Think Like A Game Designer - Mark Rosewater — Designing for Emotion, Embracing Complexity, and 28 Years of Iteration (#103)

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

About MarkMark Rosewater is the Head Designer for Magic: The Gathering and one of the most influential voices in modern game design. With decades of experience shaping one of the most successful and enduring games in the world, Mark has led the design of countless sets and pioneered many of the systems that define Magic today. Known for his deep understanding of player psychology and his ability to translate complex ideas into elegant design, Mark has spent his career exploring what makes games resonate on an emotional level. In this episode, he shares hard-earned lessons about creativity, audience connection, and why great design starts with how you want players to feel.* Check out Mood Swings, a new game by Mark Rosewater* Making Magic* Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast* Mark Rosewater Tumblr* Mark Rosewater BskyJustin’s Ah-Ha! MomentsWhy You Should Fear Indifference More Than Criticism: Strong negative reactions mean people care about your game. Indifference means it didn’t land at all. The best games spark emotion, even when that emotion is mixed or uncomfortable.The Real Goal of Game Design Is Emotional Impact: Mechanics are only a means to an end. What players remember is how the game made them feel: tension, excitement, surprise, or triumph. The most effective designs start with the emotional experience and use mechanics to deliver it.Why Complexity Can Be a Strength When Used Correctly: Magic: The Gathering continues to grow as a game because of its depth and the space it offers for expansion. Yet the secret to a complex game is that it still needs enough clarity for new players to enter. When creating a game with complexity, the goal is to preserve what makes your game compelling while making it accessible.Show Notes“Good design is all about making wrong choices.” (00:11:17)Becoming a great designer requires exploring, testing, and discovering what doesn’t work. Every wrong choice teaches you something. The faster you’re willing to be decisive and commit to your ideas, the faster you get to something that actually works. Don’t hesitate—commit and learn from it.“The data is so essential.” (00:20:50)Mark explains how much of Magic’s success comes from constantly listening to players and analyzing behavior. There’s no shortage of data (playtests, player feedback, sales trends, format popularity) but the challenge is knowing what to do with it. He says that data is all about finding patterns and understanding what’s actually driving player behavior. Players will tell you what they like, but not always why. Part of the designer’s job is to interpret those signals and turn them into better decisions about what to build next.“The idea essentially is can we sell somebody a basic game that is expandable if they want it to be expandable, but not if they don’t.” (00:45:52)Here Mark is talking specifically about the structure of his new game. The goal is to create a complete experience out of the box, while still allowing for expansion over time. That’s a difficult balance. If the base game feels incomplete, casual players drop off. If expansions feel unnecessary, engaged players lose interest.“I’ve had 28 years of iterative loops.” (01:12:33)Mark has been revisiting Mood Swings for nearly three decades, refining and rethinking it over time. While this is an extreme version of iteration, it highlights a broader truth, which is that some ideas take years to fully realize. Sometimes the idea for a game will evolve alongside your skills and perspective. The lesson is to hold onto ideas that matter, keep testing them, and recognize that the right version may only emerge much later.“If you can make your audience see themselves in your game, you will be very successful.” (01:30:17)Mark and I discuss how the way a game ties to a player’s identity drives replayability. Systems like colors in Magic or classes and races in Dungeons & Dragons give players a way to express who they are through play. That sense of self-expression creates a deeper connection, turning the game into a space where players can explore different versions of themselves in a safe and meaningful way. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit justingarydesign.substack.com/subscribe

Hello and welcome to Think Like a Game Designer. I'm your host, Justin Gary. In this podcast, I speak with world-class game designers and creative pioneers across multiple industries. Each episode takes you on a deep dive into the creative process, exploring the nuances of game design and the extensive cultural, technological, and business factors influencing various creative fields. Tune in for practical tips and inspiring insights that will expand your creative perspective, whether it's inside the gaming realm or beyond.

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In today's episode, I speak with Mark Rosewater. Oh, my goodness. I love chatting with Mark, and he was actually the second guest on the podcast. And I highly recommend that you listen to the first episode because there's a ton of gold in that, and there is a ton of gold in this one. Mark reveals his brand new game the first time he's made a new game, but he has been designing

magic for 30 years. He's the head of design at Magic to Gathering, and he has so many deep insights about the nature of design, what it's like to work on games that are massively successful. Magic is more successful today than it's ever been with over 30,000 card designs. We talk about the lessons about what is it that leads to magic success. We talk about how you acquire new players, the learnings from 30 years of growth, and what it means to create so much content. In addition to creating the game content, Mark has also created more writing about game design and more writing about the process of magic than any, I would think it's pretty safe to say any designer in the world, and he continues to do so with his many articles. We talk about what it takes for emotions, what role emotions play in the game. And this is very specific.

I won't tease exactly what the game is. You've got to listen to the episode. How emotions are core to his new game experience, how emotions are core to the experience of any great gameplay, and even negative emotions and even strong negative reactions. And we talk about all of that stuff. So there is so much gold in here. Mark is really a treasure for anyone that wants to design games.

