Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #337 - Interviews

Episode Date: June 3, 2016

Mark talks about the changes in how gaming is publicly perceived.

I'm pulling away driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so often on my podcast I talk about history, but usually I talk about the history of magic. So today I'm going to switch things up a little bit and talk about the history of gaming, of games. There has been a fundamental shift from when I was a kid to now that I wanted to spend today talking about. Because it really, it has a big impact in sort of how I think of games and how I see things. And I don't know if the average person who isn't my age necessarily knows how things have changed. So today, I'm going to talk about how gaming has changed. So today's topic is about not magic, but gaming.

Related, I feel. Okay, so, for those that are unaware, I am 48. Born back in 1967. Which means that I grew up in the 70s. That I was a kid, late 70s, early 80s. I graduated from high school in 85. I graduated from college in 89, for those who want to know. So anyway, here's one of the big differences.

There's a couple of fundamental differences between then and now, and I want to start talking about that. So when I was a kid, I got into gaming because my dad was into gaming. I did a whole podcast with my dad. We talked about that a little bit. My dad really loved games, and he introduced games to me, and we played games together,

and our family played, like, party games together. You know, gaming was something my family did. But the interesting thing was, back in the 1970s, if you were really into gaming, that wasn't something you told other people. I mean, you might find other friends who might game with you, but it really was something that was kind of kept on the down low.

Gaming was considered very geeky, and back in the day, being geeky was a bad thing. At least it wasn't societally acceptable. To sort of have geeky interests was sort of like, okay, keep that to yourselves. And so when I grew up, gaming was something in which I kind of, it wasn't something that I necessarily, you know, when someone asked me what I did and like what hobbies I had, it wasn't one of the first things that came up. I mean, if I was close to the person, it's not that I wouldn't tell them, but if I was

sort of introducing myself to somebody, you didn't lead with you were a gamer. That wasn't something you started with. That was something like, once you got to know the person. And there really was this sense that kind of gaming was, well, you know, the thought process was, if I tell someone I'm a gamer and they know nothing, that might be a negative first impression. Because, you know, gaming, that's a little out there. Like, for example, when I went to college, I found some friends who gamed, and we would game. But it wasn't, you know, we'd go off somewhere and do our gaming.

But, okay, so let's flash forward to now. So now, the stat I love to quote is, they asked boys and girls 13 to 18 whether or not they'd played a game within the last month, I believe is the thing. Be aware, by the way, for this purposes, they meant any kind of gaming, not just board gaming or card gaming, but any kind of gaming.

It meant any kind of gaming, not just board gaming or card gaming, but any kind of gaming. And boys, 90, sorry, yeah, boys, 99% said within the last month they played some kind of game. 99, 99%. Girls, 94%. So the point of this, which is important, is gaming is just something everybody does. Now, there's a lot more options. There's video games. There's a lot more kinds of games. You can play games on your phone.

There's a lot of options that were not available in my youth. But it was something that was, you know, nowadays it's just like, hey, of course, everybody plays video games. But see, let's go back to the 70s again. I also was into video games back in the 70s. But, now I did eventually have a video game player at home. Originally, my dad bought what was called the Odyssey, which was the very first video game system in which you took screens. Basically, all you could do is you moved around this little square

on the screen, and then you would tape things to your television screen so that you could then use it to make a game. Eventually we got the Atari 2600. For those that don't know, that was one of the first real in-home video game systems.

Atari is the company that made Pong, originally. And a lot of the games that you could play on the Atari 2600, maybe you've seen them. For now, for some nominal amount of money, you can buy a thing, you plug in your TV, and it plays, I don't know, like 80 games from the Atari 2600. But they were very simplistic.

Even video games in the arcade, and we'll get to that in a second, were limited in their scope in their graphics, but at home, really limited. So it was very blocky, but it was video games, and I enjoyed it. The real way you played video games back then, there was no handheld thing. I mean, there was a few things you could plug into your TV at home, and they were very rudimentary. But really, really, if you wanted to play video games, you had to go to an arcade.

