Richard Garfield Works His Magic

Richard Garfield knows what gamers want. More than any person alive, he’s responsible for how games of all kinds are discussed, thought of, and played. Three decades ago, Garfield mined his background in mathematics and his interest in open-ended gaming (like Dungeons & Dragons) and invented the card game Magic: The Gathering, based on his original concept, Five Magics. In 1993, when Magic was first released it quickly changed the world. Even if you didn’t play Magic, the spell of magic was everywhere.

It’s no surprise. The game mechanics — complex card actions working toward the simple goal of taking down your opponents’ 20 points of life — were like no other, as was the fantasy world it was built upon. Sure, there were dragons and mages abound, but the scope of the world, and its endless array of fantasy creations, remains unparalleled.

“As a designer, I'm a really big fan of original properties because you can make those properties work with the game so well,” Garfield tells Inverse. “My attitude is that the people playing the game are the actors in the world. They are the people who are making the story.”

31 years later, Garfield is at it again. He is preparing to launch an ambitious online multiplayer strategy game, Chaos Agents. As he steps into the world of online auto battlers for the very first time, Garfield embraced a more collaborative process to bring this world to life.

“There are a lot more people involved who are helping flesh out the world, bring a lot of variety to it. I feel like I contributed to that world,” he says. “I look at Chaos Agents and I say, ‘That’s a Richard Garfield game.’”

On the cusp of the launch of the game’s Alpha release (you can sign up for it here), Inverse sat down with Richard Garfield to discuss his beliefs of what makes a good game structure, what Magic taught him, why he loves auto battlers, and how he hopes to shape the future of the business of gaming.

A Magical Start

As with many things seeing a comeback these days — from rock music to clothing — it all started in the ‘90s. This was when Magic was truly born, and a moment when a trading card game leapt from a curious concept to mainstream success, and then immediately took over comic book stores and gaming shops around the world.

Crucially, Garfield emphasizes that his goal with Magic wasn’t just to create a new game but more broadly, a new paradigm. “I wanted to see this as not just as a new game, but a new form of game — like a board game or role-playing game.”

“I wanted to see this as not just as a new game, but a new form of game — like a board game or role-playing game.”

The proof of the success of Magic is often spoken of in terms of dollars — it is commonly referred to as a “billion-dollar brand” — but is probably better measured by its immediate imitators. By 1996, there were several copycat games in multiple franchises, from Decipher’s Star Wars Customizable Card Game to DC’s OverPower, all corners of geekdom got in on the collectible card game craze that Magic unleashed. At the time, Garfield was initially concerned that copycat gaming formats would hurt his White Lotuses and Planeswalkers.

“There was a fear when Magic first came out that it wouldn't be so successful and some big company would pick up the concept and do something,” he says. “But I was mostly surprised how diverse [the other ‘90s customizable card games] were. Some were copycats and were quite close to Magic. But most of them were exploring new ground. To see all that enthusiasm behind it felt pretty good. My attitude probably would've been less generous if Magic wasn't so successful.”

From Cards To Chaos

Three decades later, can Garfield repeat this success? With Popularium, a new gaming studio founded by Garfield and three other industry veterans (Jon Bankard, Skaff Elias, and Arka Ray) he is about to find out as he launches the game Chaos Agents. Instead of being set in a fantasy world, this one exists in a space-opera-esque science fiction world, a kind of mish-mash of some of the more celestial Marvel comics but also at home with the texture of Larry Niven’s “Known Space” shared stories and novels. (This isn’t the first time Garfield has done a sci-fi game. In the ‘90s he created the popular cyberpunk game Netrunner, and in 2002, he created the second major Star Wars card game, Star Wars: The Trading Card Game.)

But the science fiction of Chaos Agents is — like the fantasy of Magic — all designed to create a world where players have more and more choices over their characters. In this universe, known as “The Firmament,” cosmic objects called “Chaos Shards” are highly sought substances that can be used for a variety of purposes by different factions. Think of the spice in Dune, but much more malleable and even more politically consequential. The titular agents of chaos are the players, vying for control and possession of the Shards, which, of course, sets the stage for conflict.

Because this is a Richard Garfield creation, Chaos Agents has a kind of role-playing element to it, an underlying sense that the player’s experience of their own story is more important than, say, shooting and fighting. These characters will fight — just without you guiding every step. Garfield made Chaos Agents into an auto battler; a type of game in which the fighting occurs without direct input from the player.

“I think auto battlers are this wonderful junction between the analog game culture and the digital game culture. In auto battlers, you do something and then you watch it resolve,” Garfield says. These auto battlers have both aspects of both kinds of games — it feels like a computer game experience, but at the same time you can sit back and strategize and use the same sort of thinking you do with the paper game. And so I've been completely hooked on them.”

“I was looking at was this undelivered promise in Magic ... [to better] feel like it's an infinite world [where] everybody's unique.”

