2011 in Magic: the year of the mistake, and the year of the correction. Overhauling the Planeswalker Points system. Banning Jace, the Mind Sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic in Standard. Yanking a change to the Infraction Procedure Guide so fast that the judges got whiplash.

Why so many mistakes? Do I think the people at Wizards of the Coast idiots? Are they trying to kill Magic? No. According to Aaron Forsythe, 2011 was also a record year for sales and tournament attendance (Forsythe, “Director’s Chair”). Wizards rolled out other dramatic new changes, including the Commander decks, double-faced cards, and the Modern format, all of which were smash hits. Magic is taking bold strides forward, and sometimes that results in stepping in something that’s not so nice.

The intensity and viral speed of the online community has allowed the company to quickly identify when they have truly made an error. The Planeswalker Points system was overhauled under than four months after its release, and the IPG change disappeared so quickly that if you were away from your computer on December 22, you may have missed it entirely.

More importantly, each time they caught themselves in a mistake, it wasn’t quietly swept under the rug. On the contrary, a public statement by a notable figure was posted on the forums or splashed across the main page. These statements not only acknowledged the mistake, but also the overall fallibility in the face of a constantly growing game.

From Director of R&D Aaron Forsythe, regarding the bannings: “We've already had many discussions internally about how to tweak our processes . . . I'm not sure that means we'll necessarily be able to create formats that will remain balanced and interesting in perpetuity under the newly increased levels of activity and scrutiny—but we'll sure try.” (Forsythe, “Standard Bannings”)

From Director of Organized Play Helene Bergeot, regarding the Planeswalker Points: “I realize that we're making a lot of changes—thank you for your support. We are committed to Premier Play and growing the Magic community by providing great play experiences. Feel free to share your thoughts on the forums.” (Bergeot).

From Rules Manager Matt Tabak, regarding the IPG changes: “There are a lot of weird situations (e.g. Howling Mine, Curses, etc.) that can come up, and we hope the new IPG will cover them all. Minor gaps may exist, and we’ll address them as we go along.” (Tabak)

In addition to solid public relations, Forsythe, Bergeot, and Tabak are demonstrating what psychologists call mastery orientation. (Elliott and Dweck 5).

Science Time!

The idea of mastery orientation was first studied in children. Researchers wanted to know why some children stepped up when presented with a challenge—the mastery-oriented ones—while others became helpless. They hypothesized that the difference lay in the children’s achievement goals—namely, learning versus performance goals. A learning goal involves doing an activity for the sake of learning or to improve skills, while a performance goal focuses on demonstrating competence and hiding inadequacy (Elliott & Dweck 5).

Sure enough, they found that children who believed they were being tested became defensive and started to behave less adaptively when they struggled . . . compared to children who believed that the purpose of the test was to increase their intelligence. Terrified of making a mistake, many of the performance-goal children opted not to even attempt challenging problems (Elliott & Dweck 9).

Later research explored this extensively, looking at personally held beliefs rather than experimental settings. They found that people who tended to focus on learning goals were the same people who tended to believe that hard work paid off and who tended to increase their effort or change their strategies when they hit challenges. People who tended to focus on performance goals, on the other hand, were more likely to stubbornly insist on the same strategy or simply give up (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, and Dweck 247). These same people are more likely to avoid activities that expose their weaknesses, even if it means they miss out on a learning opportunity (Nussbaum and Dweck 605). Unsurprisingly, this does not generally lead to success.

What Does This Have to Do with Magic?

Well, the second type of person isn’t unheard of in the Magic community. Performance Goal Guy is the rage-quitter: the guy who tilts every time he screws up or loses, the guy who insists that his deck is the best regardless of the metagame. However, I propose that the Magic community offers a variety of reasons and ways to develop a mastery-oriented mindset that can serve you in all aspects of your life . . . if you’re willing to listen.

