Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #11 - 10 Things Every Game Needs

Episode Date: December 6, 2012

Mark Rosewater talks about a popular article he did called "10 Things Every Game Needs."

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. As we all know, that means it's another time for Drive to Work. So today, one of the things I've been thinking about is different kinds of topics. It became apparent to me that I can't solely do sets because there's only so many sets I've worked on, and I like to keep doing this podcast for a while, so I'm spreading those out. So one of the things I thought I would do from time to time is take popular articles I've written and talk about them. So today's is one of the most popular articles I've written in the last couple years called 10 Things Every Game Needs. So for those that have never read it, A, go read it. It's very good.

So what happened was my daughter Rachel was in fifth grade at the time and she had a teacher named Mr. Nichols. And I went to the teacher, you know, meet the teacher night, and in it he said, you know, I really like having parents come and speak. If you have some expertise, let me know about it, and I'll find a way to fit you into the curriculum. So I said to him, oh, you know, I've done plenty of public speaking. I'm more than happy to talk to the class.

He says, oh, well, what do you do? And I said, I'm a game designer. And he goes, oh, I know exactly how I'm going to use you. So it turns out that in his class, for the American Revolution, the assignment is they make a game. And so he had me come in and speak to the class about making games. And so to prepare for it, I had put together a speech about what games needed. I decided that what I would do is try to help the

kids make their game, teach them some things about what games needed. And then, I ended up writing an article about this, based on my speech, in which I talked about what I thought the things were, and then I applied them to Magic to say why I think magic does a good job at this thing. I think magic actually hits all 10 very well. So I thought today I would examine the 10 things and talk about them. The idea of this on my podcast is, look, when I write my article, you know, I only have so much space. I usually write between 3,000 and 4,000 words. But in my podcast, I have a little more time. I can explain things in a little more detail. So that's the idea here is to give you sort of a more breadth of a topic, you know, than I was able to write it. Okay, so let's start. So the very first thing I said, oh, and the reason these

are in the order they're in is organically when I gave the talk, it felt like they made the most sense to a talk, that they felt in the order by which I could explain them the most. I don't exactly know what the order is. I've thought about it. I think what it does is it presents in a way that sort of gives you what you need to know in the order. So I think these are in some order that makes logical sense for hearing it, but it's all intuitive. So one of the things I tend to do is I make a lot of decisions intuitively, and then I later figure out why it's correct. Sometimes I never do. But my intuition's pretty on, so I listen to it.

Okay, number one, your game needs a goal or goals. So why is this so important? Well, so one of the things that R&D loves to do is to talk about games and game design and such. In fact, we used to have a folder in R&D called Kickshaw. And we would just write and discuss topics. And so one of the topics that came up at one point was, what separates a game from a toy? Because both of them are, you play with them. But what makes a game a game and not a toy?

You know, where's the line between the two? And what we realized was that a game had a goal. That that was a big thing that defined a game. That a toy is like, here's this fun thing. Do this fun thing. This thing is fun to do. What's the purpose to doing it? There is no purpose.

The purpose is it's fun to do. You know, why do you take a yo-yo and make it go up and down? Because it's kind of fun to make a yo-yo go up and down. Why do you spin a top? It's kind of fun to spin a top. But games have a little bit more than that. Games can't just be, I mean, I'll get to it. Obviously, games want to be fun. But it has to be more than just an activity for the sake of the activity.

That games are about, on kind of the bare level, games are about a mental challenge. That when games attract people, as they say, I would like some sort of challenge, and I want to have a structured way for me to sort of meet that challenge. And that games have,

there's many different kinds of challenges, but games tend to be mental. When games start getting physical, that's when we make the crossover to sports. Now, clearly, there's a lot of middle ground. There are games that are physical. There are sports that are mental. So it's a fuzzy area. But pretty much, the games tend to be more on the mental end, and sports tend to be more on the physical end.

And most games, we think about games that more mentally inclined. They're mental challenges. So why is a goal so important? Well, for starters, in order to sort of accomplish something, you have to have something you're trying to accomplish. You need, you know, a big part of sort of proving yourself mentally is going, ha-ha, I have a task. I met the task. You know, I mean, with a yo-yo, you can try to get good with the yo-yo, but there's no, how do you know when you're good enough with the yo-yo? There's no way. You know, there's no, it's just kind of something you do. But a game says, okay, here's your task. Here's your goal. You need to meet this goal. When I meet the goal, I've won the game. And games, to be clear, I'm not saying they're... Once again, let me explain that. I'm giving you the basics of games.

