subject: Magic The Gathering- All You Need To Know [print this page] Magic: The Gathering is one of the first collectible trading card games to have been created and has built up a large fan base across the globe. Conceived in 1993 by Richard Garfield, a game designer from Philadelphia, it was published by Wizards of the Coast, a publishing company, in 1993. Garfield had started work on the game (colloquially referred to as Magic) whilst still a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania and eventually left his career in academia as a college lecturer to work with Wizards of the Coast full-time.
The game is reputed to have amassed some twelve million players worldwide as of 2011 and despite its niche status in a marketplace dominated by video games, continues to grow rapidly. Magic can be played by two or more participants each using a deck of cards, or alternatively, via the internet. Each game represents a fight between powerful wizards, each endowed with their own unique set of powers and skills, with the object of the game to defeat their opponent. Drawing heavily on the iconography and motifs of other fantasy and mythical roll playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, Magic has nevertheless evolved into a highly nuanced and unique game with a set of complicated rules.
Upon release, the game was an immediate success to such an extent that the publishing company was reluctant to advertise as they were unable to keep up with the demand. Initial uptake was predominantly amongst players of other adventure style games, such as Dungeons and Dragons, but soon spread to include a wide cross-section of people. Many competitors saw the immediate success of the franchise and soon started to create their own versions in the hope of benefiting from the newly emergent card game market.
Although the game is popular amongst a wide demographic, the vast majority tend to be young males, with very few female players. Some committed collectors spend vast sums of money acquiring new cards, trading them in person or online, in order to complete their collection. The rules of the game are complex and can often take some time to learn in their entirety. However, like many trading cards systems, the basic principles are simple and can be easily grasped. In a game, two players engage in a battle as wizards, or in the games parlance, planeswalkers. Each player begins with twenty life points and loses the game when those are reduced to zero. Life points are lost when attacked either by spells, or through summoned creatures and the amount of damage inflicted often depends on variable factors as determined by the throw of a dice.
