In case you missed my recap last week, I went to MagicCon Chicago and was blown away. While I already wrote plenty on my experience in Chicago, there’s one more thing I want to talk about before moving on to Tarkir, or Final Fantasy, or preview season burnout, or the newly revealed schedule of Command Fests (Commandfests? CommandFests? I need an editor over here). Today we’re going to talk about the Magic community and the dreaded DEI: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
One of the most striking things in Chicago, besides Roy Graham’s ability to consume hot wings, was the amount of DEI throughout the convention. On Sunday night a pro tour competitor who does not identify as male (though I wasn’t able to catch how they identify themselves so I won’t make any assumptions here) informed me that one of their day two Pro Tour draft pods included four players who do not identify as male (including themselves) and that they were pretty sure that was the first time in the history of the Pro Tour that a day two draft pod was made up of 50% non-male players.
Melissa DeTora registering a sealed pool for Morningtide/Shadowmoor.
If you think about how far the community has come from Melissa DeTora’s Pro Tour top 8 finish in 2013 (12 years ago) to Jessica Estephan’s Grand Prix title in 2018 (7 years ago) to Autumn Burchett’s Mythic Championship title in 2019 (6 years ago). You can draw a line from there, to programs like Lady Planeswalkers to the more recent Birds of Paradise and VML. More non-male-identifying players are breaking into the top ranks of the game than ever before, but they’re also showing up in force at the rest of the convention as well as they were omnipresent at ticketed play events, the Command Zone, Dungeons & Dragons, panel discussions, the Creator center, the Family center, the merch lines, and just sitting down at the (absolutely horrid) “food court” to scarf down something that passed for “edible” before heading back to the dungeons.
Not everything is rainbows and sunshine, and I’ll get to that in a moment, but before I do I want to do something I do so very rarely on this site, and that’s give credit where credit’s due to Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast for their enduring commitment to DEI initiatives. As the current regime looks to reshape global politics, DEI has become the boogeyman in Washington, DC and President Musk has set is AI attack dogs on anything DEI-adjacent (which apparently includes pictures of the Enola Gay and CIA “black” sites). While corporations like Target are bending over backwards to shed their DEI programs, some (most publicly Costco and Apple) have pushed back and held firm.
Hasbro’s DEI statements can be found at https://csr.hasbro.com/en-us/diversity-inclusion and they publish an annual report on their ongoing efforts which you can read on that site. Wizards of the Coast similarly has a fantastic page dedicated to their DEI programs which you can read at https://company.wizards.com/en/diversity-equity-inclusion.
Bearscape by RIcardo Bessa
It’s one thing to talk the talk but its another to walk the walk, and in Chicago it was clear Wizards was making the effort. Non-male representation was almost certainly the highest it’s ever been. Another indicator of DEI support, perhaps surprisingly, is the presence of masking in the post-pandemic world. Wizards strives to be inclusive of all players, and that includes those who may have any health condition, or be related to or live with someone with a health condition, such that contracting the flu, or covid, or any number of airborne illnesses could be catastrophic. I’m not going to waste breath on the absurd culture wars around mask-wearing in America, but suffice to say it was refreshing to see such a massive gathering be so welcoming and inclusive of everyone who was wearing masks.
Before I sign off we do have to talk about two problems. While WotC has been a good partner at inclusivity, the diversity isn’t growing as much in every dimension. The increase in non-male participation is vital, but I did not observe similar increases in non-white representation. Everyone I played against over the three-day event was white (or at least white-presenting since I don’t want to assume too much). While I did see a few dozen non-white participants in the halls of the show floor, they seemed to be few and far between. Chicago is an incredibly racially diverse city and it would be nice to see some of that reflected back in the community.
Lastly, we need to talk about equity. I mentioned earlier something called the VML which specifically is a competitive league to help with the acquisition and improvement of competitive players from marginalized communities. They have been very successful at helping to place diverse players in the Pro Tour. Recently Wizards of the Coast revoked both their funding and their Pro Tour invitation.
The fight for diversity, equity, and inclusion will likely never be over, at least it will certainly not be over in any of our lifetimes. And while Wizards has done good things, we need to continue to fight for this space to be one that champions DEI, especially when so many other spaces, especially in gaming, are collapsing under the weight of toxic social pressures.
Come back next week when I talk about how Wizards is probably not charging enough for Spider-Man packs and they should probably be $10, not $6, but what do I know?
Rich Stein (He/Him)Â is the President of Hipsters of the Coast. He has been playing Magic the Gathering since Ice Age and has been writing about it since Return to Ravnica. His competitive resume consists of this one time he finished in the top 16 of an SCG Open, and the time he beat Darwin Kastle at a Time Spiral Sealed Grand Prix by using Avalanche Riders. Rich has never made day two of a Grand Prix, but he has gone 7-0 in the MTG Arena Chromatic Cube.