Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1196: The Buffet Metaphor

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

My favorite metaphor for Magic design is that it's like running a buffet. I talk about where this metaphor came from and why I feel it's so accurate.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I dropped my son off at school. We all know what that means. It's time for a drive to work. Okay, so today it's all about a metaphor. So those regular listeners know that I'm a huge fan of metaphors. The reason that I like them so much is I think when you're trying to explain something, it helps if you can compare something that they do know, that it just makes it easier to understand the connections.

And one of the metaphors that I've been searching for for a long time was the best metaphor to describe what it is to design magic sets. And interestingly, my wife came up with this metaphor. I liked it so much, I put it in an article, and I've been using it ever since. So it is the buffet metaphor. I'm sure some of you have heard this because it's a metaphor I like quite a bit. So the idea of the buffet metaphor is what is magic design like? Magic design is like creating a buffet.

Why is that? Well, the idea is that magic, as I often say, is not one game. It's a game system. It has shared rules and shared game components, but there's many, many different ways to play. You can play limited with sealed or draft and there's various forms of draft. I did a whole podcast on that. There is constructed format. There's standard, there is modern, and there's pioneer, and there's commander, and there's vintage, and legacy, and pauper, and there's lots and lots of ways to play Magic. And the idea is, our job is to provide all of you the best game experience we can. But the trick is, the challenge is,

that what you all want out of your game is not the same. And that's why I go to the buffet. The goal of a buffet is to make, we want you to have a wonderful meal. But the idea is, and this is where I like this, I like the metaphor a lot, is magic has many, many, many cards, 27,000 something cards, lots of cards.

In order to play magic, you don't need to use all the cards. You don't even need to use the majority of the cards. You need to use some of the cards. Much like when you eat a buffet, you don't need to eat all the food. You just need to eat some of the food. You need enough food that you get full. And the idea is that we, the people making the game, much like the, you know, head chef of the buffet, is that we want to create the best experience we can for you. And the way we've learned to do that

is find foods people love. Find foods. So I will share my buffet story. This is a fundamental part of who I am. So when I was a kid I've done I talked a lot about my dad. My dad loved skiing. Obviously when I talked about his life I talked about how he retired and became a ski instructor. So in my childhood, most of our vacations were ski vacations. And eventually we realized that the best skiing was out west. It was sunny and nice. So we would go to Colorado, we'd go to California, we'd go to Utah, we'd go all around out west skiing. So one day we were, think at Vale but right next to Vale is Deer Valley which is a very fancy place and they there was a gourmet buffet a fancy buffet at Deer Valley that we went

to and it was at that buffet that for the very first time I ever tried Alaskan King crab legs I ever tried Alaskan king crab legs. And I loved them. I love, love, love, loved them. They were great. And then I said to my parents, these are amazing. Why don't we have this all the time? And my parents said, well, it's kind of expensive. So it's not something we can have all the time.

But on my birthday, the rule of how our birthdays work when I was a kid was I could choose where I wanted to eat for my birthday. I could pick any restaurant I want. So I think we went, we were at Deer Valley when I was eight. So for my ninth birthday, I said, I want Alaska king crab flakes. I choose the restaurant where I can have a, so I picked a seafood restaurant and I had Alaska king crab flakes and they were awesome. And basically it was something that I do not, I did not get all all the time but once a year on my birthday I can get them if I chose the seafood restaurant. And that for those that do not know became a

tradition. Even now on my birthday I have Alaskan king crab legs. We're talking 40 plus years later it just became part of my identity, part of who I am. That I went to this buffet and I had something That was so awesome to me that I like it affected my life That that is the impact of Like when you play magic what we want is we want magic to be transformative We want magic to be a game that sticks with you and becomes something like we talk about magic being a lifestyle game And what that means is is that magic goes beyond just being a game that you play because there's many games that you play

But for some people not everybody some people just a game It becomes part of their identity that becomes part of who you are you know, I am a magic player means something and that becomes part of who you are. I am a magic player means something. And that is our hopes and dreams as magic designers that we want to entice you. We wanna make the game of magic so much fun that it becomes a part of your very identity.

