Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #174 - Meeting Expectations

Episode Date: November 14, 2014

Mark talks about making design that the audience would expect.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today's topic was spawned by questions on my blog over the last couple months. So, one of the things that I talk a lot about... Anyway, so the topic today is meeting expectations. So, one of the things... here's where this conversation came from. So on my blog, I talk a lot in my column and on my podcast and my blog about how, what we call resonance, and how that you want to do what the audience expects up to a certain point, that there's a sense of comfort.

And so what happens is we will do something and then players will assume that we're doing the lowest hanging fruit sometimes we do do the lowest hanging fruit because low hanging fruit is tasty but we don't always do it so recent examples would be Theros, so in Theros

I mentioned there was an enchantment component and so a lot of people said oh they're finally doing an enchantment set and they imagined like Mirrod people said, oh, they're finally doing an enchantment set, and they imagined, like, Mirrodin for enchantments. I did a whole podcast on this. And so what happens is, when we do something that isn't what they think, then, like, wait a minute, you are failing to meet our expectations. So I want to talk today a little bit about expectations,

because it is important to meet expectations, but in the same sense, one of your roles is to, well, you'll see, I'll explain today. Okay, so I've talked about, I did a whole bunch of podcasts on communication theory, so a refresher because it's important to today's conversation. fresher because it's important to today's conversation. So in communications theory, I explain that there are three main things you need to do, that you need a sense of comfort, you need a sense of surprise, and you need a sense of completion. Those are the three things in communications you make sure to hit. So today, I talked a lot about those things because expectations. So part of expectations is comfort. Oh, you know, Theros, for example, the comfort level, interestingly, was not meant to be the enchantment. The enchantments were meant as an added flavor element. The comfort of Theros was supposed to be, we're doing Greek mythology. What would you expect Greek mythology to be?

Well, I would expect gods. Well, we got gods. I expect heroes and monsters. Well, we have heroes and monsters. You know, that every set needs to have certain comfort. But I think people are extrapolating some of the stuff I'm saying to assume things that are not true.

So part of today is to clarify this. Which is, you do want your audience to feel comfortable, which means you need to do a number of things so your audience has some expectation that you can meet those expectations. But remember, one of the three things is surprise. The goal is not to have everything be what you know.

So let me move over to movies as an example here. When people come to the theater, they want to know what kind of movie to expect. So I'll use my standard romantic comedy. So let's say you see a poster and it's clearly it's a romantic comedy. Well, I have expectations. If I come and there's not two people and they're not sort of, you know, if I'm not getting a romantic comedy where which two people are, you know, are they right for each other or wrong for each other or they hate each other or whatever, something where I go, Ooh, I'm gonna watch these two people get together. Um, probably through some comedy. Uh, there's a, there's a certain amount of comfort in that the, the format requires something. The format requires, okay, this is a story about two people

coming together, maybe not coming together, but usually coming together, in which, you know, there's a humorous sort of tone to it, okay? And there's a bunch of different ways the story can play out, but I want to have some general sense of, okay, I'm seeing a romantic comedy. But the goal of a movie is not necessarily to give people what they expect constantly. Like, you have to meet some level of expectations. Romantic comedy.

But maybe the romantic comedy plays out in a way that's different than you've ever seen before. It's important whenever you create something that you don't want to just hit every note beat for beat that the audience understands. That you need to surprise them. And that's true in game design as well, which is, I want some sense of comfort. Meaning, when I do something, I want you to get a general sense of what we're doing.

And Theros was a good example where the comfort level really was about the flavor of what we were doing. We were doing Greek World. Now, the interesting thing was, we had done something that we had not done ever. I mean, one could argue Orzisaga did it, but people really wanted an enchantment-heavy block.

And so, a component of the block was enchantments. Now, maybe, part of this was on me that I needed to explain better what set expectations. I mean,

there's some of that. But, one of the things that's important is you want to make sure with your audience that you would do, I mean,

like I said, you want to set your expectations correctly so your audience has some sense of what to expect. Concept Arc here is a real good example, which was, we were not making a wedge block. I knew the audience, once they heard the first set was a wedge set, would assume we were making a wedge block. There's been a lot of desire for us to make a wedge block. So it was really important

to set expectations up front and saying, guys, this set is a wedge set. This block, not a wedge block. That's not what we're doing. We're doing something a little different. So number one, I guess what I'm saying today is you want to make sure that you build into your design something where the audience can have some expectation and you meet those expectations. That is important. So for example, take ContraTurk here. There were just some cycles, you know, charms, the tri-tap lands. There's some things that we knew we were going to do, you know, the legendary creatures for commander, you know, there's some things that like, oh, you're doing a wedge set. Well, I expect you would do A, B, and C. Well, we want to make sure some of that is true. Well, I expect you would do A, B, and C.

