Mark KennedyWhat if I told you there's a card game so addictive that it's played by 20 million people around the world?
They gather by the thousands in big cities to play in "Grand Prix" tournaments, while competing for thousands of dollars in prizes. Meanwhile, others huddle in little stores across America for one-night marathons that can stretch into the wee hours of the morning.
What's the game, you ask? Poker? Blackjack?
Try Magic: The Gathering, a fantasy trading card game that Rolling Stone magazine calls "a cross between chess, poker and 'Game of Thrones.'" Meanwhile, The New York Times notes Magic combines elements of role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons with the added charm of trading cards that fluctuate in dollar value like baseball collectibles.
Magic: The Gathering, now more than 20 years old, is attracting a growing international following that has spawned its own subculture, complete with some players wearing medieval garb. The game involves rare and valuable cards - such as the legendary Black Lotus card - that can fetch tens of thousands of dollars. (Common cards, meanwhile, cost a few cents to a few bucks each.)
Full disclosure: Being terminally unhip, I had never heard of the game until I read a short newspaper article about Magic: The Gathering nights at the Walker County Library in LaFayette, Ga. A quick Google search turns up more than two dozen retailers in the Chattanooga area where you can buy Magic: The Gathering trading cards.
I wanted to talk to a Magic fan with some perspective on the game, and I found Ryan Bryson, of LaFayette, who is both an avid player and owner of a card store specializing in fantasy game merchandise.
By the time he was in first grade, says Bryson, now 19, he had discovered that fantasy games could cast a magical spell on a child's imagination. His first passion was Legend of Dragoon, one of the original Sony PlayStation games that featured role-playing and warfare on the fictional continent of Endliness.
"Even at an early age, I was interested in fantasy and sci-fi," said Bryson, whose store, Extreme Gaming, is in LaFayette. "It had a lot to do with my love of dragons."
As time went on, Bryson branched out into massive multiplayer online computer games such as World of Warcraft. His PC became his window to the big, wide world of online gaming. He began to make friends - more like acquaintances, really - around the world, and soon discovered that in some cultures like China gamers are exalted.
About age 10, Bryson said, he discovered Magic: The Gathering, a decidedly low-tech collecting card game (think Pokémon for mature audiences) that involves face-to-face contests in which players attempt to drain their opponents of their 20 "life points." The game ends when one player is reduced to zero points by an opponent's deft use of spell-casting Magic cards.
Bryson said that when he was younger, he and an uncle would drive to Rome, Ga., to play in one-day Magic tournaments at a card shop there. When he graduated from high school and started weighing his job options, his dad suggested he consider opening a card shop of his own in his hometown.
"It sounded appealing off the bat," he said. "But that's a big responsibility, to go from high school kid to business owner."
They located an empty storefront and took out a lease. For a while, until word of mouth worked its magic, business at the little store was flat, Bryson said. But it has since picked up, and profitability is in sight.
Bryson says his one-night tournaments - which his store hosts two or three times a week - attract 15 to 25 players. He says most Magic players are males, ages 16 to 25, and that they tend to rotate in and out of the hobby based on how much disposable income they have. Assembling a deck of powerful cards can be pricey.
"The average life cycle for a player is about 18 months," Bryson said. "Even the company that supports the cards [Wizards of the Coast], says that."
In the meantime, Bryson said, the social aspects of the game are becoming attractive to people perhaps eager for face-to-face interaction instead of a sterile home environment involving a headset and video-game controller.
"It's more appealing because you're actually getting to meet the people you're talking to," he says. "You can go to a Magic tournament and talk to 40 or 50 people who share the same interest."
In a world of digital communication, there's something undeniably charming about an old-fashioned parlor game.
Perhaps a new generation will discover that the human element of game playing can indeed conjure magic.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645. Follow him on Twitter @TFPCOLUMNIST. Subscribe to his Facebook updates at www.facebook.com/mkennedycolumnist.