Analog Game Studies

Within the design and study of games, it is common to view deckbuilding as an additional, contextual practice that sets up games but is not gameplay itself. This article argues for the inclusion of deckbuilding as a form of gameplay. Through the close play of the TCG On The Edge, one of the many games released shortly after massive hit Magic: The Gathering, the authors recognized that their aesthetic and affective engagements with the game happened most often during the deckbuilding process rather than in the mechanical operations of the rules in an explicit game of On The Edge. By paying close attention to the experiential components of gameplay, and reading carefully through both the game design and game studies literature surrounding card games, we argue that deckbuilding is a productive edge case through which we can produce a more expansive vision of where gameplay happens and how it is facilitated.