And to do that, the key, now, there's a lot of different ways to slice it up. You can look at formats, you can to slice it up. You can look at Formats you can look at second graphics. You can look at colors There's lots of different people that draw people in but all of it we care about all of it and the reason that I like the metaphor so much is that There's no such thing as something universally loved No matter what you choose like even the thing thing, even if I pick something, so I will pick something,

double face cards. When we made double face cards for the first time in Innistrad, there was a lot of debate within R&D. There were people in R&D that said, you should not do this. You are crossing a line that magic should not cross. And we're very adamant about it. But I and the people who really liked it said, no, this is amazing, we should do this.

And we got it to print. But I will point out that, so it was Innistrad, Dark Ascension, and then Avacyn Restored, which had like new mechanics in it. We did not put double-faced cards in Avacyn Restored. There was enough doubt about them that we sort of hedged our bets

and we didn't do them there. Now, double-faced cars went on to be very popular. One of the highest rated mechanics, if you want to count as a mechanic, one of the highest rated mechanical elements that we ever had in all our years in doing the market research. But, there is a group,

early on, I don't know, 10%ish, that despise double-faced cards. Because there's a lot of logistics that come with double-faced cards. You have to play with opaque sleeves or you have to play with a checklist card and then you have to flip them over. Remember to flip them back and you have to remember what's on the backside because you want to give away what's there. And like there's a lot that comes with double-faced cards. They don't come at no cost now. They are very exciting They are they do things northern magic card is done But you know and one of the things about making the buffet is we put out new exciting dishes all the time We're gonna try new things. Would you like an omelet bar? Would an omelet bar be fun?

How about carved prime rib? How about seafood? Like we try different things. And what we do is we gauge like, okay, let's put out the food and at the end of the night, how many people, one, how many people ate the food? And two, when we ask people, how many people rate that food as the highest thing there? And the idea is we wanna put out the food, we want people to like the food and two, when we ask people how many people will rate that food is the highest thing there.

And the idea is we want to put out the food, we want people to like the food and then we sort of look at how many people like the food. The challenge there is, like I said, there anything that's going to inspire like one of my sayings from my GDC talk is if everybody likes likes your game, but nobody loves it, it will fail. And what that means is that the goal of the game is not to make sure no one dislikes things, it's to make sure everybody loves something. And that in order to get passion, in order to make people really love something, in order

to be something that is kind of pushes boundaries, you're probably going to upset some people. Like double-faced cards made the majority of people very happy, but there are people that did not like them. And that is an important point of, with anything, we gauge response. I will stress that if enough people don't like something, if enough people don't eat the food at the buffet and rank the food very low as a buffet. We will stop serving the food Some classic example. So for example when Richard Garfield first made the game of magic He was trying to solve a problem

He did not He assumed it would be like any other game that people would go to the store and spend 20 30 bucks That's kind of what a game cost back then And buy some cards and then they play them with their friends at home and that your cards would live in a small ecosystem. And Richard's concern was that there wasn't a lot of, you know, once you all bought your cards and that's what you played with, that system didn't really refresh itself. Maybe maybe you'd buy new cards, but once again, in the beginning, they didn't even

know how often there would be new cards. But the idea Richard came up with was something from his youth. In his youth he used to play marbles and in marbles you can win each other's marbles. And so it made this dynamic where the system kept changing. So Richard said okay I'm going to use that so he made what's called anti. So for those that have never heard of anti the way anti works is you draw seven cards then you exile your eighth card and The winner of the game permanently takes possession they now own it of the anti card and

The idea was Richard's like well the way I will keep flux in the system is I will allow the pockets to have flux within it that people's cards will change hands and so I have to change decks because I lost that card. So maybe I'll change colors or maybe I, I gained a card. Now I can play a color I couldn't play before. That it was done as a way to sort of add change into it. And, and once again, Richard, it's not that Richard didn't imagine

that something could happen, but no one can see the phenomenon that magic became. And Richard's idea was, hey, if the game's wildly successful, we'll solve that problem. That's a great problem to have. We can solve that problem. You know, if being wildly successful causes us problems, we'll have time to fix those problems.

