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Full audio recording of Richard Garfield’s Q&A with the Chaos Agents community on the occasion of the launch of Chaos Agents’ private alpha. Enjoy!

A Q&A session with Richard Garfield covering the reasons he believes that Magic: The Gathering fans should be excited about Chaos Agents.

“We have been overwhelmed by the response to the Alpha announcement,” said Arka Ray, president and CTO at Popularium, in a statement. “The number of players who want to join the alpha and experience Richard’s vision has been over 20 times more than we anticipated.

We are finally here! After months of intense development, testing, playtesting, eager anticipation, the moment has finally arrived — the first official Chaos Agents Alpha version 1.9.3.1 is LIVE and ready for action!

December 20, 2024 - Full patch notes for Chaos Agents build 1.9.3, including automated Trials, quickmatches, and many other improvements.

“You own a copy of the game to the extent that you used to own a disc that you could go and buy,” Ray says. “The goal from day one was to build Chaos Agents in a way where we could essentially promise our players that regardless of whether we are around, we are supporting the official servers or not, you will be able to play the game.”

Three decades later, can Garfield repeat this success? With Popularium, a new gaming studio founded by Garfield and three other industry veterans (Jon Bankard, Skaff Elias, and Arka Ray) he is about to find out as he launches the game Chaos Agents. Instead of being set in a fantasy world, this one exists in a space-opera-esque science fiction world, a kind of mish-mash of some of the more celestial Marvel comics but also at home with the texture of Larry Niven’s “Known Space” shared stories and novels.

The first Chaos Agents World Championship took place at Gen Con in August 2024 - see the highlights here!

June 23, 2024 - Chaos Agents patch notes: Automated rewards, improved Attack algorithm, end-match improvements.

September 18, 2024 - Full patch notes for Chaos Agents build 1.9.22, including updated leaderboards, Agent details view, and many other improvements.

An exciting clip that showcases the process for developing unique heroes. Viewers take a journey through the creative process of developing unique and globally recognizable heroes. From the initial concept and character design to the development of their backstories, abilities, and special powers, viewers will gain a deep understanding of the dedication and skill required to create compelling game characters.

This clip takes viewers on a journey through the vast and mysterious universe inhabited by the Chaos Agents. Through stunning visuals and imaginative storytelling, the clip explores some of the different races of the Firmament that make up this diverse and complex universe.

Richard Garfield remembers the magic of the early days of Magic: The Gathering. The creator of the iconic card game recalled how there was a period of time when people didn’t have access to perfect information about which Magic cards and decks were the best.

“The nice thing about our industry is that it’s a very kind industry,” Bankard said. “All of our friends are out there helping us connect to people, friends of friends, and all of that is very collaborative and wonderful. It’s a big change from the big companies I’ve worked at in the past in just how much all of these indie studios are trying to help each other out.”

“We’re ready to expand to pre-alpha playtest through our new Chaos Broker Trainees – as they are better known,” said Garfield. “These playtesters have been selected from thousands of applicants eager to get their first taste of the Chaos Agents universe. We’re embarking on quite an adventure and Skaff and I are excited by where we’re headed.”

“The funding will help us develop, market and launch the Chaos Agents public alpha in the summer,” Ray told GamesIndustry.biz. “So far, we have been building with a core team of game developers, this funding will help us expand the team to bring in more support for managing our growing community.

“It will also help support development efforts for the key remaining features that the community is asking for before the Alpha launch, and help launch the first pre-release competitive tournaments for Chaos Agents.”

As names go, Chaos Agents might seem a little vague. However, there’s nothing vague about Popularium Games’ ambitious plans for this distinctive upcoming free-to-play strategy game. This bold hybrid of auto battler and battle royale aims to offer a novel experience, where players master their own uniquely generated characters.

Battle royale titles are known for their mass combats, where only one player can walk away victorious, while auto battlers have players select strategies that their units will then carry out without their direct input. Both genres are titanic features of the video game landscape, but never before have the two met quite like this.

Since bursting onto the scene in the mid-1990s, Magic the Gathering has become one of the most popular games of all time, with millions of players collecting cards to battle each other in an imaginary fantasy realm. But Magic’s early success came with a problem: the price of the game’s most powerful and rare cards surged along with its popularity. Eventually, Magic’s creators worried that the game would become too expensive and was at risk of becoming a short-lived fad. So, how do you pop a bubble in collectibles without completely alienating collectors? In this episode, we speak with Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic the Gathering, and Arka Ray, a long-time game developer at Microsoft who’s now CEO of Richard’s new gaming studio, Popularium. They talk about the surprising parallels between MTG and central banking, what they’ve learned from Magic, and how they’re applying those lessons to Chaos Agents, Popularium’s first new gaming launch.

Chaos Agents the latest title from Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield, is entering its public alpha phase. Players can test their skills in the new title that blends tabletop games with auto-battlers and battle royales this weekend at GenCon.

In Chaos Agents, players will coach and power up their globally unique superhero to victory against other foes. The game should feel familiar to tabletop enthusiasts as well as gamers. It takes concepts Garfield developed through his career — particularly Magic: The Gathering and Keyforge — and blends them with a free-for-all auto-battler format.

