Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #347 - Stand-up Comedy

Episode Date: July 8, 2016

Mark tatlks about the lessons he learned from his days of doing stand-up comedy.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today I'm doing a topic suggested by someone on my blog. So someone suggested that I talk about my stand-up days, because every once in a while I've mentioned that I used to do stand-up. And I said, oh, but the problem is I tend to talk about things that are magic-related or game design-related. And so I said, okay, is there a way to do stand up and tie it into magic design?

Yes, there is. And so what we'll do today is I'm going to talk about 10 lessons I learned from my days of stand up. And as you guys know, I have a holistic approach. I believe what you learn in one discipline affects other disciplines. And so I'm going to talk about how these 10 lessons of things I learned doing stand-up comedy applied and helped me make, made me a better game designer. That is the plan for today. So we're going to learn all about more than you ever wanted to know about my stand-up days. Okay. So first off, let me give a little context before we get into the lessons. So what happened was in college,

I started an improvisation group. Well, a little wider than that. When I was at school, I went to Boston University, and I was in the College of Communications. That was my college within the university. But I joined something called Stage Troupe, which was the theater organization. Not the school, there's a theater school,

but just for fun, the sort of extracurricular theater group that was at Boston University. And as part of stage troupe, I did a lot of different things. I did a writer's workshop where people would write their own sketches. I directed some of my own plays, Lego My Ego, Last Impressions. I did a bunch of stuff like that. And I started and ran an improvisational comedy troupe known as Uncontrolled Substance. Anyway, in that, there were a bunch of different people that were in. One of the people was a guy named Stuart Winter, who was very funny. And Stuart, in addition to other things he did, did stand-up comedy. So one day he convinced a bunch of us who were in the improv troupe to go with him.

There was a, right next to where we used to practice, there was a little stand-up place. I don't remember the exact name. I'm going to call it Giggles. Chuckles, Giggles, something like that. And so he took us there, and we all went on and tried our hand at stand-up. And I enjoyed it. So I started doing more stand-up. So through college, I did a lot of stand-up, mostly open mics. I'll get into what that means in a second. But I did a bunch of stand-up.

So let me explain a little bit. Well, why don't I get into the lessons, and then I will explain. As I explain the lessons, I'll explain a little more about how stand-up works. So lesson number one, know your audience. Okay, so when you do stand-up, when you first are starting on stand-up works. So lesson number one, know your audience. Okay, so when you do stand-up, when you first are starting on stand-up, there's something called open mic nights. So what an open mic night is, usually it was Monday nights because that's the least busy night in a comedy club. What they do is anybody who wants can sign up and do comedy. And so there's two different people

that tend to do that. One is beginners who want to sort of demonstrate what they're capable of, or people just want to try it out. And the idea is anybody can try to do stand-up, and then depending on how you do, they can ask you back. So they'll let you do stand-up, depends how it goes over. If you do really, really, really badly, they might not invite you back, but usually they'll invite you back a little bit. And at some point, if they're interested in you, what they start doing is they start putting you at earlier and earlier times. Like open mic night usually is like, you know, eight o'clock to one a.m. in the morning. And early on, you're getting, you know, 1230. You're getting late things. And eventually they start giving you early

slots. The other people that tend to do open mic nights are professional comedians who are trying out new material either they're trying out new material or they're trying to revamp some old material but it's a place for them to sort of experiment and work on stuff that isn't, you know, when someone's coming to pay you, you have to be a little more polished, but open mic night is like, okay

you know, it's kind of a given that you're going to get a lot of different comedians on for a short amount of time. So normally when you do stand-up, you have what's called a set, which is a certain amount of time. Normally when you're starting out, it's five minutes. Sometimes it can be as small as three, but usually you have a five-minute set. That's normal. And what will happen is the established comedians might get longer sets.

You know, they might get a 10-minute set or 15-minute set. But usually, if you're a beginner, you get a five-minute set. And what that means is you have to have a routine. And usually, it's not one single routine. It's a bunch of routines tied together that make up five minutes. So one of the routines when I first started out was a routine on Scooby-Doo. I can't quite get into the subject matter, but the comedy bit was about what is the Scooby-Doo gang really up to? And anyway, I used to do that bit. In the early days, I used to do that bit a lot, and it always went over really well, because mostly I was playing college clubs near colleges, because Boston's full of colleges, and always got real good responses,

because I grew up with Scooby-Doo. People I was talking to were my age. They grew up with Scooby-Doo. Everybody found it pretty funny. Then one day, I was at some club in which it was an older audience. Somehow, I wasn't near a college, which is tough to do in Boston,

and it just was an older audience. It wasn't a younger audience, and I'm doing my Scooby-Doo thing, and it's just dying. I'm like, what's going on? I'm making sure that I perform in the right way. I'm like, no, no, my energy's up and I'm hitting all my jokes and stuff. And what I realized after it was all done was that my audience had changed. This wasn't my normal audience. It wasn't a college audience. And Scooby-Doo at the time, if you were a little bit older than me, you didn't remember Scooby-Doo.

