Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #546: World Identities

Episode Date: June 15, 2018

In this podcast, I talk about why it's important for each plane to have a distinct identity.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is based on, so on my blog, one of the things that tends to happen is there's certain topics that will pop up from time to time, and we'll talk about them, and then usually they go away, but they keep coming back. We have certain topics that keep resurfacing. coming back, that we have certain topics that keep resurfacing. And today's topic is one of those topics, just because as I record this, it's something that I'm dealing with on my blog, and it makes me realize that it's actually an interesting topic. So I'm going to spend today talking about why we shape worlds the way we do.

So to understand this argument, let's first talk a little bit about Dominaria and the quirkiness that is Dominaria. Okay, so when Richard first made the game, back in Alpha, he made planeswalkers. You were a planeswalker. What did it mean to be a planeswalker? It meant that you would walk between worlds, between planes, that there was a multiverse, and the multiverse existed in many different worlds. Now, the quirky thing about early magic is

most of early magic was set in the same world, on Dominaria. In fact, the first ten years of magic. So for those, real quickly, so Alpha basically takes place in Dominaria. Arabian Nights, I think at the time it was made, the thought process was, oh, sure, it's Dominaria.

We have since retroactively said, oh, no, no, no, it's not Dominaria. It's Rabia. Arabian Nights is from Rabia. Then there was Antiquities. That was set on Dominaria. Then there was Legends. I think mostly that's set on Dominaria, although a few pieces might be elsewhere.

Then the Dark was on Dominaria. Then Fallen Empires was on Dominaria. Then Ice Dark was in Dominaria. Then Fallen Empires was in Dominaria. Then Ice Age was in Dominaria. Then Homelands was not. Homelands was on Ogrotha, which was a different plane. And then after Ice Age

was Homelands and Alliances, Alliances back on Dominaria. After Alliances, Mirage. Mirage on Dominaria. It's a Mirage and Visions and Weatherlight. All that was on Dominaria. Then Tempest, Exodus

and, sorry, Tempest, Stronghold, and Exodus were all on the plane of Wrath, which was a brand new plane. Now that plane would later get merged with Dominaria. Then after that was Urza's Saga, Urza's Legacy, and Urza's Destiny.

Most of that was Dominaria. There's a little bit there's Sera's Realm and Phyrexia. There's a few other planes getting visited there, but most of it was Dominaria. Then Mercadian Mask Block was Mercadia for Mercadian Masks.

And then the second set, Nemesis, was mostly on Wrath. And the third set, Prophecy, was mostly on Dominaria. And then after that, we have Invasion, Invasion, Planeshift, and Apocalypse were all on Dominaria. And then after that was...

Oh, did I go out of order? No, no, that's right. And then was Odyssey, and Odyssey, Judgment, and Torment, or Torment and Judgment were all on... Once again, we keep going to new continents, like Ice Age was in Terrasier, and Mirage was in Jamora, and Odyssey and Onslaught were Oteria. So Odyssey, Torment, Judgment were all on Dominaria

and then Onslaught, Legion's Scourge were all on Dominaria. Then after Onslaught was Mirrodin. Mirrodin was a brand new plane. We went was Mirrodin. Mirrodin was a brand new plane. We went to Mirrodin. So Mirrodin, Darksteel, and Fifth Dawn were all in Mirrodin. And then we went to Champions of Kamigawa, which was on Kamigawa. So Champions of Kamigawa, Betrayers of Kamigawa. What's the last one?

Betrayers of Kamigawa and Saviors of Kamigawa. That was all on Kamigawa. And then after that, we went to Ravnica. That was on the planet of Ravnica. And then we went to Time Spiral. So Ravnica block was all on Ravnica. Time Spiral block was back on Dominaria.