In fact, his writing and his material was the stuff I trained myself on when I was first starting with games. So to be able to share his insights with you has been amazing. And I get to do it again. And so without any further ado, here is Mark Rosewater. Hello and welcome. I am here with Mark Rosewater. Mark, it's so great to have you back on the podcast.

I know, I know. So I've been listening to this podcast. So I've been, I've listened to almost every episode, I believe. And so it's fun to be back on. Yeah, I am honored. You were my very second guest, and we are now at well over 100 episodes. And I, one, you know, I've mentioned it the first time.

Anybody that did not listen to the first episode, I've re-listened to it again recently, and it's still just gold, a lot of really great, very detailed processes and design thinking and lessons that apply to everybody. But, you know, you, I told you then, and I've told you many times since then.

You've been the biggest design inspiration to me. You have, at that time, you had still been the most prolific writer about game design and shareer of these insights and lessons. And you have not slowed down at all. You have your own podcast, which has accelerated past mine and number of episodes, You have your own, you know, your articles now, which you have, I got to, I don't even know how many you've written.

And I just got to ask, like, how do you do it? Like, what keeps you, I mean, you know, this is an insane amount of content that you've created. Yeah, yeah, just sort of the audience to understand. I've passed 1,200 articles. I've passed 1,300 podcasts. And I have a blog where I answer questions every day. And I believe I've answered over 175,000 questions. Those numbers are insane.

Like, I, I, you know, I make. I have a business and I run, I make games, and I run this podcast, and I find it to be a lot to do as much as I do, and most people are impressed by what I do, and you blow me out of the water. So talking about what,

the motivation and the process, like, how do you do it? It's a couple things. One is, I'm just at heart a writer. I mean, I'm just a communicator.

Like, that's my background. Before I was a game designer, I actually was a writer. That was my job. And so I just, I think I'm compelled to write things. So that's the first part of it,

is that just, I feel obligate. Like, it's my nature. I have to sort of do it. And the second part of it is I've learned in my job, as head designer of Magic the Gathering, that just interacting with the public is super valuable. Like, my job is to make things that the players like.

Well, how do I know what they like? Well, let's talk to them. And so I just find it to be a very, very useful tool to, like, getting an insight into the psyche of the players, which is, just talk with the players. They very much have opinions. They don't all agree. And they want very different things.

Like, that's one of the challenges of game design is your audience isn't one unified force that all wants the same thing. You know, they all want different things. And it's how can I make one thing that applies to a lot of different people in ways to make all of them happy? And that's the challenge. Yeah. Well, and you're inevitably going to be making some people unhappy. And it is, so, you know, a couple things from that, right? One, an important lesson, right, find out what your fans and what your players want, talk to them.

But I also think there's a flip side to that, which is the players being able to humanize, you and having you be able to communicate like your thinking and, you know, react to the things that the players are saying matters a lot too. So even when players disagree with a choice you made or they, you know, it's not like some faceless organization that like is just out to get them. It's you, Mark, who says, hey, here's why I did what I did. And there's reasons behind it and you may not agree. But there's like, you know, I care and I'm one of you. And like, I think that matters a lot too. Oh, yeah. I mean, so the story behind this is when I first got into game design, I wanted to read about game design. I was like really excited. And there was

nothing. I mean, like, there were like books that were out of print and like there was just nothing. And so when I first got to Wizards and I was sort of inside the building, I just like, okay, I'm going to write about this because I wish somebody would write stuff for me. And so I just started writing about it. And at the time, like nobody wrote about game design because like nobody was supposed to write. I don't know. Like the companies didn't want the people writing about it. And Wizards was so young that no one knew to stop me, I guess. By the time someone asked, like, should Mark be doing this? I'd been doing so long and Magic was successful.

Like, okay, I guess it's fine. And I like to think that a lot of the modern day, like, I like to think I'm part of the thing that pushed game designers to stop talk about game design because, you know, 30 years ago, it wasn't there. And now, like, if you make a new game, how do you not talk about the game design? So that, I hope that's some of my influence on the world is getting people to talk about game design. Yeah, no, no question. And I've had a similar motivation that, you know,

when I was first learning how to do this and I made my transition from like a pro player to a game designer, there was very limited material about how to do this. And it was a very difficult transition. And your material was a godsend to me. And the other material that you had referenced me to, like a whack on the side of the head and others that were like books on creativity that were super helpful, helped me to figure out how to do the job. But it was still so much that that's why I wrote my book and do this podcast and these things,

like sharing this information. And also, I think, as you said, I think the other thing I wanted to key in off of your answer is like, you're a communicator or writer by default. Like you just, you can't not do it. You enjoy doing it. And it's a way that you not only express yourself,

but also work through your own thinking. And like, it forces you to be better at what you do by having to communicate it. And that's what I felt in sort of my own work. So like it makes you a better designer and process. I definitely agree with that. That one of the nice things about having to write it is it really makes me figure out what I'm thinking.

