1.  All podcast content by Mark Rosewater


    Mark Rosewater 

    Okay, I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work. Okay, a special treat today, guys. So my father is in town, and he needs my car. So he's going to drive me to work today, or I'm driving him to work. So he can have the car. Which means--special guest star! My dad. Say hi. 


    Gene Rosewater  

    Hi there. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    So there's my dad, Gene Rosewater. And so I want to talk about a couple of things. First off is, I'm a gamer specifically because my dad is a gamer. And I think one of the neat things about Magic turning 20 right now is that we're hitting a neat generational shift, where the people that started playing Magic now have kids that are old enough that they're teaching them to play Magic. And I have people writing to me all the time talking about how, you know, how can they teach their kids to play. So I thought it'd be neat to sort of explore how I got into gaming by looking at my dad. So talk a little bit about how you got into gaming.


    Gene Rosewater  

    Gaming for me, it was a natural thing. It was something that I did when I was a kid, it was something that I did in my family. And it would never have occurred to me not to be a gamer. I love gaming, it's just part of my life. And always has been even as a young child, maybe going back to the days of flu, probably eight years old.


    Mark Rosewater  

    So one of the things that was very interesting was, we got a computer very, very early. So let's talk about that. When did--what was your first computer?


    Gene Rosewater  

    I got an Apple II in 1978. That was back when the Apple didn't have a hard drive. As a matter of fact-


    Mark Rosewater  

    Didn't have disks yet, right?


    Gene Rosewater  

    Didn't even have a disk, we would save stuff on a cassette tape, and loaded back in from the cassette tape. No memory at all to speak of. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    Right, so for the young uns out there. So basically, when we wanted to play a game on the computer, we got a cassette tape. I don't even know if you know what a cassette tape is. But it's what you used to listen to music on. And you would put it in a player and you would play it and then for like three or four minutes, even it would go (static noise) and make this noise, and then at the end of it, you could play a tiny text game. 


    Gene Rosewater  

    Yeah, and most of the time, you had to do it two or three times because it would get fouled up somewhere along the line. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    And remember when you first bought your first computer, to get an extra--was it 64kB


    Gene Rosewater  

    Initially I think I had 16K. And I sort of waited because at that point to get the next 16k was $500. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    So by the way, once again, we're talking kB. Not mB, not gig, not terabytes. kB. That's 1000 for you out there who might not know. So anyway, growing up, we--so we had a computer early, earlier than all my friends, like, everybody thought it was this weird thing, they'd come over and see our computer. We also had the very first--or one of the very, very earliest gaming systems for our TV. Called the Odyssey, remember this? 


    Gene Rosewater  

    Sure. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    Okay, explain--do you remember how the Odyssey works? 


    Gene Rosewater

    Yeah, the Odyssey was made by Motorola I believe. [Looks like it's Magnavox. -LTH] And basically, it was one game, it played Pong. And when it played Pong, what we did was we had a plastic overlay, we put it over the screen. And then there would be simply a dot and two paddles, and we would play, that would be on the screen. But nothing else was there, whatever we wanted to have to play on, what playing field we had, was the overlay,


    Mark Rosewater  

    Right. So you would take a piece of plastic, and you would tape it on top of the TV. And there are other games--because pretty much you had a carat, a little square you can move around. And so they had games in which everything was taped to the screen and then you would move little, you know, squares around the screen. So anyway, I got in--one of the things was my dad got me into gaming like very young, and a lot of things that would go on to be very sort of established things, we got in on the ground floor. I also remember--something else I remember with my dad is he and I would go to the to the arcade to play video games. Because at the time--when I was young, back in the in the 80s, that arcade--if you wanted to play video games, you went to the arcade. I mean, like I said, I think we had--we had the Atari 2600 for a while which was a little a little better than the Odyssey, but it was one of the most simplest early versions of at-home consoles, but they were very, very simplistic. And that if you want anything more advanced, you had to go to the arcade. And I remember--do you remember your favorite game--I remember your favorite. What was your favorite game?


    Gene Rosewater  

    My favorite clearly was Battlezone.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Yes. 


    Gene Rosewater  

    And I actually got pretty good at it, although I probably wasn't that good. But I thought I was.


    Mark Rosewater  

    So Battlezone, for some of my younger audience, was a first person shooter. You were in a tank I think? 


    Gene Rosewater  

    It was in a tank. There were two handles that I would hold onto. And each one would would activate the wheels or treads on each side so they can go forward, they can go back. And then you could make one go forward one go back to turn around, and we'd be shooting at things and they'd be shooting at me. No color.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Right.


    Gene Rosewater  

    It was all green.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Everything was outlined. So every object, it was just a geometric shape, essentially, that was outlined in green. And so, you know, the planes or the--whatever other things were attacking you, there was no real detail to them. But it was a fun game. It was a really fun game. 


    Gene Rosewater  

    I liked it.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Okay, so one of the things that--so growing up, my dad introduced me to a lot of different games, and--in fact, one of my favorite games that my dad introduced me to was Diplomacy. Do you remember teaching me Diplomacy? 


    Gene Rosewater  

    Yeah. Well, Diplomacy was something that actually I learned from my then brother-in-law. And it was a game of--how do you explain this--it was sort of a unique game. It was a game of territory, and you could invade territory, and everybody would set up their turn, and then everybody would sort of tell what their turn was going to be at the same time. And we would have to figure out how everything would interact. So the idea of the game was, of course, was to capture the world. And it was on a European map, right?


    Mark Rosewater  

    I think it was between World War One and World War Two. And the idea of the game, it's very simple is, there's seven countries, each country is played by a person. And on your turn, you make moves. But that's not the beauty of the game. The beauty of the game is, what you do is very dependent upon other people. So in between each turn, you go around, and you talk to everybody, and you try to convince everybody that you're their friend, basically. It's a game of diplomacy. And the game is--whenever I played with people, in fact in college is a great story where--my dad taught this to me, I love the game. But the game is all about, at some point you have to betray somebody and stab them in the back to win this game. Because the game is all about making, you know, seeming very friendly until you betray people to win. And so I say to my friends, I said, okay, this is what the game is. But it's just a game that someone betrays you. It's not personal. You know, the game is all about, you know, having alliances in this, so please don't take it personal. And like I was playing with my friends, got a bunch of friends in college, we used to play games, and I stab my friend in the back to win the game. He didn't talk to me for five weeks! (laughs) But anyway, a wonderful game that has remakes, by the way, if you want to go play Diplomacy, it's fun. So let's get to Magic since this is a Magic show.


    Mark Rosewater  

    (???) When I learned the game from my brother in law at the time, he did leave out one rule, which was, you're allowed to lie. So the first game we played, he was telling everybody lies and everything. And we of course were believing him because he was teaching us the game. So obviously, he won. But after the first game, I understood a little bit more about diplomacy.


    Mark Rosewater  

    The game does teach you about the act of diplomacy, I think. Okay, so let's get to Magic. Since this is a Magic podcast. So I have told the story of me discovering Magic, from my viewpoint multiple times. But I would like to tell the story of me getting into Magic from your viewpoint. As my dad, what is your memory of how I got into Magic?


    Gene Rosewater  

    Well, of course, I knew that you went to a game show, you saw Magic, I probably talked to you within maybe the same day or the next day. And you were just euphoric. About this new game that you'd seen, you'd sent to me, this is the game of the future. I really have to get involved in this game. And so because you thought it was so great, I believed it. As a matter of fact, at that point probably you were more involved in games than I was. And so you were becoming my game mentor at that point.


    Mark Rosewater  

    So what happened was, I went home to visit my dad. And so, to refresh his memory, I bought some--I went to a convention, Alpha was out. I bought I think a starter and two boosters or three boosters. And then I realized I liked the game. So when Beta came out, I knew that if I wanted my friends to play, I had to get it for them. Because I knew Beta was going to sell out in a day. So I bought a whole bunch. I bought like two boxes of boosters and two boxes of starters. Starters, by the way, for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, when Magic first began, you could buy 60 cards in a box. That's how you were supposed to start the game. And then they had boosters that you bought additionally. We don't do starters anymore, but at the time they did. And so I bought a whole bunch, and then I went to visit my dad and I brought him some Magic packs. So what do you remember of me bringing you Magic?


    Gene Rosewater  

    I don't remember how much it was, it was (???) enough for me to make a deck or a couple of decks. And I started learning Magic. But of course, the main thing that I learned is before Mark left and went back home, he said he wanted to trade with me. So he picked out all the cards he wanted. And then of course, I knew was gonna play Magic a lot more than me. So I didn't have any problem with that. And it wasn't for a long time until I realized that he took my Emerald Mox, he took--


    Mark Rosewater  

    (laughs) So here's what happened is, my dad opened up a Mox Emerald. I had never seen a Mox Emerald. And at the time, I didn't understand it, because I'm like, isn't this a Forest? Why wouldn't I just play a Forest? I didn't--it took me a while to understand why it was good. But I hadn't ever seen it. I didn't own it. And at the time, I had two Fungusaurs. And so I traded my dad a Fungusaur for the Mox Emerald. And I swear to God, I thought I was being nice. I thought I was doing--because Fungusaur was awesome. Every time it would do damage, it got bigger. That I understood was really good. And so I made this trade and it wasn't--I wasn't trying to like rip off my dad. I honest thought to God thought I was making a very fair trade. In fact, I thought it was in his benefit. Because I didn't get why Mox Emerald was good. And I knew that Fungusaur was awesome. So...



    Gene Rosewater  

    And what did you trade me for the Black Lotus?


    Mark Rosewater  

    Now the Black Lotus--so what happened is, I got my dad into Magic. And many years later, I don't know, four or five years later, my dad is not playing much because he didn't live in a place where he had a lot of people to play with. And so I'm visiting one day and my dad says to me, he goes, Look, if you want to take any cards, feel free to take cards. So I looked at his collection and he's got a Black Lotus. I'm like are you sure? He goes, yeah, yeah, whatever you want to take. So I took his Black Lotus. (laughs)



    Gene Rosewater  

    Okay.


    Mark Rosewater  

    He's a good dad. So. Okay, so, okay. Now what is your memory of me starting to work for Wizards?


    Gene Rosewater  

    You pretty much know the story. I know that it started with your--just wanting to get involved. And I know you talked to people. And my memory was that you talked to people at Wizards. And there were four or five different people who said, sure, I want you to come work for me. It all started when you started doing the puzzles. Puzzles in the Duelist.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Yeah. 


    Gene Rosewater  

    And everybody was really--loved them, the people at Wizards loved them, but also the people who were reading Duelist loved them, it became the premier piece in Duelist. And I think that was your your inroads into getting a job at Wizards is the fact that you could do that, you could create it. And you convinced him that it was good and it was. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    So here's my memory is,--so my plan, my--when I graduated college was, I was gonna go to Los Angeles and write for television. That was my plan. And like  I said, obviously people know I did a little of that. But this opportunity came up where I could work for Wizards, where I was freelancing for them. I said to them one day, when I was up in Seattle, I'd be willing to move to Seattle. Or I thought I'd be willing to move Seattle. And they're like, well, if you want to move here, we'll give you a job. And so I was very torn about, do I pursue what I had planned to do? Or do I make this deviation and do this different job that I thought I would enjoy. But it really was a giant change for what I thought my life was going to be. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    So I called up my parents, my parents were separated so I called them individually. And I asked each of them about what they think I should do. And so I called up my mom, and my mom was not sure. She's like, oh, I don't know, you spent a lot of time and energy trying to do what you're doing. You know, you've had some success. Maybe you want to stick to it. Maybe this isn't the right play. And I call my dad and I say, you know, I'm thinking of going to become a game--you know, work at a game company. And you said, that's awesome, you should do that. So that--my parents had--I mean, my mom eventually got on board. But I mean, she was much more skeptical. Where you were--the second I proposed the idea, you thought it was an awesome idea. So do you remember that? 


    Gene Rosewater  

    I really don't, actually, I don't remember saying that. But I could understand myself feeling that way. Absolutely. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    So let's go a little bit--so now. I mean, you play--I know you play Magic on and off because you kind of live somewhere where you don't have a lot to play. I know you've played on Magic Online a little bit


    Gene Rosewater  

    I got real involved in Magic Online for a while. And then after a while, it lost some of its luster because of the dynamics of what happens online. And I still have a lot of cards, a lot of virtual cards online, but I don't play that often anymore. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    Oh, but here's an interesting story. My nephew. I have one sister who is a year younger than me named Alysse. And Alysse has a younger--has a son named Josh. And he's my nephew. And Josh recently about I don't know, six months ago, nine months ago, got really, really into Magic. And I know you had a chance to play with Josh.


    Gene Rosewater  

    And what happened was, he had some older friends who gave him a deck, which was really a killer deck. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    Yeah. (laughs)


    Gene Rosewater  

    So most of my cardboard cards were old. I went all the way into virtual. And so I had the old decks and I wanted to play with Josh. And he just beat me up, because he had some really good--he had one good current deck. And--but we played, and he got started and he's going gangbusters now. He really understands the game.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Yeah, because I talked about--when we started, about the generational shift. I mean Josh in my mind is, that's the next generation. Like my kids I've introduced to the game, none of them have really sort of taken it up. I mean, they all know how to play and I played with all of them. But none of them--like Josh is definitely, you know, got the bug. And he's very excited. He's playing at FNMs  And, in fact, my sister just called, like, he wants to learn about what PTQs are, and like where Grands Prix are. So it's fun. He's really getting into it. So let me ask you this, which is, do you have any good stories of--I know my mom has some of these stories, of people finding out that you're my dad? Interacting with Magic people?


    Gene Rosewater  

    Well, that's--the one that comes to mind first is, oh, 6-8 years ago, took a trip to Italy. And we were in Italy, and we wanted to get out of line to do some email. And we went into a little store and I turned around, and there's a Magic poster on the wall. And so I'm looking up for this to go on the internet. And I'm talking to the guy that runs the store. And he is a Magic enthusiast. As a matter of fact, he is jumping off the wall when I tell him that Mark is my son because he knows. As a matter of fact, he gave me a card and he wanted me to autograph the card as Mark's father. And so it was like overseas notoriety. And this guy refused to take any money for the internet. He was like, I was a celebrity in his store. Because Mark was my son.


    Mark Rosewater  

    You know, so when one of the stories that's funny--I don't have my mom on the show, so I'll tell my story for my mom. So one of the things my mom enjoys is, she has no end of--she loves when she meets Magic players, telling them that she's my mother. Because they always get really excited. And she loves to do it--I know you don't do that as much but my mom gets a real kick out of it. And I figure, she's my mom, so we'll give her that, that she gets to be proud of me. So--but it is fun. Like I said, I get to be a big fish in a little pond. So in that little tiny world, they get to be celebrities. So I think my mom enjoys that quite a bit. Okay, so, what is your favorite Magic set? 


    Gene Rosewater  

    Well... 


    Mark Rosewater  

    I know you're old-time. So...


    Gene Rosewater  

    Yeah. Probably most of the cards or most of the decks that I was really talking about right now are so old that people don't even remember where they came from. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    Well, I mean, I've done shows on, you know, I just did a show on Mirage. So I go back there. So what set really speaks to you? Which set--


    Gene Rosewater 

    Actually, when you say Mirage, I thought Mirage (???) was a great, great expansion. Probably one of my favorite. That was a deck--that was an expansion that I really enjoyed. But, you know, I played back in the days of Ice Age and Tempest and even before--my first cards were Mark's first cards, so it was Unlimited.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Yeah, no, they were Beta. Your first cards were Beta.


    Gene Rosewater  

    Beta. (???) Beta, you know, and, and certainly Aladdin [He means Arabian Nights--LTH] and Legends. Some of the early, early stuff. But I lived in an area that was--there weren't a whole lot of Magic players around. I had a good friend who I did introduce to Magic. And we would actually play a lot with each other, and we'd actually go to conventions once in a while. So I really don't--couldn't even tell you exactly what I was playing with back then. I ended up with a lot of cards because I live up in Lake Tahoe, a nice place to visit.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Yep, it is. (laughs)


    Gene Rosewater  

    On three or four occasions, Mark would bring the entire R&D team up to my house. And they would come up and it was wintertime, they would ski but they would spend a week, and they would sequester themselves and they would be working on a new expansions, and they'd bring thousands of cards with them. And when they would leave, they'd just leave them all there. So I generated a lot of cards back in the day when they were coming to my house, and that happened three or four times.


    Mark Rosewater  

    So what my dad is talking about, the big one is Invasion, I would say that the core of Invasion design was done at my dad's house. And then one time, by the way, we had a trip where so many people went to visit my dad from R&D that we realized if the plane crashed, it would have decimated Magic. (laughs) Like everybody you can imagine was on the plane. I think Jim Lin was the only person that wasn't on that plane. Like, Magic would have been in the hands of one person if something had happened. So here's something people might find interesting. So in the player--I have a thing called player psychographics, right? Talking about the kind of players people are, and you are what's known as a Johnny. Do you know what a Johnny is?


    Gene Rosewater  

    Absolutely. I'm a Johnny. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    So my dad loves fiddling with decks. So explain what you enjoy when you play.


    Gene Rosewater  

    I like to do a deck that sets up with a combination of cards, and to get it to set up so that once it's there, I'm pretty much in control of the deck--of the game. It probably happens one out of four times, maybe one out of five times. So I lose a lot. And that's okay, except if I'm playing that online. What happens is, as soon as I get my deck set up, the person on the other end usually quits. So I never get a chance to see it go to the end. And that was a frustration for me playing online. If I'm playing with somebody across the table, at least they have the courtesy or whatever you want to call it of waiting until I I see my deck do what it can do.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Yeah, so it's fun. One of the things that I always enjoy with my dad is, sometimes I'll talk to him about combos, and I'll say, have you ever seen this combo? And he goes, oh, that's pretty good. And I remember one time I told you about--what was it, did you play with Mirrodin? Did you play?


    Gene Rosewater  

    Oh yeah, I always liked Mirrodin.


    Mark Rosewater  

    So I think I told you about the Isochron Scepter/Final Fortune combo. Is that one you built a deck around? Oh, with--right, with the angel? I think you did this? Where the Platinum Angel keeps you from losing the game. And Final Fortune lets you get an extra turn. But you lose next turn. So what you do is you put a Final Fortune on Isochron Scepter. And then you get an angel out and then you just take infinite turns. I think you built that deck. (laughs). I remember that. I remember that deck.


    Gene Rosewater  

    Yeah, the scepter was killer. People did not like to play against the scepter. They would just--


    Mark Rosewater  

    The story I remember you telling me is how you were playing somebody, and they out an Isochron Scepter. And then you clone it, you copy it. And then they quit the game because you had an Isochron Scepter. But you just copied their Scepter.



    Gene Rosewater  

    Of course. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    So, we're getting close to work. Is there anything--I'm going to give you a chance to sort of--any story about me and Magic that you might think is a fun story to tell people that we haven't talked about? Do you have any good...


    Gene Rosewater  

    We've touched on an awful lot of stuff. You know, nothing is really coming up for me as like, oh, a fun Mark story. I mean, I do have--by the way, you know, he said that his mother likes to say, oh, my son, his Mark Rosewater. I like doing that. I don't get a lot of opportunity to do that. And usually, if I just meet someone who plays Magic, I don't jump in there. But if they're--if I find that they're really, you know, really dyed in the wool core Magic people, I will throw out Mark's name. Because usually they know him. And that's like, that's cool. You know, that's my son.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Yeah, no, that's--like I said, because people always ask me that about my mom. Does it bug me that my mom does that. I'm like, no, she raised me. She earned it. She earned it, and any "that's my son's thing" She wants to do is fair game. Same with you. So. And like I said, one of the things that I really--I took that as that--I do think my love of gaming directly tied--because something else about my dad is, you're very playful. And that even even outside the context of games specifically, my dad was somebody who always would sort of take things and turn them into games. You know? Like I remember on Halloween, you know, we'd come home with our bag of candy and my dad would blindfold us and he'd cut up candy and try to make us guess, you know which candy was which thing. Now I later learned that was your way to eat my candy but I did have fun doing this. (laughs)


    Gene Rosewater  

    Once I had the blindfold on, I could do whatever I wanted. Right.


    Mark Rosewater  

    But one of the things that growing up that I always loved was that you always found ways to you know, to turn things into games--oh, also something else that you taught me is the idea that just because the game has rules doesn't mean that you can't change the rules. That if you don't like the game, you know, change the rules. Make the game what you want the game to be.


    Gene Rosewater  

    I think I have enhanced many games, just by tweaking the rules. I don't know about changing them, but tweaking them, make a little bit of a change. And as long as everybody knows the rules, it works better. You know, most of the games I play have been tweaked. Yeah. And I have a wonderful partner who loves to play, and the two of us--she is a great gamer. And we are always looking at how to change the games.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Yeah, and one of the things that is neat--I mean, philosophically, one of the things that steered me toward game design in general is, I love having the mindset that games aren't this locked thing. That the games--that you the game player have some say in how you play the game. And that one of the things--I mean one of the reasons I love Magic is, Magic is on some level, it's a series of tools and a series of rules to allow you to play. But Magic is super, super flexible, that if you want to play you have a lot of means and ways to affect how you're playing. You know. And that that's something that you, the game player have control of, and that's something that Magic does really well. Because I meet a lot of Magic players, but many, many of them are playing very different games, you know. In that playing draft or playing Commander or playing, you know, Emperor or playing--I mean, there's 101 ways to play Magic or 1001 ways to play Magic. And I think that that entire mindset of games being this flexible thing, rather than being a locked thing, I got from you. And that, you know--I definitely remember growing up, you were like, yeah, that's a dumb rule. Let's change that rule.


    Gene Rosewater  

    And something else. And I think that I had--I think I had some influence here, actually, both you and Alysse, but my philosophy sort of of life, at least about where you would go in life was simply this, find something you love to do, and get someone to pay you to do it. So here you were, you were a game player, you love playing games, and you went out and you found a way to get someone to pay you to play games, exactly what I espouse to.


    Mark Rosewater  

    And that's--when I called, I'd say, yeah, the reason I think you were so excited, I was like, here's what I want to do, I want to go make games for a living. You're like, that sounds awesome. You should do that. 


    Gene Rosewater  

    Right.


    Mark Rosewater  

    Yeah, I think--I wrote--I did a speech at Rachel's career day about finding your dream job. And then I wrote an article about it. Maybe one day I'll do a podcast on that. But in it I talked about the three things--you it upon two of them. The three things of a dream job is, it has to be something you're good at, something you enjoy, and something someone will pay you for. (laughs) And game design, luckily, I hit all three of those, so... but like I said, I owe a lot of gratitude for you. I'm very thankful for all you did to encourage me to play games, that encouraged me to get into games as a career. And it's fun, because whenever my dad comes to town, we always play games, we usually play some Magic, but we also played lots of other games. And it is neat. Like people always ask me how much Magic I play outside of work. And the answer is, not a lot. Mostly because I have my family, and I just don't have a lot of spare time. But when my dad visits they're the one time I actually get to play Magic. And it's fun, because we'll always play whatever the latest thing is, and my dad is not as caught up as I am. So I always get a fresh set of eyes to sort of see what he thinks of the latest set. So later this week, he has not played Return to Ravnica or any of the block yet so he'll get a chance to--although you played original Ravnica, didn't you?


    Gene Rosewater  

    The original, yeah. I played that online.


    Mark Rosewater  

    So we're--we've returned this year, and so we'll get a chance to--oh, (???) gonna park my car, I don't need to park my car because my dad's taking my car. Anyway, so we are here at Wizards. So it was fun talking with you. Obviously I get to spend the whole week with you. But it was fun having you on the show. And like I said, I try to make this podcast--I tried to mix things up. And when I realized I had the chance to interview my dad, I thought that was awesome. So I hope you guys all enjoyed what I'll call "Meet My Dad." But anyway, it was a lot of fun. Thank you for being on the show. 


    Gene Rosewater  

    Thank you for having me on. 


    Mark Rosewater  

    But now it's time to go make the Magic


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  2. I'm not pulling out of my driveway, we all know what that means! It's time for another Drive to Work: At Home Edition. Okay, so today's podcast is based on something I wrote on my blog. And I just wanted to go into more detail. It's a really interesting topic. So something I talked about in R&D philosophy is what we call inclusion over exclusion. And so the point of today's podcast is to explain what that means, and just go in greater depth of understanding sort of the philosophy behind it from a game design standpoint. 

    Okay, so my first question is, what do demons and merfolk and walls all have in common? And the answer is, they were all something part of Magic. In fact, I believe all of them were in Alpha, and all of them for a period of time got removed from the game. So demons, in early Magic, there was a worry that it was upsetting, you know, there's a certain audience that was upset that demons were in the game, and we were--Wizards was sort of anticipating something. So there's a period of time where we removed demons from the game, or, at least we removed the word demon from the game. I guess we just called them something else. We called them beasts or horrors or something, but we didn't really refer to them as demons specifically. 

    And merfolk, there was a period of time where the creative team, I think it was led by Brady Dommermuth at the time, just like felt that like, water-based fights are weird, when we're summoning things to have a land-based conflict and felt like, you know, merfolk, and other water-based, things were just kind of in a weird state. And it's weird to sort of pluck this merfolk from the sea and have it fight on land. So there's a period of time around like Odyssey where we stopped doing merfolk. Where we stopped--the creature type merfolk, we didn't do anymore. 


    And walls--this was one of my issues. Although I think Brady and I were on the same page on this one. Walls have never made a lot of sense from like, you know--what exactly is a creature? Well, it's sapient, or at least sentient, or at least alive. You know, like, a Wall of Stone? How is that any level a creature? You know what I'm saying? It's an object, you know. Why--it seems more an artifact or, you know, it doesn't make any sense as a creature. 

    I mean, there are like living walls, or maybe even like plant-based walls that make some sense as maybe being a creature if you're very loose on what a creature is. And anyway, there's a period in time where we stopped making walls as creatures. That we just stopped--like, walls used to have defender baked into them. That if you if you were a wall in your creature type, it was in the rules, just being a wall meant you had defender. We later made the defender mechanic, and then all walls had defender, but we also made other defenders that weren't walls. Each of these things, we at some point, we thought, like, it didn't make sense, or it was, you know, it was pulling away from what Magic was. And in each of these cases, we brought it back. And in each of these cases, you know, there's a reason that they returned. 

    And so what I want to talk about today is, one of the basic elements that we have to come to grips with is--so Magic is what's known as a modular game. Meaning that, you know, most games when you take it out of the box, hey, you use most of the pieces. You know, if I'm playing the game of Monopoly, well, I have the Monopoly board and the Monopoly cards. And, you know, the hotels--I have all of the component pieces that I'm playing with. And from game to game, I'm mostly using all the pieces in any one game, you know, I might not use every piece, but all the pieces are available every game. And so when you play a game, you the player aren't really deciding what pieces you're using. 

    But there are some games, Magic being one of them, where you the player of the game have some choice. Like in role playing, Dungeon and Dragons, for example, you have some choice. You know, a lot more exists than you personally have to use. And games like this, when I talked to them as being sort of modular, it means you have choices about what you want to play with. You have choices about what to include. 

    So Magic right now, you're building a deck. You know, depending on the format, a 60 card deck or a 100 card deck or a 40 card deck, whatever. Different formats, you're building a deck and the size can vary on the format. But you have choices to make and you can choose what to put in. 

    Sometimes, you know, if you're playing something like Limited, okay, you have choices, but a good chunk of your cards have to be used. Other times, if you're playing like a Legacy format, you have 25,000 cards to choose from. And, you know, your portion of what you have to choose is a tiny of what exists [sic] . 

    And so, one of the things that's interesting from an R&D standpoint is, we are trying to make sure that each person gets to make the game they want to make. Like, if you make a game, you know, like Monopoly, you know, when it's a very fixed experience like--well, you're choosing what they experience, and you're choosing the component pieces of it. And everybody's mostly going to experience those things. 

    The difference in a game that has an element where you're choosing pieces, is, you are making sort of a customizable set of objects that the player can choose from. And when you do that, what you're trying to do is saying, okay, I want to add some customizability. I want to say to the player, look, we are making more than you need. And we are giving you the freedom to figure out what you want to do. 

    Now built into that is, there is both a mechanical component and a creative component. And what I mean by that is, our cards do different things mechanically. And you the player might make choices about mechanically what you want to do. Oh, well, I like this mechanical theme. I want to build a deck around this mechanical theme. I like the graveyard, I want to get things out of the graveyard. So I'm going to focus on mechanical aspect. Or there is a creative choice. I like this world, I like this theme. You know, I'm going to build my deck so it brings out, you know, some flavor that I enjoy. 

    And there's intersection between those two, creature types being the biggest one, like, well, the reason I like goblins is A. I like the flavor of goblins. But also they have a mechanical identity, I enjoy that mechanical identity, or I like elves or merfolk, or whatever. So the players are sort of--what we want to do is we want to craft something so the players can sort of make choices about the world they make. 

    And the the the tricky thing about it, and this is one of the things where this whole idea of inclusion or exclusion comes from, is different people want different things. Like one of the most important lessons when you do game design or come to work for Magic, for example, one of the first big lessons that you have to learn is that when you play Magic, Magic means something to you personally. That there's some expression to how you play. Maybe there's more than one expression. But hey, you like playing a certain Constructed format or a certain Limited format, or, you know, there's just a mix of things that makes Magic what Magic is to you. And again, part of that might be mechanical based, part of that might be flavor based. But there's something that sort of makes Magic what Magic is to you. 

    And so one of the first things you have to learn as a game designer when making Magic is what that entails, what that is, varies greatly between players. And on many different levels. Like part of it is just the way you play, for example, the format. There's lots of ways to play Magic, one of the strengths of Magic is there's many different executions of it. And, you know, if you sit and play Commander versus Draft, you know, it's the same game, the same card--you know, the same rule set, the same game pieces, but those are very different experiences, you know, how competitive it is, how social it is, you know, there's lots of different factors that go into it. 

    So one of the things when you first get to Wizards is--and this is something that is normal human, you know, experience, which is that you tend to frame something by your experiences, how you experience it. And one of the things that it takes time to realize is, oh, well, how I experienced it is shaped by me. By how I see it, how I use it, what I do, and that one of the things--I mean, this is true of all life, I'm just talking Magic. 

    But you know, when you first start designing Magic cards, you tend to design cards that reinforce the game that you see it being. You design cards to say, well, this is what Magic is to me. So I'm gonna make cards that make that version of Magic, what Magic is to me, that's the first thing you design. You tend to design cards that are what you want to see in the game. 

    But the next level you have to get to as a game designer is going, oh, there are other people that experience the game differently than I do. And some experience it radically different than you do. For example, one of the big vectors is enfranchised versus not enfranchised. An enfranchised player, meaning I'm someone who Magic's a big part of my life, I'm part of the Magic community. Like every day I am interacting with Magic in a way where Magic is part of my identity. 

    That it's what we call lifestyle game. That it's more than just a thing I do, it's a thing I define myself as being, I'm a Magic player. That is how I define myself. That if I meet somebody else that plays Magic, we have a bond because I'm a Magic player. 

    But there are a lot of people in which they interact with Magic in a way that it's a thing they do, but it's not definitional. It is not a way they define themselves. It's sort of like--you know, the way I describe it is, there are chess players in which chess like defines who they are, that it's a part of their identity. And then there are people that play chess, you know, and that a chess player and a player of chess are two very different things. Magic has that same--you know, there are people in which the the essence and identity of Magic is just very different. 

    And, just like I said, there are lots of different formats. There's lots of different expressions. The other thing we realized, and this is one of the reasons that Magic--the reason we sort of adopted the multiverse premise in the first place. Why when Richard started, the idea of this multiverse existed, was that we want to tap into what different people enjoy. 

    So this is where we get to the concept of resonance, right? That when you play, when you choose what to do with your own free time, you want to do things that really speak to you. And that each individual person--much like Magic might speak to you or not speak to you, different elements of life speak to you. 

    For example, let's talk genres. In storytelling, there's a lot of different kinds of storytelling. There are stories that lead in different directions to tell different kinds of stories. Some people love the horror genre, you know, some people don't. Like my example is, I'm personally not that much into horror. Like if I have to go watch a film, I don't tend--I mean, I'm not saying there's not horror things I've watched, there's definitely you know, there, there are horror films I've seen, but I don't go out of my way to watch horror films. And if something is a horror film, something about it has to like--I have to be lured in to see that. Where other people are like, oh, my goodness, I love horror films, you know, the more horror film it feels, the more they want to see it. 

    And so the idea of genres is, different people feel comfortable interacting with different genres, only because it reinforces different aspects of who they are or plays into their identity and different people like different things. And the idea of resonance is that you want people to--like, there's a term I use called piggybacking. And what piggybacking means is that you take things that people already know, and use that as a means to reinforce something. 

    And so I'll just use Innistrad as an example, since we're talking horror. If I want to make a zombie deck in Innistrad, well, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm gonna say, well, let me tap into people's experience with zombies in movies, in TV shows in books--like, in pop culture. Zombies means something. The reason that zombies resonate, the reason that zombies are popular, is there something about zombies that speak to the human experience, that resonate with people. 

    So if I'm going to make a set with zombies, especially one that's leaning into, like, sort of what zombies are, I want to make sure that I'm doing something that feels like zombies. But from a game design standpoint, I have the freedom that zombies mean something to people, and that when I'm building, I'm not building from scratch, I'm not making a brand new thing you've never seen before. I'm leaning into something, you know. 

    And that is the power of genres. And that is the power of the multiverse, which is, there's a reason that Magic keeps bouncing around. The reason that we don't go to Eldraine and stay in Eldraine for five years, right, we--one of the things that we realize is that there's such a wide spread of audience that really keys into different things that--I call it pushing the pendulum, right, that we want to keep making Magic different things. And that the idea behind that, the reason that we have a Greek world and you know, an Egyptian world and a city world and a Gothic horror world and a fairytale world, like the reason we have all these different places is, different things are going to speak to different people. Different people are gonna go, oh, wow, that. You know. 

    And the cool thing about it is, no matter what we do, no matter where we go, you know, pick any Magic set. There's somebody who, like, that is at the core of what they are, of what they believe, of what they want, and it speaks to them. 

    And likewise, look, every set is not going to squarely hit every person. But the philosophy behind it--this is how I get you to inclusion versus exclusion--is that we we want to give everybody the opportunity to find the thing that speaks to them so that they can choose that.

    That one of the powerful things about Magic is that the customizability of it, the ability to craft it, means that you the player can say, hey, I want a game that satisfies certain qualities. And this particular game gives me so much freedom to craft it that I can make it resonate with who I am as a person. I can make it something that really speaks to me as a game player. 

    One of the most powerful things about Magic is that it's customizability, its modularity lets the player make it what they want it to be. Do you want it to be a game where you sit around with your friends and goof off for hours on end? Do you want it to be highly competitive, where you're testing who you are and what you're capable of doing? Do you want it to be something that's just really expressing who you are in a way that other people can see? Like, a lot of like the psychographics and, you know, a lot of the stuff that we define is just sort of saying like, hey, how are you using the game? 

    Okay. Now, the key to it is--what we found is, the more flexibility we give, the more options we give, the happier the audience seems to be as a whole. This is how I got to my buffet metaphor. For those that don't know. I spent a long time trying to understand like, what's the quality of designing Magic. And any metaphor, I mean, if you push too--you know, like, metaphors work up to a point. 

    But the buffet metaphor I've really enjoyed for Magic is, we are trying to make an awesome buffet. And the neat thing about a buffet and the reason I like this metaphor is, the goal of a buffet is to give each eater their perfect meal. We want you, the person who's going to eat the food, to go, wow. This was a meal made for me. And the whole philosophy behind the buffet is, well, if I just give a lot of food and give you a lot of options, then you the eater can choose what it is you want. And hopefully, if we have well-crafted food, that's the kind of food you want, you have great experience. 

