9/23/16 Episode 368: Twenty Lessons, Part 7--Making It Personal

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 daughter off at camp again.

Okay. So today is another in my series, Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons, based on the GDC speech I gave about the twenty things, or twenty of the things I’ve learned in twenty years of designing the same game. So I’ve done six podcasts so far. So this is number seven.

So the lesson today I’m going to talk about is, allow the ability to make the game personal. Okay. So let me explain—allow the ability to make the game personal. So let me explain. So, first, I always gave an example. So let me tell my little example story to begin with.

Okay. So this example takes place on a plane to Gen Con. So for those that aren’t aware, Gen Con is a convention. A game convention—every year, usually in the summer. Once upon a time it used to be in Milwaukee, now it’s in Indianapolis. But anyway, it’s in the Midwest, and it’s probably the biggest gaming convention in the United States.

Anyway, I was on the plane with a man named Chris Rush. Who, sadly, died just a few months ago, I did a whole podcast on him. [NLH—Not transcribed.] If you want to listen, know more about him, please listen to my podcast. I talked all about him, wonderful man. Probably best known for being the artist of Black Lotus. He illustrated a whole bunch of cards, he worked at Wizards for a while. He also was responsible for making the mana symbols. He did the graphic design on the mana symbols with Jespers Myrfors. Who was the original art director.

So anyway, Chris and I were on a plane, we both at the time worked for Wizards, and so back in the day, Wizards of the Coast used to send a lot of people to Gen Con. Like a good chunk of the company. And I was part of the good chunk of the company, as was Chris.

So as we were flying, we were seated next to each other, and we (???) started talking, Chris and I were friends. And so Chris said to me that he had an idea that he couldn’t get any traction on. But he wanted to share with me because it was obviously a cool idea. And his idea was, what if we took basic lands, and then did something different with them? Because he was like, look. Everyone knows what a basic land does. It doesn’t need to be—you know, right now they look pretty plain. He says, we could jazz them up a little bit.

So his idea was, what if instead of just keeping the art to a little box, the whole card could be art? Because there wasn’t a lot you needed to convey on a basic land to convey that it was a basic land. What if you just made full art basic lands? That was his idea.

And he had pitched the idea to a bunch of people, and the responses he got is, look, that’s not what basic lands are. That’s not what Magic is. That’s not how Magic cards look. And he really tried to do it. I mean—and I can listen when he talked, and he had real passion in it. And it really sounded like a cool idea. But he couldn’t get any traction on it, he couldn’t get anybody to do it.

But it turns out, about a year later, I was working on Unglued, which is—Un-sets kind of are—they were silver-bordered, they weren’t meant for tournament play. And they kind of broke rules. So I decided—one of the things I decided when I made Unglued was I really wanted a lot of different kinds of things in it.

I had been inspired by a deck—I used to do magic. Not the game of Magic but actual magic tricks as a kid. And there was a deck I had bought which just had a lot of neat cards in it. Like a three and a half of clubs. Or a black queen of hearts. Or half the card was the jack of diamonds, the other half was the king of diamonds. Just weird cards. And the idea was, hey, I’m not quite sure what you’re going to do with this, but you could go do fun Magic tricks. These are just weird, quirky things that you could do fun things with. And I got inspired by that when I was making Unglued, just having a lot of cool, weird things.

And so one of my ideas was, I wanted to do some basic lands. And the idea was, basic lands would not be normal basic lands. So when I was thinking of what to do with them, I remembered Chris’s idea. And I said, oh, that sounds like fun, and look. This is a part that’s all about breaking taboos and doing crazy things, so I’m gonna do it.

And nobody really stopped me, because when Chris was trying to do it, he was trying to introduce it into normal Magic and people are like “Hey, that’s not normal Magic.” But when I was trying to do it, it was a crazy, wacky idea, people go, “Ehh, okay, it’s a crazy, wacky idea.” So no one stopped me.

