A documentary is being made to showcase the 27-year history of Magic: the Gathering. Magic: the Gathering is one of the world’s most popular trading card games, and it has seen great success since its introduction in 1993. According to recent numbers from the publisher, Wizards of the Coast, the game has amassed over 35 million worldwide players.
The impact Magic: the Gathering has had on pop culture is undeniable, especially when it comes to the field of trading card games. Popular games like Hearthstone and The Witcher’s Gwent can trace their success back to this first game. It was invented by a mathematician named Richard Garfield, whose passion for gaming was inspired by none other than Dungeons & Dragons, another legendary cornerstone of gaming history that is incidentally also now owned by Wizards of the Coast. He was only thirteen when he designed his first game.
Garfield’s story, as well as Magic: the Gathering’s, are now being told in an upcoming documentary called Igniting the Spark, the Story of Magic: the Gathering, according to a new report by Polygon. It’s being co-directed by Kelley Slagle and Brian Stillman, a consulting producer for the Netflix documentary series The Toys that Made Us. That show is also being represented by Igniting the Spark’s producer Brian Volk-Weiss, creator and director of the Netflix series. No release platform or date has been mentioned.
Magic: the Gathering’s recent history is a bit complicated. They earned quite a bit of ire for printing Oko, Thief of Crowns in the recent Throne of Eldraine set; the planeswalker has since been found so powerfully oppressive that he’s been banned in almost every major game format. They’ve also faced harsh criticism for their handling of the story in their expansion War of the Spark: an Avengers: Endgame-esque event that saw the main characters in an apocalyptic struggle against their draconic nemesis Nicol Bolas. The novel that was written to accompany the set received extremely negative reviews for its poor writing and its clumsy and insensitive handling of the relationship between Chandra Nalaar and Nissa Revane, a relationship that most fans expected would blossom into a major same-sex romance and thus a milestone for representation in fiction. Instead, their romance was snubbed and written off as little more than a mistake of judgement on the characters’ parts. This left fans outraged, and led to Magic forgoing story material entirely in future sets like Theros: Beyond Death.
As tumultuous as the recent past has been, however, Magic: the Gathering fans still have a lot to look forward to in the future. In addition to this documentary, there’s also Magic Legends, a multiplayer action RPG that was announced during the Game Awards in December, as well as an upcoming Netflix series made by Endgame directors Anthony and Joe Russo. Magic: the Gathering is a beloved game with a tremendous legacy, and if nothing else the backlash it’s recently earned proves that there are many vocal fans who care deeply about the state of the game. Those fans will likely enjoy the opportunity to see how Magic became the household name it is today when Igniting the Spark is released.
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Source: Polygon
