Magic The Gathering: Star City Games Capitulating to Outrage Culture is a Blow to Meritocracy

Published on by John Sweeney
Scrumpmonkey dissects what kind of message Star City Games sends to the community when they capitulate to outrage culture.

Star City Header

On the 19th of June, Jim Davis pub­lished an ex­cel­lent ar­ti­cle on Star City Games en­ti­tled “Women and Magic.” The piece re­flects a lot of what I think and what many other’s in the Magic com­mu­ni­ty think about the is­sue of women in Magic the Gathering: that it has be­come an overblown pan­ic and has lost touch with the roots of true equal­i­ty. His ar­ti­cle was brave, it was heart­felt, but most­ly it was right. For dar­ing to break from group-think on the is­sue, he was round­ly thrown un­der the bus in the face of an an­gry mob.

On the same day, Star City Games Online Content Coordinator Cedric Phillips re­moved the ar­ti­cle and is­sued a swift apol­o­gy due to an ap­par­ent back­lash by those who dis­agree with equal treat­ment. The apol­o­gy it­self is some­thing to be­hold; even though the ed­i­tor saw no prob­lem with the ar­ti­cle, has faith in the writer and had gone through mul­ti­ple in­ter­nal opin­ions that also agreed that the ar­ti­cle was fit for pub­li­ca­tion, there was an im­me­di­ate about-face when con­front­ed with any lev­el of neg­a­tive feed­back stem­ming from the usu­al de­mands of the per­pet­u­al­ly outraged.

star city side 1What hap­pened here is clear, Star City Games and all the peo­ple who read the ar­ti­cle and saw noth­ing wrong with it ex­pe­ri­enced a mo­ment of san­i­ty — they right­ly agreed that “Respect in any com­mu­ni­ty is earned, not giv­en, and ma­jor im­pe­tus for me writ­ing this ar­ti­cle is be­cause I be­lieve women are every bit as ca­pa­ble of suc­cess in Magic as men are” as Jim Davis so apt­ly wrote. What they are apol­o­giz­ing for is the act of caus­ing of­fense and are scared to death of any­thing dam­ag­ing their prod­uct sales. Star City Games has no in­ter­est in whether the ar­ti­cle was right or wrong, it has an in­ter­est in tak­ing the eas­i­est path the pla­cate peo­ple into buy­ing their wares and in do­ing so have dealt a blow to a the en­tire com­mu­ni­ty. Even some of those who dis­agreed with the ar­ti­cle said it should have at least stayed up; I think at the very least, hav­ing a dis­sent­ing opin­ion on con­tentious is­sues is of the ut­most im­por­tance even if the ed­i­to­r­i­al staff want­ed to apol­o­gize for any of­fense caused and stick the piece full of dis­claimers. Jim Davis say­ing “I be­lieve that women should be treat­ed equal­ly to men” has be­come po­lit­i­cal­ly un­ac­cept­able. You are no longer al­lowed to speak your mind in a rea­son­able way. Even if I dis­agreed with Jim he still has the right to a dis­sent­ing opinion.

Read the com­ments on the orig­i­nal ar­ti­cle, the com­ments that got it tak­en down. The back­lash was based on the fact that Jim Davis dis­agreed with any form of dis­crim­i­na­tion in favour of a group. The com­ments rant in­co­her­ent­ly about “Male Privilege” and out­right state that they want to pre­vent com­pet­i­tive play in MTG from be­ing a mer­i­toc­ra­cy — all in­ter­spersed with de­mands the ar­ti­cle cease ex­ist­ing lest it trig­ger more peo­ple by dis­agree­ing with them. The com­ments were not mere­ly: “I dis­agree with this here is why.” They were main­ly “This of­fends me and should be re­moved!” A knee-jerk re­ac­tion de­void of counter ar­gu­ments. Jeering, moral pan­ic and the usu­al ac­cu­sa­tions of sex­ism, but no real refu­ta­tion. In try­ing to get the piece strick­en from the in­ter­net those peo­ple re­vealed their biggest flaw. They want it gone be­cause they can’t com­pete on even ground in this de­bate. They fear some­one ex­pos­ing their faulty log­ic and ba­sic sex­ism in say­ing women should be giv­en pref­er­en­tial treat­ment. Many on­line Magic com­mu­ni­ties in my ex­pe­ri­ence are circle-jerks, they are places that only am­pli­fy the most ex­treme voic­es and shut out the rest — they are even hos­tile to­ward women who refuse to play the victim.

