2/25/17 Episode 412: Twenty Lessons, Part 11--Love Not Like

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

I’m pulling out of the 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 take my GDC speech, where I talk about the twenty lessons—or twenty of the lessons that I learned while designing Magic for twenty years, and I’m up to lesson number eleven. Which is, if everybody likes your game, but nobody loves it, it will fail.

Okay. So usually to start out, I give an example from Magic. So to understand this one, there’s a tool that we use in R&D which we call “the rare poll.” So one of the things that—there’s a lot of different things that we care about. But one of the things is what I’ll call “splash.” And we want to make sure that our cards, especially our rares and our mythic rares, are exciting. That we want people to see them and go, “Ooh, that’s cool, I’m excited by that.” So how do you test that?

So what we do is, we have everybody in the company who opts in, and not just R&D but people all around the company, to take a poll. And what we do is, we take every single rare and mythic rare card in the set we’re polling, and then we give it to people, we show them the card in its—whatever version it’s currently in, the closest to final that we can, and then we ask them to rate it on a scale of one to ten.

Basically, one means, “I don’t like it!” And ten means, “I like it!” So really it’s a range from talking about really, like, you know, one is like, “I hate this card! Do not make this card! This card is horrible!” And ten is, “Oh my goodness, it’s just such an amazing card, you have to make this card, this card is an amazing card.” So we want the range.

Okay. So this is the question that’s come up to us is, let’s say we get the following two cards. Which one is a better card for us to have? Okay, so the first card gets a seven rating across the board. So what that means is, everybody’s saying, yeah, this is good. This is good. This is a good card. Not a great card, you know, not an amazing card. But a good, solid card. This is a good card. And everybody says that. Everybody feels that way.

Okay. Then other cards, half the people rate it nine or ten. They love it! But half rate it one or two. They hate it! Okay, so which is better? A card that’s uniformly liked, or a card that hits extremes, where some people love it and some people hate it.

And the answer, obviously if you’re paying attention, is the second one. We prefer the second one. And the reason is, if your set is full of sevens, if everything in your set is full of sevens, the response you get from your audience is like, okay, yeah, that’s a nice set, okay, that’s good. But there’s no passion there.

Where if your set has a bunch of the variant ones, people are like, oh my God, this is amazing. I hate this, but this is amazing! You know. And that it is much better to evoke strong emotions.

So the lesson today is talking about evoking strong emotion. I mean, obviously I spent a lot of my lesson so far talking about what you do to get people to love your game. That, you know, the creating details. The customization. The choices you give them. The ability for them to explore. Thediscovery. There’s all these things you can do to really make them fall in love with your game.

But that’s the what. That’s the what you do. Today is the why. Why is it so important to make them fall in love with your game? Why is that so crucial? And the answer is a complex one. But the short version is, in order to survive in the gaming market, which is a really complex and difficult market, you have to go over and above. It’s not okay to just do enough. You have to be able to wow people. And to wow people, you can’t just play it safe. Okay, so first off, there’s a myth that I think people have that I want to blow up right now, and then we’ll talk about sort of how to sell your game.

Okay. So the myth is this. The myth is, making bold choices is risky. And the idea is that there’s such a thing as playing it safe. Of not doing things that will upset anybody. And that playing it safe is safer. That being bold is risky.

And I’m saying today that is a myth. And here is why. You need to stand out. You need—for your game, and this is not just your game. Your movie, your novel, your song, your whatever it is. Whatever creative endeavor you’re doing. It’s a competitive business. Everywhere. I used to work in Hollywood. You know what? Being a writer is hard. Making movies is hard. You know, I never worked in the music industry, but I know that’s hard. You know. The publishing industry. Pick your industry. It’s not easy. A lot of people want to do it. And what you need to do is you need to get an audience.

And in order to get an audience—you know, there’s a lot to choose from. I’m going to use games as an example, but you can use this with any field. A lot of games come out. So for example, if you ask me how many games go beyond a first printing, meaning they print the game, and then they say, oh, there’s enough demand, we’ve sold out of our first printing. You know what? We’re going to do a second prnting. What percentage of all games that come out go to a second printing?

