Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1034: Why Not?

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

You can't say "yes" to every idea when designing for Magic. In this podcast, I explore reasons why we might not move forward with an idea.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for us to drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to answer the question, why don't we do something? So one of the things that happens a lot on my blog is people come up with ideas for themes they want. And sometimes, you know, I go, oh, that's great, or it's on the short list, or, you know. But sometimes I say, you know what, I don't think we're going to do that theme. And people usually don't respond well to that. For example, the most recent one is in March of the Machine, Morriganda pops up again. And so Morriganda is a prehistoric world. We first showed off in Future Sight, and

one of the cards in Future Sight that first showed it off was a Vanilla Matters card. So, because there's just not that many things in Morriganda, some people connect Vanilla Matters to Morriganda. And so people are like, oh, we've got to do a Vanilla Matters theme. And I'm like, well,

no, no we don't. It's not going to do a Vanilla Matters theme. And I'm like, well, no, no, we don't. It's not going to be a good theme. And normally what happens is that people come out of the woodwork to explain how to make it work. And they, you know, oh, you can use more for, you can use token creatures or whatever. So I want to talk a little bit today about when I say no, when I say why I don't think we'll do something, I want to talk a little bit today about when I say no, when I say why I don't think we'll do something, I want to talk about why do I say no? And the answer is that part of my job is to explore possibilities. In fact, we have a whole thing called exploratory design, and the whole point of exploratory design is to just explore ideas.

Is to just go, oh, what if we did thing X? Now, the way exploratory design works is, I like to say we go wide, not deep. And what that means is we just sort of look at ideas and really explore what it means. So, for example, I'll just use Strixhaven as my example. Okay, we want to do a set that's about instants and sorceries. Well, what does that mean? And what exploratory has to say is, what are the challenges? If we wanted to do that, what are the challenges?

And normally when you want to do something, either it's doable or there's something about it that is fighting against some basic way we do magic. One of the things about making a game for 30 years is it's an iterative process that like we have a lot of shorthands and ways we do things. And so part of anything is understanding how it interacts with the system. What are we asking that is different? So for example, with a Sorcery Instant Matter set, the core problem, for example, was what we call an as-fan problem. And that is, in order to make something matter enough, you need it to show up enough that it can matter, right? If I want Thing X to matter, Thing X has to show up on enough cards.

can matter, right? If I want Thing X to matter, Thing X has to show up on enough cards. In Limited, we have this problem where, when you play Limited, you tend to play about 16 creatures, 7 spells, and then the rest land. If 7 of something is not enough

for the correct As fan, which, in the case for spells, that was true, you now run the problem of, okay, well, even if every single spell slot is an instant or sorcery, I don't have enough instants and sorcery to make it matter enough.

And what that means is we have to then solve the problem of how do I take things that would go into my creature pile that satisfies the needs for creatures, but also gets me spells. And we had to find a lot of solutions in Strixhaven.

We, making token creatures are instance of sorceries, but the token creature acts like a creature. We had lesson learned where you could have, you know, creatures that could also fetch you spells, so that even though it's a creature in your deck and functions as a creature,

it also produces a spell or gets you a spell. So anyway, part of exploratory design is us sort of having to walk through what that means. So I did an entire podcast on vanilla matters, for example. The biggest problem with vanilla matters, sort of the crux of vanilla matters, is the nature of something being vanilla means there's no text on it. And trying to make the thing you care about being a thing that doesn't have text on it just causes issues. So let's get

into the number one reason why we might not want to do something. So the number one reason is it flies in the face of our tools, meaning that in order to do it, we have to not make use of a tool or multiple tools that's important to us. So, for example, with Vanilla Matters is one of the things that you need to do is creature carts have to carry a certain amount of weight. That there's a certain amount of balance in what you're doing that you want to be living on the creatures. So when you say, well, you know, most of your creatures can't have text on it, it really, you're losing a tool. Another example might be people ask from time to time, hey, what if you did a set

where a color was missing or, you know, the colors are equally weighted? Well, we didn't do that back in Torment. So Torment was a set in which there was more black cards than there were green or white cards. Or I'm sorry, there were more black cards than anything. And then there were less white and green. So more black than normal, less white and green than normal. And then the next set, there was more white and green than normal, less black than normal. So between the two sets, so Torment and Judgment, there was an equal amount of all the colors, but it was weighted differently. And what we found when we tried to do that set is there's a lot of problems that pop up.

