Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #496: Vision Design

Episode Date: December 15, 2017

In this podcast, I go into greater detail of how the new vision design team works.

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 at her college class. Okay, so today, last podcast, I talked about the changeover to the new system of vision design, set design, and play design. And I promised that I would do a podcast talking more in specifics about vision design, as that's what I do. And I figured, why wait? Let's get to it. So part of today is vision design is this new thing. And I want to go in depth and talk a lot about what vision design is, how it's a little bit different from design. And what do we do? What do we do in vision design? What's the point of vision design?

What do we do? What do we do in vision design? What's the point of vision design? Okay. So the way it works is the first thing we do is we will plot out a whole bunch of blocks, usually two, three years at a time that we're always adding on to the existing of what we're doing. And usually what happens is there's some agreement of trying to find things that creatives happy with that match with the story, you know, the basic story ideas that I'm happy with that I can find mechanical sort of a sense of what it's about.

Talking with Eric and with Play Design. Are we making something we think that we can balance? And so there's all these different people sort of agree to really basic ideas. So for example, I'll talk about someone that already existed, although these pre-exist vision proper, but there's sets that are out so I can talk about someone that already existed, although these pre-exist vision proper, but there's sets that are out so I can talk about them. Okay, so let's take Amonkhet, for example.

Amonkhet started with the idea of we want to do a top-down Egyptian world, and we wanted a Bolas element to it. So the thing that creatives were interested in was the idea that this was a world that Bolas had shaped, and that very much was in Bolas' image. And they were playing around with a lot of interesting trope space, and so they were interested in crafting this sort of hybrid between Egyptian feel and Bolas. I was interested in that it seemed like a good opportunity to do a top-down design.

You know, it was a world in which people had some, you know, had a lot of resonance to it. People understood what the, you know, the source material. And so I was interested in doing a top-down design. And, you know, talking with, you know, with development at the time, but what would, really the idea was this is going to be a world, we knew there would be a graveyard component, we knew there would be, it would have some combat that would be involving with fighting, and we knew it would lend itself toward a little

bit more of an aggressive sort of play. It would lend itself toward a little bit more of an aggressive sort of play. But anyway, everybody kind of signed off. And really all we had when I started was, okay, it's Egypt meets Bolas. And that's normally when Vision begins, there's some rough idea of what the essence is. Sometimes we know some story stuff. I think walking into this one, we had a rough idea that the Gatewatch would confirm Bolas

and Bolas was going to win. Like, we kind of, early on, kind of knew that was the place we were going, that we wanted our... Nicole Bolas really hadn't, hadn't really established himself as a villain on screen in a long time, and we really wanted to have that villain on screen in a long time,

and we really wanted to have that happen. We wanted you to see, you know. So anyway, when Vision starts, usually we have a brief sense of what we're doing. The story's not always figured out. We don't know the details. Maybe we know a high-picture thing like, okay, Gatewatch is going to fight Bullets and lose. We might know something like that. So what happens is the first thing that happens is the creative team gets together and does what's called exploratory world building, where they figure out, they sort of just,

they spend a month kind of just hammering out what they know. They've done a little bit of pre-work in the sense of what are they looking for? They want to get a general sense of what they think the world is, such that when we start exploratory design, that we have an idea of what kind of world we're working in. And a lot of exploratory design is all about sort of just mapping things out, looking at potential mechanics. Anyway, this is all precursor division design is all about sort of just mapping things out, looking at potential mechanics. Anyway, this is all precursor to vision. I'm just sort of setting up what comes into vision.

So when vision starts, we've had, you know, creatives spend a little time on the world. We have spent some time in design, exploratory design, kind of mapping things out, trying things. Often when we start visions, we'll have some mechanical directions to try. We usually have some mechanics to look at. So when vision starts, the goal, so let me, let me explain the goal of vision. Let me start there. So the point of vision design is to create something that allows set design to make an awesome set. The metaphor I always use is the idea that we're the architects, that we're drawing the blueprints.

Vision design isn't really building the building. It's not building the house or whatever. But it's more sort of figuring out what the house needs to look like. What's the style of the house? what's the essence of the house, and doing the preliminary work to figure out sort of how it comes together. So there are three things that vision needs to do. There are other things it can do, but there's three responsibilities it has. Those three things are heart, what's the heart of the set?

