Review Fix chats with Beyond the Deck: Critical Essays on Magic: The Gathering and Its Influence author Shelly Jones who discusses the importance of Magic the Gathering and more.
About Shelly Jones:
Shelly Jones (they/them) is a Professor of English at small college in upstate New York, where they teach classes in transmedia storytelling, mythology, and writing. Their research explores fandoms, analog games, and tabletop role-playing games. For the past six years, Shelly has served as an editor for Analog Game Studies. They’ve edited two essay collections published with McFarland: Watch Us Roll explores Dungeons and Dragons actual play, and Beyond the Deck examines Magic: The Gathering.
Shelly’s creative writing often incorporates folkloric and mythological elements. Their work has been a finalist for the Best Microfiction, as well as nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Dwarf Star Award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
About Beyond the Deck: Critical Essays on Magic: The Gathering and Its Influence:
Since its debut in 1993, Magic: The Gathering has grown to be an influential collectible card game, allowing its community of loyal fans to duel each other while enjoying its lore and compelling narratives. This collection of essays focuses on Magicfrom a variety of disciplinary approaches. Authors explore the innovative game design of Magic, the ludic differences between analog and digital play, how players interact with the MTG market and one another, professional play versus casual play and the many ways Magic has impacted gaming.
Review Fix: Why does Magic The Gathering matter?
Shelly Jones: Magic: The Gathering is really the foundation of collectible card games since its debut in 1993. Magic’s popularity is due in part to its revolutionary gameplay – the combination of luck through drawing from your deck and strategy, in that you can cultivate your deck over time, finding new cards that strategically work together. This constant evolution of the gameplay, adding and collecting new cards, culling your deck and tailoring it to your particular playstyle, is really what makes Magic so engaging and enduring. One of the incredible things about Magic, and undoubtedly a reason why it has grown over the past 30 years, is its versatility and the numerous ways it can be played, whether that’s in-person or online, casually or professionally. But regardless of what mode of play we’re talking about, I think at the heart of the discussions in this book is the sense of community that is created around Magic. We have an entire section in the book dedicated to communities of play and how they’re created – whether that’s in person at the local game store or in the larger arena (pun intended).
Review Fix: How has it affected your life?
Jones: My first introduction to Magic was in Middle School when friends would bring in binders chock full of cards to play and share. I was very intimidated by my friends’ intricate knowledge of these seemingly arcane artifacts, so I often watched from the sidelines (usually with a book in hand). I was curious and wanted to play, but the breadth and depth of knowledge one needed to have just to play Magic (let alone be good at it) seemed insurmountable to me in middle school. I only came to appreciate Magic much later as an adult when I got more into the hobby of board games (and had the extra disposable income to pay for the hundreds of board games we own) – including many magic sets.
Review Fix: What’s the main reason why you decided to do this book?
Jones: While there were one-off articles about MTG and a history of the cards, there wasn’t yet an academic book on Magic. Around the time the project idea came to me, Magic had just been inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame at the Strong Museum located in Rochester, NY, which is actually where I grew up. In its rationale for its induction, the Hall of Fame commented on Magic’s remarkable influence on the hobby of gaming, paving the way for other collectible card games like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. So it just seemed like the right time for an academic book on Magic.
Review Fix: What was the research process like for this one?
Jones: As I crafted the call for papers for this collection, I really wanted to make sure that lots of different aspects of Magic were addressed: the design, the culture of the play community, the pro Magic scene, the economics of play, the influences of Magic, and how Magic can be seen and used beyond the table.
For example, two of the authors took an ethnographic approach to Friday Night Magic – going to their local game store – and interviewing members of a local gaming community in order to further understand its potential access points and barriers. We see through their work just how crucial our friendly local game stores are in establishing and constructing an atmosphere that can appeal to both new and established players. In those in-person moments, clear communication is crucial. We need to know going in: is this event meant for only experienced players, or can someone learning join in? Does it cost to play and how much? Can I pop in for one round, or is it an expectation that I’m here for the next three hours? What kind of play experience are you looking for and will our decks and personalities align? What cards are you worried might be Over-powered, or is that not a concern you have? These kind of pre-session discussions help ensure we’re on the same page and we can enjoy ourselves, regardless of what evolves as we play out our decks. That clear communication is key to creating a healthy environment where players flourish, and keep coming back to play again.
