Technologies

Getting Beaten by Magic: The Gathering’s Final Fantasy Set Designer Was a Wild Ride

At Summer Game Fest, I got to play (and get schooled by) the man who turned Cloud, Sephiroth, Aerith, Terra, Yuna and others into Magic cards.

In an air-conditioned tent on a sweltering Los Angeles day at Summer Game Fest, I sat down to play a hand of the card game Magic: The Gathering and drew a handful of characters from Final Fantasy. Sitting across from me was the man who oversaw the process of turning some of the world’s most beloved video game characters into playable cards for what’s shaping up to be Magic’s most popular set ever — already a best seller a month before its release.

Magic: The Gathering is a storied collectible card game made by Wizards of the Coast that’s arguably more popular than it’s ever been since it debuted in 1993. In recent years, the game has ventured into the mainstream by adapting the most popular nerd properties, like Marvel superheroes, Warhammer 40K and Lord of the Rings, into playable cards. These Universes Beyond sets, as they’re called, have had special releases that make them legal only in select formats of the game — meaning you couldn’t bring them to play in tournaments with the most recent sets.

That all changes with the Final Fantasy set, whose cards feature every mainline game from the original Final Fantasy first released in 1987 to Final Fantasy 16 from 2023. The new set is being released in the Standard format, which means players will be able to bring the most famous characters, like Cloud, Sephiroth, Yuna, Lightning, Noctis and Y’shtola, in their decks to play in regular competitions alongside the other newest sets.

I’m no Magic scrub, but it’s been years since my teen days when I started collecting during the Urza’s Saga and Sixth Edition sets. The game has changed a lot since then, with new keywords and more powerful cards than ever, but the basics remain the same: Take a deck of cards with a mix of mana-generating lands, creatures, artifacts and other spells to battle against your opponent. Untap, upkeep, draw, play, combat, end phase.

As I sit across from Gavin Verhey, principal Magic: The Gathering game designer and set design lead for Final Fantasy, I’m daunted by the task of playing someone who literally oversaw the development of every card in my hand. But I’m comforted that, like me, he’s a huge fan of the Final Fantasy games, as was everyone on the team.

«The good news is we’ve been doing the homework for the past 30 years of our lives,» Verhey said. «I mean, we did play through the games, we all revisited the old ones.»

Though not everyone on Verhey’s team had played every one of the series’ games, collectively they’d covered them all. For instance, he’s never played the massively multiplayer online Final Fantasy 14, but he pointed to a colleague across the tent at a different table — «Dylan over here, he’s played thousands of hours of 14,» Verhey said.

Turning Final Fantasy icons into playable cards

The first official Universes Beyond set was Warhammer 40K in 2021, but Verhey told me Wizards of the Coast has been working on the Final Fantasy set for about five years, requiring a lot of back-and-forth from the card game maker and Square Enix to get all the details and translations right, along with the extensive design process to adapt the venerable property.

«What really helped us out was that Square Enix has huge Magic players,» Verhey said.

One of the challenges was to incorporate Final Fantasy 16, which was released in mid-2023, years into the Final Fantasy Magic set’s development. Verhey’s team had precious little time to incorporate the game.

«When it came out, we had a marathon weekend where we’re all gonna play through,» Verhey said. «We’re putting in the chat, we should make this a character, and this a card, and this a card. It was super fun.»

In preparation, Verhey had saved 10 card slots out of the 310-card set for Final Fantasy 16 cards. Their goal was to make sure every game had at least 10 cards and at least one of rare quality, to make sure fans could find some representation from their favorite games. Of course, some more-popular entries in the series got more cards, leading to more from Final Fantasy 6, 7, 10 and 14 — games that make their way on the lists of the best RPGs of all time.

But there were design directives Verhey held to make sure that players would recognize staples of the series even if they hadn’t played every game.

«When I was designing the set of common and uncommon cards, especially common, I wanted to put in things that were generic across many Final Fantasy games, so no matter which ones you played, you’d find a thing you recognize,» Verhey said. «If you’ve played any Final Fantasy game, or even any RPG, you’re like, Yep, there’s the weapons vendor, the item person, there’s the person greeting you when you come into town.»

