Magic Play
Magic Play, or Magic.gg, is one of the official websites maintained by Wizards of the Coast for the game of Magic: The Gathering. It focuses on competitive play, and is linked to from www.wizards.com, the official homepage of Wizards of the Coast.
Description
The Magic Play website is an official site for competitive play, including both "paper" tournaments like the Pro Tour, and digital competition through Magic Arena. It includes announcements of events, event schedules, promo galleries and links, decklists, standings, results, and statistics.
The site features two weekly columns: The Week That Was is Corbin Hosler's series on recent results and human interest stories about the players. Frank Karsten writes Metagame Mentor, focusing on the development of the metagame in the different formats, based on recently played tournaments in tabletop Premier Play, Magic Online and Magic Arena.
.gg is the domain extension for Guernsy, but many video game and esports websites use it because "gg" is commonly used in multiplayer video games as an abbreviation for the phrase "good game", usually said at the end of a match.
History
magic.gg is an indirect successor to the Sideboard magazine website, which hosted columns focused on Organized Play as well as tournament information in the early 2000s. A site overhaul merged that content into magicthegathering.com, where a "Competitive Play" section hosted tournaments and related information for many years.
The rapid success of Magic Arena in 2018 shifted the perspective of Wizards of the Coast towards viewing organized play as an Esport.[1] mtgesports.com was launched in early 2019 to support and organize the Magic Esports initiative, then moved to magic.gg in September, retaining the same look and features.[2] This approach emphasized both successful professional play and streamer personalities, and shifted even further towards on online play due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2022, the return of the Pro Tour reestablished a balance between tabletop and online events, and the Magic esports name was rebranded to Magic Play. The site was revamped with official news about the reinstated Pro Tour and other tournaments. In the week of 8th of August, 2022, Karsten and Hosler's weekly article series were introduced, the latter being a revival of The Week that Was by Brian David-Marshall on DailyMTG.com.[3][4]
References
- ↑ Elaine Chase (December 6, 2018). "The Next Chapter for Magic: Esports". magicthegathering.com. Wizards of the Coast. Archived from the original on 2018-12-11.
- ↑ Wizards of the Coast (September 22, 2019). "ESPORTS UPDATE – QUALIFIERS, FRACTIONAL INVITES, AND MORE!". Magic Esports.
- ↑ Corbin Hosler (August 12, 2022). "The Week That Was: With a Cherryxman on Top". Magic.gg.
- ↑ Frank Karsten (August 12, 2022). "Metagame Mentor: Pioneer Metagame Roundup - August 2022". Magic.gg.