MAGIC: THE GATHERING Is Officially the Most Complex Game on the Planet
I enjoy the occasional game of Magic: The Gathering. It’s not my favorite card game, but it is fun. Interestingly enough, it’s not my favorite because of how complex it has felt, and now it looks like science supports my belief that it’s ridiculously complex.
A team of researchers including Stella Biderman, Alex Churchill, and Austin Herrick did the science and found that Magic is the first game that cannot be computed. This research is now leading computer scientists to challenge what they already know about games. After all, the leading theory assumes that any game must be computable. Magic laughs in the face of this theory.
This by no means indicates that Magic is a bad game, rather that it poses interesting problems to people who love game theory.