Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #371 - Six Ages of Design

Episode Date: September 30, 2016

Mark explains the six ages of design.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. I'm dropping my son off at camp. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about the six ages of magic design. This is something I've talked about on my column a bit, but I don't think I've done a full podcast on it. And I've recently updated to add the sixth age. I think I finally figured out when and where and what it means. So today I'm going to talk about all six ages.

So in some levels, this is a history of magic design podcast. Sort of talking about the different innovations of magic design and sort of how things have changed. So if you love magic design, which hopefully you do if you listen to this podcast, and you're interested in history, which also hopefully you care some about since you listen to this podcast, today will be an interesting day for you. Okay, so the first age, the golden age of magic, was from Alpha through Alliances. So the first age of magic, obviously, Richard was mostly in charge in the early part of it. And really what happened in the early days was there was a lot of focus on individual cards. The design in the first stage was very, very much about sort of just capturing the flavor and the resonance on a card-by-card basis.

And a lot of how early design was done was just maximizing making each card as cool as it could be in a vacuum and there was a lot of flavorful stuff that went on the first age was sort of, we'll put magic on the map I think a lot of what made magic a thing that really sort of made magic what it was was the idea that these cards were so evocative and that each card could do its own thing and that, you know, Richard's whole idea is the game

is bigger than the box. I've talked about this quite a bit. And the idea was he wanted you to explore and discover as you played other people. You would see cards you didn't know existed and stuff like that. And so a lot of the focus in the early days in the original original design, was really just on a card-by-card basis, making awesome things. Now, one of the problems of that was, when you were making decisions on a card-by-card basis, you're not necessarily making decisions that are consistent overall. of the downsides of the first age was that there really was a sense of whenever I would try to figure something out, I would make the decision based upon the card at the moment. In fact, a lot of the rulings from early magic were sort of like, well, how does this card work? How's the flavor of

this card? Okay, well, if that's true, then I guess this card does this. And they would do the same for each card. And what happened was in a vacuum, cards for each card. And what happened was, in a vacuum, cards all worked the same. I'm sorry, in a vacuum, cards all worked cool, but they didn't all work the same. The decisions made on one card weren't necessarily decisions made on other cards. So there was a lot of inconsistency.

Which leads us into the second age. So, the thing about the first age, by the way, I don't want to... I think a lot of times when you look at something like, we'll take the Model T. The Model T, comparative to modern cars, seems old and ancient, right? It seems antiquated. But the point was, in its day, the Model T was an amazing thing in its day. Because before the Model T was

horses. This was a mechanical car. And so one of the things as I talk about the ages, each of these ages built on the one that came before. So I, no way would smudge the first age. The first age was awesome. If the first age didn't exist, the second age wouldn't have existed. Most of what I'm

trying to explain today is sort of how each age led into the next age. So I don't really want, my goal is not to be critical of early ages. I think early ages, you know, early magic was amazing for what it was because nothing like this had ever been done before. And since, you know, the technology of how we do design, it slowly got built up over time. So the first age really was this exploration of space, of what is this? What can we do? And a lot of really big concepts happened during the first age. You know, stuff like

multicolor or legendary things or, you know, just really finding a sense of how all the things fit together and how things worked. But the one thing that the first age, one of the symptoms of the first age that I think led to the second age was when you were making decisions on a case-by-case basis, when every card is maximizing how it feels, you have very evocative cards, but you have a system that's inconsistent. And that was one of the biggest problems in that the rules didn't work the same for every card. You know, the rules would do one thing for one card, but a different thing for another card. Or just how the color pie was applied. You know, it was, each card was flavorful unto itself,

but it created an inconsistency in how the color pie was applied to it. And so I think what the second age was, the second age, basically, Joel Mick took over as head designer. Back then, head designer and head developer were the same role. It was just one role. But Joel Mick took over as head designer. Back then, head designer and head developer were the same role. It was just one role. But Joel Mick took over. Joel, for those that don't know, so Richard Garfield obviously created the game.

Richard sort of oversaw it in the beginning. Then eventually Joel started taking over. I mean, what happened was, early on Richard was doing some design, and then Richard went on to do other things. If you remember early in Wizards, we really thought that trading card games, not just magic, but trading card games as a whole,

were going to be this giant thing. And so Richard went off and he made Jihad, which turned into Vampire the Eternal Struggle, and he made Netrunner, and he made Battletech, and he made all sorts of different trading card games, and the idea of trying to just make a lot of different trading card games and the idea of trying to just make a lot of different trading card games.