Anyway, so the game came out with Ante. And Ante wasn't optional. When magic first started, Ante was the way you played. It was the core part of the rules. I remember I started playing magic back in August of 1993, and when you would go, if you would play against a stranger, if you were at a convention or a store, the way you would play is,

hey, you wanna play a game of magic? No, Auntie. Like, you're just part of the, you wanna play a game of magic? No, Auntie. Like, it just was part of the language that you had a right upfront goal, we're not playing for Auntie.

And Auntie was wildly unpopular wildly wildly unpopular People generally like not to lose possession of their things. I have a deck. I'm very proud of it I don't want to like oh, I just lost the game and now my most powerful card is gone. People didn't like that So first anti became an optional way to play Then it just got removed from the game altogether and the few anti cards that just got banned in all the formats then it just got removed from the game altogether. And the few anti-cards that just got banned in all the formats. And I mean, for example, land destruction is a good example.

Early Magic, there was ways to play with land destruction, with discard, with counter spells, where I could keep you from doing anything. Where I just blow up every land and you never get to play a spell the whole game. Or I make you discard every card in your hand, you never play a spell the whole game or I make you discard every card In your hand you never play a spell the whole game or I counter every single spell you cast you never get them And that no spell results for you the whole game and the audience were like we really don't like that

So we cut back and we were more careful with how we did land destruction and discard and counter spells and they exist but and We were much more careful on the cost and how we did them and the volume and stuff like that. Or even more recently we did aftermath. We did March the Machine aftermath and the way that works is all our products have a rating. It's a one to five rating and four or five are the top two meaning three is like average

and four or five is like oh I liked it more than that. So the top two box, we call the top two box, I think is what they call it. It's indicative of sort of how popular something was. And normally what you want of a top two box score is you want like 70 plus, ideally is what you want. If something is like 50 to 70, it's not ideal, you know, it's okay, but not great. And if it's below 50, a that's a danger sign. So March of the machine aftermath got a five a

Five the lowest top box two box score. We got before that. I think was a 25 which was horrible So we had a lot of plant we had a lot of plans for aftermath and that what that represented We had all sorts of things and we the the brakes screech and we stopped it and we said okay we are not going to do that and we changed. So the idea is it's not as if the audience can't respond to something. We are very responsive to the audience. We put out foods. If people like the foods we make more of that food. If people hate the food we stop serving the food. But, and this is the challenging part, is what happens when somebody loves the food and somebody hates the food. And like I said, anything or actually

anything, there is nothing we have done in magic. There's absolutely nothing we've done in magic that I haven't had someone write to me and complain for example When we made in a shroud the way in a shroud worked was the double-faced cards were on their own sheet They were they were dropped in a different slot. So if you got a rare double-faced card You still got your normal rare slash mythic rare So you could get two rares in the booster pack and I had more than than one person write into me and yell at me for destroying limited. So if two rares in a pack, that's not universally loved.

There's nothing. Yeah, no matter what, something you might love, someone else just, they don't like it. So let me give my example. This was my classic example. So New Phyrexia. So New Phyrexia was the Phyrexians had showed up and then in the brother, sorry, the Weatherlight Saga, at the end of it, in Invasion, they got wiped out.

They were gone. The Phyrexians are no more. And we wanted to bring them back. So we told the whole story about how they slowly got seeped into Mirrodin and then took over Mirrodin and scarves Mirrodin Block. And at the end, they turned it into New Phyrexia. we were like, new Phyrexia was like Phyrexia at its height. Like it's, you know, it's watching the beloved Mirrodin turn into new Phyrexia.

