dollars on the secondary market:

17
Accessed on 7/21/22 https://twitter.com/CFBEvents/status/1269477825582698497/photo/1

35

Yeah, they are cEDH, might not be tier 1, but still. Teferi chain veil, narset
turns/combat steps, sisay, tazri food chain, proosh food chain and selvala combo (all
with duals, LED, mana crypt and stuff like that)
Of note, the speaker chose to highlight that their opponent had “duals, LED, mana crypt and stuff
like that.” Each of these names carries implications about class, access, and game knowledge,
with each name representing a well, known powerful card. The post represents a frustration that
the differential practices between players is contingent on privileges in class and accessibility.
The othering of cEDH in this context means to delegitimize and interrogate how these
inequivalences detrimentally effect involvement with the community. These tensions are
abstracted to the possession of certain powerful cards and semiotics drawn from those cards.
In part, these issues exist based on the how the rules committee regulates the format. Of
note, the rules committee has allowed cards from the reserved list to remain legal. The reserved
list refers to a set of cards WotC has stated will never be reprinted, in turn powerful cards on the
reserved list demand high prices on the secondary market due to scarcity (Figure 1). Many cards
that the above quote refers to are reserved list staples. The rules committee has the authority to
unilaterally ban these cards to address issues of accessibility but has not. In the rule committee’s
philosophy document they noted the following about their style of banning:
“We prefer to be conservative with what goes on or comes off the ban list. Commander
players often become emotionally attached to their decks through play and
personalization, and we value that experience highly. We only want to disrupt that bond
when necessary.
18
”
In this statement the rules committee acknowledges that deck personalization is part of a player’s
personal experience. This goes in line with the experiences of [INTERVIEWEE L] who notes:
“When I own physical cards, it feels really, really good. It can be a sign of pride, careful
spending, or a good deal. I think the most important reason that keeps me buying more

18
Accessed on 7/21/22 from https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/the-philosophy-of-commander/

36

singles over time, with my collection looking to peak $8k in the next few months, is the
resale value of those singles.”
The ownership of cards is not limited to an accessibility issue. Players may also perceive it as a
marker of pride or financial savviness. The card not only draws out conflicts between players of
differing status and privilege, but also how they orient themselves relative to that status and
privilege. The rules committee’s rather conservative stewardship coupled with its narrative of
self-regulation allows their varying relationships between cards and players to manifest in and
out of game contexts.
Injunctive Norms Through Descriptive Rules and Physicality
In exploring RQ2 and RQ3, I uncovered themes on how physical cards mediate
relationships between players. As Magic is a game that is tied to the physical collection of cards,
an individual player’s collection has a great effect on their performance and interactions with
others. In Commander this relationship is exacerbated as it allows more lax use of cards. Many
formats of Magic restrict players to cards printed throughout a certain timespan. Commander
however permits cards to be used from the game’s entire history, with a few exceptions. This
opens up Commander to the use of older cards that are significantly harder to acquire due to
scarcity, including cards on the reserved list. This permits a large variance in decks which creates
gaps in performance and efficiency between decks. These gaps can lead to conflict between
players. One thread noted:
My playgroup is mostly just new and very casual players, most people try to make
their deck is powerful as possible but end up being a little worse than the 75% decks
that me and a few others play (no instant-win combos though, since we don't find it
fun), trying really hard to not be too oppressive. But there are a few people who only
have a few decks that are tier 1-3 and just join random pubs to pub-stomp, which i
don't get, but whatever. They pretty much win every time and this annoys me, since
everyone else pretty much accepts it and just continues to play with them […]

37

This quote highlights a frustration in facing uneven gaps between access to cards and the relative
performance of their decks. Here, there is an interaction between resource availability and social
contracts. The speaker admits that their companions lack the means to optimize their decks. This
leads to frustration when they play another player with more honed resources. From a symbolic
order framework, the cards make visible the uneven gaps between resources, knowledge, and
expertise. The cards evoke shared cultural understandings around access and performance within
Magic. They act as markers that allow players to readily identify differences in accessibility and
by extension game efficacy.
However, this quote also points to differing figured worlds, as the speaker imposes a self-
limitation on how they use their cards. Their insistence of “no instant-win combos” and “trying
really hard to not be too oppressive,” point towards opportunities of enhancing their performance
that they are aware of but choose not to pursue. The speaker clarifies this discrepancy later in the
thread:
I don't mind losing at all. But I come here to play magic, interactive games of magic
where everyone has a chance, and got to do awesome stuff. Losing turn three 8 games
in a row isn't what I define as playing magic. Same for my playgroup, they just don't
see how unfair it is, and they don't realize they should just not let pubstompers join.
Here we are given an interpretation of what it means to “play magic.” It presents an
individualized understanding of the game as centered in interaction between players. To the
speaker, Magic is “where everyone has a chance, and [gets] to do awesome stuff.” This figured
world becomes evoked and realized through the speaker’s physical use of their cards, by
choosing to use cards that would be deemed suboptimal from an efficiency standpoint. When
confronted by a player whose own cards represent a different figured world, a different
interpretation of what it is to “play magic,” friction occurs.

38

This friction is a conflict between injunctive norms that come into play through
descriptive norms. Neither the game rules of Magic nor the game rules of Commander prohibit
interactions where resource and knowledge gaps are apparent. The rules in fact encourage such
discrepancies as they are more optimal routes towards winning the game. The rules are thus
descriptive norms as they are apparent and prescribe actions that would yield optimal results.
Yet, the speaker’s sense of what it means to “play magic,” their injunctive norms towards the
game, are violated through how the other players performed according to the descriptive norms.
These dynamics also manifest when individual player strategies meet. This post notes a
player’s experience with playing an “aggro” deck, a strategy that relies on the quick elimination
of other players through aggressive play:
I've gotten a fair amount of push back in games from players who are the target of this
strategy. They complain that I should spread damage around and/or that knocking people
out of the game is not fun. This complaint seems to amount to saying I should not play
my deck since its only reasonable path to victory is to be aggressive.
The game interactions encourage eliminating other players as a way of managing threats. As
such, the game prescribes a descriptive norm to remove other players from the game early. Yet
this causes friction with players’ social experiences, as one response to this post noted:
My experience has been that knocking a single player out early is a negative thing
because then that player has to sit around for the next 30 minutes.
By removing a player early, they are removed from the social experience of the game. This
creates an injunctive norm that discourages strategies that may be effective from a gameplay
standpoint but undesirable from a social standpoint. These differing norms create friction as