Like, I'm a very intuitive designer. Like, I do think so they feel right. And then some of the time it's like, I have to write about it so I can figure out why exactly I think it's right. Yeah. And so I do find writing very therapeutic from a design sense of just sort of working through what exactly is going on in my head. For example, at Magic, we have two sections, main sections of design.

We call vision design and set design. And I require all vision designers when they finish to write a document. that explains what they're doing that they hand off to the next thing. And the reason that's so important is I just want, I want them to have to think about and write it down. And the mere act of having to write it down does a lot to just really understanding what, what are you done? Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's why I encourage everybody to when they are working on these designs. Actually, I just started a new version of my think like a game designer kind of design lab class. And I said from the beginning, writing down the like the elevator pitch concept for your game is super valuable because it's what is your vision for what you're doing, not just for how you're going to sell it at the end, but like having a clear vision. And it could be that it's wrong and you go through the core design process and you change it, but forcing yourself to communicate,

this is my hypothesis. This is what I think is fun and cool. Then let's test that against the world. And then, okay, am I right? Am I wrong? How do I modify it? It is so much better than just like trying things and not really knowing even what like the heart of what you're trying to do is. Yeah, one of the big things I find with designers when I work with like newer designers is, They do what I call fence sitting, which is like, I don't want to commit anything, so I'll stay in the middle, so no matter what I'll, and I'm like, no, no, just pick something. If you're wrong, I don't care, you'll figure that out, and then you'll change. But if you don't pick something, you'll never figure out what's right. And like, I have a little bit of everything is horrible design. Like, pick a path. Yeah. Commit to something. And then go down that path and see if it's right. And maybe it's not, okay, but then you'll figure that out. And that I think, I really think part of the iterative process is committing to something because how do you iterate? like try something and then you'll learn from it. And then, okay, if it works, it doesn't work, you're in a much better place,

then you just don't really commit anything. Yeah, yeah. And what do you think that comes from? Why is it that? Because I've noticed the same trend and new designers are hired too, right? Why is it they sit? They don't make that choice and commit.

I think there's this fear that they'll make the wrong choice. And the funny thing is, good design, you make infinitely wrong choices. Like, good design is all about making wrong choices. And so it's just getting them to understand that there's, like, making wrong choices is part of the process.

There's nothing wrong. with making wrong choices, but I just think that they're afraid, you know, like, oh, what if I make the wrong choice? I'm like, well, that's how you succeed is by making wrong choices. That gets you to the right choice. Yeah, I teach you up for that one. That was it. I do anyone that answer, who's going to go?

No, but it's so important, right? It's like, it's fear. It's this fear of being wrong, this fear of not, like, you know, that I'm going to make a mistake and it's not okay. And, like, the mistakes are the process. The failure is the process. Like, it's, and this is where, you know, When we talked last, I was like, oh, my God, I can't believe you've been doing this for over 20 years and you've got the, you know, how do you keep going through it?

And now you've passed 30 years doing it since the last time we did the podcast. You know, and it's like, what's the difference between you now and you back then? And I'll let your answer it to the degrees. It was just like, you've made so many more mistakes. That's so fantastic. You've gotten to be able to make so many mistakes. You're able to calibrate so much better. Yes, it's funny.

The day we're recording this, I just put up a podcast about how have I changed in the last 30 years. was one of my topics for my podcast. It's like, someone asked me, like, how's your design changed? And really, the core of it is, the more I design, the larger picture, I think. Like, what I sort of describe it is, like,

when you're first designing magic, it's like, you're all about the cards. And then you're about, like, the cycles, and then the mechanics, and then the sets, and then the year, like, it just keeps getting bigger because you're just trying to think of,

I want to understand the larger processes. And the more I design, the more, like, you know, it's like, I've made thousands of individuals, cards. That's not really, I'm not, it's focused on that anymore. It's sort of like, how do we, how do we make new processes?

How do we, how do we make better designers? How do we make, you know, how do we improve it so that everything gets better, not just one individual card gets better? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're building the game that builds the game, right? Yeah, yeah. And, and I think there's another layer to it, which is, you know, you now, I think have, can speak to, which is, you know, I mean, building, building culture and building

legacy in a way that is, you know, you know, 30 years plus is, is, is, is, is, and the scale, you know, as far as I know, I mean, magic's bigger than it's ever been and continues to break records after records constantly. Yeah, that's our best year. Yeah, that's, I've heard that story many years now. And that's wild to me, right? I mean, like, I talk about, you know, oh, yeah, I played Magic of the Gathering and I was, and it's like, oh, yeah, I remember that game. And then it's like, well, yeah, is that still around? Like, no, it's actually bigger than it's ever been, which is ludicrous to me.

I mean, like, kudos, obviously to you and the team. Like, to what do you attribute that? And when you think about scale, I mean, there's many things, of course, but like, to reach the scale that it has, you know, what is it, what would you say, let's like, you know, the kind of the three things that come to mind is like, what's the biggest things that you've done right or the things that you're now doing to sort of see this legacy continue for another 30 years. Yeah, I mean, once again, I should stress by starting, it's a huge team. So, like, there's lots of, lots of people working in this. So as I'm talking about, it's not like this is some solitary project, many, many people working on this. Here's what I think is kind of the secret of our success. One is, okay, first and foremost, Richard Garfield just made an amazing game.

