Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #280 - Bad Cards Revisited

Episode Date: November 20, 2015

Mark talks about the revisit to his original article about why so-called bad cards exist.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And man, I took my son to school today. Okay, so last time I talked, I referenced an article I'd done a long time ago called When Cards Go Bad. That was all about why we make bad cards. It was one of the earliest articles I'd ever written. And then ten years later, I wrote an article called When Cards Go Bad Revisited. And what I did was I approached the same topic, but from a completely different vantage point. The previous time I had talked really nuts and bolts of why we did it, like why design and development have to make bad cards. And then I sort of took a step back. And my next column, my revisiting column, was saying,

hey, why are bad cards actually part of good design? And so that whole article sort of just said, let's talk about major design principles and talk about why bad cards fit in those. So I thought I would do a follow-up podcast on my follow-up article. So this is my bad card revisited podcast, where I'm going to talk about my article through that lens and so what I've done is, the very first article I explained seven reasons why bad cards existed so in my follow up article

I talked about seven principles of design and why they mean that bad cards are part of good design so today I'm going to talk about those okay so number one, games are supposed to challenge the player. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about

what games are supposed to be. Once again, a topic I've talked about a bunch of times in this podcast, but it's important. Games are meant to challenge their user. The example I gave in the article was, let's say you're a designer of lamps. You're making a lamp. Well, the goal of a let's say you're a designer of lamps. You're making a lamp.

Well, the goal of a normal lamp is, you want to be very clear. How do I turn the lamp on? You want to make that easy and simple. You know, you want to make sure that the function and utility of the lamp is really obvious. It's intuitive that the person using the lamp understands completely how the lamp is supposed to be used. Person using the lamp understands completely how the lamp is supposed to be used. But game designers, we're not trying to make things easy for the game player. The game player is coming to us wanting a challenge.

They want to be tested. So if we were making a game lamp, if you will, it wouldn't be obvious how to turn the lamp on. It couldn't just be an obvious switch. That's not a challenge. It's not like, oh, I hit the switch, the lamp's on. No, a game lamp would be like, okay, how do you turn the lamp on. It couldn't just be an obvious switch. That's not a challenge. It's not like, oh, I hit the switch, the lamp's on. No, a game lamp would be like, okay, how do you turn the lamp on? Maybe there'd be eight switches, and maybe none

of them directly turned it on. Maybe you had to turn on a combination of switches. Maybe there's something, maybe you have to do a combination of switches and there's something else you have to do. But the key is, when you're designing a game, what you're trying to do is create an experience where the player gets to test and challenge themselves.

Usually mentally, maybe physically, maybe both. Maybe emotionally, maybe spiritually. I mean, who knows? Games can test you in lots of different ways. But really, the idea of a game is, it is sort of allowing the player to test themselves in a safe environment. That's really kind of what gamings do well, is say, let's take a lot of the things for life or valuable things and test you, but in the context that's kind of safe.

You know, nothing really bad is going to happen if you lose the game. So it allows you to sort of test yourself in that kind of space. So what that means is, one of the things that's important is, you don't want to make it easy. The goal of making a game is not that the game player has it easy. And so bad cards

fit into that, because one of the things you want is I don't want to make it easy for you to build your deck. You know, I want you to have to sort of like, if everything was obviously good, you would just take the obviously good cards and play them. And so one of the cool things about magic is we have a lot of cards that you're like,

is this good? Is this good in this environment? Is this good in this deck archetype? You know, there's a lot of magic where it's like, well, is this good? I'm not sure if it's good. Maybe it's good, you know. And then a lot of bad cards.

Once again, remember, I defined bad sure if it's good. Maybe it's good. You know, and then a lot of bad cards. Once again, remember, I defined bad cards in the last podcast. Bad cards, really when people say bad cards, what they mean is this card is something I don't think I will use. That's what a bad card is. I don't think I will use it. And so, one of the things

we need to do is we want to hide part of the fun for players is we want players to figure out the cards that might seem like bad cards are good cards and cards that might seem like good cards are bad cards you know you want expectations you don't want people to look at the cards and go okay i know the good cards and the bad cards you want people to go well i'm pretty sure this is good i'm pretty sure this is bad i'm not sure about card. And so a lot of what we want to do with bad cards is we want the audience to have to figure out what's going on. Now, you can't, there's no way to have bad

cards that look good and good cards that look bad without also just having bad cards that are bad. You know, you want to mix and you want to make sure that the, in order for the whole mosaic of cards to exist, for the players to have to explore, you have to have a lot of depth and a lot of range and a lot, you know, you need to have things that players aren't sure of. And every card that appears to be bad can't actually be good. If every card that appeared to be bad was good, then no cards would appear to be bad. The players would catch on pretty quick, like, oh, all the cards are good. Even the ones that appear bad, those are good.

