Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1092: Vision Design Summit

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

In this podcast, I talk about a procedure we do called a Vision Design Summit.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so I'm going a smidgen early today because we're having a vision summit for ziplining. So I thought today I would talk all about vision summits. What are vision summits? Where do they come from? Why do we do them? So it's a part of our process that I've mentioned a little bit. I've talked about my column more than on my podcast. But anyway, today I want to talk all about them. So let me first talk a little bit about sort of the history of design and we'll get into Vision Summits. it. So one of the things about doing design is since the very beginning there have always been different teams. Who the teams are, what they do, that's shifted a little bit over time. But the idea

that on most products, especially our premier products and our main supplemental products, somebody starts working on it and then hands it off to somebody else that continues working on it. And the reason that process has been, like, how exactly it works and who's handing it to who and when and whatever, like I said, elements of it have changed, but the idea that one team works on it

and then passes it along to a second team who works on it is pretty core to how we've made Magic from pretty early. Like the very first set I ever worked on when I got to Wizards was Antiquities. Not Antiquities. Was Alliances. And the idea there was somebody had designed it, which was East Coast Playtesters. And then R&D had the developers at the time. So later on, or very soon after, R&D would both make the design team and make the development team.

And while there are overlaps between the two teams, usually the person leading the teams, usually, there's some exceptions, are different people. are different people. And the key idea here, the reason we do this, the reason that it's core to how we make magic sets, is that having different people oversee it allows you to sort of, like, there's a lot of inherent biases that come when you do something. There's things that just you kind of like, but, you know, maybe it's not what's best.

And it's good that sort of different eyes have to look at something and different people have to look at something and different people have to prioritize or how it works and the first team will come up with good ideas that the second team will 100 use um but not every idea maybe you know when going through the two different teams sort of looking at it necessarily survives and the idea there is you want the best to survive. You know, we're trying to make, I mean, the making of magic is a group effort. It is not one thing, you know, with some rare exceptions, I mean, Alpha being the biggest, it's really not one person sort of designing something.

You know, it's various people at various things working on it. So one of the things that we figured out early on was that if I'm, let's say I'm doing the first part of the process and I'm handing something to the second part of the process, that it makes sense to get input from the second part of the process during the first part of the process. get input from the second part of the process during the first part of the process. And what I mean by that is if I'm going to hand off to person X, hey, I want person X to understand and have some buy-in to what I'm doing. Now, there's a bunch of different ways we've done this over the time, and it varies a little

bit from set designer to set designer. Some set designers like to be on the vision team. They don't run it. They're not running the vision team, but they're on the vision team so that they can understand

what's going on. They can see the choices being made. And they can provide input. Some people aren't on the team, but they peek in all the time

and they look and they sort of, you know, occasionally might give notes. There actually was a period of time early on back when it was design and development that we used to call divine. And the idea of divine was that it was with one or two months left in design. This is back in the day where design was 12 months long, so usually it was two months to go, the lead developer would come in and start looking at the file and giving notes,

what we call divine. And that was probably the earliest version of sort of like, okay, we need a transition from team one to team two. I guess the idea of the second team being on the first team was something that would happen later. And, I mean, essentially what we've learned is, if the goal is to make the best product we can, and the process is going to have one team work on it,

then hand off to a second team how do we maximize how do we make sure that the work the first team is doing is maximized to help the second team and that's a big way that I've always thought about it is if I'm doing the beginning part of the product which is what I do I want to make sure that who I hand it off to the person I give it to, is set up for success, is going to do the best they can. And there are a lot of, like I said, divine was one of them. There are a lot of ways that we would

sort of try to make sure this was true. Eventually, at some point, and I'm trying to remember when our first Vision Summit was. A couple years ago. And once again, I guess the Vision Summit went from kind of an informal thing to a more formal thing. So let me explain now what a Vision Summit is, now that I've sort of given the preface of why we want it. It's important that, and usually it happens either in the end of the third month or beginning of the fourth month.

