Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #373 - Perspective

Episode Date: October 7, 2016

Mark talks about the issue of how perspective colors expectations.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And today I dropped my son off at camp. Okay, so today I'm going to try something a little bit different. Today's podcast is inspired by a real live thing that happened on the internet. So what happened was we are premiering Conspiracy 2 as we talk. Obviously, I record ahead, so by now we're off to other things. But at the time of me recording this, this last week we've been previewing Conspiracy. And so one of the questions came up,

Hey, you have a lot of cool reprints in it, but why don't you have Demnation? Why is Demnation not in this set? And so I tried to give an answer, and one of the things I realized is, it's actually a complex answer. I mean, I did my best in a couple paragraphs to explain, but it's a larger issue that I wanted to talk

about today, something I hit upon, and it goes beyond just damnation, but it made me realize this was an interesting topic. So it is what I'll dub the perspective problem. So something that the game designers have to deal with, and I just want to sort of walk through. I'm hoping for you, the players, get a better understanding of sort of how we make things and realize how I want to address this complaint, but I want to address it in a way that, like I said, it's a little more complex of an issue. Okay, so one of the things, the reason I call it the perspective problem is the idea that players tend to...

I talk a lot about how there's many different ways to play Magic. And the idea is each player has their own way they like to play. They have their own things that they care about, which is great. I mean, one of the things I think that makes Magic such a strong game is it can mean many things to many people. That, you know, that the person who wants to have really hardcore competition and challenge themselves, hey, magic can be that. The person that really wants this form of self-expression and make a deck that really demonstrates their creativity, magic can do that.

You know, do you want to sit around with your friends and laugh and have a good time? Magic can do that. It's lots of different, you know, there's many formats, there's many ways to play. It is something that has lots of different flexibility. So one of the problems that comes about is that people get so used to sort of how they see magic, that what magic is to them, that they don't always realize that that's not what magic is to everybody. It's what magic is to them. And the reason this is an issue is basically a lot of times people complain. The complaints are in the form of, how could you do, I don't understand why you're doing thing extra thing why. I will use, I'll use damnation as a good example. So damnation was a card that first appeared in planar chaos. And what we did is we had taken Wrath of God,

and one of the ideas of Planar Chaos was that was Time Spiral block, which was past, present, and future. And for the present, we decided to do an alternative reality present, like an alternate present. Because a normal present's hard to do. It's things that are now, like all sets.

So one of the things we did is we had the bonus sheet have cards that were existing magic cards, but color shifted to other colors that they could have been, but weren't. Well, what color could Wrath of God have been? Black. Black's a creature instruction color. Clearly black could kill all

creatures. That's well within black. So Wrath of God could have been a black card. So, we made a card called Damnation. It's one of the major cards of the set. Very popular. Casually very popular. In a lot of multiplayer games, having the ability to destroy all the creatures is pretty

potent. And so, Damnation, I mean, I think it gets some play in Modern, but it's not a high... It's not an often used card in Modern. It gets used a little bit, I think it gets some play in Modern, but it's not a high... It's not an often used card in Modern. It gets used a little bit, I think. But casually, it gets used a lot. So there's a lot of demand for it.

People want Damnation. So one of the things that people have requested is they want us to reprint Damnation. And so whenever a set comes out, they're like, hey, where's Damnation? Why isn't Damnation in this set? And exactly what happened when Conspiracy 2 came out. Conspiracy Take the Crown.

People are like, this could have had Conspiracy. Why didn't it have Conspiracy? And so what I was trying to explain is that if your vantage point is, I want to have Demnation. Sorry, Demnation. I want to have Demnation. I want to have Demnation reprinted. Okay, that's, like, if goal number one is get Demnation reprinted.

