4 ms·

Speaking of CCG's, any collectors who happen to be coders? I haven't met too many at the local shops I stop by so I always figured collecting cards wasn't very

by smaili 8y ago

Speaking of CCG's, any collectors who happen to be coders? I haven't met too many at the local shops I stop by so I always figured collecting cards wasn't very popular amongst engineers.

lbotos 8y ago
I'm in NYC, a Lot of MTG players are Developers/Programmers/SREs/Webmasters etc.
- busterarm 8y ago
  Same but they'll almost never admit to it at work. That, essentially, is the issue. If you don't already know they play Magic, you won't know they play Magic. Gambling, in most traditional forms, is seen as low-class and stupid, while in reality many, many people in this industry are compulsive gamblers.
  - paulie_a 8y ago
    It's called cryptocurrency.
    - busterarm 8y ago
      That is what I was alluding to.
  - kasey_junk 8y ago
    That doesn’t match my experience at all. From backgammon to poker to sports gambling I’ve experienced way more positive bias towards gambling in tech jobs than negative.
    - naravara 8y ago
      Ditto. Maybe it's because I work in data science though. Stats nerds are in their element with games of chance.
tannhauser23 8y ago
Woah really? At my company (and others, at least according to my friends), MTG is really big among software engineers. Look around for sure - you'll find plenty of people like us!
saghm 8y ago
My company has a number of MTG players at our office. We've done a number of booster box drafts, and one co-worker even ordered a proxied Vintage cube online so we can draft whenever we want without needing to buy new boxes (plus, it's the only chance the younger people like me will ever get a chance to play with stuff from the first few sets that are now way too expensive to actually play with even if you are willing to shell out the money)
JonathanMerklin 8y ago
I collected the 1996 Netrunner CCG for years; last year I found someone who was more or less selling off their complete collection (I didn't have any of the 2.0 cards or the majority of the 2.2 cards, and was also missing a handful of the 2.1 rares - inheriting a couple boxes of all the miscellaneous spares was fine by me if it meant a 100% complete binder) so that very expensive chapter of my life has closed. I also went out and finished my "first TCG appearence of the original 151" Pokémon collection with one of my first few paychecks after graduating (had to shell out the money for Charizard and a couple others that were never in my collection from childhood). I really wanted to retroactively declare myself the coolest kid on the playground at recess, otherwise what was all that work for? :) Sadly, while card games were an important part of my life growing up, a lot of mental switches flipped over the last year or so and I honestly regret spending so much money and time in the card game world over the entire first part of my life. In 2012 Android: Netrunner introduced me to the LCG model and made me realize that the CCG model was exploitative and a terrible use of my money (obvious in retrospect, but when you're in the thick of it, you try and rationalize it, you know?). Then, working towards my degree for a few years after that kept me out of the tournament ecosystem for so long that I found myself not wanting to go back - there were simply more productive uses of my brain cycles than deck construction and playing games. I know they say "time enjoyed wasted is not wasted time" but if I would have programmed or learned a few languages or focused on competition math or read classical literature or learned to cook or any number of other things in that first 18 years, I'd be so much better off [1]. It's possible many coders feel the same way, and that's why you're not seeing them. [1] In fact, should parenting be in my future, I don't think I'd let my kids have nearly as much post-pubescent "non-skill-building" fun as I was allowed to have; competition for income is fierce and it's only going to get worse.
- lmm 8y ago
  > I know they say "time enjoyed wasted is not wasted time" but if I would have programmed or learned a few languages or focused on competition math or read classical literature or learned to cook or any number of other things in that first 18 years, I'd be so much better off [1]. Better off in what sense? If we're talking about skills that apply to the rest of life, I honestly feel like deck optimisation was much better preparation for a real-world career (where the problem scope is never fully defined, the measure of success always involves an element of randomness, and hidden interactions abound) than competition maths was. And while it exercises a different kind of imagination and storytelling, I'd argue that games in a shared-world fiction can give a more intense practice of the things that classical literature give you.
kriro 8y ago
I'm a very avid boardgamer (>100 games stored in a dedicated room) but CCGs never really interested me. I played some MTG way back but it was always very obvious that those games are a money sink. I like LCGs a lot more because you know what you get and can plan. For CCGs I always ended up buying a deck to play instead of "collecting". I tried again with Star Wars Destiny and enjoy the game a lot but I just can't bring myself to buy lots of booster displays just to get the stuff I want. My rational brain simply refuses to do it. I can buy a great board game for less than a booster display or I can buy a cool but expensive game for less than two booster displays (Gloomhaven). And I can get the feel of a CCG from any of the great LCGs if I want that (Netrunner, L5R etc.). I get that in a CCG you get more carddrops and boom the entire meta shifts etc. but it's the corner of board/card gaming that interests me least by a wide margin.
Mikushi 8y ago
We have a solid group going at our office playing MTG, Epic and Star Realms. We have weekly meet ups and do per release drafts of MTG. Interestingly at the shop I go to play I'm the only one with an engineering background.
mcv 8y ago
Back when I was in university (during the 1990s) everybody in the CS department played Magic: the Gathering. There were always people playing in the coffee room, we held plenty of tournaments.