Now, this is more of a rough estimate in my mind, but I would guess that it’s about—ninety percent never go beyond their first printing. That only about ten percent of games actually go past a first printing. And my guess is another five percent only go past the second printing. That most games do not last. That it is a rarity to make a game that, you know—twenty years later, like Magic celebrates its twentieth anniversary. Okay. How many games that came out twenty-four years ago—or in the last twenty-four years, how about that? How many games that have come out since Magic first came out are still around? You know. And let’s discount the last few years, only because—you know, actually lasted for some length of time. And the answer is a tiny, tiny amount. That’s because it’s a very competitive industry. And in order to stand out, you have to get noticed.

So, okay. Here’s a way to think of it. And this is true of other things, once again, I’m talking games, but this is true. So when you talk about trying to do something, what you have to do is there’s three groups basically. There’s three ways that you learn about a game.

So number one is, there are some people who seek out new things. That part of the identity for themselves, and this is me, I love games. I love to explore new games. I’m really excited when I find a new game that I think is awesome, sharing that new game with my friends.

Now, obviously, I work in R&D at a game company, so I’m surrounded by people who share a passion for games. So it’s awesome. When I get to discover a game that no one in R&D has played yet, that is a truly wondrous thing. It doesn’t happen a lot. But it is fun. There are people who really, they, like part of their identity as a game player is discovering new games and finding new games and sharing them with their friends.

Okay. So that’s the first group. Well, in order to make that group want to play your game, something about your game has to draw them. Okay, so when I did my Ten Things Every Game Needs podcasts, the last one [NLH—Not transcribed yet] was on a hook. The idea of a hook is, I need to do something to draw attention to my game.

It’s not enough that my game is fun, you know that’s good, but if I can’t get people to play my game, there are many good games that have died. The quality of your game, while it helps, is not the only thing. You need to be able to draw attention to yourselves. You know, you need a hook.

Now, your hook can be, you know, a particular IP that you’re using. You know, like, there’s a game with—people have a passion for some TV show or movie or something, and you’re connected to that. It could be you’re doing something unique.

Like, take Magic for example. When Magic came out, it was the first trading card game. I bought a pack of cards, and my friend bought a pack of cards, they weren’t even the same cards! You know, and that I didn’t even have all the game. I had to explore the game. And I—when I, you know, got these trading cards, I then had to make my own deck. You know. It was just doing things that people had never done before. Plus, they were these cards with beautiful pictures, and every card had a beautiful illustrated picture on it. Like, that was unlike anything else. And it wasn’t hard to create excitement, you know, to create a hook, because it just did a lot of things that were new and different and bold and exciting.

Okay, so that’s the first. The second thing you have is people who are one away from the people who find new games. They’re the people who—it’s not that they go searching for new games, but they have a friend or two that they know does that. And so what they do is they kind of wait for their friends to test the waters. “Oh, have you played such and such?” Or, “What games have you played?” You know.

And then there is—this is where you start to get into word of mouth. Where the reason you play the game is not that you seek it out, as much as you are told by someone you trust that it is amazing! It’s awesome! Maybe that friend teaches you how to play, you know, maybe they directly teach you. Maybe they just go on and on about how awesome it is. But you get a firsthand account from someone you know that the game is awesome, and you go buy it. Maybe you play it first, but eventually you buy it.

Okay, the next one out is the—I mean, you sort of extrapolate. There’s people who are directly here, then you get six degrees of separation. You know, “Well, I have a friend who has a friend” and such.

And eventually you get to the point of what we call buzz. Where there’s enough positivity on it that it sort of permeates the social media atmosphere. People go, “Oh wow, I’ve heard of that. You know, I don't know a lot about it but I’ve heard good things.” You know.

Movies do this too, you know, where like, it’s not that you know much about the movie, you just—the name keeps coming up. Like, you know people keep saying positive things about it. Games can have the same thing where it’s just like, yeah, I keep hearing about that game. And what that means is that people go, “Oh, okay, there’s something about it.”

