Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1216: How to Make Losing Fun

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

One of the truisms of game design: make sure your players enjoy losing your game. How do we do that? This podcast walks listeners through six key lessons.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work Okay today's topic making losing fun This was a request for my blog so obviously winning is fun people like to win but Especially with the fact that a lot of magic games have more than two people The majority of people playing magic Don't win they lose

So it's important part of one of the things about game design There's a lot of ways to sort of talk about the roles of game design but one of them that I always liked is a Good game design is making losing fun, right? That you want the experience of playing the game to be fun regardless of the outcome of the game yes it is fun to win the game and and obviously you want to set up your game so people have a chance to win and we'll walk through that today but one of the key elements of good game design is

making sure that the game regardless of the outcome of the game, is memorable and fun for the people playing it. So today I'm going to walk you through six principles of how to make losing fun. That's what we're going to do today. Okay, number one, let the people play. So early magic definitely played around with just exploring the space that is magic. And there are three strategies in particular that were very frustrating for most players. That is land destruction, what we called permission, and card denial or hand denial, discard. Okay, so when magic first came out, let's start with land destruction, the most evil of them.

When magic first came out, there were a lot of very aggressive land destruction spells. Sinkhole cost two mana, Strimmine cost zero mana. And that there were a lot of ways, where if you were very aggressive, that you could keep your opponent from getting any lands on the battlefield. That the reason you won wasn't because you had a, you know, I mean, you won by having

whatever you had because they had nothing. And the idea was I'm just going to literally blow up every land you play because you can't win if you can't cast anything. Likewise, permission decks, early permission decks, the way it worked is I have all these counter spells, there were a lot of cheap counter spells, I'm just going to counter everything you do, or at least every actual threat that you cast. I'm not going to let you cast anything that would possibly win the game at all. And then there were the discard decks, and the discard decks is I'm just going to aggressively make you discard cards before

you can cast anything. What the three things have in common is when the decks were played at the efficiency and the rate they were in early magic, often the opponent did nothing. You destroyed their land, they never played a spell. You countered every spell they played so nothing ever happened, nothing ever resolved. You made them discard their hand so they never had a card to play. So the thing there was, the reason those are so frustrating, the reasons we've pulled back on those is rule number one here. First thing is people want to feel like they get to participate. It is not fun to be in a game that you just have no participation, that you can't do anything. And so it's really important and this is the key is you want to make sure that your game is structured in such a way that everybody is involved in the game.

Everybody gets to do stuff. Everybody get, you know, what is the fun part of your game? So for magic, one of the fun part is casting spells and attacking with creatures and, you know, just making things happen and doing things. So you want to make sure in a magic game that they can cast spells and have things resolve and have creatures they can attack with. You know you want to make sure that there are things that they can do. That whatever the fun of your game is, you have to make sure that all players have access to the fun. That all players get to do the thing that is the core experience of what the game.

If your game allows one player to just prevent the other player from ever playing from ever participating from ever doing the things That inherently are what is the fun of the game? They're not going to enjoy it That is not fun a game in which I dominate to such extent that you get don't get to do anything It's just not fun. So number one you gotta let the people play make sure that your game is set up in such a way that they have access and be careful about what tools you give players that deny other players access. Now obviously we have a little bit of land destruction.

We have some kind of spells, we have some discard. It's not that those things can't exist, but they need to exist at a rate. Land destruction for example, which was the biggest problem, we really pulled way back. We don't make a lot even of three man a man land destruction spells anymore We don't do it and we used to have them at common They used to be just something that was all over the place and now it's like we pepper them in we do it sparingly You know when we do it we lean into more like destroying non basic lands, you know

So like you're getting rid of the extra things and not the basic things are using. And same with counterspells, like the base counter spell used to be two mana, now it's three mana. And we're just a lot more careful about how easy it is. And the idea is, we want counter spells to be an element, same with discard, or even in land destruction to a certain extent. We want like, the game is fun if there's a little bit of counter-spelling, but it can't be so dominant that it means nothing happens.

And so we really, we pulled back on the thing. So when you're making your game, make sure not only that the component pieces that are fun are there, but the predators to that fun, the thing that keeps people from getting to that fun themselves aren't too powerful. Because, and regular listeners will know this, players will do whatever you encourage them to do.

