Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #269 - Breaking Rules

Episode Date: October 9, 2015

Magic is a game that often breaks its own rules. Today's podcast talks about when, why, and how you should break the rules in game design.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today's topic, breaking the rules. So, one of the things about any creative endeavor, we'll use drive to work as a perfect example, is there's structure to it. So, for example, every day I start, I'm pulling on my driveway, and I have my little end, and then there's a structure to it. I'm driving to work. I have a single topic. And then there's a structure to it. I'm driving to work. I have a single topic.

I often talk about how restrictions breed creativity, but restrictions are also important in just the audience wants to understand what the thing is. You need that kind of rules and such. But having rules, at some point you're going to break your rules. I mean, Magic, for example, is a game that breaks its own rules. Magic's all about you can't do thing X

until a card says you can, and then all of a sudden you can. So the big question I get for people is, okay, I want to make creative things, or design magic cards, or whatever. When is it okay to break the rules? Why is breaking the rules okay at some time and not at others?

And one of the things I've discovered is, one of the things I tend to use my column for is to explain the rules. So like, I'll talk about, okay, here's how we design land cards, or here's how we design multicolor cards. I'll explain something. And then at some point, I do something

that violates the thing I explained, is the rules. And so, like I said, one of the big things is breaking rules for the city, breaking rules is bad. So today I'm going to talk about when you should break rules

and when you shouldn't break rules. So I think I want to jump back and forth between reasons you should and reasons you shouldn't. So reasons you shouldn't. Number one, the reason you shouldn't is you shouldn't break a rule solely to break the rule. I know there's people sometimes when they design, they're like, you can never do X. I'm going to do X. And the desire to do it solely comes from, hey, people love doing things they can't do. I'm going to do it. And that usually gets you in trouble. That if your impetus for breaking a rule is the rule breaking itself, you're not coming from a good place. So let's do the first do. So one of the things is when you are working and you're trying to design something, when you're playtesting and doing design,

you need to have the freedom to break the rules. So, for example, when we were doing Innistrad, I wanted to do werewolves. I wanted to do werewolves. Like, I knew if we could do werewolves well, like a lot of Innistrad hinged on how well could we do werewolves, because werewolves were something we really hadn't done much in Magic, we'd only done a couple cards, and

none of them were really good. If we could definitively do werewolves in a way that really felt like werewolves. So Tom Lepilli had been working on another game, he was on my design team, he was the development representative for the team, he'd been working on Duel Masters, another game we make, and in that game, they had these cards that had stuff

on both sides of the card. So he said, hey, werewolves, you can do both sides of the card. Now the interesting thing is, I didn't, my first inclination was not like, yeah, let's put it on the back side of the card. But Tom said, well, we want to solve the problem. Here is a solution

to the problem. Maybe not the only solution, but a solution. And so what I said is, you are correct. This does solve the problem we were trying to solve. So let's try it. And the point was, I didn't, we didn't put double-faced cards in Innistrad because we're like, ooh, let's make double-faced cards.

We put double-faced cards in Innistrad because we were trying to solve a problem. It was one solution. Now, it wasn't the only solution. We tried other things. There were multiple things we tried. But what I said was, I'm not going to discount this because it's breaking a rule. I'm going to play with it first and see how it goes. So one of the big pluses is you should not break the rule to break the rule, but you should allow yourself to break rules if by breaking them you do something that solves a problem you have.

Now, once again, that doesn't mean there's a big difference between what you should explore in design and what you should release. There's a lot of things I've tried. Like, for example, if a battle for Zen in the car, I tried a lot of really weird things with the Eldrazi because I was trying to come up with weird things for the Eldrazi. And we did things that I don't know if we ever should do, but we

tried them. We did a lot of weird, quirky things. And so, but it is important that you are willing to try things. But breaking rules should come from trying to solve problems and allowing yourselves to go outside the box to solve them. Now, I talked about this before. This is my quote. I always say to Brian Tinsman, which is, before you go outside the box,

look inside the box. Meaning, if you can solve your problem and you don't need to break the rules, you shouldn't be breaking the rules. You know, if I can solve my problem easily within the confines of the rules, I shouldn't break the rules to solve the problem. And a good example is, with wearables, we tried a lot of

different things. We tried other avenues, and what we found was, the double-faced cards was so far ahead, the best solution, that I embraced it. But had we had another solution that was one-sided, that didn't require the back, that worked just as well, I would have taken that solution.

