Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #405: Evaluation

Episode Date: January 27, 2017

Part of the iterative process is using feedback to improve upon your design. This podcast talks about how to best evaluate what you've done and use feedback to make your design better.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is an interesting one. A very design-centric topic. One of the questions I get a lot when I talk about my design process is people saying, okay, I get the iterative process. I get the idea that you come up with ideas, you playtest them, and then you do feedback. But how do you decide what the good mechanics are? How do you figure out what the good stuff is? And so today's podcast is all about figuring out how do you tell what the good stuff is. So there's a bunch of different metrics and stuff I use.

So I'm going to talk today. Today's a design-oriented topic. You like good, crunchy design topics? That is today. Okay, so once again, just to refresh here, ideally, any kind of design, magic design specifically, is an iterative process. We're constantly trying to figure things out. So, okay, I, usually the way we get ideas in the beginning

is we do a lot of brainstorming, is, you know, we try to, sometimes we're trying to match flavor, sometimes we're trying to match the mechanical identity but the reality is early on we I always want to create a bullseye for my team meaning there's something driving us

there's something we're trying to do so for example Innistrad was like okay we're doing a gothic horror set you know we're going to play into the genre the horror genre and we're going to have into the genre, the horror genre, and we're going to have vampires and werewolves and zombies and such.

So I had some identity and the team tried to create something. Now the big question is trying to figure out how what works. Early playtesting, I throw a lot in. I sort of call it the throw the spaghetti at the wall playtest, where it's like just put a lot of things in your set. a lot in. I sort of call it the throw the spaghetti at the wall playtest,

where it's like just put a lot of things in your set. I don't worry about sort of environment early on. I worry about just having a lot of individual things for us to try. Eventually, as we narrow things down, we'll start figuring out how things work together. But early on, I'm just trying to find neat stuff. And so the early playtest is literally there's just lots of things in the playtest, and we're going to try them all out. And some of them hopefully will stick. Some won't, and that's okay. So it's a very chaotic early playtest because it's really just having a

sample things. And okay, so how do I determine what's good? There are four things that I look at. So let's walk through those things, talk about what they are, and then talk about how you identify them. Okay, so the four topics are emotional satisfaction, intellectual satisfaction, agency, and identity. So I'm going to walk through each one of those and explain what that means. Okay, let's start with emotional satisfaction. Okay, so the idea is when you play a mechanic or a card or a mechanic, one of the things I look for is does it create some positive emotional reaction? That doesn't always mean happiness, by the way.

Obviously, happiness is one way. Like one of the best ways to tell something is working is literally, does it make you smile when you play it? That is a big one. But it's not just, not just does it make you happy. For example, Innistrad is my go-to example for the day. In Innistrad, I was trying to create a certain emotional response. I kind of wanted to make you afraid.

So one of the things that I definitely looked for is, if I had things that definitely put you on edge a little bit, because one of the neat things about games or movies or anything that's sort of entertainment related is once you're in a safe space, once you know, once you're defined where you are, it's okay to have emotions. emotions, like, for example, I'm talking about Interstripe Captures the Horror genre, like, a big part of that is fear. It's trying to scare you. Now, being afraid in a vacuum is not a particularly fun emotion, but being afraid in a context where you know you're safe, where, like, you're getting experience, like, when you're sitting in a movie theater, like, well, you know the monster's not going to come out and get you in the movie theater. So, you know, when I talk about emotional satisfaction,

what I mean is, you're getting an emotional response that you're enjoying. It doesn't necessarily even need to be a happy emotional response, but something in which it's creating a response and you're enjoying that response. Because one of the things you want out of entertainment is, you want to feel

something. You know, I talked about this one of my lessons in my 20 lessons was talking about the difference between things being interesting and fun. I'll get to interesting in a second. But people at their core, you know, when you talk about whether or not someone's going to come back to your game,

whether it made you feel something is really strong because emotions are very deep and very evocative and people like to experience things. It's part of the human nature, human experiences. You want to feel things. And if some entertainment form gets you to feel things in a way that really sort of gets you pumped. And like I said, there's a lot of different emotional responses you can create.

