Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #299 - Choices vs. Options

Episode Date: January 22, 2016

Mark talks about the decisions that game designers set up for players to make.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about a very important distinction in games and talk about all the ramifications of what it means and how it affects magic. So today I'm going to talk about the difference between choices and options. So let me first explain my terms and then I'll talk about the importance. Okay, so if you look up in a dictionary, choices and options are synonyms of each other. So be aware, I'm going to give some definitions to separate the two, to talk about a concept and how it's slightly different. So bear in mind, I'm loading these words with meaning that are not necessarily found in the normal

dictionary. Okay, so from a game standpoint, here's the difference between choices and options. A choice means you have to choose between something. An option is you can choose things that are additive. So let me explain what that means. So for example, an option is like when you buy a car, you have options. You could get air conditioning. You could get power steering. You get power windows. You could get, you know, you have things that the car can have, but those things do not negate one another. That if I want to get power steering, it doesn't have any impact on whether I get power windows or I get a heater

or, you know, air conditioning or whatever. It has no correlation that it's additive. That, you know, if I'm going to get the best car I could possibly get, hey, wouldn't I want to have all those things? Wouldn't I want to have air conditioning and power steering and power windows?

I would want it all. Choices are in which I have to choose something. So, I'm going to the barber and get a haircut. Do I want my haircut short or my haircut long? Those, they occupy the same space. If I choose to cut it short, I can't choose to cut it long. That a choice is something in which you're making, you're choosing in a way that I, it cuts off other options.

To use the word options there. It cuts off other choices. So the idea of a decision that's a choice is, okay, do you want A or B, but you cannot have A and B? Where option is, do you want A or B? And you can have A and you can have B. In fact, if A or B is the option with a choice, it's A or B. And with options, it's A or B or A and B. Those are my choices. So one of the things that's important to understand in game design

is when you have choices and when you have options and the importance of each. My contention is that choices make for better games and options in most cases. And what I mean by that is there is this illusion that the more power the player has to do what they want, somehow it's a better game. But the funny thing is

that flies in the face of the essence of what a game is. So I've talked about this a lot, but this is important for this discussion, which is a game is purposely a test. You, the game designer, are not making things easy on the game player. I've often talked about my game design lamp. And the idea is if a lamp designer was making a game out of a lamp, they wouldn't make it easy to use. You wouldn't know how to turn it on or off.

You know, that part of the game of the lamp would be to figure out how to turn it on. Now, normally when you design things, ease of use is super important. That if I'm designing just an everyday object, I'm designing a lamp, I'm designing a car, I'm designing a radio, that whatever I'm designing, I want to make sure that the people using it, you know, like one of the things I love about Apple products, anyone know anything about me, I love Apple products, is the simplicity of the design. You know, the idea that the iPhone, for example, when it was originally designed, had one button on it was genius. You know, the idea like before that, what happened was they kept putting more and more

buttons on things and it's finally like, you know what, it gets more was they kept putting more and more buttons on things. And it's finally like, you know what? It gets more and more confusing the more buttons you put on things. Let's just figure out the key things we need and have a button for the sole functionality. You know, and that a lot of clean design is making sure it's easy and clear what you're doing. Now, in game design, here's the interesting thing. Number one in game design is you are trying to challenge the player. You are trying to challenge them so they can overcome the challenge. Part of fun of gaming is testing yourself, usually mentally, but sometimes physically.

And it's the thrill of trying to, in a safe space, be tested. Okay. So the thing about choices is choices do more what games do, which is not make things easy for you. That if I could say to you, hey, you just could do whatever you want, If I could say to you, hey, you just can do whatever you want, that is appealing from a sense of, hey, isn't it good to have what I want? If I buy a car, I don't want to be told I can have air conditioning or power steering. I want to be told I can have air conditioning and power steering if I want both. You know, you want your oars to be additive in life because, hey, life's just better

if you have more options available to you. But in a game, a game isn't life. A game is trying to make things hard on you. In fact, ironically, life doesn't always give you, life often gives you choices and not options. And it would be nice in life if sometimes you had options where you were given choices. But I think a lot of ways

games are that same sort of thing that if you want to make something challenging for somebody, you want to say, okay, you have to choose between things. So look,

I'll use the most obvious example in Magic, which is people always saying, why are there sorceries? Why isn't everything just an instant? And the answer is that if everything were instant, you'd have to make a lot less interesting decisions.