I wouldn't have done double-faced cards. Just the novelty of them alone. Be careful of novelty. Novelty is very dangerous. It's sexy. It's exciting. It definitely will get people talking. But the reason I believe that double-faced cards, and for those that don't remember,

when Innistrad came out, they were controversial. People were like, you can't do that. You're breaking a rule that magic is never broken. That the back is the back. And even within Wizards, there were a lot of people that thought we were just breaking a rule we should never break.

But the reason I felt so, the reason I defended the choice so strongly was it really, really provided us gameplay and did something for the set that I could not achieve elsewhere. I really liked the idea of dark transformation because we were doing horror, and just

the idea of, it's a vampire and you flip it over and now it's a bat and it goes back and forth between vampire and bat, or it's a bat and it goes back and forth between vampire and bat. Or it's a scientist that's messing around and turns into a fly mutation. Or it's a little girl that gets possessed and she's a demon. You know, all these cool tropes.

You know, it's the scientist that becomes, you know, Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. High. Like, all those, there are all these tropes that were built into horror where it's like kind of this innocent thing becomes this not-so-innocent thing. Or, in other cases, like the vampire and the bat. They were both, I guess, not-so-good things.

But there are a lot of transformations built into horror. Horror played off transformation a lot. And so the idea of using that as a tool was really powerful. But the reason I used it was I tried all sorts of other ways to do the same thing and I couldn't achieve the effect. That's when I broke the rule. I broke the rule when I said, okay, I've tried different things and this is the most efficient way to do it.

Okay, another important thing about breaking rules is you have to understand what your bearing walls are. So let me explain what that means. I've talked about this metaphor before. You're an architect. You are building your building. Now, every once in a while, the architect might go, you know what, this wall, I'm getting rid of this wall.

And that's fine. Maybe it'll look better if it's bigger or something. But certain walls are what they call bearing walls, which means the support for the building is built into that wall. That that wall, structurally, in order to hold a house up, there are certain points that have to be there because it's structurally holding the bearing. They call those bearing walls.

And the reason a bearing wall is important is you can't knock out a bearing wall. The reason is, if you knock out a bearing wall, well, guess what? It's what's holding the house up. The house comes tumbling down. So metaphorically, you have to understand design what your bearing walls are. What are the things

that are holding up your design? And those things you can't willy-nilly just take away. So that's the next thing when you're breaking your rules.

Understand what is important and not important to your design. You know, things that are cosmetic can come down. Things that are functional and are doing

important work, you've got to make sure to keep them there. So I'll move to a different metaphor. I talk about this a lot, the idea of writing a script, writing a movie, let's say. And one of the things I've talked a lot about is a good movie doesn't have any scene that doesn't need to be there. That every scene has a purpose. And if you can take your movie and you can pull out a scene

and the movie works just as well, or usually better, but even just as well, without it, you pull it. But the same sense is there are bearing walls to the script. You can't pull the big climax out of the movie. You need that. You can't pull certain exposition to explain things. You need that. So you have to be careful where you pull things.

And in general, one of the things about breaking rules is understand what the rule is breaking and where the damage it causes. So, for example, in magic, it has a lot to do with the color pie and a lot to do with identities of the colors, which is there are certain things colors are supposed to do and certain things they're not supposed to do. Well, breaking a rule where you let colors do something that they're inherently supposed to be weak at

causes problems. That's a bearing wall. That the color wheel in Magic, one of the most important things about it is it keeps all the cards from going in the same deck. That it does this important thing of saying, hey, there's a lot of cards, but you can't, you know, the mana system says it's really hard to play all the colors. You got to choose what colors you want to play.

