mtg book reviews

mtg book reviews

Critical Analysis and Evaluation of Magic: The Gathering Book Reviews

1. Introduction to Magic: The Gathering

In the academic literature, however, few studies deal with that theme both under the commercial and ludic points of view. And that is what led us to investigate what is being said about that element of what became known as geek culture. With that focus in mind, we realized the main actions of that collectible card game, namely: 1) the creation of the lore of Magic: The Gathering so that fans could memorize, relate to, and identify with incredible characters and memorable stories that positively shaped the brand’s value; 2) the introduction of a professional championship with prize money reaching millions of dollars; 3) the surrounding infrastructure of a community of professionals who live as professional players and participants of events such as player associations, content produced for other fans, special events created by the community in shops and sites designed to connect fans. It’s the digital evolution that’s coming together.

Magic: The Gathering (Fantasy) is a card game developed by Richard A. Garfield and released by Wizards of the Coast in 1993. Regarded as an antecedent of modern collectible card games (CCGs), the game is built on mythical creatures, spells, and magical objects that players use to defeat each other. In control of a deck of about 60 theme cards, each player embodies a magic user (or planeswalker) who must achieve the strategic objective of defeating the opponent. In addition, the game has commercial significance. The cards’ circulation movements have served as the basis for the organization of international tournaments with multimillion-dollar prizes and public tournaments across different national borders.

2. The Importance of Book Reviews in the MTG Community

Evaluation of a story comes both from inside the fiction itself and from the narration that allows its characters to think, feel, remember, in a narrative “world” inside the narrative “world”. The outside evaluation of a book consists of the analysis of the book’s setting in a wider cultural context, the review of its sales receipts and positioning on the literary market, and its translation into cinematic or other illustrative adaptations, spin-offs media, and relationships with other similar, sometimes non-literary, products (game, merchandise), and books. Production and marketing of such things can provide favorable conditions for creating events, influencing authorial styles, levels of literacy, motivations for stories, etc., and can modify the characteristics of future narrative structures, processes, or performance.

In literature, book reviews have mostly been used to suggest books for children and school libraries. In the virtual world, book reviews and summaries have become widely available through teachers, librarians, interested writers, and readers. As with other popular series or worlds, book reviews of Magic: The Gathering novels – and in cases of anthologies, reviews of individual pieces – provide a relevant way to keep in touch with the series’ ongoing storyline. They have become inspiration sources for innumerable decks and evaluation tools of storyline tools for the storyline-tournaments.

Magic: The Gathering has a rich and varied lore, particularly appropriate for creating, writing, and examining fantasy. In the fantasy genre, novels, or in our case, Magic novels, are often equated to gateways to pass from a reader’s mind into the fantasy world. Yet evidence for this predisposition is surprisingly vague. Book reports, reviews, and recommendations may replace actual literacy. Making informed reading choices can be important, particularly at times when criticism becomes a must-read.

3. Methodologies for Reviewing MTG Literature

Only those articles evaluating the books as critics are considered from this point on. Articles that advertise the books, offering only good or weak points about them so that these may be used by future readers to either buy them – i.e. giving maximum grades of satisfaction for the title – or ignore them – i.e. giving minimum grades – are excluded from the final analysis. After this homogeneous selection was made, articles presenting redaction mistakes or not effectively listing criticisms or valid and applied analysis of the books will also be excluded from the final analysis. The book reviews were strictly read and evaluated for content that could be considered as judgment, criticism, or any other valid way to analyze the book. In the few cases where content like this could be found, they were reverted to a positive decision for this variable.

In the meta-typology used in this study, articles conducting book reviews about MTG’s books resemble predominantly one of the possible iterations of authors’ introductions, i.e. the literature review. Despite serving this clear function, several articles also conduct a broader discussion about the game, not limiting the analysis to the books being reviewed.