Scooby-Doo was from my youth. Now, I mean, Scooby-Doo has gone on to become something that has kind of transcended a single generation, but at the time, people older than me didn't really know Scooby-Doo. So I was doing material that they didn't know. And what made me realize is you have to know your audience, that part of being successful as a stand-up is making jokes that your audience will appreciate. And that if you tell the wrong jokes to the wrong audience, they won't appreciate it. And what that means is, as a comedian, you sort of get a repertoire. You

have a bunch of material. And what you have to do is you have to figure out which material makes sense with the audience you're doing. So this applies very directly to game design. And I've talked about this a bunch, which is when you're designing a card, you have to know your audience. Who is this card for? Is this card for a specific psychographic? Are you making a card for Tammy or Jenny or Spike? Is this for a specific format? Are you making it for Commander or Standard or Modern or Vintage? Is it for a particular kind of player? You know, I'm like, who's the card for?

Who are you trying to make happy? Because the answer is, if you don't understand who the card is for, you can often make a card that's for multiple people, but not for a singular person. Like, I've at times made cards in which I'm not optimizing for the person I'm trying to do. And then nobody likes it. So figure out who the card is for and make it for that person. Make it for that specific person or specific kind of person.

Because what happens is just like in stand-up, if you make your card for the, you know, if you don't understand who your audience is, you make a card that nobody appreciates. And so you have to understand who it is that wants the card and then maximize it for that person. And that's a big part of doing game design is understanding what different people want. Because here's the tricky thing about designing magic cards. There are a lot of different kinds of players and they want lots of different kinds of things. And if you don't understand who you're making it for and what it is they want, you will not be successful. Okay, lesson number two, trust your material. Okay, so when you do stand-up, one of the things is you create a routine, and then you do that routine many times. So this is something a lot of people don't realize who've never done stand-up,

but the routine is definitely something in which you will do a routine again and again and again. I mean, you'll keep trying to build more material. The goal of a comedian is to get, you know, like, first you just need five minutes so you can do your open mic. You know, when you first started doing stand-up, like, literally you have five minutes. And when you do the second open mic, you're doing the same five minutes. Eventually you'll start to build up your repertoire. You'll figure out what routines work and don't work. And the ones that work, you'll do more.

And the ones that don't, maybe you'll start to build up your repertoire. You'll figure out what routines work and don't work. And the ones that work, you'll do more. And the ones that don't, maybe you'll stop doing. But one of the things that's interesting is, like I said before, I did my material and it worked one place and didn't work another. So one of the things you have to be careful of is the audiences can at times just be in different states. Sometimes your audience is in mood for a certain kind of humor.

Sometimes they're not. Sometimes, you know, there are reasons in which you can do the same routine in front of different audiences and have them respond very differently. Now, as the first lesson, it could be the material. But sometimes you're like, no, no, I'm doing universal material or this is the right age group for the material I'm doing. And the question is why one time it does well and one time it does not. Now, whenever that happens, you have to examine yourself and figure out, did you do something different? But another important thing is you've got to trust the material.

Once you know the material is good, you don't just change it because you had one bad set with it. When you go up and you perform, one of the things in general that a lot of comedians do is they'll have a notebook or something, and they'll take notes right after they go up. You'll do something, and you'll figure out, oh, I tried something new here, and that worked, or I didn't.

Or, sometimes when things don't work, you're like, okay, what did I do differently, or what did I do wrong, or could I have done something a little different? And one of the things you realize is, that once you get good material, you have to have faith in your material. You can't let a bad response

shake your belief in what your material is. And that one of the things that's really tricky when you're doing stand-up, it's so easy to take immediate feedback and just want to apply all of it. That you have to sort of figure out, you know, when is the feedback something of value and when is the feedback sort of not representative of the whole. And this is something in magic that's pretty important. I get a lot of feedback. And my feedback is not all the same feedback.

I get feedback in all sorts of different directions. So one of the things that I have to do as a designer is I have to figure out what I think is working and not working. Now, part of it is I do want feedback. We look at market research. We look at all sorts of things. I'm not saying that that data isn't important. But the same sense, you also sort of have to, as a designer, understand what is and isn't working and figure out, you know, you have to have faith in things.