Many of the most recognizable heroes, like Cloud and Sephiroth, are reserved for the rare and mythic rarity character cards, which are intentionally powerful, yet the latter of which show up only in one of every eight packs of cards. It’s a tough balance, Verhey said — but to make sure players still get these popular heroes in their decks, they splashed them into the art of common and uncommon cards for different spells, artifacts and enchantments. These often depict memorable moments in the games, including, perhaps most infamously, in Final Fantasy 6 where a martial arts character suplexes a train. (I’m not kidding. It’s really a card in the set.)

As I draw more cards, Verhey points out the many details his team made sure to pack into them, including a small indicator near the artist credit that says which game they came from. Even the simplest card in the game, a mana-producing land, evokes the moments and settings from Final Fantasy games — when I drew a basic plains (white) land, it showed the iconic car from Final Fantasy 15, the Regalia, driving up a road. I was instantly brought back to playing the game and its boys road trip adventure (which kicks off with one of the greatest intros of the series).

Designing Final Fantasy for Magic: The Gathering newcomers

If you have a friend who’s been into Magic: The Gathering, you’ve probably heard a lot about the Final Fantasy set already, and many newcomers are being drawn in by all the hype. I asked Verhey what design decisions they made to make the set as welcoming as they could for folks who’ve never played a game of Magic before (indeed, in addition to the interview, I and other Summer Game Fest attendees were offered introductory demos to learn Magic if we were totally new to the game).

«One of the things with Final Fantasy, and any Universes Beyond IP, that I think is amazing is we just start that conversation a little further down the road, because if you play Final Fantasy, I don’t need to explain health and mana and strategy and goals as much,» Verhey said.

Verhey also notes that the Starter Kit for the Final Fantasy set is a great entry point for new players, including two premade 60-card decks that are themed around Cloud and Sephiroth, as well as codes to redeem the decks in the Magic: The Gathering Arena online digital version of the game.

But the team also made design decisions to make the Final Fantasy set easier to grasp for newcomers, too.

«The mechanics in the set, many of them are things that are very approachable, like flashback [being able to cast some spells twice] and landfall mechanics [effects that trigger whenever you play land cards] that players know and have played with for ages,» Verhey said.

«The new mechanics are stuff like job select, which is a riff on living weapon from [Magic expansion] Mirrodin, which is kind of simple to understand: You get a token and put this [weapon] on it, right?» Verhey continued. «But the flavor really helps you with this because, Oh, it makes sense that a samurai katana would have a hero that comes with it and is holding the katana.»

That doesn’t mean the design process was seamless. Adapting some famous Final Fantasy heroes into a card game was occasionally tricky as Verhey’s team decided how best to translate their abilities onto a card, often going to the teammate who knew that particular game best. Verhey gave an example he had «a heck of a time with»: Kain Highwind, the best friend of the protagonist of Final Fantasy 4, who keeps switching sides with and against the party. After six different attempts at design concepts, he went to a co-worker who knew that game backward and forward, who sent Verhey a design that same day that ended up in the set: If the Kain, Traitorous Dragoon card deals damage to a player, they get control of him. Elegant.

Of the 310 cards in the set, there are some that Verhey is particularly proud of. Esper Terra is a version of the heroine of Final Fantasy 6 and one of the first Saga creatures, a new card type combination introduced in the set, which switches back and forth between normal hero and pumped-up esper (think summons or guardian forces in other FF games) for some turns. Another card, a version of Sephiroth (Fabled Soldier, which flips over to transform into One-Winged Angel), leaves a permanent emblem on the board to represent his lingering presence in Final Fantasy 7, always needling the heroes in that game.

How they balanced Final Fantasy cards for all Magic: The Gathering formats

Clearly, Magic can get complicated, and this intrinsic complexity of cards and interactions is a hallmark of high-tier play and fascinating deck strategies. By making the Final Fantasy set legal in Standard format, Wizards of the Coast is enabling it to affect mainstream play, including competitive tournaments that feature the latest sets before and after Final Fantasy. This includes debuting the aforementioned Saga creatures, which Verhey’s team developed as a way to embody some of the most powerful of Final Fantasy party abilities, like summons, that make a flashy impact for a turn or two. In development, the team tried out a «vanishing» mechanic where a summon-like creature would slowly die over several turns, which was read as a downside.