    Now here is the challenge. And this is where we get to inclusion over exclusion, is anything that one person might love, another person might hate. So for example, we do a horror set, you know, we do Innistrad, let's say, some people, it speaks to their core. This is the essence, this is the genre they love. This is the thing that just, you know, makes them all excited. Other people are like, well, that's not really my thing. You know, I'm not really--it's not, it doesn't speak to me. And so you know, I'm, I'm less excited by that

    Or maybe I hate horror. It's like, it's the thing I--you know, like I run away from horror. If there's a horror film, I don't want to see it. I don't want to see the commercials, the commercials freak me out. You know, that no matter what we do, there are people that are going to respond to it, and people that are not going to respond to it. 

    So one of the common requests that I get is, we do something, and we do infinite things, but we do something and somebody out there goes, wow. Wow. I don't like that. I don't like that. And I don't want that in my game. Because once again, everybody experiences Magic through their lens of what it is for them. This is my game. 

    And like I said. The genius of the system built by Richard Garfield was that each person had so much ability to craft what they wanted, that you really could feel like this was mine. Because it hits on all the points that I wanted to hit on. You know, it pushes all the buttons that I need pushed. That it lets me craft the game to be the game that I most want it to be. 

    So what happens is, people are like, wow. I love you know, all these aspects. Ooh, but there's one thing that I don't like. And wow, when I have to play--now, obviously I won't put it in my deck. Or maybe I have to put my deck if I have if my mechanical--like maybe it has a mechanical reference that I need because I want to win the game, but I don't like the creative reference of something. Or vice versa. Maybe I love the creative but the mechanics I don't like.

    But the idea is, look, when I play Magic, Magic is, you know--I have to play with somebody. And while I control what I play with, I don't necessarily control what they play with. And so when I'm playing the game, there might be things that I don't like, and wow. I don't want to interact with that thing. My game is better if that thing isn't there. That that thing being there. knocks down the game for me, makes my game less of what my game is. 

    So the challenge is, we have the tools to be additive. We have the tools to be inclusive. And what I mean by that is, we can make a lot of different things. we can make a lot of different settings, we can make a lot of different mechanics, we can, you know--with Universes Beyond do other IPs, like there's a lot of things we can do. We can dip in a lot of different places. 

    So Magic as a game is structured to go wide. It is easy for us to add something. And this is sort of my buffet metaphor, which is if we learn that there's a food that we haven't served before, that people would like, it is easy for us to add a food. It is easy for us to go oh, oh, you guys want seafood? We've never had seafood, but you want seafood? Yeah, we can add seafood. 

    What is much harder for us is that... to remove something is not just to remove it for you the player that want it removed, it's to remove it for all players. So if we don't do something, it sort of shuts--like if we make something that you want, okay, you can play it. Like, let's say, for example, you love fairy tales, and we make Eldraine. Now you the fairy tale lover have access to it and you can build it. Somebody who doesn't like fairy tales doesn't have to put the stuff in their deck. 

    But if we exclude--let's say we say okay, we're never going to do this thing. You know, we're going to try to keep it out of the game, well, then I'm preventing everybody to have access to that. That inclusion means everybody has access, but exclusion means no one has access. And Magic as a customizable game, as a modular game, isn't well suited for that. So when someone to me says, hey, could you not do thing X, or what's more common is, I don't like thing X. Could you do less of thing X? That is a lot harder for us. 

    Now, I'm not saying there aren't things we avoid. For example, there are some things, especially mechanically, where we have feedback that the vast majority of players, it really makes the game less for them. Like efficient direct damage, or highly efficient card denial or counterspells. Like, they're definitely things where early in Magic we did something, and like, wow, it made for a not fun game. 

    And there are other things like harmful stereotypes. I mean, there's things that actually being in the game hurts people in a way that goes beyond sort of just I don't like it, you know. And so it's not that we don't exclude anything, there's definitely things that we have to be careful about. But the general point is that the game sort of thrives if we say, you know what, we're going to try to give something for everybody. And then say, look, we're, we're going to put it in the game, you the game players then figure out how you want to use it. 

    And the challenge is, and this is something that's--I mean, it keeps coming up. You know, I mean, probably the latest cause of it is Universes Beyond, but it's a tale as old as time. Whenever we introduce something new to the game, whatever it is, whenever we go to a new world, or have a new genre, or like--whenever we introduce something new, there are people who are like, well, that's not what the game means to me, I don't want that thing. 

    And the message I have to kind of give is, well, there are other people other than you who do enjoy this, and we are trying to make the game inclusive for them. We're trying to offer the thing they love. 

    And so what that means is that kind of the--R&D is much more empowered to add things than we are to remove things. And so--because a lot of people are sort of like, well, I--this is what Magic means to me. There's this component I don't like of Magic. Hey, people that make the game, hey, this is how I feel, could you please remove that? 

    And the answer I have to kind of give is, look. There are tools for removing things, you can make a format where only certain things are allowed. You could have a play group where you choose to play with certain things. You know. Or you could maybe choose a format where only things are allowed--I mean, you have the ability on the player end to have some control. Not total control. 

    And one of the things also of being a social game is, look, part of playing with other people is--as I point out, Magic to each individual is slightly different game. And part of playing Magic with other people is seeing their experience of Magic. 

    Like--here's the way I like to think of it is, when I make a deck, I'm making--I'm optimizing what Magic is to me. Like I'm making something that's really speaks to me, that is how I want to play. When I meet somebody else, and I play against them, I get a glimpse into what Magic is for them. I get a glimpse into their version of Magic. 

    And my argument sort of is that no person's Magic is exactly the same. There might be people that are aligned, but each person has a slightly--that's one of the genius of the game is that you really can make it your own. And part of playing other people is experiencing what they enjoy. That when I play against somebody else, I get to see what aspect of the game that means to them. 

    And so when I play against somebody else, and they do something that I don't enjoy, but they enjoy, kind of my message is, well, embrace the fact that part of playing with somebody else is they're bringing what they love into the game. And maybe what they love into the game isn't the thing that you love about the game. But part of the human experience, part of interacting with people is realizing that each person has their own things. 

    And so, you know, if I play with another player, and they have an aspect that is not something I would want to include, but it really brings joy to them, our hope is that players can come to realize that like, the game is better served--that we're giving each person the tools to optimize the game to make what they bring to the game what they most want. 

    The downside--and I don't even think it's a downside. But what comes with that is that you enable other people to bring what they want to the game. And so since Magic--I mean, we've made some solitaire variants, but assume you're not playing solitaire because very few people do. Although Mana Maze Solitaire, if you go back and read the Duelist, it's very cool. 

    Part of the play experience is interacting other people and seeing what they enjoy. And that we think that Magic is better suited if we, the makers of the game, try to go broad, try to include as much as we can, that let each individual person maximize their ability to make the game what they want. And in doing that, there's a cost. And the cost is, other people have to interact and absorb what other people enjoy. 

    And like I said, there might be parts of Magic you just really dislike. And if other people are tapping into that, and you just don't enjoy the experience, that is where you have to sort of look at your playgroup, or look at how you play or what you play or where you play, you know, we're kind of putting that in the hands of the players, because R&D isn't good at exclusion. We're not. Like, the only way to exclude something is to exclude it for everybody. And we believe that Magic is a better game if we include things. If we let people have more choices and more options and more ability to craft Magic to be what they want. But the cost it comes at is the lack of exclusion. The lack of saying, well, we're just not going to do the thing you don't like. 

    And once again, the caveat I have is, if enough people dislike something--there are things that are universally disliked, that we're not doing. It's not like we're doing everything. There are things we aren't doing. But as a general rule of thumb, if there are things that we can do, that there's a decent sized audience, that it really speaks to them, that it really enhances Magic for them, we're going to do that. 

    And that is the core concept of inclusion over exclusion is, we think that Magic is a better game if each person has something that speaks to their soul, that is something that really excites them, that makes Magic a joy. And that if that means that I have to play with other people, and I have to experience their joy, even if their joy is not my joy, that that overall is a better game than us excluding things so that people can't make the game as much of their own as they want to.

    And so that is why, when people write to me, and they say, can you just please take thing X out of the game, the answer--and I'm not, I don't mean to be glib or anything, is it really boils down to that thing that you don't like, there is someone who not only likes it, there's someone who that is their favorite thing. That is the thing that makes them shine the most. And that I'm not going to take that thing away from them. And that you as a player have to sort of--and once again, there's a lot of tools that you as a player have of when and how and where to use your cards, but that I'm not going to take joy away from another player so you don't have to interact with an aspect you don't like. 

    That is the core of inclusion versus exclusion is, we'd rather empower people to have what they want. At the cost of you having to experience other people's joy and what other people love. And that's the core. That's the core of it. 

    Like, the reason I--this all came from me sharing my wall story. I got rid of walls, because I thought walls were dumb. I thought walls were just stupid. I'm a writer at my core, and it just didn't make any flavor sense, and I care about flavor. And I'm like, this is just dumb. Why are we doing this? And so I took walls out of the game, I mean I and other people took walls out of the game. 

    But I kept getting people writing in to me saying, wow, you know, the same thing that I hated about walls, that they made no sense, other people were like, hey, that's charming to me. I like that. You know. And the reason that we brought walls back--and I originally sort of fought against us bringing walls back. But what I came to realize was that, like, the walls brought happiness to other people. Even if they pissed me off, even if it's just, there's something about them that made the game less for me. 

    And then what I had to come to realize, and the reason that, you know, I support walls now is not that I'm a great fan of walls. It's not that I think walls add something to the game for me. But I recognize they add something for other people. And that part of a game of community, part of in which, you know, that I want Magic to have things that make Magic a better game for everybody. And even if those things don't make Magic a better game for me, even if the things make--you know, that other people getting what they want, the game being better for other people. the joy to other people, is a benefit to me. 

    That Magic and the Magic community, that the more that each person can sort of make Magic the thing that makes them the happiest, that that is a boon to me as a Magic player. Especially someone who's part of the Magic community, who's part of the environment of Magic, that us allowing each player to bring their joy to the game, you know, that--other people's joy is to my benefit, not to my detriment. The fact that the game is not 100% crafted to what I want makes Magic a better overall game for everybody. 

    And just like being a designer--like that lesson in game design, that I have to make Magic cards that aren't for me, that I have to make Magic cards that, you know--I have to learn what other people like so I can make something, not that enhances Magic for me, but for other people. That part of being a Magic player, I think there's a realization of understanding that Magic as a game is better if people have access to the thing they love, even if access to the thing they love might be something I'm not that crazy about from time to time. Might be something that I even dislike. 

    But that Magic as a whole is a better game for people to have access to that. That is inclusion over exclusion, that is the philosophy we're talking about. That, you know, you might not care for "fill in the blank", "fill in the blank" might even be something that you actively dislike. But if there are people out there that really truly love that thing, if that thing is what makes Magic shine for them, the game having it just makes more people happy. And, you know--anyway. So that is my topic for today, of just sort of talking about why we are doing something that you personally don't like, but that other people really, really do. And that is why.

    And that--I know it is a hard sort of lesson to say, you know, that--it's great if the world is always optimized for what you want. Of like, well, this is what I enjoy. So I wish everybody around me would optimize to what I want. But the reality is, your life will be better if you recognize that other people just want other things. And that other people having those things and having their own sense of happiness and having their own sense of belonging is in general an additive to you. That the Magic community gets better the game gets better if more people feel included, if more people feel like the game speaks to them. And that way more is added to the game than is taken away from you. And that is the inherent lesson of inclusion versus exclusion. 

    Anyway guys, I hope--this is me going a little more introspective today, but I hope you guys enjoyed it. But I can see my desk. So we all know that means, means instead of talking Magic, it's time for me be making Magic. So I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.


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  3. All podcast content by Mark Rosewater


    Mark Rosewater: 

    I'm not pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It's time for another Drive to Work, At Home Edition. So today I want to talk about a concept that's very important to Magic. That's a little on the complex side. Card advantage. So what I've done is I got an expert, Brian Weissman, longtime pro player, creator of The Deck, one would argue the first ever recorded deck that took advantage of card advantage, to come talk about what is card advantage. So hey Brian.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    How's it going, Mark, thanks for having me on.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Okay, so this is going to be like a wading pool, what they call a zero entry pool, where we're going to start very shallow. And then as we go along, we'll get to the deep end. So we're not going to start at the deep end, but we will get there. Okay, so Brian.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yes.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    In simplest terms, what is card advantage?

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    In simplest terms, Mark, card advantage is simply the idea that the easiest, almost deterministic route to winning a game of Magic is to dominate your opponent in resources, specifically in the resources of cards, either by destroying more of their cards for fewer of yours, or more simply, by drawing more cards than your opponent. And the essential idea that if you accomplish that, winning the game becomes inevitable, regardless of their strategy and generally, regardless of your strategy. Okay,

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Okay, so let's just walk through some simple examples.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Okay.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

     Okay, so let's take Divination.
    Okay, so Divination, you spend mana, you draw two cards. So you've spent one card, but you've drawn two cards,

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Precisely.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    And I mean, drawing cards is kind of the most simplest version of card advantage, right? I spent one card, I got more than one card.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Precisely. And I think on this on the surface, on face value, it's a very relatively easy concept to understand. Mainly because I think if you... if you pay attention to what people value the most about a given turn in Magic, one of the behaviors that I observe a lot when people are learning the game, and something that was totally endemic to all of the players that I first started playing Magic with back in early 1994, was that everybody really, really wanted to draw a card more than anything else. As soon as their turn began, often at the expense of the untap step, and sometimes even the upkeep step, people would reach over to their deck and grab another card. It was clearly obvious to people that they understood that drawing a card was fundamentally important, not only for entrenching their strategy, but also for just enjoying the game more. More cards means more options, more mana to do the things you want, and eventually gets you to whatever the theme of your deck is. And so I think that early on, most players recognize that drawing cards feels good, and it's powerful in some way that they may not necessarily understand. But in terms of really getting into the nitty gritty of what made that so important, it took a little bit of time for that to be understood in the community.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Okay, so let's now... the second example here is Mind Rot. Mind Rot is a spell that makes your opponent discard two cards. So assuming your opponent has two cards, although most likely if you're casting Mind Rot, they have two cards. I cast one card, they lose two cards. So now this is this is another--as we're getting into this pool, the idea that it's not that I'm going up in cards, it's that I have--in the comparison to my opponent, I have played one, I lost one card, but they lost two cards. So let's talk a little bit about like, the idea that it's--I have more cards in relation to my opponent.

     

    Brian Weissman: 


    Yes, exactly. And I think that getting back to one of the things that I really like to explain to new players and one of the things that is a really good indicator whether or not something matters a lot is how people feel about it emotionally. And anybody that's ever been forced to discard cards kind of has that that icky feeling in the middle of their chest that kind of feels uncomfortable to be made to discard. And when I think back to Magic's early days, there was there was one incredibly powerful discard spell called Mind Twist that was considerably more powerful than Mind Rot. Basically imagine Mind Rot, but it scales. You can cast--spend as much mana as you want on it. And the discard is a random discard rather than a choice discard, which feels a lot worse. 

    But it wasn't until the Fallen Empires expansion was printed in I think mid to late 1994 that a lot of people were playing with discard because a two black mana discard spell called Hymn to Tourach was printed. And everybody was playing with it because it was a common card and it was in just hundreds of decks. And it created a really kind of uncomfortable game experience for a lot of players. People began to realize I think around the time when Hymn to Tourach came out, that making your opponent discard was a strategy unto itself, and begin to understand why that was a thing. Because it felt bad to discard. You weren't really sure, you threw cards in the graveyard, was that the same as the cards being milled off the top of your library by Millstone?
    kind of seems the same, but it isn't really the same. And it certainly felt a lot worse. 

    And I think gradually, people came to understand that if you could make your opponent lose additional resources for fewer cards than you were expending to do that, that it got you further ahead and it made the situation, you began to feel more powerful in the context of the game. And they began to feel weaker. And I think that was a clue that there was something really important going on there. That it wasn't just necessarily I'm drawing more cards than you. It was, it was the idea that I'm losing options. I'm losing my foothold in this game. Something important is happening here. And it seems like it's kind of leading to the guy doing--causing all the discard to win a disproportionate number of games.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 


    Okay, so the next example is, I cast a spell. I'll use Fireball, I guess. I cast a spell in which I have one spell, but I'm able to destroy two creatures with it. So the idea is I've cast one spell... now, note, these aren't cards in their hand. These are creatures on the battle. So the next thing to understand is when we say cards, we don't just mean cards in hand. Both discard and drawing are talking about cards in hand. But now we're starting to talk about, I went up in cards because they lost two cards on the table, and I lost one card in my hand. So let's talk about the idea that it's not just cards in hand, but just cards you have.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah, precisely. I mean, it elicits that same feeling. You overextend on the board, your opponent casts a Wrath of God--an early creature removal spell from alpha that everybody was playing with. It was a rare, so you didn't see it a ton and it cost double white. But still, the card showed up a lot. Certainly Earthquake was around, Fireball was around.


    In Legends, they printed the card Pyrotechnics, which could deal--kill a bunch of creatures. Anytime that happened, you would feel like, ugh, I feel kind of gutted as a result of that. I lost my three guys off the battlefield,  that felt bad, but I kind of just feel like I'm really falling behind now. I just feel like I have far fewer options, a lot less going on. And my opponent just feels like they're getting a dominant position. 

    And so again, it became really apparent that you didn't just need to mess around and interact with cards in hand, drawing more cards, making them discard. But if you could get two for one or three for one or four for one, on the battlefield, from cards that had already been played, it was kind of the same sense of getting much further ahead in the game right away from something that was clearly impactful.

     


    Mark Rosewater: 

    Okay, so the next example, I'm gonna use Giant Growth  to talk about going both directions. How you can lose card advantage with--Giant Growth can gain card advantage or lose you card advantage. As example for gaining card advantage is, I'm attacking with a two two creature, and my opponent has--what's a good example--three one--

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    A pair of 1/1s.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    A pair of 1/1s. Okay. A pair of 1/1s is good. I'm attacking with a 2/2, they have two 1/1s. Or it even can be--the thing about 1/1s is, they were going to trade both their 1/1s for your 2/2.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah, maybe a 1/1 and a 1/2.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Yeah, a 1/1 and a 1/2, the idea being that I wasn't going to destroy both  of their creatures. I was going to destroy one of their creatures, but not both of their creatures. And then you cast Giant Growth. Now it's a 5/5, and instead of them losing one creature, they lost both creatures,

     

    Brian Weissman: 


    Exactly. To a single spell that cost only one mana, and a very similar situation that happened a lot was the card Lightning Bolt, one red mana instant, deal three damage, and so you'd have that exact scenario. I attack with a 3/3, my opponent puts two 2/2s in front of it thinking that they're going to trade a 2/2 for a 3/3, I Bolt away one of the other guys, now a 2/2 hits a 3/3 and I kill two creatures for one red mana. incredibly potent effect that also just feels backbreaking when it happens to you.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    And the other important thing with this example is, it's not that a Giant Growth is inherently card advantage. It doesn't--a lot of times I can attack with the creature and Giant Growth it, hit you... I haven't gained any card advantage. So it's not that Giant Growth is inherently card advantage. But it can be. And that's the thing to understand is that, like--a Divination is always card advantage, I'm always going up in cards, but a Giant Growth--situationally I could go up in cards. But let's use the other example. Here's where it can cost you card advantage, which is I'm attacking with a 2/2 creature, I use Giant Growth on it, and then like the Lightning Bolt you're talking about, in response to my Giant Growth, you would Lightning Bolt my creature. Now, I lose my creature, and my Giant Growth essentially went for nothing. I--it doesn't do anything because there's no--the creature isn't there anymore. So now I've lost card advantage by casting Giant Growth.

     

    Brian Weissman: 


    Yeah. And you go through that experience, having a creature Bolted or in--more commonly Swords to Plowshared back in the era. One white mana, exile a creature and the person gains life from the--equal to the power of the creature that was exiled. But the same exact thing, I try to pump up my guy somehow, enhance my guy as a combat trick, and then my guy gets blown away from underneath me. And I lose two cards for one and feel quite awful. And so totally interchangeable, right? All the cards, whether it's the situation we described at the very beginning, simply drawing more cards, making your opponent discard more cards, getting two for one, getting three for one on the battlefield with some kind of a sweeper, or even a combat trick. Giant Growthing during, you know, a multi block or something like that. Or killing a bander when your opponent tried to block with a banding creature and you kill the other thing, any one of those things gets you further into the game, and makes it considerably harder for your opponent to recover their position. And if it happens a couple of times, you'll often engineer the ideal situation where you have three or four cards in your hand, and parity on the battlefield or even a lead, and your opponent has nothing in their hand and is reduced to drawing a single card per turn off the top.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Okay, so all of these examples so far are super practical, right? That you can look--you can look back at what happened, you can count the number of cards, and you can see, oh, one player at the end of it ended up has more cards in relation to the other player.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Exactly, yes.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Okay, so now the next step is the idea that I can play a card that costs you cards, but not immediately. So for example, let's say I play a card. We were talking old school today, so I'll use an old school card. I play a Circle of Protection.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yes,

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    So Circle of Protection is an enchantment that you can spend one generic mana to prevent any source of that color. So I play--let's say you're playing red, and I play Circle of Protection: Red, how's this card advantage? Nothing got lost. So why is this card advantage?

     

    Brian Weissman: 


    Yeah, in fact, actually, it feels initially the opposite, right? I play a Circle of Protection: Red, and it doesn't immediately impact the board, you still have all your red spells in hand, you still have your red creatures in play, it feels like I've actually spent two mana and a card that I've drawn to accomplish nothing. But the problem is that the Circle of Protection: Red, provided that you have mana to fuel it, not only neutralizes most of the red spells in your opponent's hand, but more importantly, it is a future negation. Every red card that they draw. Now, particularly if they're drawing a deck that's based around dealing damage directly to the player every single time they now draw Chain Lightning or Lightning Bolt, Pyrotechnics or Fireball or whatever, they're unable to do any damage. So it's almost as if their draw step didn't matter at all. And we talked before about how you're gleeful and happy to draw your card every turn. That's the really fun part of the game. Well, when your opponent has a Circle of Protection: Red in play, you're not looking forward to drawing off the top of your deck, unless it's maybe the one or two cards in your deck that might interact with that Circle of Protection: Red. You might not even have any way to deal with it at all. And in fact, it wasn't until I think the card Anarchy was printed in Ice Age, or maybe it was... was Anarchy in Alliances? It's around then.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Anarchy is from Ice Age, I believe. [Yes. -LTH]

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah. And it destroys all white permanents in play. A red sorcery. And it wasn't until anarchy--

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    A color break by the way, that card shouldn't have been printed.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    You learned some lessons, I think. I think you've done a few videos about that sort of thing. But anyway, it wasn't until anarchy was printed that red actually had a direct way of dealing with enchantments. And so if you put a Circle of Protection: Red in play. for a single spell, you could often nullify 30 cards in their deck. In play in hand, whatever, it was one of the most powerful card advantage cards in the world. So people think, oh, Circle of Protection: Red is unsportsmanlike, it's so powerful, it's strong. But what it really is, is it's just the ultimate card advantage card when it's employed against a deck that's very narrow, like a mon-red burn deck or something,

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Right, and so that's the next thing to understand on card advantage is, it's not necessarily that I'm trying to get more cards in the immediate present, right now. But it could be that I'm--over the course of the game, I'm going to make cards, I'm going to go up on cards. And so--now here's the next thing for us to explain. The difference between card advantage and virtual card advantage. So--

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    I see, yeah.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    So card advantage means that we actually count the cards, you know, I'm up in cards. I have more cards than you. If you count all my cards in play and cards in my hand, you know, there's--I have more cards than you do.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Right.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Virtual card advantage, and this is kind of what the Circle of Protection: Red was getting at is, it's not that that card necessarily made them discard cards or destroyed cards, but it made cards they have kind of not be useful anymore.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah, (???)

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    And so you went up cards, but you went up virtual cards. And that, that card--yeah, they still have it. It's still in their hand. You can count it, but it's not advancing them toward winning.

     

    Brian Weissman: 


    Yeah, the best example I can think of in that regard was a situation that happened a lot back in the day. An enchantment that was printed in Legends, one of the most powerful enchantments ever made. And oddly enough, not an Enchant World--even though I don't believe there are any Enchant Worlds in white [There are just a few -LTH]--is the card Moat.

     


    Mark Rosewater: 

    Yeah.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Costs two generic, two white mana. And simply, while it's on the battlefield, it says non flying creatures cannot attack, hard stop. And back when Moat was around, and people were still learning the game, I'd have people walk up to games that I was playing, and I'd have a Moat in place, sort of just, you know, surreptitiously sitting on the side of the battlefield, and they'd have 11 creatures in play, and the person would walk up and their initial assumption would be, look how many creatures are in play on one side of battlefield. That guy must be winning. And then they notice that over in the right corner, I have this singular enchantment holding all of those creatures at bay. And my hand has several ways to stop any attempt that they might make to get rid of the Moat. Consequently, all 11 of those creatures are effectively dead, rendered totally irrelevant, as well as any additional creatures they might draw from their deck. So the Moat in that situation is more powerful than Mind Twist. 

    More powerful than Brain Geyser, a card drawing spell that allows you to draw X cards in addition to the blue, initial casting cost of it. So you think oh, Brain Geyser for eight is really powerful. Well, a Moat that destroys 10 creatures in play and 13 more creatures in their deck is way better than Brain Geyser. And understanding that that's a real thing is kind of a big lightbulb moment for people when they're learning how to play the game better.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Okay, now here--as we continue to delve deeper here.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    The next thing that interesting is, cards are--situationally create advantage. Like virtual advantage means, well, I play a card, and it means something. Now, in the case of Moat, you might have things in play. So like, you could right away invalidate things.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Right.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    But sometimes what happens is, by watching you play your deck, I'm figuring out what I believe is in your deck. And then I play a card. And sometimes there are cards where you get to name something, you can use knowledge that you have, but I play something that's going to cause you problems, not because you--not that I've seen it yet, but I can anticipate. And so I'm--the card advantage is like future virtual card advantage. Which is a very odd concept. But the idea that I'm going to do something, because I've read you and I understand what you're doing, and that I'm causing you problems in the future. So let's talk a little bit about sort of future--future virtual card advantage.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah, I mean, I think that--I think to understand the value of of what you're describing, future card advantage, I think that you have to kind of make a mental leap as a player where you develop from the idea of dealing with the here and now and starting to develop your strategy so that you incorporate some planning. You begin to think about, what could I draw? What could the opponent draw? And as soon as you start to consider those things, not just what is the creature in play that I have to block or remove, but more of what could the person have down the road, and you start to formulate a strategy. Cards, like the ones you're describing, which sort of preemptively deal with things become increasingly attractive. And you can start to actually sculpt and plan a strategy where you are not even necessarily dealing with the stuff that's in play, but you're sculpting a situation where everything that they draw from that point onward is nullified. And those lead to some of the most powerful and advanced decks that have ever been played in constructed magic.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    And the other thing to remember is, the thing where it starts getting very complicated is, sometimes I can do something--like the example Circle of Protection is one for one, meaning I play Circle of Protection and red cards now can't be played. I play Moat and non-flyers can't attack--non-flyers, non-islandwalkers can't attack.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    But sometimes I can do something where it's--it's not on destroying a particular card, is I'm making certain strategies harder. Could we talk a little bit about that?

     

    Brian Weissman: 


    Yeah, I think so. I would say that probably the class of cards that's in that case, I'm very glad that you brought that up, actually, because I--in an article I wrote many years ago, I think probably almost 30 years ago, where I talked about this idea, I think the best example of that are cards that are directly involved in resource denial, specifically cards like Winter Orb, and Armageddon.

    Winter Orb is a two mana artifact that was printed in Alpha. It shows up in Commander, particularly competitive Commander fairly often. And it says that during the untap step, players only are allowed to untap a single land. The remainder of their lands are--stay tapped. So if you play a Winter Orb, and your opponent has a hand full of cards and all of their lands are tapped, they may draw three, four or five spells consecutively and be unable to do anything and actually be forced to discard. So for two mana, because of the situation that you've sculpted, your opponent is discarding the cards that they draw off the top of their deck rather than playing them. And maybe if they discard three or four cards, that Winter Orb has gotten four for one or five for one, then they play one card through the Winter Orb, tapping out again. And then the next four or five cards they draw are nullified by it. And so--and Armageddon, the famous sorcery from Alpha. One white, three generic, destroys all lands in play, can create very much the same situation and can straight up just win the game a lot of the time, too. And it's not just that you lose your mana. It's the fact that you've had such a crippling crushing blow to the card advantage dynamic between the two players, that the other person is just out of the game. They're not dead yet. But they're out.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Here's what I like to think about it, which is imagine when you cast that spell, it splits. Now there's two timelines, one of which you cast the spell and one which you didn't cast the spell.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Ah, that's great.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Like a lot of what you're talking about is well, they actually discard the card, but I'm like--it's not even that. In one timeline where I did do it, they play some number of cards. In the timeline where I didn't do it, they play a different number of cards. If in another timeline they played more cards, every card they played that wasn't played in the timeline where you did play it is card advantage. (???), for example, like I play and they can only play three cards for the rest of the game. Where if I didn't, and they played eight cards, I netted this sort of virtual five cards.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yes--I know, I love that analogy, that makes a ton of sense. And that's a really--it's an excellent way of looking at it, this sort of split timeline. And you'll often--and people recognize this instinctively, too, because when the game is over, in the game that you cast the Armageddon, you cast Winter Orb, the person says, "Oh, I would have done this. And I would have done this. And I had this card and I had this, and I would have done this," and you're like, "Well, you couldn't do any of those things. Because I had a Winter Orb in play, you were limited to doing one thing, every four turns."

     

    Okay, so the next level--as we go deeper?

     

    Sure.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    So sometimes, because you can read what your opponent wants to do, you can take steps that makes it so they have trouble doing that.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Of course.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    For example, let's just use Giant Growth, because that's a great example. If you read them as having Giant Growth, you can act in such a way that a Giant Growth isn't going to cause card advantage--card disadvantage for you.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Right.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    So what that means is, sometimes card advantage is a matter of understanding the situation where you might suffer card disadvantage, and not allowing those opportunities. Could we talk a little about that?

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah, I think that--that comes down to of course, understanding specific interactions and playing around a range of effects in a situation where you might be vulnerable. So another example would be, let's say I've got a creature enchantment in my hand. And it's a creature enchantment that draws a card, whenever the creature deals damage. I could just play it on my guy and try to attack and try to get a card out of it right away. But he's got three mana sitting there untapped, you know, two red and white or something. And I can't just play it, because if he has any range of red and white removal spells, I might lose card advantage. I might lose the creature and the enchantment. But if I wait until he's tapped out, then I know that I can safely invest in the creature, get through for an attack, at least have the enchantment replace itself.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Let me say real quickly, just to--so the audience understands, if I have an enchantment that says "when this enters the battlefield draw a card," if the creature I'm putting it on is not there, meaning it fizzles, then the effect doesn't happen.

     

    Brian Weissman: 


    Yeah, I'm just thinking more along the lines of it of a card like Curiosity, for example.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Oh, sure, when it does damage. Sure.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Right, the idea that when the creature attacks and deals combat damage, you get to draw a card from it. So it's the idea that I really want to play this. But I recognize that if my opponent has three untapped, and he's playing red and white, there's a high probability--or black, he might be able to kill my creature at instant speed and I lose two for one. So by understanding that and waiting until he's tapped out, so that I guarantee that I at least get through for an attack, that at least nullifies the the aspect of that interaction that would result in me getting two for one.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    And the important point here for card advantage is, early on--like we go back to our first example, with the Divination, that has kind of card advantage separated from gameplay, right? If I cast the Divination, I am going up in card--I mean, barring some very weird cases, but I'm gonna go up in cards, and my opponent isn't interacting with that. I'm just gaining card advantage.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Exactly.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    But as we look at the stuff we're getting to now, it's like, there's a lot of card advantage that has to--from understanding the game and playing correctly and reading what your opponent's doing, that a lot of card advantage is putting myself in situations where I'm increasing card advantage or decreasing disadvantage, you know.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah.

     

    Can I give a fairly technical explanation of that idea?

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Sure.

     

    Brian Weissman: 


    Okay, so back in old school format, back in the day, the most powerful reliable card advantage engine was a four mana artifact called Jayemdae Tome, which was also printed in Alpha. By  modern standards, Jayemdae Tome is quite obsolesced. In fact, it's been printed for quite cheaper both to cast and activate, and hasn't seen widespread adoption. But in that era, Jayemdae Tome was the way that slower, deterministic control decks won games of Magic. So both players generally, if they were savvy, particularly the person playing with Jayemdae Tome, would recognize that the card was instrumental to their win. In fact, it was the win condition. It may have been a four mana artifact that didn't deal damage that took four to cast and four to activate to draw a single card. But it was actually your win condition. 


    I used to tell people that every time I tapped my Jayemdae Tome, you may die to a Serra Angel later, but every time that Jayemdae Tome taps you're taking four damage. And if I tap it five times over the course of the game, you've already lost. It may take a little while for my angel to eventually finish you, or the Mirror Universe or a Fireball, but you've lost to the Jayemdae Tome already. It's actually the win condition. 

    So because the card is so critical to your victory, protecting it is critical as well. And that may lead you, in the case of using counter magic, which is the other tool that control decks use to control the board state, is the prioritizing of Counterspell to protect Jayemdae Tome above all else.


     So I might let you kill two or three things in play with a Counterspell in my hand, because I recognize that my route to victory is actually casting a Jayemdae Tome three turns from now with enough mana to protect it. So when you try to kill the Jayemdae Tome, I Counterspell that. Now you can't kill it. And now the Jayemdae Tome starts dealing four damage a turn until the game's over. And that's a high sort of high mastery behavior that takes a lot of time to figure out, and back to what you were saying--it means that you need to understand intrinsically as a player, where the sources of card advantage are as the context of the game evolves.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Okay, the next thing I want to explain is, we use the term card advantage just because that's the term we've used forever.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    "Card" is a little--can be a little misleading. So I also want to say that there are other resources. Tokens probably being the most famous example. Meaning when we're talking about cards, what we mean is things that you can use. So for example, there are strategies in which I'm going to keep making tokens, and my tokens are my card advantage. That I'm going to beat you because you're not stopping me from making the tokens, and that tokens eventually will overwhelm you. And so, once again, I just want to explain that we use the term card advantage, but that doesn't even mean it has to be cards. As you said earlier, really, it's about resources.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Right.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Cards are the simplest resources, but whatever the resource is, I'm doing something in which I'm going up on you. And token creatures are nice, because it's easy to understand. That, you know, if you have a token card to represent your token creature, and think of those as cards. You know, that's the other thing to understand is that there's many different facets for how you can do that. Okay, so--

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    (???)

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

     Go ahead. Go ahead.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Oh no, it's fine. Go ahead.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    So now I want to explain where people get a little lost. Let's talk about looting. So looting is an effect where you draw a card and discard a card. So let's talk about, how is looting card advantage when you are not going up cards?

