Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #495: Vision, Set, and Play Design

Episode Date: December 8, 2017

Last year, R&D changed the structure of how we make Magic cards. In this podcast, I explain the change and introduce the three new parts of Magic design in R&D.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. And I dropped my daughter off her college class. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about a big change. Not something up front, but a change behind the scenes. I recently wrote an article about this, but I wanted to go in more detail, and a podcast lets me talk a little more than my columns do. So basically, I'm going to talk all about vision design, set design, and play design. What is that, you say?

Well, I'm glad you joined me today. Okay, well, before I talk about what things are becoming, let's go back and talk about what things were. So let's go back, I don't know, three, four years. So here's how the system used to work. So prior to the changeover, so we had Metamorphosis 1.0 and Metamorphosis 2.0. Metamorphosis 1.0 was the change from large, small, small, core

to large, small, large, small. So going to two worlds a year instead of one, or two blocks a year instead of one, and getting rid of the core set. And then Metamorphosis 2.0 was going from large, small, large, small, to going to large, large, large, core. I'll get to that. These changes have a lot to do with what's going on behind the scenes,

but we'll get there. But anyway, we start before any of those happen, before Metamorphosis 1.0 happens. So here's how the system used to work. About three and a half years before something would see print, we would spend about a year doing exploratory design. So exploratory design back then was very low key. We'd meet once a week. It was just the idea of exploratory design, I did a whole podcast on this, is we're trying to map out where a set is going. What are the possibilities? What are the problems? What are the challenges?

And so exploratory design is not trying to make a card file. It is just trying to explore space so that when we get to vision, we have a sense of the space we're playing in. And so we would spend about a year doing exploratory design. Then we'd spend about a year, we'd a year, uh, 12 months doing design. Uh, and that, that would start from a blank page. We'd make a file. We'd figure out what was going on, what the set's about. We'd make mechanics and we'd make cards, all the cards, the commons, the uncommons,

the rares, the mythic rares, that when we handed over to development, um, we would have a full file. I mean, everything we worked out, that when we handed over to development, we would have a full file. I mean, everything we worked out, we would try to have cycles, but we were making an honest attempt when we handed over the file to have a working file. Not that there wouldn't be changes.

Obviously, development's going to come in and change things, but we were trying to, when we handed over from design, it was complete. You know, if you had to send it to print for the next day, it was a full You know, if you had to send it to print the next day, it was a full set. It had all the components in it.

And then what would happen is development would spend nine months, I believe, maybe slightly longer, doing the fine tuning. And development's always been a second set of eyes. And there's a lot of things that development cared about

that design didn't worry about. Balancing of the cards, costing, larger formatting stuff. I mean, they would then sort of be the second set of eyes and pound the thing into shape that they needed to do. And whatever they needed to change, they would change. If they had to change mechanics, I mean, they would change cards all the time, but sometimes they would change mechanics. Sometimes they would change, sometimes small themes, usually not the major theme, but they might change out small components of it. They clearly would change maybe what certain colors were drafting and stuff. But development would then go through it.

They would spend nine-ish months. And then it went to people outside of R&D. I mean, well, it went to editing first outside of R&D. I mean, well, it went to editing first inside of R&D. And then caps and all sorts of people that had to actually make the cards, make them happen. And that system was a system that we had had. I mean, Exploratory Design was relatively new within the last five years or so, but the design and development process goes all the way back to the very, very beginning. When I walked in the doors back in 95,

that was just the way things were. So one of the things that's interesting is Eric Lauer, who is my sort of I-led design, he-led development, Eric has this really interesting knack to ask questions about things that are just established things. And going, hey, why this? So, one day Eric came to me and he said, he was very curious about the handoff. Oh, so, actually, I'm jumping a little bit ahead chronologically.

