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Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast

#1235: Bigger than the Box

Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast

Wizards of the Coast

Duels Of The Planeswalkers, Games, Magic The Gathering, Leisure, Game Design, Mtg, Ccg, Mark Rosewater

4.8743 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Richard Garfield first made Magic, he liked to say it was "a game bigger than the box." In this episode, I walk through what exactly that phrase means and the challenges of making a game that accomplishes this.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

I'm pulling away from the curb because I got my son off at school. We all know what that means.

0:05.6

It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today's topic, I want to dive in deep. There's a phrase that Richard Garfield used when you talked about magic.

0:18.4

And that phrase is, it's a game bigger than the box.

0:22.5

So I want to really dive in deep

0:24.0

on what that means.

0:25.9

There's a lot of challenges for magic.

0:27.8

And I just want to sort of,

0:29.4

it's an interesting concept

0:30.7

that magic obviously is very much built around.

0:34.9

But I want to spend a whole podcast

0:37.1

we're talking about it.

0:38.0

It's an interesting idea, and it's really something that has a lot of challenges to it,

0:44.1

and a lot of the making of magic with Richard trying to solve the problem of how to make

0:48.9

a game bigger than the box.

0:50.9

So let's start with what exactly that means.

0:53.4

What does bigger than the box mean? So let's say you go buy a normal game. You buy monopoly or scrabble or clue or pick your game. When you pick, when you buy a monopoly set, everybody who buys Monopoly set gets the same pieces. You get a certain board with, you know, now, Monopoly as an example,

1:12.7

it can be skined differently. Maybe different properties have different names based on however

1:17.5

you skin it. But the reality is the core essence of the game, the actual game pieces. You have a

1:23.1

board with 40 squares. You have cards that represent the property, you've dice and pieces and money and

1:29.7

community chants, you know, a community chest and chance and you have all the same component pieces.

1:35.0

Like I said, Monopoly is a game where sometimes they skin it differently, there's different flavors there,

1:40.2

but the core mechanics are the same. And if two different people buy Monopoly at two different places, they get the same game.

...

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