And the reason is, what an instant says to do from a gameplay standpoint is, save your mana and don't do this until you absolutely positively have to do it. And so what happens is, if you have a lot of instants, you sort of don't play. You sort of wait for the moment, and it makes you be really reactive. And you don't really have to make key decisions, because the decisions are often made for you. Like, oh, I have things in my hand. Well, until you do something, I have to react to it. I don't do anything. But with sorceries, let's take card drawing as an example. I mean, we do do instant card

drawing, but if I give you a card drawing spell as an instant, what that says is, let's wait to see if I can do anything else, and then the end of my opponent's turn, right before I'm about to untap, if I don't have any other means to use this mana, I'm going to draw cards.

Okay, now let's change it to a sorcery. I put it on a sorcery, and it says, okay, on your turn, do you want to use this resource? Because if you use this resource, if you spend mana and draw cards, you're not going to have the mana. Now, you will have cards, and maybe if you have other mana,

those cards can be valuable to you, you know. But there's an interesting choice to be had there, which is figuring out, is spending the mana now and not having the mana on your opponent's turn worth it? Because one of the things that blue decks used to do all the time that we had to sort of shift away was, is we were a little too instant happy in blue.

We just let blue have everything at instant speed, and it caused all sorts of problems, because the correct answer was just always play reactive and never, I mean, you didn't have to do a lot of thinking because there's a lot about, okay, just at the end of my opponent's turn, if certain things haven't done, I'll do it then. And so there never was any stress about when to draw cards. I draw cards when I have the mana at the end of my opponent's turn. And now as we started making more sorceries, it's like, oh, now I got to make interesting

choices about what I'm going to do. And once again, that is one of the key differences between choices and options, is that in general, there's this myth. There's this myth that players have that says that the more control they have, the better the game is,

which is plainly untrue that players purposely, when they put their hands in the control of a game designer, are asking for restrictions. They're asking for limitations. That, for example, you know, I have a game, and it's called the push-the-button game, and there's the button.

Oh, is there any obstacles to push the button? No. Is there any rules about pushing the button no well that's a pretty boring game you know you'll win every time

that what people want is they want the challenge they want to be tested they want to figure out how they accomplish the goal given to them given the limitations and restrictions

placed upon them that is what makes games interesting so this idea that the more freedom the player has the better the game is, that just blatantly contradicts

what a game is. A game, I mean, I do believe there are games for younger kids and stuff that are a little less, but most games, games for adults, look, there is something in the way that's preventing you from doing what you're wanting to do, which is what makes it an interesting game. So following along

that line, why would options be better than choices most of the time? What we want to do is say to the player, you have to weigh things. You know, that's just such a more interesting decision. You know, do you want A or B or A and B? Or do you want A or B? Now, we make entwine. We make split cards with fuse. I mean, we occasionally do make the option version.

We occasionally say, you know what? You can choose what you want. And now, when we tend to do options, by the way, notice that the options don't often come free. They come at an additional cost. So in some ways, there's still a choice to be made, which is, so let's say something like Entwine. So Entwine says you can do effect A or effect B or pay more and get A and B.

Now, I would argue that that's not even completely an option. There's still a choice there because it requires mana to do. The true options we do is occasionally we'll say choose one or both. And there's two modes. And really what we're doing is we're giving you both modes, and we're just allowing you, for ease of gameplay, to opt out of one of the modes. So technically

that's options, but not even really, because really what we intend is you get A and B. You get A and B, and we say A or B because sometimes you can't do A or you can't do B and we want you to be able to play the spell. But if you look at something like Entwine, where it's like, okay, Entwine says

you may do effect A or you may do effect B, but if you pay an additional cost, you get A or B, there's a choice there. Because what it's saying is, do I want to use up my mana? Do I want to optimize this card? So even some of our option choices, the same is true with split cards and fuse, which are the two split cards I want to play.