And then different strengths go in different colors and different weaknesses are put in different colors to make sure that every color, you know, has answers or has problems with things so that there's a robust system. The second you start saying, you know what, I'm going to break the rule that red can't do this or green can't do that, you start undermining that. And so another thing when you're breaking rules is you have to understand what rules you're breaking and what impact they'll have. So go back to Innistrad, which was, you know, Innistrad had double-faced cards. Did that inherently break something?

Well, on some level, magic has one-sided cards for a reason. We had to solve the problem because not everybody's going to sleaze, for example. So what happens if you have this card in your deck? Well, it's double-faced. What does that mean? And that's when we came up with the checklist cards

that you would go and replace of it. And I remember originally I had cards that you would have a one-sided card that went and got the double-sided card, but we couldn't get them in the packs together, so they ended up being unfeasible. So I'll use Drive to Work as an example. So one day,

Matt Cavada needed a ride to work. And I was like, hmm, normally the structure of my podcast is a single person. I'm by myself talking. But it's kind of cool. I mean, I'm driving to work.

There's another person. Well, what if I did a podcast where I had a carpool guest? And so we tried it. I didn't know whether it would work or not, but I recorded it. I said, okay, let's try this. And I said, if it fails miserably, well then, okay, I won't do that again. But I tried it. It went really well. People really liked me having a guest.

And so much so, they're like, you should have more guests. And I keep having to go, I'm actually driving to work. But I am trying. The funny thing now is more often people are saying, hmm, could I be a guest on your podcast? And I'm like, you could. You just got to drive my house. So, but anyway, I think

one of the things you will find is more and more people, as the podcast gets more popular, I have more people going, hmm, maybe I would drive to your house to be on your podcast. So anyway, I'm hoping to get some more guests down the road. I have a bunch of people who claim they'll drive to my house. They haven't driven to my house yet, so no promises. But it's a good example

where I was breaking something about the thing. It didn't break the fundamental structure. The idea is I'm driving to work and giving you a podcast. Well, people carpool, you know, it's it's thematically fit in with what I was doing. I mean, you know, Kavada was going to work. It wasn't like I was I was just picking a random person up. Okay, he needed to go to work. We were carpooling anyway. And it ended up being kind of a cool podcast. And obviously, it's something we've done many times since. Okay, so make sure you understand about sort of what rules you're breaking. That's very important.

Okay, next, something not to do is don't break rules for shock value. This is kind of tied into the last do not, but let me explain. It's a little bit different. Sometimes people, like for example, imagine it's a game that breaks its own rules. And one of the ways to make exciting cards is just do something that people are like,

I can't believe they did that. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't make cards that say, I can't believe they did that. And that doesn't mean we shouldn't make cards that say, I can't believe you do that. But the impetus can't be the shock value. And one of the things you have to be careful of is the audience enjoys being shocked. The audience enjoys doing something you don't normally do. That there's a lot of novelty.

I mean, one of the things that Magic does is we keep making new cards. Why do we keep making new cards? I mean, there's a whole bunch of reasons, but one of the reasons is it's just fun to have new things, and it's fun to play with stuff you haven't played with before. And one of our jobs is to keep sort of reinventing things

and have mechanics you've never seen before and have cards you've never seen before. So there's a lot of pressure to do things that are just kind of shocking. And there's people, I have, I have designers that will make cards from time to time. And I'm like, oh, well, you're right, that's shocking. But there's a reason we don't do that. Or you are shocking. Like, here's another good example, where is sometimes someone will do something, and it's crazy over over the top and I'm like, you know what? I'm not against this card in a vacuum

but what does this card have to do with the rest of the set? Meaning you kind of broke a rule but why? You know, Innistrad broke a rule broke the double face rule because it was trying to do dark transformation. And it wasn't just like a one-off card. It was something the set was doing. It was playing to a larger theme of what was

going on. But sometimes someone's like, I'm going to break a card. It was something the set was doing. It was playing into a larger theme of what was going on. But sometimes someone's like, I'm going to break a rule. They're like, oh, okay. I'm not against breaking that rule, but is here the right place to break the rule? So that's another big question is, are you breaking the rule in the right place at the right time? Is it serving what you're doing? Because there are rules we will break and I'm willing to break, but a particular card is breaking at the wrong time. A lot of times what happens is I'm going to break, but a particular card is breaking at the wrong time.

