What is the life benefit of designing competition decks?

[Finn]

I am entirely serious.

Listening to the shitstorm surrounding [poorly] managing the US budget has been reminding me of trimming the fat from decks until you are 60 and then starting in on the tests. It is a process I know extremely well, as I have been doing it for close to 20 years now. But there is more to it than that. Watching new sets for cards that efficiently do something that no other card does, or for the gem - the perfect card to finally make some combo work - has fascinated me my entire adult life, and has occupied more of my brain power than my personal finances, career, and family life combined. As many of you, I am very proficient at it. And as a creative outlet, it has been rewarding for far longer than anything else in my life, including VGA Planets (www.vgaplanets.nu). That is a big deal. But I have never, ever been able to apply any of my knowledge on this subject to anything else.

What I want to know is have any of you? I suppose players-turned-poker stars deserves mentioning here. But I really don't mean that. Poker holds no interest for me, and frankly I have always viewed playing as essentially a means to test my decks rather than a pastime in and of itself. No, I mean the whole process. The considerable amount of work (fun) and dedication involved to take an idea from rolling around in your brain to a functioning, competitive 60 cards. Does anyone have a career that actually borrows skills from building magic decks?

I would love to hear about it.

[sdematt]

I think problem solving and anything to do with making lists. I love to make decks and try to refine them, whether they're good or not. It's definitely helped in terms of problem solving and thinking outside the box (looking for old cards to break, looking for alternative and new tech), as well as anything involving lists :P

-Matt

[Scordata]

Efficiency is the name of the game. When you are constantly racking your brain looking for the "solution," it ends up fundamentally changing the way you view complex problems in real life. Logistics sort of becomes a religion at that point.

I imagine many of the skills generated from deck building have other applications, such as managerial duties, statistical analysis, being able to differentiate when you might have tunnel vision, and posting on the source.

What it boils down to, is that after being so critical of the choices you've made for so long, that it has been affecting your life, and you may not even realize it.

[Tacosnape]

I think you just don't -see- how you apply it to other things in life. I'm pretty sure my desire to learn a system (Legacy) so well in and out that I can design something that works within the system is applied to how I learn in most things, how I apply lessons from difficulties and from successes, etc.

Plus, winning makes you a better person. True story.

EDIT: Oh god. I'm possessed by the ghost of that guy that used to end all his posts in a lowercase "true story." Must. Exorcise. Demons.

[Amon Amarth]

Designing Magic decks has made me a think about things differently. The way I evaluate cards in specific contexts either they be narrow (Thoughtseize against TES) or large (The effectiveness of discard as a whole in Legacy). My desire to win and play better/have fun has made me much more open to the opinions and experiences of others; I wanted to collaborate with people where as in earlier in my adolescent life I was definitely a loner.

In fact,I can't imagine my life if I wasn't a Magic player. It has such a positive and profound effect on me growing up that I would certainly be the worse without it.

[Maveric78f]

And what is the life benefit of playing Sudoku?

I think that magic deck design requires logics, creativity, thinking out of the box, analogy, research and memory. Magic deck testing (which I voluntarily dissociate from deck design) involves rigor, organization, logics and observation.

It's twice more skills than I could imagine when I published the research internship subject I opened this year. All those skills are both required and trained while you magic deck build.

Also more generally, for foreigners, magic is a great way to extend your vocabulary.

The real problems with magic are that it's time consuming and obsessing.

[dahcmai]

Oddly enough there sort of is something like it.

Engineering.


Ok, this is a stretch so hear me out, but not as far as you would think.


In hardware engineering you basically have a limited number of items to use to build one thing. You get a limited amount of power to use from a power supply, you get a limited number of dollars to use to build said device, and you need to have an intimate understanding of each of those parts to put them all together to work in one piece. Sounding familiar?

It's a bit of a longshot, but basically the same thing really in an abstract sense.

[sco0ter]

Also more generally, for foreigners, magic is a great way to extend your vocabulary.

The real problems with magic are that it's time consuming and obsessing.

This. It helped me a little bit with the english language, not only the cards (which are acutally very repeatable), but also reading the forums.

Other than that, I can't think of any real benefit for my life, which came from deck building.
Sometimes I see analogies to other games. I can more easily understand the theory and strategy behind those games. But this does only help in the "game" world.
I even drew an analogy to RTS games (Starcraft):
Aggro = Rush. If it fails, you probably lose.
Control = Fast expansion. If you survive the early game, you probably win.
Combo = Fast tech to DT or Banshee or something. If your opponent has not the right answer, you probably win.

So in general, the whole understanding of resource management, card advantage and "Who's the beatdown?", also helps in other games.

