Theories and Doubt: Playing Card Games Competitively

1. Debate

There are two girls quietly playing a card game in a grubby corner on the floor of this deserted middle school cafeteria, and they’re fighting for something greater than themselves.

Alice is playing the “BDIF”-- the “Best Deck In Format”. It's well-named! Other players read strategy guides about how to beat it, add “silver bullets” to take down the beast, abandon strategies that are incidentally weak to it. It’s no matter. The deck can be inconvenienced, but after months of being targeted it's still a known entity, calling out: "How can you stop me?"

Betty is attempting to answer that. She’s studied Alice’s deck, painstakingly killed her darlings, gone back and back again to the drawing board, scraped forum after forum for advice. As a result, she has a deck that can consistently outmatch Alice without sacrificing too much win-percentage against other decks.

In theory, anyway.

Because that’s the thing, they’re theorists. Debaters. Alice claims that her deck is unbeatable (or if she does get beat, it’s due to some uncontrollably bad luck). Betty disagrees.

As theorists, they understand every card as a theory. “I’m a good card,” Alice hears, “because I exchange one resource for another, allowing players to fight on an axis their opponents are unprepared for!“ “Well, I’m better,” claims another, “because with proper support I refute the ideas in the classic article ‘The Philosophy of Fire’!” And so on, and so forth.

Their decks are hypotheses, syntheses, responses to the hundreds of cards that existed before them. When Alice and Betty play, they're arguing. 

Except not really. Partially because their argument doesn't matter. But partially because when one wins, it’ll be a data point that doesn’t really prove anything on its own. The game is full of luck, after all, and tiny revisions to play can be made. The debate will rage on.

This cafeteria is the entire school. A lesson on ceaseless toil, done consciously, with great joy.

2. Dragons

Let’s say you, like, Alice and Betty, are a theorist. You don’t have to be-- “theorist” denotes a type of player like “casual” or “aggressive”, and not everyone relates. But let's say you are.

That is, let's say you play games because you like this sort of spirited debate in which you analyze what cards are claiming to be. You’re arguing about cardboard, but actually you’re arguing about objects represented by cardboard, but actually you’re arguing about abstract concepts like “tempo” and “virtual card advantage” and “quadrant theory” and “Brainstorm lock” and “yomi”.

While your goal is to find the best possible combination of deck and play (assuming you can define such a thing) the winning is not the point. Winning is the measurement that supports the point.

Anyway, you’re a theorist. You have two choices of games to play. One is called “chess”. It transparently has no hidden information, no variance other than that provided by the unpredictability of humans, no shenanigans. It has a rich tradition of theory going back literal centuries, an international community, and an exciting new frontier of play enabled by computer analysis.

The other game has dragons on the art, and about 3-10% of the time when you shuffle up to play, the game is transparently a non-game where one player can’t make any game actions that change the outcome of the event.

Yeah, I’ll take the dragons one, you say. Even if you don't say, many people do.

Here's a question, and it's important to me that you take it as non-rhetorical and non-judgemental: Why?

3. Intermission

According to legend, WotC employees can’t read any content with custom Magic cards.

Strictly speaking, it’d be fine if someone from WotC read this article. I’m not personally attacking anybody or, really, talking about Magic very much. I mention a Magic designer, and I call him wrong, but I don't want to call him wrongheaded.

Nonetheless, below is a custom card. I reserve the right to scatter others throughout the work. That’s my polite way of saying: Folks currently employed at WotC, glad you got this far, this ain’t for you.

Gaia Fieri’s Cradle
Legendary Land-- Flavortown

T: Add {G} for each Food you control.

4.The Stage Is Set

 TAL, a designer, is sitting in a cramped office lit by a flickering lamp. The walls are no wider than the ancient chalkboards hanging upon them, dusty from age and chalk alike.

Suddenly the handsome VILLANI opens a door, and a shaft of yellow light shines on Tal. He recoils and hisses.

VILLANI: Late night again, milove?

TAL: Shouldn’t you be writing a poem or something?

VILLANI: Probably. I came to check on you, though.

VILLANI walks up to Tal and massages his shoulders.

VILLANI: You're like granite, honey.

TAL: Well, the game is going terribly.

VILLANI: Do you know why?

TAL sighs, ashamed.

TAL: I find myself feeling contempt for my players.

VILLANI coos sympathetically. Ze attempts to massage Tal with all the force in zir thin fingers, to mild success.

VILLANI: That’s bound to cause problems.