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah, it's quite enigmatic I think to a lot of players. It's--I liken it a little bit to--I'm sorry to introduce another concept, but I talked about the idea of milling too. And there are a lot of people that when you initially start playing, they think that having their library milled by a card--like Millstone for example just mills two cards when it's used--is card advantage. They're thinking, oh, look, I'm putting cards in your graveyard. I'm getting ahead. This feels important. It feels powerful. And it certainly elicits bad feelings. But they're obviously very distinctly different. Looting, which involves drawing one card and then discarding a card, versus milling cards from the top of your opponent's library are not the same thing. And the real reason why looting can actually be quasi-card advantage is because there is an aspect to card advantage, particularly as it pertains to the idea of resources. That is, has to do with context. It's contextual. Cards can be very powerful at some point. At other times, they can be utterly redundant. Lands in particular, right? If you--if your deck runs off three or four mana, once you get to three or four mana and you're not interested in doing two or three things in a turn, every additional land you draw after that is useless. It's basically like a dead draw. It's just like drawing a creature when your opponent has Moat in play. And so if you have the ability to loot, you can exchange a totally dead or useless situational card for something that might be more powerful at that moment. And so that card selection can inevitably lead to victory in the same way that just simply drawing more cards can too.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    And the way to think of it is, when we're talking about card advantage, one of the ideas we introduce is the idea that you can make dead cards. You can make cards that even though they have them in their hand or on the battlefield, they've lost their potency to win the game. To have any function. And so the reason that, you know, looting and things like it become very important for card advantage is, you need the ability to take sort of dead cards and turn them into live cards. And that is why looting--and there's a lot of other types of things. But anything in which I can trade, I can do a trade of a dead card for a live card--and when I say card, it could be a token, but you know, I'm taking a dead resource and turning into a usable resource. That is going up in card advantage from a virtual stand--I mean, that's why this gets very complicated, because...

     

    Brian Weissman: 


    Yeah, no, it does. I think you can't overstate the point of context and timing in a game of Magic. And I think a really good example would be the cards Brainstorm and the card Ancestral Recall. So Ancestral Recall, arguably the most powerful Magic card ever printed, one blue mana, instant, target player draws three. So it's one blue mana draw three at instant speed, plus two hand size, tons more resources and options, just a bonkers card. And not in print since Unlimited Edition a million years ago. 

    Contrast it with Brainstorm, which was printed in Ice Age and then reprinted a bunch of times, a Commander staple, draw three cards, then take two cards from your hand and put them back on top of your library. And so to a relatively inexperienced player, they might see those two cards side by side and think, huh. They both draw you three cards for one blue mana at instant speed. They must be roughly the same. But the brainstorm is effectively a double looting. effect, whereas the Ancestral is an actual card drawing effect. So they're not mechanically the same at all in terms of how they increase your hand size. But in a lot of games, casting Brainstorm wins you the game just as fast as casting Ancestral Recall does, because it contextually draws three cards in your hand right away, gives you more resources and options in that moment, even if you have to put cards from your hand back on top of your library. And so you can kind of understand, even though we're not doing the same thing here, the impact on the game is the same. And it was actually so apparent. After a while in I guess it was Vintage, or maybe Type I format, that Brainstorm eventually had to be restricted. In Type I, right alongside Ancestral Recall. The cards were almost functionally the same in most situations, which is kind of a really amazing thing to consider. That draw once, loot twice is most of the time the same as draw, draw, draw.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 


    One last thing before we have to wrap up soon here. So the one other concept I want to throw in here is, you can turn things that aren't resources into resources. So for example, let's say I--what's a good... Yawgmoth's Will, I guess. I guess since we're going old school today. Yawgmoth's Will is a spell that lets you--when you cast it, you now can cast things out of your graveyard.

     


    Brian Weissman: 

    And play lands too.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    And play lands. But the idea there is, the sort of card advantage of it is, I took cards that were dead cards, cards in my graveyard, and I turned them at least even temporarily. And once again, we didn't even get into, like, card advantage can be temporary. I mean, there's a lot of nuance here. But by turning my graveyard into--I mean, it's kinda like I put them in my hand for the turn. I mean, at the end of turn, I have to discard them. So I don't get to keep them. But I get them for a turn. And that that is--Yawgmoth's Will is a very, very powerful card for that ability to just temporarily--

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    (???)

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Right, allow you to do something. Sort of give like temporary card advantage.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah, I mean, imagine if Yawgmoth's Will read "one black, two generic, sorcery, draw your graveyard?"

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Yeah.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    I mean, that's essentially what it is almost, right? But discard those cards at the end of the turn. It's almost exactly what that is. Three mana, draw your graveyard. That's pretty insane.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 


    And so what that also means is that part of card advantage could be turning things into a usable card that previously weren't a usable card. And so for example, there's a card called Intuition, where you get four cards out of your library, and then your opponent chooses two of them, they go in your hand, and the two other ones go to your graveyard. And the way that card gets used that's very efficient is, I don't care what you pick, the cards being in my graveyard is just as useful to me as the cards being in my hand. So for all intents and purposes, I've drawn four cards. I've gone up four cards.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yeah, and in some--in many cases, actually, because of the effects like flashback and so on, you might actually be up even more than that, right? Because the two cards that go to the graveyard, you might be able to play them anyway. So you're drawing four cards at instant speed for three mana.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    So anyway, hopefully today--today was kind of an intro to card advantage--is, it's a very interesting thing, in that--like I said, Brian, when did you make The Deck? So it was like '94?

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Built in--first version was probably early April of 1994.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Okay, so The Deck is kind of known as being the first sort of named deck, you know. The internet wasn't quite what it is now. So it wasn't as easy to share information.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    [Laughs] Not at all.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    But the idea that card advantage, which was like the--you know, it was the engine that ran The Deck, until modern day, like card advantage is still a very important part of just Magic theory. I mean, that's kind of why I wanted to walk them through today, is that part of getting better at Magic is understanding, how do I win? Why do I win? What makes me win? And there are other concepts, card advantage isn't the only thing that matters, but it is a very potent idea that was true, you know, almost 30 years ago and it's true today.

     

    Brian Weissman: 



    Yeah, I actually--I kind of--I wanted to talk very briefly to a card that's probably familiar to a lot of listeners, and that's the card Rhystic Study. From--which--I don't remember when it was printed...

     


    Mark Rosewater: 

    Prophecy, I believe is when it was.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    In Prophecy, yeah. Incredibly powerful card that's all over the place in Commander, particularly because it's a very problematic mechanic when there's three other...

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    (overlapping) Why don't you tell people what it does?

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    I'm sorry, yeah, one blue, two generic mana enchantment, it says whenever any opponent would cast a spell, any spell. If they do not pay an additional generic mana during the spell's resolution, actually on the casting of the spell. The Rhystic Study triggers and the controller of Rhystic Study draws a card. And once it's in play, all of the players have to monitor it if they're accountable to this. And what you'll notice is that the behavior of players around Rhystic Study is very demonstrative of their relative skill levels, and their understanding of the game in general. The savvy players, the people with experience understand that paying for Rhystic Study is very important. You can't just feed cards indiscriminately to the opponent. The less experienced players, the less sophisticated players who are more new to the game, will often just play stuff and not even pay the extra mana even when they can do it. And not out of some idea of collusion, it just doesn't occur to them that that's a thing that's quite deleterious to their ability to win the game. They just don't even notice. And so there's definitely a--there's kind of an evolution that goes on among players, where they go from being the person that happily just gleefully casts their spells into Rhystic Study, to being a person like me, who it causes me physical pain to allow players to draw cards, and I will bend over backwards to prevent you from ever drawing even one card from Rhystic Study, even if that means that it's constraining my development for you know, half the game, and you have to treat it that way. And when players really begin to recognize that--you can kind of do a gut check. Whenever you start to get that feeling that my opponent is drawing extra cards, and it's making me uncomfortable, you're kind of starting to understand what's going on and why it's so important.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    And the one thing I will say, for people that this is a new concept for them, the next time you play, it's kind of fun just to sort of notice--that's the first step I say when you're beginning, just try to notice when card advantage happens. Just be thinking about like, oh, I cast this one spell and they lost two spells. And once again, it could be on the battlefield, in their hand, just I spent one spell, and they lost two spells. You know, And the spells can be permanents, I mean, they can be, you know, tokens and stuff. But that's the first step, I think, to understanding card advantage, is just noticing it happening in the game.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Absolutely. And there was the--opportunities to make that observation are everywhere in the game of Magic. I mean, in a game of Commander, for example, you're often engaged in card advantage effects, literally from turn one. And every single decision you make from that point onward is predicated on, how do I get--how do I establish card advantage in this game? How do I draw more cards? How do I make my opponent discard more cards? How do I nullify key things that give them card advantage, or protect the things that give me card advantage and so on. And once you begin to understand that and you recognize that, you can sculpt an entire sort of meta strategy around that idea, and it's very effective.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    So I'm gonna leave everybody with one--here's the most important lesson I remember learning early in the early days, which comes out of card advantage isth e following, is--the thing that keeps you from getting better at Magic, is you. Like, you are making decisions that with more knowledge and more understanding, that you will--you know, like--absolutely anybody can get better. It's just a matter of saying, oh, I am doing things that if I learned not to do them, or I learned to do things a little differently, I will become a better Magic player. And that's a really important first step to be getting better at Magic is understanding that you are in control of whether you are better or not.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Yes, precisely, exactly. Just be self analytical, be self critical. Pay attention to what lets you win, and pay attention to what causes you to lose. And if you monitor that closely, you will inevitably improve. That's how we learned how to play this game in the first place. When I started playing in 1994, we had this little inscrutable manual, that we could barely even understand the rules in it much less the strategy. And it was just a systematic way of paying attention to what worked and what didn't work and really honing in on the key components, the key mechanics of Magic, and at the heart of it, at least in 1994 and even to this day, is card advantage. It informs everything. It's sort of the unified theory of everything in Magic, it kind of does come down to that.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Okay, well, I want to thank you for being with us, Brian.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    You're very welcome, Mark. Thanks for having me.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    I knew when we talked to this topic there was no better authority than you on card advantage. So I'm glad to have you with us.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Very, very glad to be on, Mark. Thank you.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    But anyway, guys, I can see my desk. So we all know what this means. This means instead of talking Magic, it's time for me to be making Magic. So I'll see you all next time. And once again, thanks, Brian.

     

    Brian Weissman: 

    Take care, Mark.

     

    Mark Rosewater: 

    Bye bye, everybody.

     

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  4.  All podcast content by Mark Rosewater, transcript by https://otter.ai, editing by Lucas Harrington

    I'm puling out of my driveway!  We all know what that means! It's time for another to Drive to Work. And today is the final day! So I've been doing a series called 20 Years, 20 Podcasts based on my 2016--I gave a speech at the Game Developers Conference, which is a big conference in New York--not New York, sorry, in San Francisco. That is probably the largest sort of convention for people who make games. And I, in 2015, I finally attended, I--Wizards sends people every year, but I had never gone.

    And after being there one year, I decided that I wanted to give a speech. And so the following year, 2016, I did! I gave a speech. And I ended up having the highest rated speech of the whole convention. The following year, I ended up on the Ace of Spades that's on--the top 50 speeches end up on a deck of playing cards that they give away to all the speakers, so it's like a little thing to encourage you.

    And I decided the year before, when I got the deck of playing cards, that my goal was to get on the playing cards. That was my goal. And the way it works is, it's random, except it's Ace of Spades if you're the top speaker. And so my goal was to get on the deck of cards. I did, but I--and when they told me how I did, I think I was rated like 16th or something.

    But I think what it meant was, of every thing that got rated, not all the speakers, but of everything. And so the top 15 must have been non-speaker things. So like maybe, you know, the brunch. Who doesn't like the brunch, or whatever. So, I was surprised, I didn't know I was the top rated speaker until literally, they showed the new deck and I was on the Ace of Spades. So that was--anyway, that was really cool.

    So anyway, I did that speech. I then wrote up a three-part article about it. And I decided to do a podcast. And so over the last--over two years, I've been doing 20 articles. Probably you've heard of them. But today is the final, the final one. So it's kind of exciting.

    I, whenever I do a long series like this, somehow doing the last one's always fun for me, just to go, like, "I did it!" You know, like, I always worry that something will happen. I somehow won't finish my podcasts and the I won't finish the series! So I'm happy to get to the 20th one.

    So, let me recap. Because lesson #20 has a lot to do with the first 19. Okay, so lesson number one was fighting against human nature is a losing battle. That lesson was all about how, look, you're designing for humans, and humans are pretty stubborn at times, and you have to sort of, you know, adapt your game to your audience, not your audience to your game.

    Number two was aesthetics matter. I was talking a lot about, there's a lot of things that matter in your game, and that just a lot of little nuances in the how you create things and (???) and make things look, all those things lead up and matter to your audience. Partly because they're human, and they care about those things.

    Number three, resonance is important. That was definitely talking about how having things that mean something to your audience really are valuable, and that the audience--that flavor and stuff really carries a lot of importance.

    Which led to number four, make use of piggybacking. That is making use of prior knowledge of your audience to use that as a means to help them with your game. The idea being that if your audience already knows things, which they do, you can use that pre-existing knowledge to make it easier for them to understand what you're doing.

    Number five, don't confuse interesting with fun. That was talking about the difference between intellectual stimulation and emotional stimulation. And that it's very easy for us to get--as we're making the game and the cerebral mists of making it, of getting really caught up in how it makes the audience think. But the point of this is, how it makes them feel has a larger impact on whether or not they like it.

    Number six, understand what emotion your game is trying to evoke. And this is really talking about how you want to know what it is you're trying to get out of your audience.

    Number seven was allow the player the ability to make the game personal. This was about customization, about giving your player choices, because if you give them choices, they will make individualized choices that really enhance the experience for them.

    Number eight is the details of where the players fall in love with the game. And this was talking about how important all the little things you do, and that they're--everything will be noticed by somebody. Not that everybody will notice everything. But every little thing you do, there are people that will bond to that. And each person bonds to the game in a different way, and a lot of times it's the little tiny things that they feel only they noticed that really endear them to the game.

    Number nine, allow your players to have a sense of ownership. This is really walking into the idea that you want the players to feel as if part of the game is theirs. It's not your game, but their game. And that you give them means in which to make elements of it that is their own.

    On number 10, leave room for the players to explore. Don't tell them everything, let them find things. There's a lot of value in people finding stuff for themselves. That in fact, the way people tend to function is, when they discover it, it just means more than when you show it to them.

    Number 11. If everyone likes your game, but no one loves it, it will fail. Talking about how games are competitive, and that you really need the passion from your user base. And that designing things so no one dislikes it is a recipe for disaster. And that you have to be less afraid about people not liking your thing. And more afraid that people aren't loving your thing.

    That to succeed in this--games is pretty competitive. You need people really to fall in love with your game. And not everybody has to like it. Something that some people will love, others will hate. But that's okay. Getting strong emotions is better than not getting any strong emotions at all.

    Number 12, don't design to prove you can do something. This talks a little bit about, when you're making things as the person making it. It's very easy to think of the act of making a game as a game itself. You know, you don't want to fall in that trap. Don't be doing things just to prove you can. Do things to maximize the game experience for your audience.

    Number 13, make the fun part also the correct strategy to win. Understand what about your game is fun, and then make sure that the optimal way to win the game leads the people to the fun. That your audience will avoid the fun part of your game, if the game--in order to win the game, they'd have to avoid it. And don't make your game not fun because your audience--because you teach your audience not to do the part that is fun.

    14, don't be afraid to be blunt. This talks about sometimes game designers have this fear of they can't be too on the nose. And not that you should always be blunt, you shouldn't. But at times you do want to be blunt, and that's okay to be blunt.

    Number 15, design the component for the audience it's intended for. Not everybody will like every part of your game. Understand who the part you're making is for, and design it for that person. Don't worry about everybody liking it, worry about the person [who's] intended to like it.

    [Sixteen,] be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them. There's this worry sometimes that if you try something crazy, it'll drive your players away. And as, I like to say, the biggest risk is taking no risks. That you really--your audience will forgive you for trying something bold, but they're much less forgiving when you bore them.

    Number 17. You don't have to change much to change everything. Small incremental changes have a huge effect. And that a lot of times what will happen in the game is, just by changing a few things, sometimes even one single thing, the ramifications of that change will have a big impact on your game. And don't feel that in order to change things, you have to change a lot, because changing a few things really could impact that.

    Number 18, restrictions breed creativity. It's talking about how it's okay--there's this myth that, like, you do your best work if there's no restrictions, and the reverse is actually true. The restrictions help give you guidance, and help push you in a direction. And that--don't be afraid of using restrictions as a means to help you, rather than worry as it's somehow getting in your way.

    Number 19, your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them. Talks about using your audience as a sounding board to understand what is going right and wrong in your game. The audience doesn't have all the knowledge to fix those problems, because they don't know everything that goes into making it and you do. But they are a great sounding board to understand.

    So those are the first 19 lessons. So what happened was, in the speech that I gave, every time I would give a lesson, I would put it in a little box up on the screen. And if you've ever seen my talk, you'll see this. I put it in the box.

    And this is to set up the final lesson. So the final lesson is: All the lessons connect. And this is an interesting one, that one of the things that I realized--if you actually watched me give the talk, I--even as I'm giving the talk, I'm weaving them together. I'm talking--you know, there is a narrative flow. I did not pick these--they are not in random order. They are very much in order. And if you watch the talk, I very much am weaving them together. You know, I talk about how now, that you've done this thing, next you want to do that thing.

    But so what I did was, every time I would give one lesson, I'd put it up on the screen, and it was in a little box. And then, at the end, I started stringing things together. About, well, if this is true then that is true. Like you know, for example, resonance is important. And then I talked about how piggybacking--make use of piggybacking. Well, piggybacking is all about using pre existing knowledge. And so if you use resonance, resonance leads you to allow you to do piggybacking.

    These things all start clicking together. You know. That understanding, you know, getting somebody invested in the details is a way to give them their own sense of ownership. Because when they notice something little, they start piecing together something that feels like them. And customizing something for the audience also gives them a sense of ownership because they get to make something that's their own.

    And so what I did on the screen was, I started piecing these all together. I started connecting them with all these lines. Now, originally, real quickly, this is a funny behind the scenes story. My original plan was to have a board. I wanted to make all the lessons and tie them together with yarn.

    And so Jules Robins is one of my co workers, I asked him--I gave him the task of, take this board, put them together, and connect it with yarn, all the pieces that they connect. Find all the connections. And he made it and it was really intricate. And then what I realized was, there was no way to take a picture of it that really captured what it was.

    And so what I ended up doing was, I ended up building--I used his--if you've seen the image that I use, where I tie everything together, it's actually me, visually electronically taking what he had built, and mimicking it. Like all the connections that he had made, are what I put on my thing.

    But I did--I ended up doing it digitally, because it just--there was no way to take a picture of it--it looked cool to the human eye. But there was no way to take a picture of it that really connected. And then once I made a digital version, I was like, oh, I then could--I could construct this over time, as people are watching this. And once I had the digital component, I can bring in pieces.

    I spent a lot of time on that, by the way. I hope that visual was cool. I spent a lot of time making that and piecing it all together. That's one of the things that probably took me hours and hours to make.

    But the thing that I want is--and the reason I did that was, I really liked the idea. And the image that I wanted people to walk away with is that this is a web, that what I was teaching you was not 20 isolated things.

    In fact, I joked in the thing that, you know, really what I was teaching you is one sort of, you know, kind of a top down approach to how I see game design, you know, a holistic approach.

    But I knew--the funny thing was, when I originally came up with the idea--so in 2015, I went and I saw other people speak and I was very inspired. And I came up with the name or the concept for my speech during when I was at 2015. I knew the following year was gonna be my 20th year doing Magic. And I liked a lot the idea of, you know, there's a lot of lessons I wanted to teach.

    And I liked the idea of 20 years, 20 lessons. That just seems really cool. I felt like 20 lessons in an hour, while it was tight, was something I can do. And I really was interested in doing something that was kind of very--well, one of the things that I enjoy when I sort of do speeches and stuff is I want to do something that's universal. I mean, obviously I use Magic as my examples. But I wanted to do something that was pretty universal, because I wanted to give a speech that other people could use.

    And as it turns out, this speech has gone on to actually get a lot of attention. And it did what I wanted it to do, which was I wanted it to be a very open ended speech. I wanted it to be something that said, look. I don't care what game you are making. The stuff I'm talking about are universal game design ideas. They are not locked into any one particular game. They weren't just about Magic.

    Now all of them apply to Magic. And obviously, as Magic--you know, I spent 20 years making Magic, all my examples--minus my one Plants vs. Zombies example were from Magic. But the thing I hoped, and obviously one of the things that I've seen is, that a lot of people have carried over this.

    One thing that was very touching is how often I see other people quote my lessons in stuff they do. That usually is a sign of someone who gives a lecture, when you see other people in other lectures sort of reference you, it's a good sign, that means that something of what you've done has resonated with other people. So I'm honored whenever other people reference this talk or reference lessons from this talk. Anyway, I think it's very cool.

    So the point that this lesson has, and the point of today is that I firmly believe I have a very holistic view of life. Everything is connected. I've done so many different podcasts on, you know, I'll just take things like improvisation or stand up comedy or writing a sitcom, things that I've just done in my life. And then I say, okay. Well, here's the lessons I learned from that thing. And those lessons, they all carry over. That everything you learn, you know, no matter what you're doing, the lessons you learn in life carry over and that they are all interconnected.

    And so one of the things that I'm hoping, you know, the reason I wanted to end this talk with this final lesson is, I really want people to think of this of as--it really is one--it's not 20 lessons. I mean, I know I called it 20 Lessons, it really is kind of one big interconnected lesson.

    And that--you know, as we've talked about different components--like, if you look at sort of how it's built, I start with a premise in the talk. And the first premise basically, is, look, you're designing for human beings. That is who you're making your games for. And we have a lot of quirks.

    And a lot of what I talk about in the early part of the talk is saying, look, well, what does it mean that you're talking with humans? You know what I'm saying? Like, first off, I talk about how there's just expectations that humans have, and that they're stubborn. They're hard--it's hard to change human nature.

    I talk about how aesthetics matter, because how we see the world, you know--how humans take in information is really important. And that there's a certain thing that feels right. So if you're making things for humans, okay, don't fight them, and then understand how they perceive things.

    And then resonance is just talking about how, okay, look, human beings have come with existing knowledge in their head. And that when you take flavor and connect to things they know, you have a lot of advantages of doing that. When I talk about making use of piggybacking, it's just like, look, use that knowledge to your advantage.

    But as you see, this is all is all interconnected. That being, you know, understanding what your audience needs and how they function means it's easy for you, a game designer, to help with that.

    You know, when I talk about don't confuse interesting fun, I'm saying, look, humans are functionally emotional beings. Yeah, we have an intellectual side. And I'm not saying that your game can't have an intellectual side. But I was really sort of saying, look at the heart of it, when your audience is deciding whether it's something they want to return to, it's an emotional decision. It's not an intellectual one. And so I was trying to say, look, you got to make sure you understand the emotions.

    So, I mean, the following lessons--understand what emotion your game is trying to evoke. Okay, I'm talking about how people make decisions emotionally. Okay, then understand what emotions you're trying to do.

    I didn't get into talking about how to make the game personal. I'm clearly saying, okay, things are emotional. People are emotional, they make emotional decisions. You want them to bond with your game. How do you do that? Okay, well, the more you let them make it personal, that humans connect to things they have a personal bonding to. So let you do that. Make that happen.

    I talked about the details, because the details are where that bonding is going to happen. If that little tiny thing is that moment you have in your game that just speaks to people. And I really was talking about how you want to get in deep, and that a lot of--it's the attention to detail that makes those little things that really bond to people.

    The reason I talked about ownership is because you want people to have an emotional bond to something. Well, the more it is theirs, the more they connect to it, the more that it's not your game, but their game, the more they can emotionally bond with it.

    And then when I talk about leaving room for players to explore, what I'm saying is, players connect to things personally and rank those higher. Well, let them find things, so the things they find, they found. Not that you've given them, but they found, it makes it more.

    And all that ties into--I talked about how--people liking your game versus loving your game. Well, we want an emotional bond, right? We want to have the emotional high from the connection. Well, that is love. Love, you know, when somebody loves something, it's because it speaks to them on a strongly emotional level.

    And once again, I'm not trying to besmirch the intellectual part of you. That can be there too. But it can't just be intellectual. You need to speak to them emotionally. So I'm really talking about how, okay, you want somebody to really fall for your game. Well, what happens if you don't? What happens if you just sort of apply to them intellectually and not connect to them emotionally? Well, then the end, they like it, but they don't love it. And if they don't love it, you're going to fail. You know what I'm saying? I'm sort of talking about why--you know, I spend a lot of time in the lessons talking about how you need to emotionally connect to them. And then I say, well, if you don't, look, your game fails. That you need to do that. You know.

    I then started getting into stuff--the next batch of things talks about sort of, the making of games. So "Don't design to prove you can do something" really says, okay. On some level, the same way that you mistake intellectual-ness for making players like your game, it's the same trap you kind of fall in when making your game, of assuming that if you are intellectually stimulating yourself, it's helping your game.

    The trap I call it is the game designers' game design trap, where you think of the making of a game itself as a game. Because you like games, obviously as a game player, because you're not gonna be a game designer if you're not a game player. And the making of a game has a lot of trappings to feel like a game. The problem is, the goal of the game and the goal of game design are a little bit different. And so you have to be careful not to fall in that trap.

    The next thing, I talked about making fun--the correct strategy to win is another lesson I'm saying, okay, let's talk about how we make the game. So I'm then connecting, and one of the things to understand is, just like--I mean, really what I'm connecting is saying, look, these are different mistakes you'll make when building your game.

    And these are connected. That if you are making your game for the wrong reasons, sometimes when you make your game, you design--you have your audience doing it for the wrong reasons. That I want you to be making the game and understand what your priorities are. And then when making the game for audience, understand what their priorities are.

    Their priorities are enjoying themselves. For most games. I know there's games to do other things. But for most games, it's entertainment. And they want to win, but they want to have fun. And so it talks about how, look, you have to take them (???) and make sure that you're guiding them down the right path.

    Don't be afraid to be blunt is me saying, okay, well, how do I make sure they go down the right path? I want--the previous lesson says, make sure that the fun part is the correct strategy. And what I'm saying is, you need to do the things you need to do, that sometimes you gotta be blunt. Sometimes you gotta push them in that direction. That I'm trying to show you that when you're making the game, understand the tools you have available to you. Understand what you're trying to do and understand the tools.

    And when I talk about designing the component for the audience it's intended for, I'm like, okay, and another part of doing that is, you need to be blunt, and you need to understand who you're being directed at. In order to be blunt, you have to understand the audience. And so that lesson connects to the idea of, okay, you're trying to do this correctly, you're trying to build it the right way, you want to make sure they understand it. And in order to make sure they understand it, make sure you understand who they are.

    Be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them ties into the idea that there's a lot of concern--one of the biggest mistakes that designers make is that they're afraid of upsetting people. They're afraid of doing the wrong thing.

    And the funny thing is, the whole point of this lesson is that people connect positively stronger than negatively. That if they don't like something, like--when people love something, they're very willing to come back. And if they dislike something, as long as you give them something to love, you know, this idea that they have to like everything is just false. As long as people like elements of it, they don't need to like everything of it. That's okay. That if they find the parts of the game that they fall in love with, you know, the more you give them the ability to give ownership in the game, the more they'll find the way. Once again, even the lesson to the designer tie in to the lessons about the player.

    You don't have to change much to change everything. That's another thing in the designing of the game, saying to you, hey, look, you don't--when you're trying to fix things, you can think in terms of more micro of what you're trying to fix. And all these lessons--once again, these lessons all talk about, look, when you're making the game, here's the different ways for you to do that.

    Restrictions breed creativity. That's just me giving you a tool base of saying, look, when you get caught, when you get stuck, it's okay to give yourself limitations. It's okay to give yourself restrictions. That a lot of times the way to get out of being trapped is saying, okay, let me assume something. And, the other thing that I'm trying to say there is, a lot of the previous lessons talked about how there's things you need to do.

    And a lot of times [designers] feel like if they have restrictions based on trying to do things for the players, that that's a problem. That they avoid giving themselves restrictions. And kind of what I'm saying here is no, no, no, as you do these other lessons that I'm giving you, yes, they're going to make restrictions. That is not only not a bad thing, it's a positive thing. It will help you with your game. That the restrictions are a blessing, not a curse. And so I'm sort of talking about as you're doing these things to fix the game, your attitude of how you look at it is important.

    Talking about your audience as being good at stuff, that's another tool you have access to. And I'm sort of saying, look, make use of them. You need to make sure--like I talked about how you have to design it for the person that's intended to. Well, talk to the person that's intended to find out from them. You know what I'm saying? That a lot of me is saying, you know, when you're building your game, understand the resources you have available to you.

    So as you can see, you know, in some ways these lessons break up into two components, really. The first half of the talk is more about what does the audience need, and how do you meet that. And the second half of the talk is talking about the tools of making things and how you can use that.

    But the interesting thing, by the way, it kind of wraps around that the end of my--so I start by talking about your audience and what to expect of them and how to do things to maximize what they want. I get into some of the technicality of making games, but then I wrap around the end. Because the last lesson before the final lesson talks about how your audience is the tool for you to make the things you need to understand. And then I wrap right back around into, look, listen to your audience.

    And so in some ways, the thing I like about this talk is, it definitely sort of follows the path, and then it comes back around. And that was kind of the point of the final lesson is that you literally could take any two lessons in my talk, and there is a bond between them. That you know, you can randomly--okay, we will do that, we will do the very exercise that I just said.

    Okay, so I'm going to randomly pick two numbers. So let's see. I'm going to pick one from the first half and one from the second half. So the first half, I will pick 4, and the second half, I will pick 13. I just did that.

    Okay, so #4 is make use of piggybacking, and #13 is make the fun part also the correct strategy to win. But what are those that have to do with each other? Okay, so if I'm trying to piggyback something, the whole point of piggybacking is making use of existing things the players will like. Well, if the fun part--if you want to make the fun part, part of the strategy, make sure you understand which part of the resonance is the most fun part for the audience.

    And that one of the ways of making sure they understand something is making sure that the fun part of the resonance is also tied to the fun part of the game. So what you can do is you can say, okay, I really need them to do thing X. I know that this part is one of the most resonant parts of my game. Okay, well, I'm going to make sure that I tie the mechanical thing that's most important that they understand to the resonant thing that I know that I'm most excited about.

    That one of the things you get to do when you're piggybacking stuff is, you get to take the things that are resonant, and figure out how to use them. And so one of the ways to do that is that you can say, okay, I'm making, you know, genre X.

    For example, let's say you're making a Japanese-inspired game. Well, ninjas are super popular in pop culture. They're real popular. So maybe that's something that's really important. My game, I let the ninjas do it because the ninjas are something I just know the audience is going to be pretty connected to. And that, you know, most of our audience is going to go ooh, ninjas, and they'll want to play with the ninjas. So I put something mechanically important into the ninjas.

    And that--so, my point here is that you can do this with any two lessons. All the lessons connect. It is not me saying, oh, you know, oh, well, just the ones next to each other connect. I mean, I put them in an order for flow, but any ones connect.

    So let's try that one more time. Okay, so 1 through 10, I will pick 7. And 11 through 20, I will pick 12. So 7 is, allow the player the ability to make the game personal. And 12 is, don't design something to prove that you can.

    Okay, how do these connect? So, a lot of the player's ability to make something personal talks about customization. Talks about how--that what you want the audience to do is handpick the things that matter. Okay, don't design things to prove that you can is talking about how the game designer has to be careful not to fall in the trap  of making it a game for themselves.

    And so what I would say there is, when you're making a game, make sure that you are making the game customizable, not to you. Like one of the big traps that falls into when you start thinking the game is something that's a game--game design is a game for you, you start making it fun for you to play, or to design, actually. And so one of the things to keep in mind is--and one of the ways to not make it personal--one of the ways is that when you keep in mind that I'm trying to make it personal for the player, I'm trying to give options for the player, that the way I like to think of it is, one of the ways to keep it from being about you is to always keep it about being about the player.

    That one of the things I like to keep in mind is--and this is sometimes a tricky thing. You have a great fondness for your game, you have a bonding with your game. I'm not saying you don't connect with your game. It's yours. It's your creation. Clearly you have bonding with it. But to make the best game, you have to remember that the audience for the game is not you, the audience is the audience.

    And that I think a lot of the traps people fall into when they kind of do things to prove they can is that they are making the game for them. They're making the making of the game for them. And that one of the things I always want to remind people is that whenever you're making something, who is it for? Who are you making any one component piece for? And having an understanding of that.

    And I think the more that you recognize that you're designing for other people and not for yourself, the easier it is not to fall in the trap of doing things just to prove that you can.

    Because one of the things I find is, sometimes I will get in the trap of making something because I'm making it more to prove I can. And when I ask myself, who is it for? I go, oh, I don't know who this is for. And that when you find yourself making a component, and you can't answer who it's for, the answer might be, it's for you. And it's not for one of the audience of your game.

    And so that that is a good way to see that, to connect that. Is, if you're always asking who the components are for, and you can't answer that, that usually is a sign that you've gone a little bit astray.

    Anyway, this is fun. I'm gonna do one more time, just because I have a little more work to do. Okay, so one through 10, I will pick 2, and from 11 through 20, I will pick 17. No, no, I did 17 already, didn't I? 15. Okay, so 2 is aesthetics matter. And 15 is design the component for the audience it's intended for.

    Okay, so design is--I talk about how you want to understand who the audience member is. And I say aesthetics is important. Well, those are very interconnected. Meaning, if you understand who the audience is for, you'll understand which aesthetics is best for them. That's another thing to understand, which is, when I say aesthetics matter, that doesn't mean there's a universal aesthetic that always applies to everybody. Different audience members will like different things. So one of the things to understand is, you need to know who the component you're making it for, and take into account what aesthetic you're using.

    For example, one of the things I've seen in games is that games will push component-making to different audiences. For example in Magic is, there are people in Magic that like a lighter tone, and there are people in Magic that like a more serious tone. And so if you notice, we're very careful about where we put the silly tone versus the serious tone.

    So like, one of the things, for example is--I mean it's not a mistake, for example, that the Un-sets have more comedy in them. That the very nature of what we're doing in the Un-sets is trying to play into the idea that the game doesn't have to be so serious. You know, we're doing a lot of things that the normal game doesn't do, because the black-bordered rules have to be very precise for tournaments.

    So the idea that we're playing in sort of fun space--like there's a correlation between the choice of humor, and the kind of mechanics we're playing around with. Likewise, when we play around with mechanics, something like coin flipping, where that is not specifically made for tournaments, because we don't like having high overt randomness in tournaments, that allows us to sort of when we design those, we know the audience is a little more of a casual audience. And so we tailor our creative for that.

    So the idea is, the aesthetics matter. The aesthetics are unique upon people, not all people want the same aesthetics. I mean, there are some general human nature things that are true. But there are also--understand your audience, and that you get to think about who the audience is for each component, and the aesthetics you use for that component, and the resonance used for that component matters.

    And so the idea there is, when you're thinking about who the component is for, every facet of what you do--not just the mechanical elements of it, but the creative elements of it, how maybe for Magic, how we name it, what kind of art, the style of art, all that comes into play when we're talking about what we're making things for.

    Anyway, the reason I'm doing this little exercise is A. is I have time, and B. I kind of wanted to demonstrate that literally any two pieces connect. that there are--that what I'm talking about is really at its base--in some ways, the first half and the second half are really just mirror images of the same point anyway. The first half's talking a little bit more about the player and who the player is. And the second is talking about the designer and the tools of the designer.

    But those are super interconnected. The tools the designer uses stem from the fact of what's effective with the audience. You know, it's not a mistake that certain tools are used. Those are the tools that work. And the tools work because they speak to the audience.