by smaili 8y ago

Speaking of CCG's, any collectors who happen to be coders? I haven't met too many at the local shops I stop by so I always figured collecting cards wasn't very popular amongst engineers.

lbotos 8y ago

I'm in NYC, a Lot of MTG players are Developers/Programmers/SREs/Webmasters etc.

busterarm 8y ago
Same but they'll almost never admit to it at work. That, essentially, is the issue. If you don't already know they play Magic, you won't know they play Magic. Gambling, in most traditional forms, is seen as low-class and stupid, while in reality many, many people in this industry are compulsive gamblers.
- paulie_a 8y ago
  It's called cryptocurrency.
  - busterarm 8y ago
    That is what I was alluding to.
- kasey_junk 8y ago
  That doesn’t match my experience at all. From backgammon to poker to sports gambling I’ve experienced way more positive bias towards gambling in tech jobs than negative.
  - naravara 8y ago
    Ditto. Maybe it's because I work in data science though. Stats nerds are in their element with games of chance.

tannhauser23 8y ago

Woah really? At my company (and others, at least according to my friends), MTG is really big among software engineers. Look around for sure - you'll find plenty of people like us!

saghm 8y ago

My company has a number of MTG players at our office. We've done a number of booster box drafts, and one co-worker even ordered a proxied Vintage cube online so we can draft whenever we want without needing to buy new boxes (plus, it's the only chance the younger people like me will ever get a chance to play with stuff from the first few sets that are now way too expensive to actually play with even if you are willing to shell out the money)

JonathanMerklin 8y ago

I collected the 1996 Netrunner CCG for years; last year I found someone who was more or less selling off their complete collection (I didn't have any of the 2.0 cards or the majority of the 2.2 cards, and was also missing a handful of the 2.1 rares - inheriting a couple boxes of all the miscellaneous spares was fine by me if it meant a 100% complete binder) so that very expensive chapter of my life has closed. I also went out and finished my "first TCG appearence of the original 151" Pokémon collection with one of my first few paychecks after graduating (had to shell out the money for Charizard and a couple others that were never in my collection from childhood). I really wanted to retroactively declare myself the coolest kid on the playground at recess, otherwise what was all that work for? :) Sadly, while card games were an important part of my life growing up, a lot of mental switches flipped over the last year or so and I honestly regret spending so much money and time in the card game world over the entire first part of my life. In 2012 Android: Netrunner introduced me to the LCG model and made me realize that the CCG model was exploitative and a terrible use of my money (obvious in retrospect, but when you're in the thick of it, you try and rationalize it, you know?). Then, working towards my degree for a few years after that kept me out of the tournament ecosystem for so long that I found myself not wanting to go back - there were simply more productive uses of my brain cycles than deck construction and playing games. I know they say "time enjoyed wasted is not wasted time" but if I would have programmed or learned a few languages or focused on competition math or read classical literature or learned to cook or any number of other things in that first 18 years, I'd be so much better off [1]. It's possible many coders feel the same way, and that's why you're not seeing them. [1] In fact, should parenting be in my future, I don't think I'd let my kids have nearly as much post-pubescent "non-skill-building" fun as I was allowed to have; competition for income is fierce and it's only going to get worse.

lmm 8y ago
> I know they say "time enjoyed wasted is not wasted time" but if I would have programmed or learned a few languages or focused on competition math or read classical literature or learned to cook or any number of other things in that first 18 years, I'd be so much better off [1]. Better off in what sense? If we're talking about skills that apply to the rest of life, I honestly feel like deck optimisation was much better preparation for a real-world career (where the problem scope is never fully defined, the measure of success always involves an element of randomness, and hidden interactions abound) than competition maths was. And while it exercises a different kind of imagination and storytelling, I'd argue that games in a shared-world fiction can give a more intense practice of the things that classical literature give you.

kriro 8y ago

I'm a very avid boardgamer (>100 games stored in a dedicated room) but CCGs never really interested me. I played some MTG way back but it was always very obvious that those games are a money sink. I like LCGs a lot more because you know what you get and can plan. For CCGs I always ended up buying a deck to play instead of "collecting". I tried again with Star Wars Destiny and enjoy the game a lot but I just can't bring myself to buy lots of booster displays just to get the stuff I want. My rational brain simply refuses to do it. I can buy a great board game for less than a booster display or I can buy a cool but expensive game for less than two booster displays (Gloomhaven). And I can get the feel of a CCG from any of the great LCGs if I want that (Netrunner, L5R etc.). I get that in a CCG you get more carddrops and boom the entire meta shifts etc. but it's the corner of board/card gaming that interests me least by a wide margin.

Mikushi 8y ago

We have a solid group going at our office playing MTG, Epic and Star Realms. We have weekly meet ups and do per release drafts of MTG. Interestingly at the shop I go to play I'm the only one with an engineering background.

mcv 8y ago

Back when I was in university (during the 1990s) everybody in the CS department played Magic: the Gathering. There were always people playing in the coffee room, we held plenty of tournaments.