39

players navigate their strategies and expressions in gameplay against social contracts in and
outside of the game context.
Interviewees noted the role of physical cards had impacts beyond game settings as well.
[INTERVIEWEE L] compared Magic as a form of financial investment:
Magic is a set of stocks or a savings account you can play games with, everything has a
value that increases and decreases with time like a stock naturally does and that's what
keeps me interested in buying more from the secondary market
Going back to the framework of symbolic orders, Magic cards act as cultural symbols on
multiple levels, not just within the context of the game but as symbols that bridge player
experiences outside of Magic. As physical pieces and commodities, they evoke notions of class
and accessibility between players that may not be inherently visible during gameplay. One
participant [NEMO] noted the following:
[INTERVIEWEE NEMO]
Socially when you roll out with a playset
19
of Palinchron’s
20
you tend to get immediate
offers to sell them. When you run the deck with them… its not really putting people in
the best of moods.
[NEMO]’s experience highlights an interesting dichotomy surrounding the value and power of a
Magic card inside and outside of the game environment. Outside of a game of Magic, powerful,
rare cards such as Palinchron act as a marker of prestige, indicators of savvy investments and
collector dedication. Yet inside a game of Magic they highlight discrepancies in access,
translating differences in spending ability to in-game effectiveness. These values are also tied to
the perceived legitimacy that physical Magic card hold. [INTERVIEWEE E] noted the
following:

19
Playset refers to four copies of a card
20
Palinchron refers to an extremely powerful Magic card under WotC’s reserved list

40

[INTERVIEWEE E]
To play a format like legacy, the simple fact is that you need to own cards. Proxying
cards is a great alternative if you wish to play casually, but any format maintained by
WotC has to be played with their official printings […] If I can throw some opinion in,
that is why card prices being so high as to make them inaccessible to players is so bad for
the game's longterm health. In any setting where official cards are required, not being
able to afford the cards themselves means not being able to afford magic.
Of note [INTERVIEWEE E] mentions “proxying,” which is the practice of using an artificial
stand-in to represent another card by proxy. Among some playgroups, proxying serves as a way
for players to utilize powerful cards without the high buy-in cost that such cards usually demand.
Yet as [INTERVIEWEE E] notes, sanctioned events require the use and ownership of officially
printed cards. This imbues those cards with an air of legitimacy as the “official” product that is
“required” to play Magic even if it is not being strictly vital to the operation of the game. As
physical cards represent a potential for players to participate in Magic both socially
mechanically, the cards also imply the relationships that players have to WotC and the rules
committee. Policies such as WotC’s reserved list directly control the accessibility to these social
and game experiences by controlling the availability of cards. WotC also determines what kinds
and practices are official, implicitly delegitimizing player practices that fall outside that realm,
such as proxies. Similarly, the rules committee’s banlist determines which kinds of relationships
will come in contact and how heavily those relationships may be based around conflicts of
accessibility and ownership. These challenges of accessibility and ownership are not only
indicative of player’s relationships with each other but also of the power relationships that
authorial bodies such as WotC and the rules committee have with players. In this context, power
is centralized, these authorial bodies exert influence on the player experiences from the top-
down. In response to the frictions caused by these top-down decisions, players develop bottom-
up practices such as proxies and power levels to navigate issues of accessibility. These practices

41

thus not only articulate relationships between players but also implicitly communicate player
relationships with authorial power.
Discussion

For RQ1 we see that the norms of a system act as lenses through which a community
parses interactions into other contexts. System mechanisms act as proxy’s for signaling
experience and status outside of the system itself. Similarly, in RQ2 we see how these system
mechanisms are appropriated as ways to articulate differences within the system. Communities
employ system mechanics as ways of parsing the differing relationships, stakes, and goals that
people have going into a system. The results for RQ3 enriches these discourses by introducing
elements of prestige, access, and legitimization. The artifacts serve as further points of context
for articulating community relationships within a system and how those relationships are bridged
outside of a system. More broadly, these findings give insights into how communities are
mediated by systems while simultaneously appropriating them. These insights may be able to be
applied and institutions that rely on similar system logics such as games and politics.
For the next chapter, I look into the communication and policy practices of WotC and
their relationship as authors and developers to Magic players.

42

Chapter 3: Players and Developers

The previous chapters have examined the interactions between fans and spaces, and the
relationships between fans and systems. This chapter will shift the focus towards developers and
authority figures. Specifically, this chapter will examine how authority figures, developers, and
fans communicate over media and the role of media and games in that communication. In the
previous chapters I have used the term players to refer interchangeably to fans and players of
Magic. The term player was important due to the previous chapters’ focus on the game aspect of
Magic. Within this chapter, I will be using both the terms fans and players interchangeably as the
relationships here are in and out of the game space.
Theory

Transmedia, the Auteur, and Microcelebrity
With advancements in digital media, the rate and ease at which information can be
replicated and spread has increased (Negroponte, 1995). Coupled with the increased accessibility
to decentralized coordination, fans are able to engage in complex layers of discourse through a
pooling of collective experiences and knowledge (Levy, 1997; Jenkins 2006; Shirky, 2008,
2010). The ease in coordination and the distributed nature of modern communication allows for
the accumulation of knowledge and expertise at unprecedented rates and scales (Shirky, 2008,
2018). Communities can now compile and debate information on their interests in decentralized
groups. These discourses bring fans of varying orientations into contact, making visible what
orientations are encouraged or disenfranchised.

43

Modern collective discourse can form the basis for decentralized collective action
(Shirky, 2008). The expansion of digital media has allowed fans from diverse audiences to
interact and coordinate. This allows coordination among previously disempowered fans and
grants them visibility to producers and other fans. Jenkins (2007) notes that the expansion of
texts into transmedia storytelling allows fans to “pool information and tap each others’ expertise
as they work together to solve problems” (para. 9). However, these same transmedia spaces
allow for further consolidation of power and creative control (Jenkins, 2007; Scott, 2012).
The expansion of fandoms into transmedia spaces presents a paradoxical mix of content
being consolidated under corporate power while expanding discourse and access to text across
media. Scott (2012) notes that "despite transmedia stories’ collaborative narrative design, the
media industry frequently equates fans’ “participation” with their continuous consumption of
texts that narratively and financially supplement a franchise" (p.43). Within this ecosystem, Scott
(2012) posits that notions of authorship and creative control become further consolidated under
the umbrella of the “fanboy auteur.” Within the transmedia environment, the fanboy auteur
represents a figure that straddles the line between producers and consumers. They are a figure
whose fan credentials grant them interpretive powers for fan communities while maintaining
authorial control (Scott, 2012). Jenkins (2012) notes auteur relationships to fans are not
monolithic and proposes that the image of the fanboy auteur may be constructed as part of a
dyad. One part of the dyad is the “Guiding Spirit,” which represents the creative vision of the
auteur that attracts the interests of fans. The second part of the dyad are the “Powers That Be,” a
representation of the corporate forces of fandoms that make decisions based on metrics and
economic incentives.

