Get Off My Lawn is a series of articles from guest contributor Ben “ObiWein” Weiner. We will watch his career with great interest.
I think I may be a Boomer Gamer.
Some background…
I started playing Magic the Gathering in 1994 just as Unlimited was ending and Revised was starting its print run. I had dropped my first car off at a Jiffy Lube for an oil change and walked across the street to a Hobby Town USA with my friend that was along for the ride. The lady working there asked us if we had heard of Magic (we had not) and if we’d be interested in trying it out. She described it to us as Dungeons and Dragons, but on playing cards. A couple starters and a handful of boosters each and we were in.
Our group of friends played at varying levels of competitive play from the kitchen table, through local stores, up to large city wide events and, eventually, qualifier events when the Magic Pro Tour started. We even had one person get onto the Pro Tour and travel around the world for events.
Eventually Magic took a backseat to the Star Wars game published by Decipher, for which I watched a play test group friend make it to the top eight of a World Championship event. That game gave way to the Wizards of the Coast Star Wars game, for which I qualified for the 2003 World Championships. I went 8-0-1 through Constructed and Draft formats to get into the top 8. Unfortunately lost in the first round of the top eight to the ultimate winner of the championship that year.
Shortly after that World Championship in 2004, moving to a new city made play testing with my old group difficult since tools like Tabletop Simulator were not yet available. Life also caught up to me as I met my now wife, and eventually we started a family together.
Then, during the Covid-19 pandemic, a friend introduced me to Arena. That quickly became a nice way to kill time when we were locked in our homes. After starting to play Arena, I made a few posts and comments on Reddit. Quickly the trolls came out and called me a Boomer, which seemed a bit odd. I had always associated the Boomer tag with the Baby Boomer generation and the “OK Boomer” as something a younger person would say to the older out of touch recipient of the snide comment.
Going from that sentiment, am I out of touch? I always have and still enjoy playing games. Certainly there are pieces of the CCG world that have changed in the past nearly twenty years. Are there simply aspects of it that I am just out of touch with now?
Some obvious ones such as people not playing for ante anymore seem obvious and fine changes with no real impact on gaming other than the banning of very early Magic cards that are directly tied to that game concept. There are other things that I would not have expected to change or certainly not be as different as I remember.
Trading is significantly different now…
Avenues for getting and ingesting content are different as well…
Card sleeves are different…
Deck boxes…
Playmats…
Game stores…
Play formats…
Tournaments…
Being a part of the CCG World very close to the beginning and taking about 18 years away from the game has given me an interesting perspective on Star Wars Unlimited and card games in general. It is a perspective that I figure might be interesting to share with others. Of course I am not necessarily unique in this viewpoint and many reading this will have had similar experiences.
Others will simply see these musings as being out of touch and continue to call me a Boomer, to which I will smile and then say, “Get off my lawn.”
Ben is a technology professional by day. He has been an avid gamer for 40 plus years spanning everything from Dungeons and Dragons, board games, and through multiple past and present collectible card games. His non-gaming spare time is spent with his family and playing guitar. Warning: Do not play Jenga for money with this person.
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