11/11/16 Episode 383: Twenty Lessons, Part 9--Customization

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 Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons—sorry, Twenty Lessons, Twenty Podcasts series. So this is based on a speech I gave at GDC , talking about twenty lessons I learned in my twenty years making Magic. So we’re up to number nine. So today’s lesson is, allow your players to have a sense of ownership.

Okay. So I always start by giving an example. So my example here is talking about formats. So in Magic, one of the cool things is—I talk about this a lot. That in some ways, we are making tools for a game. Pieces for a game. And we have a rule system and stuff. But people really have a lot of flexibility. And one of the places they have flexibility is in how they play. In the format they play. That there’s a lot of different ways to play Magic.

Now, some of the ways to play Magic, it’s something we have done, for example, Standard is something that we created as a means to let you play not all the cards in Magic, but the more recent cards in Magic. So Standard is the last eighteen months’ worth of cards.

We also created Booster Draft. Which is a means by which you could open up the cards and pick the ones you choose and play them. We have Modern, which is a format that’s a little older than Standard, where you can play—it’s everything from… what is it, from Mirrodin forward I believe? [NLH—Eighth Edition forward.]

So there’s different formats that we make. What we call Vintage and Legacy. These are different formats that along the way we have kind of crafted. But, there’s a lot of formats that you can play that Wizards—we didn’t make.

For example, there’s a format called Emperor, where you have three people—three on three usually, or sometimes it’s five on five. But it’s a multiplayer format, where the center person is the emperor and you have to take down the emperor. But there’s a range of motion of how far you can do. There’s Star Magic where you sit in a circle of five.

One of these days I probably should do a podcast on all the different formats that exist. But there’s a lot of formats. There’s CanadianHighlander and Tiny Leaders and Pauper. Like, Pauper’s a format where you can only play common cards. And these are formats that we didn’t make. Wizards did not make. These are formats that the players put together.  

And the one I talked about in my podcast—sorry, not my podcast, in my speech, was Commander.  That probably is the biggest success of—you know, the biggest success of formats that were generated by the public.

Basically what happened was, there were a bunch of judges at the Pro Tour. And after they were done judging all day, they wanted to play. And they wanted something that allowed them access to, well, most of the cards in Magic, but with some more restrictions. They wanted something that—you know, they were looking for a more casual version of the thing. They wanted multiplayer, they wanted, you know a lot of variety.

And so they came up with this format that originally they called Elder Dragon Highlander. EDH. And the idea was that you picked—originally the reason they called it Elder Dragon Highlander is you picked one of the five Elder Dragons from Legends. So Nicol Bolas being the famous one. There are five of them. They were all shards, if you will. Arcs or shards. 

But anyway, there were five of them. They were three-color. And I think when the format started you picked one of the five Elder Dragon legends. And eventually the rules relaxed a little bit to, okay, just pick any legendary creature you want.

And the idea is, so the way the deck works is, the deck has a hundred cards, you have your one—what we now call a commander [NLH—It used to be called your general], the format—once we started making decks or it, we changed over the name to Commander, so that’s how it’s referred to now. You have commander, which is a legendary creature, and then you have 99 other cards. And the whole format is what we call—what’s it called? Where you only have one of each card. It’s a—obviously, I’m driving so I’m blanking on words. [NLH—Highlander or Singleton.]

So you can only have one of each card. It’s a format in which you’re restricted to one copy of everything. And there’s a hundred cards. So you have your commander and 99 other cards, one of each card. And the idea is, your commander defines what you call your color identity, which is, whatever colors appear on your commander card—not just in the mana cost, but also in the rules text. Look at all the mana symbols that appear, those are your colors.

So if all five colors appear, then it’s a five-color commander. Four, it’s a four-color commander. Although there’s no legendary four-color cards right now. There will be soon. And so the idea is that you get to define sort of what you are, but you have to match your colors in the way you build your deck.

So there’s a lot of restrictions. I mean, one of the things that’s nice about the format is, it’s flavorful, you get to sort of build around a legendary creature, because you only get one of each card, it really forces—it’s a format that forces a lot of diversity because you—you know, it’s hard to sort of make a really consistent deck. You can build around themes, but you have to build around broader themes because of the deck building constructions. And then, because of the color restrictions, it just sort of makes—you know, it really helps restrict what you can and can’t do.