Players want to win, and if the right strategy to win is a denial strategy that keeps the other players from playing, there are players, not every player, but there are players that will do that. Because they're like, I want to win, this is the route to win. And early magic.

Hey, there, there was very efficient, you know, um, I mean, like one, that one of the decks, I remember there's a, what we call a land equilibrium deck. There's a, uh, enchantment called land equilibrium. And the way land equilibrium works is you can have more land than your opponent. Once you put the enchantment play, your opponent can have more land than you. So the way it would work is you would get it into play, you would have all like artifact mana sources, and you would just keep them from playing land. And with with some of the explosive mana in early magic, you can get that out really fast. And then it's like,

okay, you can't play land anymore. And most decks are like, well, I kind of, I really was kind of dependent on land happening, you know. Anyway, let people play. Okay, number two is make the game end. So we're gonna talk about inertia. So one of the important things, and like I said, this is it on, some of what I'll say today is repeats of me talking in other facets, but it all ties together, obviously.

One of the things that's important is you want to make sure that your game has what we call inertia. And what that means is that the game by its natural state will end that if players do the thing you're encouraging them to do, it will make the game end rather than stall the game out. What you don't want to do is give the people tools that keep them from ending the game That you want the game to end and there's a lot of strategy in making your game such that For example, one of the reason Richard made creatures is creatures were repeatable forms of damage that once they cast a creature This creature now has potential to end the game

You know that it has it can do multiple damage over turns and so and you know why there's evasion end the game, you know, that it has it can do multiple damage over turns. And so and you know, why there's invasion in the game, and make sure that if there's creature stalemate, you can click through and so one of that some I'm going to introduce a bunch of concepts today, some sort of magic game theory sort of stuff that has to do with players who are very good at matching, Think about this in a lot of ways. So one of the concepts is the idea that somebody is the aggressor in the game. Somebody is the aggressor, somebody is the offender.

There's offense and defense. Someone's playing offense, someone's playing defense. So there's a writer named Mike Floris who wrote a very famous magic article many years ago called Who's the Beatdown? And the idea of the article, which really introduced this concept is look at any point in time you are on offense or you are on defense, understand whether you are on offense or defense. You will play differently. If you are on offense or defense you will play differently if you're an offense Hey, you should take you should maximize what you need to do to make the game and as fast as you can if you're on defense You want to you know slow things down and take resources, you know

You want to build yourself up to get to the state you need So for example, if I'm on the offense, most likely I want to attack. I want the game to end. On the defense, I need to get to the point where I can get on the offense. And one of the things about the beat down in general is a good game will go back and forth. The person who's in the dominant position

should change back and forth. And so what you want is you want to keep giving people tools so that the game ends, but also you want is you want to keep giving people tools so that the game ends, but also you want some dynamism, which gets us into number three, let them see the win. Okay, so the idea is at any one point in time one player's the aggressor, one player's the defender, right? One player is trying to win and the other player is trying to turn the tide so they become the aggressor. And so the important part of that is a couple things. One is I'm going to talk

about wanting the game to end. There's a concept in play called the clock and what the clock means is And what the clock means is, if you look at the board situation and whatever damage the aggressor can do, how many turns will it take before they'll win? So for example, let's say I have my opponent's at 15 life and I have a flyer with three power and my opponent doesn't have a flyer. Okay, the clock is five turns. Barring something changing, I'm going to do three damage a turn with my flyer. Okay, the clock is five turns Barring something changing. I'm gonna do three damage a turn with my flyer in five turns. That's 15 damage I will win the game. So I now have a clock of five turns You want the clock to exist what I mean by that is you want it as much as you can for it to be clear

that one player without something changing has a means by which they're going to win in a certain amount of time. That you want people to feel like, okay, I see what's going on. I'm the aggressor. If I do this thing that I currently have and I continue to do that, I will win the game in so many turns. And the reason that's important is you want the end in sight One of the things that I got there's many many ways to Cause bad gameplay, but one of the biggest sins in my mind from a game design standpoint is to make a game that doesn't end For example, I remember with my daughter when my oldest daughter Rachel was little

We played shoots and ladders For those that have never played is a children's game And basically you roll dice and you move on a board and you just want to get to the end of the board Ah, but the twist is there are shoots shoots is like English for a slide like on a playground So the idea is sometimes you land on something where there's a ladder and you get to go up further. Usually the way it works is every 10 is a different row. So there's like, usually you go to a hundred. So there's 10 rows.