February 12, 2024 — What kind of logic do Chaos Agents use to carry out your directives during a Chaos Battle? Or is it all simply chaos and madness? Learn how order leads to Chaos as we deep-dive into the AI-powered mind of a Chaos Agent.

January 27, 2024 — The Chaos Agents dev team wanted to give you an inside look into the many trials and tribulations along the exciting journey to shipping v1.8.6, while also providing you with a classic example of how software development, despite best intentions and efforts, can sometimes devolve into a domino of causes and effects that, while being painful for us devs, can provide wonderful entertainment for the rest of the community. So grab your popcorn and get ready for a ride!

The Red Sun News Brokerage can exclusively reveal from trusted sources that the Padoccia Trade Union offered several incentives to Chaos Brokers participating in the Xandrian Challenge that led to the offer of “donating” Win Conditions to the Xandrians.

On a cozy fall night in 2023, Wizards of the Coast founder Peter Adkison gets summoned by his old friend…

Follow the exciting action from the Special Qualifiers for the World Invitational where top Chaos Agents playtesters battle it out for a shortcut to the GOLD Finals.

Go deep on the design and motivation behind Chaos Agents with Richard Garfield and the Chaos Agents design team.

The public Alpha of Richard Garfield’s newest video game - Chaos Agents - is launching at GenCon. Play in a tournament and qualify for the Gold World Invitational on Sunday. Chaos Agents takes concepts perfected by Richard over decades of designing superhit tabletop games, and blends them with the video game genres of autobattlers and battle royales. Each Entrant will receive a unique Agent as part of their entry fee. This tournament has 3 qualifying 30-minute rounds followed by a Finals and Runners up match. Winners of the tournament will earn an additional Agent for free along with qualifications for the Gold World Invitational Tournament.

ICC : Hall C : White : 36

In our wildest Qualifier yet, the new people in the room at Gen Con really put the screws to some of our longest-term playtesters, with MasterTyler winning Shardmaster and Dlion99 winning a crushing Brawlmaster victory. Pmm5000 managed to strike back for the pre-alpha playtesters with a last-minute Survivalist victory!

Takkuso continued a strong showing at Gen Con, winning Shardmaster, while MrThrifty was able to barely squeeze out the Brawlmaster victory in our second Silver Qualifier.

A rousing match ended with a double victory for Takkuso, who took Brawlmaster and Survivalist, while Catalyst99 ran away with the Shardmaster.

Valon is one of the most decorated Massieu Shard Captains. If he can out-position his enemies on Verspersa, not only could it give his people leverage to take the Trade bank, but he’d be in line to become emperor.

Wolfram is a veteran of eight battle-planet campaigns. He’s addicted to war, and compulsively reenlists for every off-world conflict. He’s aware of his addiction, and fights as much for fun as he does for Shards.

Sorith is a ranking member of the Brillouin Trade Bank, which does business across the Firmament. The bank is over-leveraged due to some bad trades. She needs to win on Vespersa to avoid scandal.

Dusana is a physicist. She believes Vespersa—a planet recently accessible for Shard harvesting—could collapse if pillaged, setting off a chain reaction that would destroy the Mahdi planetary system.

Titus’s mother was killed fighting to protect his world’s Shard stores. For him, preserving Shards not only protects his spiritual path back to the creator, but his reunion with his mother, if he’s valiant.

• The Brillouin stand nearly six feet high

• Consummate traders, always looking for leverage to be used when convenient.

• Their skin carries the slightest hint of blue, wear broad-brimmed hats to shade their eyes.

• They carry a pair of shard hand bows—expel intense gravity or time dilation

• Culture fosters deceit, duplicity, and craftiness as core skills

• Harvest Shards for trade

• Standing just under five feet tall

• Thickness in the head, neck, torso, and limbs, with a leathery tan skin

• Unique quality is their war cry—the foe loses useful thought for those few moments

• Intelligent but a loud, brash culture with no filter

• Largely subterranean—shard harvesting is territorial as people of the ground

• The Massieu stand a little over six feet tall

• Enamored with gallantry and loyal to friends

• Infuriate the opponent with cunning

• Standard weapons, as well as antique slings to hurl shard stones

• The Massieu are empire builders

• The Massieu compete for shards for one reason: Status

• Stand eight feet tall and have a hulking musculature and immense strength.

• Wield immense arm cannons

• Intelligent race with a deeply spiritual connection to the Shard of Chaos

• Regard Shards as gifts from the great creator, to be used judiciously

• Collect Shards to prevent their exploitation for gain, war, or other unseemly uses, and for their own spiritual observance.

• Between five and six feet high

• Fair and fragile-skinned people

• Wear protective armor powered by telepathy

• Carry a long staff able to channel battle thought into energy

• Level, even cool regard for other races—culture of rationality and logic

• Harvest Shards to maintain balance of universal mechanics that control light, gravity and other forms of energy

I’m a 31-year-old man on my third glass of whiskey, and a game where you play as a high-school girl is bringing me to tears.

I’ve been hiding for my entire life, but that’s about to end.

There is just something about Super Smash Bros. that takes even the sweetest and quietest among us and morphs them into a shit-talker of the highest order.