TAL: Nothing but! Contempt for players is the root of all problems!

VILLANI: Many, to be sure. Very possibly all. Anyway, what’s wrong?

TAL: Variance. Players eat it up.

VILLANI: Well, good! You’re using it, aren’t you? Didn't you just tell me about randomized input conditions--

TAL: --yes, they lead to interesting, divergent boards to evaluate!... I'm sorry for interrupting. But yes, it’s the tool that makes my game work! Its thrumming engine!

VILLANI: That is the promise of a card game, yes.

TAL: The greatest trick any designer ever pulled was convincing players that “Draw a card” is a more elevated randomness than “Roll a die!"

VILLANI: Yes! So what's wrong?

TAL: Players love variance! They love it like someone who will be late for work loves heavy traffic!

VILLANI: I don’t follow.

TAL: It’s the perfect excuse! A rookie can win against a grizzled veteran. A child can win against a calculating older sibling. Few blunders are game-losing on their own, and few victories relieve the player of continued suspense. None of it matters! All due to variance! Any mistake can be brushed off to the side! Players don’t need to learn, or improve, or even care about the game beyond the cards in front of them!

VILLANI: And you resent that?

TAL: I resent the lack of resentment! Imagine for a moment, a player. Her name is Alice, and she is first and foremost a theorist. Alice wants to win, but much, much more importantly, she wants to interface with the game in the way a philosopher interfaces with a theory. Cards, to her, are rigorous arguments, and her job is to address, refute, and synthesize them. To do so, she needs to gather data, and it's in her interest to gather precise data. And yet Alice-- that same Alice is so focused on never feeling bad that she is willing to waste an entire 5% of her games--

TAL tumbles into a shaking lump on the desk, in horror at his contempt for the players he loves.

VILLANI: Honey…

VILLANI waits, hand on TAL’s shoulder, for a long time. Eventually TAL picks up his head.

TAL: Thank you, darling. I don't know why I'm like this.

VILLANI: Of course.

TAL: I know it's understandable to want to blame something else for a loss every once in a while. I've done so.

VILLANI: You have.

TAL: Often. But even if I didn't...

VILLANI: Indeed. Also, I believe you're misunderstanding this imaginary player you've constructed.

TAL: Oh?

VILLANI: Darling, I’ve seen players wander into unwinnable positions and say “Well, there must have been something I could have done. My loss is my fault.” There are even players out there who can’t comprehend their beloved game being bad, and assume that if they aren't having fun it's their own fault!

TAL: Huh.

VILLANI: Agreed! And while I don't think that second player has a particularly healthy relationship to your game... The point is, the structural flaws to your game improve it!

TAL: ...No, I don’t understand yet. Explain?

VILLANI: On some level, the theory of chess is boring. You play, say, a thousand games applying a given theory, you compare your win-rate to what you could have done otherwise, it’s very easy to improve on some level.

TAL: Most chess players will disagree with you there.

VILLANI: Well, most chess players aren’t purposefully reducing the game to “Develop a theory of best moves, then find the best move and do it”.

TAL: Are you implying that card games don’t reduce similarly?

VILLANI: They do, but in card games playing the best move will often make you lose. That’s just probability. You play a move that wins 85% of the time, you get burned 15% of the time. And if this happens multiple times, you might wonder whether your theory is accurate at all!

TAL: So all the flaws in my game… the chance of a pre-decided game, the ability for a worse player to win…

VILLANI: Don’t get me wrong, I’d want you to fix them if you could. But there's no need to reduce them to "flaw". That's a word like "good" or "evil", or "competitive" or "casual", that attempts to dominate whatever you describe with it. These flaws are also opportunities.

TAL: Opportunities for testing one's faith in a theory?

VILLANI: And for conquering one's self-doubt. And for having a strong belief you can hold on to steadfastly. And there is great joy in holding steadfastly to a belief-- how often do you get to do that in an environment where the stakes for your belief being wrong are so low?

VILLANI gives TAL a kiss on the cheek, and turns toward the door.

VILLANI: Players have a remarkable ability to make anything an interesting struggle. You can reject that, or you can understand it.

5. The Interesting Struggle

Alice’s deck is a heel. It’s dark magic, in the boring Campbellian way. It tests you, asking: “Why are you playing your deck? Aren't I better?” If you hate that deck-- and many players do-- it’s that kid in your lit class who will present some abhorrent stance and frame it as an unfortunate cold, hard truth. And BOY, do you want to prove that kid wrong.