So what had happened was metamorphosis 1.0 had come along. We had changed from large, small, small, core to large, small, large, small. We had done away with the core set. And we had said instead of having one long block a year, we'd have two blocks that were slightly shorter. And one of the problems that I was trying to deal with is normally under the old system, I would work on the large set. I would sort of map things out

and then other people would run the small sets. But I, you know, as the head designer, would sort of, I pre-mapped things out so that each of the small sets had an identity. They understood what they were doing. But under this new version, under Metamorphosis 1.0, there were now two worlds a year. And I wasn't quite sure how to handle it. So the first year, we were going to,

returning to two worlds, going to Zemekard and going back to Innistrad. So I'm like, okay, at least those worlds are somewhat defined. I worked extra hard during exploratory design to make sure that we sort of defined what was going on. But they were known worlds. We'd been there before. But then we had three worlds in a row that we'd never been to before. I mean, Kaladesh, we had had a glimpse at origins, but really never been there for a full set. Amiket and Ixalan. Limson origins, but really never been there for a full set.

Amonkhet and Ixalan. And so what I ended up doing was I did this thing where for six months, I co-designed with somebody. I co-designed with Sean Main for Cowdash, with Eshen Fleischer for Amonkhet, and with Ken Nagel for Ixalan. And the way it would work was, so vision, sorry, design is broken up into three components. Vision, integration, design is broken up into three components, vision, integration, and refinement. Those, usually vision would take about six months, and then integration and refinement would take about three months each.

I think I wrote an article where I once said there were four, four, four, but really, I think that wasn't true. I think we spent more time on vision. The one thing about when we all did it together, when one person was overseeing it, is you could go from vision to integration or integration refinement whenever you were ready for it. We had some general guidelines so we had a sense of where we wanted to be, but because you were doing the whole process, you could shift whenever you wanted to shift,

as long as at the end of the 12 months you had what you needed. I tended to like to stay in vision a little longer because I wanted to sort of figure out what was going on and spend a little more time sort of getting the essence of it. So basically what happened was we now moved to the system where we had two worlds a year. I really wanted to make sure that I could get in and help define the world so that people could do the design. So what I did was I co-designed and the first six months

was essentially was vision. I would lead the set with my co-designer there. You know, Sean was there for Coward Ash and likewise. And then at six months when we started integration, I would hand over the reins to my co-designer and while I would still be on the team,

I would let them run things. And that, I did that for Caledition, Amonkhet, and Ixalan. So it's important to set up that I started creating a system to sort of deal with the new thing.

So that's important because that's key to the story. I wanted to bring that up. Okay, so Eric comes to me one day and he says, he goes, okay, I like the system of two sets of eyes. I like that one person starts on it, they get invested, they do a lot of work and then it passes to a second person who gets to start with a brand new set of eyes, a fresh impression

that they get to sort of look at it without any of the biases of the person who came before them. And he said that he thought that process was really, really good, that it allowed us to make one of the secrets of magic success was that process. But he said to me, he goes, the thing I'm curious about is right now, design goes for about a year, and then there's a handoff for development that goes about nine months. Why is that the handoff? Why is that the point when it happens?

And the reason Eric had asked that, let me give a little background on what was going on on development, is the way it worked was design would hand over a file, and then development, very shortly into development, development would have to make decisions on art, for example, that they'd have to commit to some numbers of pieces of art. And once you have art for a card, it starts locking down what the card can do. I mean, you have some flexibility. I mean, once you have art, it doesn't mean you can't change the card at all, but it does start forcing your hand on certain things. The trickiest one is creatures, they're flying in their arcs. So once you say they're flying, it's hard to make them not flying anymore.

And there's a little bit of swapping you could do. There's a little bit of flexibility. But as you start sort of assigning things and locking things down, you start constraining what choices you could make. So one of the things we had done many years ago is we started this process called Divine where at the last two months of a large set and one month of a small set the lead developer would come and give notes to the lead designer saying hey I'm going to be taking the set over soon here are concerns I have giving the designer time to sort of

adjust to those concerns. And some people went even further. Like Dave Humphries had a tradition of being on the design team so you could see it from the beginning. Eric a lot of times would poke his head in earlier than Divine to give comments. That more and more, what we realize is, as the technology of development got better and better and better, there would be decisions that would need to be made earlier and earlier to sort of make sure that we were making the right thing.