Instead, Saga creature cards balance that big impact with temporary presence, dependably swinging the pendulum of pressure back to your opponent — after all, you paid mana for something that goes away eventually — but presents an interesting dilemma: Does your opponent block it? Kill it? Spend a spell on it?

«We balanced [Saga creatures] using the power, toughness and abilities to make sure it would be appropriate, but I think more interesting is, once they’re in play, what happens? They really make gameplay interesting,» Verhey said.

As it was the first Universes Beyond set to be legal in Standard play, Verhey acknowledged that there was pressure to make sure they balanced it well. That meant putting it through the same play design process of other sets, like the recent Tarkir Dragonstorm, with ex-pro Magic players play-testing and iterating the cards. «We put our whole team on it for the balance portion,» Verhey said.

This process will be used for all future Universes Beyond sets, like the upcoming Spider-Man and Avatar: The Last Airbender sets, which will be similarly balanced and legal for Standard and other formats. Wizards of the Coast could always change their mind and pare this back for future sets, but making these new IP adaptations ready to play in tournaments and beyond is the plan for now.

How Final Fantasy pushes Magic: The Gathering into the future

Unsurprisingly, it’s challenging to pick the IPs to adapt. A separate team from Verhey and his designers chooses which recognizable properties to pick, and one of their filters is deciding whether it’s possible to bring to Magic in the first place. While harmonious, ambitious, aggressive and smart characters match white, black, red and blue mana identities, respectively, some IPs don’t have much to offer green, the color of earth and nature. Other requirements include enough characters and monsters that can make small, medium and large creatures or can fit Magic staples like flying creatures, which are important for supporting play environments like drafts.

Verhey and his team learned a ton from developing the Final Fantasy set, including tackling the arduous task of filtering all the characters into all five colors of mana in Magic, which define play-style and strategy. In the years developing this set, Verhey pioneered what he calls the «snapshot moment,» picking a crucial time in that character’s story for the card they’re making.

For example, there are multiple Sephiroth character cards. One is included in a Commander premade deck and is white and red mana, depicting a pivotal moment in Final Fantasy 7’s backstory when he discovers his past and angrily burns the town of Nibelheim to the ground. Another, a black mana card, is the Sephiroth that players encounter during the main plot of Final Fantasy 7 as the evil one-winged angel trying to destroy the world.

«They’re two very different moments of Sephiroth’s story that let us show different colors through them, and that separate method is what we’re going to definitely take forward and use in future Universes Beyond sets,» Verhey said.

It’s a perfect moment in our real-world game of Magic as I sit across from Verhey: He, running the blue and black deck of the Starter Kit, plays his Sephiroth creature card. Noticing he used all his mana, I use an instant spell to kill the villain on his turn, and a turn later, I play my Cloud card, swaggering with confidence that I turned the tide. Sadly, Verhey notices I overcommitted and plays a Magitek Scythe on one of his other creatures, which forces my Cloud to block and get killed. A turn later, he uses a spell card to resurrect Sephiroth to the battlefield and quickly overwhelms me — a fitting, Final Fantasy 7-appropriate end to our match.

Over the weekend, Verhey played a lot of Magic matches with many other Summer Game Fest attendees — some veterans, some newcomers to the game. And what he’s been noticing, this weekend and in the monthslong lead-up to the set’s release, is the joy when fans see cards of their favorite characters and moments from the games.

«I think the biggest thing is remembering that everything has fans,» Verhey said. «There’s 16 games we’re trying to cover here, and every game, people are like, Oh my gosh, this card from Final Fantasy 2 is in here. Or, I can’t believe this card from Final Fantasy 7 is in here. Or, I wish this character from Final Fantasy 8 was in here. People really do care about it, and the missing stuff is really noticed, is really relevant.»

Unfortunately, that meant cutting cards even Verhey wanted, like one for Eiko from Final Fantasy 9, as well as others left on the cutting room floor from Final Fantasy 4 and 5. (I was personally hopeful for more Final Fantasy 8 cards myself.) But within the tight constraints of trying to represent 16 games in a 310-card set, they still managed to cram in enough iconic scenes that respect the beloved idiosyncrasies of a video game series nearing its 40th birthday — things like, yes, being able to kill Final Fantasy 6’s Phantom Train with the Phoenix Down card.