So I made them in Unglued and they were really popular. Really, really popular. So I put them in Unhinged next time we did an Un-set, again, really, really popular. So then we were working on Zendikar, and Zendikar—original Zendikar—had a land theme. And so the idea was, well, maybe—people really loved it in normal Magic, what if we finally brought full-art lands to black-bordered Magic? And people were like, okay—we had a theme that was land-centric, and maybe it would be cool if the land looked a little different. So we put them in Zendikar, huge hit. And then when we returned to Zendikar, Battle for Zendikar, huge hit. We put them back in.

But anyway, the lesson here is, I think that if you actually look, one of the things that’s interesting is, over the years we’ve  made a lot of different basic lands. You know, we made basic lands. We did for a while these lands, the guru lands that were special art that were really cool, we did lands set in actuallocations from around the world. We had done all sorts—and every set also does just radically different basic lands. That, you know, they might say “Islands” on them, but they look so different from world to world.

And in fact, we’ve even gotten metaphorical. Like, the Plains—the Plains of Ravnica are buildings. It’s not even a traditional plain. But there are no traditional plains. So we had to sort of think metaphorically. You know, on the city world, what are the Plains?

And so one of the things that’s really neat is that what we realized with basic lands is that we really—people really enjoy the basic lands. Which is a fundamental part of the game. But the idea that we’d give them so many choices and people embrace that choice really hammers home this theme.

Of how much—like, one of the key things, one of the things that really makes Magic tick is, the person playing the game has a lot of say into the game. You actually pick what cards go in your deck. And not only do you pick what cards go in your deck, you pick exactly which card goes in your deck. That even the basic land, you know, if you’re going to put Island in your deck, you have lots and lots of choices of Island. You have hundreds of choices of what to put for your basic land. Including, like I said. These full art lands that are really popular that players really like.

And so one of the things that’s an interesting lesson there is, I think the reason that Chris got shot down was there was this idea of, well, that’s not—you know, there’s some expectations of what something is, and if we do something a little bit different, oh, well, that won’t meet expectations. But we found the opposite to actually be true in Magic. That one of the cool things about Magic is, we let people make a lot of decisions. And that choices, I’ve learned, are a key part of the game.

So let me click in now to talk about some—I swear we’ll come back around. So when I was in school, I went to Communications school, Boston University, and one of the things we had to take—so, in the Communications field, there were three different forms of study. I was in Broadcast and Film, but there also was Journalism, and there was Advertising/Public Relations. So three sections.

And the way the Communications school worked is, you had a major. I was a Broadcast and Film major. But you still had to take classes in the other sections to sample them. Because you didn’t actually take your major I guess until the end of your sophomore year. So they made you sample before that, so you get a sense of, oh, what’s broadcast and film like? What is mass communications like? What’s advertising like? What’s journalism like?

So I had taken classes in advertising. So one of the most interesting things I learned in my advertising class, and this is one of the neat things, they say a lot of creativity is just learning different things in different fields, and finding how things can apply across fields. I mean, for those that had never listened, I did an article on this and then a podcast onit, talking about how I believed creativity is finding intersections between—finding connections to things that the average person doesn’t see the connections.

But anyway, so I was taking an advertising class, and they were talking about how advertising works. Just the psychology of advertising. So it’s—all of advertising is based on this quirk of the human brain. Which is, if you’re standing in a grocery aisle, and you have to make a decision. You’re trying to pick something out. And it’s not a product you have any experience with before. You’re just trying to pick something for the first time. What are you most likely to pick?

And the answer is, the product you’ve heard the most of. Okay. Why is that? And the answer is, this is a quirk of the human brain. People associate familiarity with quality. I mean essentially what happens is, if you know something, you assume there’s a reason to know it. And because you know it you assume that means something. And the meaning that you have, you assume that that means that it has value because  you know it.

And so one of the quirky things about how the brain works is that if I’m looking at stuff, if I’m looking at an aisle and I see things, well the product that I know, I go, oh, I’ve heard of that, oh, that must be good. That product, I’ve never heard of. Oh, that can’t be good. I’ve never heard of it. That product, I’ve heard of. Oh, it must be good. And the idea is, in the (???) of other data, without any other data to do, the human assumption will fall to, my familiarity is equal to some sort of quality. Because the fact that I know it must mean something. And that you prioritize things you know vs. things you don’t know.

