Pete Hoefling (the owner of StarCityGames.com) and Chad Daniel (our Premier Events Assistant Manager) were running a Magic Prerelease when a guy comes up to them to make conversation.
“I’m really good with trading cards, and I’d like to see if you have any job openings right now,” he stated. “Well,” replied Pete, “we don’t have anything right now, but if you want to get me your resume, I can put it on file.” To this the guy responded, “Oh yeah, sure! I’m really good at trading at my local shop. All the kids come in and I rip off their good rares for junk, and I always end up with the best stuff.” After a couple more moments of conversation, this person wandered off. Immediately Chad turned to Pete and said “Did you hear him just say ‘Don’t hire me’…?” to which Pete replied “Yeah, that’s what I heard.”
If you are reading this article, you’re likely part of the Magic Community. What does this mean? Simply put, it means that you are a human being who interacts with other human beings within the confines of the game of Magic: The Gathering. And that’s the key phrase: “human being.” You’re a person with feelings, emotions, thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears, highs, lows, intellect, and other traits associated with being a human being. You might stress some of these traits over others, but they are all present.
Think back to the last tournament you attended — maybe Friday Night Magic, a prerelease, a Pro Tour Qualifier, or Grand Prix: Dallas last weekend. Do you remember what deck you were playing? What decks did you face each round of that tournament? How did you sideboard? What was your record by the end of that tournament?
All right, let’s try a different line of questions. What were the first names of all of your opponents? What was their demeanor when you sat down to play them? Did they win / lose graciously? What was your demeanor each round? Did you win / lose graciously?
Chris Romeo recently wrote a pretty vitriolic rant about the type of inconsiderate player that has driven him out of the physical game. Everyone reading this article probably knows that type of player — inconsiderate, rude, sarcastic, off-putting, elitest, loud, and / or thoughtless. Some people reading this article might even be that player. I know at times I’ve been that guy.
I’ve definitely gone through the period of thinking I was a better player than other people, and translating that to a sense of self-worth. This lead to rude behavior, a desire to put winning ahead of treating other people with respect, and it contributed negatively to the Magic Community. I made other people associate their time spent playing Magic with a negative experience (playing against me), which (large or small) influenced whether they’d want to play Magic again.
When choosing what to do with your leisure time, you’re going to weigh the pros and the cons. Why do we play Magic rather than, say, read a book, play World of Warcraft, play a sport, watch Television, or go on a hike? It’s because we make a conscious decision to play the game. Usually it is because it is something we believe we will have fun doing.
What happens when you play Magic without the intent of having fun? Burn-out, negativity, and an eventual drift from the game are usually the result. This applies on every level of the game, from a causal group game to the Pro Tour level. Look at Kai Budde, Jon Finkel, and Zvi Mowshowitz. All three of them are among the small pool of players who could reasonably make enough money on Magic to support it as a viable hobby / expenditure of time just as a money-winner. All three of them have drifted from Magic to varying degrees, in part because it wasn’t fun anymore. This is not the only reason, but if they were having a blast playing Magic professionally, would they have disappeared off of the scene?
But you’re not Zvi, Kai or Jon. You’re Ben Bleiweiss or Chris Romeo or any other person who happens to be reading this article. Is Magic fun for you? Do you enjoy playing the game? What aspects of Magic do you enjoy? Which do you not enjoy? If the cons outweigh the pros, why are you still playing Magic? Is it out of habit? Do you need to take a short break? A long one? Leave the game entirely?
I’ve asked a lot of questions so far, and I haven’t given a lot of answers. Let me rectify that. I love the hell out of my job at StarCityGames.com — I’m the General Manager of the business, and I’m in charge of the inventory department. Our responsibilities include buying cards, grading cards, setting the prices on cards, organizing the physical inventory in our business (coordinated by Chris Woltereck, Gaea’s Might player extraordinaire inventory Manager), verifying orders before they ship to customers, posting auctions to eBay (led up by Aaron Stevenson), and the such. We have a lot of great guys in our department, including (alphabetically) Brandon Cook, Joey Harris, and “Former Virginia State Champion Young” Wesley Moss. We have assistance from virtually everyone in the company, and work hand-in-hand each day with the Shipping Department, Events Department, and the Storefront. One of my upcoming articles is going to be a “Meet the People Behind the Scenes” for StarCityGames.com, but suffice it to say that we have a great work environment, a terrific set of bosses, and we get to work with Magic cards each and every day.