In each case, notice that I seek out games--there’s a lot of games to seek out, something makes me drawn to this game. I have friends that tell me, that’s word of mouth, something drives this game. Something excites people enough to talk to me. Or it’s just buzz in general. I’m hearing the buzz. But in all three cases, something has to create passion. Something has to say, “I am exciting.” You have to get somebody to play it who hasn’t played it yet.

And in order to do that, you need—something about what you’re doing has to strike a fancy. Has to do something cool and different. You know. That we have to create a buzz, that if you really want to excite somebody, you need to do something.

Okay. Let’s go back. So the idea is, oh, well, you know, being bold, that’s the risky thing. And I’m like, no no no no no no no. Not being bold. If I just play it safe, if every time I have a chance, I just do the thing that’s been done before, you know.

Because part of taking a chance, by the way, is doing what hasn’t been done before. You know. Being bold is saying, you don’t normally do this, but I will do it. That’s what being bold is. Is doing things that haven’t been done before. Or doing things that have been done before but in a way they haven’t been done before.

If my game is all—if every component of my game are just things you’ve seen before, you know—unless—maybe the boldness is I’m mixing things you never thought would mix together. I mean, there are ways to be bold without necessarily making new content. But you have to do something. You have to make something new or mix things in a new way, or have a flavor that’s new or something. Something about it.

And so what I’m saying today is, I know there’s this idea that, you know, being bold’s the risky thing. It is not. It is not. That if you want to sell your game, if you want people to be excited by your game, to buy your game, to talk to others about your game, you need to evoke something that does that.

Now, let me get into this a little bit. I talked a lot about how—I talk a little bit about human nature. Here’s one of the sub-themes of my talks on game design, is really a talk about humans. Because a lot of anything,  I talk game design more than anything else, but a lot of anything is just understanding how humans work.

So let’s talk a little bit about the human psyche. Humans, on some level, there’s a loneliness to the world, in that you experience—each individual person experiences the world through their own—you know, I see the world through my eyes and I hear it through my ears. That there’s a perspective that’s a very individual perspective. That I see the world in a way that no one else sees the world.

And that one of the things about it is, the human experience kind of in isolation is lonely. You know. That It’s kind of cool, there’s a certain amount of wanting to just be in your own space and do your own thing. But on some level, you know, people want excitement. People want to have something that matters to them.

And one of the ways that people do that is passion. Is finding something you care about. And the way you do that is you go out and you look for things that speak to you in some way. This is why I was talking about all the different ways to make it personal. You know. A lot of (???) to customize or have little details or choices so that they can find the corner of your game that is theirs. That means something to them.

And the reason is, each person within them has things they care about. And the reason you care about things is passion makes life better. Being happy makes life better. Caring about things makes life better. Just the feeling. You know, like it’s neat to find something that speaks to you, and then you can be passionate about it. And you get to find things, and you get to discover things, and you get to share things. That that is a very compelling thing.

And that people seek out things to matter to them. That people need to find things that matter. Some of those are people.  People have to seek out people that matter to them. That you want to find people that get you. People that share things with you. People that, you know, there’s a common bond. That I can relate to something. You know. My friend and I both do something or both care about something or something has happened to both of us that we can bond over that experience. Whether it’s a good or a bad experience. That people need people. But more than just the people, people need things to get passionate about.

Okay. Now here’s the important thing, which is, people aren’t passionate about the same thing. In fact, and this is the hard part, anything that’s going to really evoke something out of one person has the potential to evoke a different thing out of a different person. The way to think of it is, I—there’s not like positive and negative things as much as, there are things that are evocative, and things that aren’t.

And things that are evocative tend to stir people up and create emotions. But it doesn’t always create the same emotion. So the idea that I just want to make things that make people happy is a little bit hard to do, because what makes one person happy will make another unhappy.

You know, you only need to watch the phenomenon right now of sort of go on social media or something, that there are people that if enoughpeople like something, they don’t like it. You know. “This band is now a sellout. Too many people like it.” That there’s people who, what they want is to find something that means something to them that doesn’t mean something to other people.