So I got two letters about new Phyrexia and I literally got them within this within the same week. So the first letter said, Hi, I'm just writing to tell you how much magic is meant to me. I did not have a good childhood. I had a lot of bad things happen to me. I really had a lot of trouble making friends. I was in a low spot. I really was in a bad place. But then the one friend I had introduced me to magic and he took me to to we went to the game store and Magic became it just filled in all these gaps in my life that I didn't have I made friends

I I you know, I I I had something that I really loved and cared about it. It turned my life around. I Adore magic magic magic was something that truly saved me at a time that I needed saving. And I can't express how much I love magic. But then he said, but the imagery in New Forex, there's a lot of body horror imagery and I don't want to get into my background, but I can say that part of the things that made my early life so horrible this stuff pulls it back and I As much as I love magic and I do I do love magic I I can't play with it it is and I'm writing to say to you, please don't do this again the I I

Love magic so much and I just can't have this this horror imagery is just absolutely Polluting something that is so important to me. Please, please don't do this again. And then the other letter I got was about a guy talking about how he and his father have been estranged his whole life. They really never got along. And then magic came along and they shared magic. And all of a sudden, for the first time ever there was a way

for him to bond with his dad and it was meaningful and helpful and really like changed his relationship with his father and he was saying one of the things that's been great is the one thing that he and his father enjoyed before magic was horror, horror movies and stuff like that and that nephrexia, not just being something they could share, but the overlap was the thing that they love most of horror was it was the most amazing thing ever. And he's like, I know, I know you can't do horror all the time, but definitely, definitely you need to do this again. And the thing that was really resonated to me is, look, I very much, very much care.

Like I consider magic to be a source of good. I consider myself and the rest of R&D caretakers of that. And like I did an article once where I said to people, write letters to me about how magic has made your life better. And my normal article is like 3000 words. I ended up putting 8,000 words of letters of just people pouring out their hearts And I I people write to me all the time I meet people at stuff like magic on and whenever I meet people they share this with me

I get how much magic impacts people I mean, I know that not everybody is an enfranchised magic player But for those who are those who make it a lifestyle I understand how much understand how much magic means to you. And that means the world to me. I want to make the buffet that is transformative. I want to make the buffet, much like I as a little kid, eating the crab legs at the

buffet, it was a transformative thing for me. I want to do that for players. I want the buffet to be something where they're like, this is the best meal I've ever had in my life. I want people to keep coming back because they get what they love there but the core problem and this is why I think the buffet is very interesting is I feel like I'm making the buffet and Somebody might rightfully come to me, we've added seafood. And somebody comes to me and goes, I'm allergic to seafood.

And because I'm allergic to seafood, man, I cannot stand the smell of seafood. So wow, I don't even like, I mean, obviously I'm not going to eat the seafood, but I don't even like being at a table where someone else is eating a seafood. That is horrible for me And that's one the challenge of magic is while you have a lot of say about your own deck You don't control what the people you play with do I mean, maybe maybe you can find a play group that has a shared opinion on what you care about I mean, maybe I mean you have some control based on the format you play and based on how you build your back and

I mean, you have some control based on the format you play, based on how you build your back end. You have some control of who you play with. But in the end, if somebody else loves something that you hate, they might sit at your table and eat that thing that you just can't stand. And a long time listeners know I hate bananas. I eat bananas with a passion. I do not like the smell of bananas, the taste of bananas. I'm not super happy when someone's eating banana next to me.

I do not like bananas. I do not like the smell of bananas. I'm not super happy when someone's eating banana next to me. I do not like bananas. I do not like the smell of bananas. I get it. But my family, for example, loves bananas. Loves bananas. My wife loves bananas. My kids love bananas. So I have bananas in my house. I remember, for example, my wife was pregnant, I think, with the twins. There was a drink that she needed to have. she was on the last three months Twins are very hard to carry she was bed rest for the last three months And so I had a I was making all the food for and stuff and one of the things she really needed It's something her doctor said is she needed this like protein shake or something and it had bananas in it bananas were important and

You know, like I said, I I despise bananas, but like okay, here's my wife pregnant with my children She needs bananas in her thing. So someone's got to peel bananas that person's going to be me and it was not something I Not experience I enjoyed but I'm like, okay, this is important and I I'm going to I'm gonna suck it up I'm gonna suck it up because this is important and I'm going to I'm going to suck it up I'm going to suck it up because this is important and that that's the hard thing that that's the whenever I give this metaphor that though the where people love to jump in with the metaphor is this idea that um that I it's you know if I serve seafood then everybody has to everybody interacts with the seafood If I serve seafood, then everybody interacts with the seafood. And here's the hard part. This is why the buffet metaphor really sticks to me.