So sometimes you land on a space and there's a ladder and you get to climb up and you get to go higher up. So you get to go farther than normally your roll would get you. But sometimes there's a chute or a slide and you go down so one of the problems in shoots and ladders the way the majority of them are made is The game is not usually designed so that someone's gonna win meaning shoots and ladder can last forever forever I I and what happens and every parent probably on the earth knows this at some point you cheat

You cheat so the game ends usually so your kid wins But you you just cheat because you can't take any more There's only so many hours in a row you can play shoots and ladders in that it just the The one thing that's the game design the game design. I remember playing shoots and ladders and go Why are there more ladders and shoots aren't there more ladders than shoots? There should be more ladders than shoots meaning the game should have inertia to end and

There are a lot of versions of shoots and ladders So maybe someone made a good version But not the version I had and so it's really drummed in my head that you want your game to end and the reason the clock It's so important is The clock is a way where everybody sees the end. Everybody knows the end is near. And the reason that's important is it creates tension. You know, and tension, tension can be bad,

but tension in a good way, because people can see, okay, I gotta do, like I have to act, I have to do something. Like you can see the stakes. And a lot of the fun of the game is the drama of the stakes okay I got a win what I need to do okay you know I have to act either I'm the beatdown okay what do I need to do to win or I'm not the beatdown how do I become the beatdown how do I turn things around what do I do okay which gets us to our fourth point get give them the outs

Okay, so there's there's an expression in Sort of advanced magic play called play to your outs So what that means is that you need to figure out how you're going to win and do that So but my story on this is so there's a man named Mark Justice So for those that might have never heard the name before he was the US national champion in 1995 he then ended up being top three in world's 95 he then went on to be in the top eight of the very first Pro Tour and he then was in the number two of the next year's world championship anyway there was a point in time

with you said to the most competitive Magic players, who is the best Magic player on the planet? They would say Mark Justice. In fact, I did a video for the very first Pro Tour before the event, where I went around to players and I said, who do you think is gonna win the event? And mostly that question was, who do you think the best Magic player is?

And almost everybody said, Mark Justice. Now obviously other players would come to eclipse the title of greatest Magic player. John Finkel, Kai Buda, Alice V, Paulo, I mean there's a lot of people you could pick maybe are the best. But anyway, I remember I was at, Mark Justice lived, I think in Salt Lake City, but he would come down from time to time down to Los Angeles where I lived, and he would play in events. And I remember we were at some store event and he was playing and I can see Mark's hand. And he's in a losing position on the board And he has cards in his hand that he can play

But instead of playing cards, he's discarding them He has cards you can play he has mana to cast things but instead of playing stuff from his hand He's discarding cards from his hand and I have no idea what's going on I'm like, why is he not playing the spells and I watch and I'm you know, I'm I I knew that Mark Justice was a significant better player than I was and I watch you know for and this goes on for many turns and then finally Seven turns in from when I use the situation I'm talking about I don't remember what the card was but he plays something and it was crucial when we played that card that

The stuff was in the graveyard rather than on the battlefield. And it turned the game around and won him the game. And the point is that card that he drew seven turns in, he didn't have it when he first started discarding cards and stuff that wasn't in his hand. But basically what Mark said is, okay, how am I going to win this game? Oh, the only way for me to win this game is this one card that's in my deck.

Okay, what I need to do is I need to prepare so when we get to the point where if I draw that card, I need to be set myself up so that I can win with it. So Mark played to his outs. He did everything he could to try to stall the game as long as he could to get to the point where he could get the card that could win it for him. And the point was, you know, the opponent was nibbling away at him every turn.

The game was ending. But Mark said, okay, my route to victory is this. And he knew what was in his deck that could win him the game. And so he played such that he goes, okay, I got to assume I'm going to draw it. If I don't draw it, I'm going to lose, but I'm going to lose anyway. So let's assume I am going to draw it and I will do steps and do things so that if I do draw it, I can win the game, which is exactly what happened. So the idea of give them their outs, what that really means is make sure that the player who is not winning has things that can change the situation.

