Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1243: Vision Design Issues

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

In this episode, I walk through many of the design issues that occur during vision design.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work Okay, so today's topic is vision problems vision design problems So obviously I'm in charge of overseeing the vision design process and the things can go wrong So I'm going to talk a lot about What kind of notes that we tend to get in vision? What are the most common things that we need to address or fix or think about? And mostly today, I'm going to be talking about

the mechanical side of things. There are things that vision has to care about, you know, it has to have a hook and be marketable. And there's a lot of things that vision spends time on. But usually those get hammered up very early. Like a lot of our planning is making sure we have a high concept that we like and that there's something that's a marketable thing. So that is something that gets worked out usually early on. More of what I'm talking about today is people after us,

you know, downstream of us have to make this set and we will get notes from them about whether or not the set that we have made will enable them to make the set they need to make. And so, you know, I've talked before, we normally have a play designer on our vision design team. We have our vision design summit where all sorts of people come in to give us notes. So today is about a lot of those issues. And I'm gonna sort of walk through a bunch of different issues that we have to concern ourselves with.

Okay, and I will note that these aren't in any particular order other than the order I decided to write them down. These are all different things we have to think about. So I'm just gonna walk through just various notes that we can get. Okay. First note we can get is we need a mana sync. So what a mana sync means is magic games, you know, I've spent a lot of time talking about the, the mana system. It is a dynamic system, whereas the game progresses, you have more mana

But one of the things that tends to happen is you get a point where your mana exceeds your cards Like early in the game in the early to mid game. It's a lot about maximizing your mana. Can you spend your mana each turn? But there will come a point where you have more mana than you have cards. You will run out of cards at some point It depends on the kind of deck you're playing some some decks are better at drawing cards you have more mana than you have cards you will run out of cards at some point. It depends on the kind of deck you're playing some some decks are better at drawing cards but in general there comes a point where you have more mana than cards and we want to make sure that you have things to do with that mana. Normally we talk about a mana sink something like kicker monstrous flashback it just means

that in the late game there There's things that you can spend your mana on it could be on activated abilities It's just every mana every magic set needs some way in the mid to late game To have ways to spend extra mana if you're not casting spells We want you to be doing something and so there's just magic is more dynamic if you have options. And the natural state of the game is, you know, if we don't give you this a mana sync is at some point just you have mana you're not spending. And now there's a lot of ways to do mana syncs. X spells can be mana syncs. Activations can

be mana syncs. Additional costs like kicker can be mana syncs activations can be mana sinks, additional costs like kicker can be mana sinks, costs from other zones like flashback can be mana sinks. Really, like I said, the major focus is what am I doing with my mana in the mid to late game? And every set needs some sort of mana sink. Some of them, they're not always a mechanic. Sometimes, like for example, just activated abilities can do that. Sometimes we like to have commons that just have large activated abilities so that you, in an early game,

you just play them as creatures, but late game, they start having extra utility. Okay, the next thing I'll get comments on is what's called card flow. So card flow, basically Magic is a game where it's a trading card game. So it is modular in the sense that there's combinations and that one of the things we like to do

is make synergies built into our design so that certain cards work well with other cards. Well, if you have high synergy and most Magic sets have a decent amount of synergy, you wanna make sure that people get to cards so that the synergies happen. So what Card Flow says is, we wanna make sure that you are seeing more cards.

Card Flow can be card draw, but the problem in general with card draw is, you only get so much card draw. Card draw itself can be a problem. So a lot of, like the most typical type of card flow will be scry and surveil. Those are both sort of evergreen, so we have those a lot. Some sets, for example, can lean on those.

Another way to get card flow, I mean, mostly card flow is, are you allowing players access either to just more cards or to more card selection, looting, rummaging. It's just the facts in which you get to see more cards and you have some selection on your cards. Now, if you just draw more cards, that will also get you there. You'll have more selection if you draw more cards.

But like I said, we have to be kind of careful how much drawing we do. And nowadays, every color has its own access to drawing. You know, blue is king of drawing. Black draws for resource, usually life. Green draws, but usually tied to creatures. Red has stuff like impulsive draw where it exiles cars and has to cast them within a certain timeframe.

