sp150720 Another look at Magic  

It was in the 1970s that I was introduced to video games by C. T. Chew, who was, at that time, a student in my printmaking classes. Around the same time I was privileged to see other creative artists at the UW mashing elements of performing arts and technology into their work.

Partly this happened because of video, which I took to be a medium friendly to the arts—the way independent films had been in my early art education. Technology didn’t bother me; I could have been an engineer, or even a dentist, with the gifts of my parents—Dad for his inventiveness and persistence, and Mom for her art and writing.

My background made the game, Magic: The Gathering, fascinating. Partly it was because a teacher invented the algorithm for the method of play. It was one of the first games to win a patent. Hasbro was interested in the game since 1994, and bought Wizards of the Coast, its producer, in 1999 for $325 million.

For an artist to be interested in algorithms, patents and game mechanics is odd, but I am also interested in artists’ survival. Artists were contracted by WOTC for the illustrations and, when I would visit the Magic flagship store in Seattle’s U-District, I liked to look at the original paintings there. That store was an art gallery, complete with a rooms for play, life-size monsters and regalia from the card’s art.

These events took place from 1975 to 1995. By the turn of the century I had left the art world behind, and it was—and is—lonely. I travel in new art worlds that are trying to be born, bearing the marks of an art world that’s dying—the art world of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries. My former colleagues—who are still alive at the UW Art School—and my former students cling to that world.

Oddly, but I have never played Magic. I borrowed a deck from a guy and I tried to play it but I was befuddled. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of it, even when I tried to read the rules. For every term there were questions I couldn’t find answers to. I think it is because the engineer and science side of me won’t let me slay make-believe monsters, or think that I can get strength by buying an expansion deck at a game store.

For me, there is something else besides entertainment in collecting and playing cards. Today I turned my attention to Magic again; but it was from a different perspective. I was on the trail of deck-building games, as Magic is one type of DBG and, in my browsing the web I found videos on the latest software for building custom decks on my computer. Also, a ‘Magic for Idiots” video series.

This is feeding my imagination with a fresh, new visit, reloading the inspiration I got from artists like C. T. Chew, Dennis Evans, Norie Sato and Sherry Markovitz—to name a few—inspiration that is at the root of making my 21^st Century art into a card game. In other words, the game mechanic for Magic can be repurposed to fit my game, Emeralda: Games for the Gifts of Life.