Another author examined the differences between in-person play and online play. Specifically they looked at the nuances of the online interface of MTGO and how the display, the user interface of the online game, can affect a player’s rhythm and state of engagement, ultimately disturbing whether or not a player is able to effectively enter a flow state. In particular he’s looking at the way the addition of a clock or a timer affects the gameplay, and how players can essentially weaponize time against their opponent. Similarly, due to the automation that happens in Arena, players might not be able to discern their opponent’s “tells” or quirks as much. That chapter really explores the design challenges of recreating an analog experience in a digital medium and how digital mechanisms can potentially inhibit the player, or encourage them to play in a different way than they would in an in-person setting.
Of course, learning magic, as I mentioned from my own experience, can be a challenge. Two of the authors, who were faculty at the same college at the time of writing, decided to use Magic in their classrooms as pedagogical tools as a kind of games-based learning. In a math classroom, they were able to incorporate magic as a way to study mathematical models – a systems approach thinking about mathematical input and output. In an English course, students were able to analyze the visual rhetoric of the cards and then created their own cards reflective of their own identities and experiences. One of the things I love about this example, even if it isn’t about magic in the traditional sense, is that we can really see how far-reaching magic’s influence is. These educators were able to use magic to initiate a meta conversation with their students. Thinking about the ways in which we learn the jargon and rules of magic as a kind of metaphor for the way first year students need to learn the jargon and rules of academia – what we call the ‘hidden curriculum’ – in order to be successful – (things like “what’s the college catalog? What’s a registrar?” Terms many of us take for granted that we know – but aren’t inherently clear. This kind of rhetorical awareness is in a way no different from the kinds of questions a new player needs to ask in order to successfully play the game – “what does trample mean? What does it mean to tap a card?”). As an educator myself who loves incorporating games into my classes whenever I can, I love the idea that Magic can be used as a pedagogical tool for mathematical skills, literacy, and critical thinking.
Review Fix: What did you learn that you weren’t expecting through this one?
Jones: The intricacies of the economy and marketplace of Magic were particularly new to me. I enjoy playing Magic casually, but hadn’t yet explored the secondary card market and how volatile the economies of individual cards could be. I think I could have had an entire book just dedicated to the complexities of the Magic Marketplace and how capitalism and competition affect the greater game scene. Underscoring a lot of that discussion was the fact that Magic crosses the boundary of hobby game into tournament play and professional play – and that the various economies can play out very differently in these different arenas.
Review Fix: Who will enjoy this one the most?
Jones: Folks interested in learning more about the communities of play and the culture of playing Magic (whether in person vs online, casually vs professionally) will enjoy this collection. This book is for anyone who wants deep dives on the rise and fall of professional play, the economics of play, and explorations of the narratives and lore of Magic.
Review Fix: Why should people pick this one up?
Jones: Beyond the Deck is one of the few academic book-length works on Magic the Gathering. If you’re looking for a discussion of Magic from a wide variety of points of view, including an interview with Mark Rosewater, the head designer for Magic at Wizards of the Coast, this is a good resource for you. In particular, Rosewater commented on his creative process and the significance of balancing mechanics with flavor in designing Magic – which I think is one of the hallmarks of the game – that wonderful mix of gameplay and lore.
Review Fix: Why is this one special for you?
Jones: I like to think this book was 20+ years in the making for me from that awkward, intimidated kid at recess who wanted so desperately to understand the epic battles happening when two kids shoved their desks together and dealt out some strange looking cards to the (still awkward) professor who now studies games for a living.
Review Fix: What’s next?
Jones: Academically, I’m working on an IRB study integrating roleplaying game safety tools into my courses to explore the impact they have on student success. This is an ongoing project that I hope to have some results for soon. I’ve got an article on safety tools in indie RPGs coming out in another collection from McFarland in the near future. I’m also working with a collective of authors on a book on the Dropout actual play Dimension 20that’s in the beginning stages.
In terms of writing more generally, my first nerdy, board game-themed cozy mystery Player Elimination is coming out August 27th. Every local board game store needs an inclusive Scooby Gang solving murders, right?
Review Fix: Where can people find out more?
Jones: For more articles on analog games, they should check out Analog Game Studies. I’ve been an editor at this academic journal for the past several years and we publish three to four issues each year. We also organize a yearly, free, two-day online conference each August called Generation Analog. Video for the past conferences (including keynotes such as Elizabeth Hargrave and B. Dave Walters) are available on our youtube channel. For more information about me, folks can check out my website, shellyjonesauthor.com for updates on writing and new books.
Review Fix: Anything else you’d like to add?
Jones: Thanks so much for this opportunity! I like to think that the driving force behind my work and my writing is to reiterate that games are for everyone. We all might have a different interest or pathway into the game, but there’s no wrong reason to come to the table. And hopefully everyone is welcome at the table.