Or even if the good cards are the bad cards, like, oh, the bad cards are the good cards. Good cards maybe are the bad cards, you know. You need to have a mix. You need to have bad cards that appear good. You need bad cards that are bad. You need good cards that are good. You need good cards that are good. You need good cards that are really bad. You know, or that appear bad. You need

the whole spectrum. So it is very, very important when you are making a game that you are understanding your role as a game designer. You're not the friend of the gamer. You are there to test the gamer. You are there to challenge themselves. That you want to put the gamer through their

paces. That's why they're there. Gamers don't come to games and go, don't make me have to do anything. No. That's what a game is about. It's about challenge. It's about testing yourself. And you, the game designer, need to create a tableau for your player in which there are challenges. Bad cards are a part of that.

If, for example, we just made nothing but strong cards, you wouldn't have a sense of that. If, for example, we just made nothing but strong cards, you wouldn't have the sense of discovery. You wouldn't have players sort of realizing that their first impressions aren't always correct. And so that serves a larger purpose that's very important. Okay, number two, make the players do the work. Okay, the idea there is it is a lot more satisfying.

Like, one of the things that, an ongoing theme in all my talks about game design is I believe that psychology is very important in game design because you are dealing with people. And the point of a game, the result of a game, is you want it to be something that's entertaining, that's fun, it's entertainment. And so what that means is you are dealing with an emotional response.

Yes, there's intellectual aspects to it, and people do think about games, but in the end, you don't think about whether you have fun or not. You feel whether you're having fun. So one of the things that's important is how can I make the player, how can I enrich the experience for the player? How do I make the game more fun? So one of the most important things, and this is just

basic human nature, is players are more invested when they believe that they had an active hand in what's going on. So we um, so, we'll take Candyland. I often joke about Candyland, because Candyland on some levels, by a strict definition, isn't a game. And what I mean by that is you, the player, have no actual input in the outcome of the game. Really what's happening is random sequences

are going on, and then you get a watch. Now, it has all the trappings of a game, and in some ways, it's a game by its trappings, and it's a good way for young kids to sort of a game, and in some ways it's a game by its trappings, and it's a good way for young kids to sort of get introduced to games in general. But from a strict sort of game design standpoint, you don't do anything. So for those who don't know Candyland, what happens in Candyland is there is a path of colors,

and you draw a card, and the card tells you where to go next. Either it has one or two squares on it of the same color, and then if it has one, say it's one red square, you go to the next square in a row that's red. If it has two, you go to the second in a row that's red. But the reality is, the player playing the game of Candyland has no decisions to make. Whether they win or not is up to the fate. And while that is fine for little kids, if you actually did that for adults, they would grow quite angry quite quick. Because, one second guys. Safe driving there. there. One of the things that's important is that you want a sense of what you are doing impacts how you are doing, that you are impacting the game, that you, it is very important,

we turn this as investment, which is you want to feel like the things you do matter, the things you do have impact. And so when you make a game, you want to feel like the things you do matter, the things you do have impact. And so when you make a game, you want to make sure that the players who are playing your game feel invested in the outcome of the game. They feel... Essentially, the way to think of it is you want your players to feel like they've imbued some of themselves into the game, that there's something they care about.

And I've talked a lot about magic, that you have a deck of cards that you built, usually. So that's part of it. But you also have your play skill, your play style. Like, when you win a game, you have won it,

because you made decisions that, you know... And often, for example, in a good game, you did something you were happy with, where it wasn't the obvious thing, but you figured out something, and you did it, and you won because of it. And there's a great sense of accomplishment.

So what I'm saying here is, one of the things to do when you build your game is you want to make sure that your audience has the ability to do things, for example, I've talked about this many times, the idea of fun, from Aaron Hoffman, that fun is you give a negative consequence to your player. They, through a mastery loop, figure out how to solve it, and then they solve it, and they take it from the bad state to a good state. That's a lot of what fun is. Meaning that part of fun is there has to be a threat. Meaning I have to feel like, oh, something could have gone bad.

It could have gone bad, could have gone bad but ah I figured it out and I didn't and that the act of figuring it out the act of doing is very important so another reason bad cards exist another reason that bad cards are very important is you want the player to sort of feel like they

actively had to do things and it was obvious if the cards were clear cut what cards to use, if we just made it super easy, then it would feel less, less, there would be less excitement from the player. That when a player, for example, takes a card and says, oh, this card is better than it seems. Oh, I should play this.