R&D is very good at what I'll call additive. If you write to me and say, you know what would make magic even better? Thing X. I would love Thing X. I can consider Thing X. Maybe I can include thing X I mean that is very actionable feed actionable feedback if someone says man you haven't done this thing But I would love you did think whether that thing is a certain flavor a certain mechanical space

We haven't done like if you want if you're sort of like hey, I come to your buffet But you know what I would really love? Cornbread. I love cornbread. I grew up with cornbread. Cornbread is amazing for me. I absolutely adore cornbread. If you could have cornbread, man, that would be the world to me.

Well, you know what? I could add cornbread. I mean, I mean, obviously with any one thing, we have to make sure it works in a larger system, but like if we can have cornbread, we can have cornbread. If cornbread makes sense sense we can do that. But if someone comes to me and says hey I really have a problem with shrimp. I'm allergic to shrimp. I don't like shrimp. Whatever. Take away the shrimp. It is hard if I know there's a giant audience that really loves the shrimp. I know there's like that that shrimp or the crab legs. Take away the crab legs. There's a giant audience that really loves the shrimp. I know there's like that shrimp or the crab legs,

take away the crab legs. There's a kid out there that's a transformative thing. They love those crab legs. You know, taking away the crab legs means that there's all these people that are really enjoying the crab legs that don't get the crab legs. That's hard to do.

Additive is easy, subtractive is hard. Taking something away is hard because the only way to do it is to remove it for everybody. And the other thing that I guess is important to understand is what that thing is that causes you problems. Just very, I gave the example of body horror, right? The horror theme. I recently had someone write to me who has a deathly fear of spiders and they're

like, could we just not have spiders in magic? Like it's, you know, it's one of the most common fears in the world and look, it's triggering to me. I, someone plays a spider and I gotta leave the game. And I mean, I, the person is really heartful saying to me, I love magic, but man, this component really, really, really causes me problems. I mean, when we first introduced standard, the idea of rotation, there are people that are really, really, fundamentally, the idea that I'm buying cards and there's a format I just can't play my cards in was

upsetting, very upsetting. I've had people write to me about the color black, about how they have a religious upbringing, and it really, just seeing demons in the game is problematic for them. I have people who don't like humor, that every time we try to bring some element of humor in the game, they're like, hey, get that out of here.

Silver boarders for humor, stop putting humor in blackboarder cards cards I have people that don't like modernity yeah they don't like seeing more modern things there's people that didn't like Bloomberg because it felt too juvenile to them and the same is with mechanics you know split cards are very popular the real people that didn't like them you know pick any mechanic Morph is very popular but there's people that absolutely can't stand Morph and so it is not as if I mean I know when people come to me and they bring to me the problems that they're having I understand how it feels like oh this this this really matters because look this is how it she this is affecting how I play magic I mean though the most

recent one the one that kind of spurred this whole podcast is universe is beyond The idea of having outside stuff in that the funny thing was early magic actually dipped its toe in it The very first expansion was a rabbi nights at Richard made that wasn't our own build world It just took existing stories and made cards out of them The third portal set, Portal Three Kingdoms, we were trying to get into Chinese market and we just picked a famous story in Asia. We weren't, and even the ARK system, one of the early systems we had to try to teach people. There were three of them. One of them was a thing

called C23 that we made up. It was Jim Lead wrote it. But the other two were TV shows, Hercules and Xena. And then we sort of said, okay, you know, we said, we want to concentrate on our own creative. We moved away from that. And we made a giant effort into saying, okay, we're doing our thing. And we would do our twists on things, but we would do our thing.

And then over the years, the one of the things Aaron Forsythe, my boss, noticed was how much people really love seeing other properties through the lens of magic. For example, one of the most popular questions I get, I still get on my blog is, here's the character, what color are they? I answer questions like that all the time. And so Aaron was like, look, I just think there's some pent up demand for this. And much like I said, okay, let's make the omelet bar. So we put out the omelet bar, and at first we're cautious with the omelet bar. You know, there's some eggs, a little bit of cheese, and maybe a few vegetables.

