Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #383 - 20 Lessons: Customization

Episode Date: November 11, 2016

Mark's ninth podcast in a series of 20 from GDC.

I'm pulling up a driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is another in my 20 years, 20 lessons, or sorry, 20 lessons, 20 podcast series. So this is based on a speech I gave at the GDC talking about 20 lessons I learned in my 20 years making magic. So we're up to number 9. So today's lesson is allow your players to have a sense of ownership. Okay, so I always start by giving an example. So my example here is talk about formats. So in magic, one of the cool things is, I talk about this a lot, that in some ways we are making tools for a game, pieces of a game, and we have a rule system and stuff, but people really have a lot of flexibility. And one of the places they have flexibility is in how they play, in the

format they play, that there's a lot of different ways to play Magic. Now, some of the ways to play Magic is something we have done. For example, Standard is something that we created as a means to let you play not all the cards in Magic, but the more recent cards in Magic. So a standard is the last 18 months worth of cards. We also created Booster Draft, which is a means by which you can, you know, open up the cards and pick the ones you choose and play them. We have Modern, which is a format that's a little older than, it's a little bit older than standard, where you can play... It's everything from Mirrodin forward, I believe. So there's different formats that we make. What we call Vintage and Legacy.

These are different formats that along the way we've kind of crafted. But there's a lot of formats that you can play that Wizards, we didn't make. For example, there's a format called Emperor, where you have three people, three on three usually, or sometimes it's five on five. But it's a multiplayer format where the center person is the emperor and you have to take down the emperor, but there's a range of motion of how far you can do. There's Star Magic, where you sit in a circle of five. One of these days I probably should do a podcast on all the different formats that exist, but there's a circle of five. One of these days I probably should do a podcast on all the different formats that exist.

But there's a lot of formats. There's Canadian Highlander and Tiny Leaders and Pauper. Pauper is a format where you can only play common cards. And these are formats that we didn't make. Wizards did not make. These are formats that the players put together.

And the one I talked about in my podcast in my speech, was Commander. That probably is the biggest success of, you know, the biggest success of formats that were generated by the public. Basically, what happened was there were a bunch of judges at the Pro Tour,

and after they were done judging all day, they wanted to play, and they wanted something that allowed them access to, well, most of the cards of Magic, but some more restrictions. They wanted something that, you know, they were looking for a more casual version of the thing. They wanted multiplayer. They wanted, you know, a lot of variety, and so they came up with this format that originally they called Elder Dragon Highlander, EDH. And the idea was that you picked, originally the reason they called it Elder Dragon Highlander is you picked one of the five Elder Dragons from Legends. So, Nicole Bowles being the famous one, there

are five of them. They were all shards, if you will, arcs or shards. But anyway, there were five of them. They were three color. And I think when the format first started, you picked one of the five Elder Dragon Legends. And eventually the rules relaxed a little bit to, okay, just pick any legendary creature you want. And the idea is, so the way the deck works is,

the deck is 100 cards. You have your one, what we now call a commander. The format, once we started making decks for it, we changed over a name to commander. So that's how it's referred to now. You have one commander, which is a legendary creature, and then you have 99 other cards, and the whole format is what we call,

what's it called? We only have one of each card. It's a, of course, obviously I'm driving my car, so I'm blinking on words. So you can only have one of each card. It's a format in which you're restricted to one copy of everything. And there's 100 cards. So you have your commander and 99 other cards, one of each card.

And the idea is your commander defines what you call your color identity, which is whatever colors appear on your commander card, not just in the mana cost, but also in the rules decks. Look at all the mana symbols that appear. Those are your colors. So if all five colors appear, then it's a five-color commander. Four is a four-color commander. Although, there's no legendary four-color cards right now.

There will be soon. And so the idea is that you get to define sort of what you are but you have to match your colors in the way you build your deck so there's a lot of restrictions

I mean it one of the things that's nice about the format is it's flavorful you get to sort of build around a legendary creature because you only get one of each card it really forces

it's a form that forces a lot of diversity because you just you know it's hard to sort of make a really consistent deck. You can build around themes, but you have to build around broader themes because of the deck building constructions. And then because of the color restrictions, it just sort of makes, you know, it really helps restrict what you can and can't do. Anyway, Commander was a format created by these judges, and then it slowly built over time. It wasn't something that we had anything to do with.