Anyway, Commander was a format created by the judges, and then it slowly built over time. It wasn’t something that we had anything to do with. And then eventually, we—in the summer we tend to make a product that’s just something different, that’s, you know, sort of not a normal—you know, aimed at different sort of audiences.

So one summer, we made Commander decks. And it was so popular that we decided to make that a yearly thing. So we now make Commander decks every year. It’s a yearly product. And Commander has taken off. You know, Commander is one of the most-played formats right now. And it’s by far the most-played format that we had no hand in.

So the reason I bring this up, because, like I said. This lesson is very much about creating a sense of ownership. And so Commander’s a great example—you know, the reason I jump in with this is that it was something that really allowed players to craft and make something their own.

So let me talk about what this lesson is, and why the example of how Commander came to be is so important. So the idea is that I’ve talked in previous lessons about how what you want to do is you want to giveyour players choices, you want to give them details they can focus on, you know, you really want to give them many options for how they’re going to build their deck.

You know, in your game, when you’re making a game you want to make sure that your audience, you know, they have input into it. So I talked about how you want to give them choices so they can make the choices. That’s a very personal thing to make choices. You want to give them access to lots of tiny details so they can find the details that mean something to them. Because, you know, like I said, it’s the little details that make them fall in love.

So today is talking about adding customization. And what that means is that you need to make sure that your game has a system built into it that allows the player some ability to not just choose existing things, but make things that are uniquely their own.

And this is a very important concept. In fact, it’s a whole lesson. That you need to not only let your players choose something, you need to let your players make something. And that’s really crucial.

That you want your players—like, one of the big things is, you—and this is pure human nature. Things that are connected to you mean more to you. Things that you have a hand in shaping, in forming. You know, like one of the things about the artistic process is how personal the artistic process is. That when you make something, there’s just—there’s a very deep connection.

My parallel, for example, is—you know, for anyone who is a parent. You’re very bonded to your kids. You know, you have a big influence. They come from you, you have a big influence in who they are, and there’s a big connection. Your kid accomplishes something, even though they accomplish it, you feel proud because there’s a bond there. That your kids are part of you.

And I think that that’s the same thing within a game, you want players to be able to have components that they personally feel not just is something they chose, but it’s something they made. And that is real crucial.

And so the key there is, you have to figure out how to add customization into your game. That you—and like I said, part of it is the idea of letting people pick things. But part of it goes beyond that. That you want people to be able to make things in such a way that they feel like nobody else has this thing.

And that’s why customization is so important is—it’s important to give them choices, but in the end, any choice they make, other people will make. If they can choose any particular thing, other people can choose that thing. But by letting them have some kind of customization—now, it could be the combination of the choices they make. Like one of the things about Magic is, we make the cards, we don’t let you choose the cards, but we give you a lot of input in how you use the cards.

For example, in Magic you have your deck. You build your deck. And that is something that is a very personal thing. I talk a lot about how Magic on some level, you get to be the game designer. That Magic gives you pieces, but we don’t—whenever I’m asked to describe Magic, people that have never ever heard of Magic before, I often talk about a metaphor I use with Monopoly.

And I always explain that when you sit down to play a normal game, you know, like Monopoly, there’s forty spaces on the Monopoly board. They don’t change. That no matter when I play Monopoly, whether I play now, I play twenty years from now, I play with my friend Bob or my friend Susie, whatever, whoever I am playing that experience with, those forty are a constant. Those are the squares on the Monpoly board. There always will be Park Place. And Boardwalk. And the four railways. And, you know—Baltic Avenue will always be there. That there is some constant to that.

And one of the things that Magic does is it says, okay, when you sit down to play, what is the thing is not a constant. There’s not forty squares that you always play with. In fact, on some level, there’s 120 squares, if you will. I have a sixty card deck, you have a sixty card deck. I mean, you can be larger than sixty, but normally your deck’s sixty. I can have sixty pieces that define our game, you can have sixty pieces that define our game.

But I’m going to pick what my sixty pieces are, you’re going to pick what your sixty pieces are, and so every time we sit down, the board, if you will, is always different. That is something very unique about Magic, that there’s this sense of exploration.

And Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic, really did a good job of putting into the game this component where you have a huge amount of customization. And that’s in A. how you build your deck, and B. as I talked about earlier, how you play. What formats you have. Not only does Magic allow you to craft the deck itself, it allows you to craft the format. And that means we give a lot of credence to the players to make choices, to personalize things, and pick how things are going to be. And that is the crux of today’s lesson is, understand in your game, what about your game is going to make the player take it beyond “This is a thing” to “This is my thing, this is something I had a hand in”?

Now, there’s a lot of different ways to do that. So for example, in video games, something that—I don’t think people think too much about but is really important is, one of the common things they’ll often do in video games is they’ll let you have customization on your avatar. On the character that represents you. That you can pick colors or outfits. You know.

For example, a lot of things you’ll notice is, the idea of like the Miis on the Wii or the player page on like Xbox, or—where there’s a sense that says, something’s going to define you, and we’re going to let you customize the thing that defines you. That is very powerful. Because there’s a big difference between I’m playing a character, and I’m me. Or I have some facsimile of me.

Or I have some facsimile that’s a new identity but it’s something I’ve created. You know. It might not represent me. A lot of people will make their Miis and stuff represent themselves. But sometimes it’s like, I can do whatever. I can be tall and have hair and this and that, and I can do things I can’t normally do. I can make choices I can’t normally make. But I get to make those choices, and I get to make the choices in conjunction with one another.

That—you know, I talked a lot about how choices are important, and this is a larger issue. It’s not just a matter of having choices. It’s a matter of letting people use those choices and combine those choices to makes something that they then get to personify.

And let me stress this, because this is really important. That your game wants to have something that your players feel is theirs and uniquely theirs. Something that they made that on some level represents them. That is their thing. That they did.

Usually what you want for this is you want people to A. have a lot of choices in how to customize, B. have some bond between why that customization—why it’s special and why it is theirs, and you want the ability to continue to customize.

So I’m going to talk a little bit about deckbuilding in Magic, because I think it does a good job of hitting these three points. Number one is, okay. So people have choices. But you then need to give them—you need some restrictions to the choices, meaning part of customization is saying, here’s choices, but here’s the larger goal of what you need to do.

So formats do a good job of this in Magic. Which is, let’s say you want to build a Standard deck. Okay, you want to build a Standard deck, okay, well you have eighteen months’ worth of cards. You don’t have all the cards, there’s a restriction of what cards you can have.

So right off the bat, it says, okay, you have to choose from this sub-selection. But we try to make it big enough, so for example in Standard, usually Standard is three blocks. And each block has, I don't know, roughly 600 cards let’s say? So we let people—you know, somewhere between 1500 and 1800 maybe cards in Standard.

So, you know, there’s a lot of cards. There’s a lot of choices. And so it’s like, okay. I’m giving you enough choice—like if I don’t give you enough choices, I only give you four choices, well, how customized can it be?

So you want to give people enough choices that they really have some option, but not have so many choices that, you know—I always talk about how restrictions breed creativity. You want some kind of restrictions.

Okay, so Magic, first off, the format says, okay, here’s what cards you can use. That’s the first thing. The second thing is it gives you some parameter too. So for example, with Standard, okay, you get sixty cards. That’s how many cards.

And the way Magic works is, you kind of want to stay close to the number, because you want to draw the cards you want to draw, so sixty—I mean, there are reasons you would go over sixty, but as a general rule of thumb, in Magic you want to have a sixty card deck. So I’m setting a limit for you. I’m saying, okay. You can choose from the following groups of cards. Okay. But you have to have sixty cards.

And then, in Magic, there’s a color identification built into the game. And what that means is, in order to do things, Magic has five colors, you know, you need to make commitment to colors. Because in order to play the colors, you have to have the resources to play them.

And so the idea there is, so there’s a color identification. What colors is your deck going to be? You know, it can’t really be all five colors—I mean, not that it can never be all five colors. But usually you’re choosing one, two, sometimes three colors. So there’s a flavor. And in Magic the colors mean something. There’s a philosophy to the colors. The colors have a lot of definition to them.

So the idea is, I say, okay. You want to play this format, here’s the choices you can pick from, here’s some restriction about what you have to do, and then here’s some sort of flavor element that helps define things.