Oh, my first impression was wrong, but I figured out that I was wrong. You've definitely sort of done something where you, like you want the players to figure out how to do what they need to do. And that when players are able to piece things together, when players are able to, when players are able to like feel like the last

elements of it are they got there that like sort of like on some level what you want is I want to make a deck you want some cards to be obvious for the deck oh I'm going to make a goblin deck well I better put a goblin lord in it

I better put you know there's a few obvious things you know you know you need but then and this is kind of by design it's clearly by design a goblin lord in it, I better put, you know, there's a few obvious things that you know you need. But then, and this is kind of by design, it's clearly by design, you want the player to go,

okay, I now have to stick some not obvious cards in. Like in Limited, we tried very, very hard in Limited to make sure that you draft enough cards that at the end,

you're struggling a little bit to figure out what to put in. It's not obvious what to put in. You know, your first card in the limited, in a draft, you know your first card. This is the best thing you drafted. Of course that goes in. You know, and in fact, your first ten cards are probably pretty obvious. But your 23rd,

usually you play 23 in 17 land, normally. So your 23rd card, it's like, that's not quite so obvious. It's like, uh, you know, it's not as good. Clearly your 23rd card is nowhere near your first card. You know, the power level is a lot lower, but you need the 23rd card. And there's a lot of interesting

thing of trying to figure out, am I making the right choice? Not, did I know to put the giant beater dragon angel, whatever, in my deck. That's pretty obvious. But it's like, oh, I need to put this combat trick, or I need to put this cantrip, or I need a, you know, I need this put this combat trick or I need to put this cantrip or I need this creature that you figure out kind of what your deck needs

on a very subtle level and that the final touches the figuring out the pieces of things to finish things off you want to leave them you want to give them clues like you don't want to say I have no idea where to start

they get frustrated you want to give them loud, clear things to start with that's why like in Limited, we have bombs at rare. And if you draft a giant dragon, probably you're in the colors of the giant dragon. Because if you get that out, it really has a good chance of you winning the game.

So, okay, that's going to steer you toward that color. And bad cards are an important part of that. And when I say bad cards, be aware of what I mean is having a range of good all the way to bad. That cards are an important part of that. And when I say bad cards, be aware what I mean is having a range of good all the way to bad. That cards are not all of the same mark and that you have to sort of figure out where things

lie. And that discovery of the layering of cards is very, very important. Okay. So by the way, it is raining today. See, I think you guys will get a little extra podcast because rain equals traffic equals more content for you. And I live in Seattle, so that works out well for everybody, I guess,

except for me who has to drive more in the rain. But I'm willing to do it to do my podcast. So, okay. Number three, don't overestimate your player. So the funny thing is here, in some levels I actually believe both. I believe you have to be careful not to overestimate and you have to be careful not to underestimate. But here's the thing I typed on the article.

So we did a survey at one point where we said to the players rate your skill level. Are you A, well below average, B, below average, C, average, D, above average, E, way, D, above average, E, significantly above average. So the interesting thing is 80% of the people who took the test rated D or E.

Now, if you know anything about basic math, that can't possibly be true. Well, one could argue that the more franchise players take the poll. But even then, 80% being above average is probably not true. Players tend to want to believe they are better than they are. And part of game design is it's very easy to assume that everything you do, players will just get. And you want to make sure you test your players and you want to make sure you push in places. I like making individual cards that really push knowledge of what players can do. That's where you want to not underestimate your players,

is you want to make sure there's pieces for the very, very advanced players. But your basic game, your basic set, your basic mechanics, you want to make sure that the lower-level player can understand what's going on. Not that they're maximizing it, not that their strategy's optimized,

but they understand the gist of what's going on. The thing we want to be careful of is you don't want the game so lost they don't know what to do. And one of the things about that is you want to make sure that everybody at every level has the ability to have the following discovery. You want to figure out, oh, that's a bad card. And what you learn is there's different people at different levels that have different abilities to gauge that. So one of the ways to make sure that everybody is able to have the moment to go, oh, I know not to play that card, is you want to have a range of cards. If all the cards were good, then I don't never have that experience to learn,

oh, that card I think is good isn't good, it's bad. That's a really important part of learning a game, is being able to see yourself advance. One of the things that's important, if you want players to play your games over a long haul, you need to have, I've talked about this in the strategy part of my 10 Things podcast, is you need your players to be able to watch themselves advance. You need players to go, oh, I used to do this, but now I do this. I've gotten better. And you need them to be able to

witness that incremental growth. Because if they don't, at some point, they'll just grow frustrated and go, ugh, I'm advancing nowhere in this game. Why am I playing? I'm not, you know, why do I keep playing? But if they keep finding new things to do and discovering new things about themselves and new things about the game, and they see growth, then they go, okay, I'm going to keep