And then eventually, in the summer, we tend to make a product that's just something different, that's sort of not a normal, aimed at different sort of audiences. So one summer, we made Commander decks, and it was so popular that we decided to just make that a yearly thing. So we now make Commander decks every year. was so popular that we decided to just make that a yearly thing. So we now make Commander decks every year. It's a yearly product. And Commander is taken off. You know, Commander is one of the most played formats right now. And it's by far the most played format that we had no hand in. So the reason I bring this up, because like I said, this lesson is very much about creating a sense of ownership and so commander is a great example and the reason I jumped in this is that it was something that

really allowed players to craft and make something their own so let me talk about what this lesson is and why why the example of how commander came to be is so important. So the idea is that I talked in previous lessons about how what you want to do is you want to give your players choices. You want to give them details they can focus on. You know, you really want to give them many options for how they're going to build their deck. You know, in your game, when you're making a game, you want to make sure that your audience, you know, they have, in your game, when you're making a game, you want to make sure that your

audience, you know, they, they have an input into it, you know? So I talked about how you want to give them choices so that they can make the choices. That's a very personal thing to make choices. You want to give them access to, to lots of tiny details so they can find the details that mean something to them. Cause you know, it's, it's like I said, it's the little details that make them fall in love. So today is talking about adding customization. And what that means is that you need to make sure that your game has a system built into it that allows the player some ability to not just choose existing things, but make things that are uniquely their own.

And this is a very important concept. In fact, it's a whole lesson. That you need to not only let your players choose something, you need to let your players make something. And that's really crucial. That you want your players, like, one of the big things is you, and this is pure human nature, things that are connected to you mean more to you. Things that you have a hand in shaping and forming.

One of the things about the artistic process is how personal the artistic process is. That when you make something, there's a very deep connection. My parallel, for example, is for anyone who's a parent, you're very bonded to your kids. You have a big influence. They come your kids. You have a big influence. They come from you. You have a big influence in who they are. And there's a big connection. Your kid accomplishes something even though they accomplish it.

You feel proud because there's a bond there. Your kids are part of you. And I think that that's the same thing within a game. You want players to be able to have components that they personally feel not just as something they chose, but as something they made. And that is real crucial. And so the key there is you have to figure out how to add customization into your game. And like I said, part of it is the idea of letting people pick things. But part of it is the idea of letting people pick things, but part of it goes beyond that, that you want people to be able to make things in such a way that they feel like nobody else

has this thing. And that's why customization is so important. It's important to give them choices, but in the end, any choice they make, other people will make. If they can choose any particular thing, other people can choose that thing. But by letting them have some kind of customization, now it could be the combination of the choices they make. Like one of the things about Magic is we make the cards, we don't let you choose the cards, but we give you a lot of input in how you use the cards. For example, in Magic you have your deck.

You build your deck. And that is something that is a very personal thing. I talk a lot about how magic, on some level, you get to be the game designer. That magic gives you pieces, but we don't, you know, whenever I'm asked to describe magic to people that have never, ever heard of magic before, I often talk about a metaphor I use with Monopoly. And I always explain how that when you sit down to play a normal game, you know, like Monopoly, there are 40 spaces on the Monopoly board. They don't change.

That no matter when I play Monopoly, whether I play now, I play 20 years from now, I play with my friend Bob or my friend Susie, whatever, whoever I'm playing that experience with, those 40 are a constant. Those are the squares on the Monopoly board. There always will be Park Place and Boardwalk and the four railways and Baltic Avenue will always be there. There is some constant to that. One of the things that Magic does is it says, okay, when you

sit down to play, what is the thing is not a constant. There's not 40 squares that you always play with. In fact, on some level, there's 120 squares, if you will. I have a 60-card deck. You have a 60-card deck. I mean, you can be larger than 60, but normally your deck's 60. I can have 60 pieces that define our game. You can have 60 pieces that define our game.