So what happened was he was off doing other games. He wasn't doing magic anymore and so a bunch of people came in. A lot of the early playtesters were the first people to come to R&D. Joel was one of the early playtesters. He was the group that made Mirage and Joel came in and he

was the first head designer outside of Richard, past Richard. And I think one of the things that Joel tried to do is said, you know what, we need some consistency. And Joel and Bill really together pushed to get the sixth edition rules done to say, you know what, our rules aren't tight enough. We have too many inconsistencies. They also did some work to clean up sort know what, our rules aren't tight enough. We have too many inconsistencies. They also did some work to clean up sort of what colors did what and how things worked and to try to have some consistency to how we design things. And the other big thing that happened under Joel's leadership

is the era of the block started. That before that, really sets were individual. You know, sets were sort of designed and alliances happened, but what really happened was alliances wasn't made to be an Ice Age expansion. I don't know if people realize this. Alliances wasn't designed that way. Alliances was just made to be another cool set. And for flavor purposes, we decided to make it an extension. Alliances was the very first set I worked on when I got to Wizards. And a lot of the overlap that existed was in development we put it in.

Almost no overlap existed because that wasn't really the intent of what they were doing when they made Alliances. They were just making another set. But for thematic reasons, we said, okay, this is tied into Ice Age, and so we sort of worked on it and added that element in. So Ice Age block kind of existed, and obviously we went back and made Colts in that many years later, but really the first block in any sort of true sense of the block, I mean Ice Age was kind of hobbled together, was Mirage. Mirage and Visions were made together, they were made to be played together. Weatherlight wasn't made with it, it was something separate. But in the early days

usually the team that made the large set made the first small set. And the second small set was often made by a different team. Over time, that would change. We'll get there today. So anyway, what happened was the idea of, okay, we're not just going to make random sets. Our sets are going to go together. And the idea of having an increment of time, which was a year, to say, okay, this is a block of sets. Three sets are going to all go together. And the idea was there would be some continuity to those sets.

There'd be some mechanical continuity. There'd be flavor continuity. That it was, one of the things that we wanted to do was make sure, like, as you start making more and more sets, they start blurring together. And so early sets, you know, we're sort of like, oh, this is the set I'm doing. And eventually we're like, okay, well, let's band some sets together. And we said, okay, we also, the other thing about Mirage is

it's really the first set where Limited got heavily influenced on how it was made. You know, if you've ever played Ice Age or Legend Sealed, it's not particularly good. They weren't really made with that in mind. Where Mirage, we meant for Limited to be played. We actually, in development, thought about it.

Now, how is Mirage development versus later? We learned a lot. Mirage is quaint and somewhat like... So one of the things that's funny, if you look at early design is we would learn things but we'd learn them really slowly. You know, like

Stripmine was too good so I made Wasteland. Okay, well Wasteland's a lot better than Stripmine but, or another example was in Mirage we made a Fireball. We had not essentially a Fireball but an Expel with one red mana.

And like in Tempest, I was trying to fix that problem, so I kept an X-Spell at common, I just made it two red mana, so it's harder to splash. You know, and little by little, we start figuring out where things need to go, and where, you know, maybe an X-Spell is so powerful that it's supposed to be a rare thing,

not just not common, but not uncommon. Maybe it's supposed to be rare, you know, and that little by little we start figuring out things. But I think the second age of design is really about the idea of thinking of things in a larger context. The idea of how do these things click together? How do these things work?

How can I make a rule for one card that applies for all the cards like it, not just itself? And so really the second age of design was all about sort of linking things together and making more of a cohesive system. Joel also, as Joel went on to become the brand manager of Magic for a while, and under his leadership of brand management, brand manager of Magic for a while. And under his leadership of brand management, we started putting rarity symbols on.

We started numbering cards. We started doing more things to think of the cards in a larger context. Oh, well this is 122 of 145. This card is this rarity. We started doing more things to sort of make things come

part of the whole. And even in design, that was very much more the case, for example. Like the way early blocks worked is we said, okay, there's two mechanics. We introduced two mechanics

per block. What are the two mechanics? And we'd introduce those. Now, be aware early on, we would have other mechanics and we just wouldn't name them. We usually only had two named mechanics.

