I’ve been getting a lot of questions that boil down to “I don’t like X, could you stop doing X?” or “Okay X exists, but I don’t like it, can you do less of X?”, and I don’t think I’ve been particularly empathetic, so I thought I’d share a story where I was the one wanting less of X.
My background is fiction writing. I did a lot of playwriting and short story writing growing up, and then in college got into TV writing and film writing. I care a lot about individual card flavor making sense.
When I started playing Magic, the nails on the chalkboard for me was Walls. Creatures should be creatures. They didn’t all have to be sapient, but at least sentient, or, at bare minimum, alive. I could handle Living Wall or a Plant that was a Wall, but things like Wall of Stone really threw me for a loop.
It was so contextually silly that there was even flavor text in Fallen Empires making fun of it. (“Ever see a wall drop dead of fright, kid?. It ain’t pretty.”)
I’m a Johnny, so I did build a few wall decks. I got the mechanical joy of attacking with things that couldn’t normally attack, but boy did the flavor just irk me.
Unlike most of you, I got into a position where I could do something about it. I was one of the people who pushed to make the defender keyword. Then, with the help of Brady Dommermuth, I got rid of Walls. For several years, we stopped making creatures with the Wall creature type.
But as time rolled on, I kept getting requests from players for more Walls. The very thing I disliked about them, the incongruity, was something that made them charming to a host of players.
When R&D first starting talking about Walls returning, I initially fought against it. Magic felt better to be without them in it.
What turned me around was Demons, of all things. In early Magic, we took away Demons because there was this fear that it would turn away too many players. It became clear though that the majority of the players liked Demons, and that we were letting a small minority remove something from the game that a majority enjoyed.
So, we brought them back. If we did that with Demons, why not Walls? The only difference was I personally didn’t like Walls. Didn’t the philosophy for including one apply to the other?
These issues, Demons and Walls and several others, helped us form a philosophy of inclusion over exclusion. Assuming it didn’t cause direct harm to certain players (things like harmful stereotypes), we should let players have access to the things that made Magic enjoyable to them.
With time I came to realize that making other people happy was a net benefit to me. I love Magic. I want others to love it too. The more happy players, the bigger the community, and the bigger the audience. That means it’s easier to find people to play with and the game could expand out and do even more things.
I came to see Walls as a good thing, not because it made me happier in a vacuum, but it made the Magic audience net happier.
That’s where my answers are coming from. Magic is too broad to not occasionally do something that any one player might prefer not to do. That’s where the customizability comes in, and even more importantly, that’s where the empathy comes in.
If something is net negative to you, take a step back, and see if it’s net positive for the audience as a whole. Does its inclusion make others happy? Does it allow someone else to fall in love with Magic? Is it doing good even if the good gained isn’t specifically for you?
I went through that exact process with Walls, and my shift in perspective made Magic even more enjoyable for me because I could see how it improved Magic for others.
That’s what I’ve been trying to do with my answers. Not neglect acknowledging that whatever you’re upset about isn’t impacting you negatively. It is. I get that. It makes Magic something less for you personally.
I’m just asking you to think about the thing you love most in the game. Some one dislikes that thing. Magic would be better for them if we removed it. But Magic is better for you and them if we include both things rather than take them both away.
Inclusion over exclusion.
Let the game have all the things people enjoy, and each person individually leans into what they enjoy and learns to deal with what they don’t. That’s the recipe for making the most players the happiest, and making Magic the best game it can be.