Well, we want to make sure some of that is true. But, and here's the key, you don't need to hit all of it. You need to hit some of it. The key to comfort is not that everything is known. The key to comfort is that some is known. And so when we say we're doing wedge, we're on the hook to do some things people expect with wedge. Not necessarily everything.

And, for example, let me talk about the ultimatums for a second, because this was a big issue, was people were like, oh, well last time you guys did Tricolor, you did the ultimatums, one of which was a huge tournament card. So one of the things that we looked, we actually considered doing the ultimatums, but what we found was, we didn't have tons of space. Remember, the Azphan of the Multicolor was lower

in the set than it was in both Return to Ravnica and Shards of alara um so we're like okay we don't have tons of rare spells let's use them wisely and what we said is you know what let's try to make rare spells like actually making it constructed because you know spells that are two cc ddee whoo i mean yeah cruel ultimatum made it because it was so good and and also remember the mana at the time allowed all sorts of shenanigans that the mana now will not allow. We really were a little bit overcommitted on the mana, and it became a little too easy to get lots of different colors.

And so we knew those expectations. Once again, remember, anything we did before, people would anticipate maybe we'll do again. That since we did a shard set, when we do a wedge set, people are going, ooh, I want every single thing you did in shards and wedge. Something that we have to deliver on, and that's important, you know. But what I'm saying is, you actually fail as a designer if all you do is meet pre-known expectations. You know, if we had literally just taken Shards of Alara, taken the same template, and just redid it on Wedge,

I'm not saying that nobody wouldn't like that. There are people that would like that. But we have an obligation over and above that, that part of what the expectations are is a sense of comfort and giving you things you would expect to be there. But another part of it is making sure that there's some things you would expect to be there. But, another part of it is making sure that there's some things you don't expect.

You know, and part of making things you don't expect is, you know, not doing everything you expect. We need to leave ourselves some room. I mean, uh, especially, so, remember, had this issue where we were doing a lower as fan, which meant we just had less gold cards. So, the set that Darkyr had this issue where we were doing a lower as fan,

which meant we just had less gold cards. So the set that we were, people wanted to compare us to, Shards of Alara, had more gold cards. So we couldn't do everything they did. We just had less gold cards. In addition,

there's other things we wanted to do. Like in Constant Darkyr, for example, you know, there's a large component that had to do with the time travel where, you know, morph plays a component of that. And there's things we're doing where there's other stuff going on beyond just the multicolor. One of the things when I talk about sort of

a shift from fourth age to fifth age in design is that one of the things that we used to do in design was the design was all about X. That was a very common thing. What's this set? It's all about X. And we would explore every, you know, we would dig down deep on X. Was X artifacts? Was X tribal? Was X multicolor?

What was it? We were just going deep on whatever that thing was. And one of the things we started to do now is that we've started, we're really, really trying to make the story and the environment something where, back in the day, it was like, it's Artifact World, you know, and that was kind of the center. We'd shape a world to make sense with Artifact World. But now we're doing more of tone and feel and like it's a horror world. Well, in order to capture this world, we have to be a little more fine-tuned in how we're doing our mechanics.

And the idea is where once upon a time our mechanics were the canvas, if you will, they are now the paints, to use a metaphor. That once upon a time it's like this is the artifact block. Everything's about artifacts. So this is the artifact block. Everything's about artifacts. So this is the graveyard block. Wherein, if you look at something like Innistrad, graveyard was a component. It was a paint to paint on, but it was not the canvas. It's not like graveyard set, things about graveyard, everything graveyard.

It was more like things about horror. We're trying to capture a mood and a tone, and then we use our mechanical space to help sort of shade that and give it feel and texture and depth. But what that means is that because we are not doing mechanics as canvas anymore, we have to pick and choose

what we are exploring. And that's an important thing. I mean, one of the things is, and this is in general, as you shift, getting your audience used to the thing that you're shifting towards. Like one of the things about magic is magic is over 20 years old. We are constantly evolving. That the way we design magic today is not the way we designed magic five years ago. And that

one of the things that the audience that we want enough similarity that you get that it's magic. We don't want you to come and go, what game is this? Like, for example, I could take the rules of magic and make a game that technically you would know how to play because I'm using the rules of magic, but I'm not using enough things that are common that it would seem really disorienting, really, really disorienting. And one of the things we want to be careful of is the goal of design. For example, I'll use a little segue.