So like, there’s no way to make one thing that everyone loves. Somebody’s not going to like it. If only because if enough people love it, they’ll not like it. They’ll hate it, because other people love it. And vice versa, there’s people who learn to love what other people hate.

In Magic, for example, one of the things I’ve learned is, there’s a group of players who what they love to do is find cards that everybody else is rejected and find a way to make those work Because it’s great fun to say, “I’ve taken this piece of trash and made treasure out of it.”

And so the idea is, when you are evoking emotion out of people, you are evoking not—it’s not you are evoking a  particular emotion. It’s not like, “I’m going to evoke happiness. And only happiness.” So as an example, I’m going to take three different sets that I was heavily involved in. Invasion, which was the first multi-colored block, Ravnica, which was the second multi-colored block but the first one with the guild structure and the first visit to Ravnica, obviously. And the third was Innistrad. The first time I did top-down, it was a Gothic horror block, and the first time I really did a top-down design. Like, pure all-out top-down. Meaning starting with flavor and just building to match the flavor.

Okay. So in Invasion, there were these things called split cards. Now, I did a whole podcast on split cards, so a lot of what I’m talking about right now, I have podcasts on Invasion [NLH--Not transcribed, audio here.] on split cards in particular [NLH--Could not locate.]. I have a podcast on Ravnica [NLH--Not transcribed, first audio here], part of which I’m doing right now. I have a podcast on Innistrad [NLH--Not transcribed, first audio here.]. So anyway, all this stuff I’m talking about, you can go here individually, go in depth on them.

So anyway, I made split cards. So those that have never seen a split card, take a Magic card, turn it sideways, and put two tiny Magic cards in that place. And the idea is, you can cast either spell. And they all have cutesy names which have “and” in them. Like Fire and Ice. Or Wax and Wane.  And each card is one of those two words.

So anyway, the idea of a split card, I had originally done it for Unglued 2 that got shelved, but it was this neat idea of, it’s two cards in one. And because we were doing a multicolor set, the two cards were not the same color. So for example, you know Wax and Wane was green and white. And so the idea was, you get this choice but these cards are different little mini-cards.

And when I first did it, I got a lot of resistance. Especially internally I got a lot of resistance. And even when I put it out for the public, when it came out, it was very popular, but there was a group that did not like them. It did not look like a Magic card. It was not what—you know, that we—whenever you do something different, you get people who are like, “I like the thing you do, this does not fit that, I don’t like that.”

And while I got lots and lots of passionate letters from people that loved split cards, I got people that hated them. Same, I did Ravnica, and Ravnica was one of my most beloved blocks we ever did. But I did the guild system, where I did this thing where the first set had only four of the ten two-color pairs. And then three and then three obviously.

And there were people that were like, “Wait a minute. The two-color pair that I love is not one of the four you have in your first set. Where are my cards? You should give me some of my cards. How did you not give me any of my cards? I hate this.” And I got angry mail.

With Innistrad I was trying to figure out how to do werewolves and dark transformation. And the solution ended up being double-faced cards. And there were people who love double-faced cards. Love love love double-faced cards. But there were people who hated them. And I got mail of like, “Magic has backs, and that’s been true from the beginning of Magic, and who are you to think you’re…” you know, whatever. “…destroying Richard Garfield’s vision.” You know, this and that, and there were people that hated them. And, you know, I’ve never done something—everything I’ve ever done where people were just excited, were excited excited excited, there were other people that were just unhappy.

Now, obviously, more people were excited than were unhappy. I’m not saying to make bold choices that only upset people. But be aware that when you make bold choices, that when you evoke strong emotion out of people, you’re not going to evoke only a certain emotion. The idea that I’m going to do something and only evoke happy, positive thoughts is naïve.

But, what I’m saying to you is, don’t—I think, when you design something, there’s two ways to think about it. Which is, you can design to prevent negativity, or you can design to promote positivity. Or another way to think of it is, I can make sure no one’s upset, or I can make sure some people are really happy.

But what I can’t do is make sure that no one’s upset and make sure people are really happy. That having really happy people will make some unhappy people. You know. That it’s not—you can’t really have one without the other. That, you know, the high highs come with low lows.