Oh, I have the ability to play both if I have the mana. The fuse cards are a little more option-y, I guess, because Entwined at least makes you pay the extra cost. I guess fuse cards make you pay the second cost of the second card. But my point is that if you look at most ways we do modal stuff in Magic, the modal is not you get to do everything. Usually the modal is, hey, you get to do one of these things.

So, for example, let's take charms. That's a very popular mechanic we do. So charms were first in Mirage. And it was just like, hey, it doesn't cost a lot, and you get three choices. Do you want A, B, or C? And none of which, originally, charms were, none of which is really worth a card. That, if we just made a card that

put A on it, you'd probably never play it, because it's not worth A. But, the flexibility of being A, or B, or C, is good enough that it's worth playing. But, and this is important, is what makes charms interesting is there's power in...

One of the things that's neat about choice, if you look at Magic, we've done a lot of things where the player's going to choose. There's a lot of modal stuff. There's a lot of things in which... Right, there's the split cards and the kickers

and the charms and the commands. There's just a lot of different kinds of things we do where you get to choose something, where you get a choice when you play it. You get a choice. We like choices. But once again, in those cases, it's not as if you can choose everything.

And even the few cases like Entwine or Fuse where we get to let you pick both modes, there's a cost to be able to play both modes. It's not just for free. So let's examine. So I'll approach this from a different standpoint. So back in

the 6th edition of the game, we made it a new rule, something we call the stack, which has to do with how you play your spells. But one of the things that we did at the time was, to line everything up, we allowed you to put damage on the stack. And what that meant was that, let's say we're going to get in a fight. So I have a 2-2 creature that I can sacrifice to, let's say, draw cards.

So you attack with your 3-2 creature, and I block with my 2-2 creature. What happened was, we could say say I put damage on the stack which means okay this damage is going to happen it's now waiting to happen but in response to that I can now do something like sacrifice my creature so what happens is I was able to block your 3-2

with my 2-2, kill it with my 2-2 and then sacrifice my creature to draw some cards okay so I was both able to use the creature as a creature and kill the thing it was going to block, but also use it as a resource. So I was kind of double dipping there. And what happened was it was non-intuitive for most players, so we took it away. So in the M10 rule change, we took away damage on the stack. And people got really mad.

They're like, why are you dumbing down the game? Why are you making the game less of a good game? And what I said is, look, guys, it's the same issue of choices versus option, which is, if I'm blocking your creature, and I have the mana to use on my creature, why wouldn't I do that? The creature's going to die. I've already used it. It's already a dead creature.

And when we took damage off the stack what we said is look, if your opponent is attacking with a 3-2 you have a choice. You have a choice. You can block that 3-2 and kill it with your 2-2 or you can chump block it

meaning I keep the damage from happening but I don't get to kill the creature. So under the current rules, I'm allowed to block a creature and then sacrifice it, and I don't do any damage to the creature with my creature, but I do keep it from damaging me. So now you have a choice. And the choice is, okay, do I want to kill his creature, or do I want to get the cards out of the creature? Do I want its ability? Which do I want to do? Before, with damage on the stack, there was no choice. It was just options.

It's like, would you like to kill the creature? Yes, I would. Would you like to sacrifice the artifact? Yes, I would. And so you got a double dip in it. And it didn't lead to better gameplay because the correct play was to get both. That was just the correct play.