But one of the things you'll look for when you make cards and you make mechanics is, am I creating some emotional response? Am I making the player go, oh, oh, oh? One of the things that's interesting is watching people playtest your game, that of just sort of watching how evocative it can be. The more excited they get or happy they get or emotional, the more you're causing some reaction out of them, usually the better off they're thinking of the game.

That people really highly, it is not easy to make something feel strong emotions. It's not easy to make something feel strong emotions. It's not easy to do. And the reason people respond so well to it in all forms of entertainment is that it really is powerful to feel something. And so in your game, one of the things you look for is are you creating some strong emotional response?

If you are, that is positive. Or mostly positive. I mean, there are strong emotional responses that can turn people off. So you have to be careful. But in general, are people enjoying what you're doing? Are people having a good emotional response? So what I say when I say emotional satisfaction is, are people having a positive emotional response to what you're doing? The card, the mechanic, the thing that you're judging.

Okay, next. Intellectual satisfaction. Okay, so emotional satisfaction is about how you feel. Intellectual satisfaction is about how you think. Is the card mechanic doing, making you think in interesting ways? Is it,

you know, one of the neat things about cards when you make new cards and stuff is players go, oh, wow, I never, oh, let me think about that. How would I do that? What does it mean? What if I had two of that? What if this card and that card got together? You know, there's a lot of fun of sort of thinking through how things work. And, you know, there is a lot of satisfaction that can come intellectually of going, oh, wow, this really tested me. It really made me think,

it really, you know, one of the things, especially if people play games and play magic in particular, is they want an intellectual challenge, you know, that games in general tend to reward sort of intellectual curiosity, intellectual stimulation, and so when you make something that makes people really think, makes them, ooh, you know, how am I going to use this? What is it going to do? How does it work? You know, that can be very positive.

Now, once again, what you want in your intellectual stimulation is positive. Confusing people can make them, you know, can stimulate them intellectually, but it's not particularly positive to go, I don't know what's going on here. I have no idea. How does this work? You know, so once again, it's emotional satisfaction, intellectual satisfaction. It is not just making people have an emotional response or have an intellectual response. It's having one that's positive for them.

And so one of the things you look for is trying to figure out whether or not what you're, the card or mechanic, is it making people think in a way that's stimulating to them, that's fun for them, that's interesting for them. And there's a lot of different ways you can do that. It could be, you know, okay, the card's very straightforward what it does, but when would you use that effect? Or, okay, I can use this effect, but how would I, why, why is this effect something I want to use? Or how can I capitalize on this? Or how can I combine this with other things to do something powerful?

You know, how can I build a deck around it? Intellectual stimulation really makes you sort of ponder, makes you think about how you would play it, makes you think how you would combine it, but that is important. It is important to sort of get people intellectually stimulated. That's another big positive. Okay, move to the next thing. Agency. So what I mean by agency is, does your mechanic say to the player,

hey, I'm going to take you on a journey. You're going to play this game a little differently than you normally do. That the card sort of says that, hey, I'm not just your normal card. I'm going to make you think a little bit differently. So here's my example from, actually not from Zendikar. I'm going to use it from, I'm sorry, not from Innistrad.

My example here is from Zendikar for a second. I remember one of the first times I ever played Landfall. There was a moment, I talked about this moment. It's a very powerful moment where it was late game and I had a bunch of Landfall creatures and I'm moment, I talked about this moment, it's a very powerful moment, where it was late game and I had a bunch of Landfall creatures

and I'm like tapping the top of my library going, come on land, come on land, come on land. And I pause for a second, I'm like, okay, it's late game and I'm hoping to draw a land. I've never been here before. This is not something that I'm familiar with. In fact, it is almost opposite of what,

normally late game I'm like, come on fact, it is almost opposite of what you're normally late game. I'm like, come on, no land, no land, no land. And here I am doing the exact opposite. And that made me sit back and go, wow, this is a really interesting mechanic. It is making me think and do in a way I've never done before. And that's really potent. The reason agency is important is it's really valuable when you can, when a car to consort or a car to mechanic consort to say, okay, I'm really going to

drive you in a new direction, you know, that I want something and I'm going to take you to the place that helps what I do. People are really captured by that. You know, it really, when you see a card and you're like, oh, how do I use that? Or what does it do?