Sometimes Chrome is a good example where we made something. It didn't really go over well with the audience. But I knew inherently I thought it was a strong idea. And I said, okay, was it execution? You know, and so we redid it, you know, in Theros, I said, okay, let's find a way to take this mechanic that kind of was lackluster and really see if we can make it shine. Because I believed in it. I trusted the material.

I trusted the mechanic. And Devotion, obviously for those that didn't know Devotion was Chroma Redone and one of the key things about it the thing that I think really is

it would be very easy for me to go I tried it it failed move on but sometimes when you're designing you have to figure out

like it's not that the players didn't like it obviously they didn't respond to it it's like oh did I do something wrong was there some way for me to, it's not that the players didn't like it, obviously they didn't respond to it, it's like oh, did I do something wrong? Was there some way for me to do it better?

And that the audience not liking something isn't always a sign that the material is weak rather than maybe the material was presented wrong. Like sometimes, for example, when I would do stand-up and I would do a bit that I know is a funny bit and it didn't really quite connect,

I would always say, okay, what about this time? How did I present this differently? What did I do? What made this time different from other times? But always in the end, I have to understand of you need to recognize quality. As an artist, you need to understand what is good and what is not, so that when you're getting feedback, you're not throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as they say. That you're not taking what's good about it

and throwing out what's bad about it. You know, when you get feedback and you have to change things, you've got to figure out what part of things aren't working and excise the things that aren't working, not all of it. You have to sort of, there's a gut instinct you need when you design to make sure that you're keeping the good stuff. It's true in stand-up, it's true in game design. Okay, lesson number three.

Adapt when things aren't working. So one of the things that stand-up taught me is, so normally when you do a set, you'll do like a five-minute set, you would have different segments. Like, the idea essentially is I'm doing a routine, and the set is the whole five minutes, and then within it, there are routines within it.

Now, sometimes your routine is the whole thing. You could have a full five-minute run, and sometimes you have smaller bits that are tied together thematically, where I make a joke in the first routine that comes up in the fourth routine. But you have a little bit of flexibility that the routines can be interspersed.

And once you have enough material, you have more than the five minutes, one of the things you'll do sometimes is, depending on how the audience is responding, you'll change the material. For example, sometimes you'll try new material, and if the new material isn't working, you'll switch into the old material that you know works well. So let's say, for example, you're working with an audience, and the new material isn't quite doing what you need it to do. You don't want to lose the audience, so you hop into known material

so you can give that to the audience. And then once you kind of have won them over, sometimes you switch back to the newer material. But one of the things I learned a lot about doing stand-up is learning to read the audience and learning to be adaptable when you need to be, knowing that things don't

always go as you plan. And game design is pretty similar, which is you create a plan, you create a vision, you have something you want to do, and then you have to execute on that plan. But the plan doesn't always hold up, that things happen along the way. The thing I like to compare it to is, you know, there's a heist movie where they spell out exactly what's going to happen and, you know, and they walk you through the 10 steps that have to happen for the perfect heist. But what always happens, something doesn't go according to plan. Something that was supposed to happen, you know, some guard that was supposed to see some place

is in the wrong place at the wrong time or there's's some alarm system. Usually, for example, there's something that they had intel on how it was going to work, but it had changed. It's not as they were told. And I feel like when you're doing artistic stuff, the same thing kind of happens. You plan, you structure, you figure out what you want to do, but when you actually get there sometimes, the idea ahead of time doesn't work. And there's a lot of working on the fly. So one of the things I've learned, for example, in playtest is I will change things in the middle of a playtest.

I will change cards in a playtest. I will change mechanics in a playtest. If something is clearly not working, I don't even need to finish the playtest with the thing that's not working. I'll just change it. You know, for example, if a card is just clearly too strong and it's causing problems, I'll change the cost on the spot. If a mechanic isn't quite working, I'll change what it does on the spot. You know, I'm willing to adapt. Because the point of playtesting is to gather information.

And if I've learned quickly that information is being skewed by something, I will then and there change the thing to fix it. You know, that you need to be willing to adapt when you're working on something. That you, one of the things that's really important, I think, to any sort of creative person is you want to sort of stay true to what you believe. You want to trust your material. But you have to figure out when things aren't working, you've got to be willing to adapt on the spot. Like, for example, I talk about iteration of—we'll get to iteration in a second.

I'm sneaking ahead. But one of the things is you playtest a lot, but you only have so much playtesting time, and so if something isn't working, if you wait till the next playtest to change it, you're just slowing down how many times you can figure out what's going on, you can iterate. Let's move on, because the next one is iteration is key. Lesson number four. Okay, so when you do stand-up, one of the things that people are unaware of is, or a lot of people are unaware of, one of the effects you're trying to create when you're doing stand-up is you want to create this illusion that the things you're saying are just coming to you.