I'll go through each of these in a second. Structure and splash. So let me walk through each of those things. So when I say heart, what I mean is when we go to sell this product, what exactly is going to make people want to go, oh, I want that product. I'm excited for that product. That something about the set has to have something in it that's, that's, what is the essence of what you're doing? What is, when I say the heart, like what is, when you dig down deep, what is the essence of the set? For example, on Ixalan, it really was realizing that it was about pirates and dinosaurs. That we had taken two things that people had wanted us to do for a long time, that magic

had never really delivered on. We found a world that really made sense for both pirates and dinosaurs. There was a larger tribal component, vampires and merfolk. But the idea in the end was, we were kind of doing this fun, rompy, sort of delivering on something that people have been wanting for a long time in a way that sort of thematically fit. Now, there was a whole world there. There's a really cool world that was built by the creative team. There was a tribal component. There's a lot of pieces going on, but in the end, the heart of that set, the heart of what was Ixalan,

very much was pirates and dinosaurs. Here's the splashy thing that's going to get people to go, ooh, let me look more at that. Now be aware, the heart of the set isn't all the set is. It is not, there's usually a lot of layers in the set. There's a lot of different things. There's many different players. You want to make sure that every set has a lot for all sorts of different kinds of players.

But one of Vision's job is essentially to create the vision for the product. And a big part of that is okay, what are we selling? What is the exciting thing? And it varies quite a bit. Sometimes, for example, with Amonkhet, for example, we started the idea of Egypt meets Bolas. It's pretty sexy. That was the heart of what it was, and we started there.

That was something in which... Now, how we execute... There's a lot of stuff. The key, though, for vision is we want to get an essence of what we're trying to do. The parallel I'd use in my metaphor is, what kind of house are we building? When someone looks at the house for the first time, what grabs them about the house? What's exciting about the house?

What exactly is this house doing? You know, and the important thing for vision when we talk about sort of the heart is you need to have what I call mechanical heart and an emotional heart. The mechanical heart is what is this set about? If you take Ixalan, for example, its mechanical heart is it's a tribal set. It's a set about tribes. Now, even more so, when you get to the emotional heart, the emotional heart is a delivery on something the players have wanted for a long time. And I knew that the mood and tone that we wanted was one of sort of excitement. You'll notice the world of Ixalan is not real serious. It's not dark and moody. It's kind of fun and light

and adventurous. Because kind of what we wanted, the mood we were going for was we knew that the idea of dinosaurs and pirates would be fun. It would be a fun set. That there's things you've been wanting to do for a long time that we're finally delivering on. And we wanted to sort of give you a bright, happy, fun thing. So the emotional part, the emotional heart, if you will, is what emotions are you trying to bring out of people? What is it you're trying to do? And be aware, emotions can be all over the place. The emotions don't have to be positive emotions. Indistribe was very much about fear, but it was kind of cool

because it was controlled. I mean, fear in a controlled setting is fun for people. You know, like you go to a horror movie and like, well, you know it's a horror movie that, you know, really being scared is not fun. You know, being scared in a controlled setting is fun. And Innistrad sort of played off that. That it played into things that, you know, it made tension within the gameplay.

So when I talk about making the heart, there's an emotional heart and there's a mechanical heart. So you want to, and usually those are intertwined. Ixalan is a good example of, well, if I'm delivering on vampires and dinosaurs, that pushes me toward the mechanical heart of tribal, but it also puts me toward an emotional that you kind of want, the idea of a dinosaur deck and a pirate deck is a little sort of like, it definitely has a little bit of

that adventurous sort of, ha ha, I'm playing pirates or I'm playing dinosaurs. It has that sort of adventurous and spirit quality that we wanted that the emotion we were going for was one of sort of a joyful element to it. That we wanted you to sort of have fun with it. That the idea of, ah, you know, dinosaurs. So one of the things we also talk about when talking about that is, so in psychology, there's the idea of you have the ego, which is your center.

And there's two forces that play upon it, the id and the superego. And the idea of the id is the id just wants you to do base things. It just wants you to do what feels good and what you want to do. And the id's all about sort of impulses and the lowest common denominator.

You know, I'm hungry, let's eat something. Whatever you're feeling, acting on it. The superego is more about long-term, what is best for me in the bigger picture of things. Not the immediate gratification, but the long-term gratification. And superego very much is about the structure of things and making sure that I'm being responsible and that the superego thinks long-term about what are the consequences of what I do. And one of the things you want to look at sets is, is a set playing toward the id

or the superego? Meaning, is it a set more about playing to the heart of the player or playing to sort of the brain of the player? And you want to mix it up a little bit. I mean, every set appeals to both. But one of the things you want is what exactly about the set is is it something that's sort of just this kind of raw excitement to it or is it something where I have to sort of get in and study and it's the realization of what it is that's exciting. Ravnica is a good example of a really super ego set. You know,

it's all about the structure and these guilds and what the colors mean and what happens when colors mix with colors and it's really heady, if you will. It's fun. It's exciting. I mean, there's plenty of emotion there, but it's more on the super ego side of things than it's on the id side of things. It's more about

the excitement of realizing all the structure that's there and all the excitement that comes with that. So when you're figuring out the heart, you want to sort of figure out what kind of set it is. Are you playing to the id or the super-ego? You know, what emotion are you trying to pull out? What mechanical things are you playing around with? Okay, so that's the first part. It's the heart.