And then white, obviously we've been doing more of meet condition draw, but usually limited to once per turn. And so that is something else. We have to think about card flow. Being snowball-y, this is another problem. So the idea is if you're snowball-y, might think of it as win more. It is something in which you are rewarding

the player for being ahead and punishing the player for being behind. A good example is if you have a mechanic that's too reliant on combat to work. Oh well if I can attack probably I'm in a good position because I'm able to attack. If I'm behind and I can't attack because the board states not in a situation I can't attack well then I don't have the opportunity to do that. And so snowball effects are effects in which It helps the person who has the advantage get more advantage and it hurts the person who is at a disadvantage and keeps them at a disadvantage That's not to say we can't have mechanics of a little bit of snowballing this does but we have to be careful

We want to make sure that the mechanics, like I said, we don't want the person who's already winning to just have an easier time winning and the person who's losing to not have any chance to catch up. And so when we get the note that a set or usually the mechanic is too snowbally, that means be careful how many aggressive things you're sticking on that mechanic. How often does that, you know, because not only might it reward you being aggressive,

but it also might give you payouts or effects that help you further become more aggressive. And so when you're told we're too snowbally, you want to sort of look at what we're doing and make sure, the idea is make sure that somebody who is in a behind state has some ability to use the mechanic in a way to catch up. Okay, next, parasitic packages.

Okay, so if a set is parasitic, that means that it is only reliant on itself. Sort of the king of parasitic sets was the original champions of Kamigawa, where like it had splice onto arcane, but you could only splice into arcane spell. Well the only arcane spells existed in this set. You know, it had Bushido and Samurai, but Samurai only existed in this set. You know, it had mechanics that sort of relied on other things, but Samurai only existed in this set. You know, it had mechanics that sort of relied on other things, but those things only existed here. So in general for a long time, we were very careful about being too parasitic.

But interestingly as magic ebbs and flows, one of the things we realized recently in trying to make fun, we realized recently in trying to make fun. Like the idea is every magic set comes out and we want you to feel like you get to explore that magic set, right? We want and not just obviously you can play it in limited or you can play it in casual constructed, but we also want it to matter constructed. So a lot of our notes that we get have to do with are we properly building the set to allow that? Um, so one of the things that we get have to do with are we properly building the set to allow that. So one of the things that we were doing now is doing what we call parasitic

I'm sorry, doing what we call parasitic packages. And the idea of a parasitic package is, is there's something about this mechanic, it could be a mechanic, it could be a typo theme, there's something about it that says, hey, we think that we could build something fun for constructed. And what we want is to have a large enough component that you can sort of build around that component. And we call those prescriptive packages or parasitic packages. The idea is that, let's say, I'll make up a new set, but, oh no, I can use an existing set.

So for example, a good example of a prescriptive or parasitic package from Outlaws of Thunder Junction was crime. And the neat thing about crime was only cards in that set cared about crime, but we, you know, so crime was a mechanic in Alice in the Thunder Junction that cared about spells or effects that targeted your opponent or their stuff. So the idea was we made this prescriptive package of cards that cared about crimes,

but crimes was universal enough that you then could go find other cards. So the idea is the package was these cards that cared and you could fill it out with other stuff in your format in standard, in modern or whatever that did this thing. But the idea was we gave you a base to build around. Oh, I'm making a crime deck. I have crime cards.

Might, what we want to do with the prescriptive package is we want you to sort of say, Oh, here's the new thing that this set has to offer. I want to build a deck around that thing. And we want to make sure that we want to make sure that we are doing these one or two for every set so that there's something from a constructed standpoint there's something new like obviously we make cards that you throw in your deck and we're going to do that and sometime you know a lot of the fun and magic is oh there's new cards and I already have my deck and I'm just going to take you know this one or two new cards

that go right into my deck and we want that and we do that but we do want every new set sort of making people scratching that building it, making people want to make something new. And so we want to make sure there's these parasitic elements that we can sort of build the packages around. So, and it varies from set to set. It just, we want something that sort of speaks to making a deck and is something that we think, um, constructed can handle. Uh, and that's another general note. Let me get into that note,

which is, is your set constructed viable? And what that means is that some mechanics really shine in limited, some shine in constructed, some shine in casual, you know, commander formats. But things that really work in high-end tournament play, there's a lot of things about how that works. For example, if your mechanic requires a lot of things on the battlefield at once, that's hard to do in most sort of tournament and constructed formats.

So if something like Coven was a mechanic in... ...Instrud Midnight Hunt, and you had to have three different creatures with different powers. That's just hard. It's hard to get three creatures in play in some constructed format, let alone three different, you know. Now that was fun for limited. Limited tends to have a much larger board. You know when you're building constructed you just have a lot more removal usually in your deck on average and more sweepers and stuff.