If goal number one is get Demnation reprinted, how could you not accomplish that? And the issue is not that we couldn't accomplish that if our number one goal was to get Demnation reprinted. The point I was trying to make is that's not our number one goal. It's actually... We have a list of,

these are cards that players would like to see reprinted. I mean, it's something we're aware of. And so, whenever we do a product where there's capability of reprinting something, we think about it. We go, oh, well, what cards can go here? But there's a big difference between where could we put damnation

if our goal, our sole goal, was doing damnation. The metaphor I used when I replied was, imagine you're an architect and you find this really neat fireplace. It's not a normal fireplace. It's maybe a little bigger than a normal fireplace and it has a few quirks to how it is. maybe a little bigger than a normal fireplace, and it has a few quirks to how it is. So the point is, if you wanted to build a house with that fireplace, sure, if that was your number one goal,

of course you could. You'd put the fireplace in first and build around the fireplace. But if your goal is to build houses and that's not your number one goal, well, by the time you get to the point where you're going to pick, it's like, oh, this one doesn't fit. And in Asia, there's all sorts of different issues of where and why and how it fits.

The car's a little more powerful than we like for standard, so putting it in normal sets is a little hard. It, for example, has an anti-regeneration clause, so it doesn't really make sense unless the set has enough regeneration that referencing regeneration makes sense. There's a bunch of issues. Not all of them I necessarily can discuss. But there's a bunch of different issues of, oh, condemnation go here. And I think what happens is the critique is there have been eight sets. Surely one of those eight sets you could have made

condemnation. And once again, it's just like, yes, if our number one goal was to put damnation in, yeah, we could have put damnation. But it's the perspective issue, which is that's not our number one goal. That's not our number two goal. It's not our number 10 goal.

It's down there. You know, getting reprints in is something we do, but we do, you know, beyond other factors. And so, and the other thing is, let's say we have a long list of cards, reprints that we want to get back into magic. Let's say this list is, I don't know, I'm making up a number here, but let's say it's 50 cards. And let's say, you know, at the end of the day, after a couple years, we look at it, and of the 50 cards, we've reprinted 41. That's pretty good.

That's 82%. That's great. We've been doing really well. And let's say the next batch of years, we have another 50 cards. And there, we reprint 44. 88%. That's B+. You know, but still, it's possible

that in that time, you haven't reprinted one of the cards. Because the issue is, our goal isn't isn't, like, damnation reprinting isn't our number one goal. Our goal is, among other things, to reprint cards that people want. And so, there's a lot of other factors there.

So it's very easy to look at sort of the perspective of, well, all I want is this one thing. Why don't they do this one thing? I just want this one thing. Come on, Wizards, do the one thing. And I think that when people sort of look at what you're doing, I mean, the same kind of thing is when, I mean, and this problem exists in many places,

which is if I care about thing X, if thing X is what really, it's my number one issue, the fact that people don't address that is like you are ignoring me. You are not listening to what I'm saying because this is my number one issue. But the problem is, we have lots of players with lots of issues. And so our goal is to sort of hit the issues and hit as many players as possible. You know, damnations, will we one day find a place to reprint damnation? We will.

We will. I'm sure we will. Will it be tomorrow? You know what I'm saying? Like, it is something that's on the list. We want to do it. When we find the right place, we'll do it. But it's not at the sake of everything else.

It's not like we're going to do it no matter what. It's going to be we're going to do it when it makes sense to do it, when it fits, when the point of where it is. Now, sometimes people will point out other things. They go, well, this card didn't fit perfectly where it went. So therefore, you can just do things that don't fit. Because that's an also sort of false, like, our goal in general is to try to make things fit the best they can.

Every once in a while, we squeak things in a little bit, you know, or factors change. Like, another thing, a big thing is that factors sometimes change where we're trying to do something, something's a certain thing, and late in the process, we have to change something. And so we do the best we can and things don't always work out. But people sort of say, oh, well, you did thing X and thing X. And at the end of the day, thing X wasn't a perfect fit. That just means you can do things that aren't a perfect fit. No, that's not our goal.

Our goal is to make things fit perfectly. That doesn't mean that due to the process that sometimes things that fit better at one point in the process don't, you know, things will change. And one of the things about designing magic and developing magic is there's a lot of moving pieces.

There's a lot of parts. There's a lot of things you have to keep track of. And so is everything perfect at every point? No. But should our goal not be to make it perfect? Of course our goal is to make it perfect. Try to do the best we can. Another place this pops up is when players see something that they go,

I don't understand why you made this. This is worthless to me. You made a card that I will never play. Why would you make such a card? And the answer I always give is, well, maybe that card's not for you. One of the big things to understand is because we have so many different kinds of players and every Magic product, especially the base expansions, are for all the players. And so my goal is, as a designer, is to make sure that every set I put out has something for everybody.