One of the things you can do in design is you can take the tools of a color to do things the color's not supposed to do. For example, I could make a sorcery that makes a 1-1 token with death touch that when it comes into play fights target creature. All those are green. Green can make tokens, green can have death touch, green can fight. Okay, now let me walk through what that does. If I do this, I'm going to play it. Barring a zero power creature, I'm going to kill whatever creature the thing fights,

and my 1-1 is going to die. So essentially, I have a spell that kills a creature. Now, there's some people who are like, okay, green can do A, green can do B, green can do C. Good to go. And I'm like, no, no, we're not good to go. The goal of a designer is not to outwit his tools. It is not to make something. Remember, design, the end goal of design is to make something for the audience, not to show how clever you are as a designer.

That when you start showing off what you can do as a designer, I think you tend to do a disservice to the audience. Because what the audience wants is a great play experience. You being clever, when your priority is showing what you can do, you do things for the sake of doing it. What we call showboat, which is you demonstrate, ooh, look what I can do. That is not beneficial for good design. Now, that doesn't mean good design can't impress. It can't mean, like, for example, during Innistrad, in solving the problem of dark transformation, we got to double-faced cards. Well, that's pretty impressive. That's pretty out there. That's really innovative.

I'm not saying that you don't want to have innovation or not do things that might have an impact on your audience, but you should get there honestly. You should get there because it's solving the problem you're trying to solve, not because you're trying to show off. And so one of the things that you have to understand about designs and about meeting the expectations of your audience is they expect something. You need to make sure you have enough of what they expect.

Now, you do want to surprise them, but that surprise has to come from not, ha-ha, they won't expect this, but rather, I need to accomplish something. Oh, here's a way to accomplish it that I haven't done before. And another thing to remember is, in order to have the surprise, it has to come couched

in the comfort. And that's an important thing to remember. Once again, I'll jump to my movie examples, is if the movie's going to do something weird, before it gets weird, it has to ground you in the characters, sometimes in the setting, you know. So, for example, I'll just say Wizard of Oz. Wizard's going to go, well, I'll just say Wizard. Dorothy's going to go on a crazy journey, right?

She's going to Oz. Well, before she does that, we first have to meet the characters. And remember, by the way, because of the setup, we meet all the characters. We even meet, we meet the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion. We get to meet them. We get to meet the characters that are based on first. And we get to meet Dorothy first, and we get to meet her home, and we see where Dorothy's at and what Dorothy's going through. And Dorothy, look, she's just a teenager, and the mean lady wants to

take her dog away. And she's just a teenager and someone's trying to, the mean lady wants to take her dog away, you know, and she just, she's really upset. And we, the person watching, can relate to it. Can we relate to getting caught in a tornado and having our house land on a witch and waking up in the land of Oz? No. Can we relate to, like, someone being mean and someone trying to take away something that is ours and us feeling sort of helpless? Yeah, yeah, we can. And so, The Wizard of Oz

doesn't start with Dorothy waking up and her house has crashed. The first shot of the movie is not she's in Munchkin land going, what happened? Why? Because you need to set up

the comfort first. And Game of Thrones is the same thing, which is you need to make sure that your audience understands the context. I want to make sure that you get this is magic. But, once I've done that, so with any new design, and this is important,

is I have to understand what my comfort is going to be. For example, when I'm doing Theros, I knew my comfort was, I was doing, same with Innistrad. Innistrad and Theros were top-down. Okay, in a top-down set, my comfort is, I'm hitting material I know you know.

You know, when I get, I mean, I'm showing you my version of zombies and vampires and werewolves, but they should have enough connection to your version that you go, oh, they're vampires and werewolves and zombies. In Theros, it's the same thing. You know, we're doing our Tegra Greek mythology, but we wanted enough tropes and enough Greek mythology.

