Magic the Gathering is a card game invented in 1991. It is still widely played today.
The inventor of the game is a mathematician and computer programmer so naturally the rules of the game rely on a degree of math and computer science (though this would likely be true even if the inventor was not a mathematician as the rules of any game often rely on numbers and sequences).
When playing Magic in order to 'cast' a spell one needs to pay its cost, so naturally one must have the required resources to pay. For popular games like Pokemon this resource is an 'energy' card. For Magic this resource is a land card that produces mana.
In sum, a Magic deck is composed of spells and lands. Lands produce 'mana.' Mana is required for spells.
Over the course of Magic's history, the 'powerful' spells have undergone a shift in their form and content; they've gone from being expensive in mana cost and singular in copy in a deck / game to being inexpensive in mana cost and redundant or multiple in a deck / game.
That is, over time the increase in power of a spell has correlated with a reduction in its cost and an increase in its statistical presence in a deck of cards (your deck can contain no more than 4 of the same card in many formats of magic, and in some formats 1 of. In both formats, cheaper mana cost cards have prevailed over more expensive ones).
To win the game, old Magic players relied on a few big spells, while new Magic players run multiple copies of many smaller spells.
As the formats became more and more competitive - especially in the last few years - this trend has intensified and accelerated. In the last few years the game has seen the introduction of what are essentially zero cost spells. These spells literally have a 0 in their cost, or they have an 'alternative casting cost.' For example, the player may pay 2 life (phyrexian mana, which we will come back to later), or may remove a card in your hand from the game to pay the cost of a spell (so you don't need a land card in play to use it...), or pay 0 for a spell this turn but if you don't pay 5 next turn you automatically lose the game.
Over time the game incentivized and trended towards 0 cost for maximum value. This understandably made game matches go quicker.
What this says about Magic and its fun-level is one thing, but what it says about the structure of games and therefore reality in general is another.
I think this may be one example of how any system with rules (Game) may tend towards least amount of cost for most amount of value. Readers will find this familiar - it is not unlike what is often described as 'the capitalistic death drive.' As I and others have written about elsewhere, both capitalism and magic are about turning a 0 into a not-0; pulling something from nothing; creating surplus value of code from a deficit, etc.
Another way of understanding this is that a game that does not optimize its move-sets for zero or near-zero efficiency will not survive the selection pressures / process. Occham's razor but for games. I theorize this could be based on the fact that this optimization allows for higher speed of play, more resolution of matches, and therefore and an overall more time to play more matches. This could mean more fun, or it could mean more practice, and the evolution part of our organism loves the meeting of fun and practice! In other words, the human brain - in the most inorganic, anti-subjective, and chemical sense - is tuned to and triggered by - addicted to even - processes that demonstrate efficiency trends towards zero. For these reasons, a competitive game with simpler and less costly ways of generating value and winning will likely interest the lizard brain more than a comparative one that does not check these boxes.
So, I think Magic the Gathering, this 90s Math-Magic game, hacks into Outside flows. Computer science, Math, Magic, Zero, 90s? It's all there (as usual).
This latent tendency within the game is captured by the actual fantasy story narratives of the game as well.
Creatures known as 'Phyrexians' - incredibly 90s Lovecraftian-Terminator Centobytes - are hellbent on 'compleating' or perfecting organisms by infecting them and turning them into agentless, soulless, melted-up bio-machines. A key word utilized in the Phyrexian narrative is 'process.' The end result is not what matters, the process of perfecting the body (in a Cartesian and Deleuzian-Guattarian sense) through mutilating it and fusing it with machine parts linked to a hive-mind is. These Phyrexian cards - no surprise here - often cost 0 mana and instead cost 'Phyrexian mana' which means the player can pay 2 of his life (players start with 20 life) instead of using a land card to produce mana.
The latent Accelerationist elements of the card game are expressed directly in the narrative.
As a cherry on top: Years ago - perhaps 5 or 6 at this point - a Nick Land audiobook had, apparently from the Youtube uploader, been associated with a wizard card from Magic the Gathering (the video had an image of the MTG card edited to reference Land...).
This is not to say MTG is accelerationist, or anything banal like that (though it is funny Nick Land - Land = Mana). More so it is to say that when things tend to come out on top in the 'game' of life, they tend to show up in and around the same crowd - computer science and solid math, zero, magic, the occult, efficiency, etc.