«In this set, [someone asked,] ‘Hey, can you remove — I don’t know why it’s even there — killing an undead thing on your Phoenix Down?'» Verhey said. «I’m like, ‘Absolutely not. That is critical. You cannot touch this.'»

Technologies

AI Slop Is Destroying the Internet. These Are the People Fighting to Save It

Technologies

The Sun’s Temper Tantrums: What You Should Know About Solar Storms

Solar storms are associated with the lovely aurora borealis, but they can have negative impacts, too.

Last month, Earth was treated to a massive aurora borealis that reached as far south as Texas. The event was attributed to a solar storm that lasted nearly a full day and will likely contend for the strongest of 2026. Such solar storms are usually fun for people on Earth, as we are protected from solar radiation by our planet’s atmosphere, so we can just enjoy the gorgeous greens and pretty purples in the night sky.

But solar storms are a lot more than just the aurora borealis we see, and sometimes they can cause real damage. There are several examples of this in recorded history, with the earliest being the Carrington Event, a solar storm that took place on Sept. 1, 1859. It remains the strongest solar storm ever recorded, where the world’s telegraph machines became overloaded with energy from it, causing them to shock their operators, send ghost messages and even catch on fire.

Things have changed a lot since the mid-1800s, and while today’s technology is a lot more resistant to solar radiation than it once was, a solar storm of that magnitude could still cause a lot of damage.

What is a solar storm?

A solar storm is a catchall term that describes any disturbance in the sun that involves the violent ejection of solar material into space. This can come in the form of coronal mass ejections, where clouds of plasma are ejected from the sun, or solar flares, which are concentrated bursts of electromagnetic radiation (aka light).

A sizable percentage of solar storms don’t hit Earth, and the sun is always belching material into space, so minor solar storms are quite common. The only ones humans tend to talk about are the bigger ones that do hit the Earth. When this happens, it causes geomagnetic storms, where solar material interacts with the Earth’s magnetic fields, and the excitations can cause issues in everything from the power grid to satellite functionality. It’s not unusual to hear «solar storm» and «geomagnetic storm» used interchangeably, since solar storms cause geomagnetic storms.

Solar storms ebb and flow on an 11-year cycle known as the solar cycle. NASA scientists announced that the sun was at the peak of its most recent 11-year cycle in 2024, and, as such, solar storms have been more frequent. The sun will metaphorically chill out over time, and fewer solar storms will happen until the cycle repeats.

This cycle has been stable for hundreds of millions of years and was first observed in the 18th century by astronomer Christian Horrebow.

How strong can a solar storm get?

The Carrington Event is a standout example of just how strong a solar storm can be, and such events are exceedingly rare. A rating system didn’t exist back then, but it would have certainly maxed out on every chart that science has today.

We currently gauge solar storm strength on four different scales.

The first rating that a solar storm gets is for the material belched out of the sun. Solar flares are graded using the Solar Flare Classification System, a logarithmic intensity scale that starts with B-class at the lowest end, and then increases to C, M and finally X-class at the strongest. According to NASA, the scale goes up indefinitely and tends to get finicky at higher levels. The strongest solar flare measured was in 2003, and it overloaded the sensors at X17 and was eventually estimated to be an X45-class flare.

CMEs don’t have a named measuring system, but are monitored by satellites and measured based on the impact they have on the Earth’s geomagnetic field.

Once the material hits Earth, NOAA uses three other scales to determine how strong the storm was and which systems it may impact. They include:

Geomagnetic storm (G1-G5): This scale measures how much of an impact the solar material is having on Earth’s geomagnetic field. Stronger storms can impact the power grid, electronics and voltage systems.
Solar radiation storm (S1-S5): This measures the amount of solar radiation present, with stronger storms increasing exposure to astronauts in space and to people in high-flying aircraft. It also describes the storm’s impact on satellite functionality and radio communications.
Radio blackouts (R1-R5): Less commonly used but still very important. A higher R-rating means a greater impact on GPS satellites and high-frequency radios, with the worst case being communication and navigation blackouts.

Solar storms also cause auroras by exciting the molecules in Earth’s atmosphere, which then light up as they «calm down,» per NASA. The strength and reach of the aurora generally correlate with the strength of the storm. G1 storms rarely cause an aurora to reach further south than Canada, while a G5 storm may be visible as far south as Texas and Florida. The next time you see a forecast calling for a big aurora, you can assume a big solar storm is on the way.