A lot of times what happens is someone will break a rule, and I'll go, oh, that's interesting. I wouldn't mind breaking this rule, but if we're going to dedicate a set, let's just not break a rule, break it once. If we're going to break it, like, one of the other things is, when you're breaking a rule, understand what confusion

the rule breaking creates. Because every time you do something you haven't done rule, understand what confusion the rule breaking creates. Because every time you do something you haven't done, it will cause confusion because people learn things. For example, the double-faced, this is the easiest one here. You know what? There's not two faces on a card. You know, there's one face. Like split cards, for example,

when I did an innovation where I had two cards on one card. Well, that was cool, and it was sexy, but notice we didn't make one split card. You know, we made five split cards. We sort of said, okay, we're going to do it in the theme. And I didn't do split cards anywhere.

I did them in a multicolored set, and I did them so they were two colors. I said, hey, this is a multicolored set. We have a multicolored theme. Split cards are much more interesting if there were two colors. I mean, I said, hey, this is a multicolor set. We have a multicolor theme. Split cards are much more interesting if they're different colors. You know, if you can have two effects in the same color. I know we did this in Planet of Chaos, but much less exciting.

I mean, you can make a card that kind of can do two things. It's a lot harder to make a card that says, I'm a red card or I'm a green card. That's a lot harder to do. So we put them in a place where they made sense. Yes, there was shock value, but we weren't doing it solely for the shock value. We were saying, hey, this makes sense in where it is, you know. And like I said, there's a time and a place for breaking the rules. And you have to know where the time and where the place is. It's okay to break a rule. I mean, once again, be careful which rule you break, but it's okay to break something, but you need to have a higher purpose to what you're doing and you need to know

when and where you're doing it. Often when you're breaking a rule, by the way, so this is the important point, is you will cause confusion. The first time somebody sees something, sees a split card, sees a double-faced card, just sees a card that's not a normal-looking magic card, they have to wrap their minds around it and understand what it does. So first off, you've got to make sure when you break a rule that it's making sense. Like split cards, for example, the reason I was really happy with split cards is there's two cards on a card.

Okay, well, that's disorienting. But, okay, the person goes, okay, they made this card, it must do something. What do I think it does? Now, the nice thing about split cards is like, well, there's two cards. Well, maybe I could choose one of the cards. And that's the logical place you go to. Well, like, I get to cast it,

it's a card, and there's two choices, so I get to choose something. And most people could look at it and figure out what it did. The opposite example is we had, in Rise of the Odrazi, we had leveling, where there were creatures that were multiple levels.

And that, the layout, the bottom right corner, there was a power toughness and then another power toughness and then another power toughness. And there was a whole system to sort of explain how you leveled up. And it confused people. I'm not saying they weren't fun. I'm not saying people didn't like the level up creatures. But a

lot of people got really confused that the layout did not do a good enough job explaining them. So the other big thing about breaking the rules is you've got to make sure when you break the rules that you can convey what the card is doing. And if it breaks a rule in a way that no one understands it, well, maybe that's not a rule you're supposed to be breaking. That when you break a rule,

you have to break it in a way that people will understand. Also, because you're breaking a rule that's confusing, usually breaking the rule in numbers helps. One of the things we've learned is, on this part of New World Order, is when you're breaking a rule, try to break the same rule numerous times. For example, let's say we're doing Original Zen in the car and we have Landfall. Landfall says, I've got to pay attention every time I play a land. Playing a land, I've got to pay attention to that.