And when you put all those things together, you know—and like I said, with Commander, okay. Commander’s a little bit different. You have a larger pool to pick from, but the restriction says, okay, you need a hundred cards, you can only have one of each card. And there’s the color that says, okay, once you’ve defined your color, once you pick a commander—there’s another choice there. Hey, pick a legendary character that represents you. That you want to sort of build around. And then, that gives you definition. That kind of chooses your colors for you. So by choosing what commander you choose, that chooses your color. That makes decisions for you.

And in each case, then you have a little puzzle to solve. And the thing about customization that’s important is, you want to give people choices, but then have a goal in mind. What are you trying to do? What’s the purpose of this thing?

Now, I’m not saying this thing necessarily has to be rules-oriented. It could be flavor-oriented. It could be—you know, like, I’m customizing my avatar. Okay. But I do think it’s powerful if the choices you make can have an impact on the game itself. It’s not crucial. But I do think it’s more powerful.

In Magic, for example, your deck is your game. What you’re choosing to build, what you’re making. And so there’s a neat thing going on, which is, when you play a game of Magic, you have fine-crafted the deck. You have made choices. That part of—I talk a lot about when you play the game of Magic, the actual sitting down and playing with the cards, the actual game itself is just part of the metagame. The larger thing around the game.

First you have to figure out, what format am I playing? Okay, then what deck am I going to make? And then, you know, you have to make choices. And the idea is, once you make a deck and you play somebody, you’re not done yet. You know, I might go out and play, I might go to my Friday Night Magic which is a place people can play, and let’s say I go 2-4 for the night. Okay, well, I did okay but not great, 2-4, that’s not great.

Okay, what can I change about my deck? Well, now that I’ve played other people, and I played with my deck, oh, these two cards that I thought would be good, they’re not that good. Maybe I should swap them. This card, oh, well, that’s really good. Maybe I should have more of that card. You know. You learn data and you can adapt to it. You can change to it.

And that’s important for customization is, you want to give people an opportunity to make key choices, and then you want them to sort of have that representation matter for the game in some way. And there’s a couple different things. The other important part of customization—I mean, part of it is, self-representation. Of how I can—this is me, and how I can feel connected to it emotionally because of the choices I make, and not only do I make choices, but the choices have some emotional consequence to them.

That when you make a deck, for example in Magic, you are making choices that mean something. That you chose something not just to choose it, but because it means something to you. Depending on what you’re prioritizing.

The same way when you’re choosing things about your avatar or choosing, you know, how you’re going to play a certain game. What resources—you know, a lot of games for example say, okay. You don’t have access to every resource. You have to pick and choose which resources you want.

You know, and that by doing that, they’re making you make choices that will impact your game. But when you win, you know, it’s like, oh, I didn’t just win—like, the game didn’t win, I won. Choices I made helped do that. Okay?

Now, there’s another aspect, which is an important part, the social aspect, to the customization, which is not only are you doing something that helps you or impacts you, you’re also making something that gets to be seen by other players.

That for example, when I sit down to play a game of Magic, not only do I get to experience the deck for myself, my opponent gets to experience it. So now, we mix in another really important part of customization, which is not only do you get to define yourself through this, but you get—other people get to see you. It’s a lens by which other people see you.

So for example, if you build a deck that’s a cool deck, like one of the things in Magic is, after you play, people will comment on your deck. Like, they might say, oh wow, that was a really cool deck, or that was neat, or ooh, I like how you did such and such. That there’s an opportunity to get interaction with the other player.

And that’s another important part of customization is, not only do you get to define yourself and have some emotional connection, but you get to sort of—it’s a lens for other people how they get a chance to see you.

And, it can go both ways. People can get mad. You can make choices with your deck people won’t like. You can choose deck choices people won’t like. But it is a way for some sense of definition. And, I mean, I think games are very social in their nature. And that a lot of—especially analogue games where you’re interacting with people face to face. I mean, I think digital obviously has some interaction—there’s a lot of online, there’s a lot of ways to play with other people, and that clearly matters.

But one of the things is, when you customize something and you bring something to the game, it becomes a showcase in something that other people get to comment on. And I think that’s also part of it, that’s also a big part of—you know, in Magic I talk about the psychographics, of different psychological reasons you play.

 So one of the ones I talk a lot is about Johnny or Jenny, is this… a person who the sense of expression is important. That they want to do something, but they also want other people to see what they’ve done, that their expression is important. That they can sort of voice themselves through their choices.