But I'm going to pick what my 60 pieces are. You're going to pick what your 60 pieces that define our game. You can have 60 pieces that define our game. But I'm going to pick what my 60 pieces are. You're going to pick what your 60 pieces are. And so every time we sit down, the board, if you will, is always different. That is something very unique about Magic, that there's a sense of exploration. And Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic, really did a good job of putting into the game this component where you have a huge amount of customization. And that's in, A, how you build your deck, and B, as I talked about earlier, how you play, what format you have. Not only does Magic allow you to craft the deck itself,

it allows you to craft the format. And that means we give a lot of credence to the players to make choices, to personalize things, and pick how things are going to be. And that is the crux of today's lesson is understand in your game what about your game is going to make the player take it beyond this is a thing to this is my thing. This is something I had a hand in. Now, there's a lot of different ways to do that. thing. This is something I had a hand in. Now, there's a lot of different ways to do that. So, for example, in video games, something that I don't think people think too much about,

but it's really important is one of the common things they'll often do in video games is they'll let you have customization on your avatar, on the character that represents you, that you can pick colors or outfits. For example, a lot of things you'll notice is the idea of a Mies on the Wii or the player page on Xbox where there's a sentence that says, something's going to define you and we're going to let you customize the thing that defines you. That is very powerful because there's a big difference between I'm playing a character and I'm me, you know, or I have some facsimile of me, or I have some facsimile that's a new identity,

but it's something I've created. You know, it might not represent me. A lot of people will make their, you know, their me's and stuff represent themselves, but sometimes it's like, I'm going to do whatever. I can be tall and have hair and this and that, and I can do things I can't normally do. I can make choices I can't normally make. But I get to make those choices, and I get to make the choices in conjunction with one another. That, you know, I talked a lot about how choices are important. And this is a larger issue.

It's not just a matter of having choices. It's a matter of letting people use those choices and combine those choices to make something that they then get to personify. And let me stress this because this is really important, that your game wants to have something that your players feel is theirs and uniquely theirs. Something that they made that on some level represents them. That is their thing that they did. Usually what you want for this is you want people to, A, have a lot of choices on how to customize.

B, have some bond between why that customization, why it's special and why it is theirs. And you want the ability to continue to customize. So I'm going to talk a little bit about deck building and magic because I think this does a good job of hitting these three points. Number one is, okay, so people have choices, but you then need to give them, you need some restrictions to the choices, meaning part of customization is saying, here's choices, but here's the larger goal of what you need to do. So formats do a good job of this in Magic,

which is, let's say you want to build a standard deck. Okay, you want to build a standard deck, okay, well, you have 18 months worth of cards. You don't have all the cards. There's a restriction of what cards you can have. So right off the bat, it says, okay, you have to choose from this subselection. But we try to make it big enough. So, for example, in standard, usually standard is three blocks, and each block has roughly 600 cards, let's say um so we let people you know somewhere between 1500 1800 maybe cards in standard so you know there's a lot

of cards there's a lot of choices and so it's like okay i'm giving you enough choices like if i don't give you enough choices i only give you four you four choices, how customized can it be? So you want to give people enough choices that they really have some option, but not so many choices that, you know, you... I always talk about how restrictions breed creativity. You want some kind of restrictions. Okay, so magic, first off, the format says, okay, here's what cards you can use. That's the first thing. The second thing is it gives you some parameter, too.

So, for example, a standard, okay, you get 60 cards. That's how many cards. And the way magic works is you kind of want to stay close to the number because you want to draw the cards you want to draw. So 60, I mean, there are reasons you will go over 60, but as a general rule of thumb, in magic, you want to have a 60 card deck. So I'm giving you, I'm setting a limit for you. I'm saying, okay, you can choose from the following groups of cards. Okay, but you have to have 60 cards. And then in Magic, there's a color identification built into the game. And what that means is, in order to do things, Magic has five colors. You know, you need to make commitment to colors because in order to play the colors, you have to have the resources to play them.

And so the idea there is, so there's a color identification. What colors is your deck going to be? You know, it can't really be all five colors. I mean, not that it can never be all five colors, but usually you're choosing one, two, sometimes three colors. So there's a flavor. And in magic, the colors mean something. There's a philosophy to the colors. The colors have a lot of definition to them.

So the idea is, I say, okay, you want to play this format. Here's the choices you can pick from. Here's some restriction about what you have to do. And then here's some sort of flavor element that helps define things. And when you put all those things together, you know, and like I said,

with Commander, okay, Commander is a little bit different. You know, you have a larger pool to pick from, but the restriction says, okay, you need a hundred cards, but you only have one of each card. And there's the color that says, okay, once you define your color, once you pick a Commander, and there's another choice there, hey, pick a legendary character that represents you, that you want to sort of build around. And then that gives a definition. That kind of chooses your colors for you. So by choosing what commander you choose, that chooses color. That makes decisions for you. And in each case, then you have a little puzzle to solve. And the thing about customization that's important is

you want to give people choices, but then have a goal in mind. What are you trying to do? What's the purpose of this thing? Now, I'm not saying this thing has to necessarily be rules-oriented. It could be flavor-oriented. It could be like, I'm customizing my avatar. Okay. But I do think it's powerful if the choices you make can have an impact on the game itself. It's not crucial, but I do think it's more powerful.