Like, you know, this is a thought I had. You want to create this illusion that, like, it's just spontaneous. But the interesting thing is it is anything but spontaneous. You have planned everything out. And so one of the things that's important is, the reason that you do your stand-up is, you iterate a lot. That you do stand-up, you get feedback on the stand-up, you apply the feedback, you tweak things, and you do it again.

And part of getting a good routine or a good set is just doing the same material again and again and again, but taking all the feedback you're getting, learning from the feedback, adapting from the feedback, and then doing the next thing. So for example, one of the things that's very common is there's something in stamps called an aside. So what an aside is, is the audience understands, I mean, even though you're trying to make it sound like you're just thinking of it in the moment, the audience knows it's a routine.

They know you've actually written this. You know, they know that you've, even though you're trying to create the illusion that just on the spot you're coming up with, the audience knows that you've written the material. But asides are something in which you make a comment on your own material. It's almost like you're an observer of your own material, which is, usually comes across as being spontaneous. Like, you know, well, I have my routine, but oh, I'm just making a comment. And that little comment's just, wow, you just came up with that in the moment. It hit you in the moment. And the funny thing is the asides are never,

you know, those are never truly spontaneous. You've planned those. And a lot of what you want to do is figure out how to get those extra little sides that are funny and so a lot of times once you have the core of the routine you're adding a lot of the things around you, you're figuring out the sides that go with it, you're figuring out the hand motions, the facial things, the vocal inflection where to emphasize things, where are you supposed to change your voice where are you doing things that add an extra little element to what you're doing? And that what happens is once you sort of cemented the material, a lot of doing the routine is figuring out little tiny details. Another thing, by the way, that the comedians will spend a lot of time on is word order, word choice.

It's like, is the joke funnier if I swap these two words? And sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it's like, oh, just phrasing it slightly differently just makes it a funnier thing. Because comedy is very much about timing and rhythm. It's one of the big things you learn as you do it is there really is a rhythm to comedy and that sometimes it's just like, oh, the punchline works a little better if I just change it a little bit, if it is presented a little bit different. If I put a pause in, there's another big thing, is knowing when to pause, knowing when to make a joke and

wait for a second. Sometimes, for example, the audience laughs right away. Sometimes it takes them a beat to laugh because they have to piece two things together. And so part of doing stand-up is figuring out all the little tiny details you need to do to make sure it's right. And the iteration part is key to that. Okay, so obviously this applies directly. I mean, if you listen to me, I've talked about iteration numerous times.

Iteration is so important because the key to making something is you want to make it, playtest it, and for games, you want to make it, playtest it, get feedback, make changes based on your feedback, and then playtest again, you know, and continue that loop. Because part of what you want to do is make the best thing you can and then playtest again and continue that loop. Because part of what you want to do is make the best thing you can and then play it. One of the things that's key for game design is

until you play it, you don't know whether Zoom was supposed to do. Until you put it in the actual memes which your audience will experience it, you don't know what it is. You can theorycraft all you want about how well something will play,

but nothing really matters until you actually play it. So you've got to playtest it, you can theorycraft all you want about how well something will play, but nothing really matters until you actually play it. So you've got to play it, you've got to play it, and what you'll find is when you play it, you'll get the feedback you need. And then you have to take that feedback, figure out how best to adapt to the feedback, but then change things based on the feedback. And then

you just continue. And that really design and development is just that system done again and again. The one thing that happens as you go along in magic design is you start with longer gaps between playtesting and it speeds up. Mostly because as you fine-tune things, your changes get smaller and smaller.

Early on, you're making wide sweeping changes. You might be changing whole mechanics. And by the end, you're just tweaking costs and making much smaller changes. So the iteration goes faster as you go along because the changes you're making are more minute. So you can more quickly make iteration loops. Okay, number five, use your fellow comedians. Okay, so one of the things about Open Mic Night, as I said before, is there's a combination of new comedians and old comedians that are trying out their stuff. So what happened was, so the first time I did stand-up, I was at Giggles, let's say. But the place that I did most of my stand-up, actually, this place, I remember the name,

it was called Catch a Rising Star, which is a big comedy club that people know, comedy clubs. And this one was in Harvard, in Cambridge, in Harvard Yard. The Harvard Yard. It was right by Harvard University. And I used to go to Cambridge. You can get on the T's, the subway in Boston. So it turns out that Boston has,

there's a couple cities that are really key to stand-up comedy. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston's one of them. There are a couple cities that are really key to stand-up comedy. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago. Boston's one of them. There are a lot of really famous comedians that came out of Boston. And interestingly, when I was doing stand-up, some of them were actually the struggling comedians at the time. They weren't national yet.