Decks grow personalities. A card game tournament in a healthy time for the game feels like participating in a Commedia dell’Arte. Rivals, enemies-of-enemies, underdogs, plucky clowns who surely can't win.

That’s why the cards have dragons on them. Because suddenly, you’re tempted to play your deck not because it’s the best deck, but because it has a goddamn dragon on it. Or phrases you say during the game, like “Bolt, snap, bolt”, are suddenly a ritual element. Or because during spoiler season, you and your friends ranked all the cards, and the one you thought was the best sucks, and that can’t be right.

Hubris is fun. Temptation, even if you don't find it a compelling force in real life, is fun. Giving into hubris is fun, resisting hubris is fun. Watching your friends bend facts to play their pet cards is fun. Realizing they were right all along is fun.

If you’re a theorist like Alice, the reason to play the dragon game instead of chess is doubt. It can be fun to be uncertain about whether you’re right. Really, how often do you get to doubt when the stakes are low?

6. A Break From Spherical Cows

Elsewhere, in the other corner of the cafeteria, Catie and Dahlia are playing the card game. Catie wants to play the good deck, but can’t, because a piece of cardboard depicting a dragon is costed as if you’re paying money for an actual dragon, and they both think it's taboo to cram some index cards in card sleeves and call it a day.

This is an essay where I talk about why people play games-- but why people don't play games is just as important. Lots of people don’t play collectible card games because they know they shouldn’t interface with the gambling aspect of booster packs, or because the people who manufacture the cards support abusers, or because it’s just plain expensive, or any number of other reasons.

And it sucks to want to do cool theory, and realize-- oh, I can't.

Here’s half a parable: An architect creates the perfect building. It's so perfect practically nobody can live in it. After all, to create the perfect experience of walking in, the door simply must be too heavy for anybody but a bodybuilder to open.

7. Introducing Spike

One consequence of that relationship between capitalism and games that's less obvious is that the theory of game design is largely about selling.

Prolific Magic designer Mark "MaRo" Rosewater has a pet theory called “player psychographics”, a riff on a concept in advertising. He splits players (or players at given points in time, in certain contexts blablabla) into archetypes he calls “Timmy”, “Jenny”, and “Spike”. He claims this helps him make cards; I believe him, though I design a lot of cards (most of which are better than Gaia Fieri's Cradle) and it's only hindered me. Different people, different ways of being.

The TJS theory definitely works, in the same way that the Myers-Brigg test works. You tell it about yourself, it summarizes what you told it about yourself, you ignore or justify the blatantly wrong parts, and overall it’s genuinely fun to look and say “That’s me”. Maybe you buy a pack of the newest set, becuase MaRo said it's made for Jenny and you think you're a Jenny-slash-Spike.

So what are these "psychographics"? He introduces Timmy and Jenny as characters. Timmy is a glowing-eyes kid who likes playing splashy, high-ceiling cards with big numbers and the potential of crushing, decisive victory. Jenny is an artist who loves winning with style, either through a complicated combo or a deck whose cards interact in non-obvious ways.

And Spike? To quote the article in which MaRo introduces them:

Spike is the competitive player. Spike plays to win. Spike enjoys winning. To accomplish this, Spike will play whatever the best deck is. Spike will copy decks off the Internet. Spike will borrow other players’ decks. To Spike, the thrill of Magic is the adrenalin rush of competition. Spike enjoys the stimulation of outplaying the opponent and the glory of victory.

Spike cares more about the quantity of wins than the quality. For example, Spike plays ten games and wins nine of them. If Spike feels he should have won the tenth, he walks away unhappy.

Compare this to passages describing Timmy and Jenny:

"Timmy sits down and plays ten games. He only wins three games out of ten but the three he wins, he dominates his opponent. Timmy had fun. Timmy walks away happy."

"[Jenny] builds a new deck that has a neat but difficult way to win. [She] plays ten games and manages to get the deck to do its thing… once. [She] walks away happy."

WotC designers pen open letters (in jest, obviously) detailing how Spike makes their job harder, but it's good for the game or their character or whatever. All the players have needs, but only Spike is demanding, or thought of as unhappy.

I want to believe this is a political act, to curry favor with those who hate when “competitive players” end the game before they’ve assembled their nine-card combo. It's obviously not, but it's funny that it sorta could be.

Why do I insist we care about MaRo, if I think he's wrong? Well, MaRo writes articles like this as ads for the game he makes. Therefore, he's probably the most prolifically read Magic design theorist, and thus one of the most prolific game design theorists.