In this current social science study, we only used articles containing a review of one of these types of MTG literature, i.e. articles about the MTG books written by other authors. Even though this approach might seem limited in terms of coverage – as only articles about MTG’s books are evaluated – the format allowed us to easily separate those articles from others reviewing and discussing actual MTG cards. Some of the articles we have classified as book reviews also evaluate the game. When this occurs, these analyses are also brought up in this article.

4. Key Elements of an Effective MTG Book Review

Book reviews have, as targets, multiple purposes: helping potential readers decide whether to buy a book, inform or entertain those who have read the book, and/or encourage an author or critique a publishing house. The idea behind Magic book reviews is the same – to inform and entertain potential buyers and to provide the author with feedback. The key elements of MTG book reviews follow standard book review content, and are the subject of this paper. The paper begins with Methodology followed by Introduction that gives an overview and background of the study. The paper continues with Review of Prior Literature and How to Conduct a Critical Analysis and Write an Effective Book Review. Key Elements of an Effective MTG Book Review is the main body of the paper. The paper concludes with Information contains, in addition to a brief summary and interpretation of important research results, a more detailed summary, and Conclusions and Future Research which outlines next steps and potential future research topics.

General knowledge of what consumers look for in a book review is beneficial – the book interest, does the reviewer provide a summary or plot information, how long is the review, what comments does the reviewer make about the book. Specifically, what content do readers look for in a book review, what comments are readers interested in, and what comments are readers not so interested in? This type of information is important for reviewing Magic: The Gathering (MTG or Magic) books so Magic players have the information they need to make intelligent, informed purchasing decisions. Knowing the areas of interest of readers also will enable reviewers to provide reviews that are consistent with reader expectations. Standard book review content appears to meet the needs and interests of readers of fiction and non-fiction books. However, is the standard format used in music, movie, and other book reviews appropriate for MTG book reviews? Topics of interest to Magic players are varied – does an effective Magic book review require additional unique components/areas?

5. Case Studies and Comparative Analysis

With a total of 509 pages, this sample of books corresponds to the different genres the Magic domain has been characterized by media scholars, and somewhat often presented in reviews of these works. Snodgrass’ study follows what Maimonides names as a “wizardry” style. Glos’ book is seen as a “bestiary”. Carless, Fisher, and Alexander-Robbins’ work can be thought of in terms of a “doomsayer”, and Markovitz and Rensmann, according to some irony presented in their book, would fall into the category of “athlete scholar”. In fact, the use of this kind of classification supports a methodology often neglected in media fields. With it, questions such as “How do these works differ from one another?” and “Is there something better or worse between them, or are they but different approaches to the field depending on the author’s contact with Magic: The Gathering?”. The problem with the nomenclature listed in the present study is that, at first glance, most of them are derogatory, attempts to vanquish shallow, and even meaningless situations/positions/ideas. If the observer maintains this train of thought, the classification and methodology derived from it will ultimately be prejudiced.

+ Gaming the World: How Sports Are Reshaping Global Politics and Culture / Andrei S. Markovitz and Lars Rensmann. – Princeton: Princeton University Press, 216p, ill.; 23.5×15 cm e-book edition exists, original edition published in November 2010.

+ And God Spoke: Magic: The Gathering / David Carless, Karem D Fisher, and Owen Alexander-Robbins. – Toronto: The Fraser Institute, 196p, ill. (col.), 21.6×14 cm e-book edition exists, original edition published in 1999.

+ Playing Magic in the Shadows / Jennifer Glos. – Jefferson: McFarland, 295 p., ill.; 18×25 cm original edition published in September 2011.

+ Magic: The Gathering – Pocket Players’ Guide / Jerry Snodgrass. – New York: 152p., ill. (col.); 10.5×16 cm original edition published in 1994.

When searching for a book to review in the format of an English language monograph, that is, a study focused and built around an overview of the history of Magic from its beginning in 1993 until the present day, these four books were the only ones found or written on this topic. It’s important to detail that it’s an emerging research field and that there are few publications with these characteristics (which makes sense when considering the economic potential of a product to its great and not overpowering competition). The four studies selected for this research are:

5.1. The Four Cases