The visual conventions of magic in contemporary popular culture — sparkles, glowing hands, mystical circles with runes, light emanating from a central source — derive primarily from stage magic performance conventions of the 19th century, which themselves derived from alchemical and hermetic illustration traditions. The sparkle that indicates magic in a video game is a direct descendant of the stage magician's flash paper and the alchemist's illustrated manuscript.

World of Warcraft (2004) established the visual vocabulary for fantasy game UI design that most MMORPGs, and many other game genres, still use today: the specific color coding for item rarity (grey/white/green/blue/purple/orange), the visual language of magical effects, and the iconographic system for spell types. These conventions are now so established that they constitute a genre visual language independent of any specific game.