Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #543: Stand-Up Comedy

Episode Date: June 8, 2018

In this podcast, I talk about my days doing stand-up comedy and the lessons I learned that applied to Magic design.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so occasionally in my podcast I do this thing where I talk about some life experience that I have and I talk about the lessons I learned from that life experience that make me a better designer. So today I'm going to talk about my time doing stand-up comedy. So the idea here, I believe holistically that everything is connected and that what makes you good in one field helps you in another field. And so I'm going to talk about my time doing stand-up, and then I'm going to explain the lessons I learned from stand-up

and how it applies to how I do magic design, in game design in general. Okay, so a little bit of history. So I went to college at Boston University in Boston, obviously. And my sophomore year, I started an improvisational comedy troupe called Uncontrolled Substance. My junior year, every year we had auditions and we'd get new people in to the troupe. And my junior year, we got someone in the troupe named Stuart Winter. And Stuart was a comedian. Stuart actually did stand-up comedy. And so he really encouraged the group

to try our hand at stand-up comedy. We were doing improvisational comedy, and he felt like it was just a real good tool to sort of work on presentation and some writing, even though we were improvisational. So anyway, a bunch of us went with Stuart one night to a local comedy club. There actually was a comedy club on the edge of the college. And so we went there and we all did stand-up.

So the way stand-up works is when you're first starting out, you do open mic night. So usually open mic nights are like on Mondays or something. It's on some day that's not a busy day for the restaurant, for the club, usually. Because the weekends, there's more people come to be entertained, and there's headliners and stuff. So normally sometime during the week, in my memory it was Mondays, it might have been Tuesdays. But anyway, there's a time that's a slow time, so that's when they do open mic nights. And open mic nights really are there for a couple reasons. One is it allows established comedians to have time to practice new material, because when

you're sort of getting paid, you want to make sure that material you have is strong. You don't want to sort of try out new things when you're doing a paid gig. So often what would happen is they would go to open mic nights to work on new material. Also, it was just a place to hang out. All the stand-up comedians knew each other. And so it was just a place to see your friends and sort of goof around. So sometimes they would practice new material. Sometimes they would screw around.

But anyway, also it's a chance for new people to sort of make it a place where you can find new talent. So if you wanted to break in, you had to basically the way it would work is you would go down and sign up at some point, and then they would give you a time slot. And the time slot could be anywhere, like usually they open the doors at like 8, and they close the doors at like 2. And your time could be, usually you would get, when you're starting out,

you would get anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes, depending on how the club worked. But you would get a small amount of time. And so there would be someone who was running the open mic night. And then what would happen is, usually, depending on the club, sometimes if you did open mic, you would get notes from somebody. Not always. Some places gave notes.

Some places didn't give notes. But the idea was, after you would do your set, you would get feedback if they liked you. Sometimes you get feedback either way, but if they liked you, they would come and say, hey, come on back. They'd encourage you to return, and then you start getting, they'd give you better slots. Like, when you first started out, a lot of times you'd get, like, the 1 a.m. slot, where it's a, you know, you're a bunch of drunk people, you know, not a lot of people because it's late and most people that are there are not really paying all that much attention.

But anyway, so that's how stand-up comedy starts is you get up and you do that. So let me walk through the lessons and I'll talk a little bit about along the way about how stand-up comedy works. Okay, so number one is find your voice. This is probably the biggest lesson I learned about stand-up comedy is how do you know, like what makes a good stand-up comedian?

And what it turns out is what makes a good stand-up comedian is what they call a voice, which means you have an attitude, you have a position on things, you have a, you know, you have a, you have, attitude. You have a position on things. You have a, you know, you have a, you have, the audience can understand where you're coming from, who you are,

that you have a persona to you. Now, that persona, that voice, doesn't necessarily have to really be you. There are a lot of stand-up comedians that kind of have a persona they put on that's not them. Now, there's some stand-up comedians that are very much them, and that their persona,, their voice is very, very much exactly who they

are. And other people, it's an aspect of them or some of them are even characters that they do. But you want a singular voice in doing stand-up. You want to, the way it was explained to me by somebody was the audience wants to understand where you're approaching your jokes. Where are you coming from? What is your point of view? And that what makes a good comedian shine, good stand-up comedian, is they have a very strong point of view. They have a very strong voice. And that they almost can talk about anything.