Anything I give you, there is an exception that breaks the rule. But as I explained in my article, if I was going to teach you an intro to painting class, I don't jump into cubism right away, right? Like I say, here's a bowl of fruit. Let's paint the bowl of fruit, you know? And later on, you learn that, well, maybe the perspective can be played with and such.

But I'm talking game design. So I'm giving the basics. And in the basics, games need a goal. They need a task. And you win a game. Most often you win a game. I guess there's some games in which more than one person wins. And there's some games in which the obstacle, I guess, is not winning.

But there is meeting the goal. In my mind, if you meet the goal, you win. So I will claim that most games, you win by meeting the goal. Maybe everybody wins, maybe a group wins, but there is a goal to meet, and the goal is important because that is the benchmark that people are going to use to figure out what they're doing.

Okay, so in talking about a goal, what does a game need? What kind of goal? Well, for number one, your goal needs to be really clear. Games are not supposed to be fuzzy. You're not supposed to be like, I'm not sure if I'm winning. No, no, no. The goal of the game is blah.

A goal needs to be very simple and very direct. You know, and the reason a goal is so important is, when someone wants to learn how to play a game, the funny thing is, really what they're saying is they want to know what the goal of the game is, and they want to know the obstacles, which we'll get to in a second. So you want your goal to be clear.

You want one goal. You want it to be simple. I know there are some games that have multiple goals, and obviously there's some reasons for doing that, especially in more complex games. But I think, at a very first time out, the cleanest, best games, there's one clear crystal rule. Now, take Magic as an example. Magic has a very clear goal.

What's the goal? Get your opponent to zero. Now, are there also no ways to win? Yes. You can deck somebody as being the biggest one. And there's poison counters and different cards that can win. But, as a general rule of thumb, if I'm teaching somebody how to play, how do I win? Get your opponent to zero. And the other thing that's nice is,

if your goal is very clear, not just in the rules clear, but also clear in the concept. Well, what am I doing in magic? Well, I'm dueling against another wizard. Well, when I get their life from 20 to zero, I force them to flee the plane, and I have won. You know, I win the... I'm fighting a fight.

When I get them to 0, I've won the fight. I've won the duel. And so it's very clear, and it is... I mean, it's very clear in, like, what the rules are, and it's very clear in sort of the flavor of what it is. Both of those are very clear. 0 is a very exact amount. I win the duel. It's a very strong, flavorful thing.

Okay, so once you have a clear goal, the next step is you need rules. So why are rules so important? Well, the idea is that a game says so, I talk about this a lot, but I'll restate this here, which is the goal of a game, unlike the design of most things, most design, the idea is to make things as easy as possible. If I'm trying to make a toaster, I want you to know how to toast your toast. I want it clear where the toast goes and what I have to push to make the toaster go on.

But game design is very different. Game design, I'm trying to throw obstacles in your way because the goal of a game is to challenge the person, you know, and to do that, I have to say, you know, here's your goal. Now, clearly, you could just do blah, blah, blah, but no, I'm not going to let you do that. I'm going to make a set of rules that define how you can meet your goal. Now, once again, the fewer rules you have, the better. Rules are like, I mean, I talk about in writing how if you can cut a scene, cut the scene. Rules are the same way.

If the game can exist without the rule, cut the rule. I mean, one of the things R&D has been doing recently is sort of going through Magic and saying, oh, are there any rules in Magic that don't really need to be there? And I'll give it. Magic's a complex game. Our rulebook is a phone book. So, I mean, Magic has a lot of rules. But as a goal, you want to set out to make as few rules as possible.

And a lot of what Richard did, I think, when he first made the game was he tried to put as much of the rules as he could on the cards, that the cards told you what they could do. Yeah, there's a lot of rules, but the rules were kind of there in front of you, so I didn't have to necessarily know all the rules. The cards would tell me the rules. And I think that was a big part of why Magic early on was so successful was, well, I didn't need to know a lot because, well, the cards kind of told me what I needed to know. I needed to know the base game.

