Please hold while we load your cart...
It feels kind of odd submitting an article related to a game I hardly play any more. I have recently sold off my Magic collection, and have hardly played at all in the last few months. I am not under the delusion that I will be gone for good... But Magic is slated to be on the back burner for quite some time to come. And I'm done with collecting for good. But old habits die hard - and despite paying a lot less attention to metagames, strategies and decks, I have still been following my favourite sites and writers in an early morning ritual I seem to be struggling to get out of. The departure of Rizzo should make this easier, as one of the most consistent providers of quality content goes away.
I was quite surprised when I swung by StarCity on Friday to discover that Rizzo had quit Magic. That lad just seemed to care so much and have so much fun with Magic that I think a lot of us were startled by his disappearance. However, I got a much bigger shock on Monday when I read Toby Wachter's article on the subject of Rizzo.
I had already felt like I should submit something to mark Rizzo's departure, and Toby convinced me that I had to say something. It was shocking to see a fairly respected Magic writer whining about Rizzo and the way news of his departure was received.
I suppose Toby's submission was a reaction to the Ferrett's article"Rizzo Died For Your Sins." Certainly the title was a little over the top - but I don't think Rizzo gets put up as a martyr. I don't see the parallel to Kurt Cobain either. Kurt Cobain gained in popular acceptance because he was dead. People who didn't give a damn about his music loved it a year later because mourning fans called it poetry. Do people who hated Wakefield articles start to love them"posthumously"? Will Rizzo's past material get a wider audience because of his disappearance?
No.
Does looking for the next Rizzo and a continuation to his legacy mean that the Ferrett wants a carbon copy? I doubt it. What that article was asking for was for someone to step up and contribute - to share their passion for the game and to inspire other people.
I think Toby's misunderstanding of Rizzo's importance (and that of Jamie Wakefield) is epitomized in the following quote:
"How much has Magic grown because of a Wakefield article? Has anyone ever bought more cards because of one of his articles? Maybe. On the other hand, how many cards has a Kai Budde or Jon Finkel sold? The allure of achieving real success helps the community. It's simple math: they are successful, people want to follow their example, they PTQ hard and buy lots of cards, which generates revenue, which keeps Magic afloat."
Why on earth should we judge someone's importance by his or her marketing impact? That is a Wizards issue, not a community issue. Are good players the ones who should be respected within the community? Not necessarily.
First, you need to consider that there will always be a Kai or Finkel. Magic skill is relative, and there will always be a best player. If professional Magic were played strictly by lobotomized chimps, there would still be a best lobotomized chimp. And Wizards would use them to promote the game and sell cards.
There will always be a Finkel or a Budde to market the game. It's a given, and it has very little to do with who that person actually is. But will there always be a Wakefield or a Rizzo? There are many (perhaps too many) daily Magic sites out there, and many writers contributing content. And there is a lot more noise than there is signal. How many of those writers do you find consistently entertaining? How many of them bridge the gap between what's important to the tourney player and what is important to the casual player? How many Magic writers make Magic actually seem fun?
Also, many writers have a narrow focus and therefore a generally narrow following. Oscar Tan has written some prime material on The Deck, but that doesn't matter much to those who don't give a damn about Type One - or even Type One players who are sick of The Deck.
Anthony Alongi is a very popular writer, but his articles do little for those who have abandoned multiplayer Magic for various reasons.
Likewise, an article by Zvi may be thoroughly informative about competitive decks and the thought process that goes into making and playing them, but that does little for your everyday casual Magic player (Or the player who can't - or won't - afford three dollars a month.)
A Magic writer who speaks to everybody is a very rare thing. Pros may have scoffed at Wakefield's 62-card decks, but I'll wager a good number of them read his reports. He bridged the gap between the tourney player and the more casual player. Even if you didn't give a damn about Type 2, you would read his T2 tourney report because it was a good read (as long as you skipped the Asheron's Call paragraphs).
And with Rizzo, it was very similar. I never got better at Magic or at a specific deck thanks to Rizzo. He never improved my play skills or gave me an inspiring deck idea. I seldom if ever agreed with his stance on various community issues.
And he was my favourite Magic writer.
The bottom line is that people aren't making a big deal about Rizzo leaving because he was magic's saviour; he wasn't. People will miss him because his articles were a consistently good read, whether you cared about or agreed with the topic or not.
I don't mean this as a personal attack on Toby; I haven't read a lot of his stuff, but this is the first time I've ever really had issue with anything he said. But I think he has missed something along the way. Maybe there should be a statue to Frank Kusumoto somewhere, and Rob Hahn's work is certainly a landmark in Magic's history. But we live in an era of daily Magic content, a great deal of it dry and uninspiring and/or misleading, and which generally caters only to a subset of the Magic players available to read it.
Above all else, JFR represented one good Magic article you would get to read every week, whatever the topic. It didn't matter whether he wrote about the format you liked or the issues important to you - because that's not why you read his articles in the first place.
Besides, Toby may be right in that there are several writers out there who work hard and actually give a damn about the game. The distinction is: how many of them can make you give a damn about the game? Not many. And that's what the Ferrett is (or should be) looking for, and it is what people will miss about John Friggin' Rizzo.
Regards,
Mark Acheson
markacheson@hotmail.com
formerly Nevyn on bdominia