Outside of work, I enjoy buying cards in person and interacting with people. I enjoy being able to deal honestly with people who come to sell me cards, work out a price that leaves both sides happy, and go home at night knowing I did good by both myself and our customers. I’ve seen a lot of venders come and go who didn’t have this mantra — they were out to get ahead by any means possible (including by lying, cheating, and stealing), and they all eventually get out of this end of the business because they burn out, get forced out, or find that they have no one left to deal with because they’ve burned every bridge around them.
I enjoy being able to write about Magic: The Gathering. My column on MagicTheGathering.com allows me to be paid to play Magic. I enjoy the creativity that I’m allowed to have in building decks for my Building on a Budget articles, I enjoy puzzling out how to build combative decks for under $30, and I like being able to chat up people and swap ideas using Magic Online while I’m playing. I like giving people articles that they enjoy reading each Monday.
I like the freedom that my StarCityGames.com column affords. I can essentially use this space to talk about anything I want, as long as it’s well-written and Magic related. This is the exact opposite of the structure of my MTG.com column, and it gives me an outlet to talk about every other aspect of Magic strategy without budget limitations, set reviews, discussions about community, theory, the finances of Magic, and talk about what’s going on with real people who play Magic.
I’ve quit Magic twice in my life. The first time was around Weatherlight, and ended around the time of Urza’s Saga. Ironically, I had my best Pro Tour finish at a time when I was least involved competitively in Magic, at Pro Tour: Mainz (Tempest draft). Why did I stop playing Magic then? Looking back at that time, I was one hell of a raging d*ck. I was brash, rude, condescending, hot-tempered, and generally full of trash talking. In retrospect, it’s no wonder I quit playing — what fun was I having? Sure, I was winning a lot and appearing at many of the Pro Tours, but then what? Was my self-worth as a human being tied to how high I finished at a tournament? What happened if I didn’t do well? Did that diminish me as a person? At that time, it must have — I wasn’t great with the social interactions with other people at Neutral Ground (where I worked at the time) and while I wasn’t a total outcast and miscreant, I can now recognize that I was far more on that side than on the side of a person that other people would willingly want to be around.
This brings me to the Misetings.com syndrome. The clique that used to hang around Misetings were a bunch of very sarcastic people who constantly ridiculed and derided other people. They were caustic, mean-hearted, and mean-spirited. The question though, and the one that always bugged me, was “why?” If your sole enjoyment of the game is ruining other people’s enjoyment of the game, why are you even involved in the game? Why don’t you find something that enriches your life and that you actively enjoy and makes you feel good as a person, rather than do something that tries to drag other people down to your level?
Maybe it’s because nobody ever cared. It takes a friend to take you aside and say “look man, you’re acting like a d*ck — what the hell is going on?” It’s not the same when a stranger confronts you on an open board — that’s just framing the situation in confrontation. But what about their friends? Were their friends as vitriolic as them? Was there a friend of a friend of a friend somewhere along the line that could being a domino effect to point out negative behavior? Was there even a way to get through to these people, or did they have to eventually sink so low in their own self-negativity that they realized there was no bottom, no end to how low you can get? That it’s up to them to improve themselves as human beings and pull themselves up to a better, happier place?
I know I hit that point, when my parents got divorced and I used Magic as a crutch for self-worth for years. I ruined a lot of potential friendships, destroyed a few relationships I had with people, and was generally not a pleasant person to be around. I was angry, and I was lashing out against other people. It happens that often Magic was my outlet for this negativity, and again was something I used for gaining self-esteem. If I could beat other people in Magic, and make them miserable while I was doing it (by showing them how much better I was than them, or how much more money I could win, or by trash-talking them during a game), the better I would feel… right?