And now it's like, okay, now I have to make a choice between which is better. Is it better to kill the creature or is it better to get the effect out of the ability? You know, I'm going to lose my creature, but what do I want for losing it? And that choice just makes for better gameplay because you're always going to choose both. When both is an option, when you have the option of both, you're always going to choose both. When both is an option, you're going to, when you have the option of both, you're going to choose that option that is just better. And it is not, one of the things that we want to do as game designers is we want to make you think, we want to challenge you, we want to mentally challenge you, you know. I never want to make

things super easy, you know. now that doesn't mean I can't do things, I mean, one of the tricky things about how one of the challenges of game design is there's a balance between wanting to make sure that there are interesting decisions

for your player, and in the same sense not overwhelming them. I mean, one of the things is that, well, this is about choice in general. Sorry, this is about just decisions in general. One of the reasons you don't give your player

endless decisions is it can freeze up a player. That if I say to you, okay, there's 18 things you can do, which of the 18 things can I do? You're like, okay, what are the 18 things again? Because when you play, okay, there's 18 things you can do, which of the 18 things can I do? You're like, okay, what are the 18 things again? Because when you play a game, there's a desire to try to maximize your choices. I'm challenging you. I'm being mentally challenged. Okay, I'm up to the challenge. I want to optimize what I'm doing. And what happens is if you give

somebody too many decisions, too many choices or options, it freezes them up. That the average person, there's an amount that they can handle before they freeze up. For example, one of the things we've learned, we've done a lot of focus testing. So focus testing is where we take people, we put them in a room, we give them some amount of instruction, sometimes it's very little, sometimes it's a lot. And then we watch them play. I mean, it's a two-way mirror or one-way mirror. I mean, the person in the room understands they're being watched. But they don't see us.

They don't see our reactions. So one of the interesting things is if you overload somebody with too many choices or options, what do they do? They make decisions. They ignore them and just make decisions on some gut level. For example, and this is easily seen for beginners in attacking and blocking. Once attacking and blocking get too complex, they fall to some simple, either they don't attack at all or, you know, they find a flyer that, youer that can't be blocked and just attack with the flyer. They come up with some simple thing.

When the math is too complex, there's one thing to say, I have one creature, you have one creature. Okay, I can figure that math out. But I have six creatures and you have eight creatures. Either I'm just not going to attack, or I'm going to attack with everything, or I'm going to attack with the flyer. I'm going to pick some shortcut that I can use to go, well, I'm just going to make a ballpark guess based on something. I'm going to pick something that I know, and I'm not going to process all the information. That is what happens when you overrun people with too many choices or options, when they have too many decisions, is they just, they stop trying to figure it,

they stop trying to optimize. So one of the things I think when people get confused is there are definitely players who are more advanced or like loaded on. 18 decisions, I can make it. That doesn't necessarily, there's a mistake there between people feeling that because they can handle a lot of decisions

that it's better for having them. And this is where the choices option comes into play. Even if you can handle 18 decisions, that doesn't necessarily mean it makes it for better to have that many decisions. That part of what makes a good game is, I talk a lot about simplicity and elegance, and that part of what you want is, you want good decisions, not decisions.

This idea that decisions in a vacuum, decisions, there are qualities to decisions. It is not like every decision I make a player make has equal value. I mean, for example, every time you play the game of chess, for example, before you make a move, I can make you choose to take off a shoe. And you have to figure out whether to take off the left shoe or the right shoe.

Okay, is that an interesting decision? Does that make chess a better game? No, choosing the left shoe versus the right shoe doesn't even mean anything to the game. And there's a lot of decisions that, A, aren't particularly relevant. Sometimes they seem relevant, but they aren't relevant. There's a lot of decisions you, A, aren't particularly relevant. Sometimes they seem relevant, but they aren't relevant. There's a lot of decisions you have to make that, you know what, 99.9% of gameplay is not going to matter. So why give the player the illusion that doing something is going to matter if it's not going to matter?