Remember, the whole idea of a beat down is somebody's the aggressor, somebody's the defender, somebody's winning, somebody's not winning. And the cool part of a lot of gameplay is you want the dynamism to go back and forth. Ideally in any one game, it's nice if each player at some point during the game is the aggressor that goes, oh, I can see, I can see victory. I just need to do such and such and I will win the game. You know, the clock is in my favor. That would you want like ideally what you want of a good game. And remember a lot of game design design especially like magic where you're

shuffling your deck where there's high variance I want to set it up so it happens the majority of the time I don't have total control of everything there are bad draws you can have and you know not every game but you want to ideally the ideal state is that you want people to exchange being the one that's the beat down being the one that is the process of winning because winning is fun but you know it's also fun believing you're going to win like being in a state where you know you're like oh in four turns I win you, being able to see the ending and know that you can win, seeing that, you know, the potential exists is very exciting.

Another very exciting to do is understanding that you're not winning and then see something that changes the state. Going from a state of there's a clock and I'm on the losing side of the clock to there's a clock and I'm on the winning side of the clock is an exhilarating feel. Those giant switches in the game, when the game goes from one state to the clock, so there's a clock and I'm on the winning side of the clock, is an exhilarating feel. Those giant switches in the game when the game goes from one state to the other is very exciting for the player who makes that happen. In fact,

if you talk about, if you say to a Magic player, tell me a memory of your favorite game. It is probably not, I had advantage, I had it a whole time and I won. I mean maybe, maybe it was the finals of the World Championship or something, but most of the time I had the advantage, my opponent had a poor draw, I had a good draw, I was the aggressor the whole time and I won. That's not the story you're telling your grandkids, right? That's not the exciting story. The exciting story, in fact there was a player, a pro player named Chris Pakula, that he, his favorite story to tell, the Chris Pakula story, where he would describe a situation he was in, which seemed like the most dire, crazy, horrible situation to be in.

And then he'd always encourage somebody to ask him, so Chris, did you lose? And he'd go, no! And then he would explain how the situation that seemed unwinnable he wanted and that there's a lot of The most exciting things the most exciting memories are not winning winning winning it's I'm in a losing state and I find I You clutch victory from the jaws of defeat is the expression that you were losing but you found a way to win And so the idea of you want players to always even when you're losing I need players to go

Okay, I just need to draw this card if I draw this card or that card. I'm back in this right So you want to make sure that there are things in there's things the players can dream of and hope for They can help them and hope for that can help them turn the game that um and imagine when you're building your own deck you want to make sure that you provide tools that can give play that's why we do things like sweepers right like wrath of god destroy all creatures because you can get situations where i'm in big trouble i have one creature they have eight creatures the clock is two turns. I'm gonna lose, but if I draw my wrath of God,

if I can equal out the board, them losing eight creatures, me losing one, that's to my advantage. Lose it, we get back to equity. We get back to a state where I have the opportunity to swing the game around. Okay, so principle number five is let them do cool things. Okay, so the idea there is there are a lot of fun things

in any game, understand what the cool things are. In magic, like I said, we have the psychographics and different psychographics want to do different things. But in general, playing big spells or big creatures or having a crucial moment or making a combo or you know, there's a lot of things in magic that are very fun to do. Whether it's card combinations

or just casting a particular card or Getting a card beginning to kick it or you know Do something or just playing a card where I? Get a two for one or a three for one or a four for one I yeah, I cast the wrath of God and kill eight of their creatures and only one of mine Like I want to do something and I there's a concept I talk about all the time called narrative equity the idea of narrative equity is there is value to storytelling. And that if in my game I set up a circumstance where a cool thing happens that the player

after the game can talk about that, it's a victory. The idea when you play a game is you want to get something tangible from it. Maybe that tangible thing is I win and I feel good. Maybe that tangible thing is, I win and I feel good. Maybe that tangible thing is, I learned something and I can apply that in future games. Or maybe I realize my deck can be different or somebody did something that I didn't know and I learned something new.

Or it could just be an amazing thing happened. For example, I tell a story, there was a world championship in Memphis where we were previewing cars and players have never seen One of the ways we chose to do that is we played in a multiplayer tournament Each of us from Wizards had a card that no one had ever seen before and the goal was play this in your deck during We built a whole deck around it make something exciting happen and I was playing what was it? It's um the change that can doubles power toughness And I was playing, what was it? It's the Change the Devil's Power and Toughness

from Morning Tide, I want to say? Chameleon Colossus, Chameleon Colossus. Anyway, I got it and stayed in the game. There were, between my deck and a few other decks, there were Group Huggy. I managed to make the creature into like a 26,000, 26,000 creature and attacked with it and gained double life.