playing. I'm getting better. That's very compelling. Like, one of the ongoing things, if I can hit this message enough, is whether or not your player likes your game is always intertwined with how connected they are to the game. How personal is the game to them? Humans just evaluate things that matter to them as being more important. And that if your game becomes part of them, if your game becomes part of their psyche, if they're thinking about how they can get better, how they can do things, and the impact they have on the game, it just

makes the game more compelling and makes them more likely to stick around. A game that you're disconnected to, that you don't have a personal connection to, is a game you will just burn through much, much faster than a game where you feel emotionally invested. Once again, I did a whole podcast on emotional investment. I'm a big, big believer in it. But basically in this rule is you want to make sure that everybody

has an opportunity to discover things for themselves. It's why, the reason we have bad cards is, look, there are players worse than you, and the players worse than you have to have cards that they discover they shouldn't be playing with. And that things that seem obvious to you aren't obvious to them. So there usually has to be some pretty bad cards to make sure that they have something to go, okay, I've got it. I don't play this card. And that is really important.

Have the ability to everybody who plays the game to be able to sort of make some differentiation. And once again, like I said, it's different points. You know, one player might figure out, oh, this card that to most players, of course, is bad. But they didn't figure that out yet. And they need to figure that out. And so the range of cards. And remember, once again, a bad card is just below your range.

It's just like the card that you know not to play strategically in whatever format you're playing, that becomes a bad card because you've learned not to play it in whatever format you're playing, that becomes a bad card because you've learned not to play it. Now, we all are sneaky. Sometimes we play into that prejudice. Sometimes we know players have learned that this kind of card isn't really good, and then we make it good,

or we make an environment in which it's good. One of the classic things I talked about was when I made Mirrodin, I put in two cards in Mirrodin, Shatter and Terror. So Terror was from, they're both from Alpha. So Terror is destroy target non-black, non-artifact creature. Shatter is destroy target artifact. They both cost one and a color.

So one and a black for Terror, one and a red for Shatter. So pretty much in a normal environment, Tear is significantly better. Why? Because there's lots and lots of creatures in Limited, and killing creatures is very valuable, and this thing kills most creatures, because I'm talking about black creatures and artifact creatures. Meanwhile, Tear destroys artifacts.

Well, in a normal environment, you don't play that many artifacts. Tear is the kind of card that you just sideboard. Maybe if your opponent has a rare bomb-y artifact, maybe you've got to pull it in so you can shatter it, but usually it's not something you even play standard. It's a sideboard card. Okay, so I specifically put both these cards in Mirrodin because in Mirrodin, it was a world of metal.

There were a lot of artifact creatures, way more than normal. And what that meant was it changed the evaluation. All of a sudden, Shatter became a very good creature kill card because there were so many artifact creatures. Terror, meanwhile, went down in value because it couldn't kill artifact creatures. So all of a sudden, the fact that there were so many artifact creatures made Terror

worse than normal. Now Terror wasn't bad. There were plenty of non-artifact creatures. It wasn't like you shouldn't play Terror. But Terror went from being a great card to merely being a good card where Shatter became a great card um because that environment not only were there a lot of artifact creatures and a lot of artifacts but they really mattered as a set all about artifacts so a lot of the more powerful things happen to fall into artifacts so anyway the idea was when you drafted that set for the first time ever you might might actually draft Shatter over Terror.

And that always depends on your deck. But my point is, you know, first pick, first pack, that was actually a very legitimate thing to want to do, which is something in Magic that had never, ever happened before. If you had ever said, what's the better pick, Shatter or Terror, all the pros, all the good players would have said, oh, that's so obvious. Of course you take Terror. And now we made an environment where that wasn so obvious. Of course you take terror.

And now we made an environment where that wasn't true. So we definitely mess around. One of the things we try to do is we like to make you reevaluate cards. We make you reevaluate strategies. So sometimes things you might think of as bad, ha-ha, it's not bad in this environment. Or things you might think is good, not as good. And so part of making bad cards is being able to play around with space of what people know and don't know. Okay, number four.

Force players to improvise. Okay, so one of the things that is fun is you want players to have some plan and then you want to force them off the plan at some point, meaning... Here's what you want to force them off the plan at some point. Meaning, here's what you want. You don't want your players lost. You don't want your players not knowing what they're doing.