44

Wexelblat (2002) notes that the dialogue that digital technology affords fans and authors
can serve to mythologize creators as fans that are somehow special. Schmidt (2010) argues that
as these lines between producer and consumer blur, intimacy becomes a focal point of the
relationship between fans and authors. According to boyd (2015), modern social networks are
egocentric, focus is placed on the actions of certain individuals within a network. The same
mechanisms that allow fans to interact with and be visible to creators of fan objects allows those
creators to discursively reinforce their status as special (Wexelblat, 2002). Yet, new media also
challenges traditional notions of authorship by enabling a mixed form of proprietary commons,
where fans are in a precarious position of creating works for public access through the internet
but under the scrutiny of producers (Booth, 2016). Within digital environments, the binaries
between fan and producer break down as fan objects become infinitely reproducible. The
exchange and production of fan work moves away from exchanges of monetary value.
According to Booth (2016), fans in the digital era simultaneously participate in practices of
market economy and gift economy with exchanges of fan works focusing on the gift economy
aspect where monetary value is eschewed in favor of socialization through information.
Within Magic we see aspects of fanboy auteurism play out in the ways that developers
interact with fans over digital media platforms. Magic’s lead designer, Mark Rosewater, has
maintained a personal blog since 2012 where he fields questions from the community. He has
also authored multiple podcasts and articles that detail the design process behind Magic. Other
WotC developers such as Gavin Veryhay have not only maintained contact with fans through
social media but have also produced video series to communicate with fans. While these
platforms enable fans to follow and communicate with creators, Scott (2012) argues that the one-
sided nature of these communications allows the auteur to impose their readings of texts as

45

“correct.” These consolidations of control happen passively as while “fanboy auteurs might
sincerely wish to establish relationships with fans through these authorial paratexts, these forms
inevitably privilege the author’s voice, and reaffirm his position of power in the relationship” (p.
48.)
Adjacent to the concept of the fan auteur are “micro-celebrities” where “audience is
viewed as a fan base; popularity is maintained through ongoing fan management; and self-
presentation is carefully constructed to be consumed by others” (Marwick & boyd, 2011, p. 140).
Of note Marwick and boyd (2011) characterize micro-celebrity performances as crafted through
the deployment of perceived authenticity and ‘backstage’ access to personal details to cultivate a
sense of intimacy. Backstage behaviors refer to private, intimate interactions that are free from
the expectations and norms of public performances (Goffman, 1959). Performances by
microcelebrities give the perception of having access to these private interactions. This
performance of intimacy does not represent a democratizing effect between fans or celebrities.
Rather Marwick and boyd (2011) argue that social media highlights how “power differentials
between “celebrities” and “non-celebrities” are performative constructs that can be leveraged by
anyone with a webcam, social network site profile, or Twitter account for their own purposes”
(Marwick & boyd, 2011. p. 156). It should be noted that these power differentials are not limited
between micro-celebrities and fans but also between micro-celebrities and mainstream
celebrities, as micro-celebrities are not guaranteed to enjoy the same level of prestige and wealth
afforded to mainstream celebrities.
With the advent of social media we can observe how micro-celebrities can emerge among
producers and developers of systems and games. These producers negotiate textual ownership
with fans at multiple levels (Jenkins, 2012), there is a tacit acknowledgement by producers that

46

fan practices may simultaneously be a subversion of and an asset to producers of texts (Booth,
2016). Within games, these practices of decoding developer intent can manifest as emergent
behaviors not intended by the developer (Shaw, 2017). Authors or developers serve as voices of
authority that can dictate how a text is read, which may include encouraging or curtailing
alternative readings of a text (Wexelblat, 2002). Within game spaces these can manifest through
banning or implementation of certain game practices to make the game experience align with
developer intents. Yet these relationships between developer and player are not one way.
Developers may choose to canonize or implement fan works or emergent practices into official
texts (Postingo, 2007; Shaw, 2017). As developers adjust to these emergent practices, it creates a
dialogue between the developer and player both through and outside of the text (Nardi, 2009;
Stanfill, 2015; Shaw 2017).
Within Magic we see micro-celebrities form through the game’s developers and
community members. The Commander rules committee (RC) is a fan body that regulates the
popular variant of Magic known as Commander. They are members of the Magic community
with looser ties to WotC that act as authorities and participate in the social media space. The RC
can give insight into the ways fan auteurism and micro-celebrity are deployed outside of official
spaces. To study these relationships I propose the following research question:
RQ1: How do games mediate the relationship between developers, and authorial bodies,
and players in and outside of the game environment?
Fans and Developers
In the construction of micro-celebrity and fan auteurism it is important to consider the
transmedia context in which they operate. Within transmedia contexts we see fans pooling the

47

knowledge and expertise of other fans to engage in group problem solving (Jenkins, 2007).
Collective intelligence and the decentralization of individuals over digital media has allowed
communities to channel what Shirky (2010) calls the “cognitive surplus.” The low entry cost of
digital platforms allows users to engage with media as creators through the sharing of knowledge
and expertise. Among fans, these acts of sharing are discursive as fan spaces are “a social
hierarchy where fans share a common interest while also competing over fan knowledge, access
to the object of the fandom, and status” (Hill 2002, p. 46). Within game spaces, Taylor (2006)
noted that these digital media landscapes were where fans “seek and acquire status not only
through the items they own, but more generally via their knowledge of the game, its artifacts and
how to acquire them” (p. 83).
Magic players have had a long history of utilizing digital media for collective player
discourse. Fan sites for Magic date as far back as USENET systems in 1996 (David-Marshall,
2016). Early fan websites acted as hubs for distributing news on events, strategies of play, and in
engaging in discourse around the game
21
. Fan websites fulfill a similar role today, alongside
utilizing the modern affordance of media such as livestreaming, data analytics, and content
creation. While these forms of communication are not unknown to members of WotC, some
members of WotC’s development team come from these transmedia fan spaces
22
. While WotC’s
main website served as a hub for game and product announcements since 1999 (Shvartsman,
1999), WotC would steadily begin leveraging digital platforms as means of informing and
interacting with players with lead designer Mark Rosewater establishing a personal blog, named

21
http://www.classicdojo.org/
22
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ_2JOFFvFo

48

Blogatog in 2011
23
, followed by a podcast in 2013
24
. With the advent of social media, other
members of the design team would go on to create their own social media profiles
25
and
communicate with players on the processes behind design
26
and policy
27
. As new media have
allowed players to create their own Magic content, WotC has leveraged its relationship with fans
to distribute news and advertisements. WotC has approached content creators to preview cards,
act as notable guests on events, and utilized fan platforms as vehicles for promoting products
28
.
To investigate how WotC communicates its relationship to fans and the role of
transmedia in these communications I ask the following research questions:
RQ2: How do developers and authorial bodies negotiate their position to fans?
RQ2a: How do developers and authorial bodies utilize transmedia to interact with players?
Method

To answer these questions, I analyzed communications from developers and authority
figures within the Magic community. The analysis focused on three specific figures in Magic:
Mark Rosewater, Gavin Verhay, and the Commander Rules Committee. Rosewater was selected
based on his senior positions and his relative renown within the Magic community as a lead
designer. Verhay was selected due to his history as a Magic player that eventually transitioned
into an official position at WotC. Verhay was also selected due to his notable media presence
with his regular YouTube show “Good Morning Magic.” The Commander Rules Committee

23
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/archive/2011/4
24
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/media/podcasts
25
https://twitter.com/mtgaaron/status/1193718050119307264
26
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/media/podcasts
27
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/
28
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXGPway-z6M