Now, on a big, I don't know, evolutionary scale, it makes some sense, that, you know, you tend to lean towards things you’re familiar with vs. things you’re not familiar with. And it would make sense that if I’m buying a product and I never heard of it before, but you know, one of them I’ve heard of, I go, I guess I buy the one I’ve heard of.

But it’s more—it’s a stronger feeling than people realize, of how important having something you know means to you. And why do I bring that up? Because one of the things that’s key is—I talk all the time, and this is the caveat is, if someone plays my game, how do I get them to play a second time? That’s the big break point I always talk about. Is someone’s going to play your game for the first time, okay. How—I mean, now there’s a big issue of how you can get them to play the first time, which we’ll get to in some later lessons, but okay. Someone plays your game. How do they—what about the game makes them want to stick with the game?

And the answer is that the more the game is about something they understand, the more the game is about something that speaks to them, the more attached they’ll get to the game. Familiarity will equal quality in their head. But how do you do that? And the key to doing that is, you want to provide a lot of choices. Because the answer is, you don’t know what matters to people. You don’t know what people care about. It’s not like everybody cares about the same thing. So the trick here is, you can’t just do one thing. It’s not like, well, everybody will just know Thing X. They might not know Thing X.

So the trick is, what you want to do is provide a lot of choices and then let your audience have some ability to customize it. So that they can find the things that are familiar to them and choose them. And then, if they pick things that are familiar, once again, they’ll click in the game and go, oh, this is familiar, I’m comfortable, and I will equate quality to it.

And I know on some level this seems silly, but psychology is really, really important. If you learn nothing else from listening to my podcast is, your audience. Like, I talked (???) about knowing your audience. Well, your audience is humans. And the human brain functions in a certain way. And part of a lot of my lesson is understanding how humans function, and as a designer taking advantage of the fact that that’s how it works.

So one of the things we know is how important comfort is. I always talk about comfort, surprise, and completion. Well, how important comfort is. Comfort is so important because people want to have a grounding. And the way you do that, the way you do that in a game is, I mean, there’s a bunch of different ways, I talk about resonance and other things.

But one of the key things is, if you give them a bunch of choices, and let them choose. Let them bring something to—like, let them—because one of the things that’s neat about it is, what I want to do is create a positive experience. How do I do that? Well, I acknowledge the fact that my player has a lot of agency. And the more agency you give them, the more you’re able to say, hey. You control your own fate and you can drift toward the things you like, the more you do that, the more you line up that it will mean something to them. That there will be a personal quality to it.

And now there’s a couple different things here. In fact, let me—one is, you increase the chance of them getting a comfortable, knowledgeable thing. You increase them being able to take something that means something to them and bring it to the game. But the second thing, this is also important is, that there is a lot of attachment that comes from you getting to make decisions and realizing that your decisions have an impact.

One of the big things that I talk about in Magic, but this is true in other games is, you want a sense of ownership. You want a sense of “I brought something to the—I brought part of me to this game.” And I’ll get more into this as we get into some other lessons. But this is very key to choice. Which is, why is choice so valuable? Why is choice so important?

Because choice does a bunch of really interesting things. First and foremost, I just talked about this, is choice allows the player to be comfortable. It allows them to choose things that resonate with them and mean something to them. That’s important. Okay? The second thing it does, though, is it lets them put a touch on it that feels as if—I mean, this is a reoccurring theme you’ll see in the next bunch of lessons. But you want your player to have ownership on the thing that they are playing with. You want them to feel connected to it.

And that there’s a big difference—like, one of the things that Magic does and does really really well is, when you play a game of—I’ll just use Monopoly. You play a game of Monopoly. There are decisions to make in the game of Monopoly, and there are things that you can do, there’s choices you can make. And Monopoly definitely lets you make choices.

But the one thing Magic does that’s a little different than that is, Magic lets you define the game you are playing. It lets you make choices that—for example, the deck you are playing is from cards you have chosen. You know, if you play Monopoly, I’m playing on a Monopoly board. I can choose which Monopoly board, you know, I have some choice of which Monopoly I play, I guess. And when I’m playing Monopoly, I could choose what I buy and what I don’t buy to some extent. I mean, I have to land on it, but I might go, oh, yeah, yeah, I want this one. I’m waiting for that one. Whatever. I have a little bit of customization.