Maybe there's not even meat when we start the omelet bar, you know. And we took it and we tried it in small, we did it in secret layers, we did, you know, commander decks, and what we found is each time we try something, it went really well. Even though when we first introduced Walking Dead, secret layer, there was a giant outcry. As someone who does this all the time, that is not unheard of, there's lots of things

where people get very upset about stuff, it is a common thing, but they were very upset and then that secret letter went on to be the best-selling secret letter of all time that there was an audience that very much wanted it and as we made other things we made commander that's worth hammer 40,000 was wildly successful Lord of the Rings was why was like as we tried in different places we discovered there was an audience that really liked it meaning we put out the omelet bar and people said, ooh, we love the omelet bar. So we started, we added some meat to the omelet bar and we put up more cheeses.

And like the omelet bar grew with time because there were so many people that liked the omelet bar. That is how, that's how the buffet works. If we get positive reinforcement, we make more of it. If we get negative reinforcement, we make more of it if we get negative reinforcement we make less of it and and I explained this on my um in my blog that there are four different types of audience for like a universe is beyond the largest audience the largest by far is in franchise players like magic players who are people who just love magic and played magic for a long time. That is the number one purchaser by a lot of Lord of the Rings.

Number two is what we call Laps players. Those are people that used to play magic, but for whatever reason life came along, they moved away from magic. But Lord of the Rings is someone that makes, oh Lord of the Rings. And Laps players already know how to play magic. They're former magic players. And so it did a really good job pulling them. Laps is the second group. Lapses way smaller than French-raced players

But it's the biggest secondary group then there's new players now Universes beyond does a better job of anything we've done in the recent time of bringing in new players Those are still a small portion of the people by the product But hey, it's we knew new players important We want new players a little new Blake blood and all that stuff and this just does an excellent job of that The reason we focus on that is because important not because it's a giant portion of the audience. It's not it's a small portion But an important portion and the final portion is collectors people that don't even play the game very very tiny Yes with universes beyond there are more collectors go through that love the property who will collect it

So there's some I think people think that's a way, way bigger group than it is. That's actually a very small group. And anyway, the challenge, like I said, the challenge of the buffet is we put in an omelet bar. The omelet bar is wildly successful, but there are people that do not like the omelet bar. They do not like that the omelet bar exists. And hey, we have people staffed at the omelet bar

to make you omelets. Those people can be doing other things. I'd rather those people not be, wait, you're like, I'd rather have someone be slicing my prime rib than making omelets. There's a lot of people that, we get a lot of feedback. And I get a lot of people that we get a lot of feedback and the and I get a lot of very heartfelt feedback.

I don't want people to feel like it doesn't affect me. When someone writes in and talks about how what magic is meant to them, man, that speaks to my soul. Like the reason that I do this job, the reason that I care so much about this job is I know it impacts people. I know it has it. I know magic can be transformative. I know that magic can be the thing that,

that players, that really makes a difference in players' lives. And when we do something that takes away, that means something to me. I don't want to say that when you write in a letter and you're like, like the guy who wrote Rodan and Bugs and Spiders, man, that speaks to me. I I don't want to say that when you write in a letter and you're like Like like the the guy who wrote in about the spiders man that speaks to me. I get it I get it like he has an honest-to-god phobia and that is

Tainting what magic means to him? The problem on the other side is there's a lot of people who love spiders and the idea and that's the tricky thing that if someone comes to the buffet and is definitely allergic to something in the buffet it's not as if i can go well you're definitely allergic i guess i guess no one else will eat that food it's like well i'll make sure you're aware of what's in the food i don't want you to eat the food accidentally but there's a whole other buffet there's a whole rest of the buffet and the idea is okay you know maybe you can't eat this, maybe the omelet bar is not for you, but there's lots of other, there's mac and cheese and there's all sorts of other

things. I'm not sure why you can't eat the omelets, but whatever, there's other foods that you can eat that is not the omelets. And the biggest problem is it comes across insensitive. When someone says this thing is fundamentally changing magic in a way that is negative to my experience, please stop doing it. It is not great. I get the message of me going, well, I know you don't like it, but other people do.