And like I said, there’s a lot of different reasons of how you make your choices. One could be that you’re using them as a means of self-expression. That’s quite possible. It could mean you’re just trying to be effective, and the choices demonstrate your ability to understand what you’re doing. You know, it could be people analyze of how good a game player you are. It could be you just want to generate certain experiences or have a certain feel. Or create a certain flair. You know, it could be it’s about how it makes you feel.

And that’s the neat thing about customization is, you have a lot of different—has a lot of impact on how you use it. That the customization will bond you with the game. That the more you get to make choices, the more you get to sort of say, okay, this is not just a random game, I’m not just playing with the forty squares that have been given to me, I’m picking the squares, or I’m picking some of the squares, the more that it becomes an innate personal thing.

And that one of the things that I think when you’re customizing your game, something you always want to look at, is you want to think about, how do I make these choices, and what impact will it have on the player?

Like, one of the things, for example, that people don’t think too much about is, I know you think about playtesting your game mechanics. But you also want to sort of focus test the choices that you get the chance to make. That you want people to be able to say, oh, can I choose this or can I choose that?

And that one of the things that’s really important is, you want people to have some sort of impact on thinking about how their choices will impact the game itself, will impact how they feel about themselves, how others will see them. That all of that has to come through, so that’s something you really want to think about.

Now. In Magic, for example, I was talking about your deck, but I really talked about just one aspect of your deck. So I talked about, for example, that I picked my format, which I get to pick. And once again, you can make a format. So not only does Magic allow you to choose the format you want, and you can personalize the format, it lets you create a format—you know, you can choose your own format. You don’t even have to play by the format that’s given to you. That Magic has this nice quality that says, hey, you know, we’re going to give you tools to play a game, we’ll give you ways to play, but we’re also giving you a set of tools that lets you choose how to play.

And people all the time, like one of the things that’s very popular is not only can people choose formats, there’s also a format called Cube. What a cube is, is people choose what cards they want to draft out of. So booster drafting is a lot of fun, and what a cube says is, I’m going to make my own environment by which to draft.

So that’s a completely different way for people to customize. You know, a cube is the idea that I’m going to make this Limited environment, but I get to handpick what’s in it. And I get to continually handpick what’s in it. I get to play with it, and I get a—you know, people who have cubes, they sort of continue to moderate it and fine-tune it and make choices, and that, you know, they’re crafting their cube. That that’s yet another way that they can do that. That’s a whole experience in which I get to make individual choices. It’s funny, because as the game designer, I’m doing this all the time. Like, I’m constantly making environments that people are then going to use. But it’s neat that players have also created that ability to do that.

But, okay. So, you get to choose a format. And once again, you get to choose your format, you can craft your format, okay, I pick a format. Then, I gotta make my deck for it. So the next step is I’m going to figure out which cards I want and how I want it.

Okay, now we take it to the next level, which is Magic—there are different ways, like not only will we make a card, we’ll reprint a card. And sometimes, we’ll reprint it in different formats. We’ll make promotional versions of cards. We have a series we just announced called Masterpiece, where you know, we’re making very sort of special cards that exist in low numbers that you can get in booster packs. There are cards in other languages. We print in eleven languages. So you can get cards in other languages. Sometimes we reprint cards and we’ll change the art. You know, normally when we use a card in a new expansion—normally, not always, but we’ll give it new art, and when we put it into supplementary products, sometimes we’ll give it new art.

So there’s different versions. So let’s say I want to play a particular card. There are multiple versions of that card, and there might be multiple art of that card. There are clearly multiple languages of that card. And there might even be multiple sort of splashy promotional versions of that card. So when you sit down to make your deck, even once you’ve chosen your deck, even—like, here are my sixty cards. I even have choices then about choosing what I want my sixty cards to be.

The example that I talked about, I talked about this in another lesson, is how just taking the basic lands. And how over time we’ve realized that how we can make the basic lands special. You know, we talked about doing full art lands, or special promotional lands, lands of real-world places. Or lands by special artists, or lands that do neat and different things. And the idea is, even the basic building blocks—you know, something that’s kind of the most mundane part of Magic, even that, we give you choices. You know, every set we make new lands in different worlds, and so it’s like, which lands do I want? Do I want the Kaladesh lands or the Ravnica lands or the Innistrad, you know, that I can hand pick. And I have all these choices for even the most basic building block. I can choose which ones I want.