That's not a particularly good decision. Another decision sometimes people make is where it's something that could matter, but it's more tracking something for the sake of tracking it. That it doesn't matter very often, and it's like, well, this could matter in one out of twenty games, so every game I need to keep track of it. That's not particularly good decision making there. That, you know, like, one of the things, one of the ways to separate good players from bad is to burden them with decisions until somebody can't handle it. But, A,

that makes the game not fun for the player who's not good, and it makes the game for the good player just more tiring. Like, I can make you, you know, for example, I'll use my chess example a little different. I can say to you, every minute on the minute, you have to ring a bell. And if you don't, you randomly lose a piece off the board. Okay, so now I've given you a decision that does

affect gameplay. That if you are not careful, this is going to really impact you. Maybe very badly impact you. Now, is that a better game of chess? Is the bell-ringing game of chess better, that every minute I have to ring this bell? That while I play, I have to keep track of the clock so that on the minute I can ring the bell, I've gave you a decision, has a big impact on the gameplay,

the game might even hinge on it. Because if I randomly lose my king, I lose the game. So there's a, you know, assuming you've all the pieces, well, no matter how many pieces you have, there's always a chance you're going to lose the game because if it grabs the king, you lose. So you have to pay attention to that. It's too important not to pay attention to.

And losing a piece is a big deal. So, okay, well, now I'm forced to pay attention to that. Hey, game designer, you made me pay attention. But what we as game designers have to figure out is, is that worth it? Okay, now I've added watching clocks to chess. You know, it makes it harder to concentrate on the chess. And there's even players that go,

oh, well, bell ringing chess tests the good players because the bad player has to spend all his time thinking about the bell. But the good player, to spend all his time thinking about the bell. But the good player, you know, they can learn when the bell has to come. And they can process better. So they can think about their moves better. And I'm like, that does not make a better game of chess. And then bell-ringing chess becomes all the sensation.

No, it doesn't make a better game of chess. Having to watch a clock while it might matter. Like, you can always make things matter to the player as a game designer. You just make the result something that impacts the game. That doesn't mean it makes it for a better game. When you are making

a decision, does the decision, is making the decision something inherent to the game that makes the player have to test themselves in a way that's that plays how the game plays. Like, I could add bell ringing to magic, but all that does is just pull your concentration, and that doesn't make for a better gameplay.

In fact, it makes for worse gameplay, because people are going to make more abrupt decisions and less methodic decisions. And I don't particularly think it makes good magic play, nor good chess play. So the issue is, in general, you have to be careful how many decisions you do no matter what. My argument today is that when you... Because decisions have to be carefully weighed, that more decisions is not better than less decisions,

you have to be very careful about your decisions. You, the game designer, have to... You should weigh each decision you're making your player make very carefully. Because there is stress you're adding to the system when you choose it poorly. And the idea is, what you want to do when you make a game is pick the right number of decisions,

make them interesting decisions and good decisions and game-affecting decisions, and balance them the right amount. What you don't want to do is, being good at your game should not be being able to multitask so many different things about things that might minutely matter better than other players.

A, that is a game that very few people can appreciate, and B, even for the good players. A, that is a game that very few people can appreciate, and B, even for the good players. Like I said, if I went to some pro players, probably they're better at the bell-ringing magic game. Would they enjoy it more?

I doubt it. I don't think adding in that component does anything that makes the game overall a more important game. It might make it more... Oh, here's another important thing. There's different kind of skill

testing. Yes, I could add in some component, and if you get good at that skill, then you have a better chance if you got good at that skill. I could add to magic a rule that says, okay, every turn you have to throw a peanut up in the air and catch it in your mouth, and if you miss,

you randomly lose a card. Okay, well, the better peanut magic player would be the one that learns how to catch a peanut in their mouth. Does that make it a better magic game? No. That making people learn a skill that is relevant only because you're telling them it's important doesn't inherently make it more fun. doesn't inherently make it more fun. Now, if I... Like, one of the things where choices actually do make it a lot more fun is one of the things that's neat to do to a player is say to them,

there are paths to make. In a lot of way, when you think about your game, what you're doing is you're saying, there's pathways for you to choose. And I am letting you have some understanding of what those pathways are. So the more experienced you are, the farther you can think about what your decisions are. In fact, the difference between a good Magic player and a bad Magic player, or to be fair, a good game player or a bad game player, not bad, I'm using that term, an experience versus

an inexperience, how about that, is how far ahead they're able to think. From focus groups, what we learn about magic players who are more inexperienced is they don't think very far ahead. When it's their turn, they look at their hand, and the question they ask themselves is, can I play something? And the answer is yes.