49

(RC) dictates the rules of the Commander format, as the Commander format has been adapted
into WotC’s official products, the RC has a considerable amount of influence in player
experiences despite not being an official WotC body. It is worth noting that I am viewing the RC
in aggregate rather than through its individual members as their public communications tend not
to be centered around any one particular member.
As each group of interest had their own form of communication, data gathering was
individualized for each one. For Rosewater, I analyzed his official blog, Blogatog and filtered
through posts using terms that focused on Rosewater's role as a designer and the business side of
Magic. Example terms included “Market,” “Business,” “Design,” and “enfranchised players.”
Collected posts ranged from May 2018 to January 2022. Of note, due to Rosewater deleting
problematic posts
29
Blogatog does not reflect a complete archive of Rosewater’s
communications with fans. Rosewater’s blog was analyzed in tandem with his drive-to-work
podcasts. Podcasts were selected with a similar focus on design and business insights and ranged
from 2016 – 2019. For Verhay, I analyzed videos from his webseries “Good Morning Magic.”
The videos were selected randomly from YouTube’s playlist shuffle feature. Special attention
was paid to videos that emphasized design insights and Verhay’s history with Magic as a player
and a designer with videos ranging from a period of early May of 2020 to late June of 2022. For
the RC, I reviewed information on their website as of July 2022, focusing on pages detailing the
committee’s philosophy doctrine, banlist, and reasonings behind bans. As new insights came to
light, supplementary data was gathered from the social media profiles of developers and
announcements on WotC’s website.

29
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/665968940333301760/so-you-arent-going-to-repeat-what-you-got-in

50

To supplement these analyses, developer communications are considered in tandem with
player interviews. A total of 15 participants were interviewed. Interviewees were recruited based
on convenience and snowball sampling across online communities and local game stores within
the Southern California area. Interviews were conducted in-person, over Discord, and over text
on Telegram based on interviewee preference. Interviews focused on the relationship between
players and developers with example questions including “how do you feel WotC affects your
relationship with other players if it all” and “What do you feel the role of developers are in the
experiences you seek in Magic.” These interviews were part of a larger series of questions that
analyzed player experiences, and relationships in Magic across various contexts.
Findings

Policy and Players
In investigating RQ1, participants had differing opinions on the role of developers and
governing bodies as they relate to game experiences. This was particularly salient when talking
about Commander as [INTERVIEWEE D] noted that the RC banned cards with the intent of
preserving player enjoyment:
“The rules committee often bans "unfun" cards or cards that have the potential to be used
in a way to ruin peoples enjoyment of the game. Banning those cards does send a
message about what kinds of things people should expect in a game. This being said, no
matter how much wotc or the rules committee does, in the end, people will play how they
want to. House rules, house ban lists, custom formats etc”
[INTERVIEWEE D] mentions “house rules” and “custom formats.” These refer to ways in
which players may play Magic under their own rulesets. The RC refers to this freedom as “Rule
0,” an acknowledgement that players are free to seek and craft their own kinds of game

51

experiences. [INTERVIEWEE D’s] statement presents a dichotomy where players are free to
retool their experiences in Magic but that there is an implicit legitimacy associated with RC’s
version of Magic. Despite Magic allowing for creative freedoms, there is a consolidation of
power and creative control towards the authority held by the RC. [INTERVIEWEE E] notes this
consolidation of authority more explicitly and criticized “Rule 0” for delegitimizing certain
forms of play:
“The rules committee, on the other hand, have a very negative opinion of competitive
play in Commander, with members of the committee and advisory group openly talking
about how playing competitively is "missing the point" of the format. Also, decisions
such as implementing an official "Rule 0" to avoid having to sort out any sort of format
wide issues has also had a negative impact on player experience, I feel. Players will often
use the rule as an excuse to remove things they personally do not like, which is not
limited to competitive play, but certainly includes it.”
In respect to RQ1, Rule 0 presents a tension between player freedom and developer intent.
Whereas [INTERVIEWEE D] saw Rule 0 as a way of negotiating experiences that fall outside of
official game rules, [INTERVIEWEE E] saw Rule 0 as amplifying divisiveness by implicitly
delegitimizing forms of play that would fall within Rule 0’s boundaries. These interviewees
noted how the RC’s decisions carried a sense legitimacy. Rule 0’s very status as unofficial
applies implicit pressure that the RC are stewards over the “correct” way to play Commander,
giving them the authority to define what gameplay experiences were considered “fun.”
Interestingly the Commander’s philosophy doctrine
30
on their website addresses this conflict:
“Commander is designed to be a malleable format. We encourage groups to use the rules
and the ban list as a baseline to optimize their own experience. This is not license for an
individual to force their vision onto a play group, but encouragement for players to
discuss their goals and how the rules might be adjusted to suit those goals.
The format can be broken; we believe games are more fun if you don’t.”

30
Retrieved on 7/11/22 from https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/the-philosophy-of-commander/

52

Similar to [INTERVIEWEE D]’s sentiment, we see the RC encouraging the discussion of goals
between players to reach an enjoyable game experience. Yet we also see how the RC invokes
their sense of authority, notably their declaration of a baseline and an explicit statement at the
end that deviations from this baseline are less fun. This statement aligns with [INTERVIEWEE
E]’s concerns over Rule 0, where certain forms of play are implicitly deemed “unfun” due to
their deviation from the RC’s judgements.
Rule 0 creates an environment where “[f]ans discriminate freely: the boundary between
what falls within their fandom and what does not are sharply drawn” (Fiske, 1992, p. 34). But
these distinctions are based on boundaries defined by the RC. In effect the RC dictates what
strategies and intents are encouraged and by extension the kinds of relationships that are
promoted inside and outside of the game environment. As [INTERVIEWEE E] notes, the kinds
of experiences the RC encourages is at the expense of players looking for competitive games in
Commander. More explicitly, the RC’s policies control accessibility to game experiences,
particularly among groups of strangers. The RC’s banlist provides a common baseline for players
to readily play Commander, and deviations from that banlist require additional negotiations with
the risk of encountering social violations. [INTERVIEWEE FLF] expressed the following:
“It seems like a lot more work trying to form our own banlist or trying to say “this is
okay in this situation” and “that is okay in that situation” when there’s already one that’s
like “alright it’s already here, it’s already noted, we already see what is allowed and
what’s not” and just follow that rather than making our own rules and following a whole
different system that may not work for someone else.”
Despite tensions that can arise from the RC’s policies, the RC’s rules provide path of least
resistance for players to engage in Commander. Despite allowing players to break the rules, the
RC’s status as the authority allows its policies to exert soft power on players’ experiences by

53

setting a standard for interaction. Deviating from this standard requires players to put in
additional effort and risk of social violations, implicitly stifling the use of Rule 0.
In looking at RQ2 we can see that part of this tension with the RC stems from their
authority over the game. This mode of authority is particularly interesting as the Commander
website cites itself as a fan website not affiliated with WotC as seen by their rights statement in
Figure 1.