And then, since Time Spiral block, we haven't been on Dominaria. Other than, like, Magic Origins. Liliana was originally from Dominaria. Other than a small, tiny peak, there was noiana was originally from Dominaria, other than a small tiny peak, so there was no major set set in Dominaria. But if you look at that, the first like 13 years of magic, I think, the vast majority, I mean, the only things in the time frame I talked about that wasn't on Dominaria was Arabian Nights was on Rebaia,

on Dominaria was Arabian Nights was on Rebaia Homelands was Ogrotha Mercadian Masks was Mercadia Wrathlock was Wrath and then we went to near the end there we went to Mirrodin and to

Kamigawa but all the rest was the same place and the idea was the thing that's really odd for me was that we, that early magic sort of just didn't follow its entire premise. Which is this idea of, hey, there's different worlds out there. And so what happened, I mean, the reason this all comes to the forefront is we made Dominaria. And Dominaria had the challenge of, so one of the to the forefront is we made Dominaria. And Dominaria had the challenge of, so one of

the things we've done ever since Dominaria is we made planes that have definition. You know, Mirrodin was the metal artifact plane. Kamigawa was the Japanese-inspired plane. Ravnica was

a city plane with gills, you know, woven in part of it. Zendikar was an adventure world with a land mechanical identity. Innishrad was a top-down gothic horror world. You know,

we started creating worlds where it had a definition, had a look, a feel, and a definition. And one of the problems with Dominaria really was the way Dominaria would do that is it would change continents within the world. But the thing that I always argue is that that's not, the fact that Dominaria has all

this sort of variety to it is a bug and not a feature. The problem is, really what we wanted to do is Ice Age took place on its own world, and then Mirage was its own world, and Onslaught and Odyssey were their own world. It would be cool, for example, that if we could go back to Jamora, imagine Jamora was not a continent but a plane, that we could revisit the world of Jamora. That would be cool. That was a defined place. It has a look. It has a feel.

But when you sort of jam-pack it into one plane, like one of the big problems with Dominaria was it kind of lacks an identity. I talk a lot about in the design of Dominaria, we're trying to give it an identity. So a lot of the detractors of this current style of trying to make sure the worlds have a very distinctness to it, they call it a world of hats online.

As if, like, you know, each world is just the minimalist of change, and just the player's wearing a different hat, I guess is the idea. Oh, it's, you know, it's, I don't know, it's horror world, so let's, whatever a gothic horror hat is. And one of the things that I try to point out a lot is, I find this is sort of a derogatory term, in that the implication is that there's not any depth to the worlds, that they're just thin veneer. And my answer is, no, our team works really hard. There's a lot going on in Innistrad,

for example. Yeah, the core identity of the world is the Gothic horror world. Yeah, there are monsters, you know, it's mostly a world of humans and monsters that humans have turned into. That is the identity of the world. That's not... That doesn't mean we can't have...

Like, Shadows over Innistrad, for example, had a different feel to it than Innistrad, but still at its core, it was a gothic horror world, you know? So the analogy I always tend to use when this comes up is Star Wars. So Star Wars has a bunch of planets, but the planets all have a very, and I'm talking in the movie, and I know when you get to the Expanded Universe, there's a little more detail, but in the movies, Tatooine is a desert planet.

That's what it is. It's not like, oh, the part we visit is the desert part of the planet, and the rest of the planet, oh, it's very different. No, no, no. The whole planet is desert. It's a desert planet. They're trying to convey this is a poor, back planet that Luke was sort of hidden away on. It's a desert planet.

Hoth was the ice planet. Endor is a forest planet. If you look at one of the things they do in Star Wars, it is not like every world has a rich biosphere of diversity, you know, that they want to give the places an identity and a feel.

That when you go to Hoth, it's not like, well, that was the cold part of Hoth, and, you know, right around the corner, maybe, you know, a couple miles away is the more tropic part of Hoth, and then on the other side is,, no, no, no, no. Like there's an identity there. And the reason is if your IP, your intellectual property, is a, has any sense of scope to it, meaning that the people travel between places, that you need to have some identification

of the places. That you need them to have sort of an easy to understand, grokkable quality to them, because you want the audience to sort of understand them, and that if every world you go to, like here's one of the issues about, I mean there's a couple things. Let's say we follow the people like, I want every world as diverse as Dominaria. Two things. First off is, the reason Dominaria is as diverse as it is is we spent so much time there.

That one of the reasons that it got to be history world is it would be a lot of work to make a world and then introduce the amount of history that we introduced in Dominaria. Because the reason we could pull that off is we spent so much time there. I mean, in general, one of the things to keep in mind is a creative team has to build a world. They have an amount of time to do it.

And really, the first time that we visit a world, their first priority is making enough of the world that we can represent it on the cards. Now, there is work done that isn't reflected necessarily in just the cards. There's stories to tell. There's other pieces that make use of our worlds. But first and foremost, when we go to visit a new world in a set, the creative team has to make sure we can make that set. There's a lot of practicality behind the scenes.