And just because you sort of get in the rhythm of what they're saying and how they think about things, that you can find anything funny because it's just watching how they take their perspective and approach things. The other reason it's so important is there's not an infinite number of topics to talk about. What makes a stand-up comedian, you know, sort of separate themselves is the tone of which they talk about the topics. It's not as if you're the only person to ever talk about topic X. It's just that your take on topic X is uniquely your own take. And the reason that I sort of apply this to game design and magic design is one of the things that I think is important when you're learning design is what speaks to you as a

designer? Where do you shine because one of the things I talk about when hiring new designers is I'm not particularly interested in hiring a designer that can just mimic what I can do because I can do what I can do what I want is I want to find somebody who will make cards that nobody else will make that to me is the most valuable designer. A designer that has a point of view, that has a voice, and they're going to make cards that somebody else would not make. There's a lot of cards that, I mean, there's a lot of fun of finding something that mixes and matches or something we just haven't done that version of, but

those kind of cards we'll find. Yeah, it's neat to find them, but eventually we're going to hit the low-hanging fruit stuff. If it's, oh, we haven't done this, but for, we haven't done a counter spell where you pay two for this. Like, okay, we'll get there eventually. But the thing that we might not get to is someone saying, here's a brand new idea for a brand new mechanic or just a different way to think about things. And that when I look at my sort of stamp on magic,

a lot of it has been me coming up with things that I don't think necessarily someone else was going to come up with. And that I feel like I've contributed things to the game

that are really my things. And the same of what I think are good designers is they contribute their thing. And so finding your voice is super important. Number two, practice makes perfect. So the way stand-up works is you do open mic, and if they like you, they invite you back. Basically, you can sign up for open mics, and at some point they can say to you, okay, thank you very much, no more open mics for you.

If you're just, if they see no potential. At some point they can say to you, okay, thank you very much. No more open mics for you. If they see no potential. At some point they can cut you off. But if you show any potential, they invite you back. And if you show a lot of potential, they start giving you good time slots. But the key to it is, and most people might not even realize this, when you see a stand-up comedian do a routine,

they do that exact routine, exact routine, word for word, every little nuance, every little aside, every little thing that feels like it's just a spontaneous joke. It is not a spontaneous joke. All of that is rehearsed. All of that, you know, every, and part of doing it is that you fine-tune what you're doing, that you try different ad-libs, that you try different tweaks to the joke, and that part of making a really good routine is doing that routine again and again and again and again. So by the time you're paying money to see a comedian, they have done that routine so

many times that they blindly know the routine, that It's etched in their brain because they've done it so many times. And part of that is a lot like how I talk about the importance of iteration, the importance of practice, the importance of just doing design. You know, when people say to me, what's the best way to get better at magic design? The answer is by doing magic design. Same holds true for game design in general. You want to be a good game designer? Well, design games.

That's how you'll get better. And really what stand-up taught me was that there has to be a dedication to the craft. That you have to take the same card set and go through it again and again and again. Because what you're trying to do is find the small incremental advantages. Like early on, you've got to make wide sweeping changes.

But by the time you're iterating for the 80th time, you're down to the very minute changes. You have a lot of what you want, and then you're just trying to find little ways to make it better. But those little ways to make it better really can be an improvement. So the iteration on the 80th step, while it might seem like you're tackling smaller issues, might have a big impact. Okay, number three, know your audience.

So one of the things that's interesting is when you do stand-up, you go to different places. So for example, one of the places I did stand-up was right by my college. But probably the place I performed the most was a place called Catch a Rising Star in Harvard Square. So Harvard Square is where Harvard is in Cambridge, which is across the river from Boston. Cambridge is like a suburb of Boston. So anyway, the majority of places I performed was at Catch a Rising Star. And it was a pretty college crowd, for those who don't know anything about Boston. Boston, I believe that during the school year, something like one out of every four people is a college student. That's how, like,

there's a lot. Boston has the higher per capita of colleges of any city in the U.S., which is awesome if you're a college student in Boston. So one of the things you learn early on is when you're doing your routine, you have to know who your audience is because your audience, whether or not you succeed or don't succeed is on you reading your audience, you understanding your audience. And one of the weird things is you can do the same routine to two different audiences and one audience can love it and the other audience can hate it. So my example here is, I used to do a routine about Scooby-Doo. And the whole premise of it was, Scooby-Doo, meddling kids, or underground drug runners, you decide.

And I talked all about how if you take the basic plot of the story, that there's a different interpretation you can take. That's sort of the premise of the sketch. And what I found is different places I would do that sketch would go differently. And I finally clued in to what was going on, which was it was an age thing. If I was talking to people my age who had grown up with Scooby-Doo, it worked. But if I had a slightly older crowd who, because, I mean, Scooby-Doo now has been around for a long time, but when I was a kid, that was when Scooby-Doo started. So if I was talking to adults when I was in college that were a little bit older than me, they didn't know Scooby-Doo. So here I was doing a whole routine

based on you understanding this knowledge. The Scooby-Doo joke wasn't funny. The whole routine wasn't funny unless you knew Scooby-Doo. So if I got too old, they didn't know Scooby-Doo, and the joke wouldn't work. So what I found was when I was doing more college audiences, it played great. You know, the routine was a real popular routine. But when I went a little bit older, it didn't work. So the key is knowing your audience. And that's a lot of the whole idea of the psychic graphics and magic. If you're going to make something, if you want your audience to like it, understand who your audience is. That you, if you don't know your audience, you will not make them happy.