They were still sort of local comedians. In fact, so one of the things that happens is when you do stand-up and you're a new person, some of the veterans will come out and they'll give you tips, they'll give you notes. So one day, so the thing I did when I did stand-up at Kitchen Rising Star was I wanted a gimmick. So the gimmick I came up with was lists. That all my comedy were based around lists. Like, you know, a top ten pet peeves of the average Enterprise crew member.

Or in 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, a Simon Garfield song. The only actually was five. Well, here's the 45 that got cut from the song. Stuff like that. But anyway, I did the bit, and I, so I came off the stage.

Maybe it was the second or third time I'd been there. And there was this comedian who I'd seen go up, and he was very funny. At the time, he was just a Boston regular. A guy named Louis C.K., who obviously would go on to be much bigger. And he gave me some tips. He said, he goes, I like your stuff. And he gave me some advice of how to make it better. And so I listened to him and tried it. And like I said, I was iterating. I took what he said to heart. I did it. It was better. And, you know, from time to time, he would

give me other notes. And so, like, it's funny, like, in my stand-up comedy days, who were my notes from? Louis C.K. That's who was giving me my comedy notes. And one of the cool things was, I mean, the comedians on some level, there's a little bit of competition.

You're fighting for slots and stuff that if I get the 8.30 slot, somebody else isn't getting the 8.30 slot. But the comedians really get along, and they obviously, there's a lot of camaraderie between the comedians and that, especially with new comedians, the comedians really are willing to help out. They want to give notes and stuff. And I, Louis C.K. was the only one to ever give me any notes. He was the one that did it the

most consistently. But anyway, what I've learned is, just like in magic, I'm surrounded by a lot of other people, very talented people. You know, magic is not a solo endeavor, and so one of the things I've learned about is part of making the best magics that I can is making use of all the people around me. First off, I have a design team. They're hand-picked because they have lots of different skills. Make use of all those skills. Secondly, I have people outside. I have people in R&D. I have people, you know, on the design development team. I have editors. I have rules managers. I have digital people. I have creative people. Even outside of R&D, I have caps people and brand people. And there's just an endless list of people that if I need help on

something, I have experts at my fingertips. And that part of being good at doing design is knowing when there's somebody else that's better at it than you and letting them help you with some aspect. You know, and that, you know, I've learned early on that I need to go to the editor and the rules manager to make sure I understand how things are templated so I understand how the rules are working. You know, are mechanics doing what I want them to do? I need to talk to digital people to make sure that I'm doing things that can be done on Magic Online and Magic Duels.

I need to talk to, you know, creative people, usually there's one on my digital people to make sure that I'm doing things that can be done on Magic Online and Magic Duels. I need to talk to creative people, usually there's one on my team, to make sure that I'm catching the story correctly, that I'm providing a design that matches the kind of imagery we want. I've got to keep looped in the development to make sure I'm making things that are developable. So part of making a good magic set is making sure that I'm making use of my fellow, in this case not comedians, but my fellow workers. And so really part of doing anything is understanding that other people can help you. And that is a big important part of any process. And this is not even just creative endeavors, but you are not alone. Other people have the ability to help you.

And part of being really good at your job is knowing who those people are and how they can help you and letting them help you. Okay, number six, respect a laugh. So when you do stand-up, one of the things is, every once in a while, you'll do your bit

and you know where people laugh. Like you've done the routine enough times, like you know where the laugh points are. But sometimes somebody will laugh at something that is not what you planned for them to laugh at. And it's always important to go, okay, why did they laugh at that? Because one of the things about stand-up is, basically in stand-up, there's set-up and delivery. The idea is that, like, I'm trying to set my joke up, and then I'm giving the joke. Usually the joke requires some kind of setup

to get to the joke. But the thing is, if you can make the setup funny, that's golden, right? I mean, the delivery is supposed to be funny. That's the punchline. That's supposed to be funny. You want the punchline to be funny, but if the setup can be funny,

if you can find a way to make people laugh, not even at the punchline of a joke, but the setup of a joke, you're just better off. And so one of the things you're always looking for is when you get a laugh that wasn't expected, try to figure out why you got that laugh. What was it that you did? And one of the things that really separates the good comedians from the great comedians is their ability to milk every aspect of the routine.

That they can take things that a normal comedian couldn't get laughs out of and get the laughs out of it. It's also a sign of a really good actor. Real quickly, when I was on Roseanne, one of the things that John Goodman was really good at was he would have straight lines,

meaning he was setting up somebody else. Meaning his line wasn't funny. His line was just meant to help somebody else make a joke, and he'd make his lines funny. He would take lines that weren't designed to be funny and make them funny. Sign of an awesome actor. Sign of a good comedian is figuring out how to do that.