And so development started getting involved earlier in the process. So what Eric was asking was, he goes, I understand we have a handoff at this particular point. Why is that the handoff? So what I did is I went back and did a little bit of investigation of how the process started. So here's what I learned is in the early days, prior to Tempest,

so Tempest was the first set I did. Tempest was also the first set designed internally. Now technically, by the way, Weatherlight came out before Tempest and it was designed internally. But large sets take longer than small sets. So we started working on Tempest before they started working on Weatherlight. A little trivia for you. Prior to that, all design work was done external to the building. If you guys know early Magic, a lot of the early designs were done by the play tefters,

the East Coast play tefters, which were one of the play tefters with Richard, Scaf Elias, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty Chris Page they did Antiquities, they did Fallen Empires they did Ice Age, they did Alliances I call it the Chess Club which was the playtesters that Richard met

through the Bridge Club the Bridge Club that was like Bill Rose, Joel Mick, Charlie Cattino, Howard Kallenberg, Don Felice, Elliot Siegel. Those were the people that made Mirage and Visions.

Also, Barry Reich, who made Spectral Chaos, which was an element that we used to make Invasion. Although that would be a little bit later after this point. Also, Peter had gotten some people that he knew. Steve Connard was a friend of his. They had done a lot of role-playing together. Legends was based on a lot of the characters from their role-playing.

Jesper Mierfors, who was the first art director, did The Dark. Kyle and Scooter, which were two people working in, well, Kyle was working in customer service and Scooter was in, at the time, called Continuity, what we now call on the creative team, did Homeland. So there were a lot of people that did sets. In fact, up through Tempest and Weatherlight, before Weatherlight chronologically, every set had been done by an outside,

someone outside had done the set. And so the reason that the system was set up is, here's how the system originally worked. The people designing the set made a set. They weren't, there was no handoff to them. They were just making a set. That's what they were doing. They were creating and they, ta-da, we made a set.

And then what happened was their R&D would then look it over because, you know, a lot of the external people didn't know all the ins and outs of what's going on. They didn't necessarily know what was coming before or after it. They didn't necessarily know about formats like Standard. You know, they were just making a set in a vacuum. And also, when they were making their sets, in the early days, every Magic set was innovating.

You know, every set was doing something that hadn't been done before. So a lot of times, one set would do something, the other set, which was being designed in isolation, had no idea the set before had just introduced something. Like, for example, Legends introduced multicolor cards. There's like three multicolor cards in the dark, but I think

development added those in, because I don't think when Jesper was making it, he knew there were multicolor cards. He didn't know that Legends had made multicolor cards. I'm not 100% sure on that one. Maybe he knew and added them. But the point was, another reason for development was there just was modern technology

that had been learned along the way that's being applied. So the original handoff was we're designing something, we are making a complete and final package. That's what we're doing. And the development was the second set of eyes

to come in and kind of proof it. In the early days, it was a lot more kind of like the author writes a book and then the editor proofreads the book and makes changes to fix the book. But what had happened over the years was it became more of a collaborative process. That when I was designing something, I wasn't designing the end product. I was designing something that would be a good starting point for development to work on. That I was making something, you know, there always was this process where I was designing something for the next step in the process. I wasn't designing something ignorant of that. I was actually trying to design stuff that encouraged that.

So really what we were doing with design development had changed over time but yet the handoff was based upon the premise of the designers were just making the whole thing and really that wasn't the place we'd been at and the more we had learned technology and the more we had done development the more we realized that earlier and earlier in the process as we were defining mechanics the more that the tournament scene it mattered mattered how things were done. And so Eric sort of said, I don't, we might be doing this at the wrong time. So meanwhile, take that and combine it with the fact that I was realizing that essentially in order to get this stuff done, I was sort of, we were sort of making a three-step process. I was leading something, then my co-designer was leading something, then the developer

was leading something. And we realized that maybe that was one step too many. And at the time, six months, what I realized was the area that I was doing the most important work was in the vision area. I mean, not that my integration refinement wasn't decent, but that I was doing the most important work was in the vision area. I mean, not that my integration refinement wasn't decent, but that was not where the most important work was. There's a blank piece of paper.

What is it? What is this set? You know, I'll give Ixalan an example. When Ixalan started, the very, very first sort of world idea of Ixalan was a two-sided conflict between, you know, the natives of the continent Ixalan and these outsiders, the vampires that were invading. And it was this two-sided conflict. And, you know, so when we started, it was this very different thing. And a lot of what Vision was is trying to figure out of realizing, okay, we had done too many two-sided conflicts nearby.