The part of making your audience happy is knowing who your audience is. Knowing who they are, what they like, so that you can build things for them. Number four, part of doing stand-up, part of every time you do the routine, it is not going to go well. Now, there's lots of factors that go into that. Maybe the audience is just in a bad mood. Maybe your presentation is off. Maybe the audience is the wrong audience for the joke you're telling. Maybe the person before you was just really funny and in comparison you're not.

Whatever, there's lots of factors. But one of the things about doing stand-up is sometimes you're going to go over well and sometimes you're going to bomb and do poorly. And that you have to learn when you do badly, you can't just blame exterior factors. You always want to look and say, okay, what did I do? Did I not understand the audience? Was I rushing my jokes? Was the order wrong? What did I do? How is this? The time that I killed versus the time I bombed, what did I do differently? And I'm not saying there never are external factors. There are. But you want to understand what exactly you did, how you contributed. And one of the things in general, and this is not just even a game design thing, but in life, if you assume that your failures are not your fault, you will never get better.

You will never improve. You know, the reason you improve is because you own up your responsibility and your participation in your failure. Now, once again, I'm not saying failure is always 100% your fault, but it's seldom 0% your fault. And that if you approach every failure with, okay, what could I learn from this? What did I do wrong? What could I do better the next time? That is how you improve. It's how you improve at stand up. You know, if I do a joke and it falls flat, I'm like, hey, this joke is done well before. why did it fall flat this time? What exactly did I do? And the self-examination is really one of the things that helps make you better. One of the reasons I think I'm a pretty strong game designer,

A, I've been doing it for a long time, but B, every time something doesn't go right, and even when things do go right, I always ask myself, okay, what did I do wrong? What could I have done better? I do a whole podcast series called Lessons Learned where I talk about what did I learn? And you'll realize that no matter what I did, success, failure

no matter what I did, there's things to learn from it. There's nothing where I did everything right. Even something where I, like even probably one of my best designs ever, like Innistrad which is one of my best designs ever, there's things I would do, if I was going to do it again, I would do differently. It is not like, you know,

even my, one of my successes is not without things I can improve. And so one of the things about stand-up is really learning that failure is part of the process and that I know how, it is demoralizing. When you go to your, you know,

I would take the T, the subway, to Cambridge to go to Crescent Rising, I would take the T, the subway to, to Cambridge to go to Crescent Rising Star. And I often would have a late time slot and I would stay up and I would go and I would do my performance. And if it would bomb, it would, it didn't feel good. Didn't feel good to bomb, but I would try to use that as a learning experience. Okay. Number five, details matter. One of the things that's really interesting when you get introspective and look at your routine, one of the things you start to realize is the difference between success and failure is such tiny things.

A little aside or just a little tilt to the joke. There's things you do that the difference between funny and not funny can be razor thin at times. Why something can be just hilarious and be, eh, has a lot to do with a lot of small nuance. And one of the things I learned in stand-up is the nuance matters. The little details matter. How I have my face or how, like, for example, one of the routines I did

was, when I was first doing stand-up, I had a gimmick. I'm not saying you should have a gimmick, but I had a gimmick at the time, where they were lists. I was doing stand-ups that were lists. Like, for example, the song 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, he only mentions five in the actual song. So here's the 45 other ways to leave your lover. Jokes like that. And so I used to,

one of the things I would do, not because it wasn't memorized, it actually was memorized, but it read better to the audience when I literally would pull a list out. And one of the things I started doing was I started putting the list in weird places because the audience just liked it

that every time I pulled out a list they didn't know where it was coming from. And it was a little tiny thing, but it, like, I literally could see the audience just, like, it just raised the level of the excitement of the audience. It just made them sort of sit forward a little bit. And every time I finished a list, they were waiting for the next list and where's he going to go? And it sounds silly, but like, it just, it just improved the performance. It just made the audience more invested. It was a little tiny detail, but it mattered. And that's the kind of thing that you learn by just doing stuff a lot.