Vision design is traditionally four months long. We have what's called a vision summit. So the way the vision summit works is we do some kind of usually limited play. It's up to the vision lead and or, I mean, the vision lead in conjunction with the set lead, how we want to do it. The most common way we'll do a summit, a vision summit, is a draft. Usually by the time you get to the third month,

you know, fourth month, the set's in a place where you can draft it. We've done sealed. That happens sometime. We've done pre-constructed decks where you kind of build decks that are your major theme. The idea essentially is we want to show off what the set is in a way that other people downstream can really give feedback. And the idea is that we really want to have a period of time before the vision design team is done

to have some input from stakeholders down road. So part of that is the set design lead is there. The play design lead is there. Usually there is a number of play designers. Andrew Brown oversees the play design team. Andrew's always there. And the idea is that Aaron Forsyth, my boss, is always there and then there are various members

maybe of people on the set design team the set design lead they're just people who depending on what the other question is does the set have special needs who, you know, depending on what, the other question is, does the set have special needs? Maybe if there's some complicated rule stuff going on,

maybe the rules manager's there. Maybe if there's frames things, the graphic designer's there. You know, you just want to get people who are going to be involved in the set downriver of the first team. And the idea is, so the way a vision summit works is, usually we spend two hours doing a play test, draft, sealed, pre-constructed, whatever the format is.

And then after that, we break up. Sometimes it's one team. Sometimes we break up into smaller teams. We've done it a couple different ways. But the idea is then we have a feedback period where we go through all the mechanics and everybody sort of weighs in, well, the mechanics, the key themes, and then just as a whole, how is it all holding together? The idea of a vision design is it's kind of a check-in, but it's a check-in by people who will down the road be

responsible for what it is. And one of the reasons that it's so important is that the reason that it goes through different bodies, and in some ways, I keep talking about two teams, but there's a vision team and a set design team. There's also a play design team. There's a digital team. There's, you know, tournaments want to look at it. There's rules and templating. There's a lot of teams down river view. There's a lot of people that are doing it. And so really what we've learned is, so let me talk about how we got to the Vision Summit. Sometimes, like the key to vision is we're trying to make something exciting and cool and flavorful. Vision is responsible usually for the major structuring, the majority of the mechanics.

You know, it's like, here's the essence of what we want to do. And then the team that follows, so set design in this case, will build off that. It is possible, like, vision design strength lies in being evocative, you know, blue sky design, coming up with new ideas, finding new places to explore, finding ways to make this set stand out from other sets. There's a lot of things that vision does, but vision wants to think a bit bigger. Vision wants to sort of be grandiose, wants to swing for the fences. And the way it normally works in vision design is whatever our big thing is,

whatever our major sort of... Usually there's something in vision where we're trying something, we're pushing somewhere. It depends on the set. The other thing to be aware of is one of the big questions we always ask in vision design is, why will people want to buy this set? Some sets come with a very strong premise, meaning that this is something players have been asking for. Maybe it's a return that people have been really eager for.

You know, sometimes we do something where we know there's kind of some built-in excitement for it. Other times, we're doing something brand new. We're doing something the players haven't asked for. We're doing something that we think is cool, but it's maybe pushing in a new direction. And so depending on sort of the state of what the design is, there's different needs for how much are we pushing boundaries.

The thing I like to do on most of my design teams, my vision design teams, is I like to have what I call a lofty plan and what I call a backup plan. And sometimes multiple backup plans. The lofty plan is, here's the grandiose idea. If we can make this work, that's pretty cool. But in any lofty idea, you know that when the rubber hits the road

it's possible that maybe the lofty idea won't work and that's a lot of the reason for this Vision Summit is you're trying to get real practical input for example let's talk about play design the play design input is a big part of this what they're saying is hey are these mechanics that we can balance? Are there knobs? Are there ways to tune them?

Is there enough design space? And there's a lot of sort of questions that are like, are these the right mechanics? Are they doing what we want to do? Another effect that the Vision Summit does is, it's just some first impressions by people who are very good at first impressions who haven't had a chance to see the set yet. You know, normally we're trying something and we're doing something novel.

