"The Jungle" in games

Richard Garfield at one point talked about a part of Magic he loved, and that filtered into why he made Keyforge. It was this sense of being in "the jungle" - that you were all exploring the space in the game together, and you didn't all have it figured out. It keeps coming up for me: this is maybe the thing I love most in games.

Things that are "the jungle":

- printing some plain old busted cards like Black Lotus or Ancestral Recall because, what the heck, nobody will have more than one or two of them anyway.
- a weird mixed lore, like the early cards that had quotes from Coleridge, Shakespeare, and the 1001 Arabian Nights, in addition to Urza and Mishra. (Urza and Mishra were characters created in the Magic universe.)
- diverse art, like a world where Stasis and Chaos Orb existed alongside Shivan Dragon and Serra Angel
- every so often running into cards you've never seen
- every so often running into decks you've never seen. Full English Breakfast was a revelation to me. (non magic player note: this was a wacky deck that incorporated a few cards into a ridiculous combo that could win the game out of nowhere)
- uses for cards you've never seen (see: /r/badmtgcombos)
- chaos drafts. This is where you "draft" (start with a random pool of cards, take turns selecting cards, and build your deck out of those cards) with a bunch of random packs from Magic's past. (usually, when drafting, you all use the same type of pack, which means you can kind of "metagame" because you have a pretty good idea of what cards everyone's going to get.)

Things that are the opposite of "the jungle":

- metagames. Knowing that probably 30% of people are going to be playing Deck A while 20% are playing Deck B, so even if your Deck C is great, you shouldn't play it if it does poorly against Decks A and B.
- honestly, high-level constructed competition. It's going to be really hard to create a competitive scene without metagames. (maybe, "high-level competition" at all.)
- most strategic board games. These games feel "Spikey" - like you all know what are the moves you _can_ make, and you only win if you happen to exactly judge when to make the right moves.
- winning by slivers. Poker is not "the jungle", because you can only win by grinding out a 1% edge over the competition, over and over again. In "jungley" games, you usually win or lose big.

Games that feel jungley to me:

ok yes Keyforge, Spelunkey, "Would You Rather" driven by @wyr_bot, Drawful, Dominion, Ascension, Betrayal at the house on the hill, D&D, Bughouse, most passive games like Antimatter Dimensions, most computer RPGs, Minecraft

Games that do not feel jungley:

Agricola, Settlers, Eclipse, chess, most FPS games like Halo

Games that feel jungley when you're playing at home but not in competitions:

Magic, Smash Bros, RTS games like Starcraft, Dominion

I wonder what Magic player archetype this makes me. I guess Timmy, because I like playing in order to feel the excitement of "what a cool card!" or "what a great play!" With a touch of Vorthos (cool flavor is cool) and Jonny (I like expressing myself through my play)