Or, okay, I'm playing with it. I'm like, oh, I'm, you know, okay,

I guess if I want to play this card, I got to do this thing. Never done that thing before, but okay, let's try that out. It's a really, it's another big thing that can capture people

when, you know, you sort of feel like, I mean, one of the things about Magic, I talk about this all the time, is Magic is a basic game that we kept reinventing, that we keep, you know, we keep finding new ways to play it. And one of the reasons people play Magic so long is that we really do reinvent things all the time,

that we really find new and different ways to play the game. And that's a strong pull to the game. Of having cards that speak to you in a way that is novel, that is, you know, things that sort of make you sit back and go, ooh, wow,

just playing this one card or this one mechanic will make this whole game feel different. And that people really are drawn to that, the idea of something that, okay, I haven't had this experience. What do I do? Okay.

The fourth thing is what I call identity. So this one's probably the trickiest one to explain. So the sense of identity is, one of the things people look for is they like when a card sort of has a unique feel to it. The easiest way to have identity is just be dripping with flavor. Oh, I get it. You're a blah. Oh, so for example, let's talk a little bit about, well, let me explain this. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through an indistribed experience and then look at all these things and compare them against it. So I'm going to do is I'm going to walk you through an indestruct experience

and then look at all these things and compare them against it. I'm going to give you a practical study. I'll do that in a second. But identity is very much about the card is bold in what it is. It has an identity. Now, the identity could be flavor-based. It could be, ooh, I'm just dripping with flavor. It could be mechanical-based. It could be, ooh, I'm just dripping with flavor. It could be mechanical-based in that

wow, it's just doing something that I've not seen done. You know, it could just be, it has a number you've never seen before, or it affects part of the game you haven't seen, or it combines two things you've seen but never combined before.

You know, there's a card we made in Odyssey called Traumatize, which milled half your library. Milled means take the cards in your library, take half of them and put them in your graveyard. And that was a bold, like before that, you know, we had cards like Millstone that like put two cards in your library,

in a graveyard from your library. But this card just said, no, half your library. And it was bold. It wasn't that it was dripping with flavor. I mean, it had some flavor to it, but it was just bold in what it did. And what identity means is a card just has a strong sort of feel to it.

Like that card does something. A lot of times identity comes from just dripping with flavor. Like, oh wow, oh I get it, it's this. Oh, it's an evil twin. I see. It, you know, it comes, it copies something, and then destroys the original. Like, oh, it's an evil twin. Like, you know, those cars are just, you know, rescued from the underworld. Like, oh, I see. The creature dies because it goes to the underworld, and then it gets its friend, and then it comes back. Oh, I know um and identity one of the things that identity

really does is it sort of it makes people sort of like people are very happy when they can see something that that has a strong definition to it um this is not just true about cards or anything this is true about people um like one of the things is i used to uh do stand-up comedy um and a big part of stand-up comedy a big part of success of stand-up comedy is having a strong identity. Of having people go, I get it. I get his point of view. You know, you want to get a voice. And a lot of that is getting a strong voice and a strong point of view.

Because people respond strong to that. That people want identity. That you want to represent something. that. That people want identity. That you want to represent something. And that when people see something, one of the things that helps people is if you have a strong identity and you represent something, people go,

oh, I get what they are. People respond strongly to that. Okay, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to walk through an actual experience that I did during Innistrad and then I'm going to talk about how we took those things and then compare them to the markers that we had to sort of talk about what we liked and didn't like.