Now, the key to Magic is, Magic is a game in which you get to pick the cards that you play. And so what I’m trying to do is, every time I make a set, you know, I or any of my team makes a set, we want to make sure that everybody likes—loves something about the set. The goal is not to make everybody love everything. Because you can’t do that. You can’t make everybody love everything. That there’s no set of cards in which all people go, “I love that.” But what I can do is figure out the different audiences I do, and makes sure for each audience I’ve done something for them to love.

And the reality is, people will forgive you. If your game has elements of things they hate, but it also has elements of things they love? What they’ll do is they’ll gravitate toward what they love, and they’ll not do the things they hate. You know what I’m saying? That it is okay, your audience doesn’t have to just be in love with every aspect of what you do. Some people will. Some, you know, will fall in love.

I mean, be aware. Some level of your audience will hate what you do. You’re not getting them. The people that truly hate what you’re doing, you’re not gonna get them. You know. If the core identity of what your game is, they hate? Okay. But you’re not going to get people that also are passionate and in love with it without having some people that hate it. That is okay. You know.

When I look at a lot of games that are popular games and I say, you know what? Okay, that was edgy in some way or that did something. Did that upset some people and some people didn’t play the game? Yeah, yeah it did. You know. That not everyone’s gonna love your game. And so first off, the people that don’t love the premise, don’t love—like, you’re more likely to have people—once your game’s established itself, well, the people who are more inclined to like it are gravitating toward it.

So I mean—but that said, I have a lot of curmudgeons on social media. Like, one of the jokes about some of the people who follow me on social media is, you know, how do they—where do they derive their fun of Magic? And their fun is complaining about Magic. That’s where they derive their fun. You know. There are people who, all they do to me is they tweet posts about how whatever I’ve said, whatever—it doesn’t matter, whatever I’ve said, how that’s to the detriment of the game.

And that that is just—that’s how they have their fun. That there’s people who, like, want to be critical, and you know the reality is if they didn’t like the game they would move on. I know they actually like the game, because no one’s going to spend ten years complaining about the game if they don’t like the game. You’d move on and do something you do like.

But part of the fun they have is they like griping about it. You know. There’s people that are going to do that. Every game’s going to have its curmudgeons. And you know what? Having curmudgeons is good. Having curmudgeons means I get somebody to give me critical feedback all the time.

Now, sometimes you gotta read between the lines, but that is awesome. You know. That is awesome, that—I love that our game creates so much passion that there’s whole threads of people talking about it. Even if some of the threads are—I mean, I get bashed all the time. One of side effects of being, you know, one of the faces of the game is, I’m “the man.” So it’s fun to yell at the man from time to time, and I get yelled at for all sorts of things. Most of which I’ve never even done. I mean, things the game has done but I haven’t personally done. But whatever, I represent the game. So I get that.

But—so what I talk about today, the why, is, you know, there are games out there. Like, that the idea—Magic has something that is very valuable, which is we have passionate fans. I’m not saying our passionate fans are always positive. But they care. They are excited. You know. Magic has tapped into something that is pretty primal.

And—like a big part of it, like I said. Go back—I mean, hopefully you’ve listened to all my other podcasts, but there’s a lot, I mean I spend a lot of time talking about what you can do to make people fall in love with your game.

Today isn’t talking about what to do. There’s lots of other lessons where I talk about what to do. Today is making you realize that that is a non-negotiable. Making people fall in love with your game—I know some people, that if you said to them, “What if you made a game that ehh, no one loved, but everybody liked?” I think a lot of people would go, “Okay, well, that’s—wow. Nobody hates it? Everybody likes it? Yeah, yeah, that sounds pretty good.”

And in a vacuum, it does sound good. But what it misses out is that people only have so much time. So let me give a little parallel from Hollywood. I’m gonna give a little lesson from Hollywood. So, if you want to be a writer in Hollywood, let’s say you want to write movie scripts. Or TV scripts. I’ll talk about—movie scripts are a little cleaner, because TV’s a little more complex how you do it. So I’m going to talk about movies.