But what Magic does really really well is, it says, you choose what you want to do. You want to make an elf deck? Make an elf deck. You want to make a black deck that makes the opponent discard, and—whatever you want to do, you have a lot of say in what you want to do.

Now, obviously, some people prioritize winning over everything else, and so those decisions pull them in a certain direction. But other people might value flavor over other things. They just want to have fun, and it’s not about having the most powerful deck, but having the deck that speaks for them and feels like theirs.

So one of the key things of giving choices is you allow your player to sort of make a closer emotional bond with what they’re doing. So choices are very important there in that they allow them to make the bond. They allow them to really connect to themselves.

And this goes back, like one of the things I talk a lot about when I talk about choice, when I say, okay, your game needs choice, what I’m saying at the core is, what you want to do is you want to make sure that you’re maximizing your player experience. Right? Like, at the end, if I play game one, at the end of the game, I say to myself, okay. What positive things did I get out of this? How much fun was this game? How much did I enjoy the game? How much did the game speak to me? How much did the game resonate on an emotional level for me? Last lesson was all talking about how you want to find the emotion.

Well, part of finding the emotion is making sure that the player has the agency to push in the direction that means something to them. Something Magic does very well. That if I want the game to be about something light and silly, well, I choose the light and silly cards. If I want it to be very mean and lean and, you know, very serious, I could choose that.

In fact, one of the things that I—like, Magic has a color wheel. It’s five colors, and each color represents something that’s very distinctly different. I think that’s a big part of what makes Magic Magic. Because there’s a lot of different opportunities to express yourself. There’s a lot of different ways to sort of—in what you choose.

And just choosing a color—one of the things we find is when you go to beginners in Magic, one of the first decisions we make you do is we say, okay. Pick a color. Now, later on you can pick another color, you can pick more than one color, I mean there’s—it’s not as if you—but, but, when people first start playing, it’s a nice clean choice to start making. Okay, there’s five choices, there’s five colors. Each color means something. And then, okay. Well, which speaks to me?

And this is a thing I’ll keep coming back to, is your goal is not to take your game and make your player adapt to your game. Your goal is to take your game and figure out how your game can adapt to your player.

So once again. Think of it this way. Your player comes invested in things. I talked about them being pre-loaded, right? That they come and they care about—there’s things they care about. Now, part of making your game an experience that people want to play is something about—something that already speaks to them is in your game. That’s why I talk about resonance being so important. But in general it’s like, “I like Thing X. Ooh, this game has Thing X.”

So something that Magic does very well, and other games can do well, is to say, okay. I’m going to have a lot of different things. And I’m going to let my audience pick and choose what they want. That way, let’s say you love elves. Let’s say you love, love, love, love elves. Elves are awesome. I love elves. Elves are great. You know. I love Lord of the Rings. I love Keebler cookies. I love—whatever. I just love elves. Right? I love Santa. I love elves.

Well, guess what. Magic has elves. You can make an elf deck. You can do that. You can build it. And in fact, if you go back in time, if you’re willing to look at all the history of Magic, you know, elves are centered in green but we have over the years made white elves, we’ve made blackelves, you know, there’s other choices of elves you can mix. It’s not even a mono-green deck. If you’re really doing all the history of elves.

Likewise, let’s say you love dragons. Let’s say you love being sneaky, or let’s say you love just overrunning your opponent with some goofy little thing. All of these are options for you. And the idea is, by giving you choices, what we let you do is we let you sort of push in the direction that you want to go.

The other thing that’s nice is, this is another thing about choices is, you don’t want to overwhelm your player with choices. What you want to do is give them simple choices, and keep giving them what I call nestled choices.

Like Magic first says, okay, hey hey. What color do you want to play? Pick a color. That’s the first thing you have to decide. And early in Magic, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to (???) too much. When you first start playing, oh, you’re playing a red deck? Like that’s very common, when I see—if you ask somebody what they play, and they tell you by color, that’s a sign of a beginner. “Oh, I play a red deck.” Which is great, there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just a nice simple way to play.