So in design, the same sense is when I do something that works, even if it's not what I'm trying to do. Like clearly you're setting out to do things and that's important and you want to make sure the things you're trying to do you are doing. But sometimes you do something that has a consequence you didn't mean. But just because you didn't intend for it doesn't mean the consequence isn't a good thing. It doesn't mean you shouldn't explore it. For example, if I make a weird combination that I didn't expect, that's not a bad thing.

Like there's a lot of times where we try to create synergies, but sometimes you walk into a synergy you didn't mean to create. It's not a bad thing. Recognize it. And the point is when you, when you have a laugh that you don't expect in standup or when you find a component in your design that you didn't plan, but it works, take advantage of that. You should always look to find, you know, don't, don't be trapped by looking for the successes where you expect to find them. Look for the successes everywhere. Because if you look for successes everywhere, you will find them everywhere. And then it'll be a richer, deeper design or stand-up bit. Okay, number seven, apply lessons in other areas.

So another thing is you will learn things in doing stand-up. Like, for example, let's say I do a routine where I start doing some hand gestures and it's really funny. Maybe the sign there is certain kinds of hand gestures are funny to people. Maybe you want to apply hand gestures to another routine. Maybe you have a voice. Maybe you have a certain tone. Maybe you have a certain, you know, whatever it is, whatever you're doing that's getting them to laugh in one routine can often work in another routine. So just because you do a routine and something positive happens

doesn't mean you've only just made that routine better. You can make yourself as a comedian better. And this clearly ties to design, that we need to design something that as you learn along the way, as you learn something, you can apply those lessons elsewhere. If I learn something about car design,

maybe that can apply to mechanic design. Maybe that can apply to how I do mood or tone. There's a lot of components to making a magic set, and that I can learn lessons wherever I'm able, and you want to cross them. One of the things, I did a whole podcast and an article talking about creativity,

and I believe creativity is finding connections between things that people don't normally find connections. And in it, I was talking about in science that one of the big breakthroughs they tend to find is when people are at one, work in one kind of science and they move to another kind of science, that they tend to be more apt to make breakthroughs because they're approaching it from a different way of thinking than most of the people in that science. That if I'm a biologist trying to do chemistry, I'm not thinking like a chemist, I'm thinking like a biologist.

And maybe I get some answers to things because I'm approaching it slightly differently. That same thing is true here, which is sometimes if you approach things from a different vantage point, what you'll find is you'll get different answers. And so when you apply lessons from one discipline to another, you sometimes are able to find things you never would find any other way.

So applying lessons in another area, super important. Okay, lesson number eight. Repetition is important. Once again, number eight. Repetition is important. Okay. When you do stand-up, when you're doing a routine, you are doing the exact routine.

I don't just mean the words. I mean the facial gestures. I mean the hand gestures. I mean the tone of voice. I mean the asides. Everything. That when you do a routine, especially when you watch comedians do the same routine again and again, as you will at an open mic night,

what you start to realize is that it is like almost like a play. Like when you do stand-up, everything, I mean, I'm not saying that really, really good comedians sometimes will be spontaneous and will have ad-libs. Usually the key to an ad-lib, by the way, is when you're interacting with the audience because the audience has said something and now they have to respond to what the audience said. That's harder. I mean, you might have some things memorized that are, okay, well, someone might say thing X and then I have to respond to what the audience said, that's harder. I mean, you might have some things memorized that are,

okay, well, someone might say thing X and then I have a routine. But a lot of times that's more than being more spontaneous. But anyway, part of what you're trying to do is you want to be exact. And when you're practicing, the goal is to do it the same way you did it before. Unless you're trying out something new, unless you're experimenting, you want to sort of practice doing it the same way because part of it is that you want to have a very exact routine

the other thing that's interesting is a lot of people say, well, once people have heard the routine, will they get bored if they hear it again? well, what if I do the material somewhere and then I'm somewhere else and I'm there again, and the answer is people actually like comedy routines, much like they like music, in that people actually like comedy routines much like they like music

in that people will play con routines on albums and stuff and listen to the same exact routine again and again. That there is a rhythm to it. Like I said, there's a rhythm to comedy and that part of what you want to do

is you want to make things sort of, you want to make sure that you're hitting the rhythm you need to hit in stand-up. And in design, in game design, part of why repetition is important is, look, every set I want to make a brand new thing. I want you to feel like it's not the game you played before.