So in game design, I mean, I talk about this all the time, but the thing that makes your audience fall in love with your game are your details. And it's not that every person falls in love with the same detail. That's why you have to spend so much time on the details. But there's little tiny things you do where you commit to something that just will endear you to somebody. And that you really want to make sure that you're spending the time and energy, you know, it's easy to think that just the big picture matters, the details you can sort of gloss over. But that's not the case. The details often, you know, success or failure often hinges on the quality of the details. Number six, presentation counts. So some of the times the reason you would fail was not the material. Because often you were

doing the same material. Sometime it had to do with how you're presenting material. And what that made me realize was that what I was wearing, how I was moving my body, like there's a lot, like even the little note thing I was talking about, that a lot of time it wasn't even the jokes themselves. That I had the jokes, the difference between the jokes being funny and not being funny oftentimes was how I told the jokes, the nature I told the jokes, the way I told the jokes. And that one of the things that when I walked into stand-up comedy, I really thought, oh, it's all about the writing. And the writing's important. A great presentation can only go so far,

but it's only half the writing. It's only half the material. The other half is the acting, is the performance, is the nuance that goes into it. And really good stand-up comedians get that. That there is a performance that goes to stand-up comedy. It is not just you randomly reading things. It is the nature of how you do it. And you are creating a persona, as I talked about, and acting in that persona, and being true to your persona, and true to your voice, and finding the moments where you can sort of connect.

So my parallel in game design is the other elements, that you want to think your game design is just the game design, but it's not. And depending on what you do, how much control you have over the other factors can vary and what I do

I have some input into the creative elements but not tons I definitely interact with the creative team and I work with them but there's a whole team there's a whole team making magic just sizzle with flavor and while I contribute to that I'm the minority of that component

I mean design adds to that and I work with them I never get to contribute to that, I'm the minority of that component. You know, I mean, design adds to that, and I work with them, and you know, I'm nothing, I never get to contribute to that area, but I'm, that's the minority, you know, that I'm, there's a whole team that is making worlds, and look awesome, and sound awesome, and have flavor, and all that stuff to it. Now, if you're working by yourself, you might be responsible for that, but one of the things I always say is, even when demoing, you really need to spend extra effort in making things look professional because how things look and how they come across

has a huge impact in how people react to it. That I've actually played games with different prototypes that look differently, and the same game, the same words, the same rules, but with different presentation just goes differently. That the right game, the same words, the same rules, but with different presentation, just goes differently. That the right presentation, just like the right comedy presentation, can make all the difference. And so when you're designing something,

yeah, I'm not going to tell you game design doesn't matter. Of course it matters. But it's not the only thing that matters. Your presentation alongside it is very important. Number seven, trust your instincts. So here's one of the things that's really challenging about doing stand-up. I do stand-up and I kill. Audience loves it.

Huge applause. Everyone's laughing. Okay, I come back the next week. I do the same routine. I do the same performance. And the audience isn't quite as receptive. And one of the things that is tricky in doing stand-up is that, you know, you definitely want to take in what the audience is doing. The audience laughing or not laughing, I'll get to that in a second.

That's important. But one of the things that's also important is that you have to get a sense as a performer of what is and isn't working external to the audience. That you need to create some general sense. Like you need to know when you are doing well. Because one of the things that can happen is, let's say you do something really well, but for reasons that aren't quite your responsibility, it doesn't go over well. You know, like a very common thing that will happen sometimes is the comedian before you, either, I mean, both can be a problem, interestingly enough. They do amazingly well, and then there's sort of a comparison to them.

Or they do really bad, and the audience is just not in a good mood. Both of those can be challenging in different ways. And you have to learn when you do something right, and you make it better, and you don't have external stuff telling you you made it better, that you can't just, you have to have some internal things to guide you. And in game design, what that means is that you need to

build up, I mean, I'm all for playtesting. I'm all for getting a lot of input. But you also need to sort of get a game designer instinct of where you think things are and aren't working. And that sometimes if you try something and it fails,

you know, like for example, it is not the correct thing to try something new in stand-up that you really have faith in and really believe in, have it bomb once and necessarily go, well, I'm never doing that again. That if you have faith in what you're doing sometimes, you need to try. I mean, sometimes you had the right idea, but it wasn't quite the final version of it. Or sometimes, you know, there's external factors that you didn't account for.

But whatever it is, you know, you can't necessarily make a change for the better, not get the response you want right away and go, okay, I'm never doing that again. And game design is the same way. That if you believe in something, if you play to something, and it goes badly, figure out what you believe in and what you don't

and maybe why it went wrong. But you have to have some ability to trust your instinct. And, you know, game design is not 100% market research. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Market research is important. Understanding what your audience wants is important. But it is not so% market research. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Market research is important. Understanding what your audience wants is important,

but it is not so cut and dry. It is not as if, well, they once said this, so that means that. You have to be able to read them. And there's a lot of important nuance in doing stand-up in understanding that.