Now, as you get more invested in the game and more understanding, okay, there’s a lot more detail than just a red deck. In Magic we have what we call archetypes, which are kinds of decks you can play. Right? So, you know, when you’re playing a red deck, oh, are you playing a burn deck? Am I using direct damage to my opponent’s face to try to do that? Am I making a goblin deck? Am I playing a lot of little tiny goblins? You know, what am I doing? What kind of deck am I making?

So as you graduate it up, you can go deeper. And that’s what I talk about nestled choices, which is, make sure when you give someone a choice, that you have a simple, clean group of choices to pick from. You want your choices to be very distinct.

What is bad is if your choices are too narrow in their decision-making. Like, what you don’t want to do is say, well, these are almost the same, but they’re just different by a little tiny bit. You know. It’s sort of like, you don’t want to say, make a choice, but the choices to a beginner will seem like the same thing. That’s bad. You want your choices to be clean and clear and deliberate. You know.

Okay, like one of the things, like Magic cards do a good job. There’s five things to choose from, but they are really distinct. No one’s confusing one color for another. They’re very distinct from each other.

Now, five is a lot. You don’t always need five. Two works. But the key is, so choice not only allows customization, but it also allows agency. Let me explain this a little bit. So when I say to you, okay, you get to do something, and early on in gaming—that you want to let your players have choice very early on. Because one of the things that choices do is they feel like they are now involved in the game. They have some impact on the game.

That one of the things when you make a game, you want your audience feeling invested in it. Well, how do people get invested in something? Why are they invested in something? They’re invested in something, and once again, this is human psychology. The more that something is something you have been involved in, the more connected you get to it.

You know, I look at things I’ve done, and the more connected to something, the more personal I feel it is. And that the more connected you are to something, the more importance you connect to it. That you equate things you are involved in with importance. Just like things you know, that—people essentially, a lot of how we value things has to do with how they affect us.

So let’s say for example I’ve worked really hard on something, well, I’m really proud of that thing. For example, my job. I make Magic sets. Well, when a Magic set comes out that I worked really hard on, I’m really proud of that. I worked really hard on that. That’s something I put a lot of time and energy on. So I feel very emotionally connected to it.

So games are no different. That if I say to the player, you get no decisions. I will tell you what to do. Okay, they might enjoy the game, I’m not saying they won’t enjoy the game. But if I say to them, “Hey hey, what do you want? Do you want A or B?” And they go, “Ehh, I want A.” “Okay, now do you want C or D?” “Hmm, I want C.” All of a sudden, they are making decisions. And their decision-making now makes the game more personal to them.

Like, one of the things we talk about with Magic decks is that there’s a high level of ownership. That when your deck wins, it’s not just the deck winning, you have won. Because the deck, you have lived and breathed and made this deck. You made decisions. You made choices. You built it. It’s an extension of you.

Way more so than if I said, hey—and for example, in Monopoly, you get to pick a piece. And even that choice. Oh, do you want to be the dog or the car or the thimble or the top hat or—maybe they’re all old pieces. But, oh, I’m always the top hat. I relate to the top hat. The top hat, that’s me. Even little things like that—each choice someone makes, each time someone does something, and then it’s something they can connect to.

Like one of the things for example you’ll look at is traditions. Why do people do traditions? Why is it so important that hey, at every holiday we do Thing X? And the answer is that in some ways, a holiday is just a holiday. And there’s things that come as part of the holiday that just everybody does, and there’s a group community feel to that. But part of it also is, in my family, we do Thing X. It’s something we do.

And it’s funny. Like for example, I’ve had kids, and we’ve introduced stuff to them. And it’s become—so for example, a little story I’ll tell is, every Thanksgiving, my wife’s mother used to come for Thanksgiving. And she would always bring donuts. And the reason was, normally what would happen is, she would take a bus to get to us, and the bus would get to—the place that the bus would take her is in front of a grocery store. And then we would pick her up at the grocery store.