I mean, arcades still exist today, but they were... Back in the day, they were much more of a thing. People would go and hang out at the arcade. The thing I remember, my dad and I, they had one arcade that did on, I forget, one night of the week or maybe it was one month, one night every month,

would have the, what was called an open arcade where all the machines were set for free play and you paid a lump amount of money to get in

and then you could just play video games from, it was like three hours or something. My dad used to do that and my dad's favorite video game back in the day was a game called Battle Zone play video games from it was like three hours or something. My dad used to do that. And my dad's favorite video game back in the day was a game called Battlezone

where you're in like a tank. It was all vector. It was all vector drawing. And you were in a tank and then you would shoot all the enemies, other tanks, and there eventually were planes and things. I don't know. What was my favorite? My favorite was a game no one's ever heard of. It

came called Rockin' Rope, where you had this rope and you would shoot and you would climb, but these things were chasing you and they'd climb after you on the ropes. And the idea is if you get off the rope, you could shake the rope and knock them off. But they were slightly faster than you. So like they would gain on you. So you had to time it correctly. Anyway, so I would play, my dad and I, my dad was also really into video games, so he and I would go, and we'd spend our, my dad would put down whatever money, and we'd spend three hours playing, and the neat thing about that was, it allowed you to play games that you normally, because the way it normally worked is, you had a quarter, games cost a quarter back in

the day, and video games were designed to eat up your quarter pretty fast. Now, some people would get good at video games eventually, but I was never amazing in any of the video games. Like, my quarter didn't last that long. And so, the nice thing about the free play night was I could play a game that normally, you know, I don't know what we paid to get in the door, but if I paid the equivalent for the amount of money I would spend on the machines, I would have spent a lot more money. I remember, for example, there was a game called Moon Patrol, where you basically, you drive

this little, I don't know, moon buggy, and you have two buttons. You can fire and you can jump. And then you start at level A and go to level B, and eventually it gets to double A and double B. And this is the kind of game where you make one mistake, you're out. But if you have

the quarters, or you're playing on free play, you can continue the play. So, you know, I remember that I would start on A, and then after infinite plays later, I'd get to like double B or double C or something. And it's also the kind of game where the

threats always came in the same order and the same pattern, meaning once you had played the level once, that section once, okay, you knew the threats that were ahead of you. One of the other things about early video games, for those that are unaware, is they were very simplistic.

They, by today's standards, didn't have a lot of memory. So, usually there wasn't a lot of graphics to them. It was all about sort of being clever in how you used it. I mean, early video games, in my mind, were very clever because they didn't have graphics to lean on. And so the gameplay was a lot about finding some cool interaction and really having you play with that.

Anyway, if you wanted to play video games, you really went to the arcade. You did not, I mean, you kind of could play at home if you're willing to play a simplistic version of it. And you couldn't, I mean, there were no cell phones back in the day. There were no Game Boys or portable gaming systems. It's funny, I watch my son.

I look at what my son plays with today. And I, like, the little, the young version of me would have gotten so jealous of what my, just the tools that my son has access to as a kid. But anyway, so, if you wanted to play video games, you went to an arcade. You had to sort of hang out at an arcade. I mean, there are arcade machines in other places, I guess, you know, a restaurant might have a few arcade machines or something. But anyway, back in the day, you kind of, it wasn't, even video games, there was even a stigma to video games. Like, if you said you liked video games, you had to make sure that you were around other video game players. You had to make sure that you were around people like yourself. That, you know, if you would say, oh, I have this video game, let me tell you about it. It was not something, you know, like right now, for example,

one of the big changes, I think, is I will attribute to the cell phone, which is that people have a device that they already carry around with them that is capable of doing high-end games. I mean, comparative to what I'm talking about for my youth. You have a gaming system.

Everyone carries, or most people, carry a gaming system with them. And so when you're bored, when you're waiting, whatever, there's just an easy way to go, hey, here's a way to pass the time. And I think, I don't know, I think one of the big changes, and this is a pretty fundamental change, was gaming used to be kind of a destination once upon a time. Like, you had to put a lot of time and energy to be a gamer. You know, you had to buy a system or you had to go to the arcade and spend a lot of quarters. Or you had to, you know, even if you're in a board gaming group or a role-playing group, you had to find people on the time.

And it was something that, it truly was something you invested time in. And now I believe that gaming has become so easy to access that it's just accessible to everybody and because of that that means that everybody like I think more people in my youth might have played games if they were exposed to games that games are fun you know I mean one of the secrets of of gamers is games are quite fun. And really all a gamer is, I guess when you get right down to it, someone says, you know what, I enjoy this enough so I've chosen to make it a hobby. That I'm going to spend time and energy and money.