So I gained like 55,000 life. I did this amazing thing that I'll talk about to the end of time. It's a really cool, exciting moment. Did I win the game? Actually, I didn't win the game. The way it worked was the top two advanced. So when we got down to top two, I wasn't even in first place. Like the other person could have beat me because he had a milled, he had a milled deck.

He could have milled me out. He didn't mill me out. But the point is I didn't even win the game. I wasn't going to win that game. It doesn't matter. It's an amazing story. I had a 26,000, 26,000 creature that attacked and gave me 55,000 life.

That's the story. Win, lose, who, who cares? And so the idea is when I say let them do cool things, understand what is fun in your game. What is, not necessarily the winning of it, and I'm not saying winning isn't fun, winning is fun, but hey, I cast this major creature, or did this cool combo, or I got a 26,000, 26,000 creature,

and I packed with it. Something that is a memorable story, let them do that. Because even if they lose the game, if something happened in the game that was an Exciting moment or multiple moments. Hey, it made the game worth it You're saying that it didn't matter that I didn't necessarily win my 26 on 26,000 game. It didn't matter I I did a thing that I I can remember for all time, you know and that a that I can remember for all time, you know, and that a lot of what good, a lot of making losing fun is making sure that the act of losing

that game that you played was a fun game. Yeah, I didn't win in the end, but I had a lot of fun during it. And so let, understand what cool things are. Part of that is the psychic graphics, what did Timmy and Tammy want to do? What did Johnny and Jenny want to do Timmy Timmy want to do what Johnny Jenny want to do what a spike want to do you know and you want to make those moments happen you know like for example it's a

very spike moment to like give them a card that's really you know factor fixture something where there's a lot of skill to playing it and they make the right decision and whether or not they win the game or not you know the idea they had this cool decision they made the right decision and whether or not they win the game or not, you know, the idea of they had this cool decision and they made the right decision. There's, you know, that there's a stimulating moment there. And so whatever, you know, make, do the cool things. OK, principle number six, when it's over, end it quickly. So the idea there is so there's three core strategies.

I mean, I'm simplifying things a lot. There's aggro, there's control, there's combo. The idea of aggro is I want to be the aggressor. And ideally I want to be the aggressor the whole game. I want to start the aggressor and I want to stay the aggressor. So the idea is usually aggro decks, usually the creature base, maybe they have direct damage.

But the idea is I want to just do as much damage as I can as fast as I can Now the one thing about the aggro deck is sometimes the aggro decks doing its job The other opponent never like you're the beat down the whole game But and this is the key to this last thing Those games are fast if I beat you with creatures and try to do as fast as I can, odds are, you know, especially if I'm really successful, I'm gonna beat you quickly. Okay, turn for your dead. Okay, you never, you the opponent never had a chance to be the aggressor, but the game was over fast. So the idea is once you realize you're

in a situation where you can't find your way out of it, we don't want that to be long. Now it's fine that the aggro can be the aggressor and you're like, okay, I see the clock, I have four turns, I know what I need to draw, I need to draw this thing, I need to do the thing and maybe I never draw it, but at least that situation is over earlier. Or if I do draw it and extend the game, okay, well now I've done something, I've answered things. Maybe this game swings in my favor or maybe a lot of playing against aggro is stalling until you get what you need And sometimes you stall enough and you get control

Sometimes you try you try and you you keep them from winning for a while But you ultimately lose but at least you had moments where you kept them from winning and that itself can be exciting The idea of control is that I have elements that once these elements are in play I will be able to like I have control of the game. My opponent really won't be able to win anymore and the idea of control is we want control to be a bit slower. The idea the fun of control is the game is you know a lot of the control game is I need to get in control. And a lot of the early to mid game in a control, playing control is trying not to lose. That you have a goal.

The goal is I have to not lose and get to the point where I can establish, you know, establish my dominance and become the aggressor. And with a control strategy, usually I have the tools that once I make that, once I get to that state, I'm going to win. So one of the things we want to do in a control matchup is make sure the tools we give to control players will win the game once they have control. We want to make sure the tools to stall give a lot of inner play and back and forth. That's why we don't counter spell too aggressive and stuff.

