If You Think ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Is Turning To “Slop,” Its Head Designer Thinks You Might Be A Fascist
In one of the most bizarre criticism deflections seen in recent memory, Magic: The Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater has written off the ever-growing number of players who believe the game is turning to “slop” on the grounds that rather than genuine criticism, he believes they’re just trading in fascist rhetoric.
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A piece of slang used to derogatorily describe a product, project, or performance that exists solely to lazily ride market trends, the term ‘slop’ came to recent prominence in the MTG world thanks to professional player Jeffrey White, who in September centered the word in a lengthy critique regarding the game’s growing focus on the Commander format:
“You have a favorite restaurant that you’ve dined at for many years now. You love it because they serve high quality food and are staffed by people who care about making the experience of eating at the restaurant good. One day, you notice a new item on the menu.
“Slop. ‘What’s this for?’ You ask the waiter. ‘It’s for the pigs. Pigs eat slop.’
“Over time, a 2nd flavor of slop shows up on the menu. Then a 3rd. Then you notice that some of the old menu items you used to love now come with a non-optional side of slop. All menu items are now designed with the pigs in mind, on the chance that one of them might try their hand at human food. The quality and preparation of the human food that’s left on the menu also starts to degrade.
“When you ask the restaurant staff about it they inform you that they no longer have the resources to make sure the human food is prepared correctly; they’re too busy making slop. You notice that some of the restaurant patrons that you’ve become good friends with have stopped showing up. You stop showing up. You are upset with the direction the restaurant is taking and post about it on social media. You get two types of replies:
- I am a pig and I eat slop
- The restaurant is doing so well and has so many patrons. How can you be upset?
“Getting more customers into the restaurant has to be a good thing. This 2nd comment is particularly frustrating because it naively assumes that the entire restaurant clientele wants the same things. But you don’t want 5 different flavors of slop. You want human food that is prepared by people who are passionate about food and who care about the experience of dining at the restaurant being a good one. It’s something you used to be able to get here, but can’t anymore. You don’t care if there are more pigs eating at the restaurant now. You liked things just fine when there were no pigs and contrary to this sentiment, things have gotten worse for you as the restaurant has grown, not better.”
And though this critique was specifically in reference to Commander formatting, White’s lack of specification and Wizard of the Coast’s then-recent announcement that four next year’s seven total MTG sets would be based on third-party IPs, led many players to presume that he was writing about the game’s growing focus on Universes Beyond.
With White’s post adding fuel to both the Commander and Universes Beyond discourse, one curious player took to Rosewater’s Tumblr page and asked him for his “take” on the entire situation.
In turn, the MTG design lead asserted, “I don’t want to spend a lot of time on this particular topic, but I will say one thing. If you’re comparing humans to animals (in a derogatory manner), you are historically in very bad company.”
Though he kept it vague, Rosewater is clearly insinuating that anyone who uses the term “slop” is in the company of the various authoritarian and fascist movements throughout history, many of which drew explicit comparisons their enemies and detractors to animals in order to dehumanize them in the minds of their supporters.
Ultimately, in terms of whether or not this will actually help smooth things over for Commander and Universes Beyond critical players or WotC, as the line goes, “It’s a a bold strategy, Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for them”.
But to chance a guess – Wantonly comparing unhappy players to history’s most evil ideologues simply for criticizing the state of their favorite game with an absolutely appropriate metaphor? It’s probably not gonna fly well.
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