So it's a lot easier to get rid of all the threats in a constructed format. We're in a limited format. It's not that you can never get things on the board. You can, but it's hard to reliably do that. So one of the notes we'll get on things is this mechanic, you know, is limited viable, but not constructed viable. This mechanic, you know, so usually we are more focused

on limited in vision design, mostly because limited cares about the biodome of the set and we're building the biodome of the set. A lot of what makes sense for constructed has to do with what else is going on in the larger formats. If you're gonna care about standard, well, you have to blend into what else is going on in the larger formats. If you're going to care about standard, well, you have to blend into what standard is doing. But none of that makes sense until you're costing cards

and until you're doing actual sort of balancing for format, that doesn't happen. That's after vision design. That gets done in set design and play design. So vision design can't do a lot of that work. None of the precursors we would need to do it haven't happened yet. But we can build our mechanics such that

it has the things they need. So there's a couple of things that they like to have. Let's walk through some of those. Knobs is a thing. What knobs mean is how many things on a card can be changed about that card in development, in set design and play design. many things on a card can be changed about that card in development in you know in in play incentives on play design for example every card has one

knob which is its mana cost other than lands obviously and creatures have two more knobs they have power and they have toughness but the idea is the more knobs you have the more choices you have, the more choices you have. If you have additional costs like kicker, that's another knob. If you have activations, that's another knob. You know, if you have, sometimes there's triggered abilities that require mana.

You know, if you, if there's other places where you need to spend mana or that it cares about the number of something. If I have a number of my card, I draw so many cards. That's a number I can change. Instead of two cards, I can draw three cards. The idea essentially is what is it that they can tweak? Now, there's other things like you can tweak

instant to sorcery, and sorcery to instant. You can on some level add abilities but really what they look at the mechanics sometimes one note will have is we could use more knobs meaning this make it like one of the problems will run into some time is we have a mechanic my example for this one is from Kaladesh. What was it called? It was a mechanic in which you can get plus one plus one counters or you can get one one tokens. I will come to me in a sec, start with an F.

And that was a really hard mechanic to develop because you had two number, yeah sorry, you had one number but it had to speak to two different things. And so the finding the right mix where that number makes sense for plus one, plus one counters and make sense for one, one tokens fabricate is the name of the mechanic that, that is difficult. So there weren't a lot of that.

It almost had a negative knob because one number had to mean two things. And you couldn't, if you change the number, you had to change for both things. So there was this balancing that had to happen. And so we need to be careful about sort of how knobby a mechanic is. And one of the things they'll say sometimes is, you know, does this mechanic have the component pieces that we need to be able to design it, to do set design and play design on it? Can we balance it? And that's a big note that we get.

That's why we have a play designer in vision design is sometimes the mere nature of what we're trying to do, what we're trying to do. Either we're trying to ask you to do something that's just hard to do in a constructed format or we're trying to do something where the, sometimes they call it a razor's edge is another problem. You have a razor's edge problem. And what that means is,

and Fabricate's a good example of this, that making it work is such exact that you have to get the exact thing to make it work. And because manas are in whole mana, you can't, other than unsets, you can't do half mana. You know, sometimes you just can't make the right mix. This ability, if we cost it at one mana value, it's too efficient. If it costs it the second mana value, that's one more, it's not good enough and that that's a car they call the razor's edge where in order to make this work and sometimes cars can be on a razor's edge the one that we get more

problem is when mechanics are on a razor's edge it means the mechanics are just very tricky to cost now fabricate it counts as this we did do fabricate we can occasionally do them but we have to be careful. Another thing to think about when we talk about set design and play design is what we call monster mechanics. What that means is when you do something that is in the unknown, that is something that the team has not worked on before, The first time you make a new resource, energy would be a good example.

The first time, like with double-faced cards, or you're doing something, like a lot of doing play design is looking at all the work you've done on previous sets and say, okay, I have, you know, if we do a new kicker like mechanic, well, we've done a lot of kicker mechanics. We understand kicker mechanics. We understand if you're doing a flashback variant or a monstrous variant. There's things we've done. We understand that.

We've done it a lot. We've worked through the kinks. We know how it functions. And so that's the thing that, you know, if a mechanic is a monster mechanic, what that means is it's going to be hard to develop. It's gonna be hard to balance. Now that doesn't mean we shouldn't do them. Magic likes to do new things and it's exciting to explore new space.