And we tended to choose bigger mechanics that we could stretch't name them. We usually only had two named mechanics, and we tended to choose bigger mechanics that we could stretch out over three sets. And we would find some way to do them, and then slowly tweak them as we went along. That, okay, that was the second age of design. So the third age of design is when Bill Rose took over

as head designer. Joel, Mick, and Bill Rose were good friends. They had worked together making Mirage and Visions. They were good friends. So when Joel left Magic Design, or left R&D, to go be the brand manager of Magic,

Bill ended up taking Joel's position. And so, and the first set really under Bill's watch was invasion so real quickly age number one was alpha through alliances age number two was mirage through prophecy so age number three starts with invasion and the reason it starts with invasion is this is where we start to see the theming of blocks. Early on, there wasn't a lot of themes.

Like Mirage had a setting but the setting wasn't horribly intertwined. The fact that it was this African setting didn't really imply what the mechanics were and the mechanics for Mirage was flanking and phasing. What did those have to do with each other? Nothing per se. Mirage was flanking and phasing. What did those have to do with each other? They fit, I don't know, nothing per se. Like, the early

blocks were kind of built around mechanics and had definitely a feel to them, but there wasn't a thematic connection. And starting with Invasion, like Invasion was, we are a multicolor block. That's what we are. We have a theme. You know, it was followed by Odyssey that was a graveyard block, which was followed by It was followed by Odyssey that was a graveyard block,

which was followed by Onslaught, which was a tribal block, which was followed by Mirrodin, which was an artifact block. You start seeing thematic blocks. Blocks become themes. And that is I think a big part of what Bill did

was the idea of okay, we have consistency where our rules are working together, the color pie makes sense, you know, we've figured out how things work and applied it across, but now we can go to the next step. And the next step was we can give more flavors to our blocks. We can make our blocks about something, conceptually, flavorfully, mechanically. conceptually, flavorfully, mechanically. And also, like, we've started to see Invasion, you know, I mean, we've started telling story during the middle of the second age,

obviously, with the Weatherlight Saiga, but you started seeing the design trying to have more integration. And the other thing that Invasion started to do is really, for the first time ever, think about not, like, second age design was you made a set, and then the second set, eh, did more of the first set, but you didn't really think it out much. Now, Invasion went a little farther. It definitely sort of said what's our theme for the set

and sort of thought about it. But it leads us into the fourth Age of Design. So the third Age of Design started, and Invasion ended in Saviors of Kamigawa. So the First Age starts in Ravnica. That is when I take over as head designer. At that point, the position splits in two. So there's a head designer and head developer.

I just become the head designer, not the head developer. Head developer at a time when I think Brian Schneider, I think is the name. So what happened was Bill had become vice president and stayed on as head designer slash developer and vice president. And eventually it was clear there was just too much going on, that Bill couldn't do a good job of doing both. And so Randy, who had taken over for Bill

sort of as the director overseeing Magic when Bill became the vice president, sort of as the director overseeing Magic when Bill became the vice president. What happened basically was he convinced Bill that we needed to have a head designer and head developer. He realized we needed different positions. So I was assigned, I was made head designer, and Brian Schneider was made head developer.

So, is that timing right? It's possible the head developer job got split before. Actually, I think maybe what Bill did is he split head design from head developer. Randy became head developer for a while before Randy took over director. Anyway, lots of little details.

So anyway, the fourth age of design was really all about the idea of more planning, that blocks were planned out, and that they represented something. So, for example, Ravnica's the first set where,

I mean, in Asia they did some proto-work in this, but Ravnica's the first set where it said, okay, we're building a block, the first block is doing this piece of it, and the second block is doing that, and the third block, you know, where blocks were planned. Blocks had a theme under the third block, you know, where blacks were planned. That, you know, blacks had a theme under the Third Age. They were about something.

But in the Second Age, they really started to have an actual plan. That there was a build to them. There was a theme to them. They represented something. You know, Ravnica obviously was what I call pie design, where four pieces went in the first set, and three in the second, and three in the third. That was followed by Time Spiral,

where we did the past, the present, and the future. You know, we were really thinking about how we put things together. Then came Lorewind and Shadomore, where we created two mini blocks that paralleled each other. You know, we started... So the fourth age of design is really thinking about how things clicked and what they were

and really taking the blocks as a whole and starting to figure out how to ingrain everything interconnected. The other thing we started to do in the fourth stage design is really say, what is our theme that we're doing? Let's make sure our mechanics are playing into how we're building the block together. For example, in Ravnica, we did a guild design, and so different mechanics showed up tied to different guilds. The other big thing about the Fourth Age design was I was very conscious of sort of where were we directed,

what were we trying to do, and I think I was very, very focused in figuring out how to give strong identity to the blocks that wasn't just a, an outward facing thing, but an inward structural building thing. And fourth, fourth, uh, age really changed how we, how we built blocks and how blocks got put together. For example, fourth is really the one where we said, okay,

this goes here, this goes there, this goes there. The idea was, if I took any card out of a block, I could tell which set it was supposed to go into. That the set's enough identity from each other that it's clear within the context of the block where it went. You know, if I showed you a multicolor card, well, somewhere in multicolor, you know,