So sort of a real-world experience. Okay, so in Innistrad, one of the things I said to the team early on is I said, obviously we're doing a top-down design, we're trying to capture the genre of horror, but the thing that I knew was going to be the defining trait was werewolves. We knew this was going to have

a monster theme. We're going to have vampires and zombies and spirits and werewolves. But the thing is, we'd done a lot of zombies. We'd done a lot of vampires. We'd done a lot of spirits. All those creatures we'd really, magic had done to a great deal. But werewolves was something that we hadn't, like we,

I think before Innistrad we'd done three werewolves, none of which were particularly memorable. Like we really hadn't done a good werewolf ever in the history of magic. And I'm like, okay, if we're going to put something on the map, we need to define werewolves in a way that is powerful. That like part of the success of the set is

can we sell werewolves in a way that people go, wow, now that's a werewolf. So I set down some parameters. Once again, one of the things about playtesting is you need to know what the goal is. Whenever I lead a team, I want to make sure my team knows what I'm looking for. I don't want to give them the answers.

I want them to explore because maybe they'll come up with stuff that I wouldn't come up with. But I want everybody to be going in the same direction. That's a lot of what a lead designer has to do is make sure that there's vision and that the team understands what it is they're trying to do. So I said, okay, guys, I want to make werewolves. So I defined some parameters for what it meant to be a werewolf. Number one is in order to be a werewolf, you have to be a human that to be a werewolf. Number one is, in order to be a werewolf, you have to be a human that turns into a werewolf. That some of the time you need to be human,

some of the time you need to be a werewolf. And in your human state, you're just weaker than in your werewolf state. That the werewolf state is generally stronger. Not that there couldn't be negative associated with the werewolf, that's fine. But there had to be two states, one of which was human, which was weaker, the other was werewolf. And I needed some hint at the flavor of transformation and that, you know, you go

from one state to the other, but that you can go back and forth, because that's what happens with humans and werewolves, is they're human, they become werewolves when the full moon comes out, but then after the full moon goes away, they come back to being human. And so I wanted to capture that. So I went to my team, and my team came up with a bunch of different things. So I want to talk about the three that I think had the most potential at the time. So one of them was, we had done cards that were circular before. If you look at something like, well, during Odyssey, we had made Threshold,

and we'd actually done Lycanthropy in Innistrad. Now, they were like were- were bears and stuff like that. They weren't necessarily werewolves. But the idea was that transformation existed. So we realized there was transformation there. The only problem we had was we wanted to be able to come back. So we looked at that space and said, okay. And then there was a card in, or a couple cards in Fawn Empire's title

influence, I think, where you would put counters on the card and it was secular in nature. And so I was like, okay. So one of the things we looked at, I said, let's assume you can use counters or something to literally build something where it rotates, like, the idea we came up with is, imagine a four-turn cycle

where it's human-human, werewolf-werewolf. So turn one, you're're human, turn two you're human, turn three you're a werewolf, turn four you're a werewolf, and then turn five you go back, you cycle back. So the first idea we looked across was some sort of secular thing. It also is kind of similar to phasing, something we did during Mirage, where you were in play and every other turn you were in play, in play, out of play, in play, out of play. The difference here essentially was phasing, it was kind of super phasing, where you were in play, and every other turn you were in play, in play, out of play, in play, out of play. The difference here essentially was phasing, it was kind of super phasing, where you're in play for two turns, you're out of play for two turns,

except instead of being out of play, you're turning into something. And if you want to think of out of play as being, like, human would be the weaker part, and then the stronger part. And the way that phasing worked is you got a much more powerful creature for your mana cost than normal because you only had it half the time. So first thing we tried out is we tried some sort of thing with counters that sort of rotated that human-human werewolf-wolf. We tried that. Second thing we tried was something that Tom Lapilli had told us was he had worked on dual masters and they had actually made double-faced cards. Cards in which they

started in one state and they flipped over in the middle of the game and obviously we knew how to print them because we printed them for for dual masters a game our trading card game we make for the Japanese market. And so the idea was, well, what if one side was human and one side was werewolf? And the idea that Tom originally pitched was the idea of, you just paid mana, that you could turn from human to werewolf whenever you wanted.