And like I said, it is very daunting to go up, do a great job that you're proud of, and then not have the response that you believe. But the correct answer there is,

I mean, you want to be introspective to look and figure out if you did anything wrong. But if you have some faith in something, you need to try it again. You know, trying it once,

failing, and moving on is not necessarily a recipe for success. Number eight, you have to pay your dues. So one of the things that I learned about stand-up is the early part of doing stand-up is not particularly fun. It's not fun being there at 1.30 in the morning in front of like eight people who, most of which are not really focused on you anyway, to do stand-up. But you got to remember that the reason I'm doing stand-up at 1.30 in the morning is not necessarily to entertain those eight people. You try. You do try.

You're trying to work on your craft. You're trying to show dedication to the club owner. You're trying to work on your craft. You're trying to show dedication to the club owner. There's a lot of reasons that you do a 130 performance that's going to help you get better. And that you're not going to get the best spots. You're not going to have an 830 spot when you're starting out. You're not going to get a 10-minute set when you're starting out. There's a lot of things you're just not going to get. And the answer

is that you need to earn those things. And that's not a bad thing. When I came to Wizards, I was really eager to lead design magic sets. I didn't get to do that right off the bat. I had to work my way there. Or even I wanted to be a head designer. That was a goal I had. But it took me time to get there. And I'm not, you know, looking back, I'm glad it took the time it did. I think I'm a better designer for, you know, having to work my way up a ladder to get there. That there's a lot of value, you know, don't besmirch. I mean, it is very easy to look at your idols and say, hey, there's a lot of things they don't have to do. Partly because maybe they're in a bigger team

or there's other people helping them or whatever the reason is. But you don't start there. One of the things I used to joke about is we had an intern once that started. And on day one, they're like, okay, what do I need to do to lead design sets? I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How about we, I will show you the steps to get there, but that is, you know, that's the tenth rung of the ladder. There's some climbing you've got to do before you get to the tenth rung of the ladder. And I like excitement and motivation, but be aware

that you don't get to just jump to the top. You need to put in your time and pay your dues. And the reason that's an important thing is not just because there's other, I mean, A, there's other people in front of you, but it is part of that process, is the learning process. Like right now, if I want somebody,

if I think somebody's potential to one day lead a set, the first thing I want to do is give them smaller things to do and give them feedback and let them learn from that and slowly build over time. Because the last thing you want to do is give somebody an assignment that's over their head. And, you know, because one of the ways to lose somebody who could be valuable, and I've had this happen, is, you know, because one of the ways to lose somebody who could be valuable,

and I've had this happen, is, you know, when I've been forced to have somebody take responsibility before they're ready for the responsibility. And it's just daunting. And it, you know, it can kind of crush you if you're not ready for something yet. And that part of the goal of somebody who's teaching new people is making sure people are ready for where they are. And stand-up was very similar. The club owner or the person who was running the open mic night, one of their jobs was to understand where people were at and make sure that there was a balance in giving them opportunity. And part of it is you need to give them some good time slots

because they need to be used to working in front of a larger crowd. And you need to give them some nice time slots so they understand, you know, they have some respect for what it means to be doing the job plus there's some skills that you get like one of the things about doing late night uh sets is it's it's harder to make people laugh at one in the morning you know and so you have to work a little extra hard for it and you and then just you know if I do my set at one in the morning, I'm just doing it a little bit differently than I do it at nine o'clock at night. And knowing that, learning that, learning of how, I mean,

part of understanding the audience is reading the audience, which I'll get to in a second. And part of that is perform for different audiences and try to figure out, like, one of the greatest things is, I got my routine. Okay, who's the audience? And what's the best way to do the routine for that audience? And that a lot of those skills come apart, come about from doing that. So if you want to be a game designer, design games.

Guess what? The first thing you design, it's probably going to be a lot more work on you. You're probably going to make the prototype yourself. You're probably going to have to do the salesmanship yourself. You know, whether it's Kickstarter or whatever it is, early on, you know, you're going to, like, before someone's going to hire you as a game designer, you have to prove to them that you're a good game designer. So people don't just hire random people off the street. You know, there has to be some demonstration of what you're capable of. For example, right now,

we're in the middle of the great designer search. The reason we do the great designer search is I can't coldly find people. I really need to put people through some paces to learn. Now, if they're on the job, I can do it there. But if I'm trying to find someone external, okay, part of the reason we do the greatesigner Search is I want to test skills of people and see how they can do different things. And so that is really the means by which I can get a sense of what they're capable of. Now, the GDS is tough.

It's really hard. That is not, you know, but it gets you in the door. You know, I have a lot of people working in R&D right now because they put the time and energy in the GDS and did well and earned our admiration. And we ended up giving them jobs. And so, you know, paying your dues really does matter. Okay, number nine, listen to the audience. I realize now that probably I should have put trust your instincts after listening to the audience, but anyway.

