Magic the Gathering's Creator Wants to Create an Even Better Game

Odd Lots

Bloomberg

News, Investing, Business, News Commentary, Business News

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2023

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Since bursting onto the scene in the mid-1990s, Magic the Gathering has become one of the most popular games of all time, with millions of players collecting cards to battle each other in an imaginary fantasy realm. But Magic's early success came with a problem: the price of the game's most powerful and rare cards surged along with its popularity. Eventually, Magic's creators worried that the game would become too expensive and was at risk of becoming a short-lived fad. So, how do you pop a bubble in collectibles without completely alienating collectors? In this episode, we speak with Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic the Gathering, and Arka Ray, a long-time game developer at Microsoft who's now CEO of Richard's new gaming studio, Popularium. They talk about the surprising parallels between MTG and central banking, what they've learned from Magic, and how they're applying those lessons to Chaos Agents, Popularium's first new gaming launch.

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0:00.0	Business stories aren't just about business. They're also about policy, politics, finance, and more.
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0:24.7	Bloomberg in-car apps are sponsored by interactive brokers. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast, I'm Joe Wiesenthall.
0:45.0	Joe Wiesenthall.
0:47.0	Joe did you ever play Magic the Gathering?
0:50.0	No.
0:51.0	Really?
0:52.0	I've never played it. The only game I know, I mean, I spent some time playing chess. And I, yeah, as I've talked about on the show before. And then of that it's like I never had the
1:04.7	capacity in my life to like really learn a new game so it's like you know what I'm
1:09.2	going to play chess try to get better at a play on my phone but I've never like
1:12.2	then it's like I want to play some other
1:14.2	game man you need to branch out I know well I don't want to start you know what the
1:18.8	thing is I don't want to start from the beginning I'm just like I'm like too old for that that's how you learn new things okay well
1:26.3	speaking of being old I spent countless hours in middle school playing magic the
1:31.9	gathering it was a huge thing in, let's see, this would have been around
1:36.3	94, 95, and almost everyone I knew at the time was playing it.
1:42.2	Where were you living in 95? I was playing it. Where were you living in 95?
1:44.0	I was in Chicago, Chicago, so that's partly why.
1:48.0	And you know, every recess was taken up with Magic the Gathering tournaments.
	...

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