And one of the things about Magic, by the way, and when you're teaching people, this is important. The base game of And one of the things about Magic, by the way, and when you're teaching people, this is important. The base game of Magic is actually not that complex. What makes Magic complex is the metagame, the fact that you can choose whatever you want, the fact that there's so many choices, and the combinations, you know, there's a crazy number of combinations when you build decks.

But the actual core of the game itself is not that complex. When I teach new people, I try to re-inform that, you know, it's very easy to get scared by magic because it seems like it's too daunting. But the base game of magic that Richard came up with is actually pretty straightforward. And most of it is pretty intuitive. And the stuff that wasn't, we weeded a lot of that out over the years. Okay, so number three, interaction. So why do you need interaction? Because not only are games about mental challenge,

but another big thing of games is games are about socialization. And that, I mean, they're solitary games, so not every game, but a big part of what makes games games is that it requires interacting with other humans. And that there is... One of the things I talk about when designing games in general is you want to make use of existing material. I talked about piggybacking in one of my articles. And what piggybacking was all about was saying,

can I use information my audience already has so that they'll learn it quickly because it's stuff they already know. And that's very valuable. Piggybacking is a very valuable way to make a game. But part of that is there are certain things that are just appealing to humans. One is human interaction. Humans like interacting with other humans. And so you want to take advantage of that in your game.

And one of the ways to do that is you want to make sure that people playing your game are interacting with each other. A common novice mistake is you make a game in which each person is kind of playing their own game and they're not interacting enough with the other people. Now, once again, there are games, and there's some famous ones right now, that don't have tons of interaction. But I do believe the more interaction you have, the more you help along the social grease of the game, if you will. And that is important. A big part of why people play games is it's a means by which to interact with other people. And you want to play into that. And so make sure when you're building your game that you build in those interactions so that people,

essentially they're forced to do what they want to do. Remember, when I talk, I mean, I'll get to inertia in a second, but you kind of, when you build a game, what you are doing is you are crafting the experience that they are going to have, okay? The goal is there because you want to point them in the right direction. The rules are to help explain to them what they're trying to do. And the interaction is to force them to have to deal with other people. That if the game doesn't make them deal with other people, they won't. And I can't stress this enough.

You, the game designer, have a huge amount of control over how the game is played. And what you have to do is you have to make the players do the things they want to do. Okay? You can make them do whatever. You can guide them to whatever path. But if you force them to do things they don't want to do or that aren't fun to them, they'll do them because people are very motivated to win in a game, but they won't have fun. So remember, your job as a game designer is to motivate them to do the things that are fun.

So next, a catch-up feature. Okay, so one of the, another big mistake that gets made is that you don't want to have a game where one player realizes they don't have a chance. So there's something Richard, it's the best of my knowledge calling this term, maybe Richard read it from somewhere else, but it's called kingmaking. So in a game called kingmaking. So in a game, kingmaking means I can't win, but I decide who does win. And the weird thing about it is it says it takes out... Now somebody who can't win, you know, has control over who does win.

And it's frustrating when it becomes a game of politics then. It's like, oh, well, this person decides I need to convince them to do this. And I'm not anti-politics. I think politics have a place in games, especially in multiplayer games where there's more than two people. And the... But you want to make sure

that the people playing feel invested and feel that they have some control. In general, in life, as in games, or I should say games as in life, people want to feel that they have some control. In general, in life, as in games, or I should say games as in life, people want to feel that they have some control. You want to feel when you're playing a game like you have some input on the output of the game, especially your own fate. And so the nice thing about a catch-up feature is it says, oh, well, as the game progresses,

the people in front have more handicaps and the people in back have less. Because the game is more dynamic if you feel at any moment that there's a chance for people to come back. Now, note, I'm not saying that you want to make it so there's no progression. I want to feel like the guys that do the best have the best chance of winning. So I'm not saying a catch-up feature is supposed to override any sense of progression or skill, but you do have to feel like there is some chance. And that's the important thing. A catch-up feature is about hope. It isn't about necessarily realism. It's about the chance that they

feel like they could come back. And they realistically need to have some chance. It doesn't need to be a great chance, but they have to go, they have to be able to aim for something. They have to have that hope. And hope is really important. That in games, you want your players to feel like, okay, I'm not out of this. I need to do the following things. And it's okay if their chances, if they're behind aren't great. Hey, look, they are behind, but they have to have some chance. Zero chance just makes kin-making and also just makes for very,