Like, there's a lot of tools we need to balance. And so when you purposely throw things out of balance, it just causes a lot of issues. So number one is that it's going to cause some problem on the creation side. Now that doesn't mean we don't try to overcome things. You know, there are definitely challenges of how do we do that. War of the Spark was a good example where we had a war with planeswalkers. You know, all the planeswalkers. But, you know, there's only so many planeswalker cards we normally put in a set. Well, you know, could we overcome that?

What if we made 36 planeswalkers? You know, and we had to figure out what does that mean? What does it mean to put way, you know, 12 times as many planeswalkers in the set than normal? You know, how does that impact? And it's not just a matter of impacting the set that it's in. It's impacting the environment, impact standard. You know, there's a lot of ramifications.

And so when we look at something, we have to understand that. And one of the things we have to understand is the idea that we can do anything, the idea that, you know, no challenge is too much of a challenge is false. That part of what you find from making magic sets is that there is a certain amount of limits that you should push, and then at some point you start getting into trouble. And so the first thing is, the reason you get into trouble is it makes it hard to make the set. In fact, one of our rules now is we are only allowed to have what we call one sort of troublesome mechanic, meaning only

one mechanic that is fundamentally changing the essence of something. That's going to be a lot of work to us require how to do it. You know, something like energy requires creating an entire economy. Something like mutate has to make a sort of, you know, it's a very complex mechanic. Companions had a similar. In fact, the rule came from Ikoria

where we made both mutate and companions in the same set. It was too much. We overran play design and companions broke because we just didn't have enough time to work on them. So one of the things is when we turn something down, it's a matter of can we make it and what are the pressures we're putting on the people

that we need to make it. Like one of my jobs in vision design is am I making something that set design can make? You know, have I made blueprints for making something that set design can make? You know, have I made blueprints for a house that set design can build? And am I making something that play design can balance? Am I making something that digital can program? Am I making something that template, you know, editors can template, that rules can accommodate? You know, there's a lot of things that we're doing that we have to make sure that people downstream of us are capable of doing.

So, number one, the reason we might not do something is I don't think we're setting up people down the road to be able to do it. I know there's this idea that anything, you know, any challenge is worth, you know, we can crack any challenge. And it's not necessarily a matter of can we do it. I do think there are things that fundamentally we're not going to get to the bar. Like, there's a quality bar that we have, right? We want magic sets to be of a certain quality. And so it's possible that a certain challenge, we can't meet that. So number one is it's depriving us of tools.

And tools, we need our tools to do our job. So when you take away tools, it is problematic. The one example I'll give for this is, this is my go-to example of a challenge for the sake of a challenge. So what if we decided to make a set with no three drops? No cards that cost three. There's the challenge. Can we do it? And the answer is, well, it's a huge loss of a tool because three drops are an important part of the game and we want you to be able to do things when you have three mana. And so I'll put my explorer design hat on. Okay, what does it mean? What does it mean not to have three drops? Well, it means we have to have more one and two drops because on turn three or once you have three mana, if I can't cast a three drop spell,

well, then I can cast two drop and one drop spell. So you'd have to up the number of those. drop spell, so you'd have to up the number of those. You then would also have to create more ways to get to four mana. The challenge there is a lot of the ways to get to four mana come from three mana, meaning we don't do rampant growth at two mana anymore. We don't do

mana rocks at two mana anymore. So there's some challenges of figuring out how to get from two to four in a way that doesn't make use of three, which is hard. But I look at that and I'm like, so I'll keep coming back to that. So number one, lots of tools. I don't have three drops. I need three drops. Three drops are an important part. You know, whenever we make a set, we do a curve. We want there to be sort of at every level something for you to cast. And so depriving us of a curve, of want there to be sort of at every level something for you to cast.

And so depriving us of a curve, of making a gap in something, you know, it doesn't have the tools we need. Okay, so number two is a support issue. Sometimes when you're doing something, it's not acting in a vacuum. It is asking for the set, and sometimes the the sets around it to do something, right? So when you make something, for example, when we made more Planeswalkers in War of the Spark, that wasn't an ask of just the set it was in. We made sure the sets before it were a little bit lighter on Planeswalkers and likewise the sets after, you know, the sets around it went down a little bit. There's certain resources after, you know, the things around it went down a little bit. There's certain resources, you know, like we had to think about how to deal with certain things. And so answers for Planeswalkers had to go up a little bit. Like there were things we had to do

to work around the environment. So sometimes one of the reasons we might want to do something is that the support required of it might not be something we want to do. Maybe it's something hard to do in sets around it. Maybe it's something that has its own challenges. Maybe it's saying the challenge of this set makes other sets more challenging. We want to kind of be careful to think about like, what is the impact that it's going to do? Okay, number three is it's more work than it's worth. And what that means is sometimes it's not a matter that we can't do it.