In Magic, for example, your deck is your game, what you're choosing to build, what you're making. And so there's a neat thing going on, which is when you play a game of Magic, you have fine-crafted a deck, you've made choices. That part of, I talk a lot about when you play the game of Magic, the actual sitting down and playing with the cards, the actual game itself, is just part of the metagame, the larger thing around the game. First, you have to figure out what format am I playing? Okay, then what deck am I going to make? And then, you know, you have to make choices.

And the idea is once you make a deck and you play somebody, you're not done yet. You know, I might go out and play and I might, you know, go to my Friday Night Magic, which is a place people can play. And let's say I go two and four for the night. Okay, well, I did okay, but not great. Two and four, that's not great. Okay, what can I change about my deck? Well, now that I've played other people, and I've played with my deck, oh, these two cards that I thought would be good, they're not that good.

Maybe I should swap them. This card, oh, that was really good. Maybe I should put more of that card in, you know. You learn data, and you can adapt to it, and you can change to it. Maybe I should put more of that card in. You learn data and you can adapt to it and you can change to it. And that's important for customization is you want to give people an opportunity to make key choices and then you want them to sort of have that representation matter through the game in some way. And there's a couple of different things.

The other important part of customization, I mean, part of it is self-representation of how I can, this is me and I can feel connected to emotionally because of the, I mean, part of it is self-representation of how I can, this is me, and I can feel connected to emotionally because of the choices I made. And not only did I make choices, but the choices have some emotional consequence to them. That when you make a deck, for example, in Magic, you are making choices that mean something. That you chose something, not just to choose it, but because it means something to you, depending on what you're prioritizing. The same way when you're choosing things about your avatar or choosing, you know, how you're going to play a certain game, what resources, you know. A lot of games, for example, say, okay, you don't have access to every resource.

You have to pick and choose which resources you want. You know, and then by doing that, they're making you make choices that will impact your game. But when you win, it's like, oh, I didn't just win. The game didn't win. I won. Choices I made helped do that. Now, there's another aspect, which is an important part, the social aspect to the customization, which is not only are you doing something that helps you or impacts you, you also are making something that gets to be seen by other players.

For example, when I sit down and play a game of Magic, not only do I get to experience the deck for myself, my opponent gets to experience it. So now we mix in another really important part of customization, which is not only do you get to define yourself through this, but you get other people get to see you. It's a lens by which other people see you. So, for example, if you build a deck that's a cool deck, like one of the things in Magic is after you play, people will comment on your deck. Like they might say, oh, wow, that's a really cool deck or that was neater. Oh, I like how you did such and such.

There's an opportunity to get interaction with the other player. And that's another important part of customization is not only do you get to define yourself and have some emotional connection, but you get to sort of, it's a lens through other people how they get a chance to see you. And it can go both ways.

People can get mad. You can make choices in your deck people won't like. You can choose deck choices people won't like. But it is a way for some sense of definition. And I mean, I think games are very social in their nature. And that a lot of, especially, you know, especially analog games where you're interacting with people face to face. I mean, I think digital has some, obviously some interaction. There's a lot of online, there's a lot of ways to play with other people, and that clearly matters.

But one of the things is, when you customize something and you bring something to the game, it becomes a showcase in something that other people get to comment on. And I think that's also part of it. That's also a big part of, you know, in Magic,

I talk about the psychographics, the different psychological reasons you play. So one of the ones I talk a lot is about Johnny or Jenny, is this, a person who, the sense of expression is important, that they want to do something, but they also want other people to see what they've done, that their expression is important, that they can sort of voice themselves through their choices. And like I said, there's a lot of different reasons of how you make your choices. One could be that you're using them as a means of self-expression.