Hey, we want to see, do other people like this? The other thing that happens in vision design sometimes is you get really deep into something. And so it, you know, you know, it, you know, you know, it, it, you get so deep into it

that sometimes it's, you know, things that might seem novel at first, you get really used to it and so you really want to sort of have somebody that can look at it and say, okay,

you know, with a fresh eye, without having been invested in this for four months or three months or whatever, how does this feel to me? Does say, okay, you know, with a fresh eye, without having been invested in this for four months or three months or whatever, how does this feel to me? Does this seem cool? You know, and there's ideas that seem cool in a vacuum that you do a lot of execution on. You just want, you kind of want to double check to say, hey, is this cool? Do you like this? And so that, that's the idea there of is you're just kind of double checking a lot thing. You're gut checking some stuff.

Okay. Now, when setting up, so let me explain another part of the setup for the Vision Summit. So Vision Design makes a file. The file will have commons and uncommons and then some amount of rares and mythic rares. and then some amount of rares and mythic rares. The idea is that the file is less the final file than it is what we call proof of concept. We are trying to demonstrate how we can build, you know, how the structure will work.

And so we will build a file that is representative of what we're trying to do. It is possible that the finished product has zero of the cards in the Vision Design file. Unlikely. Usually, Vision Design comes with cool ideas, and some of them carry through. Some get changed along the way. But, A, there are cards we make in Vision Design that never get changed, that sort of just carry through.

And there are ones in which, yeah, they get changed, but then the core essence of it was what Vision Design was up to. But the idea is that we want to play. So normally the commons and uncommons are all cards from the vision design file. Rares can vary. One of the things about rares that we want to be careful of is that you can very much... of is that rare you can you can very much rares can get you rares can muddle the playtest experience if you're not careful some like just making one rare that's a little too good that unbalances things really can upset a whole playtest can ruin a playtest so we spend a lot of time in

the vision summit making sure our rares are kind of at a certain level. In actual Magic, we will push things more, but we will have months and months and months to balance and find tests. Like, there's a lot of testing that goes on. In Vision Design, you know, there is passes. Like, somebody on the Vision Design team is a play designer. They're doing passes and trying to roughly get things in the right place. But with the rares and mythic rares specifically, we only need enough for the play test,

depending on what the play test is. For example, ziplining is a draft today. It's the most common one. So, you know, we need to have the right number of rares slash mythic rares for the draft. So we only need to make that many. Play design has some default rares that you can use if you want. So sometimes, you know, the rares aren't even rares specifically

from the set. They're just rares that play design will offer. More and more as we've been doing more vision summits, we've realized that we like some amount of the rares just because there's things you want to reflect, structural things you want to show off. And so we've been doing more sort of rares made by Vision Design in the Vision Summit. But they've been tempered, and Andrew in Play Design will usually look at them ahead of time. There's a band we want those rares to be at

to make an optimal Vision Design playtest. And so there's a lot of time spent on just looking over the file in general, but looking over the mythic rares specifically to make sure that the playtest will have an even keel from a power level standpoint. It's not that you don't want rares to matter. It's not that you don't want rares to show up. You want rares to be there because part of rares is that adds a texture that's important. But we're very, very careful not by having things that kind of run away. Because the last thing we want to do is... The last thing we want to do is...

We only have two hours to do this playtest, you know. Oh, the other thing we do at Vision Design Playtest is one of the rules is we only play two games. For a while, we tried playing just one game. But what we found was when you play the same person a second time, the nature of how you play changes a little bit. But we decided that three games weren't necessary to get the information. And because we have a limited amount of time for playtesting, we kind of want people to play, you know, multiple partners and have more experience in playing against more different decks. Because part of experience isn't just playing the decks, but it's seeing the decks played against you and feeling the decks played against you. And so, for example, the reason I'm going a little early today is I need to check the cards, make sure that the packs represent how the packs will look.

You know, just make sure... Every set is little minutia, little tiny things that affect things, and you want to go in and look and make sure that the set as you're presenting it is there. One thing is we always talk about the set skeleton, which is there's a default way that sets look. There's a default... You know, if you've read my Nuts and Bolts articles, like, oh, common one is this thing and common two is that thing. And, you know, it's a certain size and there's definitely sort of a default, but that's the default.