So one of the things that's really important is when you do stand-up, there is an audience in front of you that laughs or boos or gives reactions to things. You know, they can go ooh or ah or ooh. They can cringe or they can, you know. The thing you want to understand is when you're doing stand-up,

so one of the things I like to call, Malcolm Gladwell did a book called Outliers. They talk about how to get good at something. It's 10,000 hours plus feedback. And everyone talks about the time. You've got to put time in. True.

But they often gloss over the feedback part. The feedback is really, really important. And one of the things about stand-up is you have really instantaneous feedback. The audience is telling you right up front whether they like something or not. And you need to listen to that because there's a lot of valuable information. and you need to listen to that because there's a lot of valuable information. Also, like I said, you might think that if I have a standard routine

where I'm not changing the words, that that routine is not going to change. And the answer is it is going to change based on the audience. Because when you get into the routine, or you start doing one routine, you start to learn what the audience likes, and you can lean into that in future routines. For example, sometimes you have an audience that just is more into the physical part of stuff.

So maybe you get more animated with them. Or maybe there's an audience that just enjoys a certain aspect of a certain kind of joke. So you lead with those types of jokes. So you lead with those types of jokes or you lean into those types of jokes. Maybe you get an audience that really is giving you a really good back and forth. Well, you have to build in time for the back and forth. Like one of the things, for example,

that a lot of people don't really think about is you have to allow time for laughs. Now, the way that normally happens is, if you do stand-up long enough, is you kind of know where the laughs are coming. You know what the funny part of the routine is. But, and here's one of the interesting things, is sometimes the audience laughs

when you don't expect them to laugh. Also, sometimes they don't laugh when you expect them to laugh, which usually isn't a great sign. But sometimes when you're doing really well, you will generate laughs out of parts you don't normally generate laughs out of, which is a good sign. It usually means the audience is really into it,

but you have to, on the fly, accommodate for that. Like, one of the big mistakes you can make is talking over the laugh, where I get a laugh, and I'm so eager to get to the next part of the joke that people can't hear me because of the laughing, and so part of the joke that people can't hear me because of a laughing. And so part of the way a good comedian works is you work the laughs into the rhythm and flow of the routine.

And what you'll find that really good comedians do is they see when their audience is laughing in something. And they will push into it to sort of extend the laugh. That they'll see where they're getting a laugh. And it to sort of extend the laugh. They'll see where they're getting a laugh, and it's called milking the laugh, and they will sort of play into it to sort of get more laugh out of it. The really good comedians will even improvise sometimes. When they see opportunities for the audience that are really enjoying something,

they will improvise some additional material. Now, there's two different ways that they can improvise. One is sometimes comedians build in sort of extra material, if it's going well, that they can go to. And otherwise, some comedians just literally improvise it. They just come up with it on the spot. And it's fun. One of the things that I always loved doing when I was doing stand-up or even now having done stand-up is I love watching stand-up comedy

partly because once you've sort of seen behind the you know the screen if you will or whatever screen but seen from the other side seen from the stage

there's a lot of little nuances about stand-up that I really appreciate that until you do it it's hard I have a lot there's sometimes I little nuances about stand-up that I really appreciate that until you do it it's hard. I have a lot of, sometimes I'll watch a stand-up and I'll have the response of, oh wow, they're doing something really interesting and really challenging in that the audience might not

even realizing what they're up to, but I do and wow, admiration, like that, they're doing something over and above normally what a comedian would do. And, you know, the amount of skill or the amount of guts or whatever it is, you know, you'll get my respect for sort of the stepping up and doing that. OK, we get to my 10th and final lesson, although we do in time. Oh, I'm hitting try. I should have been at work five minutes ago. So you guys can tell when I'm milking my podcast.

Okay. So my tenth and final lesson is truth resonates. So this talks about building your... Oh, wait a second. Sorry. I forgot to talk about the game design application of listen to the audience. Let me do that real quick. So when I talk about listen to your audience,

it is, if you are a game designer, now if you're in the middle of making it, it's your playtester, it's released, it's your audience, you need to get the feedback. You need to understand what people do and don't like about your game. If you're going to make more of your game,

it'll help you make the additions better. Even if you're just going to make different games, learning from the success or failures of your first game will help with future games. And a big part of that is getting the feedback from the audience. If you can do market research, if you can't, you can do what I call cheap

market research. Just talk to people who play. I mean, it's anecdotal evidence, obviously, but I get a lot of very interesting information just talking to players. When I go to pre-releases, it's really interesting to me to get first impressions on people. In fact, whenever I get new employees at Wizards, I'm really big on first impressions because I'm trying to understand how to better improve how people see something. And a lot of that is just saying to people, OK, first impression, what do you think? Where's your focus?