Let’s say your job is, I want to write movies. Okay well, here’s what happens. You get an agent, and then your agent submits scripts to studios. Now, do the people that will come interview you and stuff, do they read the scripts? Not at first. There’s what’s called “readers.” So what readers are, are readers are people that are the first line. They read the scripts, and then, only if they think it’s good does it even get past them.

Because the idea is, the people that are actually going to decide whether to do them or not, the people that are going to make those decisions, they don’t have time. Way too many people are writing scripts. It’s way too competitive—like, you think the movies that come out are competitive, that’s nothing. You know. The movies that actually come out—and there’s a lot of movies that come out, those are the lucky ones that actually made it to production. You know. And there’s even a group of people that they start to make the movie and don’t make the movie. But I’m talking about before that. I’m talking about even getting through the door to have someone consider making your movie. And you’ve got to get past a reader.

Now, here’s how readers work. I have a lot of friends that were readers. A reader will start reading your script. At any point, when they figure out that your thing’s not going to work, that this script just isn’t worth their time, they stop reading. Like, literally, on the line—they go, “Yeeeah, okay.” As soon as they’ve come to realize that this just isn’t going to be worth their time, they stop. That could be page ninety. It could be page forty. It could be page twenty. It could be page ten. Probably—I mean, I’m sure there are readers that have given up on page one, although most readers are probably reading ten pages. But the point is, they’re not going to read any further, once they know that this script doesn’t have “it.” It doesn’t excite them. They’re moving on.

So one of the things you learn when you’re writing the scripts is, okay, in the first—well, I’ve gotta wow them throughout the whole script. But I’ve gotta wow them right out of the gate as well. I have to wow them—when they start reading my script and my first fifteen pages aren’t amazing, they’re not gonna read page sixteen. You know. If they read the first fifteen pages and it’s like, “Eh,” or even, “This is a lot like stuff I’ve seen,” okay, well, that stuff got made. Why are you different?

Like, one of the things in Hollywood I’ve talked about a lot is the three-beat, which is, “My script is like Thing A that was popular and successful, and Thing B that was popular and successful, smashed together.” You know, “It’s so-and-so meets so-and-so.” Because what that says to people is, known property, known property, but different thing because they’re combined in a new way. You know, it’s the same but different.

So what I’m saying is, the equivalent to the reader giving up, you know—the equivalent to the reader is your first game experience. I get someone to play my game. First off, I have to have a hook to even get them to want to play in the first place. I gotta get buzz or something. But let’s say I get them to sit down and play my game. Okay, much like a reader reading the script, I have one chance to sell them on my game. And if my game doesn’t say, wow, this is exciting, you know, if someone plays a game once and doesn’t have a good first game, the chance of them ever playing your game again, ever is remote.

That, you know, people will give—I mean, just even giving your game a chance—like, just getting a reader to read your script. Not even easy—because you have to get an agent to get through the doors and get to the point where the reader will even see your script. One of the hard parts about Hollywood and why you even need an agent in the first place is, you know, you can write an amazing, amazing script. An amazing script. But no one will give you the time of day.

Like, one of the things I learned in Hollywood is, writing a good script isn’t even the hardest thing. Getting people to read your script is actually harder than writing a good script. And writing a good script is hard, mind you. But.

And so, the same is with your game. You’ve got to make an amazing game, you’ve got people to sort of be passionate about it, and then, okay, people are gonna sit down and play your game. They have one experience to play your game. You’ve got to wow them out of the gate. You’ve got to make them play the first game or end the game and go, “That was fun. I want to play that again.” Hopefully, if they were playing somebody else’s copy of the game, “I want to buy that game.”

Oh, this brings up a good point. Okay. So we do a lot of market research. And what that means is, well, what I call focus groups. Where you find people that are interested and the right demographic group that you’re looking at, you bring them in, you put them behind a two-way mirror, and then, either you teach them the game, or you give them the rules and have them try to teach themselves the game.

