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Richard Garfield

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Template:Short description Template:For Template:Infobox person Richard Channing Garfield (born June 26, 1963) is an American mathematician, inventor, and game designer. Garfield created Magic: The Gathering, which is considered to be the first collectible card game (CCG). Magic debuted in 1993 and its success spawned many imitations.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Garfield oversaw the successful growth of Magic and followed it with other game designs.<ref name="Varney">Varney, Allen. "Richard Garfield Template:Webarchive." The Escapist. 10 JULY 2007. Retrieved 27 June 2013.</ref> Included in these are Keyforge, Netrunner, BattleTech(CCG), Vampire: The Eternal Struggle, Star Wars Trading Card Game, The Great Dalmuti, Artifact and the board game RoboRally. He also created a variation of the card game Hearts called Complex Hearts.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Garfield first became passionate about games when he played the roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons,<ref name="vasel 05" /> so he designed Magic decks to be customizable like roleplaying characters.<ref name="Garfield Magic" /> Garfield and Magic are both in the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame.<ref name="Hall of Fame">List of Winners, Origins Game Fair. Retrieved 22 June 2013.</ref>

Early life, family and education

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Garfield was born in Philadelphia and spent his childhood in many locations throughout the world as a result of his father's work in architecture. His family eventually settled in Oregon when he was twelve. Garfield is the great-great-grandson of U.S. President James A. Garfield and his grand-uncle Samuel Fay invented the paper clip.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He is also the nephew of Fay Jones, who, already an established artist, illustrated one Magic card for him.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

While Garfield always had an interest in puzzles and games, his passion was kick-started when he was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons.<ref name="vasel 05">Template:Cite web</ref> Garfield designed his first game when he was 13.<ref name="polkonline">Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1985,<ref>26.5248</ref> Garfield received a Bachelor of Science degree in computational mathematics. After college, he joined Bell Laboratories, but soon after decided to continue his education and attended the University of Pennsylvania, studying combinatorial mathematics for his PhD.<ref name="vasel 05" /> Garfield studied under Herbert Wilf and earned a Ph.D. in combinatorial mathematics from Penn in 1993. His thesis was On the Residue Classes of Combinatorial Families of Numbers.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Shortly thereafter, he became a Visiting Professor<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> of mathematics at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.<ref name="HG">Template:Cite book</ref>

Game design career

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Precursors and development of Magic: the Gathering

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While searching for a publisher for RoboRally, which he designed in 1985,<ref name="vasel 05" /> Wizards of the Coast began talking to Garfield through Mike Davis, but Wizards was still a new company and felt the game would be too expensive to produce.<ref name="designers">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp Peter Adkison of Wizards of the Coast expressed interest in a fast-playing game with minimal equipment, something that would be popular at a game convention.<ref name = "Garfield Magic">Template:Cite web</ref> Adkison asked if Garfield could develop a game with lower production costs than RoboRally, with the idea of making such a game more portable and easy to bring to conventions; Garfield thought of an idea that came from combining a card game with collecting baseball cards and spent a week creating a full game from that rough idea.<ref name="designers"/>Template:Rp

Garfield had been creating card games since at least 1982, starting with a card game called Five Magics that was inspired by Cosmic Encounter, and his work with this new card game built on his existing older prototypes.<ref name="designers"/>Template:Rp Garfield thus combined ideas from two previous games to invent the first trading card game, Magic: The Gathering.<ref name = "Garfield Magic"/> At first, Garfield and Adkison called the game Manaclash and worked on it in secret during a lawsuit filed by Palladium Games against Wizards. They were able to protect the game's intellectual property by using the shell company Garfield Games.<ref name="designers"/>Template:Rp Garfield began designing Magic as a Penn graduate student. Garfield's playtesters were mostly fellow Penn students.<ref name="elias 02">Template:Cite web</ref>

Wizards of the Coast

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Magic: The Gathering launched in 1993. Playtesters began independently developing expansion packs, which were then passed to Garfield for his final edit.<ref name="elias 02" /> In June 1994, Garfield left academia to join Wizards of the Coast as a full-time game designer.<ref name="vasel 05" /> Garfield managed the hit game wisely, balancing player experience with business needs and allowing other designers to contribute creatively to the game.<ref name = "Varney"/> With his direction, Wizards established a robust tournament system for Magic, something that was new to hobby gaming.<ref name = "Varney"/>

Wizards finally released Garfield's RoboRally in 1994.<ref name="designers"/>Template:Rp Wizards published Garfield's Vampire: The Masquerade-based CCG Jyhad in 1994, but changed the name to Vampire: The Eternal Struggle in 1995 to avoid offense to Muslims.<ref name="designers"/>Template:Rp Netrunner (1996) was Garfield's CCG based on Cyberpunk 2020, where he included an element that made it an asymmetrical game, so that the two players each had entirely different cards, abilities, and goals.<ref name="designers"/>Template:Rp Wizards published the BattleTech Collectible Card Game in 1996, based on a design by Garfield.<ref name="designers"/>Template:Rp Peter Adkison was developing a Dungeons & Dragons MMORPG based on a design from Garfield and Skaff Elias, but left Wizards in December 2000 after Hasbro sold the D&D computer rights and cancelled the project.<ref name="designers"/>Template:Rp

In 1999, Garfield was inducted into the Adventure Gaming Hall of Fame alongside Magic.<ref name="Hall of Fame"/> He was a primary play tester for the Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition bookset, released by Wizards in 2000. He eventually left Wizards to become an independent game designer.<ref name="vasel 05" />

As an independent designer

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He still sporadically contributes to Magic: The Gathering.<ref name="ravnica">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="innistrad">Template:Cite web</ref> More recently, he has created the board games Pecking Order (2006)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Rocketville (2006). The latter was published by Avalon Hill, a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He has shifted more of his attention to video games, having worked on the design and development of Schizoid and Spectromancer as part of Three Donkeys LLC.<ref name="vasel 05" /> He has been a game designer and consultant for companies including Electronic Arts and Microsoft.<ref name="HG"/>

Garfield taught a class titled "The Characteristics of Games" at the University of Washington.<ref name="HG"/> It is now taught as part of the University of Washington's Certificate in Game Design.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Games designed

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File:Spiel 2015 Essen - Der Freitag - Treasure Hunter (21879288099).jpg
A game of Treasure Hunter in progress

A partial list of games designed by Garfield:

Card games:

Collectible card games:

Board games:

Other games:

References

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Further reading

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