As you start getting in, start making your set, you'll realize that you need to move things around. you start getting in, start making your set, you'll realize that you need to move things around. Maybe, you know, maybe the number of a certain type of card, a certain rarity, you know, there's a certain percentage that you normally by default meet, but maybe you need more of something or, you know, it just depends on the theme of the set. Whatever the theme of the set is, you're going to raise the as fan of it, the as fan, you know, how much it shows up in a booster. You're going to change that based on your theme. If you're, you know, for example it shows up in a booster, you're going to change that based on your theme. If you're, for example, let's say a theme is all about enchantments. Well, you want

more enchantments in the set. If the theme is about instants and sorceries, you want instants and sorceries in the set. If there's a typal theme, you want more of that creature type. You want to sort of understand that the nature of building a magic set is making sure that the experience in Limited, which is making sure that the experience in Limited,

which is very reminiscent of the experience of opening a single booster pack, well, casual constructed, that we want to make all that's there. And so there's a lot of time and attention. Okay, so what will then happen is, like today, we will do the draft. Normally, there is enough people for two drafts.

I've had Vision Summits where there were three drafts, but I think two, two is the default. Um, normally what happens is there's a group of people that are like normally invited. Aaron always goes to vision summits. I always go to vision summits. Um, uh, Andrew Brown goes to vision summits. There's certain people that are in charge of stuff that, um, it's kind of their job to be at all the vision summits there's certain people that are in charge of stuff that um it's kind of their job to be at all the vision summits uh but um oh and another thing i should point out uh vision summits are for any set that has vision design and set design uh usually if you're a big enough set

a tentpole set a major release you're going to have a vision design and a set design just because we want that two set of eyes on it there There are some products that are small enough. They don't necessarily go from vision design to set design. But usually that just means that there's not, it's not a big enough product that it's necessary. There are definitely things where one person sort of sees it all the way through. And that's a lot to do with the scope of the product. Normally, if there's randomized boosters, it's going to have set design, and that's big enough. It's going to have set design and vision design.

So the Vision Summit is true for any set that has vision design will have a Vision Summit. In fact, we originally were going to have, so zip lining ends at the end of November. We were originally going to have it in October, but there were some other sets that needed a Vision Summit. And our set was in a place where everyone, like there was more confidence in what we were doing.

And so they asked if we could push it back a little bit, just because the one thing with Vision Summons, you only have so much time to respond. And so, you know, we only have the rest of november to respond to this but there was enough confidence of what was going on that they they didn't the expectation is what there's not going to be major major revisions to do um so we were able to push back a little bit um sometimes the sets that we try to get an early provision is um where there's a little bit of like we're really pushing an area that we're not quite sure about. Okay, so

what happens is we do the play test. So, like I said, it's usually best of two, and you'll do, like we do the draft and we start playing, and we try to get as many games in as you can, but once again, no more than two games per person.

Then, we have a meeting. And the way the meeting works is we literally go through all the mechanics and the themes of the set and just talk through them. What do we like about them? What do we not like about them? Where are the problems? And basically it's an opportunity and a chance to sort of talk through, opportunity and a chance to sort of talk through, I mean, both positive and negative, both here's what I like about it, here's where it shines, and here's where my concern is, here's my worry. And sort of what happens is that usually it lays out what the concern is. It lays out, what the concern is. It lays out,

it sort of does a good job of laying out the dynamics of what, like, what play design most cares about and set design to some extent is here are the troubles we see downstream. Here are the issues that we're concerned with.

Maybe we've tried to do something like this mechanic and we had certain problems here's the problems we had uh maybe another uh recent one post icoria is one of the rules now is there's only one mechanic that's really kind of a high maintenance mechanic meaning it's going to take a lot of work uh from set design and play design to get it right to balance it it's really going to take a lot of work from set design and play design to get it right, to balance it. It's really going to take a lot of time and energy. In Ikoria, we did mutate and we did companions, both of which were basically high, they required a lot of care and it was too much. We sort of, we bit off more than we can chew and it ended up being a problem. Companions ended up

not where we'd want them. So anyway, that's one of the dynamics that's important is making sure that we're not, that what we're, what vision design is asking of set design and play design, set design and play design, believe is possible. Believe they can do. And like I said, also, some of that, some of it is also talking