But if the set's all about that, if there's a whole bunch of Landfall cards, and just as a major theme, okay, well, when I play this set, I know, hey, I've got to watch out for land. Land's important. That's something I've got to do here. And if one card did that, and a different card made you care about a different thing, it would get really confusing. So one of the things about we do now with New World Order says, at Common, you can have one thing that's really out in the ordinary, one thing that people aren't used to looking out for, pick that one thing and dedicate some space to it. Say to people, okay, we're doing this thing, it's a little weird, but this is what we're doing, and get people

to learn. So when you're breaking your rules, you've got to think about not just the shock value of it, but also do you have the tools for people to understand the rules you're breaking and how to function? Because when you break rules, people don't have their guidelines in them. They're like, I know whenever you play magic, X is true. And then all of a sudden X isn't true. They're like, oh no, X is supposed to be true. So you need to make sure that you can break rules in a way that are comprehensible, that people understand. And that is really, really important. It is important that people get what you're doing.

And so what that means is, you can't, one of the lessons of today is, because you can break rules doesn't mean that you should break any rule, or that any break makes sense. There are rules you can break that are nonsensical, that just don't make any sense, that don't serve anything. There are rules you can break that are cool, but just don't function, that lack the functionality. There are a whole bunch of cards in unsets that I try to make in Black Border, and there's a card called Staying Power, that I made in Unhinged, which I originally tried to make in Black Border Magic. It just said effects that normally end at the end of turn don't. They're permanent. So if you giant grow something, it's forever a plus three, plus three. Now, in a vacuum,

that sounds kind of cool, and it sounds like a neat rule-breaking card, but it turns out the game engine can't support it. You create a bunch of problems. One of the things I always have to do is talk to the rules people when I want to break a rule, because some rules, the rules can adapt to. Some rules, they can't. Same with organized play, with Magic Online or digital, or there's just different things we work with where sometimes there's things that just can't be done and so somebody will come to me

and say wow we we can we can change things but this can't be done and because like magic is so many different things that we want people to play an organized play we want people to play digitally we want people to do all the different things we do we want it to work within things that we want people to play an organized play. We want people to play digitally. We want people to do all the different things we do. We want it to work within the rules. We want it to work

with templating. There's all these people that can come back and say, you've broken a rule that I fundamentally can't work with. The rules team,

the rules manager will come and say, I know this is fun and I know in a vacuum you can understand what's going on, but with the actual rules it creates interactions

we can't solve. And staying power is a good example of that. So it ended up going to silver border. And it might be a template, it might be a rule, there's all sorts of things that can happen, but you have to make sure that your rule breaking doesn't break the

system you're using to use it. You know, if you're in a game, well, it can't break the fundamental system of a game. If you're making a movie, well, you've got to shoot the movie. If you have the most awesome scene ever and your producer's like, we don't have the budget to shoot that, well, guess what? Maybe you're not doing that. Like, I know, for example, when I worked in television, one of the things that's very conscious is you only get so many sets. That you have the normal sets the TV show does. And then you get mostly things that don't shoot on location.

It's like sitcoms and things. So you get your main locations that are normally there. They're standing sets. And you have a few sets that maybe you use every once in a while. So they're in storage and you pull them out when you need them. And maybe they can make you one or two new ones. But there's a limitation. You can't just say

our whole show is going to take place. Every scene's in a brand new location we've never used before. That the people who put the show together, your producers are going to go we can't afford that.

You know. And so there are limitations. You can break rules but you must break rules within the limitations that you have and you have to understand your limitations.

That is, like I said, it's fun to break rules but it's fun to break rules if you can support it. Okay, next. When you're breaking your rules, you want to always be conscious of the comfort level of your audience. And what I say by that is, while on some level doing shocking things is exciting, it also is disorienting. That sometimes the reason you don't want to break a rule isn't because you can't, isn't because it's not supportable, but it's because the audience will just feel too uncomfortable. So game-wise, for example,

there's areas you can mess with the game where someone goes, well, you know, I just don't want to mess with that. Like, for example, sometimes people will come to me and say, what if you made a set that was all lands? And my response is, it's not that I couldn't do that.