But what that means is, everybody doesn't want the same thing. So my goal isn't to make you love everything in every set. My goal is to make you love some things in every set. By design, Magic lets you pick and choose. So you don't have to like everything. You get to choose what you play. If you don't like something, don't play it.

And one of the things is sometimes what someone likes, somebody else doesn't like. You're not always going to make everybody happy. I'm going to have to make cards. On some level, every player probably should dislike something you know there's something you dislike and as long as there's other players that like that that's not too distracting to the game

we'll try to do a lot of different things we'll try to make a lot of different people happy and that one of the dynamics that it's hard when you're dealing with the public is that one of the things I always have to remember is when somebody asks me something, it is not their job to have the perspective that we have.

It is not their job to understand or care about all the players. So a lot of times, one of the things that I find when I answer questions and stuff is I'm never, I have to always understand that people do not know what I know. They do not know all the issues that I know. This is my job. I spend day in, day out worrying about things, and I spend a lot of time discussing things. Not every factor is a public factor. I mean, I share a lot with you, but not everything is public. And even the stuff I do share with you, it's complex. You know what I'm saying?

This is, I mean, I've done over 300 plus podcasts on magic topics and I still have more magic topics because it's a complex topic. Magic design, there's a lot going on. And so one of the things to keep in mind is when players ask something, they don't know. They don't necessarily know. So one of the things I try to do, and this is what I'm trying to do today, is say, hey, look, when you see something, and that something just seems out of place to you, that it's something you would never, ever play, I would never play that, just take a step backwards and say, okay, would somebody play it? Why would somebody play that? Why would somebody want that?

So one of the most controversial cards we ever made was called One with Nothing. So One with Nothing, I think it was a sorcery, cost one black mana, single black mana, and it was discard your hand. And a lot of people was like, what? What? What's going on? I do not want to spend one black mana to discard my hand. And it was just a weird card. It seemed all downside. And I got a lot of people saying, why would you make this card? What's the point of this card?

And as it turns out, this card had a couple different functions. One is, it actually showed up in the sideboard of a Pro Tour. So for me, it's completely worthless. I mean, it's a very, very niche card, and its use was in a very specific circumstance. But the point is that existed. Even on the highest level of competition,

there actually was somebody at Approacher that said, oh, I actually could use this as my sideboard. So there was an actual functional use. Number two is sometimes we make cards to sort of make people talk. One of the things we want to do is we want discussions. And it's okay if we make something that a lot of players don't like if it really gets people sitting up and talking and rallying together and sharing and bonding.

You know, that part of what we want to do is we want to make an experience. And I don't want to make a lot of sort of, I mean, cards that are kind of like over-the-top bad, even though, once again, I played in a Pro Tour. But I think every once in a while, every once in a while, to do something that's just kind of like over the top bad, even though, once again, played in a Pro Tour. But I think every once in a while, every once in a while to do something that's just kind of shocking, like, what is that? Why would you do that? Plus, there's a group that I call the Uberjohnies

that they live to find uses for things that nobody else can find use for. That there's a group of people who, like, just thrive on, everybody hates this card. I'm going to make it, I'm going to play with it. And so one of the things is, this card that seemed like absolute junk, and at some level it was designed to be kind of an eye-opening, crazy card, look, still had places, still did something, still had a function.

In fact, I would add that if you asked, what was the card that did the least value in that set that it came out in, Savior of Kamigawa, I believe. I would say, no, there are cards that are unmemorable that people don't remember. That card is remembered. People talk about that card, you know, and that one of the things of making a card game is you want people, it's more than just the play value. Every once in a while you make a card that just gets people talking, discussing, or makes people want to build around it in a weird and quirky way. You know, we can do stuff like

that. One of the values of having so many cards is we can spend individual cards doing really different things, and that not everybody necessarily is supposed to like each card. So when people write in and go, why would you make something? I go, well, there's somebody out there. I mean, and that's a good experiment. When you don't get it, try to think maybe why somebody else would. Why might somebody play this? You know, is it of a creature type? Like, sometimes we'll make cards to fill out a creature, and, like, the fact that it's a creature type matters.

