Hell week
December 6th 2009 01:42
MagicTheGathering.com just finished “Spike Week.” If you haven’t been reading their content for a long time, that won’t even sound like English to you. The design team sometimes looks at players in terms of psychographics, specifically the reasons why they play Magic. This helps them decide which cards are likely to appeal to which players. Spike is the more competitive of the three psychographic profiles, referring to someone who gains enjoyment from winning games and, often, playing in tournaments. As such, Mark Rosewater had a section near the beginning of his article on Monday, encouraging Spike to be Spike:
“It's just Spikes? Good. Here's what I want to say. I know Spikes get derided a lot for taking things too seriously. ‘It's just a game’, they say. Exactly, it is a game. And what's the point of a game? What are you supposed to do by the very nature of a game's design? Win. There's no medal for the runner who has the most interesting gait or Poker bracelet for the player who has the best time. The point of any game is to prove your dominance by following the rules and achieving the objective, to be the best. That's what you're doing. You need make no excuses for doing what games were created to do. Embrace your Spikeness and make no apologies.”
He had to. Tournament types buy a lot of cards, and I’m sure the marketing department wouldn’t let him say anything more insightful or hard-hitting. Fortunately, I am not bound by such constraints, and as such I am able to ask: why exactly is it that Spike has a bad reputation?
Magic, with its amazingly complicated rules, references to real-world mythology and fantasy tropes, and museum-quality art, is by its nature an intellectual hobby. As such, it tends to attract a largely intellectual audience. Visit a gathering of Magic fans and you’ll find a very good range of people, even by the primitive classifications of high school cliques – I was once part of a playgroup that had a Goth, two members of the campus Christian society, and a couple who were like modern versions of Fred and Daphne from Scooby-Doo. Visit a high-level tournament like a Pro Tour qualifier or Regionals, though, and you’ll often (with a few high-profile exceptions) find only one class of person: jocks. Not just everyday jocks either, but the worst kind of frat-boy stereotype come to life: especially loud, crude, aggressive, and shallow.
It is easy to observe something like this and infer that it is a result of the high stakes involved. This would be incorrect. Every week, thousands of people enter FNM tournaments whose payout is nearly as great proportional to the players’ own situation and individual collections. The situation is much more like college sports: these kinds of tournaments are inherently attractive to this type of person because they offer an opportunity to pad their ego by dominating and intimidating other people. (When a deck emerged at the recent World Championships based around the Zendikar card Spreading Seas, the pro community chose to give it the nickname “Spread ‘Em.”)
(In the spirit of last week, I feel I should point out that the verb for slipping roofies into someone's drink is "to spike." Coincidence?)
And like college sports players, they don’t limit it to on-field antics. Pro-circuit Spikes make no secret of their disdain for casual players, collectors, and even FNM-level competitors, often referring to them as “scrubs.” They demand concessions from everyone, from local tournament organizers (better prizes for better players! ie. them) to Wizards of the Coast itself (more powerful and unfair cards to pwn people with!). They show no sympathy for others’ concern with the availability or high price of Standard-legal singles, as sinking money into a deck that is only good for one tournament apparently shows that you’re willing to “do what needs to be done.” A sizable number of them think nothing of fudging rules or even outright cheating, knowing that they can count on like-minded people to justify their actions because “the point of a game is to win.”
And these same people honestly wonder why other players have a bad impression of them?
“It's just Spikes? Good. Here's what I want to say. I know Spikes get derided a lot for taking things too seriously. ‘It's just a game’, they say. Exactly, it is a game. And what's the point of a game? What are you supposed to do by the very nature of a game's design? Win. There's no medal for the runner who has the most interesting gait or Poker bracelet for the player who has the best time. The point of any game is to prove your dominance by following the rules and achieving the objective, to be the best. That's what you're doing. You need make no excuses for doing what games were created to do. Embrace your Spikeness and make no apologies.”
He had to. Tournament types buy a lot of cards, and I’m sure the marketing department wouldn’t let him say anything more insightful or hard-hitting. Fortunately, I am not bound by such constraints, and as such I am able to ask: why exactly is it that Spike has a bad reputation?
Magic, with its amazingly complicated rules, references to real-world mythology and fantasy tropes, and museum-quality art, is by its nature an intellectual hobby. As such, it tends to attract a largely intellectual audience. Visit a gathering of Magic fans and you’ll find a very good range of people, even by the primitive classifications of high school cliques – I was once part of a playgroup that had a Goth, two members of the campus Christian society, and a couple who were like modern versions of Fred and Daphne from Scooby-Doo. Visit a high-level tournament like a Pro Tour qualifier or Regionals, though, and you’ll often (with a few high-profile exceptions) find only one class of person: jocks. Not just everyday jocks either, but the worst kind of frat-boy stereotype come to life: especially loud, crude, aggressive, and shallow.
It is easy to observe something like this and infer that it is a result of the high stakes involved. This would be incorrect. Every week, thousands of people enter FNM tournaments whose payout is nearly as great proportional to the players’ own situation and individual collections. The situation is much more like college sports: these kinds of tournaments are inherently attractive to this type of person because they offer an opportunity to pad their ego by dominating and intimidating other people. (When a deck emerged at the recent World Championships based around the Zendikar card Spreading Seas, the pro community chose to give it the nickname “Spread ‘Em.”)
(In the spirit of last week, I feel I should point out that the verb for slipping roofies into someone's drink is "to spike." Coincidence?)
And like college sports players, they don’t limit it to on-field antics. Pro-circuit Spikes make no secret of their disdain for casual players, collectors, and even FNM-level competitors, often referring to them as “scrubs.” They demand concessions from everyone, from local tournament organizers (better prizes for better players! ie. them) to Wizards of the Coast itself (more powerful and unfair cards to pwn people with!). They show no sympathy for others’ concern with the availability or high price of Standard-legal singles, as sinking money into a deck that is only good for one tournament apparently shows that you’re willing to “do what needs to be done.” A sizable number of them think nothing of fudging rules or even outright cheating, knowing that they can count on like-minded people to justify their actions because “the point of a game is to win.”
And these same people honestly wonder why other players have a bad impression of them?
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Comment by Anonymous
As someone who has played at the pro level (though not to any real success) and met a LOT of Magic players, my personal experience has been that the personality mix of the best players isn't that different from the players at large, except that they tend to be more focused. And the most competitive players (as differentiated from the best) tend to be slightly more intense, but not any less mature.
I've been to shops where the elite players are really nice and helpful, and shops where they are condescending. I don't mean to be inconsiderate, but your analysis is nothing more than attempting to draw a straight line from two data points, and it's not statistically relevant.
One thing I will give you is that rude, socially maladjusted people are much more unbearable when you must interact with them at something they excel at. It's very satisfying to beat someone who is egotistical, regardless of how much YOU care about winning. When that person consistently beats you though, they are sure to let you know about it.
So I suspect it's not that the competitive players you've met are any less sociable. It's that they get on your nerves more than the social mongrels who aren't competitive.
Comment by jhonny