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I have been playing Magic: the Gathering for over half my life and have spent countless hours thinking about, enjoying, and competing at the game. The majority of my friends are people that I met through competitive Magic, even if they don’t play anymore. I have had other hobbies and played other games, but none have been as all-consuming as Magic or had anywhere near the same level of community that competitive Magic does. The community around Magic makes it not just a game but a part of your life. Magic’s community has remained strong even as many other communities have been declining in the modern age.
Cooperation
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When you hear about cooperative games you usually think of Overcooked, Pandemic, or even Charades; games where multiple players work together to win. You don’t think of a two-player game like Magic, where each match has only a single winner. But paper Magic is part game and part Japanese tea ceremony. Magic’s rules are incredibly complicated and it’s up to the players to enforce them (e.g. resolving triggers, keeping track of damage and mana) without the aid of a computer. The game’s physical components force both players to work together, turning each match into a thirty-minute joint effort to ensure a mutual understanding of the game state. This collaboration is a critical part of playing paper Magic, and having your opponents treat you with respect is necessary for the game to be enjoyable.
MTR 4.1 (Player Communication):
“Players are expected to behave in a respectful manner and in accordance with the highest standards of integrity and sportsmanship.”
Magic’s standards in this area are particularly high as they are not just social but written into the tournament rules. What is acceptable in other games is bannable in Magic, such as destroying game pieces after a loss. In competitive settings, it is tempting to treat your opponent as an obstacle to victory rather than a partner. But if you do this in Magic the game ceases to function. For Magic to work you need to see your opponent as a human: someone with dignity whose cooperation you rely on to play the game. Players approaching each other with integrity and kindness will naturally create feelings of connection, which can in turn foster relationships that extend beyond the match.
The economy of favors
Once a bond forms through playing Magic, it is then reinforced through competitive Magic’s economy of favors. Tournaments naturally lead to opportunities for favors as they create a variety of needs that only other players can fulfill. These needs can be separated into three categories: logistics, acquiring cards, and competitive information. Playing in a tournament requires getting to the event, having somewhere to stay, figuring out what deck to play, knowing how to play it, and actually getting the cards. While you could certainly rent a car, book a hotel, and buy an entire deck, it’s both easier and cheaper to instead find other players you can get a ride from, split a room with, and borrow cards from. Since there is no clear price for these favors, everything is done on social credit. Favors are extended and taken freely, creating a web of social connections that ties people together and makes relationships deeper.
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Unlike with monetary transactions, social debts don’t have a fixed direction. Instead, the roles are constantly reversing; one week I am lending you cards, the next you are giving me a ride to a tournament, and so on. These relationships remain fluid. Conversely, in a market economy, relationships tend to be static. When a barista serves you coffee, the payment is monetary; you’re not going to be returning the favor next week by making them coffee instead. This fixed dynamic can be dehumanizing, as people are defined solely by their role in the market. But in an economy of favors, where social debts are continually being repaid, relationships are equitable. In aggregate, these create the set of bonds that we call a community. Issues can arise, however, if members of the community are able to act selfishly and damage the community for their own gain. To prevent this, communities need to have both a standard of conduct and management to actually enforce this standard.
Community management
Fortunately, Magic’s sponsor provides both fuel for the economy of favors and active community management; Wizards of the Coast is responsible not only for prize support but also an enforced standard of conduct. As the governing body for Magic, Wizards has the power to set the rules and unilaterally ban players. Because Wizards is incentivized to have as many people enjoy the game as possible (for the sake of their own financial benefit), their goals are aligned with those of the player base and this ensures the continued health of the competitive community.
Let’s look at a game that has a bustling economy of favors driven by powerful monetary incentives but lacks a similar type of management: Poker. Similar to Magic, Poker has an economy of favors that deals in hotel rooms, loans, and invites to house games. While Magic’s prize support is sufficient as an incentive to drive its economy, the money in Poker is on a different level. When a prize purse can reach tens of millions, there is a huge amount of pressure on social bonds. You might not betray your friend for $1,000 in prizes, but what about for $100,000? Just the possibility of this is enough to sow distrust and weaken the community as a whole.
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Additionally, Poker does not have a governing body like Wizards of the Coast, which makes it impossible to enforce behavioral standards for players. Even if someone is banned from the Bellagio, they can always go down the street and play at the Westgate. Poker does have a unified set of tournament rules, set by the Tournament Directors Association, but it stops short of anything resembling a banned list. Alex Bertoncini, one of Magic’s most notorious cheaters, was recently caught cheating at poker. While he has a lifetime ban from Magic, there is no equivalent for Poker, as any effort to police behavior in Poker is limited in scope. This illustrates just how critical Wizards’ involvement has been to the integrity of competitive Magic and its community.
What makes a community
Magic’s success at community-building becomes even more remarkable given that communities everywhere else seem to be on the decline. This was my original impetus for writing an article: I wanted to understand what made the Magic community such a strong presence in my life. What I discovered is that it’s not just about playing games or borrowing cards, but rather mutual respect, player interdependence, and active community management. Magic’s path to these things is just one of many, as other games have been able to create their own thriving communities as well. World of Warcraft provides an excellent example of a game that has created a similarly strong community but in a different way than Magic.
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World of Warcraft explicitly creates interdependence among its players through game mechanics. To beat the strongest dungeons and bosses you need a group of people you can work together with on a continuing basis. The hardest content (Mythic difficulty dungeons) can only be attempted with the same 20-person group once a week, demanding sustained cooperation between players. This makes WoW not just a game you play but a community you join. Within this structure, guilds serve as the primary social units, setting group standards and balancing individual incentives. Part of why WoW maintains social cohesion within guilds is that the game is PvE focused; while there are PvP modes, most of the content is centered around players working together to fight bosses and raid dungeons, which aligns player incentives. In cases where one player’s actions are at odds with the rest of the group, the group can hold them accountable. This allows civility and cooperation to be maintained, even while interacting anonymously online.
In general, though, it’s extremely challenging for online games to enforce respectful behavior. For example, Magic has an online client where you can play the game: Magic Online. This online client not only removes the need for players to enforce the rules engine, it also makes acquiring cards much easier. The side effect of this loss of friction is that there is no community and no behavioral standards. Players rage in chat, waste their opponent’s time when losing, and stream snipe. It is no surprise that when Wizards created a new digital client (Magic Arena) they chose to forgo the chat function entirely, letting players only communicate through emotes — though Arena players will still use the “Good game” emote when ahead or time out rather than concede.
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Conclusion
The increasing popularity of Magic is no surprise when we look at the world around us and see that communities have been steadily declining for decades: the share of Americans who say “most people can be trusted” dropped from 46% in the early 1970s to around 34% by 2018. More recently, a 2025 Pew survey found that only 44% of Americans said they trust all or most of their neighbors, a decline from 52% a decade earlier. Even though community isn’t necessary for survival anymore, humans continue to be social creatures. That underlying need for interdependence and cooperation still exists, and without it, we start to feel depressed, anxious, and lonely. We can fill in that gap by creating places where we are needed, even if the need is somewhat arbitrary like lending someone Magic cards. Playing Magic competitively has brought many wonderful things into my life, most notably my wife. I feel very grateful to have found the Magic community and that I get to be a part of it.