We wanted, we changed. First, we tried a three-sided conflict, got the pirates brought in. Then we tried a four-sided conflict and ended up getting the dinosaurs in, you know. And then as we started realizing that what we were making was a tribal set. That the things, you know, we were introducing two really new exciting things, which were dinosaurs and pirates, and they were very tribal. The vampires, which had this strong new identity, were tribal. We introduced the merfolk. We realized that what we were making was a tribal set, and not just any tribal set, an asymmetric tribal set,

in which two of the tribes were having a higher profile because they were the new exciting new things. because they were the new exciting new things. And so it started as sort of this interesting world, you know, that had the world premise and was very much based on this two-sided conflict. And by the time it came out to Vision, it had been shaped into something that was a little more of a dynamic magic set, you know. It still had that really cool creative to it,

but it had a sort of mechanical sheen added that gave it sort of a definition. That's a lot of what vision does. And so anyway, so the idea was, okay, what if we shift? So instead of doing design, so another important thing, something that we changed many years ago, if you look at the actual credits, we don't use design or development in the credits. We call design initial design and we call development final design and the reason we do that is one of the things that we did is we looked at the game industry around us and realized that the terms we use were not synonymous with how the terms are used at other companies so for example while we

called it development um what they were doing was really design by the terms of what anybody else was doing. And so we started calling it initial and final design in the credits externally. So when somebody who used to do development went to get another job, they're like, no, no, no, I'm a designer. Look, I did design work.

Because development, especially in video games, means something different. And that's not what they were doing. So one of the things we realized is we're going to change some stuff over. Let's also change the terminology. So essentially what I was doing, and like I said, in a world where we're going to two blocks a year, I needed to spend more time on the vision part of it. That is the part where I think my team shines.

that is the part where I think my team shines and and by the way part of the integration was the idea that the way we used to design and development was design had people that sort of were more

specialists at the blue sky stuff and making individual cards in the design team and the development had more of the balancing type people. And there was a little bit of development skill on the design team, a little bit of design skill on the development team. But the idea here was we'd have a little bit more integration. That our teams would be a little more, have a little more going on.

And that part of this process was to have the later teams represented so that I'm making sure that I'm making decisions that support what they're doing. So the idea was that we would change from design and development into vision design and set design. Play design is coming. That's another important component. I'll get there in a second. So the way it works is vision design changed to be six months long.

That allowed me to do vision on every single new world, every single block. And the idea was I would have six months to do the large and small set. So I would do the vision for both the large set and the small set. Exploratory design got knocked down to six months because we obviously didn't have a year anymore. So it got knocked down to six months. to six months because we obviously didn't have a year anymore so it got down to six months. Eventually we would knock it down even a little more down to three months as we were trying to tighten some stuff up and as I said before we really were being a little bit lax today so we really were taking our time and we realized it was a little bit easier if we condensed it down.

The reason we also did that was we wanted to give more time to the creative team to start doing some exploratory world building. So we created a system where they spent a month and a half doing world building, we spent three months doing exploratory design, then they had another month and a half of exploratory world building to incorporate a lot of stuff we had done in our design. And that was the new process by which we did exploratory design. And then I had six months to do design. And then we handed over from vision design to set design. Set design, the way it works, this has changed over time.

I'm going to say how it currently works. This process took a little while to figure out. The design, because I walked through the process, I know exactly what we did. I don't know the set design quite as exact. But the way it works was they ended up getting... Originally, I think they had 12 months. It ended up being more time they needed. So it went to nine months. But the way it works is it's six months, then there's a three-month hiatus, and then three more months. The reason for that gap is there are reasons to want to start set design as soon as vision finishes because they want to figure out all the things they need to so they can lock down things like art and things.