How dangerous is a solar storm?

The overwhelming majority of solar storms are harmless. Science has protections against the effects of solar storms that it did not have back when telegraphs were catching on fire, and most solar storms are small and don’t pose any threat to people on the surface since the Earth’s magnetic field protects us from the worst of it.

That isn’t to say that they pose no threats. Humans may be exposed to ionizing radiation (the bad kind of radiation) if flying at high altitudes, which includes astronauts in space. NOAA says that this can happen with an S2 or higher storm, although location is really important here. Flights that go over the polar caps during solar storms are far more susceptible than your standard trip from Chicago to Houston, and airliners have a whole host of rules to monitor space weather, reroute flights and monitor long-term radiation exposure for flight crews to minimize potential cancer risks.

Larger solar storms can knock quite a few systems out of whack. NASA says that powerful storms can impact satellites, cause radio blackouts, shut down communications, disrupt GPS and cause damaging power fluctuations in the power grid. That means everything from high-frequency radio to cellphone reception could be affected, depending on the severity.

A good example of this is the Halloween solar storms of 2003. A series of powerful solar flares hit Earth on Oct. 28-31, causing a solar storm so massive that loads of things went wrong. Most notably, airplane pilots had to change course and lower their altitudes due to the radiation wreaking havoc on their instruments, and roughly half of the world’s satellites were entirely lost for a few days.

A paper titled Flying Through Uncertainty was published about the Halloween storms and the troubles they caused. Researchers note that 59% of all satellites orbiting Earth at the time suffered some sort of malfunction, like random thrusters going offline and some shutting down entirely. Over half of the Earth’s satellites were lost for days, requiring around-the-clock work from NASA and other space agencies to get everything back online and located.

Earth hasn’t experienced a solar storm on the level of the Carrington Event since it occurred in 1859, so the maximum damage it could cause in modern times is unknown. The European Space Agency has run simulations, and spoiler alert, the results weren’t promising. A solar storm of that caliber has a high chance of causing damage to almost every satellite in orbit, which would cause a lot of problems here on Earth as well. There were also significant risks of electrical blackouts and damage. It would make one heck of an aurora, but you might have to wait to post it on social media until things came back online.

Do we have anything to worry about?

We’ve mentioned two massive solar storms with the Halloween storms and the Carrington Event. Such large storms tend to occur very infrequently. In fact, those two storms took place nearly 150 years apart. Those aren’t the strongest storms yet, though. The very worst that Earth has ever seen were what are known as Miyake events.

Miyake events are times throughout history when massive solar storms were thought to have occurred. These are measured by massive spikes in carbon-14 that were preserved in tree rings. Miyake events are few and far between, but science believes at least 15 such events have occurred over the past 15,000 years. That includes one in 12350 BCE, which may have been twice as large as any other known Miyake event.

They currently hold the title of the largest solar storms that we know of, and are thought to be caused by superflares and extreme solar events. If one of these happened today, especially one as large as the one in 12350 BCE, it would likely cause widespread, catastrophic damage and potentially threaten human life.

Those only appear to happen about once every several hundred to a couple thousand years, so it’s exceedingly unlikely that one is coming anytime soon. But solar storms on the level of the Halloween storms and the Carrington Event have happened in modern history, and humans have managed to survive them, so for the time being, there isn’t too much to worry about.

Technologies

TMR vs. Hall Effect Controllers: Battle of the Magnetic Sensing Tech

The magic of magnets tucked into your joysticks can put an end to drift. But which technology is superior?

Competitive gamers look for every advantage they can get, and that drive has spawned some of the zaniest gaming peripherals under the sun. There are plenty of hardware components that actually offer meaningful edges when implemented properly. Hall effect and TMR (tunnel magnetoresistance or tunneling magnetoresistance) sensors are two such technologies. Hall effect sensors have found their way into a wide variety of devices, including keyboards and gaming controllers, including some of our favorites like the GameSir Super Nova.

More recently, TMR sensors have started to appear in these devices as well. Is it a better technology for gaming? With multiple options vying for your lunch money, it’s worth understanding the differences to decide which is more worthy of living inside your next game controller or keyboard.

