cannot get over how funny it is that Michael Lewis interpreted a millennial wearing slovenly clothes and being mediocre at phone games as signs of unique and precious genius
Anybody who says chess is too simple for them is on the same level as the schlubs who tell you they could have "gone pro" after being red-shirted for their freshman year at a low-tier college.
I thought this was going to be about Musk saying chess was too simple for him.
I randomly think about that quotation a lot because it reveals so much about his fundamental lack of understanding for many things at once. Chess. Games. Strategy. Theory of mind.
It's a pretty common refrain among people who have always been assured that they're smarter than everyone else.
Anything they're bored by is because it's insufficiently intellectual for them.
I went to college with 100s of those guys, just most of them didn't become billionaires.
I love how the guy thinks that Magnus thought for a second that this guy could possibly win the game.
This was like racing on foot against an F1 racecar and bragging that the driver got nervous because you took your first step before the car moved.
Now I want to see him reverently describe Pokemon.
"'s favorite Pokemon was 'Ee-vee', who, unlike other Pokemon, could evolve into a remarkable 8 different forms, from the fiery Flareon to the mysterious Espeon. Where others found this style of play confusing, thrived on it."
Imagine him speaking in awe-struck terms about the tech bro who bought two DSes so that he could exploit Pokémon Black and Pokémon White without having to make a friend to trade with.
To be fair, early MtG was designed under the assumption that the game would barely sell. They knew how powerful some cards were, but expected that they would circulate among play groups due to the ante rules. They didn't anticipate a second print run, let alone a secondary market for cards.
They believed in the game, playtested a lot, and were prepared to make more cards, but it was a brand new product category so they had no way to gauge expectations. Printed what they thought was 6 months worth of cards and it lasted weeks.
I think it was people in the small niche of nerdy tabletop gaming (which was even smaller niche back then than it is now) trying to ape the more profitable nerdy niche of sports trading card collecting (which was way bigger back then). Smart, but I doubt they expected it to be a new industry.
It’s a bit of survivorship bias because there were tons of attempts to cash in on the trading card craze and most of them are forgotten. And the board game publishers had cult hits like Illuminati and Cosmic but what was the last game design before MTG to really go mainstream? Scrabble?
I mean, people who deny the pay-to-win aspect of the game are deluding themselves, but it's also true that the better players will win more games. Carlos Romão's and Huey Jenson's World Champion wins are both evidence of that.
And, of course, within similar power bands luck plays a factor, too.
“The genius of POGs was that they were round & coin-shaped, with two different faces, but they each varied in what images embellished them, & the strategy required to sweep a stack with just the right slammer move. The collect-&-trade aspect opened his world to socialization he’d never experienced…”
"This was a radical notion: the game was ultimately unknowable. Merely playing a lot and memorizing the best moves only got you so far, as from one game to the next the best moves would change." so, like, a game.
"The Black Lotus is a perfect metaphor for genius: lightning-in-a-bottle that cannot be bought for love or money but instead a gift bestowed seemingly at random to certain individuals."
This is wild from a writer whose first book was LIAR'S POKER, named after a game in which players tried to guess how many times a given digit appeared among a handful of dollar bills.
Now I really really need to know what Sam was up to specifically during the Mt. Gox pump-and-dump scheme, as that Bitcoin exchange was birthed out of the Magic: the Gathering Online eXchange for trading cards by mail via the internet.
Also, I am certain I could kick Sam's ass at Magic.
Yeah it turns out when there are no rules about deck building or anything I can beat anyone turn one as long as I go first.
Anyone not doing the same back to me loses every game.
Force of Will hadn't been printed yet.
He was twelve when Mt Gox collapsed, so probably not a key player at the time. Though just finding out he was on there at age 8 typing in low ball bids on a Timetwister would be a fascinating tidbit.
I suspect it's referencing something earlier in the book rather than something he thinks people have heard of.
"On May 1, 2023 the game was discontinued and the servers were taken offline."
(storybook-brawl.fandom.com)
Storybook Brawl is a video game that was developed by the aforementioned Matt Nass and others. It was purchased by FTX, among other mismanagements of the game.
It makes sense to be familiar with it in the confines of the topic/article.