And in the grocery store, she would always go buy something for—you know, she would go in to try to buy something for Thanksgiving. And one time she bought donuts. Just, it was there, it’s easy. And we really liked the donuts. And so she brought donuts again.

Now, there came a point where she got frail enough that it was hard enough for her to come to Thanksgiving. We now go to her. But on actual Thanksgiving day, in the morning, we now buy donuts. It just became a thing our family did. That on Thanksgiving morning we have donuts.

Who knows, it started out of whatever. You know what I’m saying? It didn’t have great meaning per se but it took on a meaning. It was a way to sort of involve Lora’s mother in Thanksgiving even thought she couldn’t be there, it was a way to sort of, this was a tradition that she had started.

Even though the tradition was more her just trying to do something to add to the thing, it became a thing. And now it’s something we do, and there’s a good chance that my kids, when they have Thanksgiving, will have donuts in the morning as they watch the parade, because that’s what you do on Thanksgiving.

And that’s really powerful. I can’t express enough how when you make decisions and that becomes part of something, that becomes part ritual—like, you know, that part of what you’ll notice when you play a game is, there’s certain things that you will do and that becomes part of the game-playing experience to you. And a lot of that comes with choices.

Like I said. What piece you play in Monopoly might seem insignificant. But it really does mean something to some people. Really—that’s part of the experience. “I’m always the top hat. I have to be the top hat. That’s what happens when I play this game.” And that is another great example of the power of choices. And that choice might seem totally inconsequential. What piece are you?

And so when you are building your game, yet another reason that you want to put choices is, you allow people for ritual, you allow people to identify, you allow people to do things that put a stamp on the game.

And trust me. One of the reasons you want people—the more people ritualize, the more people sort of make the game their own. The more they do things in which it has this personal stamp, the tighter the connection. The more the emotional—you know, one of the reasons I talk about things as I walk through our different lessons is that there is a reason behind everything I’m talking about.

And today, a lot of sort of me explaining the choices to you is, there is so much good that comes from choices. There’s so much good. That you want your audience to be able to make it personal, and to allow them to make it personal, you really have to let them customize it. You have to let them sort of add ritual to it. You have to let them sort of lean toward the thing that means something to them. You know.

And part of this I sort of say again and again is, a lot of people want to try to figure out, what’s “the thing”? And the answer is, there’s not always “the thing”. A lot of times what there is is, there’s many things, and that, you know, the more you can make your game something to many different people.

Like, one of the things that’s fun is, I love going to gaming conventions, and walking around the floor in like the gaming room, and watch other people play games. It is very illuminating to watch other people play a game you know.

And the reason is that there’s a lot of personification that goes in a game. There’s a lot of, you know, “This is how I play the game.” You know, we talk a lot about house rules. About how, well, here’s a rule we added. And when we play, we do this thing.

And I always encourage house rules. I always encourage—hey, when you play, make it the game you want to play. It’s okay. If the game did something, and it wasn’t quite what you wanted, you can push it in the direction you want. I mean, obviously just trying what the creator meant, so you understand it, because sometimes, look, they spent a lot of time and energy trying to make the game the best they can, they might actually know better than you, so try that. But if you do try that and go, “You know what? I actually like this thing.”

I adapt games all the time. You know, I try it like intended, and then go, you know what? For me, this little change will make me happier. And that a lot of making your game personal is building that into your game, of saying, okay. I want to make sure—people can adapt games, and real game players will put house rules in anything. But don’t rely your game on people being willing to step outside the game to make decisions. Some will, but that’s not everybody. That you want to make sure the customization falls within your game, the choices fall within your game. And that you let people lean in a direction they want to lean and make choices they want to make.

Like I said, one of the things you’ll find as I walk through these lessons is it’s not as if each lesson really is the result of one thing. And this is the holistic thing of it. I mean, a lot of what I’m trying to say is—I mean, a lot of what I’m saying today is, figure out how to make your game personal. And the number one way to do that is choices. It’s not the only way, but it is the easiest way. Because you don’t know your end-user as well as your end-user knows your end-user. You know. You know your audience somewhat, but your audience knows themselves much better.