I mean, a lot of times people ask for stuff, and my answer is you are not thinking about, like, why can't every world be as diverse as Dominaria? Let's assume for a second we want every world to be as diverse as Dominaria, which we don't. I'll get to that in a second. But let's say we did.

Let's say that we would like to. There's no way in the world that, you know, right now we make, we have three large sets a year. Now, we don't necessarily have to leave. We can stay in the same world for multiple times. But the point is, we don't stay in the world forever. And, you know, there's a window by which we have to build the world.

And that, you know, we do a lot. Our story and our teams do an amazing amount of work to build the world. And there's a lot of in the look and feel of the world and what do the people dress like and what are their weapons and what do their animals look like and what makes this world distinctive from each other world

and the civilization and all the things that go into making a world. And they spend a lot of time doing that. But there's limits to how much they can make. So one of the interesting things about returning to a world is that's the place where we start getting to add some depth to worlds. That the second time you're in a world, well, you don't

just sort of build it from scratch. You've built it from scratch. Now you get to add nuance to the world. And one of the things that is in my mind interesting about that is, in my mind, interesting about that is, I do think we are slowly, over time, building up a lot of equity in our worlds.

And it is not our intention that Ravnica is not a deep world. But that doesn't mean that it's supposed to be a world in which there is not a concentration in the identity of the world. We need worlds to have identities. So why? Let's go into that. Why do worlds need to have identities? First and foremost is, why do worlds matter? What do worlds mean to the game?

And the idea essentially is, at the crux of it is, the idea that you as the player, you know, you walk between worlds means we want to make a lot of different environments. Like the game, I mean, whether you move to different continents on the same world or go between worlds, you want a lot of variety in the environments. Because Magic is a game about environment. Every time we introduce something new to you, it's a new environment or a return to an old environment. And we are

environmentally based. Because what do we make? We are a game that makes cards. And what that means is for every world we visit, there are hundreds of cards that have to be made. We have to make creatures for every world. We have to make creatures for every world. We have to make just the basic look, the cosmology.

Everything has to be done to sort of give the world life and give it breathing. And then we have to figure out, not only do we have to make a world, but we have to make a world in the confines of magic. For example, one of the biggest confines of magic is

we're five colors. All the colors have to be represented. We can't just say, oh, well the concept of blue won't be in this world. I mean, other than things like Shards of Lara where there's specific sub-worlds in which colors are missing. Colors don't get to be missing. Every world has to have every color and that means something. Now we can get a little bit metaphorical on what an island is, as obviously we have. But still, there needs to be something that essentially has a feel of blue to it.

And white, and black, and red, and green. We have to build the worlds, and we have to sort of make them make sense. We have to make the color wheel make sense. You know, that one of the things that's core to the identity of magic is the five colors, and the ethos of the things that's core to the identity of magic is the is the five colors and the ethos of the five colors and so every world like a lot of how we build worlds is say okay we have this expression and we have the color pie how do we merge them together oh we're going to um greek mythology world well what we'd expect in g Greek mythology world? Gods. Well, what's our shtick? The color wheel.

Okay, let's blend the gods into the color wheel. That's how we got a lot of the beginnings of making Theros work. It's the idea that there's a pantheon of gods that represent the color wheel. In fact, there were 15 gods. Five monocolor and ten two-color gods. But the idea, essentially, is we want to create a firm sense of identity. And why is that? Well, when we're going someplace, why does the world want a unique identity and a cohesive identity is because we're trying to get you, the player, to feel something.

We want to connect you to the environment. And the way we do that is through design. In that I want the play pattern of the game to match the feel of the world. Innistrad's a scary place? I want the gameplay to be scary. You know, that whatever it is we're doing,

I want to match that through gameplay. And that the reason we have very exacting, flavorful worlds is so that the audience can have expectations exacting, flavorful worlds is so the audience can have expectations and then we can meet those expectations. For example, let's say we had the means to make every world as diverse as Dominaria and that this kind is that.