Like, what's the essence of the set? Second part is the structure. So I use my house building metaphor, my architecture metaphor. That's the part that's like, okay, where are the bearing walls going? How am I building this house? Like, what, you know, I have to make this house stand up. I have to make this house, you. I have to make this house... The heart of the set might be this is a tutor or this is a certain style of house.

But when you get to the structure part, it's like, how is it actually going to work? So a big part of what we do in vision design is we want to start figuring out the mechanics. We want to start figuring out the themes. We want to get the essence of what's going to make the set work. How is the set put together? How does thing A and thing B interlap? This is where we start layering synergy. This is where we want to sort of get the building blocks, the basics,

so that we're giving the set design team something to put together, something to sort of structure off of. The key to architecture plans is, we're like, look, we're going to give you the important things that the house is resting upon so that you know that, and we're going to make sure you're understanding, hey, this bearing wall, don't move this. This decorative wall, if you want to knock it down and move the wall, you can do that. So the structure part of it is trying to figure out sort of all the component pieces to it.

Now, a lot of that's mechanical, but not all. Some of it might be, okay, what's the flavor of this world? Or what's the essence of this world? Or is there a story component? Or is there something we need to work into the core identity of what the set is? For example, on Amonkhet, we really wanted something that felt menacing. But even more than that,

in the story, we knew that our heroes were going to show up and that the world was going to be like, we're fine, things are great, what are you doing here? But the Gatewatch kind of knew

that something was wrong, that we wanted that sense of dissonance in the story, so we built that dissonance into the set design. And a big part of the vision is figuring out what is the essence of what you're trying to do, how are we structuring it. Now, a big part of that is figuring out mechanics, is figuring out themes and stuff, is figuring

out sort of like, okay, what exactly is going on? What is this set about? You know, Kaladesh came up with the idea that we want you to feel like an inventor, and then, okay, well, what mechanics do that? We got energy. We got vehicles. We got... What's the plus one plus one mechanic called? I'm blanking.

You guys know. You know the answer. You make plus one plus one counters, or you make one one. Okay, I'm blanking on the name of that. Such as an F. It'll come to me. But anyway, a lot of it was like,

okay, we're trying to get the essence of you being an inventor. That meant it had an artifact element to it. It meant that we had to make mechanics that played into that sense. It meant we wanted to have a higher variance to give you, the player, the ability to mix and match things more. There was an essence of what we were trying to do. And a lot of the vision is figuring out how to get that together. Now, once again, vision's only four months long.

We're not building the house, you know what I'm saying? We're building the architectural plan. So a lot of what we're doing is proof of concept. It's sort of talking about how we want to put things together. We clearly will make cards to demonstrate mechanics are working. But when it actually gets to set design, they might change what cards do what. You know, they'll keep the mechanic, but they won't necessarily keep the individual cards that we made. They might if the cards work.

But so the structure is a key part because the structure sort of tells you, I mean, we make a lot of magic sets. And what we're trying to do in Vision is say, here's why this magic set is different than other magic sets. Here's the essence to it. And so let's take Ixalath, for example. I knew that it was a set about pirates and dinosaurs. But it was also a tribal set. There were other tribes in it. There were vampires. There were other tribes in it. There were vampires.

There were merfolk. But one of the things I realized when I sort of got to the essence of what the set was about was that it was more about vampires and pirates than it was about the other tribes. And that I didn't want to create something. I wanted to make sure the structure played that up.

Another thing that we were interested in is we wanted to do factioning that wasn't defined by the color. And one of the problems is when all your factions have a similar color pattern, it more leans toward being color related. So I liked the idea of trying something asynchronous, or not asynchronous, asymmetric, where the factions weren't all the same size and weren't all the same size and weren't all the same number of colors, which we did the 3-3-2-2 model.

And that allowed us to let more people to make more dinosaur cards, make more pirate cards, let people draft, have more options for pirates and dinosaurs. And because of the nature of how we did it, we got to build multiple different kinds of pirate decks and dinosaur decks.