And it's a hobby of mine. And not everybody's a gamer. Not everybody games as a hobby. But the thing that's real different right now is once upon a time, if you were a gamer, you dedicated your time and energy and money to gaming, and it's something you did. But other people didn't quite understand why you would do that. So it was something that you didn't really advertise. Like, it's funny, for example, I wear lots and lots of shirts now. You know, I wear video game shirts and comic book shirts and I very much advertise

my geeky way. And as a kid, I did somewhat, but not nearly as much as I did today. In fact, I think as a kid, I mean, I had a few t-shirts, but it wasn't something like, it's funny now that like I still identify like my pop culture is my wardrobe to a certain extent. These are my interests. This is my wardrobe. And that was not nearly as much as a kid. Even just the sense of personification. One of the big things I look at now, and the reason I bring this up, the reason this is today's podcast, is understanding how people come to games and how people experience games is an important part of being a game designer. For example, if I was going to be an author,

I would want to know how people are reading books, what means people are reading books. Like, for example, books have gone through a huge change. Like, the number of people that literally open up a book made of paper and turn the pages is way down from what it once was. You know, digital reading, for example, is at an all-time high. That's a big impact. That has an impact of how your reader reads your book.

And it's similar for me for games, which is when people play games, how do they do that? Now, I happen to make a game that's mostly a paper game. I mean, there's a digital version of it. But even the digital version, I mean, I guess you can play it on your iPad. So it's something, I mean, not quite on your phone yet, but you can play it on your iPad. on your iPad. So it's something, I mean, not quite on your phone yet, but you can play it on your iPad. It is something that, you know, is portable at least. But it is, we'll get to that in a second, that one of the things that's interesting is what it means to be an analog game in a digital world. We'll get there. But anyway, so one of the things that's interesting to me is that the technology of providing

people access to games has changed such now that people get to sample games. That I think in my youth, that most people never sampled games. So the idea of you do that was sort of like, oh, that's kind of foreign, but okay, whatever. And remember, back in the day, the comic books actually went through a similar thing. Games were thought of as being a kid thing, that kids play games. And that when you looked at what games were, most people associated games with like, oh, okay, well, you're a kid and you play Candyland or Chutes and Ladders or whatever. You play Clue. You play Monopoly. It was thought of as a kid's thing.

It wasn't thought of as something adults did. So when, as an adult, you did it, people were sort of like, oh, why are you doing this kid thing? Comic books were in a similar place. The comic books, for a long time, were perceived as a child medium. That's something that children read. So as an adult, when you read comic books, you're like, oh, why are you doing this children's thing? And I think that was part of the stigma

of games, is that people didn't realize that, like, yeah, there are games made for children, but there are games made for adults. And that there's a lot of things that adults did that were challenging. Video games had a similar quality. I think video games were also thought of as being more of a kid, maybe a teenager thing. And so when adults were doing it, it's like, oh, what's wrong with them? Why are they doing a kid thing? That's also a very common trait sometimes where people who don't understand something make assumptions about things and then make judgments based on those assumptions,

even though those assumptions aren't true. So anyway, what has happened over time is the access, I mean, that's a big thing that's changed in the world, is people now have more access to things. And when people are able to access things and see it for themselves, like one of the big things if you talk about societal change is people have to experience it firsthand. That is a real big issue about societal change. That things don't change until people have an experience that's a first-hand experience. Like, for example, when you talk about sort of civil rights or any sort of change where some subgroup started getting more acceptance in society, people understanding, had a lot to do with interaction. That when communities were more segregated and people didn't interact with a certain minority, they thought differently of the minority

because they didn't have experience interacting with the minority. This is true in multiple different aspects. That when people actually interact with something, when they actually, it's not learning about it through a secondary source, but it's a primary source, which is you. You are learning about it.

You're experiencing it. You're interacting with it. That's when you start to adopt and understand it, because all of a sudden, it goes from being this thing you don't quite get to something you understand, because you actually have experience with it. Gaming went through that for sure. I mean, I think society, one of the big things that's changed over time, like thinking from my youth, is there's been an explosion of access.

If I talk about, for example, if I, let's say, for example, when I was a kid, that I was curious about something. I go, oh, that's an interesting point. I wonder who did blah, blah, whatever. I was just curious about something. In order for me to understand the answer to that, I'd have to say, okay, I'm going to somehow get to the library. And as a kid, I obviously wasn't driving, but somehow I'd get to the library.