But at the same time, they want to be as late as possible so they can take real-world knowledge and apply it so they can figure out how best to sort of add things that affect the real world. So what happened was we had the system set up and then, of our own choosing, MetaBosses 2.0 came along. We realized, so one of the things that had happened was, we do this market research all the time

and one of the things that they let us do is, there's certain questions they always ask, but we're allowed to change up. There's a few questions we get every time we do it to ask them new things so we can sort of feel things. So one of the questions that we were curious about was, which do you prefer? Drafting large, large, large

all of the first set, or small, small, large? Part of the small set and part of the larger set. And the interesting thing we got back, I think we thought that more people liked drafting large, large, large. But the data when we got back was they overwhelmingly liked that. It was like over 80%.

It was like significantly. It might have been even over 90%. It was the vast majority liked that. And one of the things we realized was that there was a lot of challenges of doing small sets. Small sets, because they were structured different than large sets, because they had less cards, because of a lot of different factors, and because you were mixing into a thing that got locked before you, it made it a lot harder. Small sets were very challenging. We came to realize that maybe the issue was, maybe we were looking at it wrong. What if every set was just a large set that drafted with itself? And then we said, okay, let's disconnect this idea that worlds are tied to blocks.

What if worlds, what if we can stay in a world as long as we want? And, you know, if we stay in a world, obviously there has to be a reason to stay there more than once. Like, something about the world

needs to matter. There needs to be a reason to stay there more than once. But we have that flexibility. And so the idea is, hey, creative people, you have a story to tell. You figure out what you want to do.

You figure out how long we're supposed to stay somewhere. If it really makes sense to stay there one set, we can stay there one set. Two set, we can stay there two sets. Three set, we can stay there three sets. We can stay as long as we need to do as long as it makes sense. But then, from a design standpoint, each set gets to be made using the same process. So it allows us to, like, one of the big things was large and small sets were made, physically made differently based on a bunch of criteria.

By making them all large, we now can sort of systemize how we do things, make it cleaner. We can have sets because they're just drafting with themselves. We don't have problems where sets are adapting to things that are already locked. And we solve a lot of problems. Now, the one problem we made under that new system was we were making too many cards, that there's a certain number of cards we'd like to make, partly from our resources, how many can we make, and also from how many we want the audience to have

in standard any one time. And so we had realized when we took the core set away, there was reasons we took it away. We had tried to do some other things to take its place. Those other things weren't working quite as well. And we realized to go to the large, large, large world, we needed to bring the core set back. And so we decided to do, and I'll do a podcast on this at some point. So we revamped the core set.

It's a little bit different. I mean, it's a core set, but not quite the core set as they'd been. As we get closer, I'll talk to you. It's still a little far out to talk about that. But anyway, we went to large, large, large corset. Okay, so now I had an issue, which is I had been set up to do six months for one set, six months for the next set. Or six months for a large and small set, six months for a large and small set. Okay, on this new system, the corset I didn't really need to worry too much

about, like I did in the past. It's something where I get consulted, but I don't need to block out time for it. So it meant I had three different sets and 12 months to do them in. Well, if I did six months, six months, six months, okay, that wasn't going to work. I'd have to overlap them and that would cause problems. So, okay, we changed to a world where it's four months, four months, four months. I previously been doing six months for a large and small set. Now he's doing four months for just a large set. So when that changed, I made that changeover. It's still something I get.

I just handed off my very first four-month vision design. And I'm still getting, I'm still trying to figure out exactly the timing and stuff. One of the harder things about changing things is you get in patterns and understand how things work. And then as you start to do it a bunch, you start sort of, you start getting rhythms that you understand, that you recognize. And so we did that. Anyway, so let me quickly get in play design. So what happened was, as we were making all these changes,

as we were adapting to all the changes, one of the problems was, a lot of people have a responsibility of looking, you know, playing the future Fusion League and looking at Standard and at Draft and all the different formats. But the problem was there was so much drawing our attention because we were doing so many new things and that it was nobody's primary responsibility to watch the environment. It was a lot of people's second and tertiary responsibility. And so what happened was some things fell through the cracks second and tertiary responsibility. And so what happened was, some things fell through the cracks

because our focus got pulled. And obviously, if you look at the last year, you know, everyone's in a blue moon. I understand maybe we need to ban something. If once every five years we ban something, it means, you know, if we never ever ban something, that means we're not pushing the envelope ever.