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This is a state of ab­solute in­san­i­ty in a com­pet­i­tive game. Magic and any oth­er com­pet­i­tive ac­tiv­i­ty should be virtue be a mer­i­toc­ra­cy, that’s the point. The best decks and play­ers win the most games. Any oth­er sys­tem ab­solute­ly de­stroys Magic as a high lev­el com­pet­i­tive card game, it is the death of equal foot­ing com­pet­i­tive play and Star City Games just en­dorsed it by fold­ing spec­tac­u­lar­ly to the usu­al back­lash. Anyone who breaks from the group-think and up­sets the ugly un­der­cur­rent of the Magic com­mu­ni­ty is in­stant­ly burned in ef­fi­gy by an an­gry mob, cen­sored and then grov­el­ling, beg­ging apolo­gies are made by their cor­po­rate mas­ters. This is the same out­rage cul­ture we seen in many fan­doms, con­ven­tions and so called “geek spaces,” a tiny vo­cal mi­nor­i­ty hell-bent on warp­ing every­thing to meet their po­lit­i­cal whims.  No one can now say “We aren’t say­ing women de­serve pref­er­en­tial treat­ment” be­cause it is painful­ly clear that is ex­act­ly what they are say­ing — and any­one who says oth­er­wise will be set upon by the thought po­lice. This is the main func­tion of the out­rage cul­ture we see in oth­er parts of the in­ter­net: to re­move any voic­es seen as un­ac­cept­able by any means of attack.

What the, over­whelm­ing­ly male, mob that got the ar­ti­cle tak­en down is do­ing is deeply pa­tron­iz­ing and based on a mis­guid­ed sav­iour com­plex. The Magic play­ing women I know are ap­palled by bow­ing down to a dam­ag­ing mi­nor­i­ty. This act has ac­tive­ly dam­aged the chances of more women feel­ing com­fort­able in high-level play. The mes­sage is clear: no mat­ter how good you are, we feel you need to be giv­en an ad­van­tage to com­pete with men. It’s an in­sult to all those who have bro­ken through to the top ta­bles on tal­ent alone. In the minds of this un­der­cur­rent in the Magic com­mu­ni­ty, there is no way a women could com­plete in what they see as a “male” en­vi­ron­ment, and their pol­i­tics in­sist that out­right favour­ing women in some­how not “sex­ist,” and in ca­pit­u­lat­ing Star City Games is agree­ing with them.

star city side 2This stance com­ing from Star City Games is as laugh­able as it is mad­den­ing; they are the sin­gle biggest third-party for mak­ing Magic less af­ford­able. You want to know what would get more women into MtG? If the game cost less to play.  Do you know who makes the game as ex­pen­sive as hu­man­ly pos­si­ble by their busi­ness prac­tices? Star City Games. So them pre­tend­ing to be a cham­pi­on of di­ver­si­ty and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of the game is down right hyp­o­crit­i­cal. As I hope to ex­plain in a fu­ture ar­ti­cle, the way Magic cov­er­age is done is fun­da­men­tal­ly bro­ken, hav­ing the big card re­tail­ers also be the pri­ma­ry source of opin­ion on the game is a bla­tant con­flict of in­ter­est and Star City Games is at the heart of that. Star City Games’ cov­er­age comes sec­ond to their re­tail busi­ness and any­thing that would jeop­ar­dize that — even if it is per­fect rea­son­able and sane — is quick­ly snuffed out in favour of easy and smooth PR. Anything to keep the sales rolling in. They don’t care about women or po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness be­yond the mon­ey they think it can make them and would en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly take the op­po­site stance if they thought it would be an eco­nom­ic boon to them. But if Star City Games think this will do any­thing above fur­ther tar­nish­ing their brand then they are sore­ly mis­tak­en, re­cent­ly push­ing back against out­rage cul­ture has been met with cheers.

If any­one from Star City Games or Wizards of The Coast is read­ing this, here is the stark truth: bow­ing to these peo­ple will kill Magic the Gathering as a com­pet­i­tive game. The ma­jor­i­ty of play­ers do not want to play a game or read cov­er­age dom­i­nat­ed and warped by a small group ded­i­cat­ed to out­rage cul­ture. Once the ideas of “White male priv­i­lege” and “Equality of out­come” start tak­ing hold in com­pet­i­tive play, your game will no longer func­tion com­pet­i­tive­ly and will be­gin to collapse.

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You are say­ing to fe­male play­ers the fact they have a vagi­na is far more rel­e­vant than their skills at the game will ever be, that in your world they are not wor­thy of com­pet­ing in a true mer­i­toc­ra­cy and that iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics trumps tal­ent every time. What the an­gry mob they so round­ly ca­pit­u­lat­ed to wants would cause the com­plete death of com­pet­i­tive Magic play in its cur­rent form and re­place it with a “pro­gres­sive stack” where worth is mea­sured not on skill but on per­ceived op­pres­sion — a game where the “Marginalized” are giv­en pa­tron­iz­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion awards and told they can’t com­pete on a fair terms. Competitive play will sim­ply cease to be competitive.

Most of all, this at­mos­phere in the com­mu­ni­ty is some­thing main­stream fe­male Magic play­ers want no part in.

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John Sweeney

John Sweeney is a ter­ri­bly British man with a back­ground in en­gi­neer­ing. He writes long-form ed­i­to­r­i­al con­tent with analy­sis of gam­ing, games me­dia and in­ter­net cul­ture. He also does the oc­ca­sion­al video game ret­ro­spec­tive with a week­ly col­umn about Magic the Gathering thrown in for good mea­sure. He also does most of our in­ter­views for some rea­son, we have no idea why. A staunch sup­port­er of free speech and con­sumer rights; skep­ti­cal of agen­da dri­ven me­dia and sus­pi­cious of un­ac­cou­table au­thor­i­ty but al­ways hope­ful for change.
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