That's quite possible. It could mean you're just trying to be effective and the choices demonstrate your ability to understand what you're doing. You know, it could be people analyze of how good a game player you are. You know, it could be you just want to generate certain experiences or have a certain feel or create a certain flair. You know, it could be it just want to generate certain experiences or have a certain feel or create a certain flair. You know, it could be it's about how it makes you feel. And that's the neat thing about customization is you have a lot of different, it has a lot of impact on how you use it.

You know, the customization will bond you with the game. That the more you get to make choices, the more you get to sort of say, okay, this is not just random game. I'm not playing with the 40 squares that have been given to me. I'm picking the squares. I'm picking some of the squares. The more that it becomes an innate personal thing. And that one of the things that I think when you're customizing your game, something you

always want to look at is you want to think about how do I make these choices and what impact will it have on the player. Like one of the things, for example, that people don't think too much about is I know you think about playtesting your game mechanics, but you also want to sort of focus test the choices that you get a chance to make. That you want people to be able to say, oh, can I choose this or can I choose that? And that one of the things that's really important is you want people to have some sort of impact on thinking about how they impact,

how their choices will impact the game itself, will impact how they feel about themselves, how others will see them. All of that has to come through. So it's something you really want to think about. Now, in Magic, for example, let me talk about, I've talked about your deck, but I really talked about just one aspect of your deck. So, in Magic, for example, let me talk about, I've talked about your deck, but I really talked about just one aspect of your deck. So I talked about, for example, that,

okay, I pick my format, which I get to pick. And once again, you can make a format. So not only does Magic allow you to choose the format you want, and you can personalize the format, it lets you create a format, you know, you can choose your own format. You don't even have to play by the format that's given to you. That Magic has this nice quality that says, hey, we're going to give you tools to play a game. We'll give you ways to play, but we're also giving a set of tools that let you choose how to play. And people all the time, one of the things that's very popular is not only can people choose formats, there's also a format called Cube. What a Cube is, is people choose what cards they want to draft out of.

So booster drafting is a lot of fun. And what a cube says is, I'm going to make my own environment in which to draft. So that's a completely different way for people to customize. You know, a cube is the idea that I'm going to make this limited environment, but I get to handpick what's in it. And I get to continually handpick what's in it. I get to play with it, and and I get to, you know, people who have cubes, they sort of continue to moderate it and fine tune it and make choices. And they're crafting their cube. That's yet another way

that they can do that. That's a whole experience in which I get to make individual choices. It's funny because as the game designer, I'm doing this all the time. Like, I'm constantly making environments that people are then going to use. But it's neat that players have also created that ability to do that. But okay, so you get to choose a format. And once again, you get to choose your format. You could craft your format. Okay, I pick a format. Then I got to make my deck for it.

So the next step is I'm going to figure out which cards I want and how I want it. Okay, now we take to the next level, which is magic. There are different ways, like not only will we make a card, we'll reprint a card, and sometimes we'll print it in different formats. We'll make promotional versions of cards. We have a series we just announced called Masterpiece, where we're making very sort of special cards that exist in a low number that you can get in booster packs. There are cards in other languages. We print in 11 languages, so you can get cards in different languages. Sometimes we reprint cards and we'll change the art. Normally when we use a card in a new expansion, normally, not always, but we'll give it new art. And when we put it into supplementary products, sometimes we'll give it new art.

So there's different versions. So let's say I want to play a particular card. There are multiple versions of that card. There might be multiple art of that card. There are clearly multiple languages of that card. And there might even be multiple sort of splashy promotional versions of that card. So when you sit down to make your deck, even once you've chosen your deck,

even like, here are my 60 cards, I even have choices then about choosing what I want my 60 cards to be. What, you know, the example that I talk about, I talked about this in another lesson, is how just taking the basic lands and how over time we've realized how we can make the basic land special. You know, we talked about doing full art lands or doing special promotional lands, lands of real world places or lands by special artists or lands that do, you know, neat and different things. And the idea is even the basic building blocks, you know, something that's kind of the most mundane part of magic, even that we give you choices.