    And so really, when I'm talking, I'm just sort of hitting a lot of the same things is, the key to being good at the craft of game design is just an interesting--it's understanding. It's understanding who the audience is, understanding who you are, understanding what tools you have access to, and how those tools impact the audience you're designing for.

    And that is why, when you sort of take my whole talk and put it all together, I'm not really--it is not as if I'm--I'm not hitting a lot of isolated things. I'm hitting a very cohesive connective tissue.

    And that boils down to--I mean, there are different people who teach game design. You know what I'm saying? I'm not the only one. This is my take on game design. And my take on game design really boils down to the following premise, which is that of the idea of, you're designing for humans. You know. That, understand humans. Understand what they want. Understand what they want out of a game. Understand what you what you need to do to get those things out of them.

    And that a lot to me, you know, I've been doing this now for almost 23 years. And a lot of what I've learned is that the key to making good games is knowing what the audience wants, and what tools you have available to give that to them.

    And that--I mean, one of the interesting things about making the exact same game, I mean, a lot of people are in the game industry for a long time. The thing that's unique about me is, there are not a lot of games that exists continually for so many years.

    Because most games that last a long time get made, and then there's no more content made for them. Okay, Monopoly's existed for a long time. But there's not a lot of new Monopoly content. There's a little I guess, but not not a lot.

    And that Magic is this unique game, where we're constantly--the nature of what the game is, it's we keep having to make more content. So it's a game that both has lasted a long time, and continually makes new content. That's a pretty rare animal.

    And on top of that, I've been doing it continually this whole time. And so, you know, one of the things that's been interesting for me is, it really has made me have to dig in pretty deep. That, you know, when you make a game, there's things you have to do. But when you make more components for the game, you know, you got to go beneath the surface.

    Like one of the things about when you first make a game is, if you've created a good amount of design depth, you have a lot of place to play around in. And early on, you'll be kind of wasteful of your design resources. Because, you know, most games aren't made for 20 some years, and that you you kind of--you know, games that have a lot of depth to them, you get to use that depth pretty quickly. Because there's, you know, you're not kind of saving it for 20 years.

    But Magic has gotten into a situation where like, okay, we have the game, it's gone on for--this is our 20th anniversary this year, I expect this to go on another 25 years. In fact, I expect this to keep going. I believe I will die and the game is gonna be far healthier than I will be if I'm dead. But at my wake people will play Magic, and hopefully remember me and have fun.

    And I think that part of working on a game in which I'm constantly sort of trying to make sure that I'm saving space, you know, that I'm conserving stuff, it's made me look at games in a very interesting way. That I've gotten very--you have to look in a lot in order to sort of do the job that I do.

    And so a lot of the point of my speech was to sort of teach you some of the lessons that I'd picked up. There's lots of other lessons. I think that each person has their own way of doing things. And part of what I want to say is my lessons are for you to interpret, to use the way that you see fit. I'm trying to provide some truisms that help people.

    And that one of the things that's really nice is, I get letters all the time from different people in game design. You know, the fact that I've been writing about game design for so long means that there's a lot of people that currently now make games that, you know, at some level, at some point were able to--I had some influence on them. And they'll write to me, write super nice letters. And a lot of times after talks some people come talk to me.

    And you know, when I went to GDC It was nice. Because like, seems like everybody in GDC plays Magic. So it means a lot to me that these lessons, you know, definitely have carried on. And like I said, this is my take on game design. I want all of you to get your take on game design.

    It is not--my belief in in teaching about this is not that there's a definitive answer, that there's one way to do everything. It's more of--I'd like to talk about, here are general things I've learned and apply those that make sense in what you're doing.

    Every game is different. You know, I make Magic. It's a trading card game. It's a physical game. It's got art on it. You know, it has a lot of components that not every game necessarily has.

    And so there's things unique about my game that are very different from other games. So that's why I made my lessons kind of broad, because each game has its own requirements and its own restrictions.

    But I do think that the lessons I did, because they were pretty broad lessons, hopefully most of them apply, they might not all apply, but most of them should apply. And you know, I want to sort of wrap this up, because I just got to work, to thank everybody for all the kind words about this whole series, about the original speech. You know, there's not a lot of times when you sort of make something that has the lasting effects that the speeches had. And it was really cool to put together. And it's been really fun to see people responding to it. It gets quoted all the time. And that's a big honor to me.

    So I just want to--and for all of you, assuming you actually listened to all 20 of these. So originally, I did this over 20 podcasts. So if you've been listening to all 20 podcasts, let me end by applauding you and thanking you. The fact that each of these lessons itself was something I could talk about for a whole podcast kind of shows you the depth of all this stuff. So hopefully you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed this whole talk. Hope you enjoyed the original talk. I hope you enjoyed the podcast.

    But, as I always say, I'm now parked. So we all know that means, it means the end of my Drive to Work. So instead of talking Magic, and the 20 lessons, it's time for me to be making Magic. I hope you guys enjoyed the whole talk, enjoyed the series, and I'll see you all next time. Bye bye.

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  5. All podcast content by Mark Rosewater, transcript by https://otter.ai, editing by Lucas Harrington

    I'm pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It's time for another Drive to Work. And I still have that cold but I'm persevering. 

    Okay, so today is another in my series, 20 Years, 20 Podcasts. We are up to lesson #19. Almost done. So the lesson #19 is, your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them. 

    So the interesting thing about this lesson was, every other lesson that I gave during my speech I had hit upon some time in my writing or my podcasts. You know, I had hit upon them. If you actually were a regular listener of me, a reader of me, when you saw my 20 Years 20 Lessons, most lessons you'd have heard me talk about somewhere else before. This was the one lesson that I had not mentioned before. 

    It's a very specific one, very technical one. I was doing a technical talk. So this is not something that had come up before. And some people I know, were a little taken aback. What do you mean, the audience doesn't know what they're saying. And so let me explain a little bit what I mean by that. 

     One of my jobs is I am a spokesperson for Magic. I've done a whole bunch of different podcasts about it. But the short version here is, I am on multiple social media. I have a Twitter account that has like, I don't know, 75,000+ followers, I have a Tumblr account where my blog is that I answer questions every day. And that has like 25,000 followers on it. I have a Google Plus account, I have an Instagram account. 

    And on--so basically, I do a comic a daily comic called Tales from the Pit that I--every weekday that I put on all those channels. I have a poll that I do on my Twitter thing, obviously answer questions on my blog, on Tumblr, and I write an article every Monday on the website called Making Magic and I link to that through my various online media stuff. 

    And then on Fridays, I have a podcast, I'm assuming you guys know that since you're listening to it. And then on Fridays, that gets posted, two episodes per week. And then on the following Monday with my column, it gets linked again. 

    Now beyond just that, beyond the social media stuff, I do a lot of video work. I record a lot of stuff. I also travel some, I do a live thing called Blogatog Live. I do it every year at San Diego Comic Con, usually one other event, I've done it at PAX, I've done it at HasCon, this summer, I'll be doing it at Grand Prix Las Vegas, because we're doing a big 25 year celebration that I'll be at. 

    And that's where I answer questions live, where I'm not--it's not filtered at all. Because when I answer them online, I can pick and choose what I want to answer. Live, I have to answer what gets asked to me. And I do a lot of interviews, I am being interviewed all the time. Some of which are audio, some are video. 

    But anyway, I interact with the fans a lot. I do a lot of outreach. And it's not just a matter of me talking to the public, it's me getting to places where the public can talk to me. The public can ask me questions or tell me things. Like one of the things that happens on my blog all the time, is people don't even post questions. They're just like, "I have something I want you to know. And I will tell you." 

    And so I get a lot of feedback. And for the regular listeners, know that I consider that feedback to be like a really, really important part of my job, a tool of my job. Because, you know, fundamentally, my job is to make sure that we are making things that you all want. Well, how do I do that? How do I know that? A big part of that is just listening to you and having you tell me what you want. A lot of this lesson talks about the--that the audience themselves is a tool, a valuable tool. 

    So the metaphor I use for this for this lesson was going to the doctor. So you go visit the doctor, what is the first thing the doctor does? The doctor says to you, "How are you feeling? Tell me about you." Now, obviously the doctor will check you out, the doctor will listen to your heart and look at your ears and he'll check you out. But he doesn't stop at just checking you out. The first thing he does is inquire from you how you're feeling. 

    And the reason is, a doctor understands the following thing. You are the expert on you. You know how you are feeling better than anybody else. If you have a problem or are in pain, or if there's any issues that you have, you're the one that's going to know best. So the doctor comes to you, as you are the expert of you. But once the problems are described, he doesn't ask you how to solve the problems. He solved the problems. Why does he solve the problems? Well, he's the one that's trained in medicine and you're not.

    So, part of what I'm trying to say with this lesson is a couple things. One is, there's some training that goes into it. That one of the things I've learned--like, before I was a game designer, I was a television writer. And what I discovered is, when you work in some sort of creative thing, that's entertainment-based, and your audience, you know, you are entertainment to your audience. 

    Meaning that they absorb a lot of it, and that you're something they enjoy. When they spend a lot of time with that, there becomes this belief that, well, they could do it. That oh, I could write a television show, oh, I can make a game. And usually my response to that is, well, if you think you can, try making one. 

    Because what you will find is, there's a lot of craft that goes into it. a TV show, you might watch--you're like, for example, my example here is, I've been driving a car now for 34 years. I'm familiar with the car, I have a general sense of cars, I have some idea how cars work. Could I fix the car? No. You know, I mean, other than really minor issues, I can't solve the problems with my car. 

    It's not that I'm not used to cars, it's not that I don't interact with cars, I literally am in a car, about an hour a day, every day. I mean, I drive a lot, I know my car. That doesn't mean I can fix my car, because the act of making a car is very different than using a car. 

    And that is true for games and other creative endeavors, that somebody can play your game and enjoy your game. But that doesn't necessarily [mean] they understand the underpinnings of the game. 

    And there's a bunch of reasons for that. One is, there's a craft that goes into it that they might not know. Now, I personally, one of my goals has been to share the craft of Magic design with the audience. 

    You know, if you want to design your own Magic stuff, and you want to understand the craft of Magic design, I am not exaggerating, I've written millions of words on this topic. Between, you know, between my podcast and my column and my blog, and I generated millions of words. Millions of words on the topic. So if you want to know how Magic is made, there is a lot of education you could do. 

    And one of the things that's really interesting, like doing something like the Great Designer Search, is seeing people who really have studied it. Who really have said, I want to understand the craft of Magic. And the key, by the way to understanding the craft is not just reading about it, but actively doing it. 

    So there are a lot of educated--in fact, there are probably more educated Magic players than there are a lot of other things, because I've spent a lot of time and energy educating the Magic public. 

    But, I don't educate them on everything. And there's a couple reasons for that. One is, there's a lot that goes into making Magic. I did a whole podcast once about all the different people that you have to deal with when you're making a design. 

    That there's developmental issues, there's art issues, there's story issues, there's templating issues and editing issues. There's rules issues, there's digital implementation issues, there's tournament implementation issues, there's brand issues, there's marketing issues, there's sales issues, there are printing issues. There's endless number of issues. You know. 

    That when you make a Magic set, there's so many different people you have to interact with. And I've shared with you as much as I can, sort of the stuff I do. But that's not all the stuff that gets done on Magic. 

    So here's a good example of something where this didn't come up until it came up. Like it's something that I knew. But until there was a moment to explain it, I never had a reason to explain it. 

    So they were middle of Theros, I believe. And there are gods, there's a whole bunch of gods. In the first set there were five mono-colored gods, kind of the major--there are like major gods and minor gods. 

    So the five major gods each had an artifact. You know, a hammer, a bow, a whip, you know. And these were powerful, you know, god-created artifacts. So because in Theros, the gods were all enchantments, in addition to other things, that these were enchantment artifacts. 

    And a lot of players complained that we didn't make them equipment. Because it was a hammer. Why can't I give the hammer to my my goblin? And what the answer was, is it didn't fit on the card typeline. And they came back and they said, oh, well, that would be so many letters. But wait, here's a card--you put in this card, and this has that many letters. So why can't you do it? 

    And then I had to explain typography. When you print stuff, letters have a width. All letters are not equidistant. They're not the same width. For example, an L is skinny, an M is wide. You in fact can have three L's or you could have one M. 

    And so the point I made is, the other thing that we were able to print just had skinnier letters. Yes, it had the same number of letters, but the issue in typography isn't the number of letters, it's the total width. Because you're fitting it into a space.

    Now my point there is, that's something that we as a business have to care about. I don't really think about that until it matters, like, until the editing team comes to me and says, hey, it just won't fit. We need to adjust this. You know, then we adjust it. 

    It's the kind of thing that until somebody asked me about, like--when I'm explaining how I do my job, that is a relevant thing that will have an impact every once in a while on what I do. But yeah, I never mentioned it before, because it never came up in the context. 

    So A, there's things that I'm willing to explain, but just haven't, some of it has to do with areas outside of expertise. Some of that has to do with just, hey, I never got there, it's a narrow situation that doesn't come up much, and I never happened to get there in any of my writing. 

    And now the other thing is, there's proprietary information. Like there's things we do, like I talk a lot about collation. I mention the concept of collation, but I don't mention the details of collation. That's proprietary. You know, we don't want people to know how we collate. So I'll give you the gist of what we do, but not the details of what we do. 

    But that matters. So for example, when I'm making a set, collation will directly impact what I can do. How I can get the cards in the pack, or how we can lay them out matters on how the set is built, like--even how many cards are in the set has to do with how we collate it. So like, there's information that's super important. But it's not something the audience knows. 

    Then another big category would be the future. We're designing cards not in a vacuum, or sets not in a vacuum, but in an environment. And you guys might know what precedes it, but you don't know what comes after it. 

    The classic example of this would be, we had made a set called Shadows over Innistrad that had a strong graveyard component. The set that followed it was Kaladesh. Traditionally, what we do is we give answers in the following block to the block before it. 

    But we didn't, we didn't really give a lot of graveyard answers to Kaladesh. And the reason we didn't was, the set after Kaladesh, Amonkhet, again, had some graveyard elements that we were trying--we were trying this experiment where blocks two apart from each other repeated themes. It didn't work out great. 

    But anyway, because of that, we didn't want to sort of undermine an upcoming set. So when the audience was yelling at us, how can you not do Thing X? It was because, well, because of reasons why that you don't know. 

    So that's another big thing is, that, you know, the audience does not have all the information. One of the reasons the audience can't always give answers that are crisp, and clean, clean and clear, is they don't know all the factors that are going into it. 

    Now, here's another one, which is what I call player bias. Or it's really audience bias. It's true of any, probably, art, but I'll talk about in terms of game design. And what I mean by that is, Magic has many components. That if you just take a Magic card, for example, and chop it up into all its components, I don't know, there's like 20 components on a Magic card or something. There's a lot of elements to a Magic card. 

    Not every person cares about every facet of the card. For example, there are some people who the art--it's not that they dislike the art. It's not that they don't, you know, if you took the pictures away, they might be unhappy there's no pictures, you know. 

    But the art is just like--it's a thing that helps me recognize the card. The artist, I don't know who the artist is, I don't learn who the artist is. It doesn't matter to me, you know, I just want the picture so I visually can remember what the card is. But the artist isn't a thing to me. 

    Meanwhile, there's other people who the art is the thing that really, really matters to them. And knowing who the artist is, is super important. And whether--let's say we have a card that's like a reference to an old card, the fact that we reuse the old artist is a big deal to them. And if we don't, it would be something they would complain about, and it would lessen the card for them. So, like, here's an example of something in which, for one person, it's a giant deal. For others it's almost invisible, because it's not something they care about. 

    So in general, one of the problems that--not problem, but one of the issues the audience has is, you have your own bias for how you see the game. And as far as you're concerned, that is what the game is. If you like playing a certain format or a certain way, or care about a certain kind of card, that's what a game means to you. 

    So when there's a problem, A, you are more likely to identify problems in your area of expertise. And when you go to solve them, you prioritize what you care about. So a lot of times the way people will solve it is, I care about Thing A, B or C? Well, there's an easy solution. But that easy solution assumes that that is the number one priority. 

    You know, and I mean it makes sense that people will prioritize their priorities, that's why they're priorities. But it also, when we are making a Magic set, we have a lot of priorities that we have to deal with. There's a lot of players we have to deal with. And I can't just make one kind of player happy, I need to make all the players happy. 

    And what that means is on any one card, I have figured out who that card is for and maximize it for that person. But on another card, I'm maximizing for a different person. So when someone looks at a set, what they're normally thinking--I mean, I've done a lot of education, some players get this now, but I'm not making every card for the same player. So if you look at every card and go, this card could be better for me, yes it could, There are things we could do that make that card better for you. 

    So here's a classic problem we run into all the time. So there's a format called Commander. Commander has one character, a commander, that sort of the deck is focused through. And to pick a commander, you have to pick a legendary creature. So whether or not I make a creature legendary determines whether or not that creature can be a commander. 

    Okay, so let's say I make what we call a lord. Which is a card that makes a race better. Makes a tribal race better. Race or class. So you know, I make goblins better. I make birds better. I make merfolk better. You know. That they, they enhance in some way. 

    So whenever we make a tribal lord of some kind, there's pressure. Because if you want to make a deck about that tribe, and you have something that can enhance them, and that thing stacks, let's say it's +1/+1, well, I want to be able to get multiples in play. Like let's say all my goblins get +1/+1. Well, I want to get four of those in play, and now all my goblins get +4/+4. 

    But if I'm a Commander player, and I love goblins, and I want a commander for my goblins, hey, I want a legendary goblin that helps goblins. So right off the bat, here's the card that, if I make it legendary, I make one group happy and make another group unhappy. But if I make it not legendary, I make the the other group happy. but the first group not happy. I can't make everybody happy. That there's decisions you make in the game that will go one way or the other. 

    So one of the things as the game designer, you have to realize is, it is your job to prioritize everything. That you have to look at all the players and all the things you're doing, and make those larger priorities. Your player base does not do that. Partly they don't do that because they don't know everything. Partly they don't do that, because that's not their priorities. And so one of the things when the audience is giving you feedback, they are not taking into account your priority. 

    So here's another big one, for example. One of the things that most game designers have to worry about is the business side of it. For example, in Magic, one of my jobs, in fact, a pretty important job of mine is selling booster packs. If we don't sell enough booster packs, and don't make enough money, you know, we have to lay off staff, we have to--you know, part of what we do is we're a business. 

    And now, one of my goals as someone who makes Magic is, the reason I want Magic to sell so well is it's so much fun that people want to buy it. You know, a big part of my goal to sell Magic is just make it so awesome that you want it. But there are other concerns that come up. There are other business decisions that get made. There are other things we do where we are prioritizing things. 

    Like for example, I'll give a good example of this, is maximizing resources. So for example, let's say I'm making a set. And I feel I've gotten the set to the point where it makes everybody happy. I have to be careful not to overstuff that set. Why? Because I have to make everybody happy on all sets. And if I have a lot of really cool things, if I put too much cool things in one set, that just makes the next set harder to make cool. 

    So like one of the things that I'm constantly doing is I'm making sure that I'm managing our resources. Now given, I want to cross the threshold of making everyone ecstatic for the set I'm doing. I just don't need to go--like once I'm above the line, I don't need to keep adding on top of that.

    Another good example is, like with planeswalkers. There's a lot of design space in planeswalkers that is yet untapped. But that's on purpose, because it is one of our most popular and important card types. Like it is by far the most popular card type from just a player excitement level. We don't make a lot of them, and the design space is tight. 

    So I've been really holding back, and there's a lot of things we could do. But I'm trying to mine the space. Like here we have something that's a really important resource. And I want to make sure that we're not burning through equity too fast. So I've been holding us back saying, let's carefully advance. Let's make small advancements. Because I want to preserve the design space. 

    Now, when other people are designing their own sets, do they worry about that? No. No, they don't. You know what I'm saying? That is something that is very business-oriented, in that the long term health of the game is something that really, really is important. 

    Now, given if people understand some of these, I'm not saying that designers wouldn't follow that. But it's a complex thing. And it's something that I briefly touch upon. But it's much, much more important to me than it is to the average person, because it's my job to make sure that, you know, I have years and years and years and years of Magic sets to make that need to be awesome. And I can't do that if I just put all the awesome in one set. And the other sets are like not that good. I have to spread it around. 

    So when I say that the audience is not great at solving problems, I'm not dissing the audience. I know when I first said that some, people were like, why are you dissing the--I'm not saying the audience isn't capable of understanding the game. I'm saying--I mean, it basically it comes down to three things. 

    One is, there's some training they don't have. Second is, there's information they don't know. And third is, there's biases that they have, that there's no reason for them to lose them. I mean, once you're going to make Magic, I mean, if you're trying to make Magic for fun, and you want to really, really make Magic, like we make Magic, yes, at some point, you have to understand your biases, and move beyond them. 

    But if you're just playing Magic for fun, you don't need to--play the part you like. There's no requirement that you play all the cardsin any one set. Find the cards you like, build the decks you like, play those things. You know, we create so much content so that people can handpick what they do. The average person can do the things they enjoy, they don't have to do the things they don't enjoy. 

    So a lot of these things of why the audience sort of gives answers that aren't the perfect answer is not a bad thing about the audience. It's just, hey, this is their entertainment. This is something they do for fun. 

    When it's a job, you know, you have different--like, I spent a lot, and my colleagues, and we spend a lot of time worrying about the minutiae of minutiae. Tiny, tiny things, like the width of letters, you know, things that you guys really don't need to worry about. But that we do. And because of that, when decisions need to be made, when we're trying to solve problems, a lot of times the audience is just not going to understand that or not know that. 

    Okay, so let's get to the other piece. So there's another big piece. I've been talking a lot about the audience response. Let me talk a little bit about what this lesson is saying for you, the game designer. The real big lesson to me is, one of the most important things when you're a creative of any kind, or actually--making things of any kind--is, you need to understand your tools, because a craftsman is only as good as the tools they have access to. 

    And one of the things that I'm trying to sort of illuminate with this lesson is, your audience is a valuable, valuable tool. Much like my doctor metaphor. If you want to know if they enjoy your game--no one's going to know whether the game is enjoyable more than the audience playing the game. 

    Now, you might say, but wait, I play the game. But you have--on some level, there's so many things you have to care about. Because you're so removed, and you're caring about all the minutiae, it is hard for you to sort of drop that information. You know, it's hard for you to have the first impression, it's hard for you--that you on some level, because you've gained information to understand some technical stuff, it becomes harder for you to not see--you know, it's harder to not see the forest for the trees, you know. 

    That you're so holistic in what you're doing, that sometimes it's--you know, one of the things I love about playtests is, some of them just go, hey, this makes no sense. And you're like, yeah, that doesn't. How did I not see that? Because I was just looking at things from a different vantage point.

    The example I give is, I used to direct. I used to be a playwright, and I would direct. And one of the things that was really illuminating is, having actors, because your actor is all about one character. And they're so focused on that one character, and how that one character interacts with everybody else, that they ask questions of you that are awesome that you never thought of, because you even as a playwright, don't have the luxury to sort of isolate yourself in each character for as much as the actor does, because the actor has only one character they have to care about. And they get to a depth that you don't normally get to. And they ask questions that you might not think about. And it's really interesting. 

    And one of the collaborative elements of theater is that the actors really, you know, I love when the actors say, I want to understand--and sometimes, it's not even that you didn't think of it, but it reminds you that--like during the creation, you did think of it, but you sort of forgot that you thought about it, and it pulls things back out. 

    So I want you to think of the audience as a valuable tool in your toolbox. They know things that you need to know. Like, your job in making a game is making something enjoyable for them. How do you know if it's enjoyable? you gotta ask them. 

    Now, I talk a lot about playtesting. Playtesting is super valuable. You know, if you are making something, you need to see the audience experience it as they're supposed to experience it. If you're making a movie, you have to show it to them as a movie. If you're writing a book, they have to read it as a book. If you're making a game, they gotta play it as a game. That is super important. 

    And that part of this lesson is, that if you have an audience who plays your game--I understand if you're making a brand new game, you might not have this luxury just yet. But if you at all are making a game in which there's an active audience, you know, that you can still make decisions while the audience can see things.

    Now, in video games, there's a lot of--they get to change things on the fly, right? We don't get to do that in tabletop. But the idea is, oh, this sword is too powerful, they can nerf the sword, they can make the sword worse. Or they can make it something better, you know, they can change things, as the game evolves to sort of help balance. They can balance things after the fact. 

    So one of the things that's super important is, you know, understanding that your audience is available, and then understanding what it is they're good and bad at. Your audience is going to have opinions. 

    Now, be clear. I'm not saying not to listen to your audience's opinions, like your audience will suggest things. I'm not saying you're supposed to ignore their suggestions. Mostly, what I'm saying is, their hit rate tends to be very low. For the reasons I explained. You know, they do not have all the information. And they do not necessarily understand the craft. And they don't know lots of things. 

    And there's minutiae that they--you know, there's inherent biases. There's all sorts of reasons why their answers usually aren't the perfect answer. That doesn't mean you shouldn't listen to their answers. Sometimes they do have a good answer. But what I'm trying to say is, in general, having done this a long time, and listened to a lot of players, usually the players don't provide the--I won't say they don't provide a solution, they don't tend to provide the best solution, given the larger issues at hand. 

    And so one of the things that I'm trying to say to you, the game designer, is--there is a reason, especially in the age of social media, now. You need to be familiar with your audience. You need to have a relationship with your audience. Make no mistake, the reason I'm so active on social media--I mean, A, I'm inherently a communicator with my background. But more so than that, I understand the great value. 

    Like one of the things, for example, at work is, I'm known for being really in touch with the players. Now that's not like some inherent quality of me, it's not like I just intuitively know what the players want. I know what the players want because I spend hours upon hours upon hours talking with them and listening to them and answering the questions. 

    You know, the reason I know players are upset about something is--a couple things. One is, I've made myself available for them to talk to. So it's not just a matter of listening, it's also a matter of creating a relationship with them, where they feel comfortable to talk to you.

    You know, I've spent years and years becoming this person that they know they can talk to. So that they do talk to. And, you know--I mean, be aware, by the way, there's--I mean, the one side effect of being the face, if you will, is you will get all the feedback. The good feedback and the bad feedback. If they love something even that has nothing to do with you, you will get credit for. If they hate something even though it's nothing to do with you, you will get blamed for it. Because you are who they know. So you get the credit and you get the blame. 

    By the way, my my my tip to you as someone who does this is, share the credit. Meaning when they give you--when they say wonderful things, try to share with them who deserves the credit, meaning share the credit, and suck up the blame. Just take the blame. Do not--if something is wrong, I'm sorry, it was wrong. You know. 

    In general, what I've found is, explaining that you didn't make the decision doesn't really--it just comes across as you not wanting to own up that something went wrong. Accept the blame. Share the credit, take the blame. That is the harsh reality of being the face of game. 

    Get out there. Interact with your player base. And, what we in communication call  two way addressability. Talk with them, meaning, share information with them, get information from them and have a back and forth. 

    Like one of the things I like to do on my blog is, I often will--someone will ask me something, I'll talk about it, and then that spurs other people to ask and then I will purposely, like--I like creating themes for the day where there's some topic that we get on, that people get interested in. 

    And I purposely sort of help promote that, like, that's the theme of the day. You know, I like sort of--oh, we're talking about this thing? Well, let's really dig in deep on this thing. Because sometimes I'm like, oh, this is a cool topic. I want to go deeper on it. 

    Like one of the reasons I started my poll, my Head to Head poll, is, I want people to give opinions of, what do you think on this thing? And I found the polls definitely generate conversation. You know, some days I'm like, what do you like better, A or B, and like people are like, oh, and they really get into and talk about it. 

    And, you know, we've made decisions. For example, there's a set coming out called Dominaria. In it, there's wizard tribal, we care about wizards. And that directly came about from, I had done Head to Head on creature types. And wizards did way better than we would. We're like, wow, people really like wizards. And you know what? We haven't done that much wizard tribal. We've done some. But you know what, it makes sense in this world, people have shown they really are interested in it. Let's do it. And so, you know, while I'm trying to create entertainment, I'm also always looking for opportunity to gather information. To find ways to learn more things about my players. And then, I apply it. 

    So go out there. How much information you share about your game is up to you. I absolutely am in the far end camp, I share a lot about my game. Like I said, I've shared millions and millions of words about my game. I think there's a lot of benefit that comes with your audience understanding your processes and why you did things. 

    The big gain to me is that they have a much better appreciation of what you do, that when you explain all the nuances, they get to see and recognize things that sometimes they don't. One of the things that happens all the time when I explain stuff, is them going, oh, I never noticed that. But now that you point it out, that's really cool. So one of the things about talking about what you do is there's some--it increases the appreciation your audience has for the the game you're making.

    Now, that said, you don't want to give away all your secrets. I talk a lot about the importance of discovery. I'm not saying you want to share everything, You know, we make a big deal to not tell you what the good cards are, let you find decks or find combos, you know, we try not to sort of spoil the fun of you discovering things. 

    But I do like to talk about sort of how things get put together, things that you would never necessarily learn on your own. Those are good things to share, where, you know, you're going to learn what the good cards are, or what the best decks are, you're going to learn that. But how we put this mechanic together, you're never going to learn without me telling you. So that's good things to share. 

    And in general, the other thing I find is, the more you share with the audience, the more they share with you. For example, what I found on my blog is, the more questions I answer, the more questions I get. And I mean,  on a day to day basis. Like let's say I have a really busy day, and I only get to answer like 10 questions. Okay. I don't--I mean, I get some, because I always answer questions, I get questions. But I just get less questions that day. 

    Meanwhile, let's say I'm out and about, or I'm somewhere where I have a lot of waiting time because my kids are doing something and I'm just sitting around. And so I have opportunities to answer a lot of questions. I'll just generate a lot more questions that day. Because they'll see I'm answering it, and you know, when you see I'm answering, you're more likely--or even I prompt you, I answer a question that prompts you to ask a question. Just the more I answer, the more people ask. 

    So what I would say is, you want to get out there, you want to share some stuff, internal processes that make sense for you. You want to sort of answer questions where you can, and you want to create a means by which your audience--you have a conduit by which your audience can explain what they want. 

    And the point of this rule today is, the most valuable part of that is them defining the problems. The audience is really, really good at saying where they're happy and saying where they're upset. And when they're saying where they're upset, they're really good at pinpointing why they're upset. 

    Now sometimes, by the way--actually I should dial back a little bit. Sometimes they're really good at saying what upsets them. And with a little bit of digging, you can find out why it upsets them. They don't always tell you up front why it upsets them. I get that a lot actually because I just, I've created a strong rapport with them. Meaning I get more whys than I think the average person because of the relationship I've created with my audience. 

    Usually they'll tell you what they're unhappy with first. I don't like this thing. This thing in the game I don't like. You then need to work with them a little bit to understand why. They don't always tell you why they don't like something. But with rapport you can get there. 

    I have a pretty good rapport with my audience, and I've actually gotten to the point now where I've educated them that I want the why. That--don't just tell me you dislike something, tell me why you dislike it. Because the why on some level is even more important than the what. Because yeah, yeah, you can change the what, but if you don't understand the why, you might just recreate the problem. 

    Understanding the why is understanding the source of the problem, not the result of the problem. And yeah, yeah, you can fix the result. But treating symptoms is not, you know, you want to figure out what its cause is--I said that wrong. You don't--a doctor isn't just like, oh, you have splotches, what's causing those splotches. They want to get to the root of the problem. And the same, what you want to do. 

    So when you get out there, get a voice, get a rapport with your audience, find out what they dislike, then find out why they dislike it. They will also offer up solutions. I'm just saying take that with a grain of salt. For all the reasons I explained today, that is not the most valuable piece of information you'll get from them. The most valuable information you'll get is what and why--and how sometimes. You know, how it is working wrong for them. Understanding all the components of where their satisfaction comes from will allow you, the person with the craft and with the the full information to understand how to fix it. Because you have all the information, where they don't.

    So anyway, I'm (???) at work. Anyway, a lot of what I'm trying to say today is that you as a game designer have a responsibility to go outside the bubble of your game. That the audience is there, I'm assuming the audience is. Your new game, that's not true. But if the audience is there, ignoring your audience is not doing the full work of a game designer. That, you know, if you are trying to make your audience happy, you gotta go to your audience to understand if they're happy and why they're happy and what makes them happy. And what makes them unhappy. 

    You know, you need to go out--that this is a--not just a valuable resource, I would say a fundamental resource. That if you have an audience and you are not tapping into them, if you're not using them to understand what isn't working about your game, you are not maximizing. You are not doing the best job you can as a game designer. 

    And that really is the point of today's thing, is, you know, a lot of people want to focus on the aspect where the audience is good at this one thing. They're awesome at this other thing. They're amazing at this other thing. They are better than anybody else at this one component. 

    And yes, yes, this other component, they're not as strong at for many reasons I've explained, but the first thing they're amazing at. So if you are a game designer, you need to be tapping into that. 

    And, part of what I want to say today is, that is not something that instantaneously is just there. You don't just *poof* have rapport with your audience. You don't even have a conduit to your audience necessarily. You need to foster those, to find them, to foster them, to build them. 

    That--I mean, if you don't have a community, to help build communities is really important. I mean, Magic has a lot of built in communities. But you need to make sure your game has a community. And you want it--like, part of building your game is building the conduits into it so that the audience has a means to get to you. Because that information, connecting their information with you, is what is going to take your game from good to great. 

    Okay, so anyway, I am now parked, so we all know that means. This is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking Magic, it's time for me to be making Magic. I'll see you guys next time.

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  6. All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

    I’m pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It's time for another Drive to Work.

    Okay, so today is another in my series, 20 Lessons 20 Podcasts, based on my GDC talk in 2016. So I'm up to Lesson Number 18. Restrictions breed creativity.

    So a quick caveat. This is probably the lesson I'm most associated with. And as such, it is definitely a topic that I broach quite a number of times on my podcast. So for regular listeners, I'm going to talk about some stuff that I know I've talked about before. But a lot—this series is gets a lot of listening from game designers that aren't necessarily magic players. So I'm going to talk about some stuff. So just a heads up that I know I hit some of these themes before, because I'm talking about something that means a lot to me, and I’ve talked a lot about.

    Okay, so restrictions breed creativity. So, let me start, as I always do on the things, with an example from Magic. So I write a column called Making Magic every Monday, since 2002. I've been writing this column, I think I'm up to my like 850th column.

    And so one of the things when we started writing the column, we had this thing where—things have changed a little bit since then. But when we first started, the way it worked was, every other week was a theme week. And then every other week from that was not a theme week. So on theme weeks, I would always write to the theme, and the non-theme weeks, I could write whatever I wanted. So the question was, which was harder? Writing for the theme weeks, or writing for the non-theme weeks? And the answer was, the non-theme weeks were significantly harder, significantly harder.

    And it gets to the crux of what this whole topic today is about, which is, there's this myth about creativity, that being open, having choices makes you more creative. That what a creative mind wants is infinite possibilities. And the funny thing is, that's not really how the brain works. That is not—like when I had my theme week, when I knew what my theme week was like, okay, and I had to figure out what I was doing. But I would work within the theme week. And when I didn’t have my theme weeks, when I could do anything, that was infinitely harder. You know what I’m saying? In fact, a lot of times I would sort of try to find something—I would give myself some limitations to help myself.

    So let me talk a little bit about creativity and about—and once again, I did an entire podcast on creativity, I wrote an article online called Connect the Dots, where I talked about what I believe creativity is. And my whole idea on creativity is it's the ability to connect things that other people don't see as connected. That's what I believe creativity is. And I believe it's a skill that—it’s a muscle that you get better with use. But we'll get to that in a second.