You do want them to have a plan. And so we work very hard, for example, when we make sets, to make draft archetypes. For example, a real common thing we do now is the uncommon gold card, in which we make a gold card that just loudly explains what that color combination is doing. So the players that aren't as aware,

it's just the low-hanging fruit. It doesn't mean there aren't other decks you can draft. We just want to set some archetypes and give you, look, if you're going to play these two colors, here's one way you can play the colors. Not the only way, but one way. And we just make a loud message for you. And the idea is, we want to make sure you understand your archetypes, you understand the colors,

and colors are a big part of it, by the way. Just drafting, just knowing what, okay, I'm white-black. Okay, I can now ignore all the red, blue, and green cards. I'm just looking at white and black cards. It makes it a lot easier. But the second thing is that you want to make sure they have some direction, but then, you want to make

sure they have to improvise. That you don't want someone knowing the whole plan from beginning to end and never having to think. What you want is enough to lead them down a path so they're not lost and then choices that make them have to re-evaluate on the spot. And part of bad cards is, once again, it's the same dynamic I talked about earlier,

is you want enough to guide them and not enough that they have a completely guided experience. One of the things, so the story I told in my podcast, I'm sorry, in my article that I'll tell in my podcast, is I was in college and we, I was in a dorm and so we had a float, the dorm had a float, there's a homecoming. And so the government for the dorm did not spend a lot of money, and there weren't a lot of people who showed up to do it. So it was a ragtag crew.

There wasn't a lot of us. None of us had really had much float building experience, and we had limited, limited supplies. We really didn't have a lot of money, and so we didn't buy a lot of supplies. And so we were up all night. The idea is you build the float the night before the homecoming. That's how it works.

That's the tradition. And I had a blast. There were like, I don't know, five or six of us. There weren't a lot of us. And we were scrambling. And we were begging other people for stuff. We were going through garbage. Other people didn't want things.

We'd throw things away. We'd take it. We were scrambling. And we ended up with a float that we were very proud of. Mostly because we had scrambled to make this thing happen. And we did it in the night, and we were proud of ourselves. And it was just, it was really hard. But we had to improvise.

So the next year, we teamed up with another dorm. They put a lot of money toward it. There were all these people. So there were like 50 people people and we had tons of, we had a lot of money. So we had tons of supplies and it just was a lot less fun for me. It was sort of like they had pre-done it ahead of time. They knew what the design was. And so it just wasn't as exciting for me.

It wasn't as thrilling. I didn't have the rush. It was kind of, you know, year one, I was like, okay, what are we doing? And okay, you got to go find some blue was like, okay, what are we doing? And, okay, you gotta go find some blue material. Go figure out where to find it. Where the second year was like, here's the picture. You're responsible for taking these things and applying them here. And it was just like, it was very rote and boring.

And what made me realize is I'm a gamer, and what gamers like is they like the challenge, and they like um, we want to make sure that you are making the player improvise, that you are giving the player the opportunity to go, okay, I'm a little off the rails here, what am I going to do? And bad cards are part of that.

For example, in Limited, one of the things we tend to try to do is, in most draft experiences, is we make, we give you a bunch of cards we know you want to play, and then we give you cards that are like, oh, I'm not sure, and we want you to agonize a little bit. I want to make sure that when you are playing, whether you're, I mean, I talked about deck building already, but even when you're playing sometimes, we want to make situations happen that you might not realize. Oh, well, normally I do this thing, but all of a sudden, oh, now this thing happened, and I didn't, like, for example, we do a lot of things with triggered abilities,

where every turn something happens. And normally, you understand what's going to happen, but sometimes weird things happen. Or you realize in your hand that you combine cards in interesting ways and then that makes a really compelling experience it is very fun to go oh well i had these tools at hand and i know i supposed to do this but i did that instead and that's that's pretty cool and part of having bad cards in a range of cards is allowing people the opportunity to sort of improvise and make use of things that other people might not realize has value.

I talked about that last podcast of how there's something very satisfying about saying, hey, this is mine. But we'll get to that. It's actually coming up here. Okay, number five, make the players love something. Okay, so there's a quote I had. Every once in a while, I give a little game advice, a little soundbite-y game advice on Twitter.

So one of my favorites is, if you make a game that everybody likes but nobody loves, it will fail. And what that means is, it's important that every player of your game latch onto something in your game.

That they need to love something. They don't all need to love the same thing. In fact, in some levels, you want players to fall in love with different things, but you need something that everybody falls in love with. And what that means is, you need some extremes. Because what people fall in love with,

people don't tend to fall in love with the thing, I mean, some do, I guess, but the thing that everybody knows is the most awesome thing does not tend to be the thing that is the most, like, only because here's this awesome thing. Everybody knows it's awesome. Oh, well, yeah, I like it.

It's awesome. It's a cool thing. But everybody knows it's awesome. That's not something that I get a personal bond to. But let's say there's a card that everybody else deems a bad card, but I say, you know what? I don't think it's that bad. I actually think it's a good card.