people feel detached from the game because they're like, I can't win. What am I doing? I'm stuck here. The other thing, by the way, is if you want to, like, once somebody can no longer win in your game,

kick them out of the game. If that's your goal, if you want them not to have any chance of winning and you don't want to have a catch-up feature, then you game, kick them out of the game. If that's your goal, if you want them not to have any chance of winning and you don't want to have a catch-up feature, then you've got to kick them out of the game. You've got to free them from the game and say, you are done. You have no more expectation.

Now, that said, I like catch-up features. I prefer you keep them in the game and give them hope. But if you don't want to do that, then free them once they can't win anymore. Next, inertia. So as I said before, your job as the game designer is to move along the game. You are to make sure that the game... So one of the things I always say, and this is important, is that you need to design the game so it ends.

That the natural state of the game will make it end. Probably the number one mistake I see of new games is they take too long. But when I was talking to the kids in Rachel's class, I actually said to them, look, aim to make your game 20 minutes. And I knew by telling them 20 minutes, it'd probably be 30 minutes.

But anyway, your game, your audience wants to still be playing when the game ends. If they're done playing before the game ends, they will never play your game again. I mean, without some forcing. What you want to do is have the game end and then go, that was fun, I want to play again. Because if they're still excited when the game ends,

then they want to play. If they've sort of reached their end, then they go, oh, well, I enjoyed this game at first, but, oh, then I didn't enjoy it. And so, like any creative endeavor, get in, get out. You want to make it the shortest you can make it. That's a good thing is, I mean, you want to make sure you have all the pieces I'm talking about here. So your game has to be long enough to have these components, but you want to make your game as short as you can make the game. Yes, there are games that go on for hours and hours,

but you shouldn't, when you set out to make a game, especially your first game, you want to make something that people can play and finish and savor wanting to play again. And remember, if people enjoy the game and it's short, they can play it many times. But if it's long, if they want to spend three hours and the game takes 20 minutes, they can do that.

If they want to spend 20 minutes, it takes three hours, they can't. Next is surprise. So I talk about playing into human nature. I think the reason surprise is interesting is that people like comfort and they like surprise. I talk about this in media. And that there's a lot of things you want to do to create comfort in the game. I'll get to flavor in a second, which is a big part of resonance.

But another thing is humans like the unknown, especially in a game, because here's the big problem. If the game has no hidden information, then you are forcing people to have to think out far ahead. information, then you are forcing people to have to think out far ahead. You know, if I know everything, then I kind of can't relax because I feel like I'm now obligated to know everything I can. You know, I have to, okay, I know everything. Like, if I make a mistake, it's because I didn't spend the time and energy.

And by adding some surprise to the game and some unknown information, you're actually allowing your players to relax a little bit because they go, oh, well, I can't know everything, so I don't want to think too far ahead. And that's important because you want your players to not feel obligated, once again, to do things they don't want to do. And having to think too far ahead is just, it hurts. It is hard to do. And some players like it, but it's a minority. And by giving hidden information, you know, and surprise, A, you get great moments. You get moments that you

didn't see coming. And that's a huge part. The human psyche loves surprises, you know. And also, you make sure that players aren't bogged down and forced to kind of slog through things and have to take too long thinking. I mean, another thing is you want to keep your game fast going. The more information people have, the more they feel they have to think. And by doing that, the game takes longer. You know, the less you make your players force, like, they have to think so long before every move, the more brisk the game will go. And once again, the pace of the game is important. You don't want your players wanting the game to go faster. You want the game to go at the speed that they want, or even sometimes just a little tiny bit faster.

And that's okay, as long as they feel that there's some catch-up features, and that they don't need to know everything at the time. Next, strategy. So, if you want your people to play the game more than once, it's important that the following feeling comes through. If I play the game once, I will have a better time the second time I play than the first. I will have a better chance the second time I play than the first. I will have a better chance the third time I play than the second. And it's not even necessarily that it's true.