    So let's talk a little bit about brain chemistry. Because this will explain a lot about what's going on here. Okay, so why is it easier if you have something than if you don't have something? And let me talk about that. So okay, so the way the brain works is the brain is a really smart organ. That it really is the smartest organ. So what happens is, whenever your brain sees a problem, meets a problem, it goes in its data banks, it goes, “Wait wait wait. Have I dealt with this problem before? Let me look it up.” And if it has, then it uses the things that used last time.

    Now most of the time, this is really, really good. That if I want to solve a problem, and I solve it, next time I go to solve the problem, if I've already solved it, I don't want my brain to start from scratch again, I want my brain to use the knowledge I've learned before. So if I don't know how to do something, and I learn how to do it, the next time I'm trying to face that thing, my brain goes, “Whoa whoa whoa, I got this, I know how to do this.”

    Now most of the time that's really good. The brain functioning that way is really helpful. There's no reason why you should relearn something you already know. But, and this is a problem for creativity is, because of this technique of your brain, to sort of make things easier by reusing pathways, what happens is, if you approach a problem that you've already approached before, your brain, its natural thing to do is approach it from the exact same way, literally with the same neural pathways. Now the problem there is, it gets you to the same answer.

    Now normally, that's a good thing. If I want to know how to do something, if I'm trying to figure out how to cook something or whatever I'm trying to do. If I'm trying to learn how to do it, I want to come to the same conclusion. I want to go, oh, this is the way to do it.

    With creative thought though, it's the one place where it's a problem. If I'm trying to come up with something different and my brain keeps wanting to come up someplace that's the same, well, that causes a problem. And so one of the things that often happens when you're trying to do game design is, if you approach your problems from the same vantage point, you get the same answers.

    And, it is--the thing that's even I guess, about this, that’s subtler is, it's not that you're even aware necessarily that using the same neural pathways. When I explain it, when I say, “Well, here's how the brain works,” you sit back and you go, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” But when you think about how, like, one of the things that's very interesting, is figuring out when what you do, which makes sense in most places doesn't make sense somewhere.

    So for example, yeah yeah yeah, most of the time when I want to learn how to do something I want to build on experience from before. But what happens in creative thought is, it just means that I keep coming up with the same answers. And when your goal is to come up with new answers, that can be very frustrating.

    So the way the—really what this means is that if you want to be creative, you have to understand the limitations of your brain. Or not even the limitations as much as the nature of your brain. So the trick here is, if you want to be creative, what that means is, you have to get in the habit of learning to give your brain different stimuli. So let me use Magic as my example.

    I right now am working on—it’s codenamed Cricket. I’m sorry—yeah, I'm working on Cricket, and I’m matter of fact doing exploratory design on Diving. And a lot of what's going on is—and I—you know, this is my 25th set? 30th set? I don’t know, I've led a lot of sets. You know, I think I've led about 20, 25ish sets.

    So how is it my 25 sets are different from one another? Well, there's a couple of factors. The biggest is one of the things I do whenever I'm making a new set, is I try to figure out something to do that I haven't done before, I try to give myself a goal that's a unique goal for that set.

    So for example, when I do a top-down set, meaning influenced by some flavor, well, if I've never done that before, if this is the first time I've ever tried to make Greek mythology, or Gothic horror, or you know, whatever down theme I'm doing, right off the bat, I'm like, okay, you know that the first thing I do on top down sets is I make a list of all the things that that thing would want. So right off the bat, well, I haven't done that before.

    Now, sometimes I'm doing what we call bottom-up, which is a mechanical-based thing, not a flavor-based. And then it's like, okay, like, for example, Ravnica came about, because we were doing our second ever block dedicated to multicolor. So I literally said, “Well, what does the last block make you do?” And the answer was, “Play lots of colors.” So I was like, “Okay, let's do the opposite. Let's play as few colors as possible while still being multicolor,” which meant two-color. You know, that I sort of found that space by pushing against where I'd been before. So whenever I start a set, one of the things that I always try to do is, I try to make sure that I'm just—I just have a different goal in mind. I'm just trying to do something different.

    Another big thing I do is we have design teams. I try hard not to have the same design teams. That I want different stimuli coming in. That, for example, that just having different people means I'm going to get different questions. I'm going to get different input. I'm going to get different designs. That part of the way that I make sets different is just having different people getting involved in it.

    Another common thing I will do is that I try to push in certain directions, I like to give a bullseye. So one of the big things I believe about leading a design is that you, the person in charge of the design, are trying to give direction to your designers. You are trying to make a bullseye to aim for.

    Now be aware that just because you aim at one thing at one point doesn't mean that's always where you're aiming. But it's good that the people on your design team, your designers have a direction. That they know what they're trying to accomplish. And a lot of what I'm talking about today is, I want to make sure that my goal is a unique goal. And then I have a unique set of people that I'm doing that with so that I'm trying to do something I haven't done before.

    And the big thing about sort of understanding this is that I think people falsely believe that the limitations themselves will inhibit creativity. That, you know, if I have neat creative ideas, that having outside limitations would somehow hamper it. Like the idea essentially is, I within me have this, you know, they used to talk about when they do sculpture, I think Michelangelo believed that the thing he was sculpting was already in the marble, he was just freeing it from the marble. I think there's people that believe that, like, you have these great ideas, and just you have to find the great ideas.

    And the reality is an actual sort of--I think there's this false belief sometimes that the idea already exists, and all you are doing is discovering it. And that any limitations you do might pull you away from finding this beautiful piece of art trapped in, you know, in limbo. And the reality is, that it is these restrictions and is these ideas that you tend to build off of.

    So I'm gonna compare the making of an idea to an oyster. So the way an oyster gets made, for those that don't know is, a clam will get a piece of sand or something in it. And the irritants will it—it will form, it'll make a little whatever the pearl stuff is, but it starts forming around it. And then actually, a pearl is something that sort of, there was an irritation, and it was dealing with the irritation, and slowly sort of creates this thing.

    And essentially, the funny thing is, I don't think the role of the clam was to make pearls per se. It's not like I hope clams—oysters. Oysters make pearls? So oysters make pearls, not clams, oysters. [LTH--Apparently they both can.] That the goal of pearls wasn't necessarily, like—the oyster didn't exist to make the pearl per se, that the pearl was a byproduct of it trying to do something. And that a lot of great ideas are a lot like that little grain of sand to make the pearl, which is you get something in your craw, and you try to sort of work around it. And that thing inspires things.

    Like a lot of great inspirations for me have come about when I was trying to sort of solve a problem. And it was—like elegant solutions, I call them, are a lot of where the great—like a lot of the thunderbolt moments are not that I had this idea out of nowhere, it is I found—I had a problem I was trying to solve, and the elegant solution came to me.

    And I think a lot of creativity is in fact elegant problem solving. It's, I need to do something, I need to find a solution to this, I can't find an obvious solution, and then I find a non-obvious solution, but something that makes me realize, oh, if I think of it in this way, it opens it up. And it gives me some new possibilities. And like I said earlier, I believe creativity is the connecting of things that don't normally connect. So a lot of cool sort of creative moments is, oh, here's something else I've learned in a completely different field that you wouldn't think has anything to do with this. But it does. And if you think of it this way, but you know—a lot of great insights are applying things you learned elsewhere to a field that you haven't applied it to.

    There's a great book that I'm completely blanking on the name right now, that talks a lot about how a lot of great scientific discoveries were, in fact, people from one field bringing their expertise to a different field. And saying, “Oh, well, here's something we know is true in this field. If we bring it to this field,” you know… and the idea is, you know, “Oh, because this is true in one area, is there some truth to it in another area?”

    From a writing standpoint, I've talked a lot about that one of the things that's very common is for writers to have a theme, and that theme carries through their work. And a lot of what makes different works is them taking their theme and applying it in different ways. And this idea of sort of—you having ideas for criss crossing, you know, hybriding the ideas is where I think a lot of things come from. But it is not this idea that I have nothing, that ideas come from nothing, that I just spontaneously make an idea out of whole cloth. That isn't really how the brain works. It's not how ideas work. Usually what happens is, it's me forming around something to try to figure that out.

    So let me get to some practical advice today. So what am I trying to say with this lesson? Creativity—restrictions breed creativity. What does that mean? Okay, number one. It means you want to bring restrictions into your work, that restrictions are not a negative, but a positive. And what I mean by that is, when you're building something, understand that you having things that speak to you, you having ideas to work around are a good idea that one of the—to me the creative process is, there's a part early on, where you're sifting through ideas, and then find something that speaks to you.

    And it's not important that you understand why it speaks to you. That's not even important, necessarily. It's just that something about it really makes you keep coming back to it. That there's something about the concept that says, this interests me. And then what I say is, bring those things into your work, things that just sort of gnaw at your consciousness that sort of like just go, oh, there's something about this, that really—even if you don't understand why, really intrigues you. Because a lot of creativity is building off of something. And so if you start with a thing that just really interest you, it will build toward interesting things.

    The second thing is that I want you to understand this dynamic, because often in game design, or any creative endeavor, you'll get stuck. That you're trying to do something, then you get in what I call the loop. Where you sort of keep doing the same thing and getting the same answer. And it just gets frustrating, because you just can't seem to break out of it.

    So what I say there is, another great way to use this is a very good trick, which is, sometimes when you're stuck, take a restriction that's not necessary, but put it in anyway. So for example, sometimes I'm trying to design cards, and just I keep designing the same thing. So I'm going to add a restriction, I'll just add a restriction. And sometimes what I'll do is I'll add a crazy restriction, not even a nonsensical restriction. So like I'm designing cards and like, okay, okay, I'm going to be inspired by donuts. I'm going to design a card that reminds me of a donut, or I'm going to design a card that reminds me of lacrosse, or I’m going to design a card that reminds me of I Love Lucy. I just picked something that is non—that has nothing to do with what I'm doing.

    Because what it forces me, is it forces my brain to do the thing I'm talking about. I'm now thinking about my problem in a different context than I've ever thought before. And then what happens is, I can latch onto new things. I can latch on to something different. So this concept allows you when you get stuck, as a tool to help you.

    I mean a lot of what—if you listen to a lot of my lessons and stuff, a lot of them is really about human nature. Some of them is about understanding human natures of your player base. But some of them are understanding the human nature of you, the person making the game. You the game designer. That you are human too, and you have the same foibles and you will fall into the same traps, because there's certain nature—humans work a certain way. And I'm trying to make you understand that when you get to creativity, when you get to sort of artistic thought, that there are traps to fall into that are just human nature traps.

    The brain is a wondrous thing, the brain will do amazing things. But any tool is only as good as the knowledge of the tool user. And so one of the things about—if you're going to be in a field where you're using your brain, where your brain is your tool, you need to spend time understanding it. Like for example, if you're a dancer and your body is your tool, you have to get much better at understanding your body. I know a lot of dancing classes is about sort of, or even acting classes is about sort of getting you in touch with connecting to your body and how you feel and when your body's telling you things, to listen to and understand what it needs.

    And I believe your brain is similar, in that I don't think a lot of people who spend time thinking, spend time understanding their own brain. And that I believe that if you're going to sort of—if your brain is your tool, understand your brain. And a lot of today is saying, look, there's things we know about the brain, there's ways the brain works. You know, there's things that the brain wants to do and you—that,  interestingly, being creative is not—from a species standpoint. You know, from a biological standpoint, your brain’s job is to keep you alive. That's your brain’s number one job. And being creative is actually antithetical to a lot of things built into your brain.

    For example, one of the things that you want to do to survive from a survival standpoint is you want to avoid risk. Risk is bad. Risk kills you. That if you're going out and picking berries, you don't want to eat berries you've never eaten before. You want to eat the berries you've eaten before and didn't die from and that your brain really has a lot of things built into it for survival. You know.

    Now we as a species have kind of got, you know, survival isn't our day to day thing anymore. We don't wake up every day going, where am I getting my food. [LTH—Not accurate for everyone.] I got my food, it’s in the fridge. Like you know, that we've evolved past that. But your brain, that's where it came from. And you have to understand that your brain is not hardwired necessarily to want to be creative.

    Now there is reasons to problem solve, and problem solving is built into your brain. So the tool is—it’s not as if the brain can't problem solve, because there are times and places you need to problem solve. What I'm saying is that your brain sort of at its core, wants to do some things that sometimes fight your desire when being a creative person. And that you have to understand that. You have to get that. You have to realize that like, your brain is going to say, “Hey, you know how to do something? Yeah, we know how to do that. We've done it before. Let's do it that way.”

    It's kind of funny, one of the big concepts I have in my job is, I'm the Head Designer. So there's someone called the Rules Manager, there's been many people that have had the job. And the goal of the Rules Manager is to make things consistent. That if we want to do something, their job is to hunt for the template we've already used, and try to find a way to do that.

    But one of the problems is, my goal as Head Designer is, sometimes I'm trying to find novelty. I'm trying to do things we haven't done. And the last thing I want to do is take something that is exciting and new and make it feel less exciting and less new. But the Rules Manager’s job is to do that. And that one of the things I've come to realize is, you know—early on, I used to butt heads a little more with the Rules Manager. And what I've come to understand is, look, the Rules Managers are doing their job. And that if I can use the Rules Manager and understand what they want and what they do, they’re a tool for me. The Rules Manager is not my foil. I mean, I made fun of it, like in the comics, but really the Rules Manager is a tool for me. But I got to understand the tool. And I have to understand the motivations of the tool.

    In some way, by the way, this is just how to deal with people in general. People have a goal in mind, they have things they prioritize. And if you do not understand their priorities, you will not understand their interactions. That if you want to interact with people, this is I guess true of designers (???) design team, you want to understand what motivates them.

    And a lot of what I'm saying is a good designer is, is understanding sort of—making your team get what you want out of your design, so that that's what they are doing, rather than some default that you're not putting.

    So let me let me give you a different example of the same lesson today, but in a in a different context. So my wife and I, Lora’s my wife, we love throwing parties. I like making games, Lora loves cooking. We love doing planning and stuff. We really enjoy parties, we do a couple of big parties every year.

    So there was a period of time where all our friends were having babies, and we were showing baby showers. And what we learned really quickly was, if we wanted to throw a good baby shower, what we needed to do was ask the couple for a theme. Because if we didn't give a theme, what ended up happening was, generic baby shower. And they would just all be the same. Because when you say baby shower, what would you expect? You keep getting the same thing.

     

    And what we found was, what we wanted to do was not just give a baby shower, but do something specialized to the couple that was having the baby. And so what we said is give us a theme. And one, you know, one of our friends said a carnival. One of our friends said baseball. You know, one of our friends said a picnic. You know, each people gave us different things. And from that we ended up making—like the crux of it baby shower, I mean, the things you do at baby showers aren't that different. You know what I'm saying? People are bringing gifts for the baby, you're gonna play some games that are baby themed, you know, the things you're doing aren't that different. But all it took was people giving us a theme. And all of a sudden, it just inspired all sorts of things.

    And not only that, not only did it just give decorations to the parties, it even impacted the activities itself. That we got to play baby-themed things, but through the filter of whatever the theme was. And what I found was, I was just making more interesting games. You know what I’m saying? Like I was just—I was being inspired by the theme itself. And I was, as the person making the games, was making just more interesting games. That when I was sort of like “baby shower, generic baby shower,” I was just making the normal baby games.

    But as soon as I had this, like, “Oh, but I'm trying to incorporate a carnival,” you know, or “How do we make carnival games that are baby games?” All of a sudden we're making physical games that we've never done before. You know, when we had the baseball theme, I said okay, how can I make something that combines baseball with, with babies? And I came up with a really interesting game where, you know, it's a trivia game, that was a baseball game. And, you know, it allowed me to sort of do some fun stuff where I made things that I would never make.

    And that is a lot of what I'm trying to say today is, your brain is capable of making all sorts of really cool things. But it requires you the user of the brain to understand the inputs to get the outputs you want. And that if you put the same inputs, you're just getting the same output. That's just what's going to happen.

    So the idea of using restrictions, like—my takeaway from today is not even that restrictions have to exist—restrictions should exist. You the designer should bring restrictions into your design. That you should sort of force yourself to go to places you haven't gone, because that very act of doing that will lead to better design. it'll lead to richer design, more unique design, it'll lead you to doing things.

    And I’m almost to work but I'll leave one last example, which to me is a perfect example, which is double-faced cards. So that's something that we do in Magic, normally Magic, there is a front to the card, the face, and there's the back to the card. And for many, many years, every card had a front and a back.

    So we were working in Innistrad, a set that was a Gothic horror set, and we were trying to figure out how to do werewolves. And so what I said to my team is, I laid down parameters. I go, “I want to do werewolves.” And I said, “Look,” you know, “There's two states to a werewolf, gotta reflect that, you know, the moon's going to come out and the human’s gonna turn into the werewolf.” And, you know, I wanted two states, and I sort of laid out the things I needed.

    And one of my team members came back with the idea of having a double-faced card. We had done it in another game we make, a game called Duel Masters that we've done, and it was kind of exciting there. And I said, “Oh, they do in the other game, we could do it here.”

    And at first—I mean the story goes, I've done podcasts. I was reluctant, but eventually I tried it. Because always you want to try things, even things you think won't work you want to try because you never know. And what I found was it turned out to be a wonderful solution and did really neat things. And the audience adored it. Not all the audience but the vast majority adored it. Any new idea that's a little out of the box, there's always people that go, “I hate it,” but most people actually really liked it.

    But the point is, that the reason we got to double-faced cards, wasn't us saying, “What haven't we done before?” No. What got us to double-faced cards is me saying, “Here is a very tight parameter I'm trying to solve.” You know. And I made sure my audience--sorry, my design team understood the problem that we were solving, you know. And I laid out a lot of parameters, a lot of restrictions. We are doing werewolves. There are gonna be two states. There's gonna be a human. There's gonna be a werewolf.  Something's gonna change them. You know, like, the moon is gonna come out, like—here’s all the things we have to represent.

    And I said, I don't want to just do an okay werewolf, I want to do the knock-your-socks-off werewolf. Like, it was something that magic hadn't done very much, that I knew if we could capture would really put this set on the map. And Innistrad went on to be a hugely popular set, double-faced cards was hugely popular.

    But it stemmed from--it's not like I said, do anything and we got there. I said, do something specific, which is how we got there. And that the best design is when you're looking for very specific answers, and then be willing to be creative in those answers.

    So when you are designing your set, when you're making your game, when you're, you know, when you're doing that, restrictions breed creativity. It is me telling you that your brain is a tool that can help you greatly, but you have to understand your tool and use it properly. Because if you use your brain properly, you will get dividends, many, many dividends. Your brain is capable of all sorts of wonderful ideas. But in order to get at those wonderful ideas, you have to understand how it works and put the right input, so you get the right output.

    So anyway, I'm now at work. So I hope that was fun for you today. Like I said, I've been saying this forever. I really—I’m a big believer in creativity. I'm a big believer in understanding the brain and the brain psychology and how your neurons fire and all that. Because if you're using your brain, if that's the tool you use, understand your brain. Understand the tool. And so today is just one—I mean, I would recommend even reading books on the brain and understanding. I took a class in college that was all about like how the brain perceives things, that was a really amazing class. Perceptions is important.

    But anyway. That, my friends, is all I have to say today on “restrictions breed creativity”. So anyway, thank you for joining me, but I'm now at work. So we all know that means, it means it’s the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking Magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys all next time. Bye bye.


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  7. All podcast content by Mark Rosewater


    I’m pulling out of the parking lot! We all know what that means! It’s time for another Drive to Work.

    Okay. So today’s topic is something that was suggested to be by my blog, my Blogatog. So someone suggested that I talk about work/life balance. And I thought that was a very interesting topic. So I’m going to talk about that today.

    So let me set this up I guess—so one of the things about my job is it’s a pretty intense job. I have a lot of responsibilities, I have a lot of balls in the air, I have a lot of things I’ve gotta focus on, I have a lot of things I’m responsible for.

    Meanwhile, I’ve got a family. I have a family of five. You know. I’m—I have two equal parts of my life that are both busy and intense, and I love them both, but they both require a lot of time and energy, and so the question of the day is, how exactly do you balance that? How do you make sure that your work/life balance is in order? So today I’m going to talk all about that.

    To start with, I’m going to make a quote, which—something I believe a lot in, which is, priorities are not priorities unless you prioritize them. So one of the themes I’ll talk about today is, a lot of having the proper balance is understanding what matters to you, and then acting in such a way that your behavior reflects the things you say that matter to you. That’s a big part of today, so we’ll get back to this theme quite a bit. But a lot of what I’m going to talk about today is how to think about what matters and then act in accordance to that. You know. That the things you say matter, you have to make matter.

    Okay. So here’s how I’m going to start today. What I want you to do is an exercise. You can actually—you can turn off this and turn it back on if you want. But here’s the exercise. You need to make two lists. One list is every single thing you’re responsible for at work. Every responsibility. Everything you have to do at work. Everything.

    Okay. The second list you have to make is everything that you do at home. Not just things you’re responsible—these lists are not just things you’re responsible for, but things you do. Everything you do at work, everything you do away from work. When I say life, I mean life outside of work.

    So you need to make two lists. And the idea here is, you want exhaustive lists. Lists that list everything you do. Everything. Okay? And take some time. You want to make these lists as thorough as you can. Make the list such that they list everything you do.

    Okay. Once you do that, that’s step one. Step two is, then take that list and prioritize it. And what that means is, put it in an order to say, what matters most? What matters second most? What matters third most? Now, this is not an easy task. I mean, the first task, writing everything down is more of a memory thing. But the second part, prioritizing, is pretty hard. Because how do you figure out what’s more important?

    Now, when you’re doing your work priorities, keep in mind that I’s not just what you personally prioritize, but also, hey, you have a boss, you have responsibilities. You know. It’s the priorities of what—all the things that matter together. Not just your own personal priorities but as far as what needs to be done.

    For life, more personal. What matters for you personally? What personally matters to you? And the idea is, you want to make a list that really reflects what you have to care about in the order you need to care about it. And the reason that I want you to make a list is, it is hard to—essentially, here is the trick to making a list. Is take two items. And say, “Of these two items, which is more important?” And then put that above—so let’s say A and B. A is more important than B. Okay, now A comes first, B comes second. Now take a third item. Take Item C. And say, okay. C and A. Which is more important? If C is more important than A, then you’re going to list these CAB. If A is more important than C, now ask the question which is more important, C or B. And then you end up with either ACB or ABC.

    The idea is, you want—the easiest way to prioritize something is not to look at everything, but two t things. That’s the easiest way for people to understand a priority. That people are best at judging when they’re judging two things against each other.

    And what you will find is, if you actually do what I say, make a list and then balance everything and prioritize it using the system of just keep putting things against each other of which comes first, you will eventually make a list. Okay.

    Here’s why this is important. So let’s get into why I’m having you do this in the first place. One of the things about having proper balance is two major things. One is, is proper allocation of your resources. Of knowing what resources you have available and how you can allocate them. Because a lot of the problems of misbalance is improper allocation of resources.

    The other thing is overall balance between work and life. How much time gets allocated towards work, and how much time gets allocated toward the rest of your life? A lot of work/life balance has to do with those things, of properly understanding resources and overall balance. So we’re going to talk about that today.

    Okay. We’re going to start with the resources. So resources says, okay. There’s certain things—certain resources that I have. I will define a resource as something that is expendable, that there’s not an infinite amount of.

    For example, time. Time is a big resource. You only have so much time to do things. And so one of the biggest problems people run into when they get out of balance is, they’re not allocating their time correctly. Another thing is your focus. You know. You can only focus on so much at a certain time. Where does your focus come? I also say focus or attention, those are very similar, but the idea of, what do I have to care about more? What has to be more on my mind? Quality. You know? What is something that needs—I can’t necessarily do my utmost work on everything. I gotta figure out where I need to do the most—where I need to put the quality. Money. This happens more in life than work, but it can happen at work as well. Of understanding the resource of money.

    There’s a bunch of different resources. These aren’t all the resources. There’s a lot of different resources. But part of what you want to do is you want to figure out what you care about, so you can start allocating resources.

    And here’s what that means is, okay. Let’s say I make my list. Now, the second part is having a sense of balance. So one of the things I’ll say is, roughly you want your work to take around, you know, 40 hours a week. I mean, some people have a little more, fifty hours, sixty hours. You gotta figure out how much time you want to spend toward work. Figure out what is acceptable to you for how much of your life should be work vs. how much should not be work.

    That might have to do with the kind of job you have. I mean, you can allocate your time any way you want. What I want you to do is understand how you want to allocate it percentage-wise. Balance-wise. So like, do you want, you know—let’s assume, figure out how much you sleep, for example, and you can actually look at waking hours. Let’s say you get eight hours a night. Eh, most people don’t do that. But let’s say you do, let’s say you smartly get eight hours a night. Look at the rest of the time and say, okay, I have so much time for my work and so much time—how much do I want to allocate to my work? What’s the correct amount?

    Now, a lot of work allocation—there’s a minimum set by your work, like your work has some expectation of when you’ll be there. And then there’s some realization of how much time am I spending outside of normal work hours doing work? And that’s something you have to figure out. But a big thing of—the first thing is, you want to figure out how much time do I have for each. What am I allocating for each?

    Okay, then, once you figure that out, once you say okay, okay, I want to spend forty hours a week. Fifty hours a week. Whatever. And I’m not judging how much time you want to spend. If you are living a life in which you’re spending eighty percent of your time at work and you’re enjoying it and it makes you happy, hey, more power to you. But a lot of what I’m talking about today, a lot of the balance comes from understanding what matters to you.

    Another thing that’s important, by the way, is, once you have your two lists, you also have to understand, between the lists—usually on the top items is where it matters most is, where is your priority on the list itself? Between the lists? Between your work and life lists, there also needs to be priority. What’s the most important thing that you need to spend the time on? You know. Is it a life thing? Is it a work thing? You just need to understand that.

    Okay. So now that you have a list, and you have priorities, the next thing you need to understand is—we’re going to start with time, because I think time is the resource that’s most important in today’s topic, which is creating a proper balance.

    So what you need to do is, you need to look at all the tasks—so now you should have the list of your work tasks, a work of your life tasks, prioritized in order, and a number of how many hours you expect to do that a week. What is your realistic expectation? Note, by the way, from week to week, I’m not saying there can’t be a little flux, I’m not saying you can’t have a week where you get a few extra work hours in. But I want to understand your default. What do you expect your default to be?

    Okay. The next step then is to try to adequately understand how much time things take. How long do you spend doing something? And be aware, people tend to underestimate time. People tend to assume, “Oh, that’ll take me an hour,” when it takes you two hours, or three hours. So one of the things you want to start doing is, start looking at your tasks and figuring out how long your tasks take.

    So one of the things I’m going to do today is talk about, like, problems that create imbalance in your work/life—you know, things that cause problem in work/life balance. Number one is that you misallocate things. So when you’re trying to figure out your time, you need to look at all the resources at work and say, okay, how much time each of those things take? Same at home. How much time do each of the things take?

    Now, be aware, your goal is not necessarily—especially in life. Your work goal, you can—you shouldn’t allocate 100% of anything, Because you need to give yourself some flex time, because A. like I said, things you estimate won’t happen, B. things you don’t plan for will happen.

    So one of the things that you want to do in general is, I say eighty percent is a decent—like, you want to sort of allocate up to 80% so that you have a little bit of flex time to understand what you need to do. That if you book yourself up at 100% and then a problem arises, well, you’ve got in trouble because you haven’t sort of built in anything to the idea that things will arise and things will happen.

    Okay. So, we’ll start—let’s start with work. Take work, figure out how long each of the things you’re saying takes. What does it actually take to do the things you’re doing? You know. And then one of the things that you need to do—and part of this is your responsibility, part of this might also be your manager if you have a manager—one of the things to remember about a manager is, a manager is there as a means to help you. Yes, help your business, they obviously have some obligation to the business. But they also have obligation to you as an employee.

    And so one of the things you need to figure out is, as you’re looking to figure out, are you overscheduled? You know, do you have too much to do at work? Use your manager as a resource. It is your manager’s job to make sure that you’re properly being used and that you’re not being overallocated. And if you are, you need to talk with them. Now, maybe your manager’s the one that’s overallocating you, that’s a separate issue, but in most cases, what you want to do is figure out what you’re doing, how much it takes, and once again. The priority of what you need to do. And look at the time allocation.

    One of the biggest problems I find with people and work—and I find with myself and work is, it is very easy to just overcommit. In fact, one of the things about working at Wizards which makes things particularly difficult, is Wizards is a very fun job. A lot of the tasks that come to you are very fun tasks. In fact, one of the—when you see a new employee at Wizards in R&D, the same thing tends to happen, which is they get there, they’re excited, they’re excited to be working at Wizards R&D, it’s a pretty cool job, you know, you’re working on games, obviously, if you’re in R&D you love games, that’s why you ended up in R&D of a game company, and so what happens is, all these projects come along that sound really cool. Do you want to make this cool game? Do you want to make that cool game? Do you want to do this cool thing? And it is very easy to just take assignments because the assignments sound like fun. And then what happens is, you get to the point where you’re like, just, you’re overworked. You’re like, okay, I can’t handle all this. I’ve said yes to too many things.

    So this is what I call the tummyache phenomenon to be careful of, which is, let’s imagine you go to a store and they have just sweets. Really delicious, wonderful sweets. They have the best donuts you’ve ever had and the sweetest ice cream you’ve ever tasted, and the best candy, and just, you know, bakeries, and all sorts of—everything you possibly could imagine. The best desserts ever. And they say to you, “It’s all free! You can have whatever you want!”

    Well the problem you’re going to run into is the tummyache problem. Right? Is, you’re going to go, “Oh, well I have to have—oh, that donut. Ooh, this donut’s so good and this ice cream’s so good and this bakery this and that,” and like, what happens is, you can’t eat everything. Even though you want to eat many things and they’re all good and you enjoy them, that you end up with a tummyache. That if you eat too much, your body just goes, “Ohh, I can’t handle that.” And work can be the same way.

    Now, be aware, sometimes at work—I mean, I’m talking about Wizards, where like—it is a fun problem to have when you have too many things you’re excited to do and you overwork yourself. Sometimes the phenomenon of overworking yourself is not, “Oh, I’m so excited by everything,” sometimes it’s, “I have to do things I don’t even want to do but I gotta do them.”

    And when you’re prioritizing work, make sure you understand, it’s not necessarily what you want to do but what needs to get done. When I talk about priorities, especially for work, I mean, what are the priorities of not just you but the people you report to, meaning what work needs to get done that you’re expected to do?

    And one of the things to understand is, I’m just saying, make sure that you figure out, of what you need to do, that you prioritize what needs to get done. And what you will find is, if you have an excess, if you’ve done the math and say, okay, I have so many hours, I’m trying to book at 80%, I book all these hours and I look at what I have to do, and I look at how much time allocation I have, if it doesn’t line up, you have a couple issues.

    So number one could be, if you truly believe you have too much to do, you need to go talk to your manager—like, you need to see who you need to see, probably your manager, to say, look. I have too much to do.

    And that part of it is, it is very easy to take on responsibilities because either A. you know you’re good at the responsibility, or B. nobody else is taking on the responsibility, or C. it’s just something you’ve always done, it’s just some kind of routine or something. And that one of the reasons to make priorities and list them in order is to say, okay. While I need to do A, B, and C, ehh, okay, I gotta do E and I gotta do E and I gotta do F, but, okay, once I get to G, I’ve run out of time. I’ve allocated all my time. Okay. What am I doing with H, I, and J?

    So first off, understand the value of using your coworkers at work. One of the things I found long ago is that it is very easy to just want to do things yourself. You understand what you do, you know you like your own work, it is very easy to just say, “It’s easier to do it myself.”

    But one of the things about proper time allocation is making use of the resources available. Well, one of the resources available to you at work is coworkers. You know. And that one of the things I have found is, when I do my job, I try to find places where—I always ask myself, am I the best person to be doing the thing I’m doing? Is there somebody else that could do something just as well as I could do it?

    Because one of the things you’re trying to do is figure out where can you maximize what you do. Where are you most effective? And if I find somebody else that can do the thing I’m doing at equal or better, maybe they should be doing it. You know. Especially if I’m overworked.

    Like—and I’ll tell you a little story. So this is a good example where I’ve managed to turn a resource issue into a long-term gain. So the problem was, I run sets. In fact, I’ve been consecutively leading sets since like Shadowmoor, so a long time. Years and years and years and years. But that’s one of the things. I’m Head Designer, one of my jobs is to lead a lot of sets.

    But one of the things when you lead a set is you have to manage the file. Because we make a lot of cards, there’s a database, you know, somebody has to keep everything up do date. Because when you—I always talk about iteration and playtesting, you know, the file—the database has to be kept up to date because you’re constantly using it, you’re working on it, you’re changing things.

    Upkeeping a file is a lot of work. It’s just a lot of busy work. And my problem was, I was getting—I just had too much to do, so I looked at my schedule, and I said, okay. What am I doing that somebody else could do? That, you know, some things, like really, I’m going to do them better than anybody else, I should be doing those, but some things other people could do.

    And so what I did is, I took somebody on my team, and I said to them, okay. What I’m going to do is I’m going to put you in charge of managing the file. I’m going to have you make all the changes in the file. And what also happened is, when you make changes in the file—about 90% of file management is literally just keeping up with the changes and making the changes, but about 10% is adapting the file when you make changes. Because sometimes when you change one card, it requires you to change some other cards. And so there’s a little bit beyond—it’s not just record-keeping. There’s some actual design that comes to keeping a file.

    So what I did is I took a member of my design team, someone that hadn’t run their own design team yet, and said to them, “I’m going to put you in charge of the file.” And then I kept my eye on them, but I really let them do it. And what I found was, which was interesting is, it ended up being a really good learning opportunity.

    Because if you’ve never led a design before, one of the things you first have to understand is the dynamic of how it works. How does—what kind of changes happen? Well, you know the best way to understand changes in a file, in a design? Is manage it.

    And so what I found was, what started as a more managerial thing just to free up some of my time ended up becoming a really valuable teaching tool. So much so that other people have started to make use of it because it’s a really good way to take somebody that’s less experienced in a way that’s sort of more controlled, because when you’re managing the file you’re not making key decisions. You know. The person leading the file, usually me, I’m making the decisions. They’re not deciding necessarily what to put in the file. But as they put things in the file, they have the ability to massage things and change things, and oh, well this goes to three mana, we have two many three manas, let me change something else.

    And it allows them to sort of, in a much more controlled setting, make some changes and start understand what kind of things need to get done. And it’s a good example where I took something where I was trying to manage my own resources, and in doing it I really found a new way to use something that was valuable.

    So don’t underestimate the power of your coworkers. Your coworkers—think of them—I mean, this is very true for Magic, but work is collaborative. That the people at your work, you are working with. And one of the things you want to do is you want to figure out how you as a group can do the best work you can do. And so if you find yourself overallocated, look and see if there’s other people who might be of use to you. That they—like I said, part of managing your resources is understanding what your resources are. And your coworker is one of those resources.

    In general, what I’m trying to say here is, if you understand how much time you have allocated for work, and you can manage and figure out what you’re doing, the biggest thing you need to do at work is get the correct amount of workload. You know. Figure out what you can handle, work with your manager to help figure that out, and then make sure you’re staying in that and you’re not what I call redlining. That you’re not—people like to be very—“Oh, I can do it. I can handle it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Toss it on, I can take that.” And people are very much—it’s very easy to just go, “Oh, yeah, I can take another project, sure. Sure.” You know. And that before you know it, you’re just overwhelmed with things.

    And like I said. Be aware. Part of the problem with allocating in general is people not realizing the full extent of what they have and how much time the things will take. And as you spend more time on your job and get a better sense of it, getting a proper workload so that you’re working the right amount of things that fit the time you have is very key.

