MTG Head Designer Hits Back Against Anti-DEI Comments

Posted by By our-little-miss-is-home February 28, 2025 63 Views 5 Min Read
MTG Head Designer Hits Back Against Anti-DEI Comments
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Summary

  • Head MTG designer Mark Rosewater has responded to anti-diversity sentiments among some fans.
  • He makes it clear that MTG will not change course, even as others do.
  • He also says that representation is “so important” to many fans.

Head Magic: the Gathering designer Mark Rosewater has responded to ‘anti-DEI’ sentiments that have been circulating online. Here, Rosewater defends the idea of creating and designing diverse characters for the lore, arguing that it is “so important to people”.

As reported by Polygon, this comes from a roundtable interview at 2025 MagicCon. During this talk, Rosewater spoke positively about representing different backgrounds and groups in MTG, making the point that it’s important for others to feel included in the game.

This is the second time this month that Rosewater has defended diversity in the game

MTG Samut, the Driving Force card with the art in the background.

“One of the cool things about Magic is that Magic is what you want it to be,” Rosewater explains. “[…] You choose what your deck is and your deck gets to be a reflection of you in a way that few other games really can match. I mean, D&D is the only other game I can think of that really has that amount of customizability to your experience.

“Part of it is: I want to play elves! I want to play goblins! Part of it is: What elements of gameplay do I want? But part of it also is: Hey, I want to express who I am and what I am. And one of the things that’s so important is who you are as a person, the things you represent.”

Rosewater also says that he has received a lot of positive feedback based on the diverse cast, using Alesha, a trans woman, as an example. “The amount of mail I get… I mean, it’s so important to people. I talk to people constantly and it really, really means something to people.”

His comments at MagicCon came after an exchange between Rosewater and a fan over on Tumblr earlier this month. Here, the designer passionately defended having diverse characters in MTG, after someone argued that the way they were written “cheapens” the stories.

“Imagine, after years of not seeing yourself [in media] ever, you finally see someone that looks like you, but nothing about the character rings remotely true,” he explains, using the example of him living as a Jewish man in the US. “They don’t sound like you, they don’t act like you, the facts about their day-to-day life are just wrong. It’s clear whoever wrote the character didn’t truly understand the lived experience of the character, so the character feels fake.

“Our move towards diversity is just us trying to better reflect the world and the people in it. We’re trying to do to everyone else what a certain portion of people get every day without ever having to think about it.”

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Rosewater also argues that MTG isn’t making a character’s background and identity central to their story, and it only feels that way because fans aren’t used to it. He uses the example of a kiss between a queer couple standing out more than a kiss between a heterosexual couple, simply because we don’t see as much of it in media.

“How you live your life is represented constantly, everywhere,” he continues. “Why isn’t over-representing your experience at the expense of everyone else’s ‘pushing’ it? Why is media only being the experience of those in power the ‘proper way’?”

All in all, it seems that MTG will not be changing its plans based on pressure online. Rosewater’s full Tumblr post on the matter is well worth reading, as he was eager to start a dialogue about the topic.

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