You go, I got it. I got it. They did Greek mythology. Now, something like Khans is interesting. We're going to slightly different. Khans has a little bit, I mean, it's got a little bit of top-down. It's definitely having, having some real world influences, but it plays a lot more on a color pie association of,

okay, you know what these colors are. What happened? We get this combination of colors. So that's something where we are playing into something that people really understand, which is the color wheel and then doing a new version on it. But once again,

every design you have to ask yourself, what am I doing that the audience expects me to do and will be comforting for them? And then what is my surprise? Where is my surprise? And one of the things I get, I think this was coming from my blog, is people sort of listen to me say, talk about resonance and low, you know, low-hanging fruit and assume that what I'm saying is everything should be comfort. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Something should be. I don't want to do something in which you can grab onto anything,

but there has to be some elements of surprise. So when Theros, for example, is doing Greek mythology, you know what? I assume Carte Blanche should do enchantments a little different. Plus, the other point was, the enchantments, if different. Plus, the other point was, the enchantments, if I was, if the

main drive of Thereth block had been, we're making an enchantment block, we would have done very differently. We would have figured out how to make enchantments do the different things we wanted enchantments to do. But that wasn't what we were doing. What we were doing was making a Greek mythology block, inspired, and we were trying

to figure out how to use tools to do that. In enchantments, we needed something to represent the gods, and enchantments seemed like it might be a good place to do that. We made gods. What are gods? Well, enchantment creatures really feel like, okay, I'm this thing that I have this impact on the game, and if a certain condition is met, I take corporeal form. I come down. I'm a god walking on earth.

And the shamans did a really good job of representing the touch of the gods and the feel of the gods. And you really got a sense that these are the creatures of the gods and the creations of the gods. I believe the shamans did a lot of work to cover what they needed to do.

But one of the things that's interesting is I started explaining this over the thought process. I think people go, oh, well, you're telling me you're supposed to meet my expectations. Well, I thought this was true. Now, one of the things, I mean, the lesson for me is, and this is why with cons I've been very careful, is I need to have a better understanding on my end as someone who communicates to my audience what we are up to, and that if I see something where I think they might go astray,

where I go, oh, they might make assumptions that probably aren't going to be true, I try where I can to sort of explain that. I mean, like I said, I wish with Theroux I'd been a little more clear on how the enchantment theme was going to work or made a little more clear

what it wasn't going to be because I was just expecting expectations. But one of the things, sort of my lesson of today or talk about today is that the idea that the audience has to have every expectation

met is false. Every expectation does not need to be met. You know, part of what you're doing as a designer is, some of it is, like remember,

some of it is surprise. Some of it is, I thought I could do A. Ooh, it's B. Like, a big thing in movies they do all the time is where a writer and a director will take a trope, something that people expect, and then turn it on its ear. Or what makes it interesting is you assume something because you were used to the way the stories are made. So, for example, it's a TV show, but I'm going to use a Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So, there was an episode

of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where there was a talent show and, okay, I'm going to ruin a Buffy the Vampire Slayer from 10 years ago, or 11 years ago. Anyway, I apologize.

So, I don't know. Put your fingers in your ear if you've never watched Buffy and Plantea. Anyway, there's a talent show and people, I'm not sure they're getting killed or getting injured, but we're trying to figure out what's going on. Meanwhile, at some point during the show, you realize that there's a ventriloquist in which the dummy is alive.

And immediately, you assume that the bad guy is the dummy. Why? Because everything you've ever seen where a dummy comes to life, he's the bad guy. He's evil, right? So the idea that Joss Whedon played with is, in this thing, he was a good guy, not a bad guy. But that was a big reveal

because every time you'd ever seen a living dummy, they were bad. And so seeing a living dummy that wasn't bad, it played against your expectations. You know? So he took something familiar and then was able to use it in a way to do something interesting with it. And that's my point is, you are not obligated as a designer to make sure that everything you do matches expectations 100%. You are under, you do need to match some expectations,

meaning there's a certain amount of things that you need to match. So for magic, what is that with magic? Let's talk about expectations. Number one is we need to be pretty true to the color pie and the color philosophies. Now, we will stretch a little bit, you know. Innistrad will do red vampires and blue zombies.

We've never before done red vampires or blue zombies. So we get to do a little bit of stretching, but there's some surprise there. But, number one, the colors need to act the way the colors act. That's really important. I don't want all of a sudden in this set, green's all about direct damage. And, you know, red's all about counter-stalling no, no, no, the colors do what they do we try to be consistent we'll bleed a little based on the need of the set

oh, we have a set that cares about the graveyard okay, there's some abilities that certain colors don't do most of the time, but they do do in a graveyard-oriented set second thing we want to do is make sure the card types read correctly, meaning, once again, we can stretch a little bit.