You know, every set we make new lands in different worlds and so it's like, which lands do I want? Do I want the Kaladesh lands or the Ravnica lands or the Innistrad lands? You know, I can hand pick and I have all these choices for even the most building basic block. I can choose which ones I want. for even the most building basic block, I can choose which ones I want. And so, you know, this is a good example of how just in one thing, just in sort of making the game, making your deck, you know,

you have all these different choices along the way. And the end result is people feel bonded. It's one of the things that, so let's get into the next part. Why do you want the customization? What's the point of customization. Why do you want the customization? What's the point of customization? Why do you want it? So first and foremost, when players can make something that they feel is uniquely theirs,

A, they're going to bond more with the game. And like I said, that's true of human nature, that things that are more directly tied to me, I have a closer feel of. It's more important to me. A, so what that means is, one of the things I sort of, my ongoing

lessons is, one of the reasons that human psychology is so important to understand is you want to take advantage of how humans function to make your game as cool as it can be for the player. And part of it is understanding how humans function.

Okay, humans, things that matter to them, that are personal to them are treated differently. You know, there is, you know, there is things and there are your things and the way they get personalized. Like when you, for example, let's take your car. Okay. First off, I chose my car, I picked my car, I had some say in maybe what color it was, or what kind of car it was. Okay, but even then, even once I have my car, there are a lot of things I can do to my car. There's a lot of ways to sort of customize my car. There's a lot of ways to sort of give it, you know, to make it more my own.

You know, what people do is they make those choices, they choose on how they pick it, you know, to make it more my own. You know, what people do is they make those choices. They choose on how they pick it and they customize it. And then, you know, like people, for example, will name their car or just have a certain sense that a car, that it's not just a car. It is their car. You know, it is not just a house. It's your house. It's not that you figure out things that make something

and you make decisions and then you get a look at the decisions you made and then that thing, it, it's, it's, because it's connected to you, you start to get an emotional bonding with it,

an emotional connection. You know, that I know, for example, like when I've changed cars, when it's time to get a new car, there's a sadness. I'm losing my old car. The old car, it meant something to me.

There were memories with it, that I had a relationship with that car. Even though it's an object, I bonded with it. And you want your game to have a similar quality. You want the player to carve out a piece of the game that's not just the game. It's not just what you have made, you the game designer have made. It is a component, a piece of the game that is their piece of the game.

That's something that is theirs. A, they had a hand in making it. B, they had a hand in sort of giving it a flavor of their own. And C, they've got to build memories with it. They've got to interact with it. One of the things that's interesting looking at decks, and C, they've got to build memories with it. They've got to interact with it. One of the things that's interesting looking at decks, for example, is magic players get very associated with their decks. They name their decks.

Other people will hear about stuff they've done. If you build something cool, you can name it, and then other people can play your deck. You can inspire something that other people can, you know, like, one of the ways, for example, that, I mean, there's many ways to bond with magic decks, but one way could be, I make something that kind of transcends me. I make a deck that has a name that becomes something that other people play. I was the originator of

the blah deck, you know, whatever the deck is. Or, it could be something in which I just generate a lot of buzz from other people. People are talking about my deck, or people are excited by it, or want to look at it or, you know, I inspire other people to do something similar of their own, but I inspire other people. And even just playing it, I form memories with it. And the fact that I made it and I'm connected to it, I sort of form memories that are uniquely my own memories. Here's what happened when I played my deck.

Here's how my deck changed over time. Here's how I made decisions. My deck's a living, breathing thing that evolves as I play with it. I started it and it wasn't really good. But then I learned and I made some choices and it got better. And it improved. And there's this connected bonding that comes to it that, you know, that, you know, I don't think people think, like, they made magic.

Obviously, you know, we the game makers make the game. But I do believe that they take it and they turn it into something that is their thing, whether it's their format, whether it's their deck, whether it is some combination they came up with, they found. There's a lot of different ways to sort of do things and make things. So when you're creating your game, you have to say to yourself, okay, what am I putting into the hands of my player? What am I letting them craft in such a way that they get to create their own memories?

They get to create their own subset of the game. There's some element of it that gets to be them, that gets to represent them. That they get to look at it and say hey, this is me. Am I doing it in a way that others get to see? Can I create something where not only do they make something but others can identify them by it? Am I making something that really can be part of their identity? Am I making something that really can be part of their identity and making something that will allow ongoing customization and making something where they can learn something and they can change it as they go along like sometimes it's kind of neat like in games for example there's things in which as i achieve things i i now have more options for

my customization i now can do new things mean, magic obviously puts out new cards. Our customization has to do with we keep giving you more choices. But you can have a game in which you earn customization. You earn options. And that part of choosing something is I wasn't allowed to choose that until I earned it. And then there's a sense of I earned the ability to make that choice. And then when I use that choice, I'm showing off that I earned the ability to do that. That's also very powerful. But the key is ask yourself, what am I doing?