Maybe after school I could walk to the library or something. I had to get to the library. I had to then track down the information. I had to look through encyclopedias, nothing of which was super timely because it was books. And then I had to do research at the library. And maybe, maybe at the library I could figure it out. So that meant it had come up. I had to remember I cared about it. I had to track it down.

I then had to find it. And then I still had to find it at the library, which was tricky because the library has so much information and it's somewhat dated. Now, let's say I go, oh, I wonder what, I have something I wonder what, um, I have something, I have something I'm curious about. I literally can whip my phone out of my pocket, get on the internet, search. And I mean, I might not find the answer, but most of the time I will find the answer. I think my wife makes fun of me all the time.

Whenever we want to know something, I'm like, let's look it up. I want to know. Um, and that's such a, such a different world from my youth where, like, pretty much if you didn't know something or didn't know someone that knew, you know, even, for example, let's say, for example, you knew of somebody that didn't know, but they lived far away. It was expensive to call someone long distance. It's sort of like, oh, my Uncle Barry knows, but he lives in Boston. Do I want to spend $15 to find out the answer to that? Well, maybe next time I talk to him, if I remember, I'll ask. But right now, it's like I can pick up my phone, call anywhere in the United States.

It doesn't even cost me anything. And, hey, if I have Uncle Barry, hey, Uncle Barry, hey, tell me the answer to this. There's just access. There's the ability to get to things. And that has really changed how people function. Hey, tell me the answer to this. There's just access. There's the ability to get to things. And that has really changed how people function because when people can experience things firsthand, they start to make their own judgments on them. And that, in my mind, is what's happened with gaming

is that once upon a time, you had to go to gaming. You had to go to the arcade. You had to buy a board game and bring it to your house. You really had to do something to experience the game. You couldn't, you know, it wasn't something that was free and easy. It was something you had to spend money and energy on. But now, for example, let's say, for example, my friend is playing a little game. And he goes, oh, this is fun.

They mentioned it to me. And it's free. It's free to download. So, okay, for free I can sample it. And, okay, I have a little downtime where I'm waiting for something. And I downloaded this thing because my friend said to download. So, okay, for free I can sample it. And, okay, I have a little downtime where I'm waiting for something and I downloaded this thing because my friend said to download and I pulled up my phone and downloaded it and now I'm waiting and I go, oh, I tried and, hey, it's fun. This is fun. That is such an easier access to gaming. And,

but there's a whole domino effect here. So, first off, access is easier. So, since access is easier, more people are willing to sample. And like I said, it's free. It's at your fingertips. It's very easy to do. Okay, now once you get more people sampling, you get more people willing to experience it. And then you start having the second issue, which is you start getting a groundswell of acceptance. Which is, as soon as more people can interact with something, more people have firsthand experience.

They go, oh, oh, this is, I thought this was one thing, but now that I've experienced it, it's, it's not, it's not what I thought. This is not a kid's thing. This is not infantile. This is not, this is not silly. This is kind of fun. Oh, wow, this is fun. So now you experience firsthand and you have a more positive thought of fun. Oh, wow, this is fun. So now you experience firsthand and you have a more

positive thought of it. So now when someone says, oh, I game for a hobby, you know, I'm into gaming. You're like, oh, well, I have gamed a little bit. You know, maybe I don't game as much as they do. Maybe I don't make a hobby out of it. But at least I've experienced games. I play the game. And so I go, oh, OK, well, I've had fun with games. I can see why that would be fun. And no longer it's like an off-putting thing like, oh, you do what? And now it's like, oh, okay, I get it. You start getting acceptance because the more people that experience something, the more societal acceptance there is of things.

You know? And so what happens is gaming, and this is, by the way, not just gaming. This is true of all culture. This is why I think geeky things in general are just more accepted. This is why things that were once niche things are more accepted, is there's easy access to it. And as people get some personal interaction with it, even if it's just a little, they start to understand it better. And for two things, even if they don't experience it themselves, they start having secondary. So there's's primary meaning I experience myself

there's secondary which means somebody I know experiences it and there's tertiary where I've heard of people experiencing it tertiary is in my youth that's where most things were well I haven't experienced it, I don't know someone who's experienced it so it's tertiary sometimes I'm a gamer, oh my son games

they're a little more accessible to it but right now it's so much more accessible that not only are there a lot more primaries, there's a lot more secondaries. A lot more people go, well, it's not something I do, but I know somebody that does. And the thing that happens is, as it becomes more acceptable, people are more open about it.