a little bit about backup plans, but I'll get to that. That's a separate meeting. Okay, so we go through, we walk through each mechanic. We're told about each mechanic. Everybody brings up their issues. They talk about what they like and don't like, their individual cards they liked. You know, just like, what did they see as a mechanic that sort of showed them promise? What do they see as a mechanic that shows them concern? We will also sometimes talk about themes,

if there's key selling points, you know, like we'll talk about things that are big picture things that we're asking set design, play design to deliver on. Okay, that meeting usually is a half an hour. Sometimes it's an hour, depending. Okay, then what happens is, after the vision design, we get all the feedback. Usually the vision design team is at the vision summit. Not all of them are always playing in the summit, just because we want to get as many fresh eyes as possible.

So normally what happens is a few members of the design team are often playing, but a lot of them are watching, you know, are watching more so than playing and seeing how people are responding to things. Then we do the meeting, we get all the notes

on what the concerns are on the mechanics and what they liked and didn't like, but both. Then the vision design team will meet and go through all the feedback that we got. Usually most of the vision design members were there, so we can sort of share anecdotes of how we learned things. Sometimes after that meeting, individual vision design team members might go talk to people. The play design representative, for example, will usually talk with the play design people to get a more in-depth, if there's concerns, what exactly they're concerned with,

where there's concerns, are there answers that play design thinks. Now, it is possible at Vision Design, at the Vision Summit, for us to say, wow, we really don't think this will work. That doesn't happen often, usually because there's a lot of work pre that, making sure that we're doing due diligence. But sometimes we try something and Vision Design is like, okay, this just isn't working. So in the meeting, we go through all the notes of the summit, uh, and we talk through everything. Um, you know, where are their concerns and where are their answers to address the concerns?

So most of it's like, hey, mechanic X might do thing A or B. So we'll talk through and say, okay, is there ways, you know, if A and B are a problem, how do we lessen A or lessen B? Or how do we, is there a way to add in a knob or a tool or, you know, are we giving play design? Oh, let me real quickly talk about knobs. Let me explain what knobs are. So when you make a magic card, there are so many variables on it. The one main variable that exists is the mana cost. So for example, if you're trying to balance a magic card, well, you can change the cost.

If it's a creature, you can change the power. You can change the toughness. Perhaps it has an activated ability. You know, there's another number that you can change. Usually what knobs mean is there's things built into the card. Normally numbers are not always

numbers. Like another knob is instant sorcery if you're doing spells. Mostly it means that there's some way for the designers to have some amount of ability to manipulate and adapt it to try to make it work. Mana value, because you have to go

by whole mana value. There's a big difference between 3 and 4. Now, on something like a creature where you have power toughness that you can adapt, creatures are a little bit easier. Spells sometimes can be tricky because changing, you know,

unless a spell is so powerful that it needs one more mana, a lot of times fixing it is not that easy just with the mana. Now, set design, play design, they can change what the cards do, but that's a much bigger ask. That's a much bigger thing that's going on. The more knobs you have,

it means the more clean, clear things that can be adapted that would allow set design and play design to do the balancing. The more knobs you have, the knobbier you have, usually the more comfortable play design and set design is because they know that there's more opportunity, there's more finesse to sort of get it to work. And that is, that's key. Other things that they might worry

about is how does this work with other sets? So let's say, for example, we have a typo theme. We care about, you know, warriors. Um, okay, well, let's take a look at the sets around. Is warrior something that's, now, um, usually classes are a little better. You know, most sets have wizards and warriors and stuff. Um, but let's say we're doing type, uh, we're doing goblins. usually classes are a little better. Most sets have wizards and warriors and stuff. But let's say we're doing type... We're doing goblins.

Okay, well, how many worlds around us... How many sets in standard have goblins in them? And some things are easier than others. Classes are a little bit easier. There's some creature types we do a lot. We do goblins more than other things. But, like, for example, in Ixalan, when we were doing pirates and dinosaurs,

I mean, technically speaking, maybe there had been a handful of pirates and a few dinosaur cards that weren't labeled dinosaur. But for all practical purposes, we hadn't done enough in standard. Like, we were doing a new type, a new creature type for all intents and purposes, even though there might have been a few.

