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"Magic: The Gathering" is officially the world's most complex game
Magic: The Gathering is a card game in which wizards cast spells, summon creatures, and exploit magic objects to defeat their opponents. In the game, two or more players each assemble a deck of 60 cards with varying powers. They choose these decks from a pool of some 20,000 cards created as the game evolved. Though similar to role-playing fantasy games such as Dungeons and Dragons, it has significantly more cards and more complex rules than other card games.
And that raises an interesting question: among real-world games (those that people actually play, as opposed to the hypothetical ones game theorists usually consider), where does Magic fall in complexity?
Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Alex Churchill, an independent researcher and board game designer in Cambridge, UK; Stella Biderman at the Georgia Institute of Technology; and Austin Herrick at the University of Pennsylvania.
His team has measured the computational complexity of the game for the first time by encoding it in a way that can be played by a computer or Turing machine. "This construction establishes that Magic: The Gathering is the most computationally complex real-world game known in the literature," they say.
Magic: The Gathering is Turing Complete (arXiv:1904.09828)
Related: How Magic the Gathering Began, and Where it Goes Next
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday May 09 2019, @08:54PM (5 children)
The reactions to proxies are partly because each player that is serious about the game considers his cards to be an investment. I've known players that offloaded their vintage deck (the most expensive format to play competitively) to help make a down payment on a house. Every "serious" player that invests a lot of time and money into the game wants to believe someday he could walk away if so inclined by just selling his cards to recoup some of those costs.
I own no high valued old cards for partly this reason. The Chinese fakes have gotten very, very good. I expect someday it won't be possible to distinguish them at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @09:16PM (1 child)
Ha ha sounds like this but for gown-ups
https://games.slashdot.org/story/19/05/08/1329236/fortnite-is-free-but-kids-are-getting-bullied-into-spending-money [slashdot.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 09 2019, @09:24PM
Now that's a business model. 👌
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by mth on Thursday May 09 2019, @10:25PM
Card value depends on how popular a game is. MtG has remained popular for many years, but that's not a guarantee for all games. The people who said they were investing in cards in Valve's Artefact have lost money on those.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 09 2019, @10:52PM
I was at a friends house for a party. The complete and utter effing wanker uni buddy of my mate saw that there were magic the gathering cards in a cupboard. I didn't know how to play. So, this effing wanker, the kind of person who spends their uni years drinking and crippling other people's chances at finishing uni, pulls a box out of the cupboard and opens it on the floor.
The owner of the cards walked in as the effing wanker was shuffling the cards. He was upset. He explained that if we wanted to play he had a couple of boxes of common cards. That the box Mr wanker had opened was a brand new still in original packaging box set he was keeping.
I knew at the time this was a fluckup. The guy did not hold this against me. So far as I know.
Now I wonder how much that pristine box of magic cards is worth.
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Friday May 10 2019, @12:49AM
Complicated, and time consuming way of letting folks know, you are rich. Or, at one time used to be rich -- before you bought the very special Magic Cards.
It's not for me. Not for me because, I have an app and it's so much better. The Fine Art App called, I Am Rich. Very special, very expensive app, crafted in Germany. And I bought it in the early days of iPhone. Something that only 7 other people were allowed to buy. Because Apple saw that one would be a total Game changer and they took it off the market. Turning it into even more of a collector's item -- a limited edition. Only 8 copies were made. And 2 of those, the buyers returned. Something that, I'm sure, they're feeling very foolish about now. Because it's like they were in one of the most exclusive "clubs" in the history of the World. And canceled their membership.
I Am Rich is very easy to use. I touch the little square on my Home Screen. And out comes the beautiful jewel. The Red Ruby that looks so magnificent on my iPhone XS. I show that one off, very proudly, when I want someone to know that I'm rich. And right away, they know. They know and I can do that without a card table. Without a deck of cards. Without explaining a bunch of rules. It gets the message across so quickly and we can get back to what we were meeting about. Whether it's a nice dinner (KFC), a "friendly" game of Golf, a date with one of the World's top Supermodels, or a strong & smart Nuclear Deal. Terrific!!!