Pharaohs can take auras and bend them a little bit, enchantments and bend them a little bit, but we want cards to work kind of the way you normally expect cards to work, that the card types work

the way they expect them to work. And the third thing is, well, and this, one can argue this just ties into the color pie, but there is a certain style of play that each color has. There's a certain, like, the color pie dictates what it can and can't do. And then on top of that, there is a certain style of play. So one of the things we do is,

we will shake up and change things, but there's defaults. Meaning, you know, red and white are going to get together to have more of an aggro strategy. Maybe we'll make a set one time where in that set, red and white are doing something a little bit different. But we want to make sure that we fall back where, you know, if you don't know, one of the things about a magic set is, let's say you know nothing. You walk in, you've never seen a card before. And then you sit down and you read the cards and you start to play. You build your deck.

You know, you're playing sealed. We want to make sure that there's some things you already learned about magic that you can apply every time. Now, they don't have to be the same things. But every time, we want to make sure that if you know magic and you've played magic, you have some skills you've learned that will apply and you can play. Now, sometimes what will happen is one aspect won't play the same. You know, every single set, kind of what we want to do is take some part of magic that you think you understand and shake it up a bit. And that's a surprise, you know. But the reason the surprise works is because there's a layer of comfort. But

once again, the key is that you want to have a nice balance between enough comfort that it is what you expect, that it's the game of magic, and enough surprise that it's like, okay, this isn't you know, Constant Archer isn't Theros. Theros isn't Return to Ravnica. Return to Ravnica isn't Innistrad.

That every year our goal is to sort of twist and push things in a new direction. So, by the way, so I don't want to leave completion out. So you need your comfort and you need your surprise. What completion said is once you set up what you are doing, then you create more expectations. So you meet expectations in two ways. You meet them up front by having some sense of comfort and doing some things the audience expects. And then you have some sense of completion.

So where completion comes in magic is, for example, cycles are a good thing. Where once we do a cycle, once you see that we've done two cards and you get we're doing a cycle, now you have expectation. So, for example, Ravnica is a good example where we will do something in set, first set, and we only have some of the guilds. You know, in Ravnica we had four of the guilds. In Turn Ravnica we had five of the guilds.

But you know, okay, some of what I'm seeing will be duplicated. In Constant Turk here, okay, we're setting up this faction structure, but once you see what we do in one faction, you start getting a sense of what factions are doing. Now, not every faction does what every other faction does, but there's enough overlap.

You're like, okay, I get it. Factions are going to have, you know, they're going to have their charm and their certain land mixes and their legend and their rare enchantment. And, you know, there'll be things that we set up. They go, okay, I see the balance, I see how it's being structured.

And that part of making sure the audience has the sense of satisfaction is twofold. It comes partly from the comfort, but partly from the completion. But remember, the completion is, once I've set something up and they experience it, then they follow through on what to expect. So they walk in with expectation, and once they walk in and learn about things and they

have new expectations, you do have to meet both those expectations. You know what I'm saying? But I think the key, and this is where a lot of discussions happen on my blog, is having to meet some expectation is not having to meet every expectation. In fact, I believe that art is not at its best if every expectation is met. That if I go see a romantic comedy, I want to see some tweak on the romantic comedy. I want to see something where somebody's doing something that, oh, I haven't seen that before, or that's an interesting take on that, or, ooh, they took an expectation and twisted it a little bit.

You know, that's part of the fun of, part of the fun of seeing a movie is that you know the basic outline, you know the archetype they're playing around with, but if the person who's doing it doesn't mess at all, doesn't have anything that's new they bring to the table, well, you're like, well, I just, you know, I don't want to see a movie I've seen exactly before. I want to see a movie that's like movies I've seen before, where I have some expectation, you know, and then I want to be surprised a little bit. And once the movie or the story sets up what it is doing, I then have expectation for how it's going to end. And unless I'm really trying to do something specific,

mostly you want to meet that expectation. The type of stories as being cathartic, where, so one of the things about movies, I had a good teacher explain this to me, is why is it important? Why is the happy ending so important? Why is having sort of, and the reason is something they call catharsis, which is that movies and entertainment in general is called escapism, which is I have problems in my life. Why would I want to go see a movie?