Most often they play it. And when you get more experience, it's like, what can I do? Is that beneficial? Do I want to do that now? But a beginning player is just like, they're so focused on, can I play things, and do I have the mana,

and they're so focused on the now, that all the decisions about what I'm doing this turn, the idea that you make a decision based on next turn, like one of the things about really good players is they'll make decisions that aren't relevant for a while because they're thinking out for numerous turns. Or sometimes they're saying, okay, I'm backed in the corner

and my route to victory is this thing that it's my only route to victory, but I'm aware that it's my route to victory and so I'm going to the corner, and my route to victory is this thing that it's my only route to victory, but I'm aware that it's my route to victory, and so I'm going to go down that path. And my goal of this game is to try to get far enough along in my path of victory that my opponent doesn't understand what I'm up to to try to stop me to see if I can win this way. That's an interesting thing to see a good player do, where the good player thinks as many turns ahead as they're able to think.

Some of that's the limitations of how much information the game gives them. Magic is one of those games that gives you a lot of information, so you can look decently far ahead. And so one of the things about choices is it plays into that basic thing

of the gameplay, which is I'm trying to map out future turns. Okay, well, if I give you choices, I play into that. If I give you options, I'm not really particularly... I mean, if I give you options, most of the time it's figuring out how to optimize it so you're getting both things. Now, I'm not saying there's not some skill in that. There is some skill in that.

But I think people overvalue the amount of skill in that versus the amount of skill necessary in making key choices. I mean, another thing in general, I mean, a lot of what today's topic is is talking about decision-making for the game player. And something that I don't think that game designers think enough about, I mean, it's an important thing to think about, which is, every

decision you're making, your player make, every decision, you need to stop and say to yourself, is this decision worth its weight in the game? And here's another way to think of game plays, is you only get to do so much in your game that if you're trying to be elegant,

if you're trying to have some simplicity to your game, what you're... I talk a lot in writing movies. There's a quote I've had a lot in movies that I got from a writing teacher, which is, no movie is worth a scene, no scene is worth a line.

And what that means is that no matter how good your scene is in a movie, it's the most awesome scene, it's hilarious, but if the movie doesn't need the scene, the scene has to go. You can't keep a scene in a movie because it's an awesome scene if it doesn't advance the larger goals of the script. Likewise, let's say you have the pithiest of lines,

the most awesome of lines, but if it doesn't serve the scene, if it doesn't help the scene, the line has to go. And the idea there in writing, and this is true of any art, which is the goal of an artist is to figure out what their art has to have versus not. What is necessary for the art? And anything that's not necessary, you've got to boot out. That if your scene isn't helping advance the story, out. If your line isn't advancing your scene, out. If some component

of your painting isn't helping the overall thing, out. If some series of notes isn't helping your song, out. That you want to maximize what you're doing. And the the thing one of the things that you as a game designer are most focused on is what decisions are you you foisting among your players that you want to make goals and you want to make rules and then you want to sort of guide your player to say okay now that i've defined what they have to do and then define how they can do it what have i done what decisions am i making them make? And then for each decision, you've got to look at it and you've got to say, is this a good decision?

And ask yourself a couple questions. Number one is, does it advance the game? If it doesn't advance the game out, not advancing, just like the scene not advancing the movie, if the decision is not advancing the game, if it's not helping move your player, this is the inertia thing I talked about in my 10 things,

is if you're not making them make decisions that impact them advancing towards their goal or working through the rules, if you're not making, if their decisions don't make the game end, if they're not leading toward the game, if the decisions don't advance toward the end of the game, get rid of them. They're not doing you any good. So, number one, if they're not leading toward the game, if the decisions don't advance toward the end of the game, get rid of them.