Sometimes, you know, like, a lot of times the other thing we'll do is we'll make a card that seems weird, but if you understand the context of the set. Scornful Egotist, for example, was a card with Morph that was an 8-mana 1-1. And you're like, an 8-mana 1-1? Why would you want

an 8-mana 1-1? That seems crazy. Now, it has Morph, so you can get it and play cheaper than 8-mana, but still, why would you make it cost 8-mana? It's a 1-1. But then, if you look at the set it's in, Saviors of Kamigawa, it has a Hand Size Matters theme. Or, no, it1. But then, if you look at the set it's in, Savior's Kamigawa, it has a hand-sized Matters theme. Or, no, it wasn't Savior's. It was Scourge.

And it had a converted mana cost Matters theme. And the idea is, it looked at cards at how expensive they were. So here was a card I could get into play, because it had a morph, way cheaper than the 8 mana, but it allowed me to treat it as if it were 8 mana. What that meant was, there was a set where it costing 8 was positive.

That's why I was in that set. And a lot of times when a card doesn't seem to make sense, A, think about why that card might make sense in the environment it's in. We often will make cards that we normally wouldn't make, but make sense in that environment. Another example was, I made a card in, I think it came out in Eventide, it was black-white,

where it was like a 3-3 flyer that came into play with a minus one, minus one counter. And it was costed as if it was a 2-2 creature. And a lot of people are like, I don't get it, why is it not just a 2-2 creature? But, that set had ways to move counters. It had a way to use counters. Like, okay,

in a set in which moving counters or using counters meant something, hey, there's a way for this to turn into a 3-3. That was kind of cool. We didn't make a lot of them. We made one. We didn't put it in the first set. We put it in the second set. But it was a cool card. It was a little weird, but it was doing something. So sometimes when you see weird cards, they're doing

weird things. Sometimes they're just for players that maybe aren't you. You know, sometimes there's some format that doing something. So sometimes when you see weird cards, they're doing weird things. Sometimes they're just for players that maybe aren't you. You know, sometimes like there's some format that wants something. Like a lot of times, for example, I get people writing and saying, I played format X and here's a little quirk about my format.

You know, you can't do thing whatever because it just isn't a card. Could you please make a card that does this thing at this cost or this color? And we get a lot of requests like that and we try. We make a long list of things people want. So when I talk about the reprint list, it's not even

just a reprint list. We have a long list of things people want. And it's a long long list because there's a lot of people that want a lot of different things. And so we try wherever we can to find places to fit those things in. You know? Like, one of the things I'll do when I first make a,

we start doing a brand new block. We start figuring out a block. I start early on mapping out. I go, oh, is there anything, is there anything that we're doing here that starts going to spaces that maybe will help us make cards people want? That's something I'll think about.

But once again, I don't, I never start a set going, I need card X, I'm putting card X in. Or very, very rarely. Usually I want to figure out what will make card X, I'm sorry, block X exciting. What's going on? How are we going to make people want to play this?

And then from there I start building in parameters. Now, at some point I get to the, are there things people want us to make that we haven't made? Like, for example, here's another good example, which was people have been asking, people ask for legendary cards all the time, of creature cards we haven't done yet. Because people like building commander decks that are thematic,

you know, that are tribal, and they want to have their lord be that tribe. So one of the ones we've been getting forever, Legendary Spider. A lot of getting forever, Legendary Spider. A lot of requests for a Legendary Spider. And the idea was, I knew people wanted a Legendary Spider, and I think it's to the vantage point of,

hey, there's lots of sets you can make a Legendary Spider, and the answer is, there's sets in which it makes sense, and we will try to do it, and it was on our list, and when we got to Innistrad, I said, you know what? Hey, in the creepy-crawly world of gothic horror, of course.

Yeah, that kind of makes sense. Maybe there's a legendary spider. And so we found a place and we made it. And when we made it, we tried to make sure that we were, okay, well, what do people want? And tried to listen to what people want. But the idea is that legendary spiders took years and years and years to see print. It's not like people weren't asking for a Legendary Spider five years earlier.

