work in progress
About
Magic the Gathering is a very popular trading card game the envolves summoning monsters and casting a wide verairty of spells to deplete the opponent’s 20 life points to 0
on the internet it has a cult following, an large online community, and an endless amount of image macros and photoshops of the cards to combine them with other memes.
Origin
Richard Garfield was a doctoral candidate at University of Pennsylvania when he first started to design the game. During his free time he worked with local volunteer playtesters to help refine the game. He had been brought on as an adjunct professor at Whitman College in 1993 when Peter Adkison (then CEO of Wizards of the Coast games company) first met with Garfield to discuss Garfield’s new game RoboRally. Adkison saw the game as very promising, but decided that Wizards of the Coast lacked the resources to produce it at that point. He did like Garfield’s ideas and mentioned that he was looking for a portable game that could be played in the downtime that frequently occurs at gaming conventions. Garfield returned and presented the general outline of the concept of a Trading Card Game. Adkison immediately saw the potential of this idea and agreed to produce it. Magic: The Gathering underwent a general release on August 5, 1993.
While the game was simply called Magic through most of playtesting, when the game had to be officially named, a lawyer informed them that Magic was too generic to be trademarked. Mana Clash was instead chosen to be the name used in the first solicitation of the game. Still, everybody involved with the game continued to refer to it as Magic. After further consultation with the lawyer it was decided to rename the game to Magic: The Gathering, thus enabling the name to be trademarked.
Usage
On the internet, Magic: the Gathering has a very strong presence on the internet. ranging from the actual online variations of the game and it’s communities to an endless amount of parodies and image macros.
The fans themselves are often a subject of redicule and parodies as they are stereotyped as the ‘no life basement dwellers’
joke cards
the strogest parody of the cards thus far is the acto of photoshopping cards as internet memes as though the memes are playble cards. these photoshops range from just about anything: popular memes, random real life objects and even cartoon characters.
examples:
this kind of parodies also exist in other trading card games like Yu-gi-oh and Pokemon put in much smaller amount and notibility
examples
(any suggestions to add anything will be greatly appriciated