And so the idea is, I'm human and then I can pay a man and then I pay him a werewolf. I try and remember how you got turned back. Maybe it's you paid to turn, or maybe anybody could pay to turn it. I'm trying to remember how it worked. We tried a couple different versions. The one I remember is that all werewolves, humans and werewolves, all humans had the ability to make it night, which anybody could do, and all werewolves had the ability to make it day, which

anybody could do. And the idea was it was expensive, so it usually would take a turn to do it, but when you activated it, when you turned one werewolf, it turned all the werewolves. Because the idea was, oh, it's night now, all the werewolves turn to werewolves. The third thing we tried was something called day-night,

which was whenever you cast a card, it said, if there's not a day-night card, go get a day-night card. And then you went and put it into play. It came day-side face-up. It said, start here. There were three spaces for the sun. And then you flip the card over, and there's three spaces for the moon. And the card instructed you that every time you

cast a spell, advance it. So the idea is, I would play it, put it out, and then every time I cast a spell, it would advance. So it would be, you know, every third spell would make it night. And then every third spell would make it day.

Meanwhile, all the cards that had day-night to it would have a bonus at night. So the idea was they represented innocent things that got Creeping Crawly at night. Like werewolves. Like, oh, you're human. Oh, it's night. And now you get a bonus. And you can get power toughness bonus. You can get extra abilities.

You got better at night. And the idea was night time is when the Creeping Crawly things came out. So the reason you might want day time your opponent has more creepy crawly things. Like if you have the creepy crawly things, you want it to be nighttime. If your opponent has more, you want it to be daytime. So what we did is we played with all these. Okay, so the thing that I like to do when looking at the four things is give them a letter grade.

So let me walk through the letter grades. A means you are doing this thing awesomely. You are just, you are just, you are king at the thing. B means you are doing it. You're doing a good job. Not a great job, but a good job. It's there. You're definitely exhibiting this.

C is you're not doing it, but there's potential. Which means you haven't quite lived up to the potential yet, but you can see the potential. Like, you can realize there's potential there. That you think that this, with tweaking, maybe could get there. D is it's not working. It's just, you know, it's not working, and you don't have any great hope it's going to ever work.

F is it is, not only is it not working, it is causing problems. Like, not only is it not doing what it's supposed to do, it's having negative consequences that are causing, you know, it is as bad as it can be. It's not just not working. It is, like, negatively working. It's hurting other things. So one of the things I want to do is I take them and I look at them and I say,

okay, how are these, so first off, I take the secular one where I have the counters where I go secular. So I say to them, okay, emotional satisfaction. And I said, the problem I had was, it was, I really want to create a sense of, I wanted things to be tense. I wanted, I wanted you to be afraid. But when you knew everything up front, it's kind of like, okay, there'll be three scenes and the fourth scene, that's when the bad guy is going to surprise you and attack. It's like, well, if I know he's coming,

then I'm not going to be particularly surprised. So having the predictability of it really didn't quite... It was actually working against what I wanted. Um, and so I ended up giving it a D. Like, it not only wasn't it making me happy, but like, oh, like, it wasn't creating the suspense and tension that I wanted. Um, intellectually. Uh, intellectually, it also wasn't great. Um, the problem was, I mean, it a little more intellectually, like, it allowed me to figure out future turns. Um, I mean, a little more intellectually, like it allowed me to figure out future turns. So the big intellectual part of it was, okay, I was trying to map

out where things went. But a lot of it was just going, it was not the fun part. Usually the fun part of intellectual is trying to figure out how things work. Knowing how things work and then just doing kind of what I call doing the math, you know, where it's like, okay, I got the principle of it. I just got to sort of run through the, the, like, I got to do my homework, if you will. That's not particularly compelling. So I would give it a C for intellectual, um, satisfaction. Um, okay. Agency. Well, it has some agency. You know, it definitely, because you knew on the turns it would be, because you knew the turns by which it would be a werewolf,

it definitely made you act a certain way. It's like, okay, I'm going to protect it during its human phase. I'm going to be aggressive during its thing. So it had to be an agency. It clearly told you to do something. And it was probably the element of the card that most, you know, most, as far as the gameplay, it was probably the best for the gameplay. At least it told you to act in a certain way. It was very clear what it was doing. Then we get to identity. And identity is like, ah, it was probably a B. I mean, it was a werewolf.