But the idea is once they gain control, okay, let them end the game. Don't, you know, once the control pieces are in place, the game shouldn't last much longer. You know, once they have dominance and there's no way for the other person to come back, okay, end the game, give them tools to end the game. Likewise with combo.

Combo, the idea is I'm combining cards in a way that is very powerful. Combo, we treat, similar to a lot of ways we control which is If we're going to give you combos that are going to I mean there's different level of combos They're combos that help you without winning the game But if we're giving you a combo that are big enough Let it win the game like let it get you to say where the game is going to end quickly Like if my opponent can get to the combo state, and once again, they're cheap combo pieces

and expensive combo pieces. The stuff that's game winning, you want to be expensive. Meaning you don't want them to be able to do it too fast. And the combos that are beginning are more things that just set you up, they give you an advantage, but they're not so much so that they can't come back from it. And so early combos start to be fine, just give you some advantage,

give you, help make you the beat down But the stuff that really sort of takes dominance in the game or just wins the game you want that to be quick So part of that is look there's fine to have strategies to help people win But be aware if those strategies aren't making a dynamism between the players Then you want to make sure that it's going to end soon. And so the idea is Really though the worst scenario in a game is I know I can't win the game, but the game isn't ending anytime soon. You know, and we've all played those games.

It's not fun. It's not fun when like, like I said, a lot of what makes games fun is that you believe that you have a chance to win. That you can see your outs, you know what's going on, and that there is a damage in the game where there's some back and forth. If there's not a lot of back and forth, you don't want the game to go on for a long time. Like I don't mind aggro being a strategy and I don't mind every once in a while that aggro just, hey, they win, that's fine. The nice thing there is it's quick, it's over, go play another game, you know?

But things that are slow and evolving, like one of the interesting stories from alpha play testing, so before Magic came out, Richard gave everybody decks and let people trade with other people. and he wanted to see what kind of decks people would build because he was Trying to mimic what he thought was gonna be the real-life experience where hey people spend like $30 That's the cards they have not the world that ended up being But Charlie Coutinho made a deck it was I think a Kind of others white blue. I think it was white blue. And the idea of the deck was,

it was a, he would stall, stall, stall, stall, stall. The deck had four sorts of plowshares. And then I think it had a time twister in it. So it shuffled everything in the graveyard. All the graveyard stuff would come back. And the idea is that the game would just go on forever. And he would keep using the sorts of plowshare to exile your creatures. So when the game would start over again, when he used keep using the sorts of plowshare to exile your creatures.

So when the game would start over again, when he used the time twister, each iteration you had less resources to win. And eventually you got to the state where you couldn't win. He had eliminated every creature from your deck. And the idea was, and this would take hours. And one of the things Richard realized is, okay, I gotta make sure that I can't have the game go on for hours with nobody winning.

It just isn't fun. And so it was really eye-opening on understanding the kind of strategies and what you need to do and not do. And so, but anyway, I know it works. Let me do a quick recap. How to make losing fun. Number one, let people play. Don't give resources to players that deny the other players the access to get into the

game or not at a level that they just can't get in. Number two, make the game end. Inertia is important. Make sure that somebody is the aggressor and ideally pretty early on there's a clock meaning people can see the end Number three let them see the win So the you want to make sure that each player understands what they need to do to win and that the player who's the aggressor It's nice with both players can understand who's the aggressor and and the clock how long they have that there's it creates It creates suspense it makes the game have an edge to it. Because, okay, they're going to win four turns, I got to stop him or he's going to try to

win. Like, it makes the game have dynamism to it and it makes it exciting. Number four, give them outs. Make sure that a player who is losing has things they can dream of. Make sure there are tools available to them that they that they believe that they can they realistically believe they can win the game. That there's something that can happen that they can still win the game. Number five let them do cool things. Make sure that in your game you just have things that are fun unto themselves. Whether they win or lose or not that's

fine. Just make sure those are moments can happen because even if they lose they get stories they can tell. They get moments that happen. They get things where cool things happen and number six when it's over end it quickly once the player can't win do not let the game go on for much longer give the tools to the player who's taken who's going to win the game let them win the game anyway guys those are the core things of how to make losing fun I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast. I like sometimes diving into the sort of game design core principles. Anyway, I'm now at work so we know that means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking

magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye bye.