All of a sudden when we say, oh, we're going to this place, what does it mean? What does that mean? What exactly are you expecting to get out of it? So the example I gave online was, on my blog, was let's imagine we made a world, what did I call it? I'll call it Cornovia. I'm not sure if that's the word I use in my blog. But anyway, something close to that. So let's say Cornovia, one continent is Kaladesh, one continent is Amonkhet, and one continent is Ixalan. So instead of us traveling three different

worlds, we went to the same world three times, just moved around on the world. And interestingly, each continent is so different from the other. Well, what exactly, what have we done? So when I say return to Fornovia, are you excited? No, the problem is you're like, oh, well, I hope it's this part of it. we done? So when I say return to Fornovia, are you excited? No, the problem is you're like, oh, well, I hope it's this part of it. Oh, I really liked the Kaladesh continent. I hope

when we return it's to that continent. And all of a sudden you muddle the message. All of a sudden you're saying, like, the fact that Dominaria was the ice world and was the jungle world and was the mutant world and was the post-apocalyptic world just made it hard to go back there.

In some ways, the reason we took so long to go back to Dominaria was it's complete... Having all identities mean it didn't have any identity. And that's why we had to find an identity for it. And a lot of people argue like, oh no, no, no, Dominaria's the way

it should be. You should have that kind of diversity in every world lot of people argue like, oh no, no, no, Dominaria is the way it should be. You should have that kind of diversity in every world. And I'm like, I guess if you are really, really into the flavor, the idea of, oh, it would be fascinating to me to see the world of Kaladesh blend with the world of Amonkhet. What if people fled Amonkhet and they came to Kaladesh and are the refugee, like, I get it, I get it. If you're really into a world of Amonkhet. What if people fled Amonkhet and they came to Kaladesh and now they're refugees? Like, I get it.

I get it. If you're really into a world and the nuance of mixing them, I'm not saying there's not something that could be interesting there. But the problem is it muddles the message. Like today,

one of the people talked about Battle for Zendikar. And what they said is, oh, I think your problem was that Battle for Zendikar was too exacting in expectations. People wanted Adventure World.

They expected Adventure World. And when you went back and you didn't get Adventure World, they were unhappy. And I was like, you have this problem completely backwards. The fact that the audience wanted something and all of them were on the same page with their expectations is an amazing thing. Like, you want your audience, like, one of the big jobs of game design, or in the art form at some level, but game design, is you want to be able to

meet the expectations of your audience. Well, how do you do that? Your audience wants a lot of different things. Well, one of the tricks is by making something that's more cohesive so the audience is all looking in the same direction. You know, when you come to steampunk and it's this,

I'm sorry, come to Kaladesh and it's this sort of steampunk vibe, you know, with an Indian flavor, okay, you have some expectation of what to expect. Amiket is like Bolas meets Egyptian plane. You have some idea of what to expect, you know. And that we like the idea that within the world there's a little bit of

surprise and there's little things you don't expect. But in general, we want you to have expectations. That a lot of making players happy is creating expectations and then meeting expectations. That a lot of what design is, is getting the,

is hinting at the audience what it is that's coming and then delivering on it. If you guys remember my talk about my communications, the communication theory talks about how there's three things that audience wants.

They want comfort, they want surprise, and they want completion. So if you really look at what I'm talking about here, it matches that quite a bit. First off, you want comfort, which means the audience wants to know what to expect. If we said every world, we're going to a world and who knows what's going to happen

and who knows what's there, that would not make the audience happy. That the audience wants, when we sort of pitch a world, they want us to give a nuance and go, okay, I got it. It's this kind of world. The players would not be happy, for example, if we sort of pitch a world, they want us to give a nuance and go, okay, I got it. It's this kind of world. The players would not be happy, for example, if we said presenting Gripplethorn and we show a picture and the gripple

it's just nothing. It's just a generic picture. And they're like, well, what is Gripplethorn? What kind of world is it? What do I expect? That would actually make people unhappy. The goal of us teasing worlds is to give a hint of what the world is and what we might do.

And so when we show you Amonkhet, we're like, It's Bolas means Egypt. What does that mean? When you see Kaladesh, you get the idea that it's this steampunk plane. Ixalan, we didn't hide the dinosaurs and pirates from you. They were in our, you know, the very first image we showed you showed a dinosaur.

You're like, oh, there's dinosaurs coming. You know, that we want and we work really hard to build expectation. We want a sense of comfort. We want you to start by going, oh, and every world, by the way, there's something in the world we want you to be familiar and comfortable with. Maybe it's a return world in which you're excited because we've already done a lot of the expectation setting. Or it's a new world and there's something about the world that gets to draw you in. Now, that doesn't mean we tell you everything.

