User:Crazynas/History of Magic:The Gathering

Origins
Richard Garfield, the creator of the game, 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.

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.

Release & Early Years (Alpha-Visions)
Magic: The Gathering underwent a general release on 5 August 1993.

The success of the initial edition prompted a reissue later in 1993, along with expansions to the game. Arabian Nights was released as the first expansion in December 1993. Until the release of Mirage in 1996 expansions were released on an irregular basis.

A patent was granted to Wizards of the Coast in 1997 for "a novel method of game play and game components that in one embodiment are in the form of trading cards" that includes claims covering games whose rules include many of Magic's elements in combination, including concepts such as changing orientation of a game component to indicate use (referred to in the Magic and Vampire: The Eternal Struggle rules as "tapping") and constructing a deck by selecting cards from a larger pool. The patent has aroused criticism from some observers, who believe some of its claims to be invalid.

In 2003, the patent was an element of a larger legal dispute between Wizards of the Coast and Nintendo, regarding trade secrets related to Nintendo's Pokémon Trading Card Game. The legal action was settled out of court, and its terms were not disclosed.

Beginning in 2009 one revision of the core set and three expansions are released every year. While the essence of the game has always stayed the same, the rules of Magic have undergone three major revisions with the release of the Revised Edition in 1994, Classic Edition in 1999, and Magic 2010 in July 2009. With the release of the Eighth Edition in 2003, Magic also received a major visual redesign.

In 1996, Wizards of the Coast established the "Pro Tour", a circuit of tournaments where players can compete for sizable cash prizes over the course of a single weekend-long tournament. In 2009 the top prize at a single tournament was US$40,000. Sanctioned through The DCI, the tournaments added an element of prestige to the game by virtue of the cash payouts and media coverage from within the community. As of 2009 Wizards of the Coast has given out more than $30,000,000 in prizes at various professional tournaments, including Pro Tours, Grand Prix, and national championships.

While unofficial methods of online play existed previously, Magic Online ("MTGO" or "Modo"), an official online version of the game, was released in 2002. A new, updated version of Magic Online was released in April 2008.

Reception
Magic was an immediate success for Wizards of the Coast. Early on they were even reluctant to advertise the game because they were unable to keep pace with existing demand. Initially Magic attracted many Dungeons & Dragons players, but the following included all types of other people as well. The success of the game quickly led to the creation of similar games by other companies as well as Wizards of the Coast themselves. While TSR's Spellfire did become very popular (5 Editions, 6 languages, and 12 expansion sets to its name), Wizards of the Coast tried to follow up Magic ' s success with Jyhad (now called Vampire: The Eternal Struggle), a game about modern-day vampires, which appeared to do poorly, overall. Other similar games included Trading Card Games based on Star Trek and Star Wars.

Awards

 * 1994: Mensa Select Award winner
 * 1994: Origins Awards for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Board game of 1993 and Best Graphic Presentation of a Board game of 1993
 * 1994: Origins Award for the Legends expansion as Best Game Accessory
 * 1995: Italian Gaming Society Gioco dell'Anno award winner
 * 1996: Super As d'Or award for "Best New Game Concept and Genre Introduced in France"
 * 1997: InQuest Fan Award for Best CCG Expansion for the Weatherlight expansion
 * 1998 Origins Award for the Urza's Saga expansion as Collectible Card Game Expansion of the Year
 * 1999: Inducted alongside Richard Garfield into the Origins Hall of Fame
 * 2003: Games Magazine selected Magic for its Games Hall of Fame
 * 2005: Origins Award for the Ravnica: City of Guilds expansion as Collectible Card Game Expansion of the Year
 * 2009: Origins Award for the Shards of Alara expansion as Collectible Card Game Expansion of the Year

In addition several individuals including Richard Garfield and Donato Giancola won personal awards for their contributions to Magic.

Gambling
The original set of rules prescribed that all games were to be played for ante. Each player would remove a card at random from the deck they wished to play with and the two cards would be set aside. At the end of the match, the winner would take and keep both cards. Early sets included a few cards with rules designed to interact with this gambling aspect, allowing replacements of cards up for ante, adding more cards to the ante, or even permanently trading cards in play. The cards came with the instruction that they should be removed from the deck in a game that was not being played for ante.

The ante concept became controversial because many regions had restrictions on games of chance. The rule was later made optional because of these restrictions and because of players' reluctance to possibly lose a card that they owned. The gambling rule is forbidden at sanctioned events and is now mostly a relic of the past, though it still sees occasional usage in friendly games as well as the "five color" format. The last card to mention ante was printed in the 1995 expansion set Homelands.