And I play something that other people don't see value in. Now what I've done is I've made a personal connection to the game. I've said, hey, I think this thing is good. Not that everybody thinks it's good. And what happens is people have what we call pet cards, where they just fall in love with the card. And that's really important. You want your game to have components that your players fall in love with. Because that is what really ties into the game. That what makes you care about something. Once again, I'll stress this again. When something emotionally affects you, you

intellectually deem it more important. For example, the entire business of advertising is based upon the premise that if you know something, it must be important. Like I know it. I've heard of that brand. Must be a decent brand because I've heard of it. You literally value things because you know of them. I mean, it's just how humans function. And so the same thing is, if you just have an emotional connection to a component of the game, it just makes you love the game more.

And here's the funny thing. It doesn't matter if you hate something. Like, imagine, I will, so we do what we call the rare poll, where we ask players what their favorite cards are. Before we send them out, we want to know, of the rares and mythic rares, what will people like? So we do a little poll inside the office, all Magic players that work at Wizards, and we say to them, hey, what do you think? What do you think of this card?

And there's two polls. One is the people from the pit, which are the R&D people, and the other is outside. So outside, you know, people who work at Wizards, but not in R&D. So the pit people, we've all been exposed and the other is outside. So outside, you know, people who work at Wizards, but not in R&D. So the pit people, we've all been exposed to the set in question. Some of us are working on it, some of us maybe just play tested a couple times, but people outside the pit have never seen the cards before. And so it's a real good first impression for us, to get a

general first impression. So we rate the cards on a scale of 1 to 10. So let's say you have a card that gets all 7s. You know, all 7s. And you have another card that's getting half 1s and 2s and half 9s and 10s. What's the better thing to print? 7s, everybody, above average, everybody likes it.

I mean, there's no one who dislikes it. But the other card, there's nines and tens. There's people that love the card, but there's people that hate the card. Well, the second one, the nines and tens and the ones and twos, that's the one you want. Because it doesn't matter if people hate the card. Because magic, you get to choose what you play with. If you hate a card, don't play with it.

You're not obligated to play with the cards. You know, you can choose and pick what you want to play with. But if you love a card, if you love a card don't play with it you're not obligated to play with the cards you know you can choose and pick what you want to play with but if you love a card if you love a card that's what makes people stick around that's what makes people bond to connect and so one of the things that's really important and one of the things that bad cards does for us is we want people to bond with things and people will tend to people i talk a lot about aesthetics that people like balance they like proportion that you know there's a lot of aesthetics, that people like balance, they like proportion. There's a lot of things that people just, the brain finds beautiful.

But in the same sense, there's this love of imperfection. That if you look at sort of what people bond with, that they want kind of things that have a lot of aesthetics to them, but there's a little thing about just being a little bit imperfect that really somehow motivates people emotionally. You know, that somehow I've this thing isn't perfect, I'm not perfect and I've kind of bonded with it. You know, that there is

this love of imperfection. Not complete imperfection, mind you. People tend to like aesthetic things with a little bit of imperfection. But bad cards a lot of times have that imperfection because it's like, no, no, no, this card is actually better. But, you know, it has this sort of, people see it a little differently. And that makes those kind of cards, the cards that you love,

that other people don't love as much as you, is what becomes the pet card, is what becomes the thing you bond with. It's what you identify with. I'm the guy that plays with this card, you know. I'm not the guy that plays with Black Lotus, who doesn't play with Black Lotus, I mean, vintage. Like, you know, it's like, that's not exciting, but I'm the guy that plays with Ornithopter. Well, I don't even play with Ornithopter. That's a little weirder. It's a zero cost, zero two card. What do you do with Ornithopter? You know, it has a little more personality to it. So I think more people on some level have fallen

in love with Ornithopter than have fallen in love with Black Lotus. Because Black Lotus, I mean, it's powerful, and honestly people don't like it, but Ornithopter just has this quirky quality, and I've seen so many people that just love the Ornithopter, just because it's a little bit weird. It's got a little bit of imperfection to it, but it's very lovable. And in the right circumstances, it can be very strong. It's not actually a weak, in the right circumstances, it can be very strong. It's not actually a weak card, you know, in the right circumstances.

Okay. Number six. Number six is give players something to call their own. Okay, so this is a tie into the last thing. Sort of a segue, which is one of the things that you really want to do when you

make your game is you want to have enough choices that people can make choices that they feel aren't what other people have done. That isn't, that, if everything in your game is the same choice, if I go play and the next guy plays and we're all doing the same things, then I don't feel... So let me tell you the difference between a game and a puzzle. So a game, well, a puzzle has a singular outcome, usually.