And that if you give them the flexibility—like, if I say to you, here’s a choice to make, you’re going to pick the choice that means something to you. That I, the game maker, don’t need to know—I mean, I need to give you interesting choices. I’m almost to work, so the last point is, when I say choices, I don’t mean choices for the sake of making choices. I mean choices that A. are clear, they’re different from one another, it’s clear what they mean, that when you want people to make choices, it wants to be, okay, they’re radically different from each other, and you can see some ramifications of why it might matter.

And you want to sort of play into choices that you think will speak to people. That will mean something to people. I mean, I’m not saying you can’t let them make inconsequential choices, that’s okay, but that’s not really what’s going to speak to the audience. Make sure you’re making decisions that actually matter to them.

Now, once again. Hey, picking a piece could seem inconsequential and to some people it’s a big deal. So, I’m not saying that you can’t make smaller choices and that’s fine. What I’m saying though, is that you need to make sure that your choices are clear to the audience, they understand the difference between the choices, and that they are meaningful to your audience.

And once again, there’s a range of things. I’m not saying you can’t do small things, because small things can mean big things to people. But make sure that your choices are—A. Don’t overwhelm them with choices. And nest your choices. Don’t make all the choices at once.

So here’s mistakes you can make with making choices. A. Your choices seem too similar to each other, so people can’t tell them apart, B. The person doesn’t understand why they’re making choices, the choices seem meaningless, or C. There’s too many choices and they just get overwhelmed and they clam up. That’s another key thing to remember is, if your choices aren’t clear and simple, you know, if they’re too complex, then people go, I don’t understand. Either I don’t know why I’m making a choice, or I don’t know how to make the choice…

That’s another thing when giving people choices, is making sure you’re not overwhelming them with the choices or being too narrow in what the choices mean so they don’t understand what the difference in the choices are.

And the reason you want to nest is, let them make a choice. Okay, now that they’ve made a choice, okay. Based on that choice, let them make other choices. And the reason that’s much more comforting is that it allows them to make a bunch of choices, but it only gives them choices where it’s relevant to them.

Like if I said, let’s start picking archetypes before I had you start picking color in Magic, well, that would just be harder. Starting with color is nice. It’s simple. The colors really have strong meaning. It really is a key part of the game, you know, the ethos of the game. That’s a great place to start. It’s a wonderful place to start with Magic. When I teach people Magic, it’s the very first thing I have them pick. Because it’s just a nice easy choice.

And it’s full of lots of resonant choices. That’s another thing, by the way. One final thing--I’m getting to work here—is, if your early choices can be, when I say resonant, they have more external decisions to the game. Meaning they rely on things that people don’t need to understand the game to understand. That make your early choices that life has taught them.

Like the nice thing about colors in Magic is, you don’t need to know anything about picking a color. You know, I describe the colors to you, and one of them will speak to you because the colors represent something. And so, do you like being sneaky? Well, maybe you want to be blue. Are you a rule follower? Maybe you want to be white. Do you follow your passions? Maybe you want to be red. That the colors will speak to you, but they speak to you in a general sense.

So that’s important. A lot of your earliest choices need to be something where the audience can make decisions based on previous life knowledge and they don’t have to know a lot about the game to make the decision.

Now, as the game evolves, they can slowly make more and more in-game decisions, but be careful when you’re making the early decisions, you want the earliest decisions to be easy to make and based on people’s own experiences to make the decision.

Okay, but guys, so let me wrap up. So the final point today, I like I said, the lesson today, Lesson #7, is allow the player the ability to make the game personal. You really want the game to speak to the player. And the more personal it is, the more it’s something that means something to them, the greater chance that when the game ends, they go, let’s play that again. This game something to me, it spoke to me, I felt it, I was personal.

Remember, familiarity equals quality in people’s minds. You want people to finish the game and go, that was an awesome game! And probably that was an awesome game because it spoke to them on a personal level. So make sure when you make your game, you give them the opportunity to make it personal, and the first way to do that, we’ll get to more in future podcasts. But the first way to do that is to give you nice, clean, simple choices.

Okay, guys. Well, that wraps up for today. I’m in my parking space. So we all know what that means, it means the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking Magic, it’s time for me to be making Magic. I’ll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.