The real thing for vision is we shouldn't have more than one monster mechanic in a set or monster theme sometimes. But the idea is it's okay to say to set design, play design, we're gonna give you a challenge. Here's a brand new thing you've never done. You gotta figure this out. But the thing we can't do or shouldn't do

is have multiple monster mechanics. So the classic story of this one is, was Icoria, layer of the behemoths. So we introduced two monster mechanics at once. One of them was mutate. Mutate was combining cards and mutates a very complex mechanic has a lot of rule support. It's a very, there's a lot going on and making mutate work. There's a whole system to making mutate work. You don't just make me take cards in a vacuum. Oh And that's another thing I'll get to is the idea of overly synergistic. I'll get to that second but the idea is that

Mutate was just a hard mechanic. It's a monster mechanic. It was very hard to do. We also have companion Companion was introducing this idea of extra resources. Like, hey, if you meet this deck resource, you get extra cards. And that is a very dangerous thing because extra cards are very powerful. And so both of those mechanics are hard mechanics. And we really, in retrospect, shouldn't have done both at the same time. Another interesting, similar case, although this one we did catch it, when we handed off the set in Kaladesh, original Kaladesh, we had both energy and we had a mechanic that was similar to lesson learn. It had artifacts instead of incident sorceries.

And what happened at the time, Eric Lauer was leading the development along with Ian Duke. And Eric said, look, we can't do both of these. These are both monster mechanics. Which one's more important set? I said energy, and so they kicked the other one out and they did energy.

And so one of the things we try to do is identify what are the monster or problem mechanics. What are the things that are gonna be extra work? And once again, it's not that we can't have them. We can. Magic is at its best when it's exploring new space and doing things that it's done before. We don't want to shy away from that. The only note is, hey, we make a lot of magic sets. These are both monster mechanics. You can do one. Save another one for another time. We'll do it another time. And that's something. Another thing about over synergistic is one of the things that design likes to do is we like synergy, right?

We like to say hey mechanic a mechanic B play nicely together mechanic B and B and C play nice together mechanic a mechanic C So one of the things that we can do sometimes is we make such a tight interconnection That it much like making something at a razor's edge, it makes it hard to balance because each component piece cares about another component piece and that there's a sort of a house of cards thing you're doing where you know every time you change one thing you've got to change something else which makes you change something else so we have to be careful that we're not too too synergistic in a way where the set, balancing the set relies all these pieces of constantly moving

in conjunction with one another. Once again, it's not that we can't have some synergy, we should, and we do, we like synergy. We just gotta be careful the level of which we create the synergy, because the synergy can be such. Another note we'll get is too busy. And there's a couple different ways. The

simplest version too busy is just too much going on. Usually like the low hanging fruit is there's too many mechanics. And sometimes it's not too many named mechanics, it's just too many things in your set that you care about. And a common way that happens is, oh we have our main mechanic and the main mechanic cares about graveyard and then we have this draft theme, it cares about artifacts and there's all the draft theme, it cares about enchantments and then we have this theme that cares about power for a grader and this theme cares about second spell and this game, like there's so many things that you get to, like the player has to

be able to focus and we get some number of different things, we want different draft strategies and we want different drafts to care about different things. So it's not that a set can't have multiple things to think about, just there's a limit at which you're pushing the boundaries and that when we get a too busy note, what that means is look, there's just too many things you're making us pay attention to. Pick your favorites, pull back a little bit. And that note really says that's when we start combining things. Oh,

these two archetypes are about two different things. What if they were about the same thing, but then, you know, handled it a little bit differently. So, oh, those are both about this mechanic, but this is the agro version. This is the control version, or this is the mid range. You know, you could, you by sort of consolidating multiple things that care about the same thing, you can make variety variety but make it a little less onerous another thing that we get a lot is Normally in magic there's the things you normally care about and then we can make you care about something you don't normally care about One of the general notes is you usually want one thing they like for example landfall is a good example

Landfall says I have to be conscious of when I play my land. Normally I don't have to care about that. Normally I just play land when I want to play land. But landfall says, hey, hey, it's going to generate effects. Maybe the default in normal magic is if I can play a land other than maybe the last one because I'm bluffing or something, play the land. If I can play a land, play a land. Mostly you want to play every land. Landfall says whoa whoa whoa maybe that's not the case maybe you have

facts maybe you want to think about the order you play your land or when you play your land but my point is when you play a land is something you don't normally have to think about in a set with landfall you do have to think about it and so especially if it's not that you can't have one of, especially higher rarity, it's more of, no, no, this is the focus of the set. This is a constant thing you have to think about. You really want to have one sort of focus that's outside normal magic.