It just was a matter of, we have a giant list of things to do, and that we can't do all of them, so we do them as we can where we find places for them to fit. And there are individual cards that, like, maybe we just made a different choice at a different time. Like, for example, we did From the Vault,

I think Ruination it was called. It was basically board sweepers. And people were like, how could you not put it was called. It was basically board sweepers. And people were like, how could you not put it in there? It's a board sweeper. I'm like, well, you know, we decided not to do

both Wrath of God and Damnation. They're the same card, but color shifted. And for that set, we decided Wrath of God was just more iconic than Damnation was. So we did Wrath of God.

Should we have made a different decision? Maybe. I'm not saying there aren't places where we could have done it and we didn't and maybe we should have, but it wasn't as if... People have to always remember that we will care about things and think about things that maybe you're not caring about. And so when you sort of say, hey, I could easily find a place to do this,

that's a little unfair, which is without all the parameters of the people who actually made it, hey, no problem. And like I said, a lot of what happens is there's things we care about that not necessarily, I mean, it's not your job necessarily to care about those things. It's our job to care about those things. But anyway, the real point of today is it is very easy when critiquing something to take the vantage point of, well, I would like this. And could such a thing happen? And the answer usually is, look, yes, yes. If that's all we wanted, if that's all we cared about,

we could make that happen. But because there's so many balls in the air, what happens essentially is, so let's think of it this way. Let's say, so there's a place I used to go to lunch. I used to go to lunch every day. And what they would do is they would, you could put your card, your business card in a fishbowl and they'd pull it out and people could win a free lunch

and I went there for years for years and years and years and my card never got pulled and so one day I went and I looked at it and I counted how many cards were in the bowl that day I mean cards kept going in and out and on that day there was like, I don't know 50 cards in the bowl and I looked at it and I counted how many cards were in the bowl at that day. I mean, cards kept going in and out. And on that day, there was like, I don't know, 50 cards in the

bowl. And I'm like, I come here all the time. I've come here for years. I clearly have been here way more than 50 times. How come my card's never been pulled? And the answer was, look, every day something gets pulled. Every day they pull a card out of the thing. You know, and that... Odds are, eventually it gets me, but the point is there's always outliers. There's always, no matter what we do, from the list we pull, no matter what we...

And we're constantly pulling from the list. We're constantly, hey, players want this, players want that. But what happens is, there are things that will stay on the list for a while just because we haven't pulled the card. Just the right circumstance didn't come up. And because it's not our priority, you the right circumstance didn't come up. And because it's not our

priority, you know, it didn't come up yet. And I know when that's all you're looking at, when you're like, if I want to look at that bowl and say all I care about is my card. It's all I care about. And from my perspective, that is all I care about. And it might be frustrating

if there's an average of 50 cards in the bowl and 50 days go by and my name hasn't called, and 50 days go by and my name hasn't called, and then 100 days go by and my name isn't called, and then 200 days go by and my name isn't called. Then 400 days. Statistically speaking, yeah, okay, my name should have been pulled. But it might not have. And that's not a sign that it's a rigged system or anything.

It's a sign that that's how probability works. That, you know, on any particular thing, there's things that are going to happen fast and things are going to happen slow. And if you want to take the vantage point of the slow thing, if your point is to look at it and say, okay, from the vantage point of this one thing, yeah, it seems to be taking a while. Damnation, the damnation reprint, if that's all you care about, wow, yeah, it's taken a while. What's going on? You know? And the reality of the situation is,

it's in the bowl. We keep pulling cards out. Okay, yeah. Statistically speaking, we should have got to it, but we haven't yet. But that's not some larger... It's not some desire of us not to print damnation. It's, look, we have lots of factors

and lots of things going on and lots of people to make happy and lots of things. It just, look, we have lots of factors and lots of things going on and lots of people to make happy and lots of things. It just hasn't happened yet. Like I said, I get in my business card bowl metaphor, I get it's been in the bowl for a while. I understand that.