It clearly was a werewolf. It wasn't as werewolf-y as some of the other werewolves. Maybe even a vacuum. I mean, part of what you have to do when you grade also is you'll, if you're trying to do multiple things to do the same thing, you kind of want to look in context against the other things. And it wasn't as, it wasn't quite as compelling as the other things, but it did have a clear identity. It was a werewolf. It felt like a werewolf. It lost a few points in that, well, I take that back. It being predictable from a creative standpoint, like you actually do know

when a werewolf is a werewolf from a creative standpoint. The moon comes out. The moon's going to be out for some amount of time. So, anyway, I put that at B. So, it was D, C, B, B. Okay, now double-faced cards. Okay, emotional satisfaction, A. We actually stickered both sides to do it. And, you know, we used sleeves. Normally, we don't use sleeves in playtests. We use sleeves.

And, like, just flipping over a sticker card with a sticker on the back felt so, oh my, what am I doing? Ooh, I'm flipping cards over. I mean, it was, it was just fun.

It was just fun. Why was it fun? I mean, I can analyze why it was fun, but it was fun. It put a smile on my face. Every time I flipped the card over,

like, just the act of flipping the card over made me smile. And that's always a good sign. So I got A for emotional satisfaction. The intellectual satisfaction, I was a little less satisfied with the means by which I was turning over.

In that it really, it made you sort of, you ended up getting in mana wars where people weren't casting spells. And you were trying to figure out, does it make more sense to cast a spell now or instead use the resources to flip the thing over? So it did make you walk through something. And there was some intellectual stimulation going on there.

But it wasn't the funnest of intellectual stimulation, but there was some. I'd stick it at a B. Then agency. Definitely had some agency. It definitely, in fact, it had a huge amount of agency. And once again, I'm grading that on, part of the grade is how much did I like it. When I say that agency, was it an agency I enjoyed?

Not just did it have agency, but both identity and agency, I didn't put the word satisfaction after when I talked about them, but in each case it is, you know, emotional satisfaction in that, you know, we were prompted emotionally. Intellectually, we were prompted intellectually. Agency is still satisfaction. Did I like

not just did it tell me to do something, but did I enjoy what it told me to do? It's still satisfaction. Did I like... Not just did it tell me to do something, but did I enjoy what it told me to do? It's not... I mean, there could be a card that says, every turn, slap yourself in the face and gain flying. Okay, that has agency. It tells me what to do. But do I like slapping myself in the face?

You know? So it's not just agency in the sense that it doesn't tell you, did you enjoy it? And so this one was a agency in the sense that it doesn't tell you, did you enjoy it? And so this one was a C in the sense that I didn't like the means by which I flipped it over. And then the final thing was identity A. The double-sided card had great agency. It really, oh, it's this, now it's that. And everything flipped at once.

That felt really cool. So A, B, C, A. Finally, the day-night. That felt really cool. So A, B, C, A. Finally, the day and night. The day and night, the emotional satisfaction I was putting at probably a B. I liked it.

The sun came out. The thing advanced. That was pretty cool. Intellectual was an A. I really, really liked how casting spells and dictating that and pushing things along, that was really neat and did cool things. And an agency is also an A. I really, really liked how casting spells and dictating that and pushing things along, that was really neat and did cool things. And an agency is also an A. It really had a strong identity. It was day, no, not identity.

Agency, it really made you play differently, and you thought about when and how you cast spells. And it also affected deck building, because you knew you wanted activated abilities, so on turns that you were going to sort of try to, you know, when you wanted to keep it night, you wanted to not cast spells, so you wanted other things to do. And so it affected how you built your deck. I really enjoyed that. And identity, identity had, was also very flavorful.