And so, you know, this is a good example of how, just in one thing, just in sort of making the game, making your deck, you have all these different choices along the way. And the end result is, people feel bonded. It’s one of the things that—so, why—let’s get in the next part. Why do you want the customization? What is the point of customization? Why do you want it?

So first and foremost, when players can make something that they feel is uniquely theirs, A. they’re going to bond more with the game. And that, like I said, that’s true of human nature, that things that are more directly tied to me, I have a closer feel of. It’s more important to me.

A. So what that means… Like, one of the things I sort of, my ongoing lessons is, one of the reasons that human psychology is so important to understand is, you want to take advantage of how humans function to make your game as cool as it can be for the player. And part of it is understanding how humans function.

Okay. Humans--things that matter to them, that are personal to them, are treated differently. You know. There is things, and there are your things. And the way they get personalized, like for example let’s take your car.

Okay, first off, I chose my car, I picked my car, I had some say in maybe what color it was or what kind of car it was. Okay. But even then, even once I have my car, there are a lot of things I can do to my car. There’s a lot of ways to sort of customize my car. There’s a lot of ways to sort of give it, you know, to make it more my own.

And what people do is they make those choices. They choose in how they pick it and they customize it, and then, you know, like people for example will name their car, or just have a certain sense of their car, that it’s not just a car. It is their car. You know, it is not just a house, it’s your house. That you figure out things that make something and you make decisions, and then you get to look at the decisions you made, and then that thing, it’s because it’s connected to you, you start to get an emotional bonding to it. An emotional connection.

You know, that I know for example, like when I’ve changed cars, when it’s time to get a new car, there’s a sadness. I’m losing my old car. My old car meant something to me. There were memories with it. That I had a relationship with that car. You know, even though it’s an object, I bonded with it.

And you want your game to have a similar quality. You want the player to carve out a piece of the game that’s not just “the game.” It’s not just what you have made. What you the game designer have made. It is a component,  piece of the game that is their piece of the game. That’s something that is theirs.

A., they had a hand in making it, B. they had a hand in sort of giving it a flavor of their own, and C., they’ve got to build memories with it. They’ve got to interact with it.

Like, one of the things that’s interesting looking at decks for example is, Magic players get very associated with their decks. They name their decks, you know, other people will hear about stuff they’ve done, you know, that if you build something cool, you can name it, and then other people can play your deck.

You can inspire something that other people can, you know—like one of the ways, for example, that—I mean, there’s many ways to bond with Magic decks, but one way could be I make something that kind of transcends me. I make a deck that has a name that becomes something that other people play. I was the originator of the ‘blah’ deck. You know, whatever the deck is.

Or, it can be something in which I just generate a lot of buzz from other people. People are talking about my deck, or people are excited by it or want to look at it, or, you know, I inspire other people to do something similar of their own. But I inspire other people.

And, even just playing it, I form memories with it. And the fact that I made it and I’m connected to it, I’ve sort of formed memories that are uniquely my own memories. Here’s what happened when I played my deck. Here’s how my deck changed over time. Here’s how I made decisions. You know, my deck’s a living, breathing thing that evolves as I play with it. That I started it and it wasn’t really good, but then I learned and I made some choices and it got better. It improved. You know.

And that there’s this connected bonding that comes to it, that it—you know, I don’t think people think, like they made Magic. Obviously, you know, we the game makers make the game. But I do believe that they take it and they turn it into something that is their thing. Whether it’s their format, whether it’s their deck, whether it is some combination they came up with they found, like there’s a lot of different ways to sort of do things, and make things.

So when you’re creating your game, you have to say to yourself, okay. What am I putting into the hands of my player? What am I letting them craft in such a way that they get to create their own memories? They get to create their own subset of the game. There’s some element of it that gets to be them. That gets to represent them.

That they get to look at it and say, hey. This is me. Am I doing it in a way that others get to see? Can I create something where not only do they make something but others can identify them by it? Am I making something that really can be part of their identity? Am I making something that will allow ongoing customization? Am I making something where they can learn something, and then they can change it as they go along?

Like, sometimes it’s kind of neat, like in games for example, there’s things in which, as I achieve things, I now have more options for my customization. I now can do new things. I mean, Magic obviously puts a new card, so our customization has to do with we keep giving you more choices.