How am I letting my player make choices that is crafting their own thing, that's making their own game, that's making their own memories, that's making something that they get to look back on and feel as if they were the designers, they were the creators, that they had a hand. Because, and I can't stress this enough, obviously it's today's lesson, part of being a game designer is making sure that your game fits into the human experience. You know, until we start designing for non-humans, you want to fit into the human experience. You know, until we start designing for non-humans, you want to fit into the human experience.

And the human experience desperately, desperately wants to put your thumbprint on it. That, I mean, and just think of this. Think of just how humans, you know, I buy my car, I have a place to live, or even like I'm going to make dinner, I'm going to make meals. I'm going to start customizing that.

I'm going to start making choices I'm going to make meals. I'm going to start customizing that. I'm going to start making choices about how I make my grilled cheese sandwich or how I make my peanut butter and jelly sandwich or what kind of pizza I order. That's my pizza. With holidays, people celebrate holidays, they make their own traditions.

And that's important. It's not just Christmas. It's my family's Christmas. You're able to sort of make options that anything you can take, anything you can look at in the human experience, that people, it goes beyond just being food or shelter or transportation, that it becomes something in which the person wants to find a component of themselves in it. That is as core to the human experience as anything.

So we have to ask ourselves, is my game maximizing that ability? Am I maximizing the ability for my player to put their thumbprint on it? Because the more they can put their thumbprint on it, the more that they're making choices that is not just a game, it is their game. The more bonded they get, the closer they get, and the more they're going to stick to it. Because it's one thing to walk away from a thing. Like, oh, I played Monopoly, whatever.

But if you can make it something that's your own, I'm not saying, I'm not trying to knock Monopoly. I think there's a lot of experiences in Monopoly where people really can customize some sort of experience of how they play. But I think that in making your game, you want to think about how to do that, how to make sure the player walks away feeling of which they imbued part of themselves in your game. Because if they do that, like I always talk about this series, about how someone plays their game and are they coming back?

You know, what have you done when you made the game to make the player come back the next time? They play once, why do they play the second time? They play, you know, why the third, why the fourth? Why do they keep coming back? You know, what have you done when you made the game to make the player come back the next time? They play once. Why do they play the second time? They play, you know, why the third? Why the fourth? Why do they keep coming back? Well, one of the tools in your arsenal is doing something that speaks to the player on the most basic of levels. That making sure that the player, that the game has something the player cares a lot about, which is themselves. And that, how do you do that? And then that customization should happen early and happen often. And that, how do you do that? And that customization should happen early and happen often. That, you know, you should make sure that

there are places to do that. Now, I'm not saying that everything needs to be customized. I'm not saying that every decision needs to be in the hands of the players. You know, you need to cultivate the experience. You need to make sure that the choices they're making still lead to a fun game. Like in Magic, the good example there is

we don't just let players make their own cards. Players might have fun making their own cards, but we want to cultivate the game experience. So we make the cards. I sort of talk about how we're a lot like Legos, that Magic's like Legos, that build whatever you want, but we're going to give you the pieces.

We're not going to let you make the pieces. We're making the pieces, but then you can build whatever you want. So you, the designer, get to have some control. But that's the big point today is the question you have to always have when building your game is say to yourself, how am I allowing my player

to have an impact on how the game is crafted? How do they get to put the thumb on it? How do they get to put some of them into the game? And the reason that's so important is it pays off in so many different ways. It bonds them to the game. It makes them play the game longer. It makes playing the game more emotionally fulfilling for them.

It just increases the excitement. That when something's on the line, the thing on the line matters to them, you know, it just is more exciting. That when someone wins a game of Magic, you know, it's not just that they won, but their deck won. It's something that they crafted and created.

It just adds to the experience. And so when I say to you that you have to allow your players to have a sense of ownership, what I'm saying is make sure there's a way that the players put some of them into your game because if a little bit of them is in your game

then it becomes their game and if it's their game then it's so much more it means so much more to them and it will have so much more dividends

both for you the game designer and for them the game player. Okay guys I am now at Rachel's school so I got to wrap up

for today but I want to thank you very much for joining me. And as we all know, this 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 I'll see you guys next time. Hope you enjoyed this.

Bye-bye.