Figure 5: A rights statement on the RC’s website emphasizing the site as fan content
31

The RC’s status as both an authority and a fan body are recognized by WotC. When WotC
initially began releasing products for Commander in 2011, senior designer Aaron Forsythe
explicitly noted that the format would be left in the care of the RC:
“Wizards of the Coast and the DCI are not "taking over" the format! We will not be
managing the rules or the banned list of the Commander format, instead leaving it in the
capable hands of Sheldon Menery and his rules team. They deserve all the credit for this
format's popularity and we don't want to mess with a good thing!”
32

31
Retrieved on 7/11/22 from https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/faq/#rule-zero
32
Retrieved on 7/11/22 from https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/magic-gathering-
commander-2010-12-02

54

The separation between the RC and WotC remains relatively intact to this day though one junior
member is now part of WotC’s tabletop operations
33
. The RC thus presents a dichotomy in being
a community run organization of fans that operates in an official capacity. We see elements of
fan auteurism and micro-celebrity at play here. The RC’s proximity to WoTC hints at intimate
backstage insight towards Magic’s inner workings providing a sense of exclusivity (Marwick and
boyd, 2011). The RC’s relative separation from WotC and designation as a fan group creates a
similar dynamic wherein, they position themselves as members of the fan community yet have
privileged insights and decisions on what can be deemed fun for the game environment
(Wexelblat, 2002). This conferral of authority is made particularly strong as Commander
becomes effectively canonized through the support of WotC products. Despite espousing ways
of players to take control of their experiences through things such as Rule 0, the RC’s
recognition by WotC and its ability to affect player experiences make it difficult to dispel the
power relationship and implicit pressure the RC exerts on players.
The RC’s conferred authority also permits them the ability to confer power unto others as
seen in the case of the Commander Advisory Group or the CAG. The CAG is “an invited group
of Commander community leaders who use their breadth of perspectives on the format to assist
and advise the Rules Committee. They highlight potential format improvements, discuss impact
of proposed changes, and help the RC stay in touch with the community.”
34
The RC’s
description of the CAG implies the RC is separated from the community, with the CAG
providing insight on player concerns. One interviewee who was part of the CAG noted their role
as such:

33
Retrieved on 7/11/22 from https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/personal-page-scott/
34
Retrieved on 7/11/22 from https://mtgcommander.net/index.php/about-us/

55

“I feel that my role in the CAG as well as helping to shape [player] experiences is just to
sort of help serve as a bridge between the rules committee and the wider community. Just
sort of communicating what I hear the other is feeling and thinking. […] We [the CAG]
represent ourselves as well as our social media communities and we all sort of come from
different places. So that’s baked into it to some degree but at the same time I feel that we
all represent different constituencies to some degree. It’s not really tribal or anything but
more just part of who we are and what parts of the community we see.”
In exploring RQ2a we see an interesting application of transmedia that chains down from WotC
to the RC to the CAG. In allowing the RC to steward Commander, WotC leverages the
experiences of the RC as fans in policing the Commander variant and providing insight on future
products. In turn the RC’s reliance on the CAG utilizes strategies of fan consumption across
various contexts and aggregates them into policy. At each level, authority and the power to affect
policy and product are conferred from the top down. While transmedia allows fan experiences to
be aggregated from the bottom up, power is centralized and conferred from the top down. This
level of diffusion is not lost on players as [INTERVIEWEE FLF] notes:
“It feels like [the RC] are 5-6 steps away from me and my small little playgroup. They
put out the rules but we follow them just like any other rule system. […] Do I feel like the
[RC] is part of the community and have a love for Magic just like I do? Yes. Do I feel
like they are hearing what I might specifically want? No but it’s a lot of voices out there.”
[INTERVIEWEE FLF] noting that the RC feels 5-6 steps removed from their playgroup may be
representative of the various levels through which player experiences must traverse to reach
authorial bodies. As [INTERVIEWEE FLF] notes, there are many player experiences to
consider, and those experiences must work through multiple levels of micro-celebrities
conferring power and audience to each other. What player experiences are considered is
implicitly tied to which members are conferred the authority to inform the RC, or more explicitly
which fans the RC deems as having particularly special insights (Wexelblat, 2002).

56

One example of players having to work through multiple levels of microcelebrity is the
banning of the card Golos. In September 2021, the rules committee banned Golos, a popular card
in the Commander format. A member of the CAG that advised the ban outlined the decision
process in an article
35
. They noted the following:
“For anyone unaware, when I’m not writing articles I'm a member of the Commander
Advisory Group, a committee of independent advisors who work with the Rules
Committee to help foster communication between the RC and the broader commander
community. Golos has been a topic of discussion among the RC and CAG for a while
now, at least half a year if not longer.”
Comments on this article were overly negative towards the ban, with one response criticizing the
above quote:
“So if the CAG exists to foster communication between the RC and the community, and
this has been a topic of discussion for at least half a year, and yet the community at large
is still blindsided by the decision, then what went wrong?
Other comments on the article reflected similar sentiments, citing feelings of being
underrepresented or underinformed about policy decisions and voicing a disconnect with the
CAG as a representational body. Here, we see ways in which bottom-up mechanisms fail to
translate player experiences to authorial figures. In concept, the CAG is a means to gauge
community feedback, in practice they represent another level of microcelebrity. CAG members
embody an additional level of distance that players must communicate and be seen by for their
experiences to be translated into policy. Where as power and authority may transferred from the
top-down, the translation of player sentiment upwards to that authority is impeded by
mechanisms of microcelebrity.

35
https://commandersherald.com/golos-banned-the-shocking-decision-explained/

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Developers, WotC, and Players
Moving RQ2 into more corporate contexts, we see a layered relationship between
players, developers, and the larger corporate entity of WotC. Far from being a monolithic
company, WotC is a vast entity that operates disparate branches. One interviewee [SB], a
professional Magic player who had worked with WotC on multiple levels described their
operations as such:
“So what you have to understand is Wizards is made up of a lot of branches and peoples
that interact with players differently or not at all. So when you talk about getting a
preview card, you’re talking about the marketing and influencer managing side of
Wizards. Which is a different branch of people than the organized play branch of people
who run tournaments. Which is a different branch of people from designers and
developers that make cards and I have different relationships with all those people in all
those different branches.”
Yet within this complex corporate structure, players noted feeling recognized by developers
within WotC. Developers were seen as sympathetic to player experiences and concerns.
[INTERVIEWEE A] noted the following:
“If anything, I try to ignore the kerfuffle around their communication style because it’s
always rubbed people the wrong way. For me I’ve always been trying to look less at
WotC as a entity and people, and more of the group inside of WotC who are most
interested in the player base. In other words, people who are designing the cards, those
people are probably more interested in my thought process than the people who run their
budget, their PR, who run the widescale scope of their communication.”
[INTERVIEWEE A] has the notion that developers within WotC are themselves invested in the
play mechanics of Magic. Scott (2012), noted that creators within fan spaces could be thought of
as “fanboy auteurs,” straddling a space where they are at once sympathetic to the plights and
passions of fan communities, while holding creative control over a media object. In this context
we also a separation of developers from the “Powers That Be,” which are the corporate forces of