It's important that they feel that way. And what strategy says is there's things to learn in the game. That the game is deep enough that as I play, I will learn things about it, and I can apply those things to future games. This is really important on games for gamers, by the way, because gamers thrive on strategy. The reason gamers play games again and again and again is they want to test themselves and get better. And so it's very important to add the strategy to your game. A big way to do that, by the way, is when you're playing,

monitor your play test. And make sure, by the way, you play with people that don't always play and people that aren't emotionally connected to you. Ideally, by the way, are people that you know either tangentially

or don't know at all because they don't feel obligated to say nice things to you or your friends will. If your friends know you're working on this really hard, they're less inclined to give you blunt feedback,

which is what you need when you're making a game. But anyway, as you watch playtests. And it's good, by the way, to have some people play more than once. Watch progression. Are people picking things up? Or even within the context of a single game, are they doing things differently by the end of the game than they did at the beginning?

And that's why strategy is so important, is you want people to feel like they should get invested in the game because the game because the game will give something back to them and that's why strategy is really important because it it gives continuity to the game and it gives a building of leveling we talk about this a lot in gaming and that um you'll see this in video gaming and dnd and such that the idea of leveling is really important where over time i progressively get better. And leveling naturally happens in life, and it happens in games where it's like,

I have experience where I kind of go up levels. I've learned things. I'm better because I've learned them. And that even games that don't actually have leveling built into them do have this natural leveling, and that's important to reinforce because it's a big thing that drives people to play. Next is fun.

Now, a lot of people said, aren't the other things fun? And what I mean by that is, when you play your game, that you want to make sure there's something about the game that sort of tickles the subconscious, if you will, meaning that when you say to people what's fun, it's hard for people to put their finger on what's fun. Different things are fun and things aren't fun. And kind of what this category says is,

look, play the game. You have to honestly ask yourselves, and you can ask your playtesters too, but is it fun? Are you having fun? And it's very common when people are playtesting their own games that they go, well, I'm not having fun, but... And whenever you're like, I'm not having fun, but... you're in trouble.

The game... A game to really succeed, there has to be some germ of it that just tickles something that just goes, ooh, this is... I enjoy doing this. And you have to make sure not to be too cerebral,

that you have to think emotionally. As a game designer, you can't just think cerebrally. You have to think emotionally. Games are about having fun. Fun is an emotional response. You have to think about the emotional response of your player base. When they play your game, what kind of responses are they doing?

A really good, when you're watching a playtest, especially when you're watching but not participating, watch how much people laugh. That's a really good sign, you know, that people laughing means they're having a good time. You know, and also, another big way of fun is when people, when you ask whether they want to play it again or not, usually games that are more fun, just, do you want to play this again?

Yes, I want to play this again. You know, that fun is one of the major things along the strategy that drives people back to playing again, you know. And like I said, it's very easy when you're thinking about it to be super cerebral. You got to go from the gut sometimes. And when you're playtesting people, ask the question, was this fun? Why was this fun? Why wasn't this fun? You know, and it's very easy for people. I know people that avoided fun in their game design, meaning they go, well, of course it'd be fun, it's a game. That's not a given. You need to make sure that happens. Next is flavor. So the thing to me that's most important about flavor, interestingly enough, is that I talk about how you want to play into human nature,

and that, just as I do with piggybacking, flavor is a good example, that, you know, usually elements of your flavor are going to be tying to known things. You might be in a particular genre. Magic is into fantasy, for example, and that, you know, when you come to magic, if you know anything about fantasy, and everybody knows something about fantasy, you know dragons, maybe elves or goblins or dwarves or, you know, there's just lots of little things that you've picked up along the way. And that when you come in the game and you see things you know, I have dragons

being a good example. I mean, dragons are the number one creature type. All are pulling. Dragons always win. Why? Because people know what dragons are and they have a nice majestic feel to them. And that when you're playing a game about fantasy, you go, well, of course I have dragons. Dragons are like defined fantasy for a lot of people.

But the important thing, no matter what your game is, is that you want to make sure that you take the bits and pieces and give them some sort of social connectivity. That resonance is very important. That if I say,

oh, well the goal of this game is to drive your opponent from 20 to 0, okay, I mean that means something. But if I say, you're battling. That's their life. You are driving them down to 0 until they barely can walk. And then people go, oh, I see.