    And part of that is learning to get realistic time expectations. That as you do projects, especially as, you know, you do them more than once, you want to get a real sense of what time they take and how long they are. And if you think that you’ve allocated more than you have proper resources, look, talk to your manager. Figure out what’s going on, find other people maybe that can help you offload some of that, and get the right amount of workload.

    Okay. Another thing is what I will refer to as biorhythms. Project biorhythms. It’s very easy when you think of a project to want to think about it in its average. “Oh, well every week on average this project will take three weeks.” I mean not three weeks, three hours. But what you will find is that projects have a rhythm to them, what I’ll call a biorhythm, or a rhythm I guess. They’re not alive. And the idea is that they’re not always the same.

    So for example, when I’m designing a set, I talk about the iterative process. I have meetings where we figure out what we need to change, we make changes, and then we playtest. And what happens is, playtesting takes less sort of overall work hours than changing things. And so one of the things you have to understand is, weeks in which you’re just playtesting often can take less time than weeks in which you’re changing things.

    And what I’m saying is, if you average three hours a week, that doesn’t mean every week is exactly three hours. It might mean that some weeks are five hours and some weeks are one hour. So that is the rhythm, that’s the biorhythm of the project.

    And that one of the things you need to understand is, you need to understand the different rhythms of the different projects you have, because another way to get overworked is, I have all my projects average at three hours a week. Except, there’s some weeks where I’m twiddling my thumbs because I don’t have enough to do, and there’s other weeks where I’m overwhelmed because I’ve hit the high level of it.

    And that one of the things you want to do is make sure that you understand the rhythms of your projects and map them out so the busy time for one project might be the light time for the other. That you don’t—you have to be careful not to sort of allocate the right time on average, but not allocate the right time in reality because having—let’s say for example you have forty hour weeks. Having twenty hours a week one [week] and sixty hours the next isn’t proper. You know. Not only do you have to allocate overall, you allocate week by week and part of that is understanding the rhythms of the things you’re doing.

    The other resource I want to talk about is focus and quality. There is this idea that every task needs the same resources. You know. “Oh, well I want to do everything to the best of my ability. I want to give everything my total focus.”

    And here’s the problem. You can’t focus on everything at once. You don’t have the ability to put the same level of quality to everything. You need to prioritize, like that you need to look at your priority list and say, “Okay. What are the things that I need to be at the top of my game? What are the things that I need to be doing the best absolute work I can do?”

    But there’s some other things you’re like, “You know what? Good enough is all this project needs.” You know. I’m doing something, this is not…” you know, understand where and what you do needs to be your absolute best work and, once again, the reason I’m saying—I’m not saying do bad work, I’m saying understand the quality of work that’s necessary to accomplish what you need to accomplish.

    Because one of the things that happens is, people—one of the ways people burn themselves out is they put too—they sort of assume, like, “I have to always have total focus and total quality,” and they’re always revved at 100. You know, they’re always going at the highest level. You can’t function that way all the time. You have to—you can’t be at your top level constantly, you’ll stress yourself out.

    And your stress level’s another thing you have to keep track of, which is, you need to figure out, you need to work in downtime. Both at work and at home, you need to have times in which you’re not at the highest level. You need to sort of understand that just as your projects have a biorhythm, you have a biorhythm. That you can’t sort of max yourself out all the time, you will burn yourself out. And so you need to figure out where really you want to stress and do your strongest and where, you know, there’s—some areas get to be good enough. Some areas get to be, “You know what? This needs to get done, but this doesn’t need to get done at the absolute highest quality possible. That’s not what this project needs.” You know. Sometimes you have things that are important, but they’re just—they’re rote, and you don’t need to spend the extra mental energy on them. You want to figure out where those things are. You know.

    Money and finances are another area especially where you gotta figure out where you put them. And when you get into life that’s a little bit more important. But anyway, as I talk about work, figure out. Allocate your time, your attention, your focus, your quality, figure out where those things need to go. Figure out which projects need the most time, which ones need the less. And, when you run out of space, when you don’t have any more time, you’ve gotta get rid of some projects. That overcommitting is one of the biggest reasons that people get off-balance between work and life. Is they overcommit in one area.

    Okay. So I spent a lot of time talking about work. Let’s talk about life. Let’s talk about the non-work part. Okay. So one of the big truisms I believe about life in general is, attendance matters. That one of the things, for example—so when I first started working at Wizards, you know, back in 1995, I was 28, and here’s how my workday used to work. I would wake up, I would go to work, I would work work work work work work work work work,  work work work work work work work, to the early hours of the morning, and then I would go home and go to bed and continue.

    Now, you know, we used to go out to all—all my meals were eaten out, and we’d play some games, ad I mean, there was some downtimes within that. But pretty much, I was focused on work. I was just—that’s what I did. And I didn’t at the time have much other life. I didn’t have a balance really because I didn’t have anything else there yet.

    But what happened was, eventually, I met my wife Lora. She worked at Wizards, I met her at Wizards, at first we were friends, and then eventually we started dating, and then we got married, and then we had a kid, and then we had two more kids because I had twins. And what happened is, as I got more committed toward my life, toward my wife, toward my marriage and my family, I allocated more and more time.

    For example, when I first got to Wizards I used to travel all the time. All the time. And then, I started dating Lora and I traveled a little bit less. And then Lora and I got married and I traveled even less than that. And then I had my first child, I had Rachel and I traveled even less than that. And then when Adam and Sarah came along, I’m like, “Okay. I’m seriously—I gotta…” you know, so I reduced my travel to two times a year.

    So the idea was that once I—you know—as I had more and more responsibilities, I realized I needed to spend more and more time allocated to my family. I needed to understand what I was doing. And like I said, when you’re talking about your balance between work and life, figure out what’s important. When I was younger and I didn’t have a lot of sort of external things and most of my downtime was playing games with my coworkers, that’s okay. I could allocate a lot of time at work. You know. I could allocate a lot of time on travel for business because that’s what I was doing.

    And I was enjoying it, you know, it’s fine to allocate more time for work if that is where you’re getting your enjoyment from. But the key to having balance is understanding—so here’s another resource, happiness. What makes you happy? Where do you derive pleasure from? And you have to make sure—I mean, ideally I want you to have a work in which the work is happy for you and you get some happiness from it, and that’s why I (???) dream jobs and doing things you love, not everybody gets to do that, I understand that.

    But make sure you understand the idea of where the downtimes are, and that—first off, attendance matters, meaning you need to be there for things. Like, one of the things I learned of having kids and having a family is, it doesn’t matter the importance of something in a vacuum. Like, any one individual softball game my child is playing in, you know, if I miss one softball game, will that matter? In the big things, maybe not. But it does in the sense that one of the ways that people realize you are there for them is you are there. That if I want to be there for my family I can’t just miss the softball games, I can’t miss the plays, I can’t miss the elementary school graduations.

    That part of committing to my life is making resources and allocating them. Of saying, “Okay, I’m going to spend enough time.” You know. And that—don’t—it’s very easy to think of it as, “When am I doing the most work?” You know, “When am I doing the most for my family?” But part of being there for your family is not just doing something for them, but it’s literally just being there. In life, attendance is very important.

    Also, you have to understand attention. When I say you allocate, it also means—it’s not just a matter of physically being there, it’s being focused there Now, I’m not saying you can never—I mean, obviously I think about my work at time at home, I think about my home at time at work. But when I’m with my family, I try to think about my family, I try to stay focused on my family.

    Now, obviously, those that know my social media, like, I have a lot of downtime when I’m doing my parenting and there’s a lot of time where like, one of the kids is doing something and I’m just sitting there waiting for them, and I’ll hop on social media and I’ll answer questions, you know, I’ll find bits and pieces of time where I can do job things where it makes sense, but I don’t ever do that where I’m taking away time from my family.

    I want to make sure that when I’m doing family time, you know, when I’m interacting with them, I am spending time with them. And that I want my attention to focus on them. I don’t want, you know, sit at dinner and I’m spending the whole time going, “Oh, I gotta solve this design problem.” You know.

    And the other thing I’ve found is that when you allocate your focus, when you know what you’re doing, when—like, it actually makes me more creative not to think about the problem 24/7. Now, I’m sure my subconscious is working on it when I’m not consciously working on it, but you know, sometimes it’s nice, one of the things that helps me solve a problem is, I’ll go off in my life and just think about something else. Stop worrying about the design problem and go, okay, my daughter has homework to do, or I have to, you know, solve some problem with my family, and a lot of times, thinking about that problem, just a different problem completely, will free up my mind and make my mind think differently because I just get in a different mindset. And sometimes I’ll come back to my problem at work, and the fact that I just shifted gears was really valuable to helping solve that problem. That—don’t think of a separation between your work and your life as downside. It has a lot of upside.

    The other thing that’s really important is, you have to understand the difference between taking and giving. Which is, what elements of your life take energy from you, what elements of your life give you energy? You know, where do you expend energy, where do you derive energy? And part of your allocation is making sure, especially in your life half, I also think it’s important in your work half, but sometimes you have a little less control over that. But make sure that you want to figure out what gives you energy. I mean, this is true for work—as much as possible make this true for work. I just  know that sometimes you have less control at work. Find the things that give you energy and make sure you allocate enough time for them.

    That another way people get into a problem with life/work balance is, they’re just going full throttle all the time, and they do things that expend energy and don’t do the things that give them energy. My analogy here essentially is, look, you can drive your car all over the place, but you’ve gotta stop and get gas once in a while. And if you don’t, eventually you’ll just run out. Your car will stop. And you’ll stop being able to drive anywhere because you won’t have the gas to fill it. Understand what your metaphorical gas is. What is it that drives you? What is it that feeds you?

    Hopefully, there’s aspects of your life that do that. For me, a big part of my life is just spending time with my family and being with my family. You know, I—and there’s things that I enjoy, and, you know, hobbies I enjoy, and games and comics and TV and science fiction and things I enjoy that I, you know, can interact with, and that—it helps fill me up. It helps give me some energy. But part of allocating is understanding where you’re expending energy and where you’re gaining energy, because if you only expend energy and don’t gain it, you will just run out of gas. And then that will cause yet another imbalance.

    The other big thing about life, and this is a little harsher one but it’s something that I think is important, is you have to understand who are the people in your life, and you also have to—I’ll put it this way. You can prioritize (???) in clumps, if you will. You don’t have to individually prioritize. That seems a little mean. But what you can do is say, okay. Of the people in my life, who are the most important people to me? You know, who’s the number one group? Okay, who’s the secondary group? You know, not the primary group, but the secondary group? Who’s the tertiary group?

    You know, and you can sort of the take the people and figure out—because another thing is, understanding who matters to you—now, it might be that these people are what gives you energy. It might be people that just, you like who you are when you’re with them. It might be people that help you relax. You know, whatever, or—it might be people that you love dearly and you want to spend time with.

    Whatever reason, that’s fine, understand who it is, who are the people that give you resources, that provide happiness, that provide downtime, whatever, figure out the people that you need. For whatever reason you need them, and people need people, that is how we function. And make sure that you prioritize them. Not only do you prioritize activities, you gotta prioritize people.

    And my story here is, when I got married, we invited a lot of people to the wedding. And what I thought was really interesting was, it was a very illuminating thing. Because what we did is, we got married, we called it a destination wedding. We were—it was about an hour, an hour and a half away. You had to actually take a ferry, I mean, it was probably an hour and a half to two hour drive to get to where we were going.

    So we had a wedding and we made it a little difficult to get to our wedding. Not insanely difficult, but a little bit difficult. And it was very illuminating, because it really showed me what people I mattered to. Because the people I mattered to made it to the wedding. They’re like, “Okay, this is someone that matters to me, what do I need to do, I will do it and I will get there.”

    And there are some people that are like, “Oh, yeah, it’s far away.” Whatever. They gave reasons for not attending. And what I realized was, it really made it much clearer in my mind, understanding who prioritized me and who didn’t.

    And it was very illuminating, it really said to me that—I mean, to circle back to where I started with this, your priorities are only priorities if you prioritize them. If a person is a priority to you, but you never spend time with them? I’ll let you in on a secret. They’re not a priority. You know. And so you need to understand, who are the people that matter, and then you need to spend the time with the people.

    A lot of life balance, a lot of—I mean, I’m almost to work today, so let me wrap this up, but a lot of the key of today, a lot of what I’m saying today is, you need to understand. If you want to balance between work and life, you need to in work and in life, understand what matters to you. What is important to you? What things are important to you, what people are important to you, what actions are important to you?

    What are the things that you do and people you interact with, you know, and the projects you handle, what are the things that matter to you and mean something to you? Either because they personally enrich you in some way, or they’re important for some—you know, the key to work or whatever.  What are the things that matter, that you need to make sure you do, that you spend time with, that you interact with, what are the things that matter?

    Figure that out. Prioritize them. Figure out your priority. And then, and this seems like such an easy thing to say, but in fact it’s a hard thing to live. But figure out your priorities, and then prioritize them. If somebody matters to you, spend time with them.

    Like, one of the things for example is I’ve got a family, I’m like, family matters to me, and I gave up other things. You know what? I loved traveling. I loved traveling. Going around the world is really awesome. It was really cool. Did it matter to me more than my family? No, it didn’t, so I gave that up so I could spend time with my family because my family was my priority.

    And it’s very hard sometimes—I mean, it’s a wonderful life to live where you have to prioritize between things you enjoy, and not everybody has that opportunity. But the important thing is, knowing what matters. You know. If you have a life where things are hard for you, but there’s certain things that give you joy, that help make it through, prioritize them. Understand those things. You know. If there’s people you need or things you need, if there’s activities you need or people you need to get through the day, you know, to really make your life something valuable to you, then understand what those things are. And figure out how to prioritize them. You know.

    And another important part of this is, part of prioritizing is figuring out what doesn’t matter, and then not doing it. You know. Whether they’re activities that somebody else can do or you don’t really need to do or things you’re doing out of habit but not out of a need anymore, you know, there’s a lot of reasons why you can pick up things you don’t need.

    And that part of a proper balance is not wasting time and energy on things that are not giving you what you need. And that a lot of what I want to do today, a lot of the things I’m talking about is, figure out your priorities and then prioritize the things that matter and deprioritize the things that don’t matter. And that might mean giving things up or not doing things or not interacting with people. You know.

    You have to figure out, where is the things that matter, where are the things that make life worth living, that make things special for you, that make your job what you want it to be, that make you happy with who you are? Prioritize those things, do those things. Figure out the things that aren’t doing that. Figure out the things that suck up your time and energy and resources, that aren’t worth those resources. That’s a lot of making balance, is figure out what matters and how you can allocate your resources to the things that matter, and not to the things that don’t matter. And if you do that, that is how you can have work/life balance.

    Okay guys, I am now in my parking space, we all know what that means, it means it’s the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking Magic, it’s time for me to be making Magic. I’ll see you guys next time.
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  8. All podcast content by Mark Rosewater


    ­­I’m pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It’s time for another Drive to Work.

    Okay, guys. So today is the seventeenth in my series of Twenty Lessons, Twenty Podcasts. And so I did a talk at GDC back in 2016, in it I talked about twenty lessons I learned during the twenty years I had of making Magic, and I’ve been doing a podcast on each lesson, so we’re up to number seventeen, you don’t have to change much to change everything.

    So, I always start this by talking about a Magic example. So this one talks about the creation of Ravnica. So what happened was, we—for many years Magic would just make themes—the themes would be like, just—we would make two mechanics. And then we eventually got to a set called Invasion, where we’re like, what if there’s a theme? What if there’s a theme to the set? Rather than just, oh, it’s these two mechanics that may or may not be connected, what if there was an actual theme and the mechanics all connected to the theme?

    And Invasion’s theme was multicolor. And it went over really well. So then we did Odyssey and its theme was the graveyard. And we did Onslaught and its theme was tribal. And we did Mirrodin and its theme was artifacts. And we did Champions of Kamigawa  and its theme was a top-down Japanese flavor.

    So anyway, we eventually get to Ravnica. And Ravnica, the idea was, enough time had gone by that we wanted to do a multicolor theme again. But this was the first time we’d ever repeated a theme. And so my goal was, I wanted to both do the theme but be as different from the last set that did the theme as that.

    Collective RestraintSo the previous set that had done the theme was Invasion. So Invasion’s multicolor theme really was, like, “Play lots of colors.” Introduced the domain mechanic, where the more basic land types you have, the larger the effects were. And it just did a lot to encourage you to play a lot of different colors.

    So I started Ravnica literally by saying, “How can I do a multicolor set that’s as far away from Invasion as I can get?” And so the idea was, well, Invasion was “Play lots of colors.” So what if Ravnica was “Play few colors”?

    Now, obviously it was a multicolor set. So monocolor is not multicolor. So the theme couldn’t be “Play moncolor,” then it’s not a multicolor set. So I’m like, okay. What’s the smallest multicolor theme we can have? Two color.

    And so basically, the set started with the real simple of, instead of playing five-color, play two-color. Invasion pushed you toward playing four and five colors, okay, well this set will push you toward playing two colors. That’s where I started.

    And obviously for those that know Ravnica, I mean, from that we got the idea of, “Let’s represent all the ten two-color pairs equally,” which led us to the idea of representing them flavorfully, which led to the guilds, which led to the model of—you know, the block had 4-3-3, four guilds then three guilds then three guilds, so not every set had every guild in it.

    So a lot stuff came out, but it really came out of a very simple premise. Which is just, “Okay, let’s push toward two-color.” And the interesting thing about it is, nobody would confuse Invasion with Ravnica. Yes, they both have a strong multicolor theme. They both have lots of multicolor cards. But the sets ended up having really, really different feels to them.

    And the point was, it wasn’t as if I had really changed much. I really changed one tiny aspect. Now, it was an important aspect, but the point is, changing that one thing changed so much about the identity of the sets.

    And the lesson I really learned there, and the lesson I’m talking about in this thing is, it gets to a metaphor that I use. So I’ll now segue into my metaphor. So my metaphor is, I often—my wife Lora is a very good cook. And Lora, most oftentime Lora will cook. I do some cooking. The joke is that I’m her sous-chef, I’m more likely to like, brown the meat or prepare the sauce or something. But I am not—of my wife and myself, I am the less culinary-skilled person.

    So usually as the sous-chef, if you will, I prepare the things that go along with the meal. So one of my jobs is to prepare “the vegetables”. So “the vegetables” is, we have frozen vegetables, and we make a boiling pot of water, and we put the vegetables in the water. It’s not real complicated, why it’s really well-suited for me.

    So anyway, there’s a dynamic that I learned about making peas. So here’s what happens every time I make peas. Make peas with the world. Okay, so. What will happen is, I’ll boil the water. And then, I get out the bag of frozen peas. And I put some peas in the pot. And then I look in the pot, I’m like, “Ohh, that doesn’t seem like a lot of peas.” So I put more peas in the pot. And then I’ll go, “Well, nah, it still doesn’t look like a lot of peas.” So I’ll put more peas in. And then I’m like, “Ehh, maybe that’s enough peas.” But then I’m like, “Well, but what if I’m misjudging, if I don’t make enough peas then we’ll run out of peas and won’t have peas. Okay, I’ll put more peas, I’ll put more peas in.” And then I’m like, “Ohh, aghh, I probably have enough peas. I probably do. But like, you know, if I err toward too many peas, that’s better than not having enough peas, maybe just to be on the safe side I should add more peas.” And then, and then as I’m ready to put the bag away, I’m like, “Well, [unintelligible],” and I put like another handful of peas.

    Okay. And then what happens is, I always make too many peas. I always make too many peas. Which you’d think would influence me to not make as many peas in the future. As if I would learn from my lesson of making too many—but it does not. So I always make too many peas. I always, like—whenever I prepare the peas and put them in the bowl, like, they barely fit in the bowl. And the bowl’s way more than we need. So it’s just too many peas.

    So the reason I bring that metaphor up, one is to show embarrassingly how bad I am at making peas. But the real reason to show that is there’s this inclination, there’s this worry that I think people have in game design that “There’s not enough. I haven’t put enough in my game. There needs to be more. My game’s not—it’s missing things.”

    And you know, there’s a general thought that has the same sort of philosophy I think I have with my peas, which is this idea of, I’d better err on the side of having more. I don’t want to have not enough. I’d better make sure there’s more. And if I’m not sure, I’ll just put more in.

    And the idea essentially is this sort of philosophy of, it’s better to err toward more than err toward less. That I think game designers treat their components like I treat peas. But there’s a problem with that. That is the idea—like, a lot of my lessons are taking things that seem to make sense and realizing they are fundamentally flawed. They don’t make sense.

    So the idea here is, “Oh. Why—it’s better for me to err on too much than err on not enough.” And my point today is, no, in this case, in peas, not that big a deal. I waste some peas. But in actual game design, it is a problem. Okay, so why. Why is that a problem? Why is having a little bit more a problem? Okay, let’s run through the many reason this is a problem.

    So number one is, complexity. So I talk about this all the time. The goal of your game is to have enough complexity that there’s some richness to it, but not so much that it gets in the way of your game. That it gets in the way of people enjoying your game.

    Now, the one of the interesting things is, I happen to work on a very complex game. I work on a game made for gamers, that it is—you know, and we are constantly struggling with complexity. But the baseline of the game I’m talking about is just complex.

    Most games do not want to aim at the complexity level of Magic. Magic is an insanely complex game. And even then, you know, Magic we tried really hard to make sure that the base element of the game stays as simple as possible.

    But what I’m saying is, when you’re making a new game, that every level of complexity you add to your game becomes a barrier to your game. It becomes a barrier somewhat of playing your game. And that it is very easy to look at some existing examples, you know what I’m saying, and say, “Well, there’s games I love and they are complex,” but you are hurting yourself.

    Like, first of all, if your game is successful, if your game becomes something that lasts the tests of time, what normally happens is, you have the opportunity later on for true, true fans of the game, to add extra elements on. That can come later.

    But when you’re making a game out of the gate, complexity is a real, real issue. That every time you add something, like—one of the things to think about, here’s my—a day of metaphors is, there’s a great metaphor they talk about in Zen, about how there’s like a Zen master and a student. And the student has—the Zen master gives the student a teacup. And he goes, “Would you like some tea?” And he pours a little bit of tea in the cup. And so then the student, you know, he pours just a little bit in the cup and he gives it to the student, and he goes, “Would you like more tea?” And the student looks in his cup, there’s not much tea in it. So the student goes, “Yes, I would like more tea.” And so he pours—and he keeps pouring until the cup’s overrunning with tea. And then what he says is, there’s a point in which you can’t have more tea. You must drink the tea you have before you can have more tea.

    And the idea is, I always like to think of the teacup as sort of the player’s mind. There’s only so much they can grasp. And that when you exceed what they can grasp, all you’re doing is forcing them to exclude things. [NLH—Mark has misunderstood the point of this story.]

    Like when you make a game too complex, what you are doing is you are saying to the person playing—either you make them quit, which is not good, or you make them choose things not to care about. And here’s the problem. When they choose things not to care about, you’re not going to get to choose what those are, they’re going to choose. And what that means is, they are changing the nature of your game, often for worse because maybe the things that really matter, they won’t understand. And so maybe the things they choose to ignore are the things that are important.

    You know, I talked before in one of my lessons of, make sure the players can find the fun in your game. Well, the more complexity you add, the more you kind of hide your fun, the more chance there is that they go down the wrong path. Or they see the wrong thing. Or they make the wrong assumption. You know. The more the chance that the thing they decide not to do in your game is the thing that’s the most important thing in your game.

    That part of guiding someone in your game as a designer is not—is giving them just enough choices that they experience the game as you want them to experience it. It is so—the flaw in the thinking here is that if I give them all these things to explore, they will explore them all and it will make a richer experience. And the true answer is, if you give them too much to explore, they don’t know where to go.

    And the idea essentially is, so I’ll borrow a little bit from UI design. Here, jumping around. So UI is User Interface. Is the idea of, “I’m making a video game and I want the player to do something.” And what they’ve discovered is, what they call decision paralysis. Is, if I give you too many options, you just freeze up. That what you want to do is you want to give people a few options.

    Like, one of the things for example when the iPhone first premiered, that was a big, that was a crazy idea at the time was, there will be one button. There’s one button. On all the screen there’s one button. So, what do I do? Well, if I’m not sure, I’ll press the one button. You know. If there’s eighteen buttons, well, which button do I press? One button, okay, I’ll press the one button.

    And so one of the dangers of just adding too much is that there’s all sorts of sort of dangers of how people interact with their product, how they understand the product. You know. Sort of them learning your product, them having the experience that you want. So extra complexity causes all sorts of problems.

    There’s also—I mean, I could do a whole podcast on just the dangers of complexity. I’m sure one day I will because it’s a fine topic. But anyway, it adds complexity. So anyway, it adds complexity. So number one, it adds complexity, that’s a problem.

    Number two. It muddies your message. And what I mean by that is, the same—sort of a similar point. If I, like I said, on User Interface, if I give you eighteen buttons, you don’t know what to do, so there’s the confusion factor, but also I don’t know what matters. I don't know what’s important.

    Like, one of the things about having sort of some cleanliness to your game is you get to focus on the things that matter. I talk a lot about finding the fun. That you want the audience to find the fun of your game. So part of it is you muddy the message, they don’t know what the fun is. But also, they might not know like—one of the things in general, I talk a lot about aesthetics. I talk a lot about cleanliness, that you want things to feel good and feel right. But you also want a clean and clear message. What is your game about?

    So for example, if I say to somebody, “What is your game about?” and they say, “It’s about these four things,” I go, “Well, it’s about one of those things.” You know. Your game can’t be about everything, because if you’re about everything, you’re about nothing.

    You know, for example, one of the things they teach you in writing, when you write scripts and stuff, is that you want to be able to sum up what your screenplay is about—usually—and this is true for stories, I guess, I’m just, I was taught how to write screenplays. Is, do you have a one-sentence summary? Do you have a one-paragraph summary? Do you have, like, a two-paragraph summary? And even—you can go shorter than one sentence. You can do, like, what’s—one or two words.

    And the idea essentially is, is your idea simple enough that you can condense it down? Because if your idea’s so complex that you can’t condense it down, you start having messaging problems. And one of the big things about games in general, and when you’re making a game, especially the first time someone plays your game, but even before they play the game, when it’s sitting on the shelf or you’re trying to get other people to convince them to play it, that the cleanliness of the message. What is your game about?

    Magic, for instance, one of the things I like a lot is, at its core it’s like, it’s about fighting with magic. There are three words. Fighting with magic. Well, that sounds cool. I would like to do magical things and fight with other people, and ooh a magical duel, that sounds fun.

    Now, there’s a lot else going on there. But there’s a cleanliness of what the message is and what’s going on. So another thing that when you add in too many components is, you just muddy your message, you make it harder to convey something. Because as you add more things, there’s just—it makes more paralysis, and people have less idea of what you’re doing.

    So it is really, really important that when you make something, you—one of the things to think a lot about, that when you make your components and you make your pieces in your game is, that each thing needs to stand on its own. I talk a lot about, in writing there’s this principle that if it can exist without it, it should exist without it. That if you can pull the scene from your movie, and the movie makes perfect sense without your scene, pull it.

    Games have the same basic idea, which is, does the game need that element? If you can pull that element out of your game and your game is just as fun, is that element serving its purpose? Is it doing something?

    And one of the hardest parts of the creative experience, and this is true in writing, it’s true in game design, is you the person, the creator, fall in love with your creation. You birthed it. It is from you. It is something that really means a great deal to you. And the idea that something you made that is beautiful and wonderful isn’t servicing the purpose of what you’re doing really takes time and energy and growth to learn and understand.

    One of the things I talk a lot about in writing is an expression they call “killing your darlings.” And what it means is, part of becoming really good—this is true of any art, I’m just using any writing here, but—is of you understanding the purpose of what you’re doing, and that you don’t fall in love with creations in a vacuum.

    Like, a real common thing that happens is, you’re writing a comedy. And you come up with a funny line. It’s a funny line. It’s a funny, funny line. But the problem is, in order to set up the funny line, you need a certain—like there’s a certain conceit to the scene to make the line work.

    So, well, okay, in order to set up the line I’ve got to do this. And in order to make that, just—and what you’ll find is, you add a lot of extra stuff to make the joke work. To make the joke fit. And what you realize is, is it worth that? Is that one really good joke worth all the trouble that comes with it?

    And in general, when you’re adding components and you’re adding pieces to it, you have to understand the net overall effect. Because what happens is, people often look at the thing in a vacuum. “Oh, that joke is funny! Ooh, that joke is funny. That’s a funny joke.” And what they don’t realize is, well, how much did you add to make that joke work? Did you add a whole scene so you could do the joke? Did you change the element of the character arc? Did you have to tweak something to justify it to make it work?

    And so a lot of times, when you add a component, you can’t just judge that component in a vacuum. You have to judge that component in the larger picture of, well, what does it mean to have that component? What am I sacrificing to have that component? How does it affect other things around it? It doesn’t live in a vacuum. No piece lives in a vacuum. And so when you’re judging and evaluating things, you can’t look at it by itself. It can’t just be, “Oh…”

    And here’s a really common mistake novice game designers make. Is they put an element in their game, and they have a game with it in which that element is wonderful. Oh, it’s so much fun. And then what they say is, oh, well I’ve played with this element, and it is a lot of—it really is enjoyable. It really made the game more fun. And what they miss is that you tend to focus on the thing you see. And you don’t focus on the thing you don’t see.

    So sometimes, for example, you’ll make a component. And when the component gets used, oh, it’s a thing of beauty. The thing is so fun. But when it’s not used, its absence causes problems. Or the things you have to do to try to do it, and sometimes not do it, make for unfun games.

    Like one of the things to do in playtesting is, it’s easy to figure out when something is fun because you’re doing it. That’s easy to figure out. It’s easy to figure out when something is not fun because you’re doing it, because oh look, I’m doing this, it’s not fun. One of the hardest things to understand is, when something is not fun because of the absence of something. That here is this thing that is not there, but because I’m trying to get toward it or I’m aiming at it or I know I need to care about it, that it is warping how the rest of the game is played.

    And that’s something that, in Magic design we do a lot, where I’m trying to add a new element. You know, one of the things about designing a game that keeps changing itself is, okay, now you’re going to care about Thing X.

    And the thing you have to figure out is, what happens to a game in which I care about Thing X but don’t get Thing X? Right? Like, it’s very easy to think about Game X where I get Game X—I try to make Thing X happen and I made Thing X happen, yay!

    Okay. Is it fun to try? That’s an important thing with any component. Is the act of not getting it but trying to get it fun? Is the fact that there’s this dangled carrot—if I don’t get the carrot, am I having a good time? And that’s a really big red flag. If there’s a thing that getting it is fun, but trying to get is unfun, that is a big problem. So be aware of that.

    Okay. Next is—oh, so—and this one has to do—this is one of those things that it’s a long term problem but it’s something to think about, which is, if I use stuff here that I don’t need to, I don’t get to use it later. This comes up in my work all the time. Now, I’m also making a game where we keep making the game. That one of the things that I have to worry about is, if I overstuff a set, if I put extra stuff in a set, meaning I exceed beyond what I’m capable of doing, then I’m just causing problems for myself.

    So for example, the metaphor I will use here is, I have a friend, and I want to get them a gift. It’s their birthday. I find something awesome. An awesome gift. They’re gonna love the gift. Now, I then find a second gift. Oh, they’re really gonna love that gift. So, I could just give them both things.

    Or I could give them one of them and save the other one and give it to them for the holidays, or their next birthday—like, sort of giving them both gifts causes all sorts of problems. Not that it won’t make them happy. Maybe they’ll really like both gifts. But A. It makes the next gift-buying harder, I’ve made a harder bar to clear. And I have to find another thing. I had a thing. You know. Would they have been happy with the one thing and not the second thing? If the answer’s yes, it’s sort of like, well, maybe I don’t need to give them the second thing. You know. And, the other interesting thing is, when we talk about happiness, people want to think of it as a scale. Like it’s linear in that—the more happiness the better. But this is actually not how humans function.

    So the way that humans function is, there is a threshold. If I make you two times as happy, that doesn’t mean you’re—if I give you two times as many things to be happy about, that doesn’t mean I make you twice as happy. What happens essentially is, the first thing—like, let’s say I give you a gift that you love. I’m going to go up a certain level. The second thing, because it’s—like, you’re already happy. Like, my ability to make you happier goes down once I’ve made you happy in the first place. It is not as if two things make you twice as happy. So there’s sort of like—every level just makes you a little bit happier.

    And when you’re talking about happiness in game design, there’s a threshold that I care about. Which is, did I make you happy? I don’t care—once you’re happy, once I’ve made you happy, you want to be careful not to say, “Well, I want to have three increments—like, I want to exceed the happiness quotient by X amount more.”

    And the answer is, once you make them happy, once you reach the point where they enjoy your game, anything else you’re doing to them, even if you’re sort of slowly incrementing up their happiness, are you really doing yourself a favor? All you’re doing is sort of raising expectations and you’re not necessarily making them that much happier.

    That for example, I’ll use my friend’s gift thing. So let’s say I find a gift they love. I find a second gift they love. And then finding a third gift is really hard. So let’s walk through the experiences we have here. Experience one is, so let’s say it’s their birthday and then the holidays. You get them two gifts a year.

    So it’s their birthday. You get them Gift 1. Oh, they love it. They love it, they’re so happy. Come the holidays, you give them Gift 2. Oh, they love that too! They’re so happy. And in general, they had an awesome year. They had a really great year. So happy.

    Okay. Version two. I give them gift one at their birthday. Oh, they’re happy! Then I give them gift two, they’re happier! Okay. Then come the holidays, I give them a gift that’s not particularly great. And they’re like, “Oh, oh, thank you very much.” So now I—their birthday, they were a little bit happier in Version B than Version A. But in Version B, they weren’t happy at the holidays. You didn’t give them a gift they particularly liked.

    So it’s kind of like, they were happy, and a little extra happy, and not happy. Vs. happy and happy. So which of those two experiences is a better experience? Clearly the [second] one. You just—you made two happy experiences instead of one slightly happier experience and one not happy experience.

    So one of the things of using extra pieces and stuff is, it’s a resource. Every piece you use in the game is a resource. Now, I understand if you’re making a game that’s it, and there’s never anything else, but I will say this about success of games, you never know where things are going

    Like, one of the things is, Richard obviously knew there was a chance that the game could be popular, but Richard had no idea that Magic would become what it did. I mean, it was a runaway crazy phenomenon success. That doesn’t happen normally. But the point is, Richard didn’t know. Richard had an amazing game. He thought he had an amazing game. He thought some people would really, really like it. He still had no idea that it would be what it became.

    And the point there is, nobody does. You’re not going to make a game and go, “Oh, well, this is the next thing. This is the next hot phenomenon…” No one knows that. I mean, even if you’re super proud of your game and you have a lot of faith in your game, there’s so many factors that contribute to that. You don’t know. So one of the things is, any game could hit the jackpot. And if that’s the case, there’s a good chance that you will need more for the game. So the idea is, “I just want to spend everything” is wrong.

    Okay, but wait a minute, some of you might be saying, “But I don’t want to undershoot. I don’t want to not excite people.” You know. And there’s this big fear of like, “Well, (???) make a game, people go, ‘yawn,’ and I was holding stuff in the tank, that seems wrong.”

    So--yes. There is—and this is why you playtest. One of the reasons is, you want to make sure there’s enough stuff there that people get excited. I’m not saying hold back things to the point where your game isn’t exciting. That’s not what I’m saying. But what I am saying is, do your due diligence, do your playtesting, work with people, and figure out what makes them happy.

