4/20/18 Episode 529: Twenty Lessons, Part 18--Restrictions Breed Creativity

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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