Meaning, I'm not trying to be unique, I'm trying to find the answer, and usually there's a singular answer. Now, the reason the puzzle, people like puzzles is there's a challenge it, and there's a sense of accomplishment when you accomplish a puzzle. But people do not emotionally connect with puzzles in quite the same way they connect with games. They can, but it's a very different animal. And the reason is, a game, you are not trying to get the same outcome as everybody else. In a puzzle, like, there's an answer. You're trying to find the answer to the puzzle. In a game, what you are trying to do is you are trying to win, but you're trying to win in a way that has a personality to it that's your win. It's not

anybody's win. It's not like, oh, I did what everybody else did, and then I won. You know, what you want is to say, here's the choices I made. I had options. I could have done a lot of different things, but I made these options. I made these choices. And because of that, I won the game. You know, not the game was won. I won the game. I made conscious choices and I did things

and I managed through my own skills and choices. You know, I won it. And that is very compelling. And part of that is, part of giving players the chance to do their own thing is not making a clear and cut path. Not making it so everybody knows exactly where they're supposed to go next. You know, and one of the big things, one of the fun things about a game is you want players to go, oh, probably I'm supposed to go this way, but I'm not.

I'm going that way. And bad cards are definitely part of this. I'm going to take cards that, once again, bad is always in quotes. What I want to do is take cards that other people have written off and not write it off. I'm going to take something that, you know, I'm making, I was supposed to go play card X, but I'm playing card Y. I'm not doing what most people are doing. I'm different. A lot of times we talk about rogue deck builders. There's that same general sense of I'm going to do my own thing. Now, sometimes it's subtle. Sometimes it's tweaking your deck,

but it can often just be, I included one card that other people didn't include. Like, for example, a lot of times when people are showing off their decks, what they want to spotlight on is, yeah, yeah, I'm playing deck X that a lot of people are playing. But in my version, I do thing X. I include these cards, or I do this thing, or I have this weird draft. I have this weird cyborg strategy or something in which I'm not playing it just like everybody else. That even if it's a little tiny thing, even if it's just a few

sideboard cards or something, I'm just a little different. I have my own spin on it. I've stamped my own personality on it. And that is very, very compelling. That when you manage to make the game yours, when you are doing something unique to yourself, like, I cannot stress this enough, that the more the player emotionally identifies with the game,

the more bonded they are, the more they'll play it, and the more they'll come back to it. Okay, number seven. Give the players a scapegoat. Okay, so this is the reverse side. This is, players want to feel emotionally invested, but in the same sense, when they lose, they don't want to feel bad about themselves.

Like, here's the dichotomy that's funny. When they win, they want to be responsible for their victory. They won the game. When they lose, most players don't want to be responsible for their loss. Now, good players learn that they are. One of the ways to get better at games in general, very true for Magic, is owning up to your losses and realizing

I did things that led to my loss. I lost because of decisions I made. So, good players eventually learn that. But, most players don't want to admit that, or it's hard to admit that, and that you want to make sure that the players who aren't ready to admit that, or it's hard to admit that, and that you want to make sure that the players who aren't ready

to admit that they're the cause of their own defeat to have something to latch on to. They need a scapegoat. They need to have some component of the game that says, oh, well, it's not my fault. Now, your game is going to have that built in. Magic, for example, has mana screw, has drawn off the deck. I could have just not drawn good cards or I could not have gotten my mana.

There's a lot of things that I can blame. If I want to blame in Magic, if I want it to not be my fault that I lost, very easy to not be my fault. And another way to do that is that if you get players to sort of put bad cards in their deck and they lose, they get to blame the bad cards. I mean, even though they picked them and put them in, there's the funny thing. Let's say you pick and choose a bad card and put it in your deck, bad in quotes, whatever, and you win with it. You win. You feel awesome. Oh my goodness, oh my goodness. I won. I won. I won.

I'm smart. I put this card in that nobody valued, and I won with it, and you feel great. But let's say you put that same card in and you lose. You're like, oh, what was I doing? Why did I put that card in? Oh, that card was a mistake. I'm taking you out, card, you know. Like, the card can take all the losses.

The card can take, you know, that when you lose, it's the card's fault, what was this bad card doing to my deck, I gotta get rid of this bad card, this bad card made me lose, um, and you can see the difference, like, when you win with the bad card, you won, you were the smart guy who put it in your deck, and when you lose with a bad card, like, oh, the bad card, it lost me the game, what was I thinking, the bad card lost me, I don't want to be lose with a bad card, like, oh, the bad card, it lost me the game. What was I thinking? The bad card lost me. I don't want to be associated with this bad card anymore. And so psychologically, it's interesting

that bad cards both allow players to feel better about themselves for winning and allow players to feel less bad about themselves for losing, which is a pretty, when you think about it, that's a pretty compelling thing. It's very funny that when people sort of look at bad cards it's very easy to go i don't see value in that card why are you wasting my time why are you putting this in my pack and i don't think players understand all the psychological things going on like all the value of making you feel challenged or making you