What do you like? What don't you like? Stuff like that. OK, that is what's in your audience. Number 10, truth resonates. So one of the things that's really interesting in doing stand-up is um for the most part you're writing your own material um that is it's it's an endeavor that's part performance and part writing um and earlier i talked about how important that the performance part was but you know what the writing part also

very important um and so one of the things that I learned from doing stand-up comedy is the importance of truth. And what I mean by that is the reason people laugh at you is because you're finding some universal truth. There's something that is funny, not just because it's funny to you, but it's funny to them. And usually because it taps into something, into the human experience in some way. And really what I discovered in writing material is the more I looked into my own life, the more I would find things. Like, the best comedians were very personal. The best comedians spoke from experience. And that, the comedians that kind of did like, I'm going to joke about random

things that are universally true but there's no personal connection. Like air food, airline food, that's bad, isn't it? Okay, yeah, airline food doesn't taste good. But I mean, that lacks a little, like where, when you talk

about like some nuance about in a breakup, the thing that happens, or how you feel, or something in which people go, oh, wow, I have felt that. You know, when you tap into somebody else's emotion, when you tap into, when someone can go, wow, I relate, that is where, I mean, it's not just comedy. I would say drama lies there, too. But good entertainment lies in hitting some internal truth. And a lot of what I found when I did stand-up was that the stuff that resonated best was stuff in which people could recognize what I was saying. And that's hard. It is hard to do that because it requires you kind of looking within and being somewhat

vulnerable in your performance. But it's where success lies. And I feel like game design isn't that far away and that really the best game design is kind of getting to the getting to the the truth of what matters so for example in magic one of my big realizations was the importance of the emotional content of design. Like, one of the questions I always ask now when somebody's playing a set that I'm making is, what do I want them to feel? So, for example, I'll use Dominar, just because that's a set that's out now,

or when you guys are listening to this. And one of the things I knew about it was, it was the 25th anniversary of Magic. We were returning to Magic's original home world. I knew the feeling was going to be one of nostalgia, of kind of happiness.

You know, and that one of the things we were very, like, it's okay to have sets where it's more down. Like, Innistrad was all about scaring you. But, like, what do you want? Dominaria to scare you? Do I want to make, you know, Scars of Mirrodin, we were trying to make you feel a little bit at, you know, at

ill at ease because we were trying to capture the Phyrexians. Do we want that? You know, is Dominaria supposed to make you feel uncomfortable or scared? No, no, no, no. Dominaria was tapping into something where it was these fun, happy moments and we wanted the gameplay to tap into that. That I wanted it to be

a lot more of, ah, I remember this, and I'm excited. The reason we pushed toward a vibrant renewal for the world was we knew that people equate Dominaria with happiness. One of the reasons I think Time Spiral had some issues was, I don't think

people really want to see a world they love as post-apocalyptic. I mean, maybe if that to see a world they love as post-apocalyptic. Maybe if that's all the world ever was as post-apocalyptic you come to accept that's what it is. But a world in which you knew it in happy or vibrant times is kind of sad when it's all broken. And one of the things we decided was we didn't want it

to be that way. So one of the things that I really find is and this is my thing. I talked about as a writer how you come back to themes. I have found as a game designer that I come back to themes. And one of my themes that I really hit strong is you're designing for humans. That's probably one of some of all of my game design lessons into one sentence.

It is you are designing for humans. There you go. I've summed it all up for you. And what I mean by that is, you need to understand your audience. You need to understand what your audience wants, how your audience functions. And your audience is humans.

And so there's ways that humans function. So if you want to be good at game design, it's about you doing things that generate the response that you want. And in some ways, truth resonates is the same thing. You know, the trick to stand-up comedy is you're doing comedy for

humans. You know, find the human experience. Find the universality. Find the truth. And that really much is, like I said, one for one that overlaps with game design and stand-up comedy. That the best stand-up comedians understand their audience, understand their message, understand their voice, and they have something to say, and they have a message that speaks to people because it's true.

Game design is not that different. That game design, I mean, you are testing different qualities of human nature, but, you know, you are putting people to the test. You are making people sort of human nature, but you are putting people to the test. You are making people sort of create challenges, often mental challenges, and you're putting them in an environment, and you're doing a lot of things, and you want to make that something people want to do.

Games aren't entertainment. Well, why would people want to do entertainment? And there's many different aspects of that, and maybe I'll do a whole podcast on that one day. But really the key is that what you want to do is speak universality. One of the things about trying to find themes that really speak is there are themes that speak to people. The reason that I think Instagram is so popular is

there's something about horror, the horror genre, that really speaks to people. Dominaria really taps into high fantasy. There's something about that that really speaks to people. Dominaria really taps into high fantasy. There's something about that that really speaks to people. So part of doing a good job and being a good stand-up comedian, a good game designer, is understanding the inherent truth to it.