[sco0ter]

double post

[Koby]

Engineering.


Seconded. Most engineering work isn't just find solutions, but finding solutions within a constraint. This applies to both budget as well as other resources, and finding the best balance.

I also appreciate the community aspect in collaboration, which is a "soft" skill, but very useful in the workplace.

[Honoluluicecaps]

I'm actually a student currently studying for my Ph.D. in sociology, and the majority of the work that I do is pertaining to phenomenology, including such things as gambling, social networks, and even atypical (yet much more interesting) aspects of society, such as LARPing and even Magic.

Regarding the life benefit of building competitive decks, I would refer you to a book by Jane McGonigal entitled Reality is Broken http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Broken-Games-Better-Change/dp/1594202850/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313004340&sr=8-1.

McGonigal discusses extensively how participation in games (she focuses on video games extensively but refers to others such as Scrabble) gives the participator a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that is not achieved by the majority of us in our typical "lives." Building competitive magic decks is hard work... the thought that is involved in becoming a competent and successful player is equally hard if not harder. There is a sense of accomplishment that our jobs, and even sometimes our relationships, don't often give us because of their structure. When one works in a factory or for a company doing data analysis, one often feels alienated from their job. Subsequently what one produces, the big picture so to speak, is never exposed to the producer. This alienation can honestly cause significant depression and dissatisfaction. But look at building an MTG deck! You work hard, you focus on how to construct the very best deck, and it takes hours of testing, theorizing, and rough drafts. But you can see the result! You can hone your skills, other people start utilizing your product, and it gives you a sense of satisfaction.

McGonigal argues that this satisfaction is something that needs to employed in other aspects of our lives. Our jobs, our relationships, and our reality in general, need to be structured in the same type of way. My representation of her thesis is obviously abridged, but I invite you to read her book. It's my opinion that the value of building competitive decks is much deeper than we suspect, because it involves a level of emotional and mental investment that can benefit our lives and generally make us happier, which in turn makes us better people and allows us to enjoy our lives more.

tl;dr - Playing games is good for you. Immersing yourself in those games is even better for you. While you may wonder how your career and family fit into the scope of those games, the truth is that games make you happier because they have a structure that encourages happiness, which would benefit all of us if we applied gaming structure to our careers and life goals.

[Phoenix Ignition]

While the problem solving aspect of the game may help the way we view every day problems it is almost impossible to prove that connection (even if I do agree with it). What Magic really did for me though was gave me a vocabulary of random-ass words that got me through the SATs, ACTs and GRE vocab sections.

There are, however, many studies done on linking video game playing (the problem solving aspect) with overall increase in intelligence (though the correlation -> causation is still sort of iffy to me -- many people who are more intelligent to begin with seem to like playing video games) which probably would correspond similarly to Magic.

But, yeah, playing this game throughout middle school and high school gave me some concrete evidence on what it helped - vocab for standardized tests.

[jrw1985]

As an unemployed job-hunter I can attest that no employers are turned on to hear that you play a fantasy strategy card game. They'd be much more interested in having a short-stop for the company softball team. Playing Magic has made me better at playing games all-around, but I don't feel I've learned any marketable skills from it. A couple people have cited their improved vocabulary, and I agree that I've learned many useless and obscure words from playing Magic, and they might have even solved a crossword or two for me (Djinn won me a Scrabble game once). But really, unless you're pursuing a career in game-design, then you're probably not picking up any desirable skills in deckbuilding.

Now don't get me wrong; I really wish there were Uber marketable skills gained from playing Magic. But the problem with deckbuilding that keeps your skills in it from being truly applicable outside the game is that Magic involves using a finite set of cards that have precisely defined roles. The real world doesn't work like that. The most important work you generally tend to do in any career is to fix problems with novel solutions, creating and implementing new products and processes. In Magic, where the cards you can play are set and defined, you can ponder and concentrate on building the most effective, efficient, elegant deck ever designed. In the real world your client's $100,000 worth of Icelandic Krona get frozen by the IMF and you need to coordinate a hold on the account with upper management until you can trade in Icelandic currency again.

Magic encourages you to think in very small, precise terms. In the real working world you are hit with events that don't follow the pretty and precise little processes you've grown so accustomed to all the time, and it's you ability to think beyond your general confines that makes you valuable.

[TossUsToLions]

Seconded. Most engineering work isn't just find solutions, but finding solutions within a constraint. This applies to both budget as well as other resources, and finding the best balance.

I also appreciate the community aspect in collaboration, which is a "soft" skill, but very useful in the workplace.

Thirded (is that legal?!). Since I began working in the programming and engineering fields, I continuously notice parallels between Magic and engineering (efficiency, logic, problem-solving, etc.)