It's a really, really good game. I mean, I personally think it's the best game ever made. I'm a little biased, but I mean, it's just a fun game. And that one of our secrets of success has been, just get people to play the game. Just get them to sample the game because it's so good. A lot of people go, ooh, this is amazing. This is super fun. And like recently, for example, we just did a, what we call Universe is Beyond,

where we're doing other properties. And what it's been really good at is, like, magic's big problem is what we call barrier to entry, meaning it's a complicated game. And not knowing anything and then knowing enough to play is intimidating. So you have to do something that really encourages people to try it. And it turns out if we say, what's your all-time favorite property? Well, we made a deal-out of that. Like, that people will try it where they wouldn't before.

And then the secret is magic's awesome. And so once they try, they stick around. I mean, not everybody, but enough people stick around because it's fun. And then we grow the game because more people are playing magic. And so do you think, so yeah, Universes Beyond is one of the most interesting developments over the last, whatever it is five years, six years you've been doing Universes Beyond now, but something like that. And I love it. I know that, and that makes a perfect amount of sense. So you're right, you take the coolest IP and things that people love and have nostalgia and joy for.

You bring it into this world for people who are previous fans of magic. I know many of which, I mean, I played the Teenage Muti Turtle set at Gamma. I hadn't played magic in over a year or whatever actual, like, face-to-face magic. It was awesome. And so it's an easy way to bring back old players. It brings in new players who are like, oh, I like, I like this, this brand. Let me see what it's like and gets this through the barrier. Do you think that is like kind of the top reason for its growth over the last five years, that time window?

I mean, well, so, yes, for three things. Number one is we're doing the best we can to find more ways to expose people to the game. It's an awesome game. And part of that is just get. find more ways to get people to get access. And I think we're doing that very well. Number two is, I think we finally embrace the complexity as a plus. I think we spend a lot of time, like, let's simplify and how can we teach it?

And in the end, what made people want to play magic is not that it's simple. What made people I want magic is the infinite depth. So for, I don't assume your audience does everything about magic, but sometime a year or two ago, we cross 30,000 cards, unique cards. So, you know, chess has, you know, six pieces. Like, you know, so magic is, one of the things that's really nice about magic is, I always say it's like a game system. It's not really a single game.

And that there's lots of ways to play. And you want to play commander or modern or booster drive. There's infinite ways to play it. And that magic is very adaptable. So I think that we've leaned into that the complexity is kind of the fun. of the game and that now what we want to do is just show you how much fun it is, show you how deep it is, and let

people enjoy that rather than try to like dumb it down to make the simplest version of it you know, because we did this, we did some test one at one point where we did a very simplified version of it and we did focus groups and at the end they're like, would you play this again? No, it's too simple. Like, oh no,

we made the big magic was too simple. Something went horribly awry. Interesting. So that, embracing the complexity of it, embracing the flavor, like a lot of what people love about the game is all the depth and all the different things that you can do. And the third thing I would say

is meeting magic players where they want to be. So like Commander is kind of the classic example. So Commander wasn't, we didn't make Commander. The players made Commander. You know, that And just for context, Commander is a

multiplayer, more casual format that now has become much, pretty much the most popular way to play as far as now in terms of... Traditionally, in a commander, instead of starting at 20 life, which is the normal life, you start at 40 life,

and normally play with three other people. So it's a four-person game, and you start at double the life that you normally started at. And it's a very, very casual format. And that basically somebody made it. And, you know, Sheldon Menry really was one that really

sort of pushed it in the magic circles. And then we decided to dip our toe in it, and we made some commander decks. And they were horrible. successful. So we made more. And then just the ball kept rolling and now, right, in tabletop, it's the most dominant way to play magic. And I think that part of our success has been, look, magic can be a lot of things to a lot of people. Let, let it be that. That there's no reason that you can't have a pro tour with people competing for lots of money. At the same time,

that people are just having fun and goofing around with their friends and that, the flexibility, I think is a big part of what makes magic sort of, you know. So how do you think about how you apportion your your resources and products in that sense, right? So you want to be where players are. So you want to have stuff for the, you know, for the casual player that's playing commander. You want to have stuff for the competitive player that's playing in tournaments. You want to have people that like to do sealed events,

people who are just coming in for the, for the for the for the teenage new ninja turtles. Right. What, uh, is there like us, is there a bigger picture strategy to it or is it just like, okay, well, we saw, we sold out this many of this thing. So we're going to make that percentage more of our resources towards that or I mean, the answer is, and part of my goal today is a lot of your podcast talked about the very beginning part of design. Like, how do I get my very first design? Today's going to be a little bit of lesson about, okay, you're there.