And then, my friends, I'm not too far from work, that are my ten lessons. Hopefully what I found is doing stand-up, stand-up is an art form i think game design is an art form in each case you are trying to make something that speaks to you that is unique to what you want to make that is your voice but at the same time speaks to the audience that has some inherent truth to it that gives them something that they

want that they need, and that what makes a good stand-up and makes a good game, I'm not saying they're identical, obviously. There's different aspects you're playing with, but they're not really that far apart. I don't think entertainment is that far apart. I don't think making somebody enjoy your book or your movie or your song

or your dance or whatever is that different, that you're trying to tap into something. And I get the different art forms tapping into different kinds of things. You know, what makes someone tap their foot to good music is not the same thing that draws someone into your painting. But there's a lot of universality

in the kinds of things that you're doing. So anyway, let me, to recap, so these are the 10 lessons I learned from stand-ups that you can apply to your game design number one find your voice you are unique

make sure you're being unique make sure the thing you're making you could make that if you're making something that somebody else would make maybe they'll make it better

make something that you and only you can make two practice makes perfect you don't get good at something just by wanting to be good at it

you get good at something by doing it and by spending the time and energy of iterating and learning from your mistakes. If you want that art to resonate, if you want the truth to come out, you have to know who that audience is. So you have to understand and figure out who it is, whatever you're creating, who is it you're creating for. Number four, failure is part of growth. You are going to fail. I'm going to give you a little head start here. You are going to fail. Why are you going to fail? Because everybody fails.

Because failure is part of the human condition. It's not a bad thing. Failure is an excellent, excellent teacher. I did a whole podcast on failure. The key to failure is don't let failure crush you. Let failure inspire you to become better. Number five, details matter. This was in my 20 lessons.

People fall in love with the details. Now, different details matter to different people. You don't know which detail is going to make any one person fall in love with it. But it's the dedication to the little details. It's caring about the minuteness. It's people need to bond to things and they bond to things when they think people have put in the energy.

And when they go down deep and they see little things that speak to them, little truths that are something that sort of they notice and no one else notices, it's what makes it personal to them. And so details are just super critical. And that the difference between success

and failure is measured in inches. It is those details. That what can make something that is good separate from something that is great is the attention to detail. Number six, presentation counts. It's very nice to assume that your art is all in the crux of what it is you're trying to say. That it's in the rules or it's in the material

if you're doing stand-up. But the reality is all of it matters. Everything matters. Any way in which your audience interacts with you, the visual, the audio, the smell, you know, whatever, all the senses. And when you are trying to do something for somebody else, every piece of it matters.

In game design, that means the pieces matter. The presentation of your board or your game components or whatever. Your box. You know, all that matters. That, you know, if you have the most amazing game in the ugliest box, it might never matter that your game is amazing because nobody will buy it. And so all those components matter. Number seven, trust your instincts.

Part of becoming a good game designer is getting an inner voice of when things are and aren't working and training that voice and working on that voice and teaching it. A lot of what instincts are are kind of muscle memory,

mental muscle memory, I like to call it. And that comes from just doing something enough that you start to learn and get an idea of how it works. Number eight, you have to pay your dues. Nobody, day one is not, figure out where you want to get to and what you need to do to get there. You do not get, you don't start there. You know, I didn't begin, I didn't begin magic as a head designer. I didn't even begin as a designer. I began as a developer. Um, and that I knew starting where I wanted to go. And I made sure I talked to the people I needed to, to figure out the steps they needed to get there. But you don't, you don't jump to the 10th rung of the ladder. You got to go up each rung one at a time. And that not only, I mean, it's important for two reasons.

One, you know, there's a means to get things. But even more important than that, it's how you learn. It's how you get better. That usually when you start out, you're not ready to be at the top. You would fail if you were at the top. But if you work your way up and along the way, learn all the skills you need, that when you get there, you'll be ready to be there. Number nine, listen to the audience. You are trying to make improvements and one of the biggest ways to do that is with the feedback.

And whether it's game design or stand-up comedy, you have an audience that wants to give you feedback. Listen to their feedback. Their feedback will do a lot to guide you and help you make you better. And number 10, truth resonates. That, you know, if you really want to speak to people, you need to say something to them that speaks deep within, that makes them go, I too feel that way. I understand. I recognize that. That part of the universal experience,

you know, you're designing for humans. Understand the human experience. Understand what about your game, your stand-up routine, your novel, your song,

whatever. Whatever art you're making, understand why and how it will speak to the person. And it's that being personal that's going inside and really bringing out

something that's personal is what's going to bond people and make people connect and make people enjoy what you're making. And that, my friends, is how stand-up comedy made me a better game designer. So I hope you

enjoyed today. I like doing these more offbeat things where we talk about a slightly different skill set. But now, finally, after a bunch of traffic, I am at work. So we all know what that means. It's 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.