Once again, I'm not saying we never do more than one, but you really want to be careful. And especially if that one thing you're paying attention to involves external pieces or involves logistics. Another thing that too busy can mean is there's too much manipulation of what is going on. Now, in general, when we make you manipulate things that eats up brain space to monitor it.

But sometimes too busy can also mean there's just too much, like it can be too much brain space is being used or it could be just too much fiddling is going on. There's too many different things to pay attention to. As a general rule of thumb, if we're gonna make you pay it, if there's gonna be a play aid, for example,

like we're doing something that makes you wanna pay attention to something. Oh, we're doing like speed in aether drift. We have to care about your speed. Um, you know, if we're making you care about something, we want to limit that. Like there should be one play aid, you know, in wild and elder rain, you're making auras or tokens. Well, that, that's really the focus. So that's what we're doing. So, um, too busy can also mean you're just pulling focus a little bit too much,

or there is too much logistical stuff going on you got to be careful with. Another note that we get is not enough splash or novelty. What that means is so when we have mechanics that do a job of just making the set work well we call those workhorse mechanics. So a workhorse mechanic means, hey, it makes limited play well. Maybe they show up in constructed, but they're very functional cards. And they tend to be doing something like flurry in

Tarkir Dragonstorm, carrying about seconds foul. It's a workhorse mechanic. It plays well and makes limited fun. It even can show up in constructed, but it's not, it is something we've been to time and time again. No one's gonna see second spell mattering

and go, oh wow, second spell mattering. You've seen it before. It's something we've done. It's something that we're used to. And workhorses are more about taking things that are fun gameplay and playing into them. But one of the things about each Magic Set about taking things that are fun gameplay and playing into them. But one of the things about each magic set is you want to create some wonder and awe.

You want people to go, Ooh, I haven't seen that before. And so you want a certain amount of novelty means specifically something that the audience is not familiar with. It's relatively new. Now novelty can be a brand new thing or it could be taking things you know before but doing some interesting tweak on them. It can be combining things that never been combined before. It just means that novelty means that I'm doing something that you will have to think about because you don't have previous experience and think about it and it is something that

you go, oh I've not seen that before. A splash is slightly different. Although splash and novelty are linked together. Splash is what's going to make people talk. Um, for example, new frames tend to make people talk, um, mechanics that sort of push in space that's like formerly we've never done before. So things that felt taboo, like in antiquities, we did the, we did the pitch cards for the first time, where these were cards where you could cast them

without spending mana. Well, at the time alliances came out, if you were tapped out, you could not cast a spell. So this was breaking what some people thought was a rule. Magic doesn't let you do that, but now we know, and that's one of the fun things about, about novelty and splash is, you know, when you can do something that people didn't even think you could do, or you are able to combine things like when we did melds for the first time, we had done double face cards in Innistrad, but all of a sudden we go back to Innistrad, two cards

that are double faced can flip over and join together into a big giant card. And that was just really novel. You had not seen that before. And so that is something. When we get the note about novelty or splash, it's kind of like, oh, you're being a little work horsey. It's not that your set won't play well, but one of the things the set also needs to do

is we want to sell well. We want to sell well we want to excite people and that when you are sort of showing your cards when you're doing previews you want to have something that's gonna make people talk part of drumming up excitement for a set is having new things and so we want every set to have some amount of novelty have some amount of novelty. Indiscriminately, by the way, now in a world with universes beyond, one of the things that we have said is we want the the universe is beyond sets, the thing that sells the universe is beyond sets the property. Oh, we're doing the Lord

of the Rings, Final Fantasy, Fallout., we're doing the Lord of the rings, final fantasy fallout. Like we're doing things that people are excited by because they're fun properties from other places people like, um, when we're, I mean, the goal of a universe is beyond set from a design standpoint is to make it really ring true, right? To make it feel like the property, but we don't need to worry about mechanical novelty as much because that's just not what sells the set. What sells Final Fantasy is people excited about Final Fantasy. What sells Lord of the Rings is people excited about Lord of the Rings. Now there's a lot of responsibility on our end to make sure

that we're making mechanics that bring true what the property is and there might be novelty or innovation or splash in that, but a lot of the splash in a UV set is look how well we captured this quality of the property. In magic and multiverse sets, we want to make sure that there needs to be a certain amount of mechanical novelty. And that's where we care more about mechanical novelty. Now, also in our own, you know, in multiverse sets, we want fun worlds and fun creative and you know, a lot of what sells something like Bloomberg is look at all the cute animals and we haven't done that before.