58

WotC (Jenkins, 2012). There is an effort made by [INTERVIEWEE A] to see developers as the
analogous “Guiding Spirit,” that is allied with player concerns. [INTERVIEWEE To] bridges
this gap even further by noting developers as being fellow players who could improve the
efficiency of certain strategies such as “white” but were powerless to change business aspects of
the game:
“[Developers] are cool people, I’d love to jam some games with them. But at the end of
the day, they can make white play better, they can make good cards in white, but they
can’t make the Arena economy better. They control what the cards are, but they don’t
control how the cards get to you. And that’s another thing, the change in the MSRP, you
know it wasn’t the designer in R&D that did that, it was the back half of WotC”
[INTERVIEWEE To’s] desire to play with developers marks them as members of the player
community, sharing similar forms of access and interaction as other players. [INTERVIEWEE
To] also makes a deliberate separation between the developer and the economic interests of
WotC, perceiving those stakes as being siloed from the agendas of developers. Yet their status as
developers also highlights them as somehow special (Wexelblat, 2002). Particularly, developers
are constructed as members of the player community who are qualified to dispense insider
information and design philosophy. Magic developers are known to field community concerns
and insights into design and policy decisions
36
. They are afforded a privilege of translating their
philosophies on how the game is played into legitimate card design.
Yet the developer’s status as part of the community does not exclude players from
perceiving developers as being aligned with the “Powers that Be”. [INTERVIEWEE ARG]
noted that while developers allowed players to be heard, their interests still aligned with WotC’s
corporate agenda:

36
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/

59

“At that point I feel that there is at least an attempt [from developers] to be on the same
page as their players and their customer community But at the same time it feels like
they’re distant. […][Certain cards] don’t get reprinted in their Commander decks or their
pioneer decks or other Wizard’s products because I feel that Wizards does keep track and
has a finger in the secondary market. So it falls back to “oh we hear you but we’re still a
business and we want to make a buck and do these things. So we’re not going to do these
things because we don’t think it would be in our best financial interest.”
There is a tension here in how players negotiate a developer’s dual identity of being part of
the player community and part of the corporate brand. In looking at developer’s themselves
Gavin Verhay’s show “Good Morning Magic” presents an interesting case in exploring the
dual identity of being a player of Magic while working at WotC. One video in the series gave
a glimpse at various WotC employees ranging from DevOps to retail development staff. The
video allowed them to present the kinds of Magic decks they played
37
. This video builds on
the connection between players and WotC staff by presenting staff at various levels of the
company as players of Magic. Yet the sentiment among [INTERVIEWEE A] and
[INTERVIEWEE To] seem to imply that this connection to players is reserved to developers.
Two of the people featured in the staff video were designer Chris Mooney and retail
development specialist Mary Kathryn Amiotte. In looking at their respective Twitter profiles we
see a difference in presentation (or lack thereof). Both profiles identify themselves with the
#wotcstaff hashtag but within Mooney’s case (Figure 2) we see an engagement with players
experiences. This is in stark contrast to Amiotte’s profile (Figure 3) which is relatively blank
outside of the #WotCStaff tag and no known tweets. In terms of micro-celebrity, we see how the
role of intimacy works on different levels. Both Mooney and Amiotte have been presented as
players of Magic which fosters a sense of connection with players. However, Mooney’s much
more public presentation implies a more intimate insight into the workings of Magic. It provides

37
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zwns1_QbeZg&list=PLOaGbQxdBvkn8rks7MWSSQtIAGxaWnatD&index=13

60

the level of backstage access that confers a level of perceived authority and privilege that
Mooney has over other players (Marwick & boyd, 2011). Despite Amiotte also being a staff
member that plays Magic¸ they do not engage in these same dynamics of intimacy, diminishing
their ability to be seen as connected to player experiences. In relation to WotC as a whole, this
dynamic of intimacy is particularly tied to developers such Mark Rosewater and Gavin Verhay
who have historically been the ones to establish themselves as community figures and faces for
the company.

61

Figure 6: Twitter profile of Magic developer Chris Mooney
38

38
https://twitter.com/chriscmooney

62

Figure 7: Twitter profile of Magic retail development specialist Mary Amiotte
39

Verhay himself presents an interesting case mixing authority with fan status. In his
regular YouTube show “Good Morning Magic,” Verhay is known to touch on a variety of topics
ranging from personal stories
40
to providing developer insights
41
, to fielding community
concerns
42
. Verhay presents himself as reachable and approachable, fielding player concerns and

39
https://twitter.com/PhyrxnLibrarian
40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq1Ww1PcbmU&list=PLOaGbQxdBvkn8rks7MWSSQtIAGxaWnatD&index=2
41
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpsEzKTpQ3c&list=PLOaGbQxdBvkn8rks7MWSSQtIAGxaWnatD&index=14
42
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ywZ1VzbA4&list=PLOaGbQxdBvkn8rks7MWSSQtIAGxaWnatD&index=6

63

curiosities in his videos. Yet there are distinct separations between Verhay and his viewers in
some videos. In one particular video
43
Verhay use the term “we” to describe the experience of
designing a product that was released before he started playing Magic and by extension, before
he joined WotC. Verhay’s use of “we” persists through videos referring to Magic’s history
despite not being a part of WotC during these histories
44
. Verhay creates a distinct separation
from the players in these moments, signaling an insider perspective with special authority and
insight over the game. This signaling of authority is separate from Verhay’s actual experience as
a Magic player as he invokes membership with the design team for products he was not involved
with as a designer or even a player.
Rosewater constructs this separation more explicitly. Rosewater is prolific in
communicating with players in articles hosted on the Magic website, personal blogs, and
podcasts. In his personal blog, Blogatog, he directly fields questions from members of the
community. On Blogatog we see that Rosewater is rather open about Magic’s nature as a
business as well as his own involvement in the business side of the brand (Figure 4).

43
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slZ-KJ0kD24&list=PLOaGbQxdBvkn8rks7MWSSQtIAGxaWnatD&index=353
44
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37gRw8PWf5Y&list=PLOaGbQxdBvkn8rks7MWSSQtIAGxaWnatD&index=4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37gRw8PWf5Y&list=PLOaGbQxdBvkn8rks7MWSSQtIAGxaWnatD&index=4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oi5eDNCYMDw&list=PLOaGbQxdBvkn8rks7MWSSQtIAGxaWnatD&index=5

64

Figure 8: A blog post from Rosewater’s blog about his relation to Magic’s business agenda
45

There is a disconnect here between how the player views Rosewater and how Rosewater
presents himself. The comment on the blog implies players see Rosewater as part of the
“Guiding Spirit” that is distinct from corporate interests of the “Powers That Be.”. Yet on his
own media Rosewater is rather open on his relationship with Magic as a business and his own
involvement with the “Powers That Be”. In one podcast on market research, he notes the
challenges of navigating player concerns against internal data and goals
46
.
“A product that doesn’t sell well is not a successful product. No matter how much people
say they like it. If people don’t buy it, we consider it a failure. […] We never want to
ignore the voice of the audience. The audience wanting something doesn’t always mean it
happens. Partly because sometimes the audience doesn’t represent the full audience. Or
sometimes there are other factors at hand. […] There’s things that players might go ‘This