It's not the greatest message to hear. I mean, it is the truth, but it is not the greatest message to hear. And here's the biggest thing. I mean, this is the... I talked about this in my blog. The way we as designers have to interact with feedback is we have to take a feedback from sort of all called the amalgam of the players meaning that it's not what any one player wants it is what the players as a whole want and that if the players as a whole hate

something we will remove from the game you don't like Auntie Auntie's gone you don't like aftermath aftermaths gone you don't like anti? Anti's gone. You don't like aftermath? Aftermath's gone. You don't like two-mana land destruction? That's gone. Like there are things that as a group the amalgam says they do not like. We remove from the game. We are very responsive to the players. If the players as a whole don't like something, it is gone. We are very receptive. But, but if there's something that is problematic for you you, um, and let me, let me speak from experience. I will talk about something that I played magic since the very beginning, since August

of 1993. Magic obviously is a huge part of my identity. I am the head designer of magic. Like it is a giant part of who I am. Magic has meant the world to me. It's my dream job. I met my wife through magic. I've traveled the world through magic. Magic has treated me really, really well. I have a great affinity for magic. And I want magic to be that for other people. So when Commander came around, I liked my magic strategic. I have nothing against what I'll call a political game. So the idea of a political game is the key of the strategy is about convincing other people of things.

One of my favorite games diplomacy is a pure political game. Diplomacy is a game where your country's like World War I-ish and you're trying to take over Europe. And the way to do it is you have to make alliances with other countries. But at some point, somewhere, somebody's going to betray somebody. It's kind of how you win the game. And I played diplomacy with friends from college, I remember, where I brought the game. I explained it to them. I said, look, the nature of this game is political and somebody's going to betray somebody.

But that's the nature of the game, don't take it personal. And then I stabbed my friend in the back to win the game and he did not talk to me for three weeks. There's a place for political games, I like political games. Me personally, I prefer magic to be a little more strategic than political. So commander just wasn't my cup of tea. And originally early on, I got, as Commander got bigger and bigger, I was a little bit grumpy. I was sort of

like, hey, that's not the magic I know and love, you know. And I realized a couple things that really turned me around on Commander. Number one is the realization that, look, I can still play the magic the way I wanted to play. I could play the formats I wanted to play. I could play the formats I wanted to play. I could, you know, I could, I didn't have to play Commander if I didn't want to. I could make the choice not to play Commander. The second thing, but more important than that, was the idea of why do I love Magic? Why is Magic so important to me?

Why is Magic the game I've dedicated my life to? And the reason is, one of the things I just, I love about the game is the fact that it adapts to what people need it to be. And I said, I remember thinking, I said, maybe there's something going on in the world right now where people just really need to sit around with their friends, that there's just this need right now for like

the socialness, like magic I think shifted because there was a need for more socialness. That is just the idea that I can sit with my friends and laugh and just forget what's going on and just enjoy that moment was something important to people. And that I think the rise of commander had a lot to do with just People had this need for the socialness. It was important and that the very thing like I said much like The the crab legs were formative to me in my my buffet experience That is for other people commanders for other people and I've seen so many people Get so much joy and fun out of commander and. And it's not like I never played Commander.

I was on game nights. I played Commander live on stage. And that game was super fun. And winning that game was a mental act to me. And so what I realized is, look, part of being part of a community is that I want magic to be what everybody wants it to be.

That if magic doing certain things makes other people happy, even if it means elements of the game drift away from where I would choose the game to be, that that is like magic is becoming what magic needs to be for the all of the magic community. And like for example, another example is I just like walls as a creature type. I just think creatively it makes no sense. I get why a bear is a creature, why a wall of stone is a creature. It's an object. We have we have artifacts and things for objects. It's not a creature. It's not living. It's not breathing. You know, I can't I can't tear a wall. I mean technically no you can't tear walls done anyway

Um, and so for a while I removed walls from the game a Brady downer who was a the creative director of the time He and I both hated walls So we took him out of the game and for a while there were no walls in the game But the feedback we got from the audience was hey what happened to walls? We like walls walls are awesome And eventually what we realized was players just wanted walls in the game. So we put walls back in the game. That the it is not mine.