It's not that the game's incapable of making lands lands and there's a lot of cheats I could do to get lands but in the end, is that a fun game experience? Is that something when people actually play it they would enjoy? I don't think they would. Now sometimes the discomfort comes from it just won't work right sometimes it comes from you're just doing something so fundamental. Like, let's say, for example, you're writing a sitcom

and one day you say, instead of doing a comedy, I'm going to do a bitter tragedy. Well, does your auditor want a bitter tragedy? Do they turn into the show every week to get a bitter tragedy? I mean, it doesn't mean you can't maybe have sad moments on a show,

but are you going to take the show and just completely change what it is? Well, your audience may go, that's not what I came for. I don't want that. I didn't come to watch this sitcom to see horrible, bitter reality where things work horribly and there's no laughs. You know, that's not what they're coming for.

So another thing about breaking your rules is you have to serve the expectations of the audience. You know, it's one thing to say, hey, you didn't expect this and it's fun. It's another thing, you didn't expect this and didn't want it. So, that's a big caveat, which is you need, no matter what you do, you still are serving your creative medium, serving

your game, serving your story, serving your art. And that putting something in that the audience, that doesn't enhance what the audience's experience is, you know, like, I'm not a big person. I'm going, I'm going to do this, and I'm just going to do it just to be disorienting. You know, there's no greater purpose solved.

It's just like, why is that there? Who knows? You know, and I'm not saying you can't have esoteric moments or do quirky things. But I am saying that different for the sake of different, just to be shocked in which it doesn't serve anything and just put your audience ill at ease because they don't understand it is not necessarily serving what you're doing. I'm not saying you don't ever want to manipulate your audience and make them feel feelings they're not used to feeling. I'm not saying that. I think you can make people cry watching

a sitcom. I think you can do a game where, you know, your tone is a little different than normal. I'm not saying you can't have surprise moments, but you don't want to undercut the essence of what your thing is. You know, magic, for example, it comes up all the time. People are like, hey, why don't you push the game farther out from where you are? You're a fantasy game. Well, if instead of a fantasy game, you were something completely different. You were a science fiction game. And I'm like, well, no, no, no.

Our identity is a fantasy game. We can push things. You know, if you get out to something like Mirrodin, okay, there's a lot of sci-fi aspects to Mirrodin. But we still were on the cusp of being side-fiction fantasy. We weren't this hard sci-fi that had no fantasy to it. And that's one of the reasons why people want us to do a lot of real contemporary things. Like, no, fantasy has its roots more in the past. That, you know, we're not doing contemporary fantasy.

We're not doing, you know, hey, it's a troll with a cell phone. That's just not what we're doing. fantasy. We're not doing, you know, hey, it's a troll with a cell phone. That's just not what we're doing. And so, there are limits. When you,

the idea that you can break rules does not mean, because you can break a rule, does not mean you break any rule. And you have to be careful of the ramifications of the rules you break. Almost to work, so this is my last point here, which is when you're in a creative mode, when you're trying things,

hey, you want to break rules? Break rules. You know, I think, I mean, one of the reasons it's important to allow yourself to do that is sometimes you will get to stepping stones. You do something crazy, and the crazy thing, there's a not-so-crazy version that captures a lot of the fun of the crazy version that you wouldn't have figured out had you not tried

the crazy version. So I'm all for experimenting with crazy, rule-breaking things when you're designing the thing you're designing. In design, we will try crazy things. When Tom Lopelli says we're doing double-faced cards, let's try double-faced cards. I didn't think we were going to do it, but I thought that maybe we'd learn something and we could apply it. Turns out it worked so well,

I embraced it. So it's okay to embrace the crazy rule-breaking thing. The question you have to ask yourself, and this is the most important point, is the following questions. Number one, is it enhancing my product? Is my product better for the breaking of the rules? Is the product better than it was doing something else? Because remember, if you can do it in the box, if the solution's in the box, don't go outside the box. Outside the box should only be used when in the box doesn't work. Number two, is it organic to what I'm doing?