1. Good Role Models

I have already discussed Forsythe, Bergeot, and Tabak’s reactions to WotC’s mistakes. Forsythe even compiled them, alongside the company’s successes, in his From the Director’s Chair: 2011 article (Forsythe, “Director’s Chair.”) In the five years I’ve been playing, the public faces of Magic have been very transparent about their thought process in making various controversial decisions.

Mark Rosewater in particular tends to talk very candidly about his failures, both in design and in life. The man seems to have an ego of rubber, able to bounce back from anything. In fact, he has written no fewer than three columns focused specifically on the mistakes of Design.

Like Rosewater, many of the pros are candid about their failures: When Pro Tour player Alex Melkinow was asked to give a play mistake from the weekend, he asked, “Just one?” (Sottosanti). Famed deck-builder Adrian Sullivan stated in an interview that, “I think what sets me apart is a healthy ability to discard decks that aren’t working, even when I’m thinking outside the box” (Sullivan). Many people, with their minds on showing how smart they are, tend to ignore negative feedback in order to protect their egos (Nussbaum & Dweck 599). That’s not a luxury that a Magic designer or pro player can afford, and if you want to be successful at almost anything, neither can you.

2. The Necessity of Persistence

We live in a time when people are famous for being famous. A viral video or single pop song, or even being an interestingly dysfunctional pregnant teenager, can bring the wealth and attention pouring in. In Magic, however, that is just not going to fly.

Making it to the top requires consistency. Even when the Sliver Kids won the Pro Tour with a quirky poison draft strategy, boosting them from relative unknowns to overnight sensations, they still had to make it to the Pro Tour in the first place. To make it to a position of visibility in competitive Magic is to grind, to study, and to keep going and learning through loss after loss. Even the Pro Tour Hall of Fame isn’t based purely on performance: The website instructs that, “Voting shall be based upon the player’s performances, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, and contributions to the game in general” (“Rules: Hall of Fame”).

And even if your dream is something other than winning the Pro Tour, you can’t just be focused on showing off all the time. Want to be a designer? The Great Designer Searches weren’t won by someone turning in a single card cycle so beautiful it made the judges cry; the winners earned their internships through consistency, familiarity with existing design theory, and responsiveness to feedback. Want to be the next video star? Evan Erwin of The Magic Show originally went in thinking he could do his commentary off the cuff, but he soon learned how much planning and forethought a quality video actually required. (Erwin) Want to be a published Magic writer? As much as you all seemed to enjoy my last article, I don’t think I’d be back this month if I didn’t have a blog to show that I’m not a one-hit wonder. And I wrote that blog not to show off my writing skills (a performance goal), but to help me sort through some things that were on my mind at the time (a learning goal).

Remember Performance Goal Guy? The guy who collapses in the face of a challenge? He’s not making it to the finish line. As Mark Rosewater says—and this doesn’t only apply to Magic—“Reaching your dream cannot be done passively. If you’re not striving to make it happen, you are allowing it to not happen” (Rosewater)

3. It’s a Game!

This one is actually a bit paradoxical. Yes, it’s a game. A competitive game at that. And as such, hypothetically, the goal is to win—a performance goal. But even if you’re not competitive, it is easy to find something to enjoy about Magic. At its heart, Magic is intended to be fun. Studying the Comprehensive Rules to hone your judge skills, browsing Gatherer for fun additions to your Commander deck, finding every Easter egg hidden in Damia’s art . . . the list could go on forever. The point is: No matter what direction you take your exploration, you’re facing a challenge. For fun. Congratulations, you’re being mastery-oriented.

In Conclusion

In closing, I will tell you how I learned some of the lessons in this column the hard way.

For those who haven’t read my bio, I am in a doctoral program for clinical psychology. On April 11, I found out I had been rejected by every practicum (similar to an internship) that I interviewed with. How do I know it was April 11? Because I am a big fan of Mark Rosewater’s and read his column every Sunday night, and April 11 was the day he wrote about being fired from Roseanne.

After I received my final rejection phone call on Monday morning, I realized I would have to go through the application process all over again. I wanted to cry. I wanted to give up. I wanted to ignore the negative feedback that was staring me in the face.