In some level, I as head designer, all of R&D, we are not here to just make magic what we want it to be. That is not our job. Our job is not to make magic what we want magic to be. Our job is to make magic what you all want magic to be. That we are the keepers of the buffet. but the people who decide what's in the buffet is all of you. You decide what's in the buffet. And if you guys really like things, we will expand it. We will make more of it. And I understand that

sometimes we will make something that some of you do not like. That just it is not what the buffet is about. But what I'm asking people to say is, look at all the happy people at the buffet. Look at all the people that are enjoying the buffet. That part to me of magic is the understanding that, hey, we're part of a community, and that magic shouldn't just be what I want magic to be, magic needs to be what everybody wants magic to be.

And that, look, I can find, like, magic is adaptable. There's lots of ways to play. There's lots of cards. There's lots of, there's lots of ability for you, the player, to have some ability to shape what it is you're playing. And that is the tool. That is the tool we have available to you. Like, we, the reason we have so much food at the buffet is so you can find the thing you truly love. We got lots and lots and lots of food at the buffet. Because we can be additive. We can add things you love.

We can find out what makes people happy and add that. But it is very, very hard for us to take the food that some people really adore that is the thing that makes magic magic for them and take that away. And that is why the buffet metaphor is super compelling to me. Look, I will make the omelet bar if people really like the omelet bar and I will make the omelet bar will grow the more people that love the omelet bar. And if one day people stop liking omelets, I guarantee you the omelet bar will go away. But while there's an audience that really wants an omelet bar, we're going to make an

omelet bar and You know the more people that like it the bigger the more space it gets at the buffet That is just the nature of the buffet that if we put out food and it's gone in an hour tomorrow We're putting out twice that much of food because there was a demand for that and I just I Feel bad sometimes people write into me. I talk my blog all the time. I'm not trying to be dismissive of people I understand the idea when I say yes, I know you don't like this, but somebody else likes this I know that sounds super dismissive. It's like man. I don't care what you think. I do very much

I do very much care what you think But I also care what the other people think and that is my job as keeper of the buffet to make everybody happy by making the most awesome buffet I can and I cannot guarantee that things you don't like will not be at the buffet. I don't have the ability to do that I can guarantee that things you like are at the buffet and if you have things that are missing that you would like to see That that is great advice that like if you want to me like, this would make me love magic even more. That's great. I can add it to things I can do, but the message of I hate this thing that other people really

adore and remove this thing because it makes magic less for me, that's a hard one for me to address. And it's not because I don't care. It's not because I don't want magic to be a lifestyle for people, not that I don't want magic to speak to their heart. I do, I do, but magic is an adaptive creature that adapts to the very audience that plays it. That is my job as keeper of the buffet is to make sure that there's as many people

out there eating as possible, enjoying the meal as much as possible, and that is why I like the buffet metaphor and that it is not our job to keep people from having to experience foods they hate it's to make sure that people have foods they love and that that is that is the the essence of magic design and that is why I like the buffet metaphor so anyway guys I know I went a little long today I've actually been at work this is an important topic to me and I wanted to spend the extra time and energy to really convey that as keeper of the buffet, I pick and choose, I and

Oliver and Dee pick and choose the foods very carefully. I do hear you that there might be foods you don't like. I honest to God, to my heart hear that. But I'm saying that to somebody else it is the thing that makes them love the game. It is the thing that's transformative to them. And that just like magic means a lot to you, magic means a lot to them. And so we're trying our hardest to make magic for everybody. And that can be hard and that can be difficult and I get it. And I, I I I don't want people feeling like I'm heartless or I don't care or I don't listen. I'm just trying to explain the reality of Making magic the challenge of designing magic is I have to design for everyone. I have to think of the amalgam I have to think of what people at large want

So anyway guys that is the buffet metaphor That's why I think it's a strong metaphor and that's why I decided to talk about it today I hope this was a meaningful conversation or mean I mean I'm talking you're not talking but I hope this was A podcast that made me make you think a little bit about magic and magic design. But anyway guys, I'm clearly at work So we all know what that means means at 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 all next time. Bye. Bye