    Now, sometimes there’s a combination of things that make them happy. I am not saying today, never ever have multiple components or never ever, you know—what I’m saying is, be judicious in how you use your components. Everything in your game has to sort of pass its own test and its own muster, and has to be—its element in the game is additive, making the game better, and in a way that’s not an embarrassment of riches.

    Now, like I said, most games, the problems I see is not there’s so many awesome things, how do you fit them all in, to be honest. Mostly what I see is, some cool things and some things that are filling space and not really doing anything.

    Like, for example, I haven’t looked at tons of novice designs, I’ve had a few opportunities in my job, and the one common thing I tend to see on novice designers is they—because they don’t have enough confidence in the game, they overcommit and put more in under the guise that more is better. Which I’m saying today it is not.

    And usually what it is—and this is me sort of getting on the note about playtesting here today again, is, the goal of your game is to understand—I mean the goal of you the game designer is, you want to understand the game you are making. You want to know what makes it tick, you want to know what makes it exciting, you want to know what makes it fun.

    And the reason all of this is so important is, so here is a new metaphor. We’ll use Jenga. Think of your game as a Jenga game. I mean not like you’re making Jenga. Metaphorically it’s a game of Jenga. And what I will say to you is, so there’s a point when you play Jenga—so Jenga, for those that might not know, is a game in which you stack—you have little wooden, like, planks if you will, that are longer than they are wide, and you put three down—they’re thick, they’re about an inch thick, and they’re about three inches long and an inch wide. And then you put them down three at a time, and you criss-cros them to make this tower.

    And the idea is, on your turn, you remove a piece of the tower. And then you put it on top. And the idea is, it gets harder and harder to find pieces—you know, because you don’t want the thing to topple. So what I want to say today is, your game is like a game of Jenga. And your goal is, keep removing things until it collapses, and then put that last piece back in.

    Your goal essentially is, you want to be a perfect Jenga player. You don’t want anything in your game that could be taken out and the game not collapse. And that part of why you playtest and why you do all the work that you do is to understand what the element of your games are doing. What purposes they serve.

    And that when you do that, it allows you to have a better sense of what can and can’t go in and go out. And, by the way. One of the things when you do playtesting, try removing things from your game. Try saying, “Okay, we’re going to play the game again, but take out Component X. What happens?”

    And one of two things will happen. Either, wow, the game doesn’t work, and that tells you, you know what? Component X is important. Or it works just fine and you’re like, “Oh, I don’t need Component X.” And both of those are really valuable. So, I mean—another big lesson of today is, part of understanding your game is playing your game and really knowing it.

    Okay. Next. So the other thing, by the way, in the lesson is, I mean this lesson actually—whether you are a new person making a new game or a person adding onto a game, the lessons are a little bit different. I’ve been talking a lot about the new person lesson. So—should I continue with it? Let me continue with that, before I end I will make the point for the more advanced person

    Okay. Other things—so one of the things I said in the talk is, a lot of people ask the question to themselves, “How much do I need to add?” And what I said is, change that thought process. Ask yourself how little I need to add. Because one of the things that’s key to it is, you don’t need much, usually, to have the feel you’re getting. So let’s look—I did a series of podcasts called Ten Things Every Game Needs. I’m going to talk about a few of the things from that right now.

    So, problems I see designers having: Too many goals. A goal wants to be clean and clear and crisp. How do I win the game? Do Thing X. Now, I’m not saying you can’t have alternative win conditions. I’m not saying there can’t be other ways to win. But you want to make sure in your basic game that it’s clean and clear what you’re trying to do. Usually what that means is you want one simple straightforward goal.

    Maybe there’s other goals you learn along the way, or maybe the game opens up goals through gameplay, but you want to make sure you have too many goals. Too many goals makes people not sure what they’re trying to do, and that makes them A. Not find your fun, and B. Get lost within your game, which is a big problem.

    Next. Rules. You can have too many rules. This tends to fall in a couple camps. One is a complexity issue, your audience doesn’t understand everything. But more than that, the more rules you have, the more rules interaction issues you have. And a lot of game complexity comes from rules interaction. “Oh, well, I do Thing A and Thing B. How does Thing A and Thing B work together?” The more rules you have, the more you have to address all the interconnectivity of the rules.

    So be very careful in writing your rules. Make sure your rules are providing you (???)—they’re providing something that the game needs.  And once again, in your playtesting, you can try taking rules out. “Okay, what if I didn’t have that rule?”

    A big problem that I find with rules comes from flavor, which comes from people trying to match flavor with rules. And that one of the things you often can do when trying to match flavor is, try to get the big picture, have the general sense of the flavor, without necessarily getting every nuance of the flavor. Sometimes when you sort of make lots of little rules to sort of be perfectly accurate flavorwise, you end up muddying and mucking up your game and making it harder for people to sort of, not only play, but to even understand—like, this idea that I’m matching the top-down so close that it makes it better is not necessarily so. A lot of the ways people connect to things is through a general sense of things, so being super exact doesn’t always have the effect you want. And it usually causes lots of problems/

    Okay. Too many interactions. Interaction is good. You want players to interact with one another. But, too much anything is a problem. If I’m interacting with you constantly, you know, and you never get a moment’s breath or get to do something by yourself or get, you know, your own time to shine, yeah, you want an interaction. But that doesn’t mean every moment and every time you want the interaction. That sometimes you want moments where people can prepare by themselves or do something on their own.

    At some point it should interact, and I’m not saying—clearly you want to interact since it’s one of the ten things, but you can overdo an interaction. You can make it such that people can’t move without the moves of others, and it can cause paralysis where kind of nothing happens because everyone’s kind of waiting for everyone else to do something.

    You can have too much strategy. And what I mean by that is, sometimes what people add in is they want a lot of things to think about. But one of the problems in general is if you have too many hooks. If you have too many things for people to sort of look at, it can lead people astray.

    Like, one of the problems we have in Magic is, if I put a card into a set, and that card has nothing to do with the set. There’s a problem, where it’s the first card people open. It’s the first card people draft. And all of a sudden, they think that’s what it’s about. And when that’s not what it’s about, it misleads them and (???) them down the wrong path.

    It’s one of the reasons for example when we preview cards of upcoming sets, we have to be very careful what we preview. Because we don’t want to preview an outlier. We want to preview something that is really endemic of what the game’s going to be. And if you don’t do that you can cause yourself problems.

    In general by the way, a line you’ll hear me say a lot is “focus on the fun.” Understand what makes your game fun. What makes it tick? What makes it unique? What makes it something that people haven’t done before? You know. Where is a thing that makes you smile when you do it? And that a lot of my lessons today is making sure you don’t bury it under stuff that are just gonna hide it.

    Remember, more is not always—more can be less. That sometimes when you add things to a project—like the gifts thing. That giving the second gift might not overall increase the experience. And you have to keep that in mind.

    Okay, so let me now move on. A lot of what I was talking about today was the beginning designer, right? You are making your very first game. So let me talk a little bit about the designer that’s making more for their game. You already have a game, you’re adding on to your game. And this lesson is equally important but has a slightly different aspect to it. So let me talk about that.

    And what that is is, a lot of times when you’re trying to sort of make something new for your game, there’s this idea of, “I don’t want to do what we’ve done before. I want to make something brand new and different.”

    But as a guy who for 20+ years, 22 years so far, has been doing this, what I’ve discovered is, most of what you’re doing when you’re making a new version of something is just recreating the old thing. Magic is a fun game. A lot of my job is not making a brand new thing, a lot of my job is just recreating Magic many times. And that you want to understand what makes it click so that you can capture that sense and that a lot, a lot a lot of what we do is not trying to make Magic different. It’s trying to make Magic the same.

    And that what this lesson is saying is, is just like the novice puts in too many pieces, the more advanced designer sometimes will move things farther away than they need. And once again, not how much do I need to add, how little do I need to add?

    And I use Ravnica as a good example because in some ways, Ravnica and invasion aren’t that different. You know. There’s a lot of things you do when you do multicolor cards. For example, you lean on cycles. You lean on—you know, to try to make it simple there’s a lot of Chinese menu—there’s a lot of ways you design multicolor cards that are just similar no matter what set you’re designing them in.

    And in many, many ways, Invasion and Ravnica have a lot of similarity. And the idea was, when I was trying to find a difference to define Ravnica, my goal wasn’t, at every level, at every time I could do something, do it different. In fact, a lot of times, hey, I did something, I learned a theme, I learned from it, a lot of those lessons you want to use again.

    So how do I make a good multicolor set? Well, there’s some things that just make a good multicolor set. And the idea there is, you don’t want to—sort of for the sake of just being different, not give yourself the tools you need.

    So make sure you understand the tools you need and use those tools. And here’s the key to the lesson is, if you change just a tiny percentage of your game, the fact that people have to interact with that tiny percentage. You know. And you can (???) a lot, makes it different.

    Roil ElementalLike for example, when we were originally playing around with Zendikar, we put in a mechanic called landfall that cares about when you play a land. And a land, for those—assume most of you guys know Magic, listening to me, but land’s a resource you use to drive stuff.

    And all of a sudden we made it such that this thing that you often dreaded in late game—normally in Magic in late game you don’t want to draw a land. You have enough land. You want to draw spells that you can do something with.

    And when we made it such that there were times where, late in the game you wanted to draw a land. That never happens. And most of what we were doing in Zendikar was normal Magic. It wasn’t particularly far away. But we just added this one little thing, like, “Let’s just—let’s care about lands in a way we haven’t before.” And that just made all the difference. It felt—you know what I’m saying?

    That it is—you really have to resist the urge—like, when you’re trying to make something new and different, newness comes—that you get so much benefit from a little bit of newness. And that’s a lot of what I want to say today is sort of, you know, since today’s the day of metaphors, I have a cake. I’m making a cake. Most of what makes the cake the cake is the cake. But the things people sort of focus on tends to be the decorations and the icing. The icing makes it sweet.

    And the idea is that if I’m going to make two different cakes, that, you know what? Most—I can take the exact same cake and dress it up differently and put different icing on it and put different decorations on it, and really sell you as this being a different cake…

    Like, my wife and I for example. Lora and I like throwing parties. That is one of our favorite things to do. And often in our parties, when appropriate, we’ll get a cake. We have a woman that we know at a local bakery that does awesome cakes, and she will decorate things and make them real cool and real fun.

    And what we’ve discovered is, we tend to get the same cake. The cake we get is half vanilla, half chocolate. Vanilla one side—we tend to get a sheet cake. Vanilla one side, chocolate on the other, and that we experimented for a little while trying different kinds of cakes, and what we found was, no no, you know what? These are the cakes people like. This is what makes the people happy. It’s pretty straightforward, look, vanilla and chocolate are the basic cakes you could ask for. Some people like vanilla, some like chocolate, provide them both, give them a little bit of choice, and people are always happy with the cake.

    And so really what we do when we make the cake, we’re not changing the cake of the cake. We’re changing the dressing of the cake. Well, if it’s our Super Bowl party and we make it into a football field, okay, that’s a real different animal, or let’s say it’s one of my kids’ birthday parties. You know, it’s Adam’s birthday party and  have a video game theme, so I turn it into a Switch. You know. Or some video game thing. And the point is, the cake tastes the same. It tastes the same. But one being a football field and the other being a Switch, wow, that’s just a different experience. And that really feels different.

    In the games there’s a lot of the same thing. I mean I don’t want to use the icing—I’m not trying to say it’s just about dressing. It’s just about flavor and stuff. It’s more than that.  You do want to have some mechanical differences. But you don’t need to have a lot of mechanical differences. You really don’t.

    Like I said. Ravnica pretty much took one premise, one premise, and everything came out of that premise. All I was trying to is be a multicolor set that lets you play less colors. That was really my goal the whole time, and from that everything sprang up from it. And then as I made things, and other people made things, and we worked off it, we just kept extrapolating, but it was always off that one premise.

    And so what I will say to you is, if you’re working on something, let’s say you’re trying to make your—you know, an additive element to a game that already exists. The key here, and this is true for parties, for cakes, whatever—focus. It’s about something. It’s not about a lot of things, it’s about one thing.

    And so pick that one thing, make it matter, put the focus on it, you know, pick mechanics that matter, and what you will find is, having that one theme to it, that one emphasis will really set it apart and make it something that is cool.

    And what you will find is, when you have that as your bullseye, when you have one idea that you’re pushing toward, it will stir other things. “Oh, it wants to be this. Okay, well if I do that…” And what you’ll find is, you will make a lot of organic changes that come out of having a singular theme. And so when changing things, you don’t have to change much to change a lot. (???) actual is—“You don’t have to change much to change everything” is my actual quote.

    So anyway, I am driving up to work. So the takeaway today, if you’re a young designer designing your first game, you don’t need to overrun your game with lots of things. And on some level it’s the same lesson which is, figure out what your game’s about, find the fun, find the essence, find the core, focus on the core. Make it be what it’s supposed to be. Lose extraneous things. You don’t need extraneous things.

    And do playtests. Take things out. If the playtests go well after you’ve taken them out then maybe it doesn’t need to be there. You know. That what a lot of what I’m saying today is, it has to do with how you think about the game, how you build your game, how you make your game, and then, as you iterate it, stress test all the pieces, all the components.

    And what you will find is, there’s some components that aren’t carrying their weight. And if they’re not carrying their weight, less is more. You know what I’m saying? That having a cleanliness to your design is going to lead to overall better games. I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions to that, but as a general rule of thumb, being simpler, being more elegant, being more focused will make for a better experience. Regardless of whether it’s the very first game you ever made or an expansion to a game that’s 25 years old. So anyway, guys, I’m now at work, So we know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. Oh, (???) traffic, you guys got a little extra.

    So anyway, instead of talking Magic and game design, it’s time for me to make Magic. I’ll see you guys next time.
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  9. All podcast content by Mark Rosewater


    I’m pulling out of the parking lot! We all know what that means! It’s time for another Drive to Work. And I dropped my son off at camp.

    Okay. So today is another in my series, Twenty Years, Twenty Podcasts. Or sorry, Twenty Lessons, Twenty Podcasts. Where I talk about twenty different lessons I learned over twenty years of making the same game.  This is based on the speech I gaveback at GDC back in 2016, and we’re up to number fifteen! So, “Design the component for the audience it’s intended for.”  So for each one of these,  I start by explaining an example from Magic. And then I’ll dive in.

    Okay, so to understand my story for the Magic, I first have to explain some things. So, in Magic, way back when, I created something called the psychographics. There’s a whole podcast on this, if you want more detail you can go listen to it, but I’ll give you the brief version. I borrowed something that I learned from in advertising, which is when you are trying to advertise to somebody, you want to understand not just who wants to buy your product, but why. Why do they want to buy it? Because when you’re trying to advertise, you’re trying to understand what you are appealing to.

    So one of the things I was interested in when I got to Wizards was trying to think about the psychology of design. Who was the audience? And so I came up with three psychographics that we use. Timmy and Tammy… I have male and female versions for these because I didn’t think at the time to make them unisex. So there’s Timmy and Tammy, Johnny and Jenny, and Spike.

    So Timmy and Tammy are in it for the experience. That game-playing for them is about seeing something. Could be the visceral thrill of winning with big giant creatures. It could be interacting with my friends, of just bonding socially. You know. That the idea is, there’s something about the game that makes them feel a way they like to feel. You know. There’s something about it that, the experience itself is something that’s enjoyable in some way.

    And so really what the Timmies and Tammies of the world want to do is play the game in a way that creates the experience they’re trying to get. Like, the stereotypical Timmy/Tammy likes big creatures. And likes, you know, winning big, with big splashy effects. Now, that’s just a subset of the group, but that the idea is, you know, they really are in it for the experience.

    Johnny and Jenny are in it for expression. They want to express something about themselves. That the game and its ability for you to customize is a means by which you can show other people something about you. You know. They’re very into sort of showing what they are capable of and showing a bit about themselves.

    Spike wants to prove something. That the game is a means for them to demonstrate something. Usually for Spikes it’s about showing that they can dominate the game or dominate some aspect of the game. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes it’s about self-improvement, about making a benchmark against yourself. There’s a bunch of different ways Spikes can exhibit things. But the idea essentially is, Timmy and Tammy want to experience something, Johnny and Jenny want to express something, Spike wants to prove something.

    Molten SentryOkay. The reason that’s important is, we’re going to go into Ravnica with a card called Molten Sentry. So original Ravnica, there was a card that you would play, it was a red card, and that you flipped a coin when you played it. It was a creature. And either it was a 5/2 creature with haste, or it was a 2/5 creature with defender. So either you could attack with it the turn you played it, which normally you can’t do, or you couldn’t attack at all with it, you could only block with it, but it was very tough. It was a really good blocker.

    So let’s look at the psychographics. So this card really isn’t made for Johnny and Jenny, so we’ll take them out of it. So what Spike appreciates is, coin flip is something that’s a very—or not Spike, sorry. Timmy and Tammy enjoy coin flips. Not all Timmy and Tammies, but the coin flip enthusiasts tend to fall in this category. Because it’s exciting, it’s fun. What’s going to happen? I don't know. Flipping a coin is—there’s a moment of excitement where I’m not sure what’s going to happen. The outcome is unknown. That creates drama and excitement. Timmy and Tammy love drama and excitement.

    Meanwhile, this card also gives you two choices that are very balanced. That, you know, sometimes you want one choice, sometimes you want the other choice. Well, Spike likes balanced choices. Spike really likes the idea that sometimes I could choose this and sometimes I could choose that. And that’s skill testing. And it allows me to sort of, you know, be able to use my ability to engage things to understand what the correct choice is at any one time. And Spike loves interesting choices.

    Okay. But the problem is, let’s reverse them. Coin flipping. Spike hates coin flipping, that’s randomness. That’s something out of your control. Spike’s all about proving dominance through knowledge. Through what he or she knows. Well, coin flipping is the antithesis of that. It’s something which I don’t know what’s going to happen. So in general, Spikes don’t like coin flipping.

    Now we get to balanced outcomes. Ehh, Timmy/Tammy aren’t as fond about balanced outcomes. What they want is a dramatic coin flip. And in some ways, if there’s two different choices, and one choice is really exciting and one choice is not as exciting, you know, that is something that just makes for a more dramatic coin flip. You know. Either this awesome thing happens or this terrible thing happens. You know. Not that they always need a terrible option, but they at least need an option in which one, you clearly want one over the other. And this card was a little more balanced than Timmy and Tammy like.

    So the problem was, we made a card in which part of it was for Timmy and Tammy, and part of it was for Spike. But the part that was for Timmy and Tammy, Spike doesn’t like. And the part that’s for spike, Timmy and Tammy don’t like. So we end up with a card that nobody likes. That there’s people who like parts of it.

    And so one of the lessons is, what we needed to do is we needed to lean in one direction or the other. We could make a Timmy/Tammy card if we just made a higher variance card. You know. You get a 5/5 (???) or a 1/1, or something in which, oh my goodness, the variance is really exciting what’s going to happen.

    Or, take the coin-flipping out of it. Just make it a choice. When you play the card, you have a decision. Spike would love that card. It gives them options. Am I playing offensively? Am I playing defensively? I have choices of what I want to do.

    So the reality is, by trying to sort of be more broad, we in the end actually made nobody happy. So that’s one of the big lessons to start with here is, that when you try to please everyone, you often please no one. All of your players don’t want the same thing out of your game. So it’s important to understand who your different players are.

    And so this lesson really is about—I mean, it’s about two things. First, it’s about the idea that you need to be knowledgeable about your game. That one of the things I talk a lot about and I’ve done podcasts on this topic, is: when you have a game, you need to go out and get research. You need to playtest it. And not just playtest it, but you then need to interview the people you’re playtesting with.

    That the idea is, you want to understand when you make a game, what is it that people like about your game? Where is—well, actually two things. One, you want to figure out what people like about it. And you want to figure out who the different players are.

    Because what you will find is—so let’s take Magic as an example. When I’m trying to understand what Magic players like, there’s a lot of facets to the game. And so one of the things that you’re always looking for is, where might somebody be entranced? You know.

    Like I said. We have the psychographics we use. So we’re very cautious about making sure that we—you know, there’s different kinds of psychological things people need. Also we have an aesthetics scale. Vorthos andMel. That are very about—what do they like about the game from an aesthetic level? Is it about the flavor? Is it about the art? Is it about how the card captures what it is? Or, the opposite side is Mel’s about sort of, do they enjoy the structural aspects of it? The game design of it? Is there a card that the components of the card blend together to make really interesting gameplay?

    So there’s a lot of different facets to understand. And that we want to make sure that no matter what facet you like, that we’re thinking about that. And that the key thing about Magic is, there’s so—because the game—Magic has a lot of flexibility. But most games have some flexibility. And so when you’re making your game, figure out what exactly it is that makes your game—what are the components that people can fall in love with?

    Now, earlier on in this podcast series, I talked a lot about choices. I talked about customization. I talked about details. I talked about how there’s a lot of things you do in your game to imbue—to allow your player to bond with your game.

    And as I said many times, but it comes up here which is important is, the key to any success—and I would say the key to any art, I consider game design an art form. So I believe the key to any art is that you want to bond and connect with your audience. You want your audience to be able to see something that they understand, that means something to them, and connect to.

    But the tricky thing is, not everybody’s the same, not everybody’s going to come and bond with the same elements of your game. So the key to a strong game is to make a lot of different choices, a lot of different details, a lot of customization that allows the player the ability to find the thing that matters for them.

    You know, sometimes it’s finding it, sometimes it’s making it, depending on what tools your game gives your players. But the idea is, you want your players to come to the game and say, “Oh wow. There’s something about this game that speaks to me. Not to people in general, me.” That “Oh, I love blah. And this game has blah. And wow, that really—I really now connect to it. It makes the game personal for me.”

    And that’s the big thing that people could understand is, there is a line—there are games you play. And there are games that you are part of. When I say games you play, it’s like, okay, I’m going to sit down and play a game with my friends or something, and like, okay, it’s fun, and I pass the time. But the reason you play is that it’s just like, oh, it’s a thing to do, maybe something to do with my friends, or whatever.

    But a game that really connects in is something in which you identify through the game. That the way I used to say is, you know, I play Scrabble, but I’m a Magic player. That Magic defines part of who I am. You know. That that game speaks to me in a way that becomes, that’s part of my psyche if you will.

    And so one of the things you’re always looking for in a game is to try to find a way to make that connection with your player base. To make the game something in which there’s something about it that speaks to the player.

    Okay. The reason that it’s so important, and sort of ties into today’s lesson is, if you want to do this, if you want to allow your players to bond with your game, you need to do a lot of research up front. You need to understand, A. Who are the players of your game? B. What are the components that they like?

    And those are connected. Because, for example, I’ll take Magic as my ongoing example. For example. Some players who play Magic really, really fall in love with the flavor side of things. We call them the Vorthoses. That the art, the story, the—how cards come alive as game-wise representing a concept that they’re attracted to.

    And one of the things there, if you notice, like in the game, we’ll do a lot of worlds in which we do top-down things. We do—it’s the horror genre. It’s Greek mythology. It’s Egyptian mythology. You know, that we bounce around and we take some real source material, because there’s people that say, oh. I love zombie movies. Oh, yay, you’ve made me zombies that feel like the zombies from the movies I love. And that there’s a lot of trying to sort of deliver to people aspects of what they like.

    But in order to do that, in order to sort of hit toward your audience, so we’ll get to the second part in a moment, but the first part is before you can deliver, you have to understand. And that is why—I mean, like one of the things, for example, I spend a lot of time interacting with the audience. Why do I do that? Now, on some level, I’m a spokesperson. I mean, there’s a little bit of cheerleading, you know, and just getting people focused on things we want them to get excited by.

    But there’s another way. It’s a two-way thing. I want to know what excites our players. I want to know—like, I’m always interested when players write in to me and say, “Hey, have you ever considered X or Y?” You know. “Could you… here’s a character that you referenced but it’s not a card. Could it be a card?” Or, “Here’s a mechanic that you did that you didn’t do this one aspect with it.” You know. “Could we get an angel that has that mechanic?” Or whatever. I’m not allowed to hear new stuff because I can’t hear unsolicited material. But I can hear people asking for tweaks on existing things. And that is so important because it allows me to get a better understanding of what the audience might want. And so it is very valuable.

    So what I would say is, playtest your game, and once again, playtest with people who don’t have an emotional stake in your well-being. And then, not just playtest with them, not just observe while they’re playing, afterwards, talk to them. A lot of people that do playtesting don’t realize that really good playtesting then involves a questionnaire, usually. You want to keep it short. Don’t keep it too long. But what you want to say to the players is not just how did you feel about the game, but what did you like about the game and not like? What were the components that drew you in, and what were the components that pushed you away?

    So it’s important—and once again, it is important to understand—the former is a little more important than the latter. What is it about the game that you loved? I have another podcast in the series you can listen to where I talk about, if everybody likes your game but nobody loves it, it will fail. And I was talking about how you need to sort of push the envelope and find things that people are passionate about, even if it means that other people dislike it.

    Which ties in to part number two. Okay, so you’ve done some research, you figured out what are the different components of your game, and what are the things that people seem to be attracted to? Okay, so the next stage is now making the connection of understanding what component is for what player.

    And I can’t stress how important this is, because as we’ll talk through today, every game—like, it’s important that you understand that there’s no uniformity in your game player. It’s very easy to want to think of your game player as a singular entity. Like, “All players of my game act like this.”

    And what we’ve found is, I mean I can just talk for Magic, we’ve done a lot of research on Magic, is that there are people that play for radically different reasons. There are audience members that, like, if the two of them tried to play Magic together, they would have trouble playing Magic together. Because how they play and what they play and what formats they play and what they enjoy is so different from each other that it would be hard—you know, it would actually be a little difficult to get them to play together. And that’s not the way people think. You know, it’s like, “Well, if you both play the same game, clearly you would have a good time playing with each other.” Eh, not necessarily.

    And that one of the things Magic does in particular is Magic is very modular in the sense that the cards are kind of a tool for you to play a game. And there’s a rule structure and there’s things to help you. But the ability for you to play different formats, to just invent your own format, there’s a lot of ways to play with the cards and people keep inventing and finding new ways.

    Okay. So here, now we get to the crux of today’s lesson. Which is, you need to understand when you’re crafting any one component, what is that component for? Who is it for? And the answer is, all components can’t be for everyone.

    There’s this problem I see with newer game designers, in that they seem to want to design everything with everyone in mind. And the reality is, you are doing a disservice. It is going to be hard for you to make a game that people love if every time you have a decision to make, you go toward the center decision. You go toward the thing that most people would like. This ties very closely into the, “If everyone likes but no one loves it” podcast.

    So you need to make decisions, you need to push in directions. And what I’m saying today is, when I’m making a card, I need to understand who that card is for. I need to have in my mind a picture of, “Okay. Who am I trying to make happy?” Because, when I don’t, when I’m not clear—we do, like, Molten Sentry is the perfect example, where I kind of made a card that could have been much beloved by a lot more—I’m not saying nobody likes it.

    But it just wasn’t—in our godbook studies, we do studies on the cards where we ask players, you know, Magic players, what they think and we show them a whole bunch of different cards and they grade them. So we get grades on individual cards. We know how individual cards do. This card did not do well.

    And the reason that I believe so is, we were not focused on who the audience was. And so when you sort of isolate, and when you figure out, the key is, you want to make decisions for who the audience is. And not where—like, here, I’ll use a different metaphor to show why this is kind of silly.

    Imagine if you’re writing a horror film. You know. Attack of the Zombies or whatever. And you say, “You know what? I’m not just going to cater to horror fans. I’m going to cater to all movie fans.” And so I make decisions that optimize it to make it a general movie.

    The problem I’m going to run into is, the general movie audience probably isn’t coming to this movie because it’s a horror movie. Meaning horror fans are coming to this movie. People that like that kind of movie. And so if I kind of make a movie that’s for everybody, and don’t maximize making it a movie for horror fans, or zombie fans, I’m doing a disservice to my movie. Because the people who are going to come see it are the zombie fans. That’s who’s going to come see it.

    And so with your game component—I’m not saying you can’t ever make components cross over more sections of players. You can. But for each one component, you should maximize—you should prioritize I guess is better. Prioritize who it’s for, and make sure that every decision you make makes that player happy.

    Now, sometimes your decisions you make, that are—there’s a way to make a second group happy that doesn’t diminish making the first group happy. That’s fine. I’m not saying each component can’t have more than one audience. But you have to sort of prioritize who your main audience is.

    So when you’re making something, when I’m making a card for example, I’m very conscious of understanding who’s supposed to play that card. And then, and this is the hard part, that when you make your component, you have to buckle down, and you’re going to get criticism.

    For example, whenever I make a card, so here’s a very classic example. I make a card for a certain audience in mind. A lot of other people will complain that the card is useless to them. And this is something you will see a lot, especially if you’re lucky enough to have a game in which you get feedback from your audience on a regular basis.

    A very common complaint is, “I don’t like this.” And really, when you dig deep, what they’re saying is, “This isn’t for me.” And that you as a game designer have to understand that not every game component can be for every game player, and that you have to suck that up.

    Goblin Test Pilot
    That when somebody—like, for example. I made a card once called Goblin Pilot, I think it was called. Goblin Test Pilot? [NLH—Yes, Goblin Test Pilot.] And so basically it’s a goblin that flies, that you can tap it to do damage to a random creature. I think you do two damage to a random creature. [NLH—Any target, chosen at random.]

    Now, Goblin Test Pilot is a 2/2 creature, I think. [NLH—0/2.] So he can kill himself. Whenever you use him, there’s some percentage chance that he’s going to hit himself. And I had a bunch of players yell at me. They’re like, “Why would I ever play this card? Why would I play this? This card is a stupid card, you know, some percent of the time it just destroys itself. Why would I play that?”

    And what I said is, “Here, I’m going to do a little experiment on my social media. I’m going to say, ‘Who likes this card?” And all these people came out of the woodwork and said, “Oh, this card’s awesome, I love this card! It’s so flavorful.”

    And what people—what I was trying to demonstrate is, the card is made to be a fun, goofy card. It wasn’t made to be a competitive card. It wasn’t made to be a top tournament card. It was made to be a flavorful, fun card. Because some people, when they make decks, are just having fun. You know.

    They’re more Timmies and Tammies or Johnnies and Jennies. They’re more—it’s not about winning for them—you know, not that they don’t want to win, but they have to win within the constraints that they want to win. Maybe they want to win with style. Maybe they’re just trying to make something super flavorful. Maybe they’re trying to make their friends laugh. Maybe they have a weird combo that does something cool. But the point is, the card is a neat card that made a lot of players happy.

    But the vocal players at first were very unhappy. And so one of the things that you have to kind of buckle down when you’re a game designer is  you have to sort of do the homework to understand your audience, and then you have to sort of accept the fact that everybody, every player—I mean, I’ve done a lot to educate Magic players, so Magic players, some of them have fully come around. But players will always assume that everything was meant for them, and when it doesn’t match what they want, they will complain. And you have to be knowledgeable enough and understand your audience enough to know who the audience is, so when you make something and you get negative comments, you’re like, “Okay, okay, I get that this player doesn’t like it.”

    And like I said, I talked about this during the “Everyone Likes It” podcast. Anything that’s going to get someone to fall in love with it, anything that you’re going to do that’s going to make someone just be really endeared, odds are, anything that’s that emotion—you know, that’s that strong an emotion-getter, is going to turn some people off the wrong way. Any card that’s going to make someone belove it, it’s going to make somebody hate it. And that you need to suck it up. You need to accept that not everybody’s going to love everything you do, that somebody’s going to hate some of the stuff you do. Because it’s through the things that players hate that you make stuff that players also love.

    That, you know, there is a lot of risk-taking to game design. But one of the things that’s not really a risk is this idea that if players are unhappy, I have failed as a game designer. And that’s why I really want you to spend the work and time to understand, okay. Who are the different people that play my game?

    And when you sit down and when you have playtests and when you’re interviewing people, you will discover really cool things. Especially if, once again, when you do the interviews, you want the interviews to be about how they feel about things. And what they enjoyed and didn’t enjoy.

    You want to be open-ended enough that it gives you the ability—like, one of the things that I’ve found is, if you had asked me, when I first started getting into doing Magic, back in ’95 when I joined the company, and said, “Okay, why do people play Magic?” I would have had some answers, and not that my answers were incorrect, but I did not fully understand the audience at the time I started.

    And then, I spent a lot of time, and I still spend a lot of time. I’m still trying to understand the audience. There’s still new formats that get played that I still want to understand what makes it tick. Now, as players who regularly follow me know, I’m not a giant Commander fan, in that I don’t like to play Commander. Commander is a format, a casual format. Usually multiplayer. Only because I’m just not a big fan of politics in my Magic. Politics happen when you have more than two players. Well, more than two players in which it’s more free-for-all, it’s not defined who’s on what side.

    But I spent a lot of time trying to understand Commander. I spent a lot of time trying to understand what makes it tick and why players like it, and what kind of cards we need to design to make people happy with the format.

    That even things—and it’s just an example of a format that I don’t—I mean, I play some to understand it, I watch some. But I mean, I—it’s not something that I personally enjoy. But part of being a game designer is not just making a game as it—so here’s a common mistake I see. Is when people start doing Magic for example, or young or new Magic designers, they tend to design to what they like about the game. That what they do is they say, “Ooh, Magic is fun, here’s what I enjoy about it, here’s things that I would enjoy.”

    Now, that’s great. It’s a wonderful place to start. But one of the things you have to do is, you have to start understanding why others like to play. Like, a lot of my journey in my 20+ years of making Magic is trying to get better at not just making the Magic I enjoy, but making the Magic others enjoy. And that I really have embraced my inner Vorthos to try to make super flavorful things. Embraced my inner Mel to make very fine-tuned things. Embraced my inner Timmy and Tammy, embraced my inner Johnny and Jenny, embraced my—well, I am Johnny and Jenny. Embraced my inner Spike. That I need to find those parts of me so I understand.

    And one of the things I believe on some level is, everybody has a little bit of everything in them. And that even if you’re the die-hardest of die-hardest Spikes. Even if it’s all about winning at whatever cost and you’ll play whatever deck you need to. There’s moments—like, I talk about having a Timmy moment. There’s a moment where the correct play was to cast some giant creature, and you had some giant blowout moment, and come on, come on. Deep in your soul that was fun. You know. Not that you would change decisions, not that you would pick a suboptimal deck to do that, but if it’s the right thing to do and you did it, there’s something fun about just playing a giant creature and going, “Rahh,” or a big spell, whatever. There’s visceral fun to that. And that even the Spikiest of Spike could have a Timmy moment.

    And like—so one of the things that I try to do when I play is I want to capture those moments, and I want to figure out, where is the fun in different things? So that I can aim that way. And so a big part of today’s lesson, really the key part of it is that you are not designing—like, get it out of your head, when you are making things, that you’re just making everything for everybody. That is not the route to success in a game.

    The route to success in a game is doing the knowledge on your own game, doing the homework, understanding the various audiences, and then being able to identify when you make components, who is that component mostly for?

    And like I said. It’s not that you can’t make for multiple people. Just somebody’s the priority. You have to prioritize somebody when you’re making it. And that when you have decisions to make, your priority gets to win every decision. That if I’m making a card for Tammy, that every decision where there’s a fork in the road, I take the Tammy fork.

    And sometimes there’s a fork in the road and it doesn’t matter. Tammy will like both things. Then I can start making decisions that might make a secondary person happy. You know. I can do that. But once again, you know, what I’ve learned time and time again is, not to be (???)—so, so here’s my metaphor for today. Where—I actually learned this lesson, the first time I learned this lesson wasn’t making Magic. It actually was playwriting.

