How A Network Engages Others Protocologically
RQ3: How do different networks activate and engage one another through the execution of specific protocols (e.g., the economic and player-based networks mediated through and evolving the protocols of the game)?
The protocols of each game consisted of a series of interconnected protocols understood and enacted by each player—the strategy they anticipated playing and the strategy of their opponent, to which they reacted and responded in regards to each specific game and to the remaining number of future games still to be realized.
Rarely did it occur that a player’s initial strategy turned out to be the one they successfully executed beyond, perhaps, the length of a single turn or two. Instead, as the cards an opponent had available became apparent, each player found themselves adjusting strategies to the likely cards and abilities with which their opponent was armed in a given game. Further, as these initial and emergent strategies intersected at various moments, multiple activity networks activated for a number of related, although distinct, ends: game victory, confirmation of sound strategy, community-building (of Magic players and colleagues), education, and collaborative storytelling. Tensions between particular kinds of subject and community roles (in particular, points of convergence between identifications of each participant as colleague and opponent) seemed to be the most prominent throughout the two sets of games. One participant might want to ask about a potential card ability and its effect so as to learn about its potential uses or pitfalls, but a competing protocol, the desire not to tip off an opponent about a possible weakness in their strategy—or to provide them time to anticipate a counter-offensive—sometimes influenced what was discussed during, rather than after, a particular game, when the stakes no longer seemed so urgent. Occasionally, the third participant would be consulted as a momentary impartial judge or sounding board; however, each player remained aware that the third participant would inevitably be an opponent in future games.
The starter deck games, as a whole, reflected a very different sense of awareness regarding the available means of network activation than did the constructed games; this can be easily attributed to the engagement of each participant in planning one or more strategies for their constructed deck. Because the cards for the constructed decks were chosen with specific goals in mind, each player could clearly anticipate outcomes for the use of any given card in their deck during a particular game. In contrast, many of the starter deck games involved exploration of the potential each existing deck offered, especially as it could be recognized by each player and whether they found their preferred gameplay style(s) aligning with that facilitated by a given starter deck.
When asymmetrical play styles collided, protocological expectations (and the upsetting thereof) transformed the game into a truly complex system. For example, in the play-by-play records for the example constructed game between Adam and Kevin, Kevin’s efforts to damage Adam’s life counter quickly and directly (such as with Lava Axe) were countered not by outright cancellations of his spells but by creatures with the Lifelink ability and spells that forced Kevin to discard potentially powerful cards from his hand (e.g., Mind Rot). Kevin could not rely on Adam limiting his own actions to cancelling or otherwise negating Kevin’s spells, and instead he had to figure out how to populate his side of the battlefield (which Adam then cleared with cards like Into the Void) and mitigate the life counter replenishment that Adam’s creatures provided. Similarly, Adam had to figure out how to prioritize the spending of his mana to last the first several devastating turns that might have ended the game much sooner than he desired.
During that particular game, both players commented frequently on their enjoyment of the unexpected game twists (and some of their real-time reflection comments are a bit distracted as a result of their focused attention on imagining possible tactics to be employed by their opponent). A mix of verbal and nonverbal rhetorical cues provided each participant with the means to suggest and enact particular kinds of meaning (such as when each player held back a card that they could have played immediately, implying it could be played at a more appropriate time in the future) and reading their opponent’s similar cues. The emergent strategies, the constraints of which were gleaned from earlier games, were then interpreted in combination with these interpretations of individual and community identity as well as of the shared and desired outcome(s) of one or more activity network.