They're not doing you any good. So number one, how do they contribute to the game? Number two, are they interesting decisions? Actually, that's the wrong question. Are they fun decisions? This is interesting versus fun I talk a lot about, which is not is it mentally stimulating, is it actually something that has a visual impact as you play? A lot of your decisions, what you want to do is you want to make sure that there's

something interesting. Sorry, I keep using the word interesting. There's something inherently fun to it. I want to make the decision. You know, I, the person playing the game, go, wow, what am I going to do? The goal of decision making isn't to tax the player.

You are the ally to the game player, not the enemy. Just because you are making life hard for them, you're doing it for them. So this is an important lesson, by the way. You, the game designer, are the friend of the game player. You're trying to make the game-playing experience for them. You're not trying to challenge them to the point that they break. It's not like, ha-ha, if they can't finish the game player. You're trying to make the game playing experience for them. You're not trying to challenge them to the point that they break. It's not like,

haha, if they can't finish the game, I, the game designer, have won. If your game is too complicated for them and they stop playing, you failed. If their game is no fun for you, you failed. Your job is to make a game where they challenge themselves but have a good time

doing so. And so when you're giving decisions, you have to say to themselves, is this a fun decision? Is this something that players will enjoy having to think about? If you're making a decision and it's important but it's just so taxing and so hard to figure out and it's just adding stress to the system, you don't want a lot of that. I'm not saying you can't have some of that, but what you want to do is make decisions that are interesting and fun decisions. And one of the things we try really hard to do

when we make decisions is make sure that it's a decision. What we don't want to do is it's A or B, but A is right 99% of the time. Then what are you doing there? Why give them B as a choice? When you give them choices, you want to make sure that A and B are both things that they

could choose. Now, A might be right more of the time, or maybe in a certain deck A is more often right, but you want the B to mean something and not to be this irrelevant thing that almost never matters. The other thing when you're looking at decisions is you want to make sure that

you only get so many decisions. You have to be aware of their cognitive load, which is how much things are they concentrating on. And as I said before, as we learned in the focus group, once you override cognitive load, the human default is to start making

sort of gut decisions. You just start saying, okay, I can't, I know I can't process information, so I'm just going to sort of do the best I can. I'm going to make it off the gut. And there is, there's some interesting space there, but in general it's a problem. That if your opponent, like,

there's too much for me to decide, ah, screw it. You have a problem. You don't want your, you don't want your player throwing the towel in because the game has overwhelmed them. That is not for most games. I guess there's some super advanced games that break this rule.

But in general, you don't want your game to overwhelm your player. The decision is, is this adding to the game? Is it something that's fun for the player to have to decide between? And how much cognitively is it adding? How much cognitive load is it adding? Because one of the things about your decisions is they don't live in a vacuum. It's not like each decision, is this decision good, yes or no? At some point, you've got to go back and say, okay, given all these decisions, is this too many decisions?

And the answer is yes, then you've got to go back and figure out how to pull some decisions out of things. And that don't fall in the trap of saying, well, each individual decision in the vacuum is fine. Well, that doesn't matter. You know, for example, I could ask you a simple question and you'd be fine. And there's some point in which I just overload you with simple questions, where it's just, there's only so many questions you can process at a time. Now, maybe that's 10, maybe it's 20, maybe it's 100, maybe it's 1,000. There's a point where you break. And the goal of your game, you're not the enemy of your player. The goal of your game is not

to break the player. Your goal of the player is to challenge the player at an appropriate level that it is fun for them to figure out what to do. So, for example, I'll give my analogy here of the jigsaw puzzle. So, I like doing jigsaw puzzles. My wife and I, sometimes my kid will do jigsaw puzzles.