There's a lot of interesting lesson. So the lesson here is data matters. Data is very important. And I know that might sound like, like, I know that creative people are like, oh, I want to be creative. But you can be creative, but you have to listen to the data. and that we live in an era now with the ability to get so much data and that, I mean,

how do you design games now is you want to figure out what your audience likes? How do you figure what your audience likes? There are infinite ways to get data and then you have to crunch the data. And not only is collecting the data complicated, crunching the data is complicated, but look, data is very important.

And if you're going to be an actual game company making actual games, I mean, obviously you know this because you have a game company, but like the data is so essential. Yeah. Okay. Well, so let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's be mystified because data is a big fuzzy word, right? Yes, I understand it in principle, but what does this mean really? And there's a bunch of different ways to data. I mean, the low-hanging fruit that people always think about is like sales. And yes, sales is important. If a lot of people buy something that does in fact mean something.

We also do a lot of market research where we actually get people and there's two different types of market research. There's the one where we try to get you when you come to us. Like, if you come to the magic website, you can click on this and take a survey. And the other is when we go try to find people. And there's the ones where we go to where we expect magic players to be, and the ones where we go where we don't expect magic players. We call deep dives, where we're like just going out in the public and keep asking people to we find magic players.

That's a lot harder to do because you're going through a lot more people. So we do market research. There's digital data. We have digital ways to play. That stuff we can market really well. There's sanction a way to play. So we can take track of that. there's a lot of trends online

like we can look at how much people talk about certain things like there's there's infinite online data you can get and there are different sites that collect data for different things in different formats and like there is a lot a lot a lot of data yeah um and then and then we have a whole section of our company that both collects the data and then crunches the data because like you need you need like math like math majors here

the people that know what they're doing like it's very complex I mean, I do enjoy talking to people, and I think there's anecdotal stuff that I get from talking to people, which is very valuable. But that's very, very different than trying to get the data. And the answer is, what do we make? Our data kind of tells us what the audience wants,

because the audience, in many ways, like through gameplay, through talking online, through buying products, through, like, all the different ways that people connect with the world, we can look into that. And it just says what people want to do. And that...

One of the, like, I have a blog where people ask me questions all the time. And so much of the time, people are you doing this? I'm like, because people want it. That's why we're doing it. You know, people want it. And maybe it's not you. Maybe, maybe this thing is not for you personally, but there is somebody it's for. And, you know, that's who we're doing it.

I have a metaphor that I like. I call it my buffet metaphor, which is we're trying to make the best trading card game in the world. How do we do that? Well, we just give lots of different foods. How do you make a great buffet? and that do you like seafood? We got seafood. Do you want ham?

We got ham. Do you want chicken? Do you want pasta? Do you want a salad bar? What do you want? And then we want to try to provide that. But the tricky part of it is that some people go, I love the salad bar, but I hate seafood. And the answer is, we'll eat for the salad bar and try to ignore the seafood.

But there's people that love seafood. That's why we have seafood. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a funny analogy because there's something about the psychology of a TCG, right, of a trading card game that people have this feeling like they need everything. And so there's, I definitely know there's a sentiment amongst the magic community that like, oh, they're releasing too many products or they're trying to do too many things or like it's too hard

to keep up. Like where like I, whatever, I know you well. I understand what's going on. You got, you know, people want the things and they're selling and there's lots of cool stuff. But for some reason, there's a psychology that's a shift around if they don't, if it's, if there are things that they don't necessarily. that are not for them at the buffet. I have to eat everything.

I have to eat everything in the buffet. I mean, so it's funny. When Richard first made the game, Richard's vision was that he didn't want to tell anybody anything about the game. You know, so we'll lead until a later topic of today, but one of the core ideas of a trading card game is what Richard calls bigger than the box,

meaning that most games when you play the game, you have all the pieces. Like, everybody plays with the same pieces. But a trading card game, that's not true. that you're playing with some of the pieces. And as I said, we have 30,000 pieces. There's no way to play with all the pieces. And that, so Richard's early vision was we don't tell anybody anything,

but the internet was born. And like, it was just too hard to hide information. Yeah. But magic's actually gotten to a point now where we make so much, then on some level, it is now, like, Richard wanted you to sit down in a game of magic and someone plays a card you go, I've never seen that card before.

Yeah. I think we've kind of come back around to Richard's vision where, look, it's not that we can't hide information. It's just we can't, there's enough information that you can't process it. Yeah. And so, you know, no man, no mortal man can understand all of these cards. I mean, I think the hard part is I understand the audience that just wants to experience everything. But on some level, like, like, magic is really good at additive and bad at subtractive is what I like to say.

Like, if somebody wants something, they're happy, I can add that. I can add new things for people who want it. But in order for me not to do something, I have to take away for everybody. And the example I give is, I had someone write me a letter on my blog and said, look, I have a rachnophobia. I am definitely afraid of spiders. I literally can't play if there's a spider on a card in the game. Please, please, please, please, can you just stop putting spiders on cards? And I'm sympathetic.