People share it more. So like in my youth, it's not that people weren't gaming, but because you were kind of, it was thought of like, well, not something I want to share, people were less open about it. There were less people just wearing t-shirts advertising it, you know. So what happens is, as people have more primary experiences and secondary experiences,

more people are interacting with it, making it more acceptable, and so then people feel more open to share it. And it's a snowball effect. So what happens is, it just becomes something where people start to be more willing to experience other people's things because they have more access to it. They understand it better. And so you go back in time, things are more segregated.

It's sort of like I have my experiences and I don't really interact with people's other experiences. So I look at those other experiences and go, oh, they're foreign to me. But as people have more access to things, and people thus start having more primary and secondary access, and things are a little more open, and people calm down about things, and it's less sort of taboo, and more people are willing to share, the snowball, it keeps expanding until the point where people are like, oh, I see, this thing isn't at all weird. A lot of people do this thing.

I know people that do this thing. I might have experienced this thing. And all of a sudden, what once was kind of taboo is no longer taboo. And that's really where gaming has come. That's why it's very amazing to me as a gamer, someone who's been gaming for most of my life, you know, for 40 plus years, and that's really where gaming has come that's why it's very amazing to me as a gamer someone who's been gaming for most of my life you know for 40 plus years to sort of watch and go like there literally was a point in my youth where somebody asked if i was a gamer i had to size

them up and go are they trying to is this a positive thing or are they going to be negative about it do i want to open up to the fact that i'm a gamer is that something i want to be negative about it? Do I want to open up to the fact that I'm a gamer? Is that something I want to be public about? To now, where it's like, I would share that with everybody. If someone asked me if I met someone for the first time, like, what are your hobbies? I would say gaming. I like gaming. I wouldn't think twice. I wouldn't even think about like, oh, that's something maybe I should question whether I'm supposed to reveal that. And that is a very different world to live in. That is why I think people who are sort of, I think a lot of you listening to this are probably a lot younger, that have

never experienced a world in which gaming wasn't kind of just open. It's something people did. And once again, 99% of boys, 94% of girls. It's something like, especially in your youth, it's something you experience at a high percentage. It's something that you do. And as you get older, it's also something that's expected that older people will do.

That it's not like, oh, that's just a kid's thing anymore. So the other thing that's interesting is that because of the digitalness of this, this is another thing that hits me as a game designer is, if I say to somebody, I'm a game designer, people go, cool. And then they assume that I make video games. And then I'll have to say, no, no, no, I make analog games, I make card games, I make actual games you pick up. They go, oh, you know, that's not their assumption. So gaming has definitely shifted, and I think that a lot of people, when they think of games,

in fact, when you go on Wikipedia and you look up gaming things, a lot of them just assume you mean video games. And not that there's anything wrong with video games. I like video games, and video games to me are definitely a great execution of gaming. That games are more than just video games. It's very funny that the shift that goes on. And I think the reason it stems is most people

experience games through video games. Like I said, I think the phone is a big entry point for a lot most people experience games through video games. Like I said, I think the phone is a big entry point for a lot of people into games. And now, like once upon a time, you wanted to play a video game, you kind of had to go to the video game. Well, since those days, the video game comes to you. I mean, if I want to think about this, so my son, for example, the number of devices in our house that he can play video games on, he can play video games on the television, almost any television in our house. He can play video games on the computer.

So in my youth, we had a television, and okay, we had a Tideworks 2600, so I could play rudimentary video games on my TV. My computer, okay. My dad was a gamer. We had some computer games We, you know, my dad was a gamer. We had some computer games, not a lot, but we had a few. Okay. He could play them on the phone. Well, we had a phone back in the day, not a cell phone. And he sure could play video games on it.

He can play on a tablet, which is something we didn't have access to. I mean, pretty much almost any digital device available he can play on. And he still has access to what I had access to, which is analog games, which is just, okay, I had card

games and board games and such. But, for example, like, he can play video games by himself. He can play video games in the car. He can play video games anywhere. In fact, for example, when poor Adam gets dragged like clothes shopping or something where his sisters are picking out clothes, he can sit and play video games. That's not something I had access to as a kid.