That doesn't mean we have to, like, yes, number two is surprise. We want to surprise you. We will find ways within the expectations of what we're doing to do some cool things. Like, if you saw Steampunk World, you didn't necessarily right out of the gate expect vehicles. They make sense there. You know, they're an outgrowth of what it is. But we were able to surprise you. Same with energy.

Like, when you first learned Steampunk World, you didn't necessarily know exactly what we were doing with it. And then we created mechanics that felt, that made sense in that world, but did new and different things. You know, you hadn't necessarily, I mean, that's one of the things about making worlds is we want to both sort of meet the expectation of the world and then push past it a little bit. Like, one of the challenges with Dominaria was

the expectations were all over the board. Like, one of the challenges with Dominaria was the expectations were all over the board. Like, even right now, I get a lot of questions about why didn't you include Thing X? That's my favorite thing about this world. How come Thing X wasn't included? And the answer was, we couldn't fit it all in.

There's no way in the world on Dominaria to revisit everything that people associate with this world in one set it is literally impossible and the reason is there's just so many things the number of things that people are like oh my goodness where is Thing X

where are the dwarves in red where are the tree folk where are the viashino where are the cephalids where are the slivers where are the koboldsids? Where are the slivers? I mean, there's just an endless number. Where are the kobolds? Like, there's so many people that, like, had an expectation

for something, and even then, some of the things we did deliver, like, another reason I get complaints is people are like, okay, you made a kabu, but, you know, and yeah, yeah, there's some kabu showing up in art and other things, but that's it? I want more kabu. I want kabu tribal. I want lots of kabu. You know? They're like, everybody, not only do they want things, but that's it. I want more Kabu. I want Kabu Tribal. I want lots of Kabu.

They're like, everybody, not only do they want things, but they want it in volume. I wanted to make a new sliver deck. I wanted it like, and if it's a, for example, when we go to Ravnica, we can deliver on the Guild Mages. And yes, there's expectation of the Guild Mages, but there's a limit of how much

expectation there is, and that we can deliver on that. The Dominar is just the world that is almost impossible to completely deliver on, because there's a limit of how much expectation there is and that we can deliver on that. The Dominaria is just the world that is almost impossible to completely deliver on because there's no way we can hit all that nuance in the singular set. And like I said, a lot of what we were trying to do with Dominaria, a lot of our history theme

was trying to turn a bug into a feature and say, oh, okay, we have this world with 8,000 references already in it. Well, can we make that make sense? Can we make that a world where that somehow means something? But the thing to keep in mind, and this is one of the things that often happens on my blog, is, as I explain all the time,

people have a focus. People care about something. That the game means something to them. And usually, when they're arguing with me, what they're saying is, here's the part that really speaks to me. Here's the part of the game that I derive enjoyment from.

And, I mean, I do a lot to make players self-aware. And I think there's a lot of players that have become more self-aware, and now understand that the game is many things to many people, and that every component's for every player. But not all players understand that. And a lot of the complaints I get is, this is the part that really speaks to me as a Magic player.

Why wouldn't you make decisions that maximize that? And the thing that they're missing is, that is not the thing that they're prioritizing is not our priority. You know? Because a lot of times what happens is they get appalled. They're like, how are you so dumb? Clearly you could have just done A, B, and C, and this set would have been so much

better. But what they're really saying is, if you had just done these things, it would have made the game better for me. And that doesn't mean it would have made the game better. It doesn't mean it would make the game better for more players. Like, one of the tricky things about being the people that make the game

is we have to make a lot of audiences happy. We don't have the freedom to just go... I mean, sometimes in supplemental sets, we can focus a little more. We can make a commander product and go, well, look, you know, really this is for the commander players. If non-commander players don't like it, well, it's for the commander players.

And while we do that on a card-by-card basis within normal sets, you know, standard legal sets, it's not something that we do on a large scale. It is not like we go, oh, well, this set's just not going to be for this large group of people. No. Every set is for every people as much as we can do that.

Now, the pendulum swings. Clearly, if you love artifacts, then a world in which it's artifact themed is more the kind of world you'll love. And one of the reasons we push the pendulum and move around on themes is I know not every world is going to be the favorite of somebody meaning I want to make sure that there's a world

within a five year period let's say we want a world that really really speaks to you and not every world is going to speak to everybody, I get that but it's still important to sort of meet the criteria and things we want. And this particular issue is a really good example of someone saying, well, I would enjoy it more if worlds had less singular identity and there was more depth in the worlds.