It's a matter that we don't have enough time to do it. I'll use War of Spark again. Or not War of Spark. I'll use Icoria again. So I think we could have done Mutate and balanced Mutate. In fact, we did. I think we actually could have done Companions and balanced mutate. In fact, we did. I think we actually could have done companions and balanced it had we had enough time. But it's a good example

where we had too much to do and not enough time. And the end result was we didn't meet the bar of quality that we expect, right? We don't, the fact that we had a recast companions, you know, the fact that we had a band companions, that you know, the fact that we had to ban companions, that was not ideal. And so part of that was we just didn't have enough time. So sometimes when we talk about not doing something, it's like we do a cost analysis and like, okay, and a real common thing that happens is the set design team will come to the vision design team and says, we can't do both these things. We can do one. This happened in Kaladesh. Originally in Kaladesh,

we had not just energy, but we also had kind of a precursor to lesson learned. They were called invention. So rather than getting instance and sorceries, you got artifacts, but similar process. And basically what they said is, these are both very intricate mechanics that will require a lot of work. We can do one of them, we can't do both of them. So we chose to do energy and chose not to do. And as was, energy had some issues, right? And that's without having to do the second thing

that was challenging. So another reason sometimes we don't do something is it's just not worth the work. It's more work than it is worth. And I know there's this gloriaized idea that we can do anything. And that part of the challenge of making magic sacks is solving any problem. And what we've learned over time is

that we've done stuff in the past that were like, wow, was that worth it? So we get to number four now, what I'll call not a selling feature. And what that means is, for example, there's a period of time where we did what we call gimmick sets. All the sets are creatures. All the sets are gold cards. You know, there's more black in the set. You know, we did things in which there was a very loud sort of feature of the set that was like just gimmicky. Right. Um, and what we found was they were really hard to do really, really hard, especially all the gold. Um, and we did it because we were trying to do it.

But in the end, like I look at a Laura DeBorn, which is the all gold set and like, how, how did the all-Gold feature go over? Not amazing. You know, it didn't make people want to buy the set. I will say, the All-Creature

was probably our best gimmick. They went over the best. That set actually was the best-selling small set for a little while. And so,

there was something exciting about it. Ooh, look at all the creatures I get. But the gold thing wasn't quite impactful. Had we done a set that was three quarters gold, I think it would have been just as exciting to people

and been a lot easier to do. But we've learned time and time again that sometimes we do something that's a lot of work and then we test with the audience to say, hey, how excited were you for this feature? And a lot of times they're like, eh, not that excited. So players in general, bending over backwards to do a larger theme

usually does not have the impact that we need. So sometimes it's the issue of, okay, we could do it, it's a lot of work. Will players care? Is it something that will excite players? And what we learned over time doing a lot of market research is players are much more, how does this card go in their deck, right? They want to see cards and themes that they want to play.

And that more esoteric things is not the thing that tends to sell them on the set. I think the really enfranchised players that are sort of have seen infinite magic sets are, you know, are bored with the normal stuff, and they get more excited by it, but that really isn't a general selling point. isn't a general selling point. Okay. Number five, sometimes doing something makes an imbalance in a way that isn't, that isn't fun for the audience. So my example here is in Torment. So Torment had more black cards than anything else. So the idea essentially is that I was supposed to go, oh, maybe I want to play more black because there was more black. Um, but it just made it impossible to balance. It just made it something, you know, one of the things about having, um, the color

balance built into the set is, um, we have a lot of tools where we can measure colors against each other. And so one of the ways to understand if the set is doing well is looking at how adjusted the colors are against each other. But when one of the colors by definition is imbalanced, it becomes a lot harder to do that. And that's another thing that we've become very key on is what imbalances are we making in the system. It's not that we can't ever have imbalances. It's not that certain things can't be better than others.

That's the nature of leaning towards certain themes. But we want to be careful how much we push in that. Okay, the next problem we run into is confusion for the audience. So for this one, I'm going to use a set called Rise of the Eldrazi. So in this set, the idea was the Eldrazi are these giant, strange, alien creatures. So we made something we called Battle Cruiser Magic. And the idea in it was that we did everything we could to make you get to the state where you're playing giant creatures.