And that sort of exposure is a very different thing. And it really shapes, I don't know, it is neat to look at sort of where things are and where they once were. So what does it mean? Today I'm talking about the access to video games. Not video games, games. How people have more access to it and how it's just more acceptable because of that. What I think that means is there's a much broader audience available for games. And even analog games.

Because once people interact with games and even analog games, because once people interact with games and go, ooh, this is kind of fun, it has really changed society. So one of the big things that it's done is, I think as gaming has become more acceptable, the idea of social gaming, the idea of, here's games, we'll play at a party, has really opened up. That if you ask me, for example, the idea of going to a party and kind of just a game breaking out at the party, that really isn't something that happened in my youth.

I'm not saying impossible. There were quote-unquote party games, but they were a little bit different animal. If someone, for example, if I was at high school, and there was a party, and they're like, we're playing a party game, it was not by, we weren't breaking out taboo or something, not that Taboo existed

at the time. We were spitting a bottle, or we were, you know, we were playing things that were more social-oriented games, games that were, in some sense, looser games, more activities, where today, like, you're at a party, they might pull out, you know, Exploding Kittens, or they might pull out Cards Against Humanity, or they might pull out Apple to Apples, or one of many, many games, you know. There's a lot of different sort of more social type things you'll see today. And there's been an explosion in social games, for example. And that's one of the things that I think really changes.

Like, if you, for example, if I was designing Magic, I mean, if Magic existed back in the 1970s, I would have a much smaller audience because the number of people, I mean, there would have been an audience that were gamers back in the day. I was a gamer. I would have loved Magic in my youth. But it would have been a much smaller group that today, when I'm sort of aiming to make more Magic players,

I have such a broader area that I can look to. Because just more people are willing to say, yeah, I'm willing to play a game, or I play games, or even I'm a gamer. Just more people would say, hey, I play enough games that I consider gaming to be a thing I like. And that really changes the kind of games we need to make, what we can do, who our audiences are. In some ways, I think

having experienced what I have of watching games go through these changes, at some level it makes me not take things for granted of really sort of appreciate all the audience that gaming has now and watch kind of the shift that gaming's gone through. Like one of the other big things, and this is tied together, is gaming, for example, was a little

more homogenous in my youth, meaning the kinds of people that played games, because it was such a closed connect group, like for example, in my youth, almost all gamers, at least the ones I interacted with were male, there weren't a lot of female gamers. And part of that is, as you have less access, as less people are exposed to it, you know, if I'm just less willing to share with anybody but people I think are really close to my circle, you just have less diversity in gaming. That's another giant change that's happened,

that all of a sudden, that lots of different people are playing games. Lots of different kinds of people are playing games. And it's not that, for example, maybe there weren't some of that, but not nearly to, you know, just the exposure and the willingness of more groups to be exposed to it, you know.

That one of the things is when you're in a very closed system where you're afraid to sort of open up or talk to other people, it's hard to get people outside your demographic group to try this experience. And that is another big impact in gaming. I think the diversity of gaming has a huge impact on where games can go. Because once you start getting other people playing games, you get other kind of people making games.

And that's exciting. I mean, I think, for example, I use another medium, I talk about movies, is back in the day, most directors were male. But all of a sudden, you know, you start exposing and making them more accessible. And now today, you have a lot more directors. In my youth, it was mostly white males. And now you have lots more directors and lots more kinds of people making films and telling stories. And guess what? They get to tell different kinds of stories because they have different life experiences

because they grew up in different places with different things. And so I think the same thing has happened with games. One of the things that's really exciting right now is there's a diversity of people making games and there's a diversity of kinds of games. Like one of the neat things I went to GDC this year one of the things is they have a lot of

people showing off their games and that some of the games are very familiar like okay and some of them are like well I've never seen a game like this. There's this neat game called Her Story which I think you can download, by the way, I think on Apple products. It was this game in which you have police tapes from many years ago. There was a crime, and the only tapes that exist are of this one witness.

And you can type in any word, and then it'll show you up to five clips that are up to, I don't know, like ten seconds long of the witness saying the word in question. And the idea is, by sort of looking at these video clips, you're trying to figure out what happened. Who committed the murder? And all you have to go is this one witness.

She comes in multiple times. You have multiple days of her testimony. But you have this weird interface to try to figure out what went on. And it is unlike any game I've ever seen. It won a lot of awards at GDC. It's a really cool game. And it's just, I'd never seen anything like it. And as I looked around a lot

of the games there, there were a lot of games that were very offbeat or different or like wow, this is neat from a different perspective point or trying a different thing in the kind of game it's making or stretching the kind of game it was. I think as you're seeing more people play, you're seeing more people make.