How Hall effect joysticks work

We’ve previously broken down the difference between Hall effect tech and traditional potentiometers in controller joysticks, but here’s a quick rundown on how Hall effect sensors work. A Hall effect joystick moves a magnet over a sensor circuit, and the magnetic field affects the circuit’s voltage. The sensor in the circuit measures these voltage shifts and maps them to controller inputs. Element14 has a lovely visual explanation of this effect here.

The advantage this tech has over potentiometer-based joysticks used in controllers for decades is that the magnet and sensor don’t need to make physical contact. There’s no rubbing action to slowly wear away and degrade the sensor. So, in theory, Hall effect joysticks should remain accurate for the long haul.

How TMR joysticks work

While TMR works differently, it’s a similar concept to Hall effect devices. When you move a TMR joystick, it moves a magnet in the vicinity of the sensor. So far, it’s the same, right? Except with TMR, this shifting magnetic field changes the resistance in the sensor instead of the voltage.

There’s a useful demonstration of a sensor in action here. Just like Hall effect joysticks, TMR joysticks don’t rely on physical contact to register inputs and therefore won’t suffer the wear and drift that affects potentiometer-based joysticks.

Which is better, Hall effect or TMR?

There’s no hard and fast answer to which technology is better. After all, the actual implementation of the technology and the hardware it’s built into can be just as important, if not more so. Both technologies can provide accurate sensing, and neither requires physical contact with the sensing chip, so both can be used for precise controls that won’t encounter stick drift. That said, there are some potential advantages to TMR.

According to Coto Technology, who, in fairness, make TMR sensors, they can be more sensitive, allowing for either greater precision or the use of smaller magnets. Since the Hall effect is subtler, it relies on amplification and ultimately requires extra power. While power requirements vary from sensor to sensor, GameSir claims its TMR joysticks use about one-tenth the power of mainstream Hall effect joysticks. Cherry is another brand highlighting the lower power consumption of TMR sensors, albeit in the brand’s keyboard switches.

The greater precision is an opportunity for TMR joysticks to come out ahead, but that will depend more on the controller itself than the technology. Strange response curves, a big dead zone (which shouldn’t be needed), or low polling rates could prevent a perfectly good TMR sensor from beating a comparable Hall effect sensor in a better optimized controller.

The power savings will likely be the advantage most of us really feel. While it won’t matter for wired controllers, power savings can go a long way for wireless ones. Take the Razer Wolverine V3 Pro, for instance, a Hall effect controller offering 20 hours of battery life from a 4.5-watt-hour battery with support for a 1,000Hz polling rate on a wireless connection. Razer also offers the Wolverine V3 Pro 8K PC, a near-identical controller with the same battery offering TMR sensors. They claim the TMR version can go for 36 hours on a charge, though that’s presumably before cranking it up to an 8,000Hz polling rate — something Razer possibly left off the Hall effect model because of power usage.

The disadvantage of the TMR sensor would be its cost, but it appears that it’s negligible when factored into the entire price of a controller. Both versions of the aforementioned Razer controller are $199. Both 8BitDo and GameSir have managed to stick them into reasonably priced controllers like the 8BitDo Ultimate 2, GameSir G7 Pro and GameSir Cyclone 2.

So which wins?

It seems TMR joysticks have all the advantages of Hall effect joysticks and then some, bringing better power efficiency that can help in wireless applications. The one big downside might be price, but from what we’ve seen right now, that doesn’t seem to be much of an issue. You can even find both technologies in controllers that cost less than some potentiometer models, like the Xbox Elite Series 2 controller.

Caveats to consider

For all the hype, neither Hall effect nor TMR joysticks are perfect. One of their key selling points is that they won’t experience stick drift, but there are still elements of the joystick that can wear down. The ring around the joystick can lose its smoothness. The stick material can wear down (ever tried to use a controller with the rubber worn off its joystick? It’s not pleasant). The linkages that hold the joystick upright and the springs that keep it stiff can loosen, degrade and fill with dust. All of these can impact the continued use of the joystick, even if the Hall effect or TMR sensor itself is in perfect operating order.

So you might not get stick drift from a bad sensor, but you could get stick drift from a stick that simply doesn’t return to its original resting position. That’s when having a controller that’s serviceable or has swappable parts, like the PDP Victrix Pro BFG, could matter just as much as having one with Hall effect or TMR joysticks.