45
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/174053094228/i-think-people-would-be-more-accepting-of-your
46
https://media.wizards.com/2019/podcasts/magic/drivetowork605_marketresearch_jkH4d3D3.mp3

65

would be awesome’ and we’re like there’s business reasons we can’t do that or logistical
reasons.”
The transparency on the relationships between business and production for Magic run counter to
some player expectations on the role of developers as seen in the responses of [INTERVIEWEE
A], [INTERVIEWEE To], and Rosewater’s blog. Among some players there seems to be an
effort to separate developers from corporate interests as modern media has allowed developers to
appear more intimate and involved with player concerns. This separation is not universal as we
see in the case of [INTERVIEWEE ARG]. These discrepancies fall in line with the dynamics of
fanboy auteurism. At once developers such as Rosewater are seen as fans, participants within a
space that possess a shared interest and understanding of Magic as the players. Yet these
developers leverage a level of authority and power over the brand that sets them apart. This
authority creates and necessitates a distance from other players that implies a separation between
developer experience and player experiences. This distance is not only in the insight and control
those developers have over the design of the game but also in how a game reaches and is
marketed to players.
For RQ2a, we see how transmedia also plays into the business strategy of WotC. In the
same interview on market research Rosewater notes the struggles of relying on fan feedback over
social media:
“[T]here is a dynamic that can happen on social media where when people know they’re
being heard will push agendas they care about and it’s easier to rally other people with
the same agenda. It’s the nature of social media. People being loud on social media, not
that we don’t listen to it, but we always compare that against the other data we have. And
just because alot of minority might want something doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what
a majority of players want.”
Both Rosewater and players draw on the transmedia environment but have different levels of
information available to them. Fans do not have access to market data and must make sense of

66

their experiences and experiences of others based on the pooling knowledge and discourse. The
use of transmedia among fans compensates for a lack of resources, control, and information
through drawing on the experiences of others. By contrast developers such as Rosewater may
have access to proprietary information that allows them to navigate the transmedia space in
different ways. This propriety information is coupled with developers ultimately having a
different relationship to Magic than players despite being been seen as part of the community.
Discussion

In respect to RQ1 we see Magic act as a focal point for relationships that are both top
down and bottom up for developers and players. As seen in the case with the RC, power and
authority are conferred from the top down. Within the RC’s case, WotC grants them the
authority to steward a fan format and the RC in turn grants members of the CAG the authority to
express community concerns and translate the needs of individual players. At each level, power
is centralized in an authorial body that can determine which voices are heard and not heard,
which may harm more fringe or disenfranchised voices. This top-down structure falls in line with
previous literature as despite the ability of transmedia to pool the experiences of many people,
these same structures centralize power and authority (Wexelblat, 2002; Jenkins. 2007; Scott,
2012). The bottom-up aspects of these relationships also follow a theme of centralization. As a
community’s disparate concerns are aggregated by these authorities and flow upward to inform
product and policy. Yet these bottom-up mechanisms are troubled as power is centralized into
figures of authority creating additional layers of distance through which voices have to work
through to be made into policy. In our modern media environment, these dynamics of power and
authority have many opportunities to form. For example, it is now commonplace for games to
support social media communities that are officiated by developers. Digital platforms such as

67

Discord, reddit, and Twitter give rise to similar cases as Magic where the disparate experiences
of fans are taken as input but centralized under specific channels and individuals who are
conferred authority.
For RQ2 we see how developers create a mixture of intimacy and distance with fans and
how this presentation can create tensions. From Verhay we see how he separates himself from
players, making direct references to his status as a developer in his videos and his insider insight.
Yet he also provides a sense of intimacy and connection through personal stories and sharing a
history as a Magic player. There is a disconnect here that fans attempt to reconcile based on their
experiences with the game not only as players but also as consumers of a product. This
disconnect falls in line with work on micro-celebrity where the performance to an audience
creates a power differential between the celebrities and noncelebrities, elevating the status of
some fans as “special” among others (Wexelblat, 2002; Marwick & boyd, 2011).
For RQ2a we see how developers may have an unequivocal relationship to transmedia
compared to fans. In the case of Rosewater we see how he balances community concerns against
internal data that may not available to most fans. Whereas fans utilize transmedia environments
to engage in complex, collective problem solving (Jenkins, 2007), developers may not need to
rely on this due to access to privileged information. A fan’s understanding of a text may develop
based on a communal experience as their access may be limited. By contrast, a developer’s
relationship to a text may be informed by factors outside of communal understandings. The
results for RQ2 and RQ2a have implications for examining how leadership presents itself in a
transmedia environment as well possible mechanisms in their sensemaking and decision making.
Future research could analyze the ways in which authority figures collect and utilize proprietary
information and how that information brokers relationships between authority and communities.

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Conclusion

Throughout this project we have examined Wizards of the Coast’s (WotC) trading card
game Magic: the Gathering along three major dimensions: space and medium, systems, and
peoples. This section will briefly recount each dimension and consider the applications of the
work in other fields. Note that within each section I will be using both the terms fans and players.
These terms are not mutually exclusive and it is better to imagine the term player as
encompassing a subset of interests that are covered in fan. Specifically, player is meant to
emphasize people who are engaging with the game and system aspects of Magic. This includes
but is not limited to playing the game, their interaction with policy over the game, and the
ownership over game pieces such as cards.
Space and Medium
This project specifically examined the interplay between offline and online spaces and
their respective roles in fostering relationships and third place dynamics. Within Magic we see
how the affordances of its digital platforms affects the goals and interactions that players have
with the game and other players. Notably, as the social affordances of the platforms become less
rich, players noted less social obligation and connection to other players and the game.
Conversely, as the social affordances of these platforms expanded, so too did the possibility
spaces for the players. In more cue rich forms of media such as webcams, players noted engaging
in forms of community building and socialization that went beyond the game context. Players
using these media rich platforms noted sharing in the social experiences surrounding card
ownership and conversation on the Magic franchise as whole. Of note, players approached these
platforms with particular social and game goals in mind. The platform’s affordances did not

69

determine player goals, but rather players appropriated the mechanisms of the platform to suit
their objectives. As these mechanisms became richer in their social cues, the possibility space for
pursuing these goals also expanded.
These dynamics in digital spaces are not meant to discount the role of physical spaces.
Within Magic, the local game store (lgs) played a prominent fixture for players. LGSs functioned
as social hubs that allowed socialization, meeting new players, and engaging with Magic through
commerce and play. The similarity in dynamics in lgs’s and more cue rich forms of digital media
are worth noting, as it implies that the mechanisms of community building and characteristics of
third place are not tied to specific spaces. These third place characteristics may instead rely on
the possibility space an environment affords and how that possibility space interacts with the
intentions of the people in that space.
As modern digital media hybridizes the experiences of offline and online spaces, the
interplay between intention, media richness, and space become more common place. Future
work may place further emphasis on the unique affordances of these digital space. Examples
include the accessibility offered by digital platforms, eliminating traditional boundaries of
geography; the ability for these media to expand cognition by offering live insights and metrics
that may not be readily apparent in physical spaces; or the ability for these media to engage in
multiplicity, allowing users to simultaneously participate in different settings and groups.
Systems
As a game Magic represents the nuances that players encounter in engaging with a
system’s mechanics and pieces. This project examined how these dynamics played out in the
Commander format of Magic, a variant that emphasized social interactions between players. The