And that's another real exciting thing is that gaming itself has transitioned and that the spectrum of what's acceptable and who can make it and who can play it, it's an exciting world. Like one of the other things, for example, is people,

from time to time, people were talking about how I had no training in game design. Like I'm this untrained game designer. And like, well, you do understand when I got into this business, you couldn't major in game design.

There wasn't even a study. It wasn't something you could study. And now I've talked to so many people that like, you know, I've talked to so many people that, like, you know, I've talked to professors that run game design, you know, whole schools of game design. And, like, I just talked to someone at GDC who's running a class in magic design, talking about magic and the making of magic.

He works at a school that does game design, and they're doing a whole class just in designing magic. That's exciting, you know. The idea that somebody could I look back and I'm like, oh, I took communications and that's something that interests me and it still does. But while I did not have the option of gaming as a career, that wasn't something that I could even consider. And now people are studying game design.

They're game designers by major. That's an exciting thing. So one of the new things for me is whenever I look backwards, I then want to look forwards. Okay, 40 years ago when I was a kid, what was gaming like? How was gaming accepted? Who was making games? Now let's go forward 40 years. Let's go forward to the year, you know, 2056. How is that going to be different? Because the kids that are going to grow up there, they're going to, like,

whatever we experience, you know, I'm a couple generations back. I grew up in a world where games existed when I was a kid. Video games didn't exist until I was a teenager. And a lot of kinds of gaming didn't exist. Role playing sort of started happening while I was a kid. Obviously, trading card games didn't exist. A lot of new and different kinds of games didn't exist you know uh a lot of new and different kinds of games didn't exist so i find not a flash forward 40 years to my son and like his experience and how he plays games and what games aren't him or to my either of my daughters they play games but the

kinds of games we have a weekly family game night where we play games every friday night you know the kind of exposure they're having that they're going to share that with their kids, and just the kind of world in which where gaming is, where is gaming going? And that's something really exciting, you know, that I can only fathom, I can only make guesses. Like, one of the new things is, if gaming can change this much in 40 years, how much more can it change in 40 more years, you know? Like, right now, most people play games, you know? Like, one of the things that's very interesting is, when go to Germany the culture in Germany is gaming is treated like movies it's just something that you do families do it's not a question of do you game it's more like what kind of games do you you know it's kind of not like do you see the movies it's like what kind of movies

do you like well in Germany it's not like do you play games like what kind of movies do you like? Well, in Germany, it's not like, do you play games? It's like, what kind of games do you play? And just like when I first came to Wizards 20 years ago, Richard introduced us to a lot of German games that he had to teach us because the rules existed only in German. And now a good chunk of those games are now printed in English. That America is slowly catching up

to where Germany was 20 years ago, where gaming is just becoming part of our culture. That of course you game. That is not a question of if you game, it's how do you game? What do you game with? Now, flash forward 40 years, what does that mean? You know, does the world catch up? Is gaming, like, already, if you look at the money made in the gaming industry versus the money made in the movie industry, I think gaming is past the movies, I think. I'm not 100% sure on that. But it's just something that's really become a key part of our experiences the movies, I think. I'm not 100% sure on that. But it's just something that's really become a key part of our experiences. Like, I joke about how, you know,

when I'm a, you know, very old in some senior citizen home, like, people around me are playing video games, because that's something our generation has done. So anyway, that is the exciting thing, that when I sort of understand where I am anyway, that is the exciting thing, that when I sort of understand where I am now, where games are right now, I look back to the past and see how things have changed over time for what gaming has become. And I look to the future and I go,

oh, well, you know, if games have come this far since I was a kid, you know, the trend is good, the trend line is great, that I think gaming is going to, you know, just become such a more and more an endemic part of life. In fact, I would argue it already has. But that is exciting. Who are the new people? Who are the next game makers? Who are the next game designers? You know, there

are people that grew up, were gaming, imagine growing up in a world where gaming was not just acceptable, but just a part of life. You know, what kind of games are you going to make? What experience is going to come from that? So anyway, that is what excites me. And that gaming has come so far,

but it is a long way still to go. So anyway, guys, I'm dropping off my daughter. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.