Like, hey, it's not that I want to ignore this person's plea. I get it. I like, look, it really impacts him playing magic. But the problem is, if I, like, am I going to not make spiders for all the people that love spiders? because he doesn't like spiders. That's the challenge is for everybody who hates something, somebody else loves that thing. And that we can make things people love.

It's hard to avoid things people hate. And that's another kind of important game design lesson is you have to just make sure everybody has something they love. Don't try to avoid having anything people hate. Because what somebody loves, somebody else will hate. Yeah. Well, and I think like, you know, to give the more sort of controversial side of this, I think like if nobody hates something in your game,

then you're not doing a good enough job. Like I think that there is a version of like, especially with a collectible game like this, right? Like you want people to care a lot and you want them to have very big emotional reactions to things. And obviously you want them on balance to be very positive things. But there have to be the counter side to that.

There have to be when there's this constant discovery, some things that you're like, oh my God, I can't believe that happened to me or I can't believe that card exists. I can't believe this happened to me. Like there is a range of which you want some of the things. that people love to hate to be out there. Like, you know, in, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I literally don't believe you can make something that some people truly love that other people won't hate. If you're going to make strong emotions, you can't just make strong emotions in one direction. Like, you're going to make strong directions in many directions. And one of my, I did a talk at GDC back in 2016. At the time, it was my 20th anniversary.

So I did 20 lessons for my 20 years working. And one of them was, if everybody likes your game, but nobody loves it, it'll just fail. Yes. And the idea is your goal is not to make, your goal is not to offend anybody. Your goal is to make everybody in their own way fall in love with what you're doing. And that means you've got to commit and do things and that, yeah, you're going to piss people off.

But that, right, as you're saying, no game that's going to be a successful game is not going to upset somebody in some way because the very nature of what makes it exciting and different, it'll rub some people the wrong way. Yeah. Yeah. And it goes back to kind of what we talked about the beginning of like, you know, as a designer, being willing to make a choice and make a bold choice and go forward with it. and, you know, whether that be in early testing to find out if it's a bad choice overall and it's not a good tradeoff or as in the later stages, we're like, yeah, I'm going to make this statement and this game is, whatever, is for this person. And it's not for this person. And that's okay. And like being able to take that stand is like important. And it's hard because, listen, you've, you know, I've felt plenty of this, but no to a degree of what you have. Like you, you know, the, the, the, the hatred and IRA of the internet that comes forward to you. Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, it is, I've had people calling for my dad. You know, literally because of card designs. It's like, it takes a thick skin. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I, there's not a lot of people at Wizards that do what I do that like sort of a public face for the reason is like people just will be very negative. Like if I want to go on any day, I can go and read it and have people say nasty, nasty things about me. I can find that every day of the week. Yeah. And you just sort of like, the thing that really I've learned over time, this is how I got my thick skin is everybody is trying to tell you something.

A lot of them don't know how to tell you the right way, but they're trying to tell you something. And if you look past the language of how they're saying it, well, what are they saying? And a lot of times, like, I like this thing. I don't like that thing, you know. They're communicating something about the game that, from a game design standpoint,

it's important to understand. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And again, it just speaks to, like, they really care about the thing you made, right? Like, the fact that they're going to take the time to, like, create this vitriolic post about you. Like, you've done something that they really cared about this game, even if they're bad, right? It means you've touched, you know, you're doing something that matters.

And sometimes it's going to rub people the wrong way. And I agree with your assessment there of, like, you know, give people a charitable interpretation, reword their statements and try to get the value out of it when you can. As a game designer, you should not fear hatred. You should fear disinterest. Yes. That is what you should very fear is there's so many other games to play. If your game just boards them, then they'll go play other games. If they want to spend time going on a board to scream about how awful your game is,

but you're doing something that's at least invigorating them to want to do that. Yes. As a game designer, you should not fear hatred. You should fear disinterest is probably going to be the title of this episode at this point. Okay. And it's ties well because it also is an important emotion. So I am going to switch to the topic that you're most excited to talk about. But I have one last thing I want to talk about with magic with a comment that you made

because it's something I debate a lot internally. You said, we're leaning into complexity as a plus. And one of the things I have noticed over the years is the increasing complexity of the cards and the game and the completing word count on the cards and the game. And for me, I have as a designer, I have always very much appreciated, you know, a clean aesthetic and like trying to sort of minimize that stuff. And I have felt that I could be very wrong or that I have overvalued that in my own work, potentially. And I'm curious if it's just because magic has 30,000 cards and because the core game is so good that you can just, you either have to or it's okay to do this or in fact, you know what,

people don't care about this as much as I think they do. And that like you, you know, the, the value of just like getting all the stuff out there is worth like, it doesn't, you know, card count, word count doesn't matter. And I'm curious where we are on this. Yeah, that's an interesting thing. So, Commander became the number one tabletop game. So I've played my share of Commander games, obviously. And when you sit in a Commander game and you look around the table and process what's going on,

there is so much happening. Like, there's times in which you go, I'm just going to worry about what I'm doing. I know if I can even process everything on the board. It gets very complex. And I'm saying, this is the most popular way to play. And it is far from the simplest way to play. And I think what I realize, I mean, it's not that you want no simplicity. It's not that like I'm a big fan of can you cut words, cut words.