Second is where you’re farther along. At the point we’re talking about, “Is this game worth it?” What we’ll do is, bring people in that are the right—people that like games at the right level you’re trying to sell to. And then you teach them how to play your game. And then they play the game. And then at the end of it you ask two questions. These are the two questions. Okay. Do you want to playtest your game? These are the two questions you ask to determine whether your game has a shot.

Question number one. You ask them, “Would you buy this game?” Not, “Do you like this game?” You know, not, “Rate this game,” “Would you buy this game?” I mean, you do ask the other questions. But this is the important one. “Would you buy this game?” Because if the answer is no, if they weren’t passionate enough in playing the game that they want the game, yeah, you’re doomed. You know. I mean, you—and once again, not everybody has to say yes. But enough people have to say yes that there’s an audience for your game.

Okay, question number one, “Would you buy my game?” “Yes.” Okay. Now, once they say yes, they’ll buy your game, question number two is, “Would you tell your friend to buy this game?” If they say no, you have a problem. If they say yes, okay. Okay. They’re wiling to buy it, they’re willing to tell their friends to buy it. Okay. You’re now in a place where you can start considering, okay, maybe you have something you can make on your hands.

And the reason those two questions are so important is, the very nature of what I’m talking about it, is your game good enough that once you play it, once you experience it, that you want to own it. That you want to play it again. If that’s not a yes then your game just isn’t where it needs to be. And the second thing is, will I tell my friends, like I just explained. Word of mouth. Whether your game succeeds or not is about people going, “I played this and this was awesome. Hey, Bob, Mary, Joe, Sue, Maria… whatever. Do… you have to try this game. You have to play this game, this game is awesome. This game is amazing.” That is how you sell your game. That is how you make it succeed.

And in order to do that, in order to get somebody to buy the game, to tell someone to buy the game, you have to aim for the fences. You have to make something truly amazing. And I mean, kind of what I’m sort of getting to the point of is that I want—the walkaway of today has to be that you are doing the smartest thing when you make your game. You are doing the thing that’s going to give you the greatest chance of being successful. And what I’m saying is, don’t fall for the myth that I can’t do anything too radical or too big or too bold.

The idea that playing it safe—see, that’s the problem. The term is playing it safe. That implies that it is safe. And in the world of creation, the world in which you’re trying to make something and then sell it, playing it safe is never safe. Don’t—the expression itself is wrong. Don’t listen to it.

And so when you are making your game—remember, I bring this up all the time. This is why playtesting is so important. And this is why playtesting with other people, especially people who do not have an emotional connection to you –I can’t stress that enough. The reason that’s so important is that you need to gauge—constantly. It’s why we do the rare poll. You need to gauge constantly, am I exciting people?

Or—not even just exciting people. Let me make this point. There are a lot of games out there that people love not because it makes them happy, but because it evokes some other response out of them. I know there are games that make people afraid, or games that really dig up ugly things in the past. You know, I have some friends [NLH—This is me!] that like, some of the games they love are really like, gut-wrenching games that really make them experience things, but it really—it makes them face things they want to face, or makes them, you know, deal with things, you know, that there’s a lot of different ways to create emotion out of people. You don’t have to just create happiness.

I know that’s the one people want or think about, but you can make a game that really—I mean, now, it has to be emotions that people want to experience. But there are a lot of deep, dark emotions that people do want to, vicariously through the safety of a game, experience.

Like, one of the things—I wrote a play many years ago called, “Leggo My Ego.” Which the premise of the play was, a main character’s making decisions, all his emotions arguing about it. And that one of the things I made a conscious decision to do was I wanted to have a lot of more negative emotions. There are plenty of positive emotions. Love was in the play.

But I also had bitterness. I had depression. I had paranoia. You know, I really wanted to have some of the darker emotions. And what I found was, people really connected with them. They loved depression. Depression never said anything but really depressing things. But what they loved is, they could relate to,
“Hey, there’s times that I take something and I just find the most depressing way to look at it.” Or, you know, “I take something and I just freak out about it. I find some way to get afraid of it. I see the paranoia in myself.” Or, “I just get bitter about it. I see the bitterness.” You know. That people can respond—the idea that you only need positive emotions for people to respond is just not true. People will respond to emotions that mean something to them.