    So I made a play, which I’ve mentioned before, called “Leggo My Ego.” And the premise of the play is the main character is trying to decide whether or not to cheat on his girlfriend of two and a half years with a girl he’s been obsessed with forever. And it’s his emotions arguing about whether or not he’s supposed to do this. That’s the play.

    So I put a bunch of emotions—the play is full of, I think there’s eleven characters and they’re all—there’s the id, the ego, and thesuperego, and all the rest of the characters are emotions. Well, save rationalization, that’s a defense mechanism.

    And one of the things is, some of the emotions in the play are negative emotions. There’s bitterness. There’s depression. You know. There’s some emotions that are definitely more downbeat emotions. And that one of the things I learned was, the audience liked Depression the more depressing Depression was. The more bitter Bitterness was. The more paranoid Paranoia was.

    That what made them like the character was what made them bond to the character, and the idea was that I had this inkling to go, “Oh, well, I want to make sure Depression is entertaining.” And the reality is, the more depressing Depression was—in fact, the best laughs that Depression got was finding a way to take what someone else said and converting it to the most depressing possible way to think about it. That was the comedy of Depression.

    And, what I found is, when the dust settled, people liked the negative emotions very much. Depression was very popular. Bitterness was very popular. Paranoia was very popular. What it made me realize was that you have to steer into something. You have to commit to something. And that that is where the work shines.

    And so if I’m going to make a Timmy card, I’m going to make the Timmiest Timmy card  I can make. I’m going to lean in. I’m going to make something—you know, what I want to do is I want to express that thing as strong and as loud as I can.

    My goal is not that—I can’t stress this enough. That this idea that I want to find the common ground, that I want to make choices that is going to make everybody somewhat happy is a huge mistake. I don’t want to make everybody a little bit happy. I want to make one person really happy. I want to make someone fall in love with my game. And the way I do that is I pick somebody, I focus on them, and I really commit. I—you know, I pull no punches.

    And Molten Sentry for example is a good example where we pulled punches. Where I could have made that a super exciting Timmy card. Or I could have made that a super exciting Spike card. But in the end I made a card that nobody likes. And that’s the thing is, there’s this idea that somehow it’s dangerous. That leaning in, that committing to something, that pushing towards something is going to cause your game problems.

    And I’m telling you, it’s the exact opposite. That if you make sure that each component, each player of the game has some corner of the game that is theirs, that speaks to them, that’s exciting, that’s the route to success. Like, one of Magics big success has been that we make a wide variety of cards for a wide variety of players.

    And in fact, no player should like every card in every expansion. That players should look at some cards and go, “I would never play that. Man, that’s a horrible card. I don’t like that card at all.” Now, as long as that card’s for somebody, I’m not saying make a card that everybody hates, though once in a while that’s not a horrible thing.

    But you want to make something in which it’s for somebody. And then don’t worry about everybody else. Don’t worry about everybody else. That everybody else can dislike the card, hate the card, send you nasty emails, it doesn’t matter. That if the person who’s supposed to love it loves it, that’s what matters.

    And that mostly of today’s lesson is me trying to sort of really hammer home that a lot of game design is research. A lot of game design is psychology. A lot of game design is putting in the time and energy to understand what makes your game tick. That you’ve gotta look not just without but within.

    And that a lot of doing that is, there’s a lot of homework that comes in making a game. And I know that there’s this idea that the way a game is made is I lock myself in a room, and then I come out and there’s a game! And that’s not at all what’s going on.

    You need interaction with the public, you need playtesting, you need feedback, you need interviews. That a lot of what you need to do is you need to sort of understand who your audience is, what it is they want. Because if you can’t lean into things, if you can’t push toward the audience that’s gonna love the thing, you’re going to end up with a game that isn’t going to shine. That isn’t going to speak to people. That isn’t going to bond with people.

    And that the lesson of today is really a lesson of, you need—if you want to make something that is going to bond to your players, that’s going to stand out, that’s going to stand up to the test of time, that’s going to sort of excite in a way that you need a game to excite, it requires you doing work. There’s work to be done.

    And as much as I do enjoy interacting with the audience, as much as I do like social media, I believe the secret of my success, the reason I’ve become such a good game designer is that I have dedicated myself to understanding my audience and understanding my game. That I have spent lots and lots—and like I said, I invented the psychographics. I—there’s so many things that I have done to try to get a handle on ways to explain my audience so that I understand their needs and desires, so that I can deliver on their needs and desires. You know.

    That—you know, if you listen to my podcast, I keep coming up and saying again and again that one of the skills you need to be a good game designer is to be a psychologist. Is to understand how people work. And understand what makes people tick. Because in the end, what makes good game design is making something that people want to play.

    And not just play. Once again. I don’t want people to play my game, I want people to be a player of my game. That part of their definition, that part—I mean, who they are as a person gets intertwined with what my game is? That I could speak to them on the most primal, deepest of levels.

    And to do that, to be a game designer that does that, requires me to really understand both who my audience is, and then make the commitment, make the bold commitment of dedicating each component to the right person and leaning in. Pushing in. Making sure that my Timmy card is the Timmiest card that I can make. That my Jenny card is the Jenniest card that I can make. That my Spike card is the Spikest card I can make.

    I have to figure out who the audience is and then maximize the element for them, knowing that I’m not doing that for everybody, and that each player will get their own section that I’m focusing on them. So in the end I’m giving everybody something, but not every piece is for every player. Every piece is for somebody, but every piece is not for everybody.

    Okay guys. I’m now at work, so we all know what that means. It means it’s the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking Magic, it’s time for me to be making Magic I’ll see you next time.
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  10. All podcast content by Mark Rosewater


    I’m pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It’s time for another Drive to Work.

    Okay. So today is another in my series, Twenty Lessons, Twenty Podcasts. Where I recap twenty important lessons that I’ve learned over the twenty years or more that I’ve been making Magic. This is based on a GDC speech I gave, so we’re up to lesson number 14. Don’t be afraid to be blunt.

    Okay. So for each one of these, I always start with a story from Magic. So this one take us back to Rise of the Eldrazi. Okay, so the idea of this set was that we were on Zendikar, and we learn that these ancient creatures had been trapped inside the world. And in Rise of the Eldrazi¸ they get out, because they’re called the Eldrazi and this is the Rise of the Eldrazi.

    Ulamog, the Infinite GyreSo we had to figure out how to design the Eldrazi. So the Eldrazi were definitely challenging to design for. So basically the idea was, they were giant, voracious alien creatures. You know. They were these things that were ??? of like—one of the things about them was that one of the reasons they were so hard to fight story-wise is no one understood what they wanted. They were kind of a force of nature more than anything else. You couldn’t reason with them. They didn’t have any sort of normal sense of reason.
    Kozilek, Butcher of Truth 
    Emrakul, the Aeons TornSo—and, they were ancient, ancient, ancient beings, they were huge, there were three of them, the Titans we called them, so it was Ulamog, Kozilek, and Emrakul. Those were the three Eldrazi titans.

    And so we were trying to figure out how to play them. You know, how do you make giant voracious ancient alien beings? That’s tricky. So one of the things we did was—and this was the first time we met them. Obviously they came back in Battle for Zendikar. 

    But the first time, Brian Tinsman was the head designer. And so what he decided to do is just embrace the giant-ness. And he created something that we refer to as “[battlecruiser] Magic, which is, what if Magic sort of just slowed down a little bit, and then allowed players to just get out huge giant creatures and then battle each other? And so the idea was, in order to get the hugeness of the Eldrazi—and note, the Eldrazi were not just the Eldrazi. They created spawns and things. And even their spawns were huge.

    It That BetraysSo we were trying to figure out how to—we were messing around with sort of how to make them flavorful. So to capture the voraciousness, we came up—oh, what was it called? We came up with a mechanic that was called annihilate. [NLH--Called"annihilator" in the final version.] And what annihilate did is it had a number. Annihilate 4. Annihilate 2. When you attacked with a creature with annihilate, your opponent had to sacrifice that many permanents. Now, that could be lands, it could be any permanent. But let’s say I had annihilate 2. So if I had annihilate 2, you would sacrifice two permanents every time I attacked.

    So we tested annihilate, and it proved to be really strong. It was, like—when you had annihilate, you wanted to attack. It was a very powerful ability. And what tended to happen was, it just took a couple attacks before your opponent was in such a—you know, such a negative for having to deal with that, that often it would win you the game.

    That—I mean, we didn’t bring annihilate back in Battle for Zendikar because it proved to be so what we call snowball-y. Like, once you started attacking with the Eldrazi, they’re just so hard to come back from. That losing, you know, multiple permanents per turn is something that you just don’t rebound from. That it really tends to, you know—that it really sort of started winning and just kept winning more and more.

    Ulamog's Crusher
    But anyway. But our problem was, we were doing playtesting, we had a common creature that had, you know, I think it was a 7/7 or an 8/8, it had annihilate on it. I don’t remember. Annihilate 1, annihilate 2. But the point was, we had this giant common creature that we wanted you to attack with. Because the Eldrazi—like, you were supposed to attack with the Eldrazi.

    But what we found in playtesting is, when we playtested with less experienced players, they just got scared. You know, it took them a while to get out this giant Eldrazi, they finally got it out, and the last thing they wanted is anything to happen to it. So they weren’t attacking with it.

    And the problem we had is, like we knew the ability was powerful, we knew that once you sort of attacked with it and saw how awesome it was, you would attack. But how do we get by that first barrier? How do we get people to attack with it when their gut instinct is, “Ooh, I don’t want to put my creature at risk?”

    And so we had a lot of, you know, trying to figure out how exactly to do that. How do we get somebody to attack with the creature? And finally the solution that I came up with was, what if we just write, “Must attack? This creature must attack if able…” or, “attacks if able” I think is the template. “This creature attacks if able. Attacks every turn if able.”

    And what we did is, if we gave you an Eldrazi and just forced your had, you had to attack with it, well then the player, like, okay, there’s no pressure on them. There’s no tension. Like, that’s just what the creature did. I have no choice. If I play the creature, it’s got to attack.

    And then once they attacked with that creature, they started to see the value of attacking with Eldrazi. And so by making one common creature just mandatory, that like, how do we make sure you attack with it? We just force your hand. We force you to attack with it. Was enough to sort of tip the scales and start teaching people about the Eldrazi.

    And the funny thing is, we went through all sort of subtle things. And in the end… so, there’s a story… what’s the name of the story? It’s a famous Greek story I think. Where… I’m blanking on the name of it. But there is a wise soldier or something. And he—who was it? Was it like—was it David? King David? King Solomon?

    One of the wise kings of age-old… they come and there’s this knot. There’s this super—like, I don't know, very intricate knot. [NLH--The Gordian Knot] Made out of giant string. And this knot is, you know, the whole thing is like, feet in diameter. You know, five, six feet in diameter. Because of all the, you know, all the interweaving. And it’s just this really complex knot. Oh, maybe it was Alexander. I  think it was Alexander is the story. [NLH--Yes.]

    But anyway, there was some omen or something that says, you know, in order to take the village you have to untie this knot. And so what he does is, the solution is, he just takes his sword and he chops it in half.
    Lightning Bolt 
    And this was kind of the solution here, is like sometimes you just need a straight blunt answer. You know, there’s another classic—I used to make Magic puzzles. And I made a Magic puzzle once where  I made this very elaborate setup. And then I gave you a Lightning Bolt.  And you know, there’s all these different things and different creatures you can kill and different triggers on the creatures, and like all the stuff. But your opponent was at three life and you had a Lightning Bolt, which does three damage.

    So the idea was, it was just this idea that, yeah, you can look and maybe there’s an elaborate, complicated answer. But you know what? There was a simple answer. Just Bolt your opponent. The board didn’t matter.

    And that was me playing with expectations of puzzles, where like you have this expectation that there is this really ornate answer, which normally there was. I just wanted to make a point sometimes that hey, sometimes the answer is direct and simple.

    So we get to today’s lesson! Don’t be afraid to be blunt. And I think part of this is, when you are an artist, when you are a creator, you are taught that subtlety is important. You are taught to show, don’t tell. You know. That you’re supposed to, you know, don’t be so obvious about what you’re doing. That you want some subtlety built into it. You know.

    And a lot of times, that’s good. You know. A lot of times you want to be subtle. I think stories are better when you sort of have to piece some things out, that everything isn’t spoon fed to you. But, the point of today is that I think sometimes in all the lessons of subtlety, in all the lessons of sort of not hitting somebody over the head, that you miss that that’s a tool.

    And that’s kind of the theme of today’s podcast is, not that you should always be blunt, not that bluntness is something that’s supposed to be used even the majority of the time. But that it’s a tool. It is something that you can use, and that too often, I think, people are worried that if they’re blunt, that somehow they’re not doing their job or they’re not being as artistic as they could be.

    There’s a concern—like, I don’t think that—I think a lot of today’s lesson—I mean, different lessons come from different places. I think, you know—so one of my favorite books, if you guys don’t know this already, is a book on creative thinking called A Whack on the Side of the Head. By Roger Von Oech. By Dr. Roger Von Oech, I believe. He has a PhD. [NLH—Yes.]

    And one of the things he points out all the time is that one of the things—the book’s about creativity. And about—the premise of the book is, anybody can be creative. The reason you’re not creative is not a lack of the ability to be creative, but the fact that you sort of censor yourself. That you create rules that you then won’t break.

    And that a lot of creativity is recognizing your own rules, and figuring out when it’s okay to break them. And I think the subtlety rule is another one of these rules that you’re sort of taught, of “Oh, oh, don’t be blunt, don’t be blunt, don’t be blunt,” and what you sort of gets lost over is, no no no no. Don’t always be blunt. You know. It’s very easy when you’re starting out to just want to be blunt.

    And you know, I know for example, I had a class in dialogue. I love dialogue, and I took a class all about dialogue. And what the teacher said was, you know, part of what you’re doing in dialogue, when you’re writing dialogue is, you are trying A. to capture how people speak, so it sounds like natural speech. And B. people convey information differently, you know, there’s a way by which people convey information and you should understand it.

    And what he was saying is, that often people don’t come out and say what they think. You know. And a lot of dialogue writing is figuring out how to say something without always just saying it. And so—and I think the same thing is true for any art form.

    I mean, even in game design, you know, that part of, you know, I talk a lot about what games are, are sort of, you’re mentally challenging the game player. That you’re trying to, you know—things aren’t always what they seem, and you have to figure out interesting ways to interact and can you figure out, you know—can you get to the goal within the rules system in a way that might not be the normal way to do it? So in games there’s a lot of pushing people to want to be unorthodox in how they function. And so, from that is this loud messaging of, you don’t want to be too obvious.

    Waterfront BouncerSo let me talk, give some examples where we try to be a little less obvious in Magic, and some problems that we got into. So for example, Mercadian Masques was a set we made many years ago. So Mike Elliott was the lead designer of that. And Mike came up with a couple mechanics.

    UnsummonSo the two main mechanics of the set, one was called “spellshapers.” And spellshapers were creatures that you could essentially—the flavor was, you could turn cards in your hand into a particular spell. So for example, let’s—Waterfront Bouncer, for example, could turn any spell in your hand into an Unsummon. So basically you spent, you know, you spent blue, tap, and discard a card, and now you can Unsummon a creature.

    And so the idea essentially is the card said, “Oh. Well, I can turn any card in your hand into this card.” That’s the sort of flavor. But we ended up using a creature type for them, they were all spellshapers, but that was the way we signified them. We didn’t mark it in any way. We didn’t say, you know, we didn’t give it an ability word or anything, we just—they could do that. And they all did a similar thing, they all were spellshapers.
    Cateran OverlordRamosian Sky Marshal 
    Then, he also had a mechanic—recruiting? I’m not sure what it got called. It didn’t have an official name, part of the problem. And there were rebels and there were mercenaries. Rebels were white, mercenaries were black.

    What rebels did was the one-drop rebel got you the two-drop rebel got you the three-drop rebel. And in mercenaries, the three-drop mercenary got you the two-drop mercenary got you the one-drop mercenary. So white went up, black went down, for those that aren’t familiar with Mercadian Masques, up is better than down. The rebels ended up being very, very strong. Mercenaries not so much.

    So we had two mechanics. We had, you know—these were legit mechanics, they were on a whole bunch of cards, they did something new, but for the spellshapers, we just connected them through a creature type, and through the rebels and the mercenaries we connected them through a creature type. So the set had spellshapers, the set had rebels and mercenaries, but there was nothing to sort of call out the mechanics.

    But, I mean, they were there. And they were loudly there. It wasn’t like they were quiet. There were a lot of spellshapers. There were a decent amount of rebels and mercenaries. It was definitely something significant in the deck.

    And the rebels and mercenaries, even, they were linear. They called out, you know, you don’t want to play one rebel or mercenary, you want to play a whole bunch of rebels and mercenaries. So seeing one made you go look for others. Yet, when the set came out, the number one complaint I got was, “Why didn’t you guys make any new mechanics?”

    And at first I was like, “Okay, guys. There’s new mechanics.” And at first, you know, like—I have, boy/girl twins. And so when they were born, you know, we’d have a stroller, and we’d be wheeling them around. And you know, so people would come up to us, and they’d go, “Oh, are those twins?” And we’d go, “Yes, this is Adam, our son Adam, and this is our daughter Sarah.” And then they’d go, “Are they identical?”

    Now, I was taken aback at the time, because I’m like, well, one’s a boy and one’s a girl. They can’t be identical. You know. Identical means you have the same genes, it’s split, so, you know, you have the same genetic makeup so you have to be the same sex to be an identical twin.

    So the first time I heard it, I just, my thought process was, “Oh, okay, that person, you know, oh, was a little ignorant of what identical twins is. But okay.” And then I kept getting asked. And then finally, when someone sort of—like, it just takes some amount of time before you realize that, oh. I don’t think that the average person knows what an identical twin is.

    Or not—like, you know, that the difference between an identical twin and fraternal twin, for those that don’t know, or [dizygotic], if you don’t want to say fraternal, it has to do with whether there’s one egg or two eggs. Did the egg—did two eggs get fertilized, or did one egg get fertilized and split in two? And if you split in two, they’re identical. The genetics are identical so they’re identical twins. But if there’s two different eggs, there are two different eggs. I mean, they have the same parents, but they’re two different eggs. So, you know, the siblings who look alike are siblings who look alike, but they can look radically different. And in the case of my children, they’re different sexes.

    So there’s a dynamic that happened with Mercadian Masques that also happened with my twins, which is, I finally came to the realization with my twins that like, oh my goodness, a lot less people understand what identical twins means than I thought. I understood it. I assumed everybody understood it.

    And I think Mercadian Masques was a similar quality, that I always assumed that, hey. I’m a game design. I really—I can identify game mechanics really easily. But you know what? That’s not something most people are necessarily good at. And when you don’t label something, that people can miss it.

    And that when we didn’t label—“Oh, spellshaping!” or whatever we wanted to call it, you know, or just give it a name, actually. Spellshaper didn’t even do a great job of communicating. The idea that these peddlers, I guess, they were all sort of street peddlers, were selling you magic. And that you could sort of use that magic to turn your cards into whatever that was. It wasn’t particularly well-conveyed. And like with the rebels and the mercenaries, if we had just given it “recruiting” or something. But the lack of a keyword or ability word made people not see the connection.

    Yavimaya ElderWild DogsOkay. So likewise, here’s another example. Is that in Urza’s Destiny, so Urza’s Saga had cycling. That was one of the mechanics. And so I was trying to do a tweak on cycling. So cycling is, if the card is in your hand, you can discard the card. Pay two, discard the card and draw a card.

    So I made these creatures that, while on the battlefield, you could pay two, sacrifice the creature, and draw a card. So the idea is, oh, it’s cycling from play. Normally, you get rid of the card in your hand, you pay two mana and get rid of the card in your hand, and you get a new card. Here you pay two mana, you get rid of the creature in play.

    And the idea there was, oh, you know, you could block with it and then sacrifice it so the creature remains blocked. Damage was on the stack at this point, so you could do damage on the stack tricks.  But anyway, there was a bunch of different reasons why I might want to trade the permanent I have in play for another card.

    And so anyway, I was really excited because I felt like, oh, this is a neat take on cycling. But, I didn’t label it. I didn’t say that, you know, “Get it? It’s cycling?” I didn’t say, “Cycling from play,” I didn’t do anything. I just did it. And my assumption was, oh, well, you know. Clearly, you’re spending two. And cycling in Urza’s Saga all cost two. You’re spending two generic mana and you’re getting rid of something, a card, and you’re getting a replacement card. You know. It seemed really clear to me.

    And as I started explaining that, every time I would explain it, mostly, I mean a few people got it, but most people were like, “Oh yeah, I didn’t get that.” And it happened again and again, and finally you’re like, oh. Okay. People just—people don’t see—you, the game designer, have a critical eye.

    Like, one of the things that happens all the time in game design is, we make a mechanic that structurally is similar to another mechanic. But flavorfully and gameplay-wise is very different. But what happens is, because we tend to look at things through the lens of the mechanics, things will seem really similar to us, because we’re like, “Well, that’s just this without the trapping.”

    And what we’ve learned is that the public sees it in its final form. They see with all its flavor. They see it in its synergy with things around it. And that you can have two mechanics that kind of in a vacuum play in similar space. But you dress them up a little differently, have different flavor, put them in different environments, and have different synergies, and the audience doesn’t see them as remotely similar. That that’s something that we tend to do.

    Likewise, for example, this example doesn’t just go to mechanics, but those (???). So let’s talk about stories for a second. So for a while, we were trying to sort of, not, sort of spoil the story on the cards. So we sort of would like, subtly hint at things. You know.

    So for example, in Theros, at the end of the story, Elspeth—spoilers here, if you haven’t read the Theros story, but it’s been a while. Elspeth dies. Dies at the hand of Heliod.

    But we didn’t want to spoil the book, so like we—the set was sort of, like, very vague on it. We weren’t obvious about it. You know. And so what happened was, you know, I mean now we have a novel, so if you read the novel, the novel told you what happened. Or novella I think, for Theros. But what happened was, we were subtle about it. We weren’t very blatant, especially in the card set, that Elspeth died.

    And then what we learned was, people just didn’t understand that Elspeth died. That we were just, like, you know, that what we learned is, when we sort of hold back on the story and we’re not blunt on the story, that people, like—that’s a pretty major thing that happened. The main character ended the story by dying. And the majority of people didn’t know it. You know. The majority of people, like, when I would bring it up, people were like, “Well, what did you mean?” “Well, yeah, she got killed by Heliod.” “What are you talking about?” You know.

    And that really made us sort of rethink. I mean, a lot of the modern storytelling—and I mean, obviously there’s amounts of how blunt you want to be. But a lot of things we try to do with storytelling now is be a little more up front and make sure that people get at least the general—the idea is, let’s not be subtle in you getting the general gist of the story.

    Let’s be subtle on some of the details. You know. It’s not that—like, I want you to know that Chandra reunites with her mother. Hey, the subtle—what are the emotions she’s feeling? Hey, go read the stories. But I want you to know that Chandra and her mother, you know, got reunited. You know, we put it on a card, and like, look, they got reunited! You know. It’s a cathartic moment. They got reunited. You know, that we want to make sure that big moments and things that happen, that you’re aware of it.

    So the—a different way to think of this, as we talk about today, is that—I’ll bring back the metaphor I had before. So you have a toolbox. Your—you know, one of the things I like to say is you as an inventor, as a game designer, as a craftsman of whatever, you have a bunch of tools available to you. And one of the things I’ve learned over time is that what separates a good artist, game designer, whatever, from a great one often has to do with their tools.

    That what happens with somebody who’s really good is—you know, and for example. One of the things they say is, if you want to be a writer, read. If you want to be a director, go see movies. You know. If you want to be a game designer, play games. And why is that so important?

    Because the more games you play, the more things you experience, the more tools that you learn, the more apt you are. That—I mean, I think there are a bunch of things that define how good you get to become. One of those things is experience. You’ve tried things. You know what I’m saying? Like, essentially, there’s three things I think that bring wisdom if you will.

    One is experience. Have you done it? You know, like one of the reasons I think I’m a pretty good Magic designer is I’ve done twenty-one, you know, almost twenty-two years of Magic design. I’ve been designing Magic cards continually for that long. That means I’ve made a lot of Magic cards. I’ve made thousands and thousands and thousands of Magic cards.

    In fact I’ve made thousands of Magic cards that see print. And like I said, one in a hundred cards sees print. So, you know, if I have thousands of cards that saw print, that means I’ve designed hundreds of thousands if not millions of cards. I’ve designed a lot of Magic cards. I’ve made a lot, a lot of Magic cards. Some of which were really bad. But the experience of making them taught me a lot. There was a lot that came from the know-how of doing it.

    Number two, there is knowledge. That part of what makes you better is you learn things. Part of the things, for example, when I’m teaching other people is, I have a great repository o knowledge in my head. That comes from just doing this job for a long time. You know, when someone says, “Let’s try Thing X,” I go, “Oh, yeah, I’ve tried Thing X. Here’s what we learned.” You know. That I have a lot of lessons in my head, I mean, part of that is experience, and part of that is just, I’ve learned things

    Now, they go hand in hand, experience brings you knowledge, you know another thing also is, part of knowledge is just you’ve thought about things. I’ve made a lot of different sets that did a lot of different things, that have made me think about Magic in a lot of different ways. So I’ve learned a lot about Magic. There’s a lot of knowledge gained there. So number two is knowledge.

    Number three, and this is what I’m talking about today, is tools. That one of the things that really makes you valuable is learning, you know, whether it be little tricks, it be little means by which you can do things, like one of the things for example I find when I’m teaching young designers, or newer designers, is there’s a lot of stuff I’ve tried that has worked and I can share that. You know. I can share, sort of, “Hey, here’s a thing that you can do. Here’s something that’s available to you.”

    And so if you want to get better, if you want to become a better game designer, those are the three things that you need to think about. You know. You need to—so when I say experience, experience is, make games. Design games. The more games you’ve designed, the better you’ll get at making games. You want to be a writer? Write. You want to be an artist? Draw. That there’s nothing going—nothing is going to replace the act of doing it and iterating and learning from it.

    Number two, like I’ve said. You want to be a game designer, play games. Read about games. Study games. I know Richard Garfield, for example, not only does he play every game he can get his hands on, he has studied the history of games. In fact, he’s taught a class on the history of games.

    Like, how exactly did chess come about? How did backgammon come about? How did checkers come about? You know. What are games that—you know, or mancala. There are games that have lasted thousands of years.

    And the interesting thing is, chess as you know it was not always chess. There are things that are in chess now that weren’t always agiven. And, there are precursors to chess. Chinese chess and a lot of other chess variants that are similar but different. And when you sort of study and look and say, hey, how did this game evolve, you the game designer start to, (???), “Oh. That is interesting. That’s interesting they did this.” You know.

    And so something that Richard has done, you know, and that I say to anybody is, hey. You want to be good at the thing you’re good at. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s games or whatever. But study that thing. You know.

    I, for example, wanted to do great TV shows. I watched a lot of TV. I really wanted to understand how things clicked and how they worked. And, you know, I was fascinated—I really, really liked pilots. A pilot is the first show of the series that introduces the characters and the premise of the series.

    And pilots are really hard to do, because you have to both introduce everything, while showing an example of what a sample episode would be like. And I really, really—before I got this job, the thing I thought I wanted to do with my life was make TV pilots. I really loved the idea of crafting a world and making a world, and then finding sort of how you introduce that world. And there was a period of time where I would watch every pilot I could get my hands onto.

    I, in fact, there’s a—at the Writer’s Guild of America, which is a guild I’d later join when I became a professional writer, they have a library that anybody could use, not just guild members. And you can watch videos. And I went in and I watched every pilot I can get my hand onto.

    And it didn’t matter whether I was interested in the show or not. What I wanted to see—I was particularly interested in—I mean, I watched both hourlong and sitcom. I was very interested in sitcom. But anyway, I watched both. And like—how do you introduce stuff? How do you learn stuff? What are the tricks?

    And so I educated myself. I got a lot of knowledge. I also did a lot of writing. And same with game design. Before I worked for Wizards, I made a lot of games, I read about games. Now, there weren’t a lot of books about game design at the time. But I found the stuff I could, I read the stuff I could. I went to—GAMA is a convention, a game manufacturer’s association. And there were seminars in game design, and I went and I took seminars in game design. I talked to professional people. You know. I acquired all the knowledge I could.

    Third thing was tools. And what that is, is, A. In gathering the knowledge and playing other games and stuff, you know—like, one of the most valuable things about playing other games is seeing how they do things. How they solve problems. And what I say is not just play the game, but think about how the game ticks. Think about what makes it work. What is the engine that drives the game? What is the fun of the game? How does the game make you—you know, like, all the lessons, all the other lessons I’m giving you through this series, like, look at existing games and see how they do it. You know.

    And, you know, usually games, you can tell if they’ve lasted the test of time, you know, and play some of the classics. And try to understand, okay, why’d they do what they do? Why they do this, why they do that.

    And, it’s also fine, something I like to do, is say, hey. Is there some place I—you know, some way—I mean, always play the original and understand the original. And then go, hey, is there some way I can adapt it? Could I take this game and add a few rules and maybe, you know, do something to the game that might make the game more fun for me? You know, experiment with it.

    And so the reason that I, when I talk about bluntness is, I believe bluntness is a very important tool that people are kind of trained not to use. And the funny thing is, when you start out, it’s one of the most popular tools you use. Beginners are incredibly blunt.

    And what happens is, this is gonna sound a little weird, but you want to be not too blunt with your blunt brush. You want to figure out where you need to be blunt. So when I say, “Don’t be afraid to be blunt,” I’m not saying that bluntness is the answer. I am not saying that every problem is a nail. But I am saying that it’s a hammer, and that at times you’ll have nails, and when you need to pound nails in, you know, a hammer is a good thing to have.

    And it is really easy. So I did a podcast talking about, don’t do things to prove you can. A very common thing I see people doing is they somehow pooh-pooh the tools. And go, “Oh, that’s not the tool of a real artist.” You know. “A real artist is not blunt, so I will never use the blunt hammer.”

    And what I find is, when you get experience and you get knowledge, you start to realize that there are tools that you often write off early on. That there are tools that you’re like, it’s not—when and how you are blunt is not something that should be done lightly. You know. Interestingly, that I’m not saying to be blunt I how you use your bluntness. I’m saying use it carefully. That it is surgeon’s tool, and you want to figure out the place to do it. So let me talk through the most common reasons why you might want to use the blunt hammer.

    Number one is, and this a good example from my Rise of the Eldrazi story, when you try things and your audience just isn’t getting it. When you try stuff—and what I say is, it’s fine to start from a subtle place, I have no problem saying, okay, let’s not hit them over the head, let’s try be a little subtler about it, but do playtests. Watch.

    And this is why it’s so important to playtest with people that aren’t you and your team. You need to playtest with people that don’t know your game. And ideally aren’t emotionally invested in you. Because there are things that are obvious for you because you’ve been playing around with it, that there’s no way for you to see whether it’s something that people will understand or not.

    And so the reason that playtests are so important is that you need to constantly be testing. Do people get this? Does it make sense to them? Do they understand it? And so a common theme you will find in these kinds of playtests is, players just miss something.

    And like my example with Mercadian Masques or Urza’s Destiny or even my twins, it is so easy when somebody makes a mistake to just gloss—like, “Wow, that was a weird mistake. I wonder why they made that mistake.” And then what you have to say is, whenever anybody makes a mistake, you have to say, “Oh, could this be a mistake a lot of people would make?”

    And you can’t use your value judgment. You know too much. Yes, I get that spellshaping is a mechanic. And yes, I understand how a mechanic works. And yes, I understand the mechanics of what—how you define a mechanic. And under any definition, yeah, this is a mechanic. But, people didn’t see it. You know.

    Urza’s Destiny. Cycling from play. Look, there’s so many reasons, there’s so many parallels why it is exactly cycling from play. And if I said to somebody, “Hey, why don’t you design a card that cycles from play?” they would make the exact same card. But the point is, that doesn’t mean they see it. You know. Being obvious, or being sort of direct in how you do something doesn’t mean people see it.

    So, number one tool for bluntness is, when people aren’t seeing something, sometimes what that means is, you’ve got to put it in their face. That you don’t want your audience just missing things. So it’s okay when you test and iterate and they’re not seeing things, it’s okay to use it.

    The other reason you might want to use the blunt hammer is sometimes misdirection. That sometimes what you want is—like, I used to do magic as a kid, like actual, you know, predistita—uh—magic tricks. I’m missing my word I want. [NLH—Prestidigitation.] You know, making, pull a rabbit out of a hat and stuff.

    And one of the things that I learned in that is, a lot of the tricks of magic is sort of pulling focus. Is making people pay attention to your left hand when your right hand’s doing something. And a lot of the tricks I learned there was that you want to make sure people are looking in the wrong place. So bluntness sometimes is a great way to make people look in the wrong place. So sometimes, when you want to mislead, bluntness can be a tool to help people mislead.

    Another thing is, when you have a sequential issue, when you need to build on something, sometimes you need to be blunt, not because people won’t eventually figure it out, but they need to figure it out really fast, because there’s things that build up on it, that if they don’t understand that fast, they won’t build upon it.

    So sometimes bluntness is just for ordering. To make people do things in a certain order. That the things you need to find the earliest, you’re the bluntest with. And so, you know, that is the—you know, like I said. There’s a lot of ways to use the bluntness hammer. There’s a lot of different tools you can use it with.

    And like I said. It runs the spectrum from, “Your audience isn’t getting something,” to “You’re using it as a means to make people focus (???) for some reason of how you’re doing your design. And you know, the walkaway—I’m almost to school today. The walkaway today is that you need to makes ure that you have every tool available to you. You want a full toolbox.

    And the reason this one got called out for a specific lesson, there’s lots of tools, and (???) for example, I write a bunch of Nuts and Bolts articles  where I talk about how to make Magic sets, and in there I talk about all sorts of tools. Like, the design skeleton for example is a tool that we use in Magic design to sort of plot out what we’re going to do. And a lot of what I teach people, I like to teach people the tools.

    The reason I bring this one out, and the reason this had a whole lesson to it is, I am fighting something—there are lessons you learn early on in any sort of creative endeavor that you later must unlearn. Like, one of the things for example when I was a writer is, in school, they really pull a lot of common speech out of you. That you’re taught to write really formally when you’re taught writing.

    And then one of the things as you start to study communications, is going, oh oh oh, these things you learn early on actually aren’t 100% true. That a lot of good communication is being more casual in how you present things.

    Same with math. There are certain math concepts that they just teach you, like, “This is just true.” And then you get to higher math and they go, “Well, it’s not completely true.” And the reason is, early on, sometimes you need to learn things, and then unlearn them later on. And I think the bluntness rule is one of those things that when you’re first starting out, because beginners are so blunt, that you are taught to sort of not be so blunt.

    And so this is an advanced lesson that says, okay, one of the first things you learn is don’t be so blunt. And now what I’m saying is, well, wait a minute. Bluntness is a tool. You can use that tool. Figure out where and when and how to use it, use it effectively, use it to—use it on purpose. But, you know, be very careful with when and how you use it.

    But don’t throw it away. Don’t abandon the tool. It’s an important and valuable tool. And there are just times when you need to convey the things you need to convey, or your players just aren’t getting it, or whatever. You know, you have some reason that you need eyeballs on something. And it’s a great tool to get the eyeballs there. You know, that it is okay, in the right place at the right time, to force your players’ hand. And that, my friends, is lesson number fourteen. Don’t be afraid to be blunt.

    But anyway, I’m here at Rachel’s school. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking Magic, it’s time for me to be making Magic. I’ll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.
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