Is it somatic to what I'm doing? Does it make sense? Does it fit in? Even if it'm doing? Does it make sense? Does it fit in? Even if it's weird, does it make sense there? Does your audience go, okay, wow, it's odd, but I see why they're doing it.

I understand why it's here. You know, the thing you don't want to do is break a rule, and then everyone's like, wow, I don't know why that's there. It's like, you know, you want to break a rule for purpose. You want to break a rule for reasons,

and your audience has to understand those reasons. It has to be clear to them why you're breaking the rule. The rule shouldn't be, your audience shouldn't be in the dark of why you broke the rule. It should be obvious why you broke the rule, because that helps the audience accept the break. They go, okay, wow, that's weird.

Oh, but I see what they're doing. Oh, I get it, you know, that if the rule break is organic to what you're doing, the audience will, on both a conscious and subconscious level, understand that and is more accepting to it. I'm not saying everyone will accept it. I'm not saying you're not going to get people who are disoriented. And I'm not saying you shouldn't ever break rules

because someone might be disoriented. But you want to break them because they make organic sense to what you're doing. You want the audience. And is your rule break making your audience happy or making them sad? What I mean by that is if the rule break is just

getting them all riled up and angry and there's no payoff, there's no cool reason for doing it, there's never a moment of happiness. If you for doing it, there's no, like, there's never a moment of happiness. If you are breaking a rule and all it is doing is causing frustration and anger and happiness, don't break the rule. Rule breaking, don't manipulate your audience in a way, it's one thing to shock them and surprise them and have, do things they might not expect, but it has to serve the purpose.

Meaning that, for a good example, I take my children. I tell my children the truth. I don't lie to my children, but I do lie every once in a while because it's something like, oh, I have Christmas presents for them, and I don't want them to know, or Hanukkah presents, or I don't want them to know what the presents are. And so if they're saying something, I might give a little white lie because I want them to know what the presents are. And so if they're saying something, I might give a little white lie because I want them to know what I got them. And the reason is, it's not a bad thing. I'm not trying to make them feel uncomfortable.

But I know when they open the presents, they'll be so excited that I'm doing something. I'm kind of breaking a little rule, but I'm breaking a rule because I'm not breaking the larger rule, which is meet the needs of your audience. Make your audience happy. Satisfy your audience. And so breaking a rule makes them dissatisfied. That's a problem. which is meet the needs of your audience, make your audience happy, satisfy your audience.

And so breaking a rule makes them dissatisfied, that's a problem. But it makes them satisfied, that's okay. You know what I'm saying? And that a lot of rule breaking has to do with how organic to what you're doing. Are you doing something that's serving the larger purpose? And then that's, in fact, if you look at all my rules today,

really what I'm saying is, is that the wrong reason to break rules is for any reason other than it serves the purpose of your, of the thing you're creating, and it will make the audience happier for you having done it. That if, you know, that, and when I say happier, I should codify that. Whatever emotion you're trying to get out of your audience, because you're not always trying to make them happy necessarily, you're trying to have an experience, but it reinforces the experience.

If the thing you're trying to do, it helps to do that. You know, in a horror film, maybe I'm trying to scare them. Well, if it helps you scare them, if you break a rule, and because, you know, they don't expect you to do something, you break a rule and you can scare them more,

okay, hey, you're serving your purpose. But breaking rules needs to be, in a larger sense, to serve that purpose. You have to be, the rule break has to be another tool in your arsenal you are using to make better art. If you're using it to do anything other than make better art, if you're doing it just for the sake of drawing attention to it, or you're doing it just to market, or doing it just to sort of throw your audience,

that's not the right reason to do it. You break rules because it's serving the purpose of what you're doing. And that, my friends, is the most important rule about breaking rules. Anyway, I'm in my parking space. We know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of making magic, sorry, instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you guys next time.