Politics and Games
I like games about politics. Some of my favorite games include GMT's Versailles 1919 and Churchill, Wherlegig's Pax Pamir 2nd Edition, and Hollandspiele's The Vote. However, I've found that I dislike games that are "political."
To be clear, I'm not meaning this in the sense that I don't like games that have a political point of view (I love those). I mean games where there's a second, political layer beyond the core of the game. Examples of this include Risk, Twilight Imperium, and, to a certain extent, Root. In these games, a core part of being good at the game is finding ways to encourage players to attack people who aren't you. This layer exists alongside or atop another set of systems that are more "game-y." It's not enough to be good at the underlying game, if you want to win, you have to also be good at playing the political game of being dangerous enough to not mess with but also not dangerous enough to gang up on.
You may be surprised by this, given that I am developing a very "political" game in the form of Hench. For me, the distinction is that the gameplay of Hench exists to enable the politics, rather than the politics being a layer atop the game. For example, in Hench, the game explicitly asks you to make deals to distribute Glory and has systems to enable this, rather than relying on agreements that exist, at some level, outside the game system. Sidereal Confluence and Diplomacy are two other games that I enjoy largely because the game is about the "political" level, rather than being about something else and having a politics layer on top.
I also enjoy a card game, often of the collectable variety. To establish my bona-fides there, I hosted the panel on Card Design at the Star Wars Unlimited Galactic Championship. I've played a great many games of Magic in my time, which finally brings us to the core idea of this post, which is about the growth of Commander (EDH) at the primary way in which people experience Magic
For people who aren't familiar with Magic, historically the primary way people engaged with the game was through 1 vs 1 games, which cannot feature "political" gameplay as a major feature. The game supported (poorly) other forms of play, including a 2 vs 2 format that I rather enjoyed (and will talk more about in another post). Commander, however, is a 1 vs 1 vs 1 vs 1 format that has a HUGE amount of political play. I don't particularly like Commander, but I've been trying to play some games it with my friends who do, in part to understand the appeal.
In my mind, there are 4 possible reasons (along with linear combinations of the above) why Commander has become the default way to play Magic. Specifically - 1) Corporate/Financial 2) Personal Expression 3) Interaction and 4) Politics. To delve into each in turn-
The Corporate / Financial explanation would posit that either Wizards had cultivated the format in top-down way, or that from a bottom-up fiscal motivation, it's cheaper or easier for players to get access to the cards. This mostly exists as a straw-man to be knocked over, because, as a format which doesn't rotate, it's more expensive for players to get into (older cards are more expensive than newer cards) and it makes less money for Wizards than rotating formats (because Commander players don't need new cards as much as Limited or Standard players, so they have less incentive to buy card packs).
The personal expression explanation would note that because of way that Commander decks are built (featuring a Commander card), it's both much more possible to support weirder strategies AND you can put more of "yourself" into the game. It's one thing to talk about "my goblin deck," but, in general, most Magic decks are kind of hard to pin down exactly who you are and what exactly they're doing. For example, an Dimir Control list in standard will feature a bunch of cards to stop your opponent from taking game actions, but you're kind of an amorphous wizard-person doing evil-wizard-y things and making use of various efficient creatures. In comparison to a Tasha, the Witch Queen deck where you'll be doing basically the same kind of thing, but you're explicitly that evil wizard.
I'm not 100% on this explanation, largely because many other games on the market have an explicit player stand-in (Leaders in SWU, Heroes in Flesh and Blood, etc.) and I don't see them systematically outperforming games without that feature (Magic, Lorecana). A kind of side element to this discussion is that in general, in Commander, you're more able to build your personal tableau of stuff and see your "engine" happen. That said, there are lots of (quite good) tableau-builder board games, and I don't see Terraforming Mars (for example) have quite the same level of cultural influence as Commander.
The interaction explanation relies on the fact that playing with more people is generally more fun! People have friends, and they want things to do with their friends, rather than exclusively hanging out in pairs or pairing off for activities. I'm very sympathetic to this reasoning, and I remember fondly big, multiplayer games of Magic with my younger brother and cousins. However, 4 is a very specific player count, and I would be curious why you don't see a more flexible system evolve. I can't think of an obvious reason why Commander wouldn't work with 3 or 5, for example, so the fact that the game hasn't developed that way is interesting to me and maybe suggests there's something else going on.
This leaves explanation 4, that people actually really like the political aspect of the game. A game being political tends to reduce the returns on game skill and game power. For example, if you're doing well in Munchkin other people will drag you down to their level. So players of differing levels of skill can have similar chances of winning. In general, making sure that the weaker player can sometimes defeat the stronger is a good element for a game to have, because it helps to bring in newer players. That said, I feel "political" systems are generally a bad way to do this, both because it encourages bad feelings between players ("I didn't lose because of chance, but because PERSON made a stupid decision" feels less good to me) and because it encourages play that is fundamentally kind of weird, in that you want to do well, but not TOO well, or not TOO well too loudly.
Given some of the secret (for an extremely small value of secret) projects I'm working on, I'm hopeful the answer isn't pure politics, but life is full of interesting, counter-intuitive elements.