Community

I wasn't going to comment originally, but since Mark asked for feedback on his Twitter account, here goes:

The fake reveal turned me off from the start; humor is obviously subjective, but I just thought it was in bad taste.  Then, the pictures themselves are unattractive (again, probably intended to be funny, but didn't work for me).  Some of the anecdotes were interesting/amusing, but none really illuminated something fundamental about game design or Magic design, and this is supposed to be a design column.  Past experimental columns always tied into design in some way.

This is not intended to be a knock on off-beat columns in general; I loved the column on memory, as well as the Roseanne columns. This one just didn't work for me, but it obviously did for others.  Those that didn't like it can simply skip part 2. It's not like we're starved for content at the moment.

That said, I would like Part 2 better if you used each shirt to tell a design story.  For example, you liked one of the shirts because it was a card you designed.  Is there an interesting story behind that card?  What led it to be selected for a shirt?  Do you consciously design certain cards to work particularly well visually?  Maybe you can't do this for all of them, but as much as you can would help.  It's also okay to just abandon the idea, or put it on your Tumblr site.

I only have my 3 pro tour ones from last season. wish i had some of those.

second of note is that id prefer a design article on monday and not a hey i have t shirts article. this could have been put on the forums or something

Jul 11, 2011 -- 12:19PM, milo_bloom wrote:

I wouldn't min more subtle Magic t-shirts to wear. Something with just the artwork, and if it has to have Magic: The Gathering printed on it somewhere, make sure it's small and inconspicuous.

For this reason the coolest of the ten was the Phyrexian Symbol one. It was (uh-oh) elegant. There, I said it.

Jul 11, 2011 -- 6:07PM, Hacimen wrote:

if you are taking the week off give someone else a pen. There's a new Magic set due out this week or so I am told. I figure there should be something to talk about.

Exactly! We're very eager to hear about M12. If this was a period with no news, this off-beat might be less offensive. As it is, I'd rather Mark had let one of the designers on the set write this week's MM.

Jul 11, 2011 -- 1:44PM, keiyakins wrote:

Jul 10, 2011 -- 10:32PM, Shiny_Umbreon wrote:

Ok, every Monday, I seriously expect an article about Magic design. And I'm disappointed.

Magic *graphic* design? >_> Yeah, it's a stretch.

The fake reveal was rather poor taste. "Out of the Closet", that joke is okay. But the whole heartstring-tugging lead-in, wasn't very nice.

(While we're at it, the first set of special cards linked from all-star studded is missing?)

The whole situation could be smelt a mile away :P.


Anyway, I get Mark's position. He's that middleman, the friendly guy that talks to you so much about MtG that eventually it leads into his stories about stuff related to MtG. And in some sense, that's discussing Making Magic, because community and being social is a part of MtG that makes us continue playing it.

It serves as a way to relate to people, but it makes friends, and friends talk about more than MtG for years until you move to that new job and leave it all behind because you realize you don't care about the scene because you never were really involved with them.

So Mark's trying to keep the game friendly in article-form, which isn't a piece of cake when players demand specific stories.


Maybe there should be more feedback, though. Maybe he should do polls about what topics he's thinking of writing about and let's us vote and avoid what we're least interested in for as long as possible.