right have a scapegoat or like all the things that it does. But it's important when you're making the game to realize that behind the scenes, the game has to serve a lot of functions, and that your role as a game designer is to make something that's fun for the player, and that rewards the player in ways they want to be rewarded, and protects the player

in ways they need to be protected. You're a multitasked person when you're game designing. And that a lot of what's going on is you want to give your audience a way to emotionally bond with your game, to connect with your game, to have highs and lows and have this great visceral feel. In some ways, let's talk Timmy, Johnny, Spike. Timmy slash Tammy, Johnny slash Jenny, and Spike. So Timmy to Tammy is all about the experience,

the emotional experience. So when you build in a game, you want players to have highs and lows. That's why bad cards exist. You want to make sure that, hey, I got my big amazing card, and one of the reasons my big amazing card is amazing is because the rest of my deck, you know,

if every card was the caliber of your best card in your deck, that card wouldn't be exciting to draw. You know, if every card was good, it's like, well, every card's good. But, like, some cards are not as good as other cards. And, ooh, I draw the good card! I get really excited. There's a big visceral, emotional rush. That's the Timmy Tammy moment. Okay?

Also, I'm talking about how you want people to feel like they make decisions that impact their deck that they choose that they did. That's self-expression. That's Johnny and Jenny. That's like, look what I did. I chose this card that nobody thought was any good, and I put it in my deck, and I won with it. Look at me.

I'm the one that did that. You're expressing what you're capable of doing. And then, bad cards also allow you to do the improvising, to be able to, you know, look at what I did. I got out of this. You're able to prove how good you are. You know, I had a draft, and I had to play with this 23rd card,

and man, this is a piece of dreck. But you know what? I managed to use it and find a way to help win with it. You know, that you overcame the bad card. That that allows you to prove your skill. There's that spike moment. And that's what I'm saying, is bad cards give the Timmy moments, they give the Johnny

moments, they give the spike moments. Tammy's happy, Jenny's happy, Spike's happy, that bad cards can do all this good stuff. And last time, my last podcast was kind of about why they kind of had to exist, and this podcast is even guzzly a further.

They're doing good. They are fundamentally, from a standpoint, it's very funny because I know a lot of other people. I mean, in game design, Magic is kind of unique in that it's a trading card game, so we keep producing more content. We have more content than a lot of other people. I mean, in game design, Magic is kind of unique and that's a trading card game, so we keep producing more content. We have more content than a lot of games. I mean, there are games that definitely put out more content.

We're not alone in that regard, but we generate more content than most, and our game's constantly evolving and shifting, but the value of the bad cards is really doing good work. That it is not just... It's not just like one of my things from last time was like,

well, we can't not have them. I mean, one could just sit there and say, hey, in order to trade in a card game, we need to make this volume of cards, and we can't... All of them can't be the top power level, so some of them aren't. But I'm going way beyond that today. I'm not just saying, well, they have to exist. They're not like some

necessary evil. I actually believe that today. I'm not just saying, well, they have to exist. They're not like some necessary evil. I actually believe that the bad cards, and once again, in quotes, because a lot of what's bad is just, it's not meant for me. But they're doing a lot of really strong, good work. They are, from a game design standpoint, they are helping make your game better. They are helping enhance your players' experience. They're making the game more fun. They're emotionally bonding your players to the game.

They are protecting your players emotionally when things go bad. They're doing all sorts of very noble and good work. And so I feel like today's podcast, yesterday's podcast was like, here's why we kind of have to have them, and here's kind of the function of them, and here's why cards you say are bad maybe aren't so bad. That was kind of the last podcast lesson. Today's lesson is there is work behind the scenes.

There are structural things to how games work that it is important to have these components. And that every game, on some level, has bad components. Magic might have a wider spread than some, just because we have so many components. And you only need 60 for your deck and such. But it is an important part of games in general.

And that if you go look at other games, you will see there are things that don't work in certain circumstances that are bad in certain ways, but good in others. And that those are a valuable part of what makes the game tick. So that is my lesson of today. I'm almost at work. Bad cards and bad components are key to making them work.

It's very easy to look at the cards on top and the cards that win you the games and get excited by those cards. Those are doing the showy work. But behind the scenes, the bad cards are doing a lot of the heavy lifting of just making the overall experience better. And so do not hate the bad cards.

The bad cards are doing very good and important work. And with that, I pull into my space. Wow, we had an extra long podcast today because of the rain. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it. Luckily, it was a topic I'm excited to talk about, and anyway, I'm now in my parking space, so we know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me

to be making magic. See you guys next time.