So much so that you were kind of punished for just trying to play normal magic. Now, the interesting thing is that set for the enfranchised drafters was very popular because it was different. It was really weird. Don't play two drops, you know. And so for the enfranchised drafters that sort of could figure out what was going on, it was really interesting for them. But for everybody else, for the people that are like, well, I'm just going to play Magic and I'm just going to use whatever general knowledge I have to play,

just had really bad experiences because there were just general things that normally worked that did not work, that there were what we call traps. And Rise of the Eldrazi as a whole did not sell well. It was not a set. Ironically, it went on to be, with enfranchised drafter, this idea of this awesome set. But for most drafters, it wasn't. It was that for really enfranchised drafters.

And that one of the interesting lessons of Rise of the Eldrazi is we have to make sure that whatever we're making that the average magic player can enjoy it. That if we stretch things too much

to the point in which if you don't understand what's going on you have a bad experience. So for example let's go back to the no three drops. You know.

Let's say we make an environment with no three drops and so we're gumming up with one and two drops, right? And we're giving you tools to get to four drops. If you understand the structure, if you understand load up on one and two drops, and because you're loading up on one and two drops, it's going to be a more aggro environment. So you have to play things that might not be good enough in the normal magic, but are good enough in a more aggro environment. And you have to play things that might not be good enough in the normal magic, but are good enough in a more aggro environment. And you have to understand the tools that we're giving you to be able to jump to four. And even if those tools look weak, they're not weak because

it's the means to get to four. So what ends up happening in that kind of environment is the players that are adapting to it, the players that understand all the weird things that are going on, they're going to shine in that environment and do really well. But the average player is going to get really lost because the things that kind of normally work for them just aren't going to work. And so it creates confusion for the audience. And now, once again, this is a matter of limits. We want magic sets to be different. We want you to go, oh, I have to think about how this is different than normal.

So it's not that we don't want some of that. But what we've learned is we can only push so far. We can only make magic so different. And one of the things that I often try to explain is magic systems allow me a lot of flexibility. Meaning I can make magic cards that are 100% magic cards using magic card rules, but the end results of what you're playing doesn't remotely feel like magic. And that is not just a responsibility of us. You know, I mean, we need to keep our magic sets feeling like magic sets there needs to be

a certain amount of I get what's going on and it's magic as I understand it and that we can push things and that part of the fun of any one set is okay we're gonna make you care about things you don't normally care about but there's a boundary and then if we push too far past that boundary then we make something that is very confusing for some portion of the audience and makes it less fun. Okay, which gets into the next one. Is what we're making fundamentally a fun experience? This is one of the ones that we run into with the vanilla matters, which is, okay, let's

say we take all the risks that come along with vanilla matters, which is, okay, let's say I, let's say we, we, we take all the risks that come along with vanilla matters. Okay. We got to put more vanilla things and mechanics that can function as vanilla and we, other things that remove whatever, whatever we have to do to make vanilla matters. Okay. Here's the, one of the biggest strikes against vanilla matters is, okay, so I'm playing these cards that generate vanilla creatures. Now, let's say I don't draw the cards that care. You know, like one of the things is in any sort of system, there's an A, B thing where A is the thing you care about. And then B is the thing that enhances that thing, right? I care about artifact creatures. Well, I need the artifact creatures,

and I need the things that care about artifact creatures. Some of that overlaps a little bit, but in vanilla matters, it can't overlap at all, right? Normally, for example, I can make an artifact creature that cares about artifacts, but I can't make a vanilla creature that cares about vanilla creatures. So by definition, it's for split.

It's a total A-B split. Then the problem you run into is that if I don't draw the things that care, if I just draw all the A cards and not the B cards, I have a very mundane experience. I'm playing vanilla magic, you know, and that is one of the core problems is can we make it in a way that is fundamentally fun where you're having fun no matter what combination of things you draw and it is hard it is a challenge um and and that's like i said that is like when i look at something like vanilla matters i'm like

we lose tools it's um might be confusing for the audience. It's not particularly fun gameplay. It's a lot of extra work. It requires support. You know, so it is, there's a lot of things there that when I look at it, I go, wow, is that worth it? So the one last thing, the final thing is, is it bad for the game? is it bad for the game? My example there is Planar Chaos, where we decided to play around with the color pie. And the idea is the time spiral block was past, present, and future.