And all of a sudden, the context of two planeswalkers battling in a duel of magic is really, really important for the game. You know what I'm saying? And that, it gives context to everything, you know, that it helps you remember what things are. You know, if magic just had

generic spell names, and, you know, there's no flavor to it, you wouldn't remember what's where, you couldn't track things, you couldn't... Like, a lot of what we do in Magic is like, well, because we know it's this flavor, all this stuff becomes instant. You know.

And then a lot of complexity is simplified because we piggyback on information the opponent knows or the player knows. And that is very important. Also, flavor is... I mean, we were talking about the design aesthetic, the Vorthos end of the spectrum, and a lot of people have the Vorthos in them,

is that there's something about just feeling connected to something because it kind of makes sense that's really important. And that people want to have a general sense of, oh, I see why it works that way. And whatever your game is, try to pick something that, A, captures the essence of what your game is. And good game design, by the way, flavor is worked into the design. It's not

an afterthought. It's worked in as you make it. And second, make sure that the flavor is something that people will enjoy unto itself. You know, that, I mean, yeah, you can make a game about, you know, some boring topic like types of razor blades or something. Somehow,

all my examples of bad things are like sharp objects. I don't know why. Some might think sharp objects are boring. So anyway, flavor is crucial. Flavor is crucial because it both simplifies your game to understand it, and it adds the fun element. It adds the human connection, and it gets people to instantly go, oh, I know it, and it adds the fun element. It adds the human connection, and it gets people to instantly go, oh, I know that, and it gets them involved in the game faster. Finally, the last thing your game needs is a hook. Now, I almost didn't put this in when I talked to the kids, because the kids weren't selling their game. The kids were just making a game for class, and so really for them, it wasn't super important., if you're making a game outside of, you know, for a class, odds are, you want to sell the game

ultimately. And the thing I try to explain to people is, you can't ignore the fact, if you're trying to sell a game, that you're trying to sell a game. That something about your game has to have what I call a hook to it, which means, when you're trying to get

something interesting in the game, something about it has to go, hey, here's something that either you haven't played before or combines two things you have done but never in that combination or has some flavor that's unique. There's something about it in which the audience member goes, oh, I haven't played that game. That game has some element to it that is new and different.

Now, the hook doesn't necessarily need to be the most compelling element of your game. A lot of people think it does, and in some ways it's nice when it does, but it's not crucial. And I know there are games, for example, that have pushed certain flavor they thought would draw people in, and the flavor matched the game, but definitely the flavor flavor they thought would draw people in.

And the flavor matched the game, but definitely the flavor was a hook to draw people in. I know other games where there's some component or some, and I know a lot of games these days like to have some physical thing that's kind of a new thing. The important thing to me is just understand you are selling your game. And the way I describe this to people is, let's say you're making a movie. You have to know what your poster is. You know, they talk about this in screenwriting. Like, you have to make sure that when you want to sell your script,

that you say, oh, well, there's some movie poster you could put up. People go, ooh, that sounds interesting. And your game kind of has to have a movie poster in that regard, that there's something about it that people go, oh, well, I'm interested. I would like to try that. And if you can do that, then, I mean, you just can't ignore

selling your game when you make the game. That's kind of what I'm trying to say, is that you do have to think about the poster. You have to think about the ad. You have to think about the box, you know. And that, like I said, don't let that rule the game. If you want to make a good game, don't make a good game despite the hook. Make the good game involving the hook, or don't force the hook to be more than it's supposed to be.

But it is important when selling a game that you have a component that sells it. And that, just to be honest, a lot of what I talk about when I talk about design is the crafter design, but there's a little bit of the business of design. I'm not getting too much into components and I mean, there's a lot of the business side. Maybe one day I do a podcast on that, but, um, anyway, so I am at work. So I hope you enjoyed today. It seems a little bit different. Um, I mean, there's a little bit of magic in there, but it was a little more generic. Uh, I'm kind of curious to see what people think. Uh. I mean, these podcasts will all tie into magic on some level.

But from time to time, I like to stretch a little bit. And like I said, I know people were very interested in this article, so I'm kind of curious what people think of the podcast. You know, I would like some feedback because, you know, did I say enough that wasn't in the article? Did I give some examples that were new?

Anyway, I'm very curious. So anyway, it looks like it's time to go make the Magic Cards. Thanks for joining me, guys.