That's a world we haven't made before. So there's novelty in both the overall world and creative, but from a design standpoint, we want novelty in the mechanics. And sometimes, by the way, another thing that they talk about is a hook. Meaning when you talk about advertising, what is the thing that we advertise? And one of the interesting things there, I'll use Thorn of Eldraine as my example for this, is usually what we want to do is we want to lean into what makes the set different from other magic sets.

And Thorn Eldraine was a great example. So Thorn Eldraine was this sort of combination of sort of a Camelot fairy tale inspired world. So we did a lot of sort of English Camelot stuff and a lot of more central Europe fairy tale stuff. Now magic had done lots of high fantasy with knights. We had done Alara, we'd done Dominaria. The idea of knights, not that knights are exciting and that the knight typo wasn't cool, but that wasn't the thing that made people go,

ooh, magic doing knights, we'd done knights plenty. But fairy tales, really the fairy tales we hadn't. So the idea there is the hook for Thorin Eldraine was the fairy tales. Not because the camel up part was the fairy tales not because the camera part is not important not because people didn't like it, but it was the thing that made people sit up and go Magic does fairy tales like right? That's the hook magic does fairy tales it gives sort of When you're when you're advertising and promoting a set and previewing the set you want to sort of lean into

What makes people talk and normally that is more about what is the novel thing, what is the thing that we haven't done before. Now if you bring something back that people really love, sometimes like Tarkir Dragonstorm, a lot of the hook of Tarkir Dragonstorm is, hey, we haven't been in Tarkir in over 10 years, we're back. And that's pretty exciting because it's been a long time since we were back um, and so Anyway, uh, that's another note making sure that we

And we're talking about a hook for us. I mean there's there's creative hooks That's not we're not on the line for creative folks creative I mean arc planning does a lot of that but um, i'm talking about mechanical hooks other cool mechanical things That we get to excite people by Another thing that we want to talking about mechanical hooks. They're the cool mechanical things that we get to excite people by. Another thing that we want to worry about in general, so there's a note what Play Design will call good bones. What good bones means is the structure is such that set design and play design can work with it to get the set they need. Meaning a lot of what, so for those that have heard my metaphor a million times, I talk about building a house, right?

That making a magic set is like building a house. Vision design is about making the blueprints. And a lot of what good bones mean is your blueprints are good. You have a good structure that a lot of changes will happen. You know, like, if you look at architecture plans and blueprints, who knows when you build a house? Like when you actually go to build a house,

there are problems that rise up. Oh, we need to dig here, but there's a stone in the ground that I can't dig up. Oh, so we have to adapt to that, you know, or, you know, we were going to put this house here, but for whatever reason we need support, whatever, we didn't actually build a house, there's things that come up.

But the idea is, is the blueprint solid? And that's a lot of note we get also is, does the set we have, does it have good bones? Meaning can play design and set design, you know, can they build and adapt to it, you know and the thing to remember about vision design is We're just prepping for what comes after us that a lot of what vision is is You know, we make a lot of magic sets and we want to make sure that each magic set can shine. And so that's why the reason we have two or actually say three whole different

teams is that each team has its specialty. And vision design very much is about making sure that what we're making is something that has a hook and is marketable and is exciting and is novel and has splash And you know, but has all the workhorses and it's good bones and all the stuff I talked about today It has to do that stuff And the other thing that's really important to think about is on some level as you know, we talked about who your who's your client at some level and well Obviously the players are a client. We're trying to make a fun game. The players are one client for vision design.

The other client or clients is downstream. You know, set design has to, we're making the blueprint, set design has to build the house. Play design has to do all the finishing touches on the house. That if we don't do a good job in our job, you know, in the planning part of it, it makes a lot more work down the road. So a lot of the notes that we're getting

are just about things we need to do that help maximize the people after us being able to make the best set they can. And that's a lot of most of today's podcast is just about all the different notes and things we need to do because people downstream of us will need these things to care. And so they are having us understand and give us notes on how we can make sure that we are maximizing it for them. And that, my friend, is all about the issues of vision design. I hope you enjoyed that today. It was a lot of fun talking about, but I am here at work. So we all know that means, means instead of talking magic,

it's time for me to be making magic. Hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast and I will talk to you next time.