And my argument is not you might not enjoy that. I acknowledge that there's things I'm being asked of, that the reason I'm being asked of them is there's some subset that truly believes that would make it better for them. Now, the funny thing for me is I'm not even convinced having worlds have identities is even really disliked by the people who claim that they prefer it be more varied. really disliked by the people who claim that they prefer it be more varied.

Because a lot of, like I said, a lot of what makes the thing, I talked about comfort, surprise, and completion. I didn't quite finish that thought, so let me go back to that. Is, we want the world to be comfortable. We want you to have some expectation, understanding of what the world is.

If we're returning, it means we understand the essence of what the world is. Battle for Zendikar is a mistake in that regard. That, you know, the next time we go to Zendikar, I don't want it to not feel like Zendikar.

I want it to... Like, part of having worlds and having identities to them means there's a responsibility on us to make the game to match those. When we don't, that's our fault.

That... The problem isn't that there is expectations. That's a great thing. The problem is you're not meeting them. Then, within the world, we do want to surprise people. We do want to do things that, while true

to the world, might not be anticipated. We want to make mechanics and things that are fun, that are thematic and fit the world, but aren't something necessarily people walking in on new to expect. And then, completion means that we want to make sure that we tie all those new components into the world

in a way that's organic, so that the cohesive whole is, wow, that feels like that thing. And one of the things that is so powerful, that it is, like a lot of times, it's funny. So those who've been a long-time listener, you know that my kind of core, the theme, my theme, because all writers have a theme, is how much we want to believe we are intellectual creatures

when at our core we are emotional creatures. They're not intellectual creatures. And this is a great one where I feel like we're having this argument on the intellectual spectrum when really, really, really it's all about the emotional thing. That when I make a world and I want to have a cohesive identity it is less about it intellectually sort of speaking to you not that it can't or it shouldn't, but it's less about that. It's more about having it have an emotional center.

That when I go to a world, I want the audience to feel something. I want the audience to anticipate something. You know, I want the audience to, like, one of the things that Dominaria is going for, and a lot of people are missing this, is the feel that you're feeling from the world, there's a very happy feel that goes with Dominaria. And that is not that Dominaria isn't intrinsically happy. In fact, as the worlds go, a lot of tragedies happen in Dominaria. Because of our insistence to stay there and our need to do environmental

plane-sweeping stories, we put Dominaria through the ringer. It has had major catastrophe after major catastrophe after major catastrophe. Major things have gone on there. And part of the challenge of the set was, look, it was the 25th anniversary and we were going home. We were going back to where it all began. A place where magic existed for a long time, 10 plus years. And I think if you include Wrath, which is now

overlaid on it, there's over 30 expansions in that place in Dominaria. But the tricky part was we knew that the nostalgia was going to drive the emotion. Like one of the things that's interesting is normally I going to drive the emotion. One of the things that's interesting is, normally I get to chart the emotions to a certain extent, and my limitation usually is our source material. Well, if we're doing gothic horror,

okay, well, what does gothic horror make you feel like? That's going to shape my design. But here, Dominaria was shaped by how people felt about it external to the world, meaning because of nostalgia. So we built a world that was kind of a happy, fun world because we wanted to make a world that would match how we knew players would feel about it. And the reason we chose the history theme that we did was we knew we wanted to hide Easter eggs all over the place. We knew that a lot of the fun of the world would be

it's a world dripping with history, and if you know the history, you get to see the history. That thing in the museum, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you don't know any better, it's just an object in the museum. But if you do know better, that's not just any object, that's this

particular object. That's not just a sword. That's the Black Blade. The Black Blade. The one that Dakin would carry. You know, like it means something. And so the idea that is, Dominaria, like I said, was crafted backwards essentially. Like we knew the emotion. I mean, we, it is not a mistake that Dominaria was with the 25th anniversary. It's not as if, in fact, we were planning out our plan. I think Dominaria was actually a year earlier or later. And we're like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

It's the 25th anniversary. Okay, whatever we have to do, that needs to be there. We'll change whatever we need to change to make sure that on the 25th anniversary, on the 25th anniversary, on the 25th anniversary, we were going to be right there on our return to Dominaria, that we're going to go back to where it all began.

