The Minds Behind Magic: The Gathering Say They're Making It For Anyone, Not Everyone

There’s a simple mantra that permeates every interview or question and answer session conducted during the MagicCon weekend: Magic is for everyone, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s going to love everything the team puts out. While universal acclaim would be great, the creative teams say that this simply isn’t possible.

At MagicCon Atlanta, two key panels laid bare the company’s short- and long-term plans for the decades-old card game. The Preview Panel announced all but one of the expansions coming to the game in 2026–four of which will be Universes Beyond collaboration sets–while the Secret Lair panel announced over a dozen new limited-time drops set to launch throughout the month of October, featuring names like Jaws, Furby, Iron Maiden, The Office, and multiple PlayStation franchises.

While the reaction in the room for these panels was marked with excitement, the deluge of Universes Beyond collaborations mixed in with the in-universe Magic fans love led to a fair bit of trepidation among the fanbase. One viral post from a competitive Magic player leaned heavily on the in vogue insult “slop,” while the YouTube content creation community made their thoughts known acros smultiple videos.

After speaking with many of the minds behind Magic: The Gathering design after those panels, one thing became clear: None of the reactions were unexpected.

Can’t please everyone

“I really understand that people want to see the game through their own lens, and that’s fine,” head designer Mark Rosewater said during his Q+A session. “My number one message is: what you enjoy, and how you play Magic, that just isn’t everybody. You’re not everybody.”

That said, the team does hear all of the reactions, positive and negative, that come after big announcements like the ones at the MagicCon panels. Blake Rasmussen, communications director for MTG at Wizards of the Coast, describes the team as “terminally online, sometimes to [their] detriment,” but they recognize that the most forthcoming opinions aren’t always reflective of the majority.

“It is not hard to find positive opinions, though negative ones are the loudest–but that’s just true for the internet,” Rasmussen said. “People are nuanced and different and have complex opinions and feelings about things, and that’s what we really need to keep in mind, both for the world at large and also for Magic.”

The Universes Beyond debate

Rosewater acknowledged that Universes Beyond is not going to be every player’s thing, and said he’s come to terms with some of the negative fan reactions its continued growth in the game has created.

“There’s always a line in the sand where people say ‘this is Magic’ or ‘this is not Magic,’ but everybody’s line is different,” Rosewater said, referring to negative reactions to Universe Beyond’s continued growth in the game. “I know your line seems like the line, because it’s so clear of a line to you, but your line is just not everybody’s line. And as the guy who has to make the game, I have to respect everybody’s line.”

The line for Universes Beyond, Rosewater revealed, is clear: “The data says that Universes Beyond is a runaway hit by every metric you could possibly measure.”

That data includes a $200 million opening day of sales for Magic: The Gathering – Final Fantasy, which became the fastest-selling expansion in the game’s history. The previous best-selling expansion, The Lord Of The Rings, needed months to hit that sales milestone. Similarly, the best-selling Secret Lair drop of all time, according to Rosewater, is one of the Fallout drops from 2024, though he did not specify which one.

There is precedent in Magic exploring other worlds outside its own, even before Universes Beyond. The first expansion the game ever saw was Arabian Nights in December 1993, which adapted the famous tales of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights into a full set. Later on, Portal: Three Kingdoms implemented the history of the Three Kingdoms of China into a set specifically made for Asian markets.

However, Rosewater said he understands how the influx of Universes Beyond sets may make some longtime players feel. As he put it, “when the collective wants something, and it’s not your thing, it can be demoralizing.”

He then gave an example of his own; Mark Rosewater, head designer of Magic: The Gathering, is not a fan of its most popular format, Commander.

“To me, Magic is a strategic game; I love it because I win when I’m outthinking my opponent,” he explained. “Commander is not a strategic game; it is a political game. You’re playing the people. I really had to come around to it, and that’s okay. I realized that the more people play, and the more people enjoy it, the better the game is.”