I mean, I think, I'm not saying don't think about what you're doing in a way that's easy to grok and understand. But I do think that how people respond emotionally, here's segue, how people respond emotionally to what you're doing is very important. and that what basically what I discovered is if players are invested, they will work through a little more complexity. That what's more important is that they're invested and excited than they, you know,

saying that they don't have to understand everything right away if they're really excited because they'll learn it and understand it. And I agree with you. I mean, there's the game designer me that it wants to make evident the most elegant, the most elegant, simple thing possible. And magic is ebb and flowed. We definitely had sets where we were trying to cut,

and have the least number of texts on, we've done that. I've been there. And I don't think that leads to the happiest players. So there's a sweet mix between what's the fewest number of words that can do the things you want. Like, right now we're trying really hard to make sure there's enough room for flavor text. And so, like, we are doing metrics to make sure that we're not making too many words because we want flavor text on enough cards. And we want, like, there is a balance. I don't want people to feel like caution to the wind, just make everything as complex as it can be.

That's not correct either. but the simplest form of it is not the correct answer. There's a sweet middle spot where you're combining the coolness of what you're doing with the flavor what you're doing in a way that makes people want to care.

And finally that sweet spot's been a lot of our recent sort of explorations. Yeah, yeah. So then just to dig into this a little bit further because I think it's just, it's a tough challenge and you've highlighted it well. It's like getting them to the point

of being invested and excited. And so what are the triggers that get them to that point, right? So for example, let's, I'm just going to go old school because I'm more familiar with old school magicists,

right? Like the form of the dragon, right? One of the coolest card designs of all time, in my opinion, right? Because it's just, it is a thing that like,

the rules are like, not that, not that easy, but they are so flavorful and tied to the thing, right? You are a dragon is the flavor. All right. I'm a dragon.

I'm a dragon. And that means, and here's what it means. to be a dragon and it and it kind of you can see how it connects to how a dragon works in the game and like what it means for me to be a dragon and that's like it's awesome because like the story, the art and the concept get me past the complexity and that is not like nearly as complex as the most complex things like the the plains walker mechanic for example I felt was like I was when I was on the wrong side of this I'll say like I thought it was way too complex when it got introduced

I was like I can't believe it there's so many rules associated with this thing like what the hell so much going on but the story and what it allowed you to tell ended up being sort of worth it. Is it is that it is it the vocativeness of the the character and the world thing? Is it like what are the tricks that get people invested and excited enough to leap over the complexity? Yeah, I mean

the, look, my core belief, um, well, I'm going to tell a little story here, which is going to connect to this and to later here. Okay. Is so when I was my freshman year of college, I took a writing class.

And, um, one of our, the exercises is that We had to pick an author, and we had to read a whole bunch of short stories by that author. And then the teacher said, okay, now, every writer has a theme. Can you tell me the theme of the author you just read? And then you would try to figure out the theme. And then she goes, okay, you are a writer. You have a theme.

What is your theme? And so when I did the discovery, what I realized is here is my personal theme. And it just bleeds through everything I do, writing, game design, everything, which is people fundamentally want to think of themselves as being intellectual, but in the end, we make almost all our decisions based on emotion, that we are driven by emotion.

We have this illusion that we're intellectual creatures and in the reality we're really driven by our emotions. And I've always been fascinated by the, like one of my big beliefs as a designer is I'm trying to get an emotional response

out of my player. Like that's really the core of this, right? Is if I show you a card and I just tap into something that just makes you excited or happier, or even scared, I mean, it doesn't have to be happy. You can tap in other emotions.

You, the player, it means something to you, and that the reality is, on some level, you have your life outside the game, but you bring in elements of your life into the game. Whether it's resonant things, whether it's properties you know,

whether it's things that just means something to you, and that whenever we can tap into these human emotions, and we can make you the player, like feel something, that's gold. That is where the sweet spot is. You know, form a dragon is like, I get to be a dragon.

And do these things make sense to each other? Well, they do if I'm a dragon, you know, and that's why it makes sense. Like, if I showed you the card without the name or the art, you're like, what is this card? It looks like, God, the book. But the second I go, but you're a dragon, you're like, I'm a dragon.

And I think that is the key. That if you can, it's a combination of residence, but it's just tapping into that emotion. getting people to go, ooh, it's this thing, and I'm so excited for this thing. Yeah, yeah. I love it.

I love it. Okay. All right. Now that we have gotten to the strength of emotional responses. Yes. We will use... I'm talking about emotions.

Yes, your bonds of emotions. So I'm the head designer of magic. But today, the reason I actually called you in the first place was not to talk about magic. I mean, I'm happy to talk about magic because magic is fun. But, so back in 1998,

so 28 years of, ago, I had been working at Wizards for three years, and I came up with an idea. So here was my core idea, which was, so Richard Garfield, we made Magic, made the trading card game. And I love the trading card games are awesome. But I said, one of the problems, I mean, magic is an amazing game, the best game ever made, but it's complex. Like I said, it's a complex game.