So probably an A there. So it was B, like B, A, A, A. So I looked at both of them, and both of them were... So first off, one of the things is once you grade everything, look at it and say, if things are successful, if I have things I like, I can get rid of things I don't like. If you have A's and B's, get rid of the C's. If you don't have A's and B's, okay, the C's are the potential. That's when you're going to play around with. That's what you're going to be looking at. So for example, if you're getting C's, D's, and F's, okay, your C's are where you're going to look. But if you're getting A's and B's,

the C's can go. So what I realized is the first one, the rotating, you know, the counter one, I had too much success with the other ones to make that work. And so what happened was I stopped doing the first one and I put all my energy in doing the second two. And in the end, what happened was as the more I play tested with the double-faced cards and with the day-night stuff, I came to realize that each one shone in a certain place. Where Double-Faced Card's shown is it was really high in both... It was really high in both the emotional satisfaction

and in the identity. That, you know, it's a human. Now it becomes a werewolf and all the werewolves change at the same time. And, you know, There's something really just... It got you giddy. The double-faced cards,

you were kind of breaking a rule we never broke, but it made sense and it was kind of cool. It was different. It really felt like you were doing something that you had never been allowed to do and finally you're doing it, but it made perfect sense that you're doing it. Meanwhile, the thing that Day and Night was doing really well was,

it intellectually was really interesting, and it gave a sense of agency in a way that I loved, in that it really made you play in a way that was happy, in that I wasn't enjoying how to flip over the cards in the initial version of the double-faced cards. And essentially, I mean, if you know anything about industry, you can sense where the story is going, is what happened is the more I played, the more I was able to start picking the elements I liked. And it's like, oh, wow, I really like the way that Double Face cards feels. I really like the way that day-night creates an interesting game

experience. And so the answer was, I eventually merged those together. That I changed how to flip the cards over, and I took the gameplay that I liked from day-night, and I took the just pure emotional joy I got from the double-faced cards, and I made them into a singular thing. So, and, I mean, sort of the point of today is saying that a lot of what you want to do,

a lot of the way to figure out whether something is working early on is figuring out whether it's hitting upon something. Like, what I want is when somebody sees something, sees and plays with something for the first time. I open it up, I look at it, I read it, and then I play with the game. At the end of that game, I've now seen it, I've experienced it, I played with it. How do I feel? And what I want to do is I want you to feel really good about it. And these four things are the things, over time, having a lot of doing a lot of playtesting, are the things I've found that connect people most with the cards themselves. the cards themselves. And they really are strong and potent things.

And so I found that if you sort of look and say, am I addressing these things? Am I emotionally fulfilling my player? Am I making them feel things they want to feel? Am I intellectually stimulating my player? Am I making them think in interesting ways, in ways that sort of, you know, really exercise their brain? Am I defining what I want? Is the thing paving new path?

Is it making people play in ways they haven't played before or experience things they might not experience if this card didn't push them in that direction? Is it opening their mind to doing something they maybe haven't done before? And finally, is it presenting itself, in that direction? Is it opening their mind to doing something they maybe haven't done before? And finally, is it presenting itself,

is it giving a strong sense of who it is? People are attracted to things that know what they are. Does your game piece know what it is? And that when you combine those four things, when you're able to do that,

when you're able to create all these pieces, when you can hit those, it's not, by the way, that every card in your set is going to do that, when you're able to create, you know, all these pieces, when you can hit those, it's not by the way that every card in your set is going to do that. This is, I'm talking about early playtests. What I'm looking for is the stars in my set. I'm looking for the things that are going to shine. I'm looking for the things that are going to define who and what the set is. Now yes, I'm going to put things in the file because I need a two-drop vanilla creature

to make limited work or to color balance something or, you know, there's all sorts of reasons you're going to stick cards in sets that go over and above. What I'm talking about today is trying to find the superstars of your set so that you can find some things that you're going to build off of that are going to be the things that give the overall feel to your set. And those four things, emotional satisfaction, intellectual satisfaction, agency and identity,

capture those four things, have your mechanics and your cards do those four things, and you will be successful. And that, my friends, is how you figure out whether or not something is working in early playtest. Okay, I've just driven up to Rachel's school, so we all know what that means.

It means this is 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.