And okay, I get that everyone's in a rare, rare while. Maybe we should ban something. But multiple cards three times during the course of a year, that was a problem. And what we realized is that we needed to have a portion of R&D that's primary responsibility was the balance of the environment. That's really, really important. That's how a lot of people enjoy our game.

Not everybody, but a lot of people. And so we wanted to make sure we got that right. So what we did is we got in a guy named Dan Burdick to be the manager. And we moved over a bunch of people enjoy our game. Not everybody, but a lot of people. And so we wanted to make sure we got that right. So what we did is we got in a guy named Dan Burdick to be the manager, and we moved over a bunch of people. And then Dan went out and hired some new people fresh off the pro tour and stuff. And we said, you know what? We're going to have a new team that's now going to oversee who's in charge of making sure that all the formats are balanced. Obviously, their primary responsibilities are standard and boosted, rafted, and sealed. But secondarily, they look at modern. They look at commander. They do look at other formats that get played a lot.

And the idea is that we're going to use this team from the very, very beginning. My vision design team has a play designer on it. Set design will have a play designer on it. And then play design has their own period of time where they're doing work on every set. And the idea is that we now, by divvying up our three responsibilities into vision design, set design, and play design, we have people looking at all different aspects.

It's a different way to look at how we do it. In some ways, it's three set of eyes instead of two set of eyes, although looking at it in a different context. So here's how it works now. So when we convince down to four months, there now is a month of exploratory world building, three months of exploratory design,

then there's four months of vision design, then there is six months of set design, then three months of hiatus, then three more months of set design. Then during the last two months of set design, then three months hiatus, then three more months of set design, then during the last two months of set design, play design begins, and that goes for three months. That goes one month after set design ends. Note that this is still in a time where set design is allowed to change numbers and things. Even though there's pencils down and editing and stuff's going on,

they still are allowed to change numbers and things. If a card's a problem, it's still in a window where we can fix the problem if we notice a problem. So we've moved to a system now where if you add up the numbers, so it's 4 plus 4 plus 12 plus 1, so that's 17? 17? No, 19. So 19 months. So from the very beginning of the process to the very end of the process

is now about 19 months. Now, after we hand it off, there is still a bunch of... The cars have to get made and produced and shipped places, and there's still a bunch of time after that. But we've condensed our time down a little bit, and we're just looking at things a little differently. I, for example, am now very focused on vision. I'm not doing integration and refinement.

I'm really just making sure that every set we do, we figure out what we're doing. We give it an identity. So one of the things... I think probably I will do a podcast on vision design at a different time. There's a lot of nuances I want to talk about vision design. Today was more about the change. So I promised you I will do a vision design podcast in the near future, talking a lot about the nuances of vision design.

But anyway, that is the change. That we went from a world of design and development, which we had done since the very beginning, to now a new world of vision design, set design, play design. And I'm really excited. I really think that one of the things I love about Magic is that we integrate it. Not integrate.

I used the wrong word. One of the things that we always do is we iterate it. That we iterate how we make cards, how we design Magic, and that I love that we're iterating the process by which we make Magic. That there's a lot of cool things that are going on. There's a lot of changes to the system, but I

think it's resulting in a better product. So I hope... The first set, by the way, that had a vision design team was... Well, Rivals of Ixalan was kind of in between. And it had kind of a combined vision set design team. The first set that had a clear, distinctive Vision design team was Dominaria. And then the first set that had... Play Design did some consultation on Dominaria.

The first one, though, where they had their full Play Design time was for Milk. And the first time that Play design integrated into vision itself was in archery. So all this stuff is coming. But Dominaria is kind of the first, the first wheelset you'll see that had vision and had set design, a little bit of play design. It got a consult, but it didn't have the full three months like it will in the future. Anyway, that, my friends, is the big change. And like I said, it's a pretty exciting thing. It's not something that you guys necessarily would see. If we weren't so transparent with our process,

it's not something you would necessarily even know. But we are, and I'd like you guys to know it. So that, my friends, is how the new process works. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed today and enjoyed learning it. Like I said, I will soon do a podcast on vision design to go more in the nitty gritty of how that's going to work. So anyway, I'm parking my car in a park. So we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work.

Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you guys next time.