ABSTRACT
Perhaps most specically, the fascination with magic stems from a desire to guide and shape the forces that govern the course of our individual human lives. e exercise of will to create change in life is murky and dicult, thwarted as it oen is by forces both internal and external beyond our control. But in games, there is the potential of mastery, of understanding rules and then manipulating them through strategy in order to achieve a desired outcome. “Here I rule” is a marketing slogan of Magic: The Gathering, a declaration sometimes accompanied by depictions of
a skinny adolescent smirking condently while surrounded by fearsome monsters. As gamers, many of us identify with that sentiment.