You know, the audience has built a lot of merfolk decks and vampire decks. There's many of them out there. They haven't built a lot of dinosaur decks and pirate decks. Pirates existed for a wee little tiny bit on some pretty weak cards and mechanic masks. And dinosaurs, I guess, there have been individual cards that we now call dinosaurs, but we've never really, and we've never tribally given you anything for either of those. We were going to really mechanically allow you to do a bunch of different stuff.

And, you know, that was, you know, one of the cool things about it is that it really allowed us to give you options and make a set that did that. So a lot of sort of the structure is, okay, wow, the heart of the structure is, okay, while the heart of the set is about pirates and dinosaurs, how do we make sure the structure

of the set is about pirates and dinosaurs? And so the structure is about sort of figuring out from where the heart is at of what do we need to do? You know, the structure in Amonkhet really figured out that we wanted minus one, minus one counters to give the world a sense of figured out that we wanted minus one, minus one counters

to give the world a sense of viciousness that we needed it to. You know, we really worked out a lot of some of the themes we wanted to play up in Egypt. You know, there's a lot of stuff we did to sort of get the essence of how we want things to be. Now, the big difference between vision and design is design would do this like the normal design or old-school design the first six months was vision and three months of integration three months of refinement so what we would do is once we'd figure out what we wanted to do then we start building the house. Here we're handing it off before the house is getting built

we're sort of mapping out things and we're we're handing it off before the house is getting built. We're sort of mapping out things. And we're building products that they can use to build the house. We make cards and stuff. But really what we're doing is not, we're not giving a finished product. We're giving proof of concept so they can see the kind of things they're doing so that they can sort of figure out how they want to build it. And a lot of what goes on in set design is, you know, we're mapping out sort of how the house is going to look, but they have a lot of freedom to go, okay, oh, we're going to move this wall because it's a decorative wall. It's not a bearing wall. We're going to move it. It'll look better if we put this here, put that there, put

this, you know, there's a lot of work they get to do to add on and to change things that, you know, the builder of a house does tons and tons of things that affects the house. You know, the architect is kind of giving you the structure to build it, but they then go and build it. Okay, the third thing is the splash. And this is another thing that has to do with we want the set to be exciting. We want people to buy the set. And so one of the things you always got to figure out is what exactly is the splashy thing about the set. Sometimes the heart of the set is very splashy. So for example, pirates and dinosaurs were pretty splashy, but we still wanted something a little bit more layered in there.

And so for example, we knew that we wanted to play up the idea of exploration, that the world had this strong feel that, yeah, the set was a tribal set, but there was a theme we wanted to communicate, and the theme was a sense of exploration. That the world had this strong feel that, yeah, the set was a tribal set, but there was a theme we wanted to communicate. And the theme was a sense of exploration. And the tribes did it a little bit, but not enough. And so we really wanted something a little bit splashier that played up one of the big themes of the set. And that's when we figured out how to use the double-faced cards to make sort of this unique transformation into land, to make this sort of exploration cards, if you will, using a technology

we already have. Now, one of the things about Splash is sometimes you make brand new things you've never made before. Sometimes you use old resources and you bring them back or use them in a way you haven't used them before or do something that gets people excited. But one of the things that Vision's responsible for is we're not just building the set, you know, we're not just building the structure, we're also sort of figuring out like, okay, what is the cool thing? And we've spent a lot of time in Vision pushing boundaries and trying to figure out like where exactly do we get to do things and where do we want things? And part of what

we need to do is figure out like, are there here's the main elements of splash number one is are you doing something players have wanted but you haven't given them number two is are you taking an element players love and bringing it back or number three is are you doing something players don't know about but there's a component about it that'll be exciting. Either you're breaking a rule you've never brought, or you're somehow bringing a new element to it, it's a new frame, it's a new kind of mechanic.

And that essentially, those are the big three things that tend to determine Splash, is sort of meeting expectations of a thing they want but don't have, returning something that they love, or going a new space that they don a thing they want but don't have, returning something that they love, or going a new space that they don't know they want,

but once they see it, they'll get excited by it. And a good example of that is something like split cards from Invasion, where nobody asked me for split cards. No one said, you know what I really want? Could you put two little tiny cards on a card? But I knew the second you saw it, you're like, oh, that's awesome! You know, that you were excited to see it. You know, double-faced cards,

the Indestra was a good example where that's something that no one asked for, but we knew when we provided, people were like, oh, you know, oh my goodness! Now, Splash, there's a lot of different kinds of Splash, and Splash doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, groundbreaking every time. There's kind of a mix.