And what we've learned is, there's this thing that jigsaw puzzles do where they try to see how hard they can make the puzzle. Okay, this puzzle, all the shapes are the same shape, and all the pieces are the same color. And, like, what, what, okay. What I want, what I look for in a puzzle is i want a puzzle with lots and lots of details because to me the fun of putting the puzzle together is trying to find where all the pieces go in the puzzle it's not i don't want a puzzle that like i mean i'm not

saying there's not people that enjoy this but i don't enjoy it that i don't want a puzzle where like i'm like okay i i'm past the part that's fun for me, now let's do the part that's not fun. Because what happens is, it makes it a not fun experience. My goal in my puzzle is, I want the first piece to be fun, I want the last piece to be fun. I want the whole process to be fun. So I'm going to try to pick

something, and I feel a lot of times game designers do what some of the puzzle designers do, which, once again, there's a narrow audience that maybe wants that, but most puzzle players, the goal of the puzzle is not to challenge them to the point where it's not even fun anymore.

They want to challenge themselves in a way that is still fun for them. And I think a lot of people miss that. And I think when you're talking about choices and options, it's trying to understand what's the best way to make them. What's the best way to make decisions for your player? And that it is important to not overwhelm them, and it's important not to make them make so many decisions

that they just don't have the ability to even enjoy it. Like, one of the things that's true, by the way, is I can give you fun decisions, and I can give you enough fun decisions that it stops being fun. Like, interesting, one of the things I learned at work, coming to work at Wizards, is you get asked to do projects. I can give you fun decisions, and I can give you enough fun decisions that it stops being fun. It's interesting. One of the things I learned at work, coming to work at Wizards, is you get asked to do projects. And there's a lot of, sometimes you're assigned projects, but often you're asked if you want to do them. People will come to you and say, hey, I have a project.

Would you like to be part of it? And one of the dangers at Wizards is that there are so many projects that really are fun that you take too many. And this is exactly this problem, which is, I can give you fun decisions, but at some point, my fun decisions aren't fun anymore because the volume of the decisions

overwhelm you. You know, oh, this project sounds fun. This project sounds fun. Well, at some point, I have too many projects and, like, none of it's fun because I can't handle it all.

And that when you're making your player make decisions, you have to think about that as't handle it all. And that when you're making your player make decisions, you have to think about that as well. So one of the things when you're making, you're trying to make your player make decisions, is trying to understand where are the most interesting and fun decisions for them, and maximize on those.

There's another reason why I think choices is most often better than options is what I want to do is I don't want to give you a billion decisions. I want to give you a few key decisions that matter. And choices matter in a very potent way where options do not. Options are if I can have A and B, I will take A and B. Choices are, which do I care more about, A or B? I can't have both A and B, so I really have to figure out what I want more. Where options is just like, okay, I want A and B. Maybe if I have to get one before the other,

I got to choose what order to get them in because it's better to have A first than B. And there's some decision-making there, but not as much as choices. And so one of my big things today is when you are making your player make decisions, you want to be methodic in what

those decisions are, and be careful. There is this misnomer that if each thing in a vacuum Well, there's a couple myths to dispel today. I've got to wrap up myth number one is more decisions

is better, not true myth number two is that the harder the decision, the better not true and myth number three is that it is your job to, myth number three is that somehow

if your players have too easy of a time that you, the game designer, have failed. And that's also a myth. And the point is, your job as game designer is to make the game fun for your game player. At the end of the experience, you know, when we did a focus testing, one of the most important questions we asked was, was this fun? Would you play this again? Would you recommend this to your friends? Did you have a good time? Because that is what matters most. You are not seeing how much you can test them. This is not a goal of how challenging could I be. It's, did I

put the challenge level at the right amount so that my opponent had some challenge, but had fun doing it, and had a fun overall experience. Okay, guys. Anyway, that is choice versus option. My talk all about decisions. So I had a little extra traffic today, so you got extra long podcasts. Hope you guys appreciated it. But I'm now in my parking space.

We know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.