And then we crafted the world to match that expectation and match the emotional thing. But the happiness that Dominaria creates, this nostalgia, this world that represents early magic, we don't get that anywhere but Dominaria creates, this nostalgia, this world that represents early magic. We don't get that anywhere but Dominaria. Now, given, other worlds will pick up stuff over time. Ravnick, for example, we've been there twice. And so the audience have expectation and we're starting to craft emotional connections. Like one of the things that's really cool is we want to make a world, we want you to have expectations for it, and then over time

we want to start, like one of the neat things for example about return worlds is that they're mechanical gimme's that we get like for example, when we go back to Ravnica, look we have the guilds, we're going to lean on the guilds there's going to be

certain things that you know to anticipate there's going to be two color cards there's going to be certain things that you know to anticipate there's going to be two color cards there's going to be guild mages there's going to be more cycles that are color related there's going to be hybrid mana there's just things that you know to expect and that one of the

cool things is when making your game the idea of meeting the expectations is so important that having comfort, like I said, it all starts with comfort. And that either we lean on comfort and that it's something you already know,

or we lean on comfort as something that you're aware of and a familiarity with, just not magic's take on it. And so a lot of what this argument is, I mean, the reason that I have it all the time in my blog is no one's going to change my mind because I understand what it's doing for us big term. Like,

and this is a lie. If you watch me argue in my blog, the people who are arguing with me, surprise, surprise, magic players can be stubborn. They're a smart group. You guys are pretty intelligent and magic requires a lot of dedication to facts and details.

So you guys are pretty good at arguing. So a lot of my blog is me arguing. And like I said, it's a lot of, this is something I derive pleasure from. I want to point it out to you. Really, the game would be better if you do this. And a lot of what my blog posting is, is, oh, well, here's the thing that we care about,

that some players care about, that you don't care about. And that I get that you think that this thing would make things better. And maybe, maybe, maybe it would make better for you. Not always even the case better for you. This is a good example where if we followed what people were asking for and just started going to less worlds and just having worlds be continents on the same world and go, okay,

Kaladesh and Amonkhet and Ixalan are just parts of the same world, that you start to lose a little bit of identity between what the worlds are. And I don't think that's a positive thing. The people that are asking for it, I don't think if the dust settled, if we gave it to them, that it would, in the end, be something that they're happy with.

Because that comfort, because that identity is something strong. I mean, in general, what I discover is that players tend to derive stuff and that it's very common. Like one of the things, this is another dynamic, one of the things that happens when you dissect things. Like I spend a lot of time explaining why we do things. And when I do that, I get into the nitty gritty. I go behind the scenes. I show the wireframe, if you will.

So in computer animation, the way that you make a character move is you sort of make the crux of the character underneath the character and you build on top of it. That's what they call the wireframes. And if you've ever seen the wireframes

for animation, it's not nearly as fun and exciting as the finished product, but like it's how they make it work. And that a lot of what I do is kind of show you how we make it work. And I think from that, people sort of love to jump in and get critical because it's easy when you're looking at something at its sort of real bare form that sometimes you don't quite get kind of what it's doing or why it's there. And that it is not a mistake, for example, the reason I often bring up Star Wars, sometimes Star Trek, that IPs that travel really identify ourselves worlds.

And the reason we do as well, you know, this all kind of comes together. There's a larger purpose to what we're doing. And one of my goals, the reason I have my blog, is I want as many people

as possible to understand. Because a lot of times, what I discover in a lot of things looking at other companies is they make a decision, I don't seem to like the decision, and then I get grumbly about the decision. And that what I want to do

is I want to explain to you the reasons for our decisions. It doesn't mean you'll agree with them all. I know there's things we do that people go, oh, well, I would do something different. And, in fact, I think the common theme of the reoccurring arguments in my blog are things in which, look, I know the thing I'm talking about,

and I'll go to great depth to explain why. But people just might want something and go, well, I don't, it doesn't matter to me that you're doing these things for other reasons and other people and other, you know, it is still something I want. And I get that, you know. I mean, it's funny, like, one of the interesting things about making magic is that it's a collaborative effort. Magic is not my vision of what it is. It's my shared vision with a team of other people

and a team that changes over time. Now, I have a hand in the shaping of the world. It's not like when I look at the game, I don't feel like I don't see my work within the game. But I don't, by myself, make the decisions. So, the same

way the decisions that we make that you disagree with, the decisions we make that I disagree with, in the sense that if this was my baby to like just have, you know, I was dictator. By the way, I'm not saying that would lead to a better product. I'm not saying our current system of sort of having to fight of other people to collaborate and make something that's a shared thing doesn't make it better. I think it does. So like I do think, I do think the process is a very good process. But it does mean, I mean, for regular listeners, like, the fact that we use creature type hound and not dog drives me batty. It drives me batty.