But I still want you to be, it's magic. It's not some other game. I mean, I could change so many things in a set that it doesn't even feel like magic. But that would not make people happy. If I was innovating, if every time I came to a choice and I chose the choice I'd never chosen before, you would not have a fun experience. And the reason is,

part of what makes magic fun is most of it you already understand. You're trying to understand the new parts of it, but the reason the new parts are fun is the old parts exist. And my answer there is, like, if I gave you a cake, but instead of having any cake,

it was just all icing, that wouldn't be nearly as good as a cake with icing. The part of what makes the icing fun is there's cake there. And I think that in part of imaginary design, yeah, you want new and different things,

but you want it layered on top of well-known existing things. You do not want to make somebody have to re-figure everything out. You want to make them figure out a few things. One of the neat things about something like Landfall is it says, okay, you now have to care when you play lands. But everything else that's in the car was pretty normal magic because that's a lot.

Saying, okay, all of a sudden, the order you play lands and when you play lands, that's something to think about and that's new and cool. But I don't throw other things that are as complex on top of that because it becomes too much. And so one of the things that's important in design is the repetition is important because you want people to be familiar and know what they're doing and that you need enough familiarity that is not too alien and foreign to them. So repetition is important.

Number nine, sweat the details. So one of the things we do stand up, I talk about how vocal inflection, facial expression, the little sides you say, just the choice of the wording, how you use your hands, all of that matters. And that one thing you'll find that's very interesting is you'll do a bet and you'll just change two words in a sentence or you'll just have a little change in your voice or you'll do a little hand gesture or something.

And all of a sudden, what is just not that funny becomes funny to people. That comedy is, it's an art of nuance that, you know, something can be funny that it's hard to say why exactly is it funny, but sometimes it's just a little something that makes it funny. And in game design, it's the same thing, that it's just a little something that makes it funny. And in game design, it's the same thing, that there's lots of little things that make things shine, that the reason that people sort of fall in love

with your game is the details, that there's just little things that speak to them. And so one of the things that I say in game design, just like in stand-up, is you need to pay attention to all the details. They're not extraneous. It does matter what word choice you use and what inflection you have and how often you pause. All that stuff in stand-up matters.

Well, in design, it matters how you word things, how you choose to do things, the order of things, what's on the card, what's not. All those little details really do matter. So number nine, sweat the details. Okay, number ten, enjoy yourself. So one of the things, a piece of advice I got from a different comedian, not Lucy Kay, is they were watching me and they said, you know, why are you here? Why are you doing stand-up? And I'm like, oh, because it's fun.

And he goes, okay, if it's fun, then why don't I see you doing stand-up? And I'm like, oh, because it's fun. And he goes, okay, if it's fun, then why don't I see you enjoying it on stage? That if the reason you're doing this, it is fun, then enjoy it. Don't enjoy it after the fact. Enjoy it in the moment. And he said, if you are enjoying yourself,

it makes the audience want to enjoy what you're doing. If you're nervous, it makes the audience nervous. If you're enjoying yourself, it makes the audience want to enjoy what you're doing. If you're nervous, it makes the audience nervous. If you're enjoying yourself, it makes the audience enjoy what you're doing. And what he said is, think about this. He goes, if you're not in front of something doing it, stop doing it.

If you're having fun, I mean, assuming you don't have to, doing the things you have to do. But if you're doing something that's, you know, something you're doing above your own choice, like, if you're not enjoying it, stop doing it. If you're enjoying it, enjoy it. And for the first time I ever did stand-up,

I was really nervous. The funny thing is I used to do improv and so I was like, okay, how bad can it be in improv? I go up on stage with nothing and the audience

throws suggestions at me. At least here, I practice, right? But what I found was the audience is much more forgiving in improv. They get that you don't have anything.

So if you mess up, it's kind of funny. One of the things about doing improv is you can slip up a little bit. The audience is like, okay, look, you're making it up. But when you do improv, I'm going to say when you do stand-up, look, they've come to a club, they've paid their money, they got their two drinks or whatever, and they're like, make me laugh, comedian. And they expect you to be polished and they want you to be funny.

And they are very unforgiving when you're not. So it made me a lot more nervous when I went up. But one of the things I started to realize as I did a little more was that, like, you have to enjoy the process. That part of what makes you a good comedian is it comes through that you enjoy things. And the same, to me, is in game design. So, for example, I interact with the public a lot,

obviously. Um, and one of the, one of the feedbacks I get all the time is, wow, he really seems to like magic. Yeah, I really do like magic. You know, um, for example, I've been in the same position now for, since 2003, so 13 years. And people are like, well, don't you want to like get promoted? Don't you want to? I'm like, no, no, no, no. This is what I want to do. I have a dream job. I got to the point of doing exactly what I want to do. And I'm staying there. It's what I want to do. People have talked to me like, do I want to do management? No, no. I don't want to be the guy that manages the guy doing the job I want to do. I want to be the guy doing the job I want to do. So part of it is that the ability that has allowed me to sort of like, you know, I've been doing this job 20 plus years now.

