Under the hood
October 17th 2011 06:13
"What is going on inside your head, Wayne? Bah! He's gone! Just a twisted shell of a man."
-- The Scarecrow, in Batman: Arkham Asylum
There’s a very interesting article in a recent issue of HYPER, an Australian gaming magazine, about what an individual’s style and approach to video games says about them. Given the same game, different people’s personality comes out in what they do – some people will load up a challenge room in Batman: Arkham City and rush into the middle of the herd of gang members, punching and throwing smoke bombs at anything that moves; others will stand perfectly still until the first enemy tries to attack, and then spring into action. Similarly, your choice of Dressphere in Final Fantasy X-2, of weapon and armor in Oblivion, and of which buildings to climb over on your way to the Rosa in Fiore in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood are a reflection of your mental landscape, even if none of these games is developed in such a way as to allow an actual diagnosis.
Are you wondering right now why the comparable discussion for Magic: the Gathering is relatively rare? Because Magic is much the same as those games, and certain player preferences reveal much, much uglier things.
Think about it. It’s possible in Magic to make a deck with thirty counterspells that never lets anything its opponents cast leave the stack. It’s possible to make a deck with spells that can destroy any and every permanent your opponent plays before the end of their turn. It’s possible to make a deck that makes it entirely impossible for the opponent to cast a spell at all, leaving them to sit there, shuffle the cards in their hand, and glare at the “prison” deck’s controller.
Not only was (and is, if you have access to the right out-of-print cards) it possible to do these things, lots of Magic players want to. In Magic’s early days, so many people did so that certain specific vintage cards are considered unreprintable. If you let people play with them in sanctioned tournaments, and as a side effect, tacitly encourage them to play with them casually, many will choose to abuse them. Are Regrowth, Counterspell, and even the dreaded Strip Mine inherently disruptive? No. Each of them, like almost every broken card in Magic, has an “innocent” use. But according to what we on the outside know about the Future Future League, it only takes one abusive deck for something to be cut from an upcoming set, because given the option, many players will choose the abusive deck, enough to make things unfun for everybody.
This is before you even get into the number of players who ignore or even disdain the art, the most detailed and high-quality in any fantasy game. Animals with no language are drawn to beauty; some Magic players aren’t. The attraction of a significant number of Magic players to unfairness sets them apart from many other gaming fanbases. If said fanbase was a person, it’d probably end up in Arkham Asylum; not as one of the gun-toting henchmen, either. It'd be locked in a room with a glass door, wearing a straitjacket.
Follow me on Twitter for daily condensed insight, analysis, and sarcasm. Never forget the Headless Horseman!
-- The Scarecrow, in Batman: Arkham Asylum
There’s a very interesting article in a recent issue of HYPER, an Australian gaming magazine, about what an individual’s style and approach to video games says about them. Given the same game, different people’s personality comes out in what they do – some people will load up a challenge room in Batman: Arkham City and rush into the middle of the herd of gang members, punching and throwing smoke bombs at anything that moves; others will stand perfectly still until the first enemy tries to attack, and then spring into action. Similarly, your choice of Dressphere in Final Fantasy X-2, of weapon and armor in Oblivion, and of which buildings to climb over on your way to the Rosa in Fiore in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood are a reflection of your mental landscape, even if none of these games is developed in such a way as to allow an actual diagnosis.
Are you wondering right now why the comparable discussion for Magic: the Gathering is relatively rare? Because Magic is much the same as those games, and certain player preferences reveal much, much uglier things.
Think about it. It’s possible in Magic to make a deck with thirty counterspells that never lets anything its opponents cast leave the stack. It’s possible to make a deck with spells that can destroy any and every permanent your opponent plays before the end of their turn. It’s possible to make a deck that makes it entirely impossible for the opponent to cast a spell at all, leaving them to sit there, shuffle the cards in their hand, and glare at the “prison” deck’s controller.
Not only was (and is, if you have access to the right out-of-print cards) it possible to do these things, lots of Magic players want to. In Magic’s early days, so many people did so that certain specific vintage cards are considered unreprintable. If you let people play with them in sanctioned tournaments, and as a side effect, tacitly encourage them to play with them casually, many will choose to abuse them. Are Regrowth, Counterspell, and even the dreaded Strip Mine inherently disruptive? No. Each of them, like almost every broken card in Magic, has an “innocent” use. But according to what we on the outside know about the Future Future League, it only takes one abusive deck for something to be cut from an upcoming set, because given the option, many players will choose the abusive deck, enough to make things unfun for everybody.
This is before you even get into the number of players who ignore or even disdain the art, the most detailed and high-quality in any fantasy game. Animals with no language are drawn to beauty; some Magic players aren’t. The attraction of a significant number of Magic players to unfairness sets them apart from many other gaming fanbases. If said fanbase was a person, it’d probably end up in Arkham Asylum; not as one of the gun-toting henchmen, either. It'd be locked in a room with a glass door, wearing a straitjacket.
Follow me on Twitter for daily condensed insight, analysis, and sarcasm. Never forget the Headless Horseman!
| 32 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