But you can have a game in which you earn customization. You earn options. And that part of choosing something is, I wasn’t allowed to choose that until I earned it. And then there’s a sense of, I earned the ability to make that choice. And then when I use that choice, I’m showing off that I earned the ability to do that. That’s also very powerful.

But the key is, ask yourself, what am I doing? How am I letting my player make choices that are crafting their own thing? That’s making their own game? That’s making their own memories? That’s making something that they get to look back on and feel as if they were the designers? They were the creators? That they had a hand?

Because—and I can’t stress this enough, obviously it’s today’s lesson, part of being a game designer is making sure that your game fits into the human experience. You know, until we start designing for non-humans, you want to fit into the human experience. And the human experience desperately, desperately wants to put your thumbprint on it.

And I mean, just think of this. Think of just how humans—you know, I buy my car, I have a place to live, or—even like, I’m going to make dinner, I’m going to make meals. I’m going to start customizing that. I’m going to start making choices about how I make my grilled cheese sandwich. Or how I make my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Or what kind of pizza I order. That’s my pizza.

You know, with holidays, people start with holidays. They make their own traditions. And that’s important. You know, that we—it’s not just Christmas, it’s my family’s Christmas. That you’re able to sort of make options that anything you can take, anything you can look at in the human experience, that people—it goes beyond just being food or shelter or transportation. That it becomes something in which the person wants to find a component of themselves in it. That is as core to the human experience as anything.

So what you have to ask yourself is, is my game maximizing that ability? Am I maximizing the ability for my player to put their thumbprint on it? Because the more they can put their thumbprint on it, the more that they’re making choices, that is not just a game, that is their game. The more bonded they get, the closer they get, and the more they’re gonna stick to it.

Because it’s one thing to walk away from a thing. Like, oh, I’ve played Monopoly, whatever. You know. But if you can make it something that’s your own—and I’m not saying, I’m not trying to knock Monopoly, I think there’s a lot of experiences with Monpoly where people can really customize some sort of experience of how they play. But I think that in making your game you want to think about how to do that. How to make sure the player walks away feeling of which they imbued part of themselves in your game.

Because if they do that—like, I always talk in this series about how someone plays their game and are they coming back? You know, what have you done when you made the game to make the player come back the next time? They play once, why they play the second time? You know, why the third? Why the fourth? Why do they keep coming back?

But one of the tools in your arsenal is doing something that speaks to the player on the most basic of levels. That making sure that the player—that the game has something that the player cares a lot about. Which is themselves. And that how do you do that? And that customization should happen early and happen often. You know, you should make sure that there are places to do that.

Now, I’m not saying that everything needs to be customized. I’m not saying that every decision needs to be in the hands of the players. You know, you need to cultivate the experience, you need to make sure that the choices they’re making still lead to a fun game.

Like in Magic, the good example there is, we don’t just let players make their own cards. You know, players might have fun making their own cards, but we want to cultivate the game experience. So we make the cards, you know, I sort of talk about how we’re a lot like Legos, Magic is like Legos, that like, build whatever you want, but we’re going to give you the pieces. We’re not going to let you make the pieces. We’re making the pieces. But then you can build whatever you want.

So you the designer get to have some control, but that’s the big point today is, the question you have to always have when building your game is say to yourself, how am I allowing my player to have an impact on how the game is crafted? How do they get to put the thumb on it? How do they get to put some of them into the game?

And the reason that’s so important is, it pays off in so many different ways. It bonds them to the game. It makes them play the game longer. It makes playing the game more emotionally fulfilling for them. It just increases the excitement. That when something’s on the line and the thing on the line matters to them, you know, it just is more exciting. That when someone wins a game of Magic, you know, it’s not just that they won, but their deck won! It’s something that they crafted and created. It just adds to the experience.

And so when I say to you that you have to allow your players to have a sense of ownership, what I’m saying is, make sure there’s a way that the players put some of them into your game. Because if a little bit of them is in your game, then it becomes their game. And if it’s their game, then it’s so much more—it means so much more to them, and it will have so much more dividends. Both for you the game designer, and for them the game player.

Okay, guys. I am now at Rachel’s school. So I gotta wrap up for today. But I want to thank you very much for joining me, and as we all know, this means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking Magic, it’s time for me to be making Magic. So I’ll see you guys next time, hope you enjoyed this. Bye-bye.