But that just lead to more unhappiness. I couldn’t win them all, and I found myself with fewer and fewer friends. I can’t say exactly when my life turned around, and I know it was a gradual process. A huge part of my personal change came from, of all things, an Introduction to Women’s Studies class. I took it as an elective credit at Tulane University, figuring it to be an easy “A.” Instead, it was the single most important class I ever took at any school, and it changed my entire life. It opened my eyes to a lot of my problems, including taking many aspects of my life for granted, pointing out all the wrong ways in which I was treating other people (both male and female), and opened up an empathy in me that I had suppressed years ago.
I began doing a lot of reading and honest self-introspecting. I started seeing a therapist, and had a lot of personal breakthroughs during that time. I realized that, no matter my circumstance, it was up to me how I would react or let a situation affect me, and that it was my choice whether or not to be a miserable bastard. If I had a bad day, it was my choice if I took it out on other people, or kept it to myself. Even if I couldn’t control my emotions (knowing I’d be in a bad mood), I definitely could make the conscious effort to not be around other people until it blew over, or to talk it out constructively with a friend. Lord knows I’m far from perfect still, but I am aware of my actions, and work to improve myself as a person with each and every day.
And this is your responsibility to the Magic Community. You have control over yourself. You have a choice about how you can react to and respond to any situation. You can choose your attitude when you play other people. You are not fated to be pleasant or unpleasant, kind or cruel, angry or calm — it is your decision. It is your choice to log into the forums of an article and praise a writer, or to ridicule him publicly.
It is also your responsibility to ask yourself, honestly and introspectively, the reasons for your actions. “Why am I flaming this other person in the forums? Does this make me feel better about myself? Am I helping myself by doing this? Is it constructive?” In most cases, if you were being honest with yourself, the answer to these questions is “no.” If you don’t enjoy an article, and you go out of your way to flame the author in the forums (and let me be clear — I’m talking flaming here, not rationally discussing what you didn’t like about that particular article, or a writing style), what have you accomplished? You’ve certainly discouraged that author from writing further, rather than encouraging them to improve. You haven’t made yourself feel better, because you did nothing to improve yourself as a person — you took the easy way out and just vented and tore down, rather than building up. It is easier to destroy than to create.
The same goes for playing face to face. Why did you have to trash-talk your opponent? Again, I’m not talking about two friends who are jokingly trash-talking. I mean you, the guy who calls other people scrubs, or complains about how much better you are when you lose, and complain about how lucky your opponent got. What are you getting out of playing Magic? You might be happy when you win — until you lose. Then you’re miserable. Why are you miserable when you lose? Is it because you lost, or because you tied up your own self-worth in winning?
Will you read this article? Are you at the point in your life where you’re ready to honestly and openly answer these questions, no matter how unpleasant the answer might be?
To myself, and Chris Romeo, and to the casual players, competitive players, nice people, d*cks, road warriors, basement-slingers, retailers, Wizards of the Coast employees, tournament organizers, high-school students, college people, men, women, old, young — anyone who plays Magic — we are all part of the same community. We all have the responsibility to make the Community as strong as possible. We carry out this responsibility by controlling our own actions and interactions with other people. If we fail in these responsibilities, the Community grows weak. People quit playing, people stop buying cards, retailers go out of business, and eventually Magic as a whole fails.
Do you enjoy playing Magic? If not, what makes it unenjoyable? Can you fix that aspect or aspects of the game or yourself? Would you be better off not playing for a while? For Good?
Have you been respectful to others? Have others been respectful towards you? If no to the first, why have you treated other badly? If no to the second, have you taken that person aside and attempted to talk to them, person to person in private (so as not to embarrass them, but to talk human being to human being) to let them know that they have hurt you? You might say “well, they wouldn’t care!” but have you made the attempt? Is it possible that one of these people are hurting inside, and need someone to reach out, however small, and let them know there is empathy and caring all around them?
Have you been responsible to the Magic Community and to yourself?