Richard Garfield says the joy he wants to recapture is the open-ended discovery of early Magic: The Gathering—before players could readily look up optimized decks and feel pushed toward a prescribed way to play. His answer is not a call to make every game work like early Magic, but a design preference: let exploration matter, and make advantage come from player skill and knowledge rather than power carried over from one match to the next.
Why early Magic felt open to Garfield
In the early days of Magic, players had less information about which cards and decks were strongest. That uncertainty left room to experiment and imagine what the game could become. In a GamesBeat interview with Dean Takahashi, Garfield described the contrast once strategy information became easy to find: “But when they start playing more seriously. They can look up all the cards. They can see what people believe the best decks are. So it takes away some of the magic. It makes people follow a prescribed path.”
That is Garfield’s observation about how knowledge can shape play, not evidence that every player preferred the early game or that contemporary Magic has no room for creativity. Knowing strong strategies can help players compete, but it can also make some feel that experimentation is a detour from the accepted route. Garfield is interested in designs that preserve the feeling that players can discover their own possibilities.
Skill, not accumulated power, should decide a contest
Garfield also distinguishes lasting progression from advantage earned through play. If someone carries power accumulated across matches into a new contest, an opponent may feel disadvantaged before the game begins. He prefers competition in which both players meet on more equal terms and the edge comes from what they know and how they play. As he put it: “And so I really prefer to make it so that your advantage in the game is your own skill and knowledge.”
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This preference does not mean every game must remove progression or make all players identical. It identifies a particular design goal: when the contest is meant to test the players against each other, the outcome should not be decided by one person’s accumulated power from earlier matches.
How Brawlers makes folding a strategic choice
Garfield describes Brawlers as a separate two-player card game. Both players use the same cards, while bluffing and pressing your luck create the tension. Wrestling-themed animation frames the action, but the underlying decisions remain card-game decisions. Garfield explained: “The cards are the same for both players. And so there’s animated proceedings, but you’re playing this card game with this bluffing and pressing your luck mechanic.”
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One design detail makes losing a hand less like simply surrendering. In the version described in the interview, folding preserves a player’s ongoing power and increases their hand size for the rest of the game. That gives a player a reason to stop pushing a bad position: the fold accepts an immediate loss in exchange for a strategic benefit later. The choice is still consequential, but it can feel like a decision rather than a dead end.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Garfield’s design process leaves room for players to surprise him
Garfield says designers cannot fully anticipate what a public will do with a game. “It’s hard to develop a game in a vacuum. And you’re never going to be able to develop it to the level that the public will once they get ahold of it.” That idea fits his interest in discovery: designers can create choices and systems, but players will find uses, strategies and interactions that were not obvious during development.
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The GamesBeat interview was originally published November 18, 2023, and updated June 18, 2025. Its discussion of Brawlers is distinct from Chaos Agents, another project associated with Garfield. Popularium describes Chaos Agents as an auto-battler/battle-royale hybrid, and its press page includes 2026 coverage. It is described as a digital game, not a physical card product; that page does not establish a release date or current purchase availability.
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