Invasion's multicolor, somewhere that would go, or, you know, Odyssey's the graveyard, well, you know, this card would go somewhere in Odyssey. You could tell it was from the block, but you couldn't necessarily tell exactly what set it was from. Okay, so the fourth age design went from Ravnica through Rise of the Eldrazi. So the fifth age started in Scars of Mirrodin. So Scars of Mirrodin was when I really started getting the idea of, okay, not only am I structuring my blocks, I'm trying to evoke something out of the blocks.

This is where I really first started playing the idea of emotional resonance. Like, okay, what am I trying to do? What am I trying to get people to feel? You know, Scarves of Mirrodin was all about the Phyrexians invading. And so I really spent a lot of time and energy saying, okay, well, how do the Phyrexians make you feel? What is the emotion that's going on? And how do I make the gameplay match the emotional resonance

I'm trying to get out of the player? So I talk a lot. I recently did a thing on emotional resonance in my 20 Lessons series. This is where the part where that really started coming home, the idea of, okay, I'm doing a set. I'm trying to make the audience feel a certain way. I'm trying to match up the gameplay. I'm trying to match up the mechanics.

That before, the mechanics were trying to lock into how the block was structured. Now they were trying to tie in not just into that, but what was the overall emotional feel we were going through? What's the block trying to do? How is it trying to make you feel? And obviously I've been the head designer, so the first two ages kind of match with different head designers. What happens is, since I've been doing this for a while,

as I sort of make big innovations, that's when ages happen when I'm in charge. You know, I'm obviously, for the fourth, fifth, and sixth, I'm still all head designer. So the fifth design really played an emotional resonance, really sort of thinking about how mechanics tied in, how we made you feel. And it went from Scars of Mirrodin through Journeying to Nyx.

So the sixth age, which recently happened, I'll talk a little more about this because I haven't talked a lot about it. The Sixth Age of Design, the biggest innovation of the Sixth Age of Design was a couple things. The biggest one was

the introduction of exploratory design. I talked about this recently in my lessons learned, but this is a good metaphor. Let me talk about this a little bit. The way I used to build sets was essentially, I'll use my metaphor of the house, was I would say, okay, I have to start building the house.

Well, what's the most logical thing I could do? What do I, from the little bit I know about the house, what do I think I have to do? Well, this wall. I guess this wall would go up. So I'd build that wall. And then as I'm trying to map out the house, I'm like, okay, well, it's time to build another wall. Okay, what's the most logical place for me to put this next wall? And what happened was I was kind of building the house. I was kind of plotting the house while I was building the house. And that's hard because sometimes you make decisions and you're committed to that decision. It's like I can't just necessarily pull walls down. So like once I build a couple walls and then when I'm putting on the fourth wall,

if I realize the first wall something's wrong with it well put the walls up so what exploratory design said is okay let's do blueprints let me figure this all out before I'm committed to having to actually build the building and if I'm doing blueprints I can put a wall up and scratch it off

you know I have the freedom to move things around because I'm not committed to anything yet and exploratory design really changed that dynamic of how we could think about design. Now, the funny thing is, this is more inward facing than outward facing. But the end result, which I think the audience can see, is it ended up with a much tighter element of design, that how the things pull together. Now, like I said, when I did my lessons

learning the concertar chiar, there was a few mistakes made in concertar chiar, but there was a through line between the mechanics and the set. I mean, I still cared about the emotional resonance.

I still cared about the block structure. But I'm starting to do it in such a way that the pieces are very different than we've seen before. For example, just the very nature, like in Kahn's, how I was able to take the clans, convert them, change them, have each one represent one end of the spectrum, but then have a through line between all three sets and the clans.

That wasn't something I could have done before. That required me spending some time thinking about how to map certain things out. And like I said, Cons was the first time out. I think each set has gotten better since then. But the idea of having the exploratory design so that we can map things out ahead of time, that we can sort of see where we're going, that we can do that, fundamentally changed how we build sets. It changed how the integration of the sets, it changed sort of our ability to experiment and to push things.