And so, when you make your game, evoke emotion. Evoke response. That if you make your game, and at the end of the game, you haven’t move your player, you haven’t made them feel something or do something or interact in some way, you haven’t sort of gone the extra—you haven’t done something that made them bring it back to themselves. And I’ll say this time and time again. The question that everybody’s asking, all the time, whether they’re aware that they’re constantly asking or not, is “Does this thing relate—can I relate to this thing in any way? Do I relate to this story, to this song, to this game? Is there something that I can relate to? Is there something that I see myself in? I see my experiences. I see things that matter to me in it.”

Because when push comes to shove, people connect to things that on some level mirror themselves. They’re able to see something about themselves in it. And so the reason, when I say it’s not a risk, it is not a risk to make bold moves, it’s not a risk to not play it safe. The reason is, that is the kind of thing, the thing that’s going to make someone sit up and take notice and really take your game to heart is because you are making these kinds of choices.

And so I have spent a full podcast today trying to reinforce to you, when you playtest, be bold. Do crazy things. And by the way, when you playtest, don’t worry about trying things over and above. There are many times that I’ve tried something, that I thought in my heart of hearts that we wouldn’t do, you know, for example when Tom LaPille first said, “double-faced cards” for werewolves, I admit, I was a little skeptical, I’m like, wow, there’s a whole bunch of logistic issues.

But you know what? No no no. It’s a good—I mean, I asked him to give me something that flavorfully matched werewolves. Well, it does. It’s human on one side, it’s a werewolf on the other, okay, that’s pretty compelling, that’s pretty exciting, okay, there’s all sorts of problems. But you know what? Let’s try it.

And a lot of times I’ve tried crazy things and they don’t work. But you know what? Sometimes I try crazy things and they do work. So don’t hold back. You know. The idea of the conservative approach of just—playing it safe isn’t safe. It is not. You know. You have to iterate. Try things. Try bold things. Try exciting things. Try things that just, you know—try things that are going to make your audience experience something either they haven’t experienced before, or something they haven’t experienced in your venue before. Like in a game or something. It’ll pay off dividends. You know.

And by the way. Be aware. You can make a game, and that game could be very evocative. I’m not saying your game will succeed because it’s evocative. You know. Because it stirs emotions. What I’m saying is, it won’t succeed if it doesn’t.

That there are not a lot of games out there where when you interview people, they’re like, “Well, okay,” you know, “It wasn’t amazing, but yeah, I guess it wasn’t that bad.” That’s not—there’s no game. No game that survives. You don’t make it to second, third, and fourth printing because people are like, “Well, I didn’t hate it.” You know.

And so if “I didn’t hate it” is not gonna save your game, it shouldn’t drive your process. You know. It shouldn’t—once again, the key to selling anything—we’ll talk games, game design, is understanding what matters in the end. What is gonna make your game successful or not successful? Because you the game designer, in making your choices, have to understand which things matter and which things don’t.

And what I’m telling you today is somebody being uncomfortable, somebody disliking an element of your game, somebody hating an element of your game, doesn’t necessarily mean that they walk away. You know. Magic has people that hate aspects of Magic but love the game.

And so be bold, guys. I probably have said that nth number of times today, but I will keep saying it because it is the message of the day. Be bold. Take bold choices. Evoke something. Evoke emotion out of your players Make them experience something. Because, and what I’m saying is, it’s not a risk to do that. That is not the risky thing. Because if you don’t evoke something, if you don’t do that, you’re not going to be a success anyway. I’ve given you all these tools to make players love your game. Figure out ways to do that. Make them love your game. And the point is, whatever you have to do to make that happen, whatever you have to do to evoke those responses, take those chances. Do those things. Because not doing those things is way risker than doing those things.

Okay, guys. I’m now at work. I didn’t have to take Rachel today. Anyway, I’m parked in the parking lot. So we all know what that means. It means it’s the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking Magic, it’s  time for me to be making Magic. See you guys next time.