And there's, in fact, part of Vision's job is to sort of keep in check, like, you want every set to have enough splash to be exciting, but not so much splash that you're kind of wasting splash resources. Because there's a lot of splash that has to go around. We have to make a lot of sets. And so we want to make sure that every set has a little bit of splash, but not so much so that we're kind of overusing the splash

that, you know, we want people excited. But, uh, the thing I, I sort of the metaphor I talk about is that I can bring, I can give my kids some candy and they'll be very excited. I can give them, you know, 10 pieces of candy. And while they, they'd be a little bit excited, you know, 10 pieces of candy. And while they'd be a little bit excited, you know, a little tiny more than just one piece of candy, it's not that much more value, you know. And then I just, you know, like, you start, there's such loss at some point where, like, you want enough to excite people, but, you know, giving my kids 100 pieces of candy

doesn't, it's not 100 times the excitement of one piece of candy. And that also, at some point, if you overdo it, you know, your kids will get sick on the candy. It's because like there's too much. That one of the things you also need to do is ground the set. So, and that's, by the way, that's part of the structure is

making sure that what you do is grounded. That you want to make sure there's enough existing magic. Like part of having Splash is doing something that is fun and sometimes unexpected, but part of structure is making sure you have enough of the expected. Like when we build something, it's not about making it, I don't want people to sit down and go, wow, is this magic? You know, I want them to go, oh, this is magic. So a lot of what we do is making sure that we deliver on the stuff that the expectation is there. And then enough of the new stuff or enough of the theme that people feel like, oh, this is a unique set.

And then there's that balance. That's one of the tricky things that we do, is we want to make sure that the set feels new and exciting and different, but at the same time feels familiar and comfortable. And that's a balance that we spend a lot of time on in vision, is trying to figure out how much do we need like one of the big questions we always come into this is a structure question is how many mechanics do we need do we need three mechanics four mechanics five mechanics you know where's

the line um and sometimes it's also about you know is this big enough to be a mechanic no this might be a theme this might be a cycle this might be a vertical cycle you know this might be a component that we want to add in, but not necessarily a full-blown thing. And a lot of the things to be aware of is we are providing the tools for set design. Like, I can't stress this enough. The role of vision is not to make a finalized set.

The role of vision is to make all the pieces such that set design can then go and build an awesome set. That set design can build something that, you know, we're trying to enable the best possible job of set design. That we're not building the house. We're mapping it out. We're doing the blueprints. We might be providing swatches and things.

You know, we're giving them a lot of tools to go build the house. But then when it's time to build the house, they're going to build the house. And one of the things that happens is among the act of building a house, things happen and you have to make changes and you have to adapt things and you have to change things. And sometimes things that look good on paper, when you start to build it, don't quite work and you have to change it. But the real big thing here is we have four months to do what we do. Um, you know, design was more about sort of doing this plus doing more. And in the new world, look, vision's very contained in that. We are trying to take the blank page and bring it to life and make something and get the components out of it.

Um, now as we accelerate our schedule, as we sort of make more worlds a year and more standalone sets a year, just that job becomes the example I use. There's a very famous I Love Lucy episode where she's working in a candy factory. And the idea is these candies are coming down a conveyor belt and she's got to put them into boxes. And at first she's doing okay, but then she starts getting behind. And then she gets comically behind. And a lot of ways I feel like the last couple years has been that our conveyor belt has sped up a little bit. And so

I've consolidated consolidated you know that design being more of just doing vision now rather than the old school design is more about look we have a lot of things we got to set in place there's a lot of houses that got to get built we're building more houses than we used to and so it's spending the time and energy really making sure that all the houses have a really strong foundation. And now, like I said, I'm building three houses a year. So once upon a time, I built a house a year. Now it's three houses a year. So it requires a lot more focus, and that's why the change over to vision.

It's exciting. I mean, one of the things that I love most is the beginning part of the process has always been the most exciting for me. I love the blank page. I know many people are scared to death of the blank page. I love the blank page. I love the challenge of what is this world going to be? How are we discovering this world? And it's, it's a challenge. It is really hard saying, oh, okay, well, what is this world? Well, what's it doing? And trying to, trying to get essence of what, what, what you're, what you're trying to do. But anyway, it's exciting. It's fun.

I have a lot of really talented people I work with, and there's always, you know, every team is different, so every vision design team is different people, so I get to work with lots of different people. But anyway, it's fun and exciting, and so I'm excited for you guys to see Dominaria. That is our first sort of vision designed

set. And so all my examples today as I talk about it, none of them are sets that were technically vision-designed. Although a lot of what Kaladesh and Amonkhet and Ixalan were was kind of proto-vision design

because I did the first six months and handed it over. So a lot of that is similar to how kind of vision ends up playing out. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this. I am now sitting at the parking lot, in the parking lot.

So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking about magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.