The other big thing that the Sixth Age of Design did is, not only did we start exploratory design we started exploratory world building and that has proven invaluable because one of the things that um i've been able to do that wasn't true before is i now start building back in the day i would start building sets before i had any idea really what the creative was i would talk with the creative team and get a a ballpark area, but they were really busy doing other stuff. And so I would sort of take a first stab at it. And then what would happen was once the creative got involved, they tried to sort of fix up what was

going on. But I would make decisions based on things I didn't know. And a lot of times we got ourselves in trouble because I would commit to something that, because I didn't, you know, I had nothing else to work on. So I would just make decisions. And we would end up sometimes making decisions that didn't optimize what creative wanted. So the idea is once we started to do exploratory design, they started to do exploratory world building. Which said, let's work ahead. Let's plan ahead. Let's figure out what we want about this world.

What's the flavor we want? What are the components we need? What are all the creative things we have to figure out so that when we get to the world, and then when I get to exploratory design, I have some idea what's going on. I have some idea what the world's supposed to be about. And it allows me to interact with them in a,

I mean, there's always been some connection between creative and design. We were always at work together. But I think as you move through the ages, what you find is we're working earlier and earlier together were always at work together. But I think as you move through the ages, what you find is we're working earlier and earlier together and more and more together. And I think the sixth age of design

is we're doing all this work. You know, they're doing exploratory design, world building, I'm doing exploratory design. It's weaving together. And all that's getting done before design even starts. This is all pre-design.

So when I sit down now to start a design, the amount of information I have, like once upon a time when I started a design, it's like okay, it's blank page, let's go. And now I start with like an outline. I start with a clear idea of what it is I'm trying to build. I have blueprints, you know, I have preliminary blueprints to start figuring out what I'm doing um and that has fundamentally changed how we design because I'm now I'm not playing catch-up I'm not sort of designing on the go I have the freedom to really think ahead to what I want and to work with the the creative team in a way to maximize like um to have us be able to come together and do things.

My best example is from Kaladesh, but Kaladesh is not public yet. Although, by the time you hear this, it might be. It'll be really close. But Kaladesh, I mean, I'll talk a little abstract because I don't know whether or not you know Kaladesh yet, but Kaladesh has its major mechanic and its creative contribution are so entwined.

What defines the world creatively is what defines the game mechanically, the set mechanically. And the fact that they're that interwoven is really a testament to how the Sixth Age of Design works. So the Sixth Age of Design starts in

Conjuring of Tarkir and goes till we get a seventh age. I'll let you know when a seventh age happens. But anyway, so to recap, the six ages of design. So first age was alpha through alliances. That was the age of the individual card design. The second age was mirage through prophecy. That was the age of interconnectivity, the start of the block, and the idea of just thinking

of things in a larger context, of having things work together in a system. The third age of design was Invasion through Saviors of Kamigawa. That was all about theming, about connectivity, about making sure that blocks had an overall theme to them. Fourth age was Ravnica through Rise of the Drazi. That was all about block planning and really sort of picking mechanics in such a way that they allowed us to create a connected block.

The Fifth Age was Scars of Mirrodin through Journey into Nyx. That was all about emotional resonance, about designing in such a way that your designs reinforce and enhance the gameplay, thus that you match the feel that you want to get and enhance the gameplay thus that you match the feel that you want to get out of the gameplay. That you want your audience to feel a certain way to match the world you're in.

And the sixth stage of design starts with Kanzi Tarkir, Depressed in Day. And that is talking about using exploratory design and exploratory world building to pre-work, to lay down foundations so that we're figuring out what we need to do ahead of time and so we are building on stuff that's carefully planned

in a way that we had never been able to plan before. And that, my friends, is the six ages of magic design. So I hope you enjoyed this little jaunt through history, little design history. Something near and dear to my heart. And I hope to have many more ages of design to come. In fact, I could see a seventh one on the horizon.

Anyway, thanks for joining me. I'm now in my parking space, so we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thanks for joining me, guys, and I hope, I don't know, when I always do design stuff like this, I hope it means something to know when I always do design stuff like this I hope it means something people

I care a lot about the design stuff so anyway sorry I segued off my my thing so instead of making magic

it's time for instead of talking magic time for me to be making magic okay guys I will see you next time bye bye