70

game of Magic offered a proxy for players to express decorum, experience, and intentions
through game actions. Game actions became the means through which players understood,
violated, and conformed to the social expectations of other players. These expectations were
balanced against Magic’s nature as a game. The system of Magic encouraged behaviors that
would lead to victory. These behaviors may have caused friction when they conflicted with the
social expectations of players. For example, Magic encourages eliminating players early for
strategic advantages, but pursuing such an advantage also eliminates that player from the social
experience of playing the game. Players not only recognized these frictions but also created tools
for navigating these frictions on both group and community scales. These include creating
distinctions between players such as the labels of “casual” and “competitive” and developing
heuristics such as deck power levels as ways of communicating differing expectations and
experiences.
The social expectations of Magic, and particularly Commander, are not solely made by
players but are also stewarded by authorial bodies such as the Commander rule’s committee. The
rules committee provides an intersection between player intention, system pressures, and
authorial intent. The rule’s committee advocates an approach of self-governance while
maintaining their policies as a baseline for play. While they encourage players to negotiate their
own boundaries, the rule’s committee’s emphasis on being the authority exercises a form of soft
power over player’s social expectations by implicitly delegitimizing forms of play that deviate
from their policies.
The rule’s committee’s policies more explicitly affect player experiences through
accessibility. As a game with physical game pieces, Magic highlights the role of artifacts in
mediating the relationship between players and authorial figures. While the mechanics of Magic

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are exclusive to the game space, participation and success within that space are influenced by
factors outside of the game. As physical cards, Magic cards highlight differences in access, with
particularly powerful or rare cards demanding prices of hundreds to thousands of US dollars on
the secondary market. The ownership and use of certain cards bring issues of class, privilege, and
access into the game space. These issues of access are also tied to players’ relationships to
authorial bodies. For example, WotC has enacted policy that increases the scarcity of certain rare
powerful cards. The Commander’s Rules Committee allows these rare, powerful cards to be
legal within Commander. These two authorial bodies thus not only enforce issues of access
through maintaining the scarcity of these cards but also place implicit pressure to own these
cards in order to compete in the game space.
The dynamics between system incentives and social expectations is readily applicable to
other game environments, particularly games that feature social engagement beyond head-to-
head competition. Games that permit a high degree of social flexibility such as Fortnite may
provide salient cases to further explore the relationships between players and systems. These
relationships are not isolated to games. While many digital systems do not have a definite win
state as many games, such systems also possess indicators of success. Social media sites for
example commonly have likes, or awards given to user comments. These metrics may create
similar dynamics to Magic where the varying social expectations of users intersect with what the
system incentivizes. This project is also relevant in examining the pieces of these systems as well
as the role of authorial bodies in controlling those pieces. Issues of scarcity, access, and privilege
are not limited to physical objects. Digital systems and games may enforce their own forms of
artificial scarcity such as limited time rewards within games or proprietary emotes within
streams. The frictions between ownership, authority, and participation can be readily replicated

72

within digital spaces and it is worth exploring how users navigate these frictions in other
contexts.
People
Players engaging with Magic implicitly interact with the game’s authorial bodies such as
developers and policy makers. In exploring the relationship between players and authorial
figures we see a dichotomy between the authority figures being both part of and apart from the
Magic community. Developers portray themselves as players that engage with Magic and share a
similar enjoyment of the game, cultivating a level of intimacy with players. Yet developers also
demand a certain level of separation from players by holding different stakes, as well as offering
special insights and backstage access to the inner workings of the game. This dichotomy reflects
carefully crafted forms of impression management that position the developers as a part of the
community while conferring a special status and authority unto them.
Player relationships with developers also highlight how forms of power are centralized
and distributed within the Magic community. For example, within the case of the Commander
format there is a simultaneous top down and bottom-up distribution of power. The Commander
format itself was created by fans before eventually becoming sanctioned by WotC. It represents a
bottom-up practice that became adopted into official products and events. Power that originally
began as bottom-up fan practice is subsumed upward. Additionally, while the rules committee
still holds autonomy over policy decisions, this centralizes power by giving the rules committee
the authority to determine what community sources best represent the interests of the format. The
power relationship of who is listened to and which play experiences may be legitimized into
policy are thus conducted from the top down rather than democratized.

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The cases of WotC and the rules committee can be applied to the modern media
environment where lines between authorial bodies and users seem to blur. As social media gives
users the ability to reach out and be seen by authority, it creates the image of an egalitarian space
of participation. Yet, these systems may only encourage further centralization of power. The
performances of authority figures on these platforms may create perceptions of intimacy with
users but also affords said figures the space to establish themselves as having special insight or
knowledge. These platforms allow authority figures to selectively highlight personal and
community concerns, giving special privilege to voices of their choosing. Despite offering a
space where people may be seen by an authority figure, power is recentralized towards the
authority figure as they are given more freedom to choose who is seen and leveraging those
interactions for carefully crafted performances.
Closing
The guiding impetus of this project has been to analyze relationships between users of a
system, the system itself, and developers of that system. These analyses have been guided by
perspectives from fandom studies and computer mediated communications with particular focus
on qualitative methods. As such, while the insights of this project may lack generalizability, they
provide a basis for guiding future investigations into systems, their users, and developers. In
relation to Magic specifically, it should be noted that this project is by no means a holistic
investigation into the nuances of the systems available In Magic: the Gathering. There are still
many other avenues of potential study including but not limited to: Magic’s status as a spectator
sport, the role of use of content creators a promotional agents and designers of the game,
relationships that fans have to Magic beyond the game aspects such as through the artwork and

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story. This project provides a window into how concepts from Magic can be applied to critically
analyze other phenomena and broader concepts.

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Abstract (if available)

Abstract Systems are ubiquitous. They exist within our political and social institutions. They exist within our technological infrastructure. Systems control the possibility space of interactions by defining the nature of an environment and controlling the actions available. However, systems are not all encompassing and act in tandem with practices. While systems define possibilities, practices provide context. Practices create expectations and nuances for how actions within an environment are perceived. Systems and practices are thus intertwined, their interactions creating context and content. In this project I examine how fan communities interact with each other through practice and space, analyzing how system affordances interact with user generated practices. The trading card game, Magic: the Gathering is provided as a case study for these interactions.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Liu, Calvin (author)

Core Title Gathering understanding: players, systems and developers in Magic: the gathering

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Degree Conferral Date 2022-12

Publication Date 09/14/2024

Defense Date 08/18/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag computer-mediated communications,fan studies,Magic: the gathering,OAI-PMH Harvest,qualitative,tabletop games

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Jenkins, Henry (committee chair), Williams, Dmitri (committee chair), Trammell, Aaron (committee member)

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