Furthermore, his audience is mostly Magic players who otherwise wouldn't have cared about the theory of game design. MaRo is a pretty good writer, and his purpose is to convince the audience that the Magic designers are good at their job-- so most likely, those players accept his theory. Internalize it, even.

Regardless of how useful it is in card design, we know about it because believing it helps sell packs. And for such a theory, I honestly expect much worse. But I also dream of better.

8. Reintroducing Alice

Card game player Swim once said that in order to improve at a game, he trains his brain not to react to winning and losing, but to the quality of his play.

If he loses a game in which he played perfectly, it's as if he had won. If he wins a game, but doesn’t feel as if he deserved to, he will be upset. This strikes me as the unconscious way of a lot of folks like Alice or Betty, or Catie or Dahlia. MaRo would call it Spikey, and mostly that would keep his model humming, but truth be told the TJS model doesn't know how to handle a "competitive" player who has this relationship to winning.

If my goal here were to “salvage” the TJS model, I believe we have the tools to do so. We incorporate philosophies like Swim’s and Alice’s and generally make the section on Spike seem less like bad satire, and we're done.

I’m not really interested in that. I'd read an essay from someone who is. But my main goal here was to introduce the philosophy of the theorist. A lot of people imagine "competitive players" as unfeeling creatures mumbling "win..... win....." under their breath, or fools too weak of will to play a real game like chess or Starcraft, and I want us to entertain the idea of a different sort of competitive player.

I am interested in making games for Alice, but not in this essay. “What kinds of cards do theorists like?” is a good question, but what Alice likes overlaps largely (not completely, but largely) with popular interpretations of “good design”. I’d rather spend my time talking about the theories that get neglected.

Mostly I just want to impart some understanding of what being a theorist feels like.

9. Tal's Labyrinth

I shuffle up my deck. Good luck, have fun. Here comes the starting hand...

...too weak. I've lost with too many hands like this before. It just doesn't do much. I can mulligan, though-- shuffling this hand back in, drawing a new one at a cost.

...oh god, this one is worse. Just unplayable.

Should you have kept the original hand? It was weak-- but how often was this hand going to be better?

 Oh, hush. We had, maybe, a 10% chance of getting a hand this bad.

And your chance of a hand that's better, but still has no chance of winning?

I have faith in my actions. Begone.

And you too, hand, begone. Another mulligan.

Statistically, players who mulligan twice have something like a 25% win rate. A double coin flip.

And I suspect players who are afraid of mulliganing awful hands will fare even worse.

You suspect? Or you know?

Shhhh. Although, I will research that after the game.

Third time's the charm, though. Hand's great.

I have a decision, though. I can spend the first turn developing the board... or I can save my resources to react to my opponent.

Oh, what a puzzle! Best pick wisely!

What do you fancy yourself to be? An angel, or a devil on my shoulder?

Or a dragon? Something else entirely?

Oh, do hush if you won't answer me, I have a game to play. Now if my opponent is playing the most popular deck right now, it's better for me to keep my cards to myself-- it'll be inconvenient for them to respond next turn if I do. But, I'm so prepared for that deck... we basically always win, especially in best-2-out-of-3, so--

Sounds entitled.

Well, look at this hand! Look at my deck!

It sounds to me you have the tools to win, and you've talked yourself into throwing them away.

No, because if we look at this specific-- I don't need to justify myself to you.

Everything you do justifies yourself to me.

Well, then, you won't mind if I play this card. You're trying to be a fear I conquered from a long time ago, but I'm a better player now.

What if your opponent plays the combo--

Then I will likely lose, and prepare for round 2.

You call yourself a competitive player! You see a path to defeat, and don't do everything you can to stop it!

I have.

But there are cards you could put into your deck to prevent that loss! Cards that make a fair matchup! You don't trust yourself enough to give yourself a chance to win?

I've been clear. I won't let the fear of being out of control consume me. If I wanted to win them all, I'd play chess.

So nonchalant! By that logic--

I have faith in my actions. You cannot shake me.

As if you have the right to say that! I am omnipotent! I am within you, and within every card, and within every deck. I am the fear of loss, the fear of undeserved victory. I am the god you learned about as a child and the god you discovered for youself as you won. You cursed yourself, always to worry that you build something fundamentally flawed, or ignore something fundamentally sound, or misunderstand the nature of something perfect. I am unkillable.

That you are. And I hope to learn from you.

That's all. Your turn.