Designing Magic: The Gathering's Amonkhet: Egyptianness and the Limitations of Cultural Resonance

Representations of culture on the card plane are by no means a recent practice. However, the current technologies of card design in Magic: The Gathering [1] have codified cultural representation into a discrete set of processes and tools that are both agile and expansive. This paper argues that the use of resonance as a conceptual tool has led to the development of representational design practices that allow for the wide-scale codification of culture into game mechanics. Further, resonance is theorized as both a design orientation and tool which is inherently skewed towards reproducing cultural stereotypes and perpetuating practices of colonial representation. The concept of resonance is then explored through the vantage point of Magic design in Amonkhet, the game's version of ancient Egypt, along with its resulting core design architecture. The purpose of this paper is to reposition resonance at the center of card design analysis as a critique.