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The CCG Resolution
By Corvus | April 3, 2008
Almost nothing I’m about to say here hasn’t been said in the comments of the previous post. But, as the primary storyteller on the site, I get to summarize it for you in my own words anyway!
There are two primary forces at work that make it next to impossible to view Magic: The Gathering as a storytelling medium. The first, and most minor, of the forces is a lack of narrative consistency, or internal narrative cohesion if you will. In fact I will, I find the glue metaphor quite apt in this instance. Magic is comprised entirely of very granular game mechanics–grit. Each card is provided with just enough narrative glue to keep the card’s mechanic from falling apart. This narrative glue is is comprised of a name and a picture. That’s it. It’s just enough to provide the mechanic with a light context. But for the cards to really stick together in a meaningful narrative fashion would require more cohesive elements than that. Pokemon, for example, has turned to external narrative glue with the cartoon and video games.
The second, and more important, force is the audience itself. Unless the audience is actively seeking a narrative experience, they probably aren’t going to get one. This is true of any medium, but it is much easier to ignore the narrative potential within a game like Magic, because Magic was specifically designed to appeal to a group of people who aren’t really looking for story. This certainly doesn’t mean that a dedicated player, like Duncan’s splinter-centric friend, couldn’t liberally apply their own narrative glue, but ultimately the game wasn’t intended to be played that way and the majority of the audience isn’t receptive to it.
Additionally, interpreting any single game of Magic as a storytelling experience requires the buy in of every player at the table. This is entirely unlike Tetris which allows, encourages even, portions of your brain to tune out and take care of themselves for a while. This hypnagogic state is perfect for finding unexpected story within the random progression of simple mechanics. Magic on the other hand forces you into a hyper-aware state, communicating with other players and overwhelming your attention with the granularity of its rule set.
So the take-away from this discussion (which was awesome by the way, thank you) is that while any set of game mechanics can be treated as a narrative, there’s a tipping point at which the mechanics are so vast that the audience receives very limited returns for their application of narrative consistency. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s just a thing. Clearly, Magic has proven itself to be a phenomenon with strong cultural appeal and it has outlasted many of the pretenders to its throne. I cannot even fathom the Herculean task of maintaining game balance within such a vast system for 15 years.
I’d also like to take a moment to tip my hat to Chris’s observation that Magic did a lot to save the local hobby game shops and, quite possibly, the industries they support. He’s absolutely right, of course. Without Magic, the shops suffering from the cultural shift towards videogames might have closed their doors, once and for all. Magic gave them a very profitable product base to leverage more sales against. I imagine you could even make an argument that without the existence of Magic, games like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Guillotine (a card game I’ll touch on tomorrow) might not have existed, or at least found the audience base they did.
Tomorrow I finally get around to answering Michael’s question which started this week’s focus on card games:
I confess that I’ve never played a storytelling or RPG-style card game before, though I’ve watched others play and found it interesting. Can you recommend a card game that might be suitable for an experienced gamer like me to try?
So put on your thinking caps for tomorrow’s post when I’ll ask you all to make your own recommendations to Michael as well!
Tagged:card-games, ccg, storytelling. | 5 Comments »
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:55 pm
I’d better start compiling my list of games now. There are quite a few good ones.
And I look forward to your insights to Guillotine. I thoroughly enjoy that game, but I have yet to use it in a significantly story focused way.
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:32 pm
I played a great deal of Magic when I was a kid, but most of the enjoyment I got out of the narrative aspect of it was pausing the game to explain what I imagined just happened, and laughing about how ridiculous it was.
I also got a great deal of that same kind of narrative fun out of Illuminatti: New World Order (INWO), despite some severe game mechanics problems with the game.
Example:
“I play the benefit concert card, which gives +10 power to big media, because it’s liberal.”
“Okay, I play ‘Secrets Man Was Not Meant to Know’ on that, so it cancels its effect.”
“Okay, I play ANOTHER benefit concert, still giving me a net +10 power.”
Turns into:
“So, big media is going to hold a benefit concert to raise public support for their attempt to control local police departments.”
“Oh yeah? Well, the star of the concert, in his opening number, happens to garble the words of a song just enough to produce an ancient summoning spell, and a huge rift opens in the ampitheater, releasing a demon of unimaginable power!”
“And then, the demon produces a guitar of pure flame, fires off the pyrotechnics, and shrieks, ‘Let’s rock!’”
“Damn!”
On the subject of narrative fun in games, are you familiar with Nanofictionary? The game mechanics are so loose as to be utterly unappealing to people who aren’t interested in narrative card games, but it’s an interesting idea.
http://www.looneylabs.com/OurGames/ProductInfo/index.html is where you can find it, about 3/4 of the way down.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Someone mentioned Nanofictionary at the JoCo concert last night. I’ll take a look and incorporate it into tomorrow’s post. Thanks, William!
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:38 pm
I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there actually was “narrative glue” for Magic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_novels
I played Magic as a kid, and actually have a pile of the novels in a box somewhere. My taste in literature at that age was questionable, but I remember the back story actually being quite interesting. It spanned several millenia, and dealt with a war between immortal “planeswalkers.”
April 4th, 2008 at 8:24 am
*eltrohc*
In other words, “We provide each other with just enough crossover that we can continue to market the novels as part of MtG.”