There are people that are just never going to get into magic just because it's too complex for that. You know, it's just not for everybody. It's for many people, but not for everybody. What if we made a trading card game that captured everything that was fun about trading card games, but was simpler? Was just, like, my thought is there's a spectrum. Magic is probably on the one end of the spectrum. Like, here's about as complex as a trading card game can get.

What is the other end of the spectrum? And that was my little challenge to myself is, okay, I would make a trading card game that takes everything that's awesome about trading card games. but what's the simplest form of it I can do? What is the easiest form I can do? What is the lowest barrier? I want the lowest barrier. Magic has its huge barrier. I want a low barrier entry.

How do I do that? And so that was my challenge back in 1998. And now this is fun for me because when you mentioned this project, I played this game with you back in 1998. This is one in between rounds at the Pro Tour and various signed things. I would hang out and we would play many, many rounds of this. And it was super fun. It was, you know, lots of things still in flux,

but I think the core of it is actually still pretty much intact. Yeah, but the core idea from 1998. Like, I have all my old playtest cards. In fact, at MagicCon, but by the time you heard this, Magic on will be over. But at Magicon, I did a talk. Yeah. Which I show like every version of it.

Because the story of Moot Swings is me, I came up with a great idea. And it's just trying to convince somebody that my idea is worth doing. That's one of my through lines for today, because this is a game design podcast, which is a good idea in a vacuum is not necessarily just enough. You have to convince other people of your idea,

and that when you do something that's off the beaten track, when you do something that hasn't been done before, it's very hard to convince people because there's nothing to point to. You can't just say, oh, it's just, you know, because every time I compare to magic, there's all the things that didn't do that magic did. So let me walk a little from the audience.

Let me walk a little through what the game is so they can understand. So I said to myself, what is the simplest version? So I said, for starters, I don't want deck building. That's really complicated. I have to build the deck. That's very complicated. So I said, okay, what if we took the idea of a card, just a basic idea of a card game?

If you go to the store and you buy Uno or Milborn or whatever, name your favorite just card game. The idea is I go in, I plunked on my money, I buy a bunch of cards, and that's it. I own a game. I can play the game. I have the game right away. I don't have to go make the game. Like, magic's really weird and, like, you buy pieces to a game and like, okay, now go put together the game.

There was an ad we did many years ago where when we made the first preconstructed decks. And the ad was just, it showed all the ingredients for a pizza laid out. And it said, sometimes you just want, you don't want it to make it. I just want the pizza. I don't want the ingredients to a pizza. And so the idea was, okay, I just want a game where you buy it off the shelf and it's the game, right? That's what I wanted. I don't want you to have to build anything,

but it's a trading card game. And so here was the core idea. And this is an idea that to me is fascinating, but convincing people of this took some time. So the idea is when I go to the store, if you and I go to the store and we buy the same game, you and I each buy Uno, right? If you play at my house or I play at your house,

it's the same game, right? It doesn't matter where we play. But imagine if my copy of the game does not have the same cards as your country. copy of the game. So when we play at my house, it's the same basic game, but it's slightly different because I just have some cards you don't have. We probably have some cards in common, so there's some familiarity. But there's just, and when I go play my, you know, another friend, I might see cards I've never seen before. And that was the idea that the cool part of a trading

card game is I like collecting, I like trading, I like adaptability, I like card combos. But I just wanted to make it a lot simpler. And so I just kind of threw away what I consider the complex stuff, which is, okay, you don't have to build anything. We will just give it to you. you. But each person gets something unique. And that's kind of the cool part about it. Yeah. So this business model then is, and as a way, it's it, you're, you're going to buy this product. It is a randomized product that is, has rarity, just like somebody would expect from a pack of magic, except my one box is everything that we all need to play, however many players. Well, I'll give you the exact. So you'll buy a box. It will have 45 cards in it. You'll have 23

commons, 14 uncommon, six rairs, and two Mepids. Okay. And that game, you never have to touch it out a card. That is a complete game. You can play that game for the end of time. It's fun. It's a very fun game. You can buy the game and ignore it.

You never have to go outside your house. You can play that game. It's a game. Much like you bought any other card game that you would buy in this store. Well, okay. And your enthusiasm around enforcing that message is gets to the core of where I want to want to push on this. Oh, no, no, no.

Be aware. It took me 28 years to get this game made. So there's some questions. I'm very open to that. Yeah. And again, this is a great game that you get out of the way. There's a great game. I'm going to buy it.

I recommend everybody else buy it, try it out. Regardless, even if you ignore this business model discussion that we're going to have and how much pushback I'm going to give to Mark, the game is fun, and you will have fun playing it out of the box. I did 20 plus years ago. I will, you will also. So let's put that aside. But I, many people have tried to bite at this apple.

And I have also considered biting at this apple. And I have done, I have bitten at this apple with Richard Garfield, in fact. the idea of trying to create a complete game that is unique to each person, right? We did SoulForge