Instead, I slowly picked up my laptop and re-opened Rosewater’s column. It was his fortunately-timed words that first helped me calm down, send a message to my supervisor, and ask for the help I needed to get the practicum I now have and love.

Mark Rosewater’s very last lesson, of the seventeen he imparted in the Roseanne series, was, “There is no shame in making a mistake. Life, in many ways, is trial and error. The biggest error is not making mistakes, but repeating them.” (Rosewater)

The next time you come across an obstacle or a challenge, remember that you have (mostly) mastered the rules for what has been called the most complicated game in the world. Think about what a novice you used to be, all the mistakes you made, and how far you’ve come—your capacity for learning has become ever more impressive.

If you have a Magic-related accomplishment, think about all the challenges you overcame to get there—you may not even have noticed them at the time, as you were spurred on by the love of the game. As I mentioned on Twitter, I have revised my Gathering Magic articles more times than I revised all of my papers in all of college. That’s because I’m motivated not by a grade, but by a desire to be the best writer I can be in service of the game I love most.

And finally, think about how the game came to be as great as it is. Mistakes were made. Risks were taken. The stack, Equipment, planeswalkers—all of these now-core parts of the game were once new and radical. If the designers played it safe, we’d still be playing with interrupts. Take a chance. If it doesn’t work, take another.

Failing my interviews didn’t make me a failure, just like losing a match doesn’t make you a loser. You are a Magic player. You have figured out how to persist when you struggle and learn from your mistakes. Those skills stay with you long after you put the cards down for the day.

Works Cited

• Bergeot, Helene. “Addressing Changes to 2012 Premiere Play.” DailyMTG.com. Wizards of the Coast, LLC, 23 December 2011. Web. 16 January 2012.
• Blackwell, Lisa S., Kali H. Trzesniewski, and Carol S. Dweck. “Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement Across an Adolescent Transition: A Longitudinal Study and an Intervention.” Child Development 78.1 (2007): 246-263. Web. 16 January 2012.
• Cunningham, Jeff. “What is the Metagame?” DailyMTG.com. Wizards of the Coast, LLC, 6 January 2007. Web. 20 January 2012.
• Elliott, Elaine S. and Carol S. Dweck. “Goals: An Approach to Motivation and Achievement.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54.1 (1988): 5-12. Web. 16 January 2012.
• Erwin, Evan. Interview by Bennie Smith. “You Lika the Juice?” StarCityGames.com. n.p., n.d. Web. 20 January 2012.
• Forsythe, Aaron. “From the Director’s Chair: 2011.” DailyMTG.com. Wizards of the Coast, Inc., 5 January 2012. Web. 16 January 2012.
• Knutson, Mark. “The Dynamics of a Turn.” DailyMTG.com. Wizards of the Coast, LLC, 4 November 2006. Web. 20 January 2012.
• Nussbaum, A. David and Carol S. Dweck. “Defensiveness Versus Remediation: Self-Theories and Modes of Self-Esteem Maintenance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 34.5 (599-612). Web. 16 January 2012.
• “Revamped Premiere Play Coming in 2012.” DailyMTG.com. Wizards of the Coast, Inc., 23 December 2011. Web. 16 January 2012.
• Rosewater, Mark. “A Roseanne by Any Other Name, Part 3.” DailyMTG.com. Wizards of the Coast, LLC, 11 April 2011. Web. 17 January 2012.
• “Rules: Magic Pro Tour Hall of Fame.” Wizards.com. Wizards of the Coast, LLC, 14 July 2011. Web. 17 January 2012.
• Sottosanti, Paul. “Professional Mistakes.” DailyMTG.com. Wizards of the Coast, LLC, n.d. Web. 16 January 2012.
• Sullivan, Adrian. Interview by Will Rieffer. StarCityGames.com. n.p., n.d. Web. 16 January 2012.
• Tabak, Matt. “January 2012 IPG Revisions.” Wizards.com. Wizards of the Coast, LLC, 22 December 2011. Web. 16 January 2012.