Like, of course dog is more resonant than hound. Dog just means more things than hound. Like, we often make dogs that aren't even hounds and call them hound. And I understand that there's a vernacular that hound means dog, but it really is a subset of dog. So when you call a St. Bernard a hound, like, okay, you're being super loose on the word hound. And there's things like that. There are a lot of things, you know. You know, if I had things,

I would do more targeting than we do. I understand, for a bunch of different reasons, including digital, that targeting has issues. But I would target more. I mean, there's just individual things I would do. If I was in charge, if I was Grand Pumbaa, there's some different things I would do. Not tons.

Like I said, I have influence. It's not like I don't actually influence. And there's definitely things... There's things that are true about the game that are very much my influence. For all you out there that want to remove poison counters, I'm the one in your way. I'm the one stopping that from happening.

And that, you know, the... One of the things that's tricky is that you as an artist have individual desires. That when you first start making magic, it's very easy for you to make the magic that is your magic. The reason you play the game.

But what happens with time, and this is important, is that you want to sort of... You want things to have a sense of comfort to them. And that part of what happens as you evolve as a game designer is you realize that you're not just making the game for you, you're making the game for everybody. And then you start to have a better understanding of who those other people are.

Like one of the big things about new designers is I do a lot of education to make them understand. Like first thing I always say to them is learn who you are as a game player. What is it about Magic that you enjoy? And that's great. You get to make that. It's not as if you don't get to make the game for you, but you don't get to make it solely for you. And part of understanding sort of your biases is understanding what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy. Like, it's very easy

to say, I just like Thing X. I'm just not going to make Thing X. But if there's an audience that really likes Thing X, now, once again, one of Magic's larger issues is there are things that the majority don't like that we, you know, like. For example, we tend to avoid strategies. We tend to avoid making strategies strong enough whereas you can just keep your opponents from ever doing anything. Whether I blow up your land so you never get a play spell in the first place

or I make you discard all your hands so you never get a play card or I counter every single spell you get. Those just aren't fun game experiences and so we've moved away from those being viable. That, yeah, there's good discard, there's, you know, decent counterspell and land destruction we're a little more cautious

on, but there's enough that you can use it, but not so much that you can just never let them do their thing. That isn't fun. But beyond those few things, we want to sort of have that exposure, and so a lot of learning how to be a mag designer is learning how to make things not for your taste, if you will.

For example, Commander's not really my thing. I'm not much into multiplayer. I don't like politics, I like magic. That doesn't mean I don't look for opportunities to create cards that are neat and play to multiplayer, not that I don't try to find ways to add politics to magic in places where it's appropriate. Like, I understand there's an audience

that wants something, and so I work there to build there, to make that happen. So when we're talking about environments and worlds, it's very easy to dismiss the world of hats sort of complaint. And my issue

there really is that we're going to make worlds with an identity. Whether or not you understand why the identity is important, A, I think world of hats really undersells the idea that you can have identity yet still have depth to it. I do think Ravnica has a surprising amount of depth, even though it's still core to its identity as a guild city world. depth, even though it's still core to its identity as a guild city world.

You know, I don't think that having a concentration is a lack of, you know, keeps you from having a lack of depth. It does mean that there's certain things that the world will and won't do, and that, I think, is a bonus. I think it's a plus. I think you want the audience to have some expectations of what will and won't happen. You know, I want some surprise, but I want so much surprise that when you come to something, there isn't some sense of comfort to you. I do want the world to be comforting and evocative and to do the things they need to do.

And so when I argue with people and say, hey, worlds having an identity is not just some whim. It's not just some thing in passing. It's not just saying that there's a really strong reason why we do that. And the reason I spent 44 minutes today talking about it is that it is important. And it's something, you know, from time to time, I'll argue about this in my blog because I'm not changing my mind on this particular topic.

This is a pretty important one. There are topics you can change my mind. This one, I think you're going to have much more trouble with. But anyway, I'm now parked in the parking lot. So we all know what that means. I mean, this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Bye-bye.