And the present was this alternate reality present, because it's hard making present matter since every set is the present, I guess. And so in the alternate reality, we sort of redid the color pie. Now, nothing was supposed, I mean, and the idea at the time was not to break anything. We did a few breaks

in retrospect, but the problem, though, is it really, it did a disservice to the game. It made people believe things that aren't true. It put things in colors that to this day, because internal formats are popular, you know, people play Harmonize today

and green isn't supposed to do that, but it does because we made this one set. And, you know, sometimes people want something and the last reason that we shouldn't do it is it's just bad for the game. That it is undermining something that is important for the game. And Planar Chaos, like, a lot of today's lessons, you know, talking about Torment, talking about A Law of Reborn, talking about Rise of the Odrazi, talking about Planar Chaos.

Like, we tried something, we did something, and, we sort of learned like, oh, we probably shouldn't have done that. You know, there's a lot of things that we have done over the years that I look back and we learn lessons from. Um, so my, my final thought today, uh, is really the reason that we don't do everything. The reason that people say, hey, do thing X, and I'm like, I don't think that's a good idea, is because we've made so much set, because we've iterated, because I've done so many exploratory designs, it's not as

if I haven't tried to figure out, hey, how do you make vanilla matter works? It's not like I haven't spent time and energy on that. I have. You know, I've actually, you know, no three drops. I've spent time thinking about no three drops. And it's a perfect example of a restriction

for the sake of a restriction. Like, it's not a selling point. It's not like people are like, ooh, give me that set without the three drops. Like, no one's, it's not exciting anybody. It is sort of a challenge for the sake of a challenge. And so you really have to figure out when you get something, what am I getting out of it? Now, something like Instants and Sorceries matter. I understand, like, okay, that's a compelling theme.

That's exciting. You know, if you told me that was the theme for a set, I go, tell me more. You know, like, it is a compelling theme. Now, sometimes people say, oh, here's what I want. Make a set of nothing but instants and sorceries. Now, A, we sort of are off gimmick sets, but B, there's some huge problems in trying to pull that off. The biggest thing is creatures are an important tool of the game, and you really start to, you know, if you have no creatures,

it's problematic. You can make token creatures, although token creatures are limited in how much text we put on them. So even if we were aggressive with our token making, there's just only so much complexity we can get in creatures. And that's just an example of,

okay, we did the experiment. How would we do it? What are the tools we need available? And then does that create something that is compelling and fun and, you know, that wouldn't confuse players? And the end result is, eh, I don't think that ends up with something that would be there. It doesn't cross the bar.

And that is sort of the lesson of today's podcast, is an important lesson. It took me a little while to get to this one, which is, yes, magic is a hungry monster. Yes, there are a lot of things we will do. But just because there's lots of things we will do doesn't mean everything should be done. There are things we shouldn't do in magic. There are things that aren't good for magic. And I know when I tell players that, you know, when I say, oh, let's do thing X,

they go, eh, I don't think we should do thing X. There is this challenge to try to prove that we could do it. But this was one of my GDC lessons. I really have learned that, like that the reason to do something is because it's going to make an awesome game. The reason I should design something is because

it's going to lead to something that will be fun for the players to play. I should not design things just to prove that I can do something. It is a horrible reason to do design. I know there's ego involved and I know there's, you know, like, oh, am I up to the challenge? But what I've learned is every magic sense of challenge. Design is a challenge. There's no such thing as me not having challenges in design. I will always

have challenges. But the key is to find the challenges that are worth the work, that are worth the energy, that are worth the cost that they come to them. And that figure out when you get a challenge, is that challenge worth doing? And the big lesson of today is not every challenge is worth doing. Now, sometimes there's a challenge I don't think it's worth doing. And then we get new technology down the road. There's a new way to do something or to print something, or there's some new mechanics that we came up with that makes me rethink things. So from time to time, we'll go back. You know, maybe there's some amazing mechanic out there that just solves the vanilla matters thing in a way that go, oh, maybe we could do it. So that's not to say that just because we can't

do something, we can't forever do it. But it does mean that there are challenges that at least at the moment in time are not worth pursuing. And that is why when people ask, do thing X, and I go, ah, I don't think we should do thing X, why I say that. That part of being a good designer is knowing where to put your energies, is knowing where there is payoff, where there is reward. And to go down paths where you will waste a lot of energy or other people's energy or break tools or systems or balance

or make something that's confusing or not marketable or unfun, there are paths in which you end up with something that is not good magic. And our job is to make good magic. So when I find things that I don't think will make good magic, our job is to pass on it. So anyway, guys, that is my podcast today, answering why we don't do things. But anyway, I'm now at work, so we all know what this means. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make magic.

So I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast, and I'll see you soon. Bye-bye.