But it will have its day. It will be pulled out of the bowl one day. It will happen. Because it's in the bowl and we keep pulling things out of the bowl so it will come the day where it gets pulled out of the bowl. Statistically speaking, yeah, it should have been pulled out of the bowl, and we keep pulling things out of the bowl, so there'll come the day where it gets pulled out of the bowl. Statistically speaking, yeah, it should have been pulled out of the bowl, statistically speaking,

but that doesn't mean that it's not being pulled out of some larger conspiracy or anything. Ironically, since I'm talking about conspiracy. And so, that's the thing,

sort of my thing for today is, when you want something and we haven't done it, or when you see something and you can't understand why we did it, understand that it is part of this issue, which is when you take the vantage point of the point of view of one thing,

things can seem very odd. Things can seem stilted. But that is because you're looking at the vantage point of one thing, and that we try really hard to make every player happy on as many things as we can. And the list of things players want is long. It's a

long, long list. And I'm constantly compiling it. And people keep asking for new things. And so, we do a lot to try to deliver what players want. And we keep trying to do more and more things. Like, Conspiracy has a lot of cards people have been asking for reprinted that we were able to reprint and we did reprint them I think a lot of people are very happy

how many reprints we've gotten into it but I I just my point today is something to keep in mind as you're being critical is that when your point of view is specifically the one objective the one

thing it is very easy to get frustrated. I get that. But just remember that we are not working on one problem. Our list is not reprint damnation. Our list is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of things, one of which is for Print Damnation. And yes, it'll happen one day. For those that want Damnation to be printed, it will.

There will come a day where it's the right place and the right time and it works for us and we get to pull the card out of the thing and you get it. But the fact that it hasn't happened yet is not some sort of master planning against it or plotting. It's not us trying to kick Damnation down. It is just us having lots of factors

and lots of variables and doing lots of things with lots of moving pieces and lots of spinning plates and lots of balls in the air. Get as many metaphors here as I can. And that, we'll get there.

We will. It just, it will take some time. And I get the frustration. I get when you're looking from one perspective, from one thing, how it seems crazy and it takes so long. I get when you're looking from one perspective from one thing how it seems crazy

and it takes so long but that's just a matter of that one perspective aka the perspective problem. So anyway guys 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. Oh, weird. I didn't have a lot of traffic today. Let me quickly since I'm about to sign off and I realize I like to make sure I get pretty close to 30 minutes. I don't always a lot of traffic today. Let me quickly, since I'm about to sign off and I realize I like to make sure I get pretty close to 30 minutes. I don't always get 30 minutes,

but the last thing I'll say today is to wrap up is I like to hear problems like this. I like to, one of the things I want to do more of is when people get frustrated, like I am so frustrated about whatever. Why would you do a thing ever?

I want to do more podcasts explaining why we would do that. Today's podcast is kind of how could you not reprint damnation and try to explain how we could not reprint damnation in a way that's not some larger goal. There's no objective to not reprint damnation. It's just

there's a lot of factors going on at once. Are there other things? Are there other things you're frustrated by? If you like this podcast, I'm trying to look for other spaces to do podcasts. So one of the things I'm interested in is why do you do X? This frustrates me. I don't understand why you do X. Why do you do X? And then I can explain why we do X. And that's something that I'd be happy to do. So if you guys like that idea, you can pitch me and stuff like that. Once again, I love feedback.

I know it's funny because I do, I do the podcast in like six weeks, six to eight weeks later, you guys hear it. I do want feedback on the podcast. Which ones do you like? Which ones don't you like?

Which ones, you know, like today, is this something you're interested in? Do you want to hear more of this kind of thing? And if so, are there questions? Or like,

eh, this is not my kind of podcast. I like podcasts, whatever. When you do this or that, you know, I want feedback. And believe it or not, I get very little feedback on my podcast. Very few people tell me what they like and don't like. Every once in a while, I'll just put one on. People go, oh, that was fun or something.

I mean, I'll get very quick and passing, I enjoyed it. Which are good. I like that. But if people want to give me detail on what kind of podcasts they like and don't like, I would love to hear that feedback. Okay, we're coming up here on the 30-minute mark. So I hope today, like I said, today was really me trying to explain something, then the context of a couple paragraphs was hard to explain.

But maybe having a whole half hour to explain it made it a little easier. So hopefully that helped. But anyway, I am in my parking space, and we all do know what that means. So it, of course, is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, which I always love to do, it's time for me to be making magic, which, interesting, I also love to do. So anyway, guys, thank you so much for joining me on my ride in today. And like I said, please let me know other topics you'd like me to talk about, other issues you'd like me to talk about, and give me lots of feedback on the podcast, because that's really appreciated. But with that said, it's time for me to bid you adieu, and I'll see you guys next time. Ciao.