The world within

Some fans worry, with all of the outside intellectual property making its way into the game in Universes Beyond and Secret Lair drops, that the story of Magic itself will be lost in the ether. While 2026 will start in-universe with Lorwyn Eclipsed, that expansion will come four months after Edge of Eternities, the last expansion set inside Magic’s world, which launched in August. Two Universes Beyond expansions, Marvel’s Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender, sit between them on the schedule; Spider-Man launched in September, while Avatar is due in November.

Rasmussen assured me that the story of Magic: The Gathering will continue to be told.

“We care very much about our story. Our fans care very much about our story. When people love something, we do more of it,” Rasmussen said. “People love the Magic multiverse. They love our characters, they love the worlds, and the stories, and we are doing more of it.”

There are multiple announced projects in the works centered around Magic’s own world. An animated Netflix series was revealed in October 2024, while a live-action film and television universe is in the works with Legendary Pictures. The MagicCon Atlanta preview panel unveiled a new novel set in Strixhaven, which will release around the same time as the Secrets of Strixhaven set, while a new comic series with Dark Horse Comics debuted last month.

“There’s been a fear for a long time that Magic will become all Universes Beyond and that we’ll lose that thread,” Rasmussen said, “but we’re heavily investing in that side of our business and our storytelling. It’s not something we’re abandoning.”

Finding the right fit

Those who have accepted Universes Beyond into the Magic world have their own set of concerns, namely how well outside characters are adapted into the game. One point of debate coming out of the panels was Jaws, Relentless Predator, a mechanically-unique representation of Steven Spielberg’s savage shark. Despite being an ocean-faring creature, the MTG version of Jaws is mono-red, focusing more on its rage and bloodlust.

Rosewater says the debate over what colors would represent which characters has raged since the early days.

“One of the most common questions I got all was, ‘What are the colors of this popular character?’ What color is Iron Man? What color is SpongeBob? It was clear that it was fun for the audience to imagine pop culture through the lens of Magic,” Rosewater said. “Fans did that on their own.”

As far as designing the cards, Steve Sunu, a senior product designer on Secret Lair, said that authenticity is paramount to getting a drop released–even if that means a drop simply doesn’t happen.

“We’ve explored a lot of different properties where sometimes we can’t find a good way to present it authentically for Magic, in which case, we don’t do it,” Sunu said. “We take great pride in the fact that when we choose a partner, no matter what it is, our main mission is to make sure that it comes across authentically, and that passion for that project or band or movie or TV show comes across authentically.”

Sam Strick, a creative lead on the Secret Lair team, said the team is able to take this approach thanks to the size of the Wizards of the Coast offices.

“Within the building–and it’s a large building–there are fans of just about everything. We listen to everyone,” Strick said. “So no matter if it’s Romantasy [like the Artist Series: Kieran Yanner drop announced during the panel], or that one IP no one knows about that everyone has to Google, what we’re designing is going to be someone’s favorite thing.”

All things considered, however, the Secret Lair team thinks of itself, in Strick’s words, as a “curator” of sorts, bringing strange and off-beat elements to Magic that the main design team can’t do. Recent collaborations with Los Angeles-based art studio Brain Dead and independent radio station KEXP are prime examples, and for Sunu, it all goes back to designing things that may appeal to any one person, rather than trying to please everyone.

“We’re very careful and protective of what it is that we take on,” Sunu said, “not just because there are only so many hours in the day, but because we also really want to make sure that we’re serving not just Magic fans, but the fans of those individual communities as well.”

Ultimately, the design teams know that no matter what they do, simply the presence of outside IP in Magic: The Gathering will have some fans drawing their lines in the sand. If that happens, those designers, Rosewater included, will continue to respect them, he said.

“I know this is a hard pill for some to swallow, that it’s making so many people happy even though it’s not your thing,” Rosewater said. “We add things to the game, and if you think Magic would be better without those things, fine. But if you’re not in the majority, taking it away is really hard to do.”

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