Introduction

"All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. Just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the ‘consecrated spot’ cannot be formally distinguished from the play-ground. The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc, are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart" -Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)."[4] In Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture,

Welcome to "The Magic Circle Blog" -- a blog about games and game design. This is the first entry, so welcome to the beginning! I should start off with an introduction and some sort of broad description of what this blog is all about. This is about exploration. When I said, "welcome to the beginning", I meant it in more ways than one. I am not a published designer. I am not an expert in the field of game design. I am a wanna-be. I am a hobbyist. I'm at the beginning. I am reading, practicing, and now writing about game design with the goal of getting better at it. I'm hoping that if you take the time to read what I write here, that you will participate in the conversations and we can explore this stuff together.

My interest in games has been with me many years. I was always intensely fascinated by video games in particular. If my family was out and about and we were by an arcade I'd beg for quarters and a chance at some time with those machines. Even at Disneyland, I was more interested in Space Invaders at the "Starcade" than I was in Space Mountain in Futureland. By the time I hit 6th grade I had discovered Dungeons and Dragons which took hold of my imagination for many years. I'd also play a fair amount of games like Risk and Axis and Allies thrown in with the occasional Monopoly experience that most of us know. In college I was also introduced to Magic: The Gathering and other Collectible Card Games (or CCGs as they became known as) and later I was caught up in the Poker craze that swept across the country.

Games continue to play a big part in my life. I still enjoy video games and I am recently fascinated by boardgames, having been re-introduced to the hobby through the explosion of "Family Strategy Games" that come to us from Europe. While I'm not a professional designer I have worked in the video game industry (on the production side) for 10 years now. Of course production is one thing, but design has the real allure. It's hard to play a great game and not deconstruct it a little. It's hard not to wonder how the creators came to certain decisions and how they manufactured these systems, these enviroments, and these play-grounds that come together to produce such memorable experiences. It's also hard to let these thoughts just tumble around in my head and still do something productive with them. So this blog will be a way to organize and investigate them a little further.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy The Magic Circle Blog.

-ER