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You've seen all the drama go down in shows like Survivor, Top Chef, America's Next Top Model, RuPaul's Drag Race, whatever your favorite reality competition TV show is. Now imagine what those shows would be like with Magic: The Gathering players. That's something you would tune in for every week, right?

This basic structure was used for the inaugural Great Designer Search in 2006 from Magic: The Gathering. To solve the problem of a shortage of game designers at Wizards of the Coast, MTG veteran Mark Rosewater had the idea of bringing in new talent using the same basic structure of competition shows. 

On the Magic: The Gathering website, Rosewater wrote, "My wife Lora and I watch a lot of television, including a decent amount of reality television. There's a subgenre of reality television where a show collects people of a certain skill and tests them at the skill to find who's best at it. What if we did something like that for Magic designers?"

Rosewater continued, "One of the biggest challenges was narrowing it down from the thousands who entered it to a manageable number for the main part of it. I ended up creating three tests: an essay test, a multiple-choice skills test, and a card-design test. I used those to narrow the field down to sixteen contestants, then down to eight from there."

The program was a success for Magic: The Gathering. Rosewater noted that "the top three contestants for each of the three iterations of The Great Designer Search got to work at Wizards (although not always in R&D). Seven of the nine have gone on to lead the design of at least one Magic set, and all nine have served on multiple Magic design teams."

But is it something that Magic: The Gathering would ever do again? Rosewater wrote that while the program was "wildly successful," it was also a lot to organize. Still, he remains hopeful about bringing them back in the future. "They're a lot of work and present a number of unique challenges, but it's hard to argue with the results."

Whether you are a Commander player, a regular at your local game shop's FNM event, or simply love collecting Magic: The Gathering cards, you've landed in the right place. From Universes Beyond to the furthest reaches of the Magic Multiverse, we've got you covered here at Popverse. 

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