And so that's tricky, right? If you're introducing something in the set, well, the sets before can't have it. And so that's another big thing, is not just looking at your set in a vacuum, but looking at your set in conjunction with all the other sets. And so sometimes the notes that come out of Vision Summit

aren't even just notes for this set. It might be, hey, in order to do justice for this set, there's some asks of other sets. Oh, okay, we're going to care about some creature type. Okay, can we find, like, I use Bloomboro as an example. There are some animals that we care about in Bloomboro that we wanted to make sure that there were some animals in other sets. For example, I talked about in my column how there were some slightly more mice than we might have done.

I mean, we had done mice previously in Eldraine, but last time I think there were one or two mice, and this time there was, I think, four mice. So, you know, just a little bit more mice. Why a little bit more mice? Well, we're doing a set down the road that might care about mice because if you've ever, if you know the source material that Bloomboro is,

the genre clusters, they say, that it's playing in, mice are important. So anyway, talk about that. So sometimes the feedback isn't just to the vision design team, but for other teams around. So what happens is the vision design team will meet,

talk through things. If there's changes being made, they'll figure out how to do the changes. The reason the vision summit is done before vision design is over is vision design is in the best place to try to figure out solutions only because they're the most,

they both, they A, both most understand the file, having been working on it and the structure, and B, blue sky design is kind of where vision design shines.

You know, if we need to find a solution, vision design is more likely to find a grandiose solution rather, like, a lot of times when it gets to set design,

especially late set design, you kind of have to rely on things that are known. Like, you know, there's certain things for example, if we make a kicker-like mechanic we've made a lot of kicker-like mechanics.

Play design understands kicker-like mechanics. So the later you are in the process the more you want to lean on things that are known things because you have less time to sort of do all the testing work. And so the earlier you are, the more blue sky you can get. The later you are, the more sort of tried and true you got to be. The more you have to lean into things

that are just known quantities. Anyway, so, oh, okay. So then Vigisign meets, has these conversations, figure out what changed, you know, how do we want to change the file based on feedback we're getting from the playtesters,

from the Vision Summit. Then there's another meeting that's set up anywhere from a week to two weeks after the Vision Summit, what we call the Vision Summit follow-up. And the idea of the Vision Summit follow-up is that we are, it's a chance for the vision design team to meet with many of the same people that were in the vision summit and walk through what changes they want to make. How are we trying to fix things? And the reason that's important is because we can get feedback from the people who gave us the comments like, oh yeah, good, that's a good job, that will fix it. Or, okay, I like that, but push in this direction this direction like we'll get some feedback about are our changes

addressing the actual issues that got raised in the vision I mean normally they do but and it's not so much that they aren't addressing them it's not just there's sometimes some nuance there's sometimes some questions sometimes play design we like this but push in this direction push in that direction set design also we will get some feedback but anyway that allows us to have a meeting where we can talk through and then get feedback from it anyway the vision summit is I'm going to say relatively new

I've been here 28 years so relatively new it's a couple years old I find it very useful in general what we've learned is and this has just been true over time, the more input you get from downstream as you're working upstream, the more you can tailor what you're doing to the needs of the teams downstream. And that is important. Vision design's ultimate job is to set up set design for success. It's to make something that set design can then, you know, you want to make the blueprint that set design, you know, can go build the house.

And, you know, if you have things that are problematic, you want to know that ahead of time so that you can address them ahead of time. Under some of the old systems, like way back when, design would make something hand-off to development. Sometimes development goes, oh, this is a huge problem. And then they were just sort of starting from scratch to fix the problem. And that's where Divine came from.

And then there's, essentially Divine was the earliest version of what the Vision Summit was. I mean, it was one person rather than a whole team. And I think a lot of the evolution is, what we've learned is

the more different voices, the more different eyes of the evolution is the, we, what we've learned is the more different voices, the more different eyes, the more people looking at something, the better it will get, uh, and the more valuable it would get. So anyway, um, there's a lot, like there's a lot of tools and I, I try to spend this podcast talking through the tools with you guys so you can understand, um, what and how we've done, we do things. Um, but anyway, guys, uh, I, I'm at work. So as we all know, uh, it means that's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic,

it's time for me to make a magic. Hope you guys enjoyed today's show. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.