Why do I still love it? Because I enjoy it and I take time to enjoy it. And when I talk to all of you, hopefully it's really clear. And I think it is. I really, really enjoy both what I do and the game itself. I love Magic. Magic has done awesome things for me. It is a great game.

I believe it to be the best game ever. I really, truly, truly believe it is my favorite game. I'm not exaggerating. It's not just because I make it. It was my favorite game before I made it. And one of the reasons I was so excited and why I decided to make it was how much I love the game. And I think that enthusiasm, that excitement, if you want to do the best job you can, you have to love what you do because part of art in general is being driven by passion,

is being driven by what you care about. And so if you don't care about the thing, you're just not as good at it. You know what I'm saying? Take any two jobs and take the exact same job and give me someone with passion for their job who enjoys it and someone who doesn't. The person who enjoys it, who's passionate about it, is just going to do better at it. They're just going to do better

at their job. Because when you love something, when you enjoy something, you just give an extra amount of effort toward it. And so one of the things that I always try to do is make sure that I enjoy what I'm doing. I enjoy designing sets. I enjoy talking about sets. I enjoy doing podcasts. I enjoy what I'm doing. That is super critical. that if you don't enjoy what you do, you're not optimizing what you do. A, you won't be happy, which, hey, be happy. That's a good life lesson. But, and part of that is enjoying what you do, you know. And a lot of times what I find is there's people who, in fact, do enjoy the thing they do, but they don't take the time to enjoy it. So this lesson is not just enjoy it, but make sure you take the time

while doing it to enjoy it. It shouldn't be like, I'm nervous the entire time I'm doing it, and after the fact go, well, now that I look back after the fact, I enjoyed that. You know, make sure that in the moment you're enjoying it.

Okay, so to recap, I'm almost at Rachel's school. To recap, here are the 10 lessons that I learned in stand-up comedy. Number one, know your audience. In game design, as it was comedy, you have to deliver for the people who you're making it for. If you're doing comedy, who's the people you're trying to make laugh? If you're doing game design, who's the person you're trying to enjoy your game?

Make sure you understand that. And that for any one individual piece, it might be a different audience member. Sometimes you're doing jokes, a specific person in the audience is who you're trying to get laugh. Or a specific card, you're trying to get a certain person to enjoy it.

But understand your audience. Number two, trust your material. You have to know as an artist when what you have is good or bad. If you think you have a funny bit or you have a good card design, just because you have a bad set or a bad playtest doesn't mean you throw it all away. Figure out what works and doesn't work, but keep the good stuff.

Number three, adapt when things aren't working. Everything isn't going to always go according to plan. And that part of being good at stand-up is knowing when you can change things while you're performing. Part of being good at game design is changing things during playtests of adapting when you need them to. Number four, iteration is key. The way you get a good stand-up routine, the way you get a good magic set, is just doing the same thing again and again, refining it, getting feedback, and then changing it. Number five, use your fellow comedians or fellow workers. You know, you want to be funny in comedy?

You're surrounded by experts that are also experts in comedy. Make use of that. They're a great resource. You want to make awesome game designs? You're probably surrounded by other people who do game designs or work on game designs. Make use of their skills. You're not the best at everything, so

make use of people who are better at you in things. Number six, respect a laugh. Just because somebody, if someone laughs at something you don't expect or someone enjoys a part of your game design they don't expect, figure out why. There's always reasons you can make things better by finding where people enjoy stuff in places you don't expect it. Number seven, apply lessons in other areas. When you learn something, that doesn't mean you're located to just the area you learned it in.

As you learn lessons, apply them. The way to get better in other areas is by applying lessons from things in one place in another place. Number eight, repetition is important. People want to feel comfortable. I talk about comfort as being a key human thing. Well, part of what you're doing is making sure that you're not only surprising people, but you're giving them what they expect. And part of that is doing things again and again.

Number nine, sweat the details. The little tiny things do matter. Somebody's going to pay attention to them and someone's going to care. Not everybody's going to care about every detail, but the people who do care will care a great deal. Make sure your details are up to what you need them to be. And number ten, enjoy yourself. Part of why

you do the thing you do, hopefully, is because it's fun for you. And if you enjoy it, it makes the audience enjoy it. If you enjoy your set, your audience will enjoy it more. If you enjoy your game design, your audience will enjoy it more. So you need your game design, your audience will enjoy it more. So you need to enjoy it. Anyway guys, that is my 10 lessons from my days of stand-up. So anyway,

I'm now at school. I'm going to drop Rachel off. So we know what that 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.