Because I want to escape from my problems. And one of the things that's nice is life doesn't always tie things up in a neat little bow. Not that there aren't happy endings in life, but they're not as easy as concrete. They're not as simple. Life is just a lot more complex. And so it is nice to go see something where you find somebody, you get to empathize with them, and that through that person, you get to see them find the happy ending. You get to see things work out for them. And that says to you, it's a

sense of comfort, you know, that when you're able to see that says to you, it's a sense of comfort. You know, that when you're able to see that. So let's apply that same sense to games, since we're talking about games, is games is a sense of challenge, a sense of you want

to test yourself. Well, the one important thing is you want to make sure that your audience will be able to win. Not all the time. You know, the part of what makes

a game fun is not that they, you know, if you always win every time you play, You know, the part of what makes a game fun is not that they, you know, if you always win every time you play, you know, tic-tac-toe loses a thrill where you're like,

I'm never going to lose. I know what to do. But, on the same sense, if you can never win, like one of the problems that a lot of people have with chess is

that, you know, when they start playing, they lose every time they play against a better player. Unless they can find someone else that's

equally bad, that means they're just going to keep losing. And there's only so many times you can lose a game if you're like, okay, I'm not playing this to feel like I'm dumb, you know. The part of playing a game, cathartically, is to go, ha ha, you know, life has many

challenges. I've overcome these challenges. Look what I can do, you know. And that part of playing a game is you want to have, you want your game player to have a catharsis through what they're doing, and part of playing games is feeling of having a sense of accomplishment

in a life where you don't always have accomplishments, or not as easy. Same reason watching the hero get the girl in a romantic comedy, or the girl get the hero, or the guy get the girl, the girl get the guy, either could be the hero, obviously, you know, watching that happens makes you feel good, even if you don't have a relationship, because you're like, I feel like relationships are possible by watching this, I too one day will get a relationship, because I see, you know, it can happen, and in the game, it's like

I can overcome things, I can, can you know and like I've talked about in the Psychic Graphics kind of what experience you're trying to get out of it varies from person to person but I do believe that it's like every Psychic Graphic

wants to win because every Psychic Graphic just wants to have because the goal winning is the goal of the game and so different people

care how much they win you know Johnny is definitely someone who's like, I'm doing something crazy, and I don't expect to win a lot, but I want to win some. And the great moment of joy for Johnny a lot of times is, I did it.

I've told the story, but I don't know if I've ever told it on my podcast, but, like, I used to build crazy decks back before I started Roof for Wizards. I was an uber Johnny. And, like, I built a deck where the goal of the deck was I would win by casting the card Tunnel. I would kill you with Tunnel. I wanted to say I cast Tunnel, I win, or you lose. Well, how do you do that?

I built a whole deck in which, you know, I make this crazy wall, then I make super big, and then I give it to you, and I put something on it so when it's destroyed, it does damage its controller, but I build it up and give it to my opponent. And then I destroy it. And they lose.

Because I tunneled. Tunnel destroys target wall, for those who don't know what tunnel does. Destroy target wall. I wanted to play a card that said destroy target wall and win the game. Hard to do. And you know what? I didn't win a lot of times. But whatever.

Do you know how hard it is to win with a card tunnel? Pretty hard. And so the fact that I won sometimes, just's a few times, with a giant victory. That's a big part of it. You, the game designer, are trying to make sure that your audience has the sense of catharsis that gets to have their victories and gets to do the thing that's important to them.

And in order to do that, you need to do the presentation stuff I'm talking about today. But that it is important that when meeting expectations, what I'm trying to stress today is they, A, want to expect some stuff that they walk in expecting, you know, and B, they want to expect some stuff that once you've shown what you're doing, they want to follow along

and figure out where you're going. But also, they want you to throw some curveballs at them. They want you to do some stuff that they didn't see coming. That if you do a design, and when the design is over, they go, wow, there's nothing here that I didn't expect. That's also, you are not meeting expectations. So that's my point of today, is there are three different expectations you have to meet, which tie very neatly to the communication theory. And that is, you have to comfort them, and they expect it, and you have to do it. You have to surprise them. They expect them, and you have to do it.

And you have to complete what you're doing. They expect it, and you have to do it. Those, my friends, are what you need to do. Those are the expectations you have to meet. Anyway, I've just parked my car. So guys, I very much thank you for listening to me, but this is the end of my drive to work. I'll talk to you guys next time.