Chaos Agents is fundamentally a computer game, a digital-first experience in which players can create their characters in a new world and explore the mechanics of that world in their own way. Garfield hopes that the open-ended aspect of Chaos Agents will create a sense of player autonomy however, something he feels like, over time, Magic didn’t fully retain.

“The issue I was looking at was this undelivered promise in Magic,” Garfield says. “And the undelivered promise was when you begin playing Magic, you feel like it's an infinite world and everybody's unique and there's so much to explore. That was definitely true when magic first came out, but the more networked it has become and the more it has been dominated by a competitive constructed culture, the less that's true.”

The rise of pro-level tournaments and the rise of deck-construction websites like EDHREC can sometimes make Magic feel less open-ended. Certain cards have become not just popular but ubiquitous, reducing the feeling of serendipity that once defined the game. Garfield hopes his new game can avoid that pitfall.

“In Chaos Agents, instead of a constructed deck, you have your character that is actually unique, he says. “Once you have that, then there's an essentially infinite world. Your assets are unique by design, and it opens up a lot of things, which I find very exciting in gameplay.”

Getting Owned

Today, Magic: The Gathering (owned by Wizards of the Coast’s parent company, Hasbro) is experiencing a massive commercial renaissance. From your local gaming store to the aisles of Target and Walmart, various Magic sets are now available, many of which exist under the “Universes Beyond” banner, which allows for legit Magic cards and gameplay within pre-existing franchises. The most popular of these in the past few years is undoubtedly The Lord of the Rings cards released in June 2023, though Fallout cards and Doctor Who have been huge, too, with Marvel coming up next. Back in the 1990s, these types of geeky franchises tended to have their own Magic-style knock-offs, but now, a stand-alone, say, Jurassic Park trading card game, isn’t really the right move. The gaming zeitgeist has become more honest. Instead of knock-off Magic, these IPs are creating licensing deals with Magic.

The cards in these sets are beautiful to be sure, but Garfield points out that, from a certain point of view, card games that rely on pre-created characters have limitations. Had Garfield simply been given the right to create a Lord of the Rings card game, Magic would have never worked. The fact that Magic was “such a hodgepodge” of fantasy influences and worlds is why Garfield thinks it clicked. Looking back fans would have “felt less ownership of it,” Garfield says, had Magic begun with lore dependent on a preexisting IP right out of the gate.

“One of the brilliant things with Pokemon is how close the game mechanics were and what they portrayed [on screen].”

“I've always viewed fantasy [the genre] as being a palette, which as human beings, we share culturally. So we paint a lot of things there,” he says. “Whereas when you’re within a specific property that's less inviting. People can do that. You will see people do this: mix up the Smurfs and Lord of the Rings or whatever, but it is less inviting.”

Ironically or not, Magic is now its own franchise with preexisting lore. Prior this interview, Netflix had not officially announced the new Magic: The Gathering animated series currently in development by Star Trek showrunner Terry Matalas. Though Garfield is supportive of wherever his Magic baby finds itself, he points out that any TV or movie version of that concept will fundamentally change one major aspect of the game: The main character will shift.

“There's going to be some hand-waving,” Garfield admits of any world-building in a Magic TV adaptation. But, Garfield does think it’s possible for a narrative art form like TV or film to have a game that perfectly mirrors its counterpart, and vice versa. In fact, it’s already been done once.

“One of the brilliant things with Pokemon is how close the game mechanics were and what they portrayed [on screen],” Garfield says. “To an adult that looked kind of janky until you really got into it, but the fact that they made it so close really worked.”

The Golden Age Of Gaming

On all levels of game design, Garfield is thinking as much about the mechanics as he is about the people. His philosophy may be pragmatic but that doesn’t make it any less deep or heartfelt. In talking to Garfield, one realizes that from Magic to Chaos Agents, he cares deeply about making fulfilling games, ones in which players feel satisfied on some undefinable emotional and intellectual level.

“Games are so fundamental to the way I see life. It is hard for me to see that question as different from why do we need oxygen or something like that,” Garfield says. “I think, to be an intelligent creature and play people naturally, they like to solve problems and they like to socialize, and this is this sort of exercise, all those important parts of one's intellectual and social needs. I think we are living in a golden age of games.”

“I think we are living in a golden age of games.”

Above all else, Garfield doesn’t just see games as a way to unify large groups of people, he sees it as a way for individuals to connect with other individuals. He’s focused, more than anything, on the player’s experience. He’s aware that when you get too many people in a room, in a big tournament, people can start to bicker, and he thinks well-designed games can mitigate that very human tendency. There’s not just cold math and fantasy spells and chaos shards in Richard Garfield’s calculus to making good games. He may seem like all intellect, but there’s a great deal of heart poured into his games.

“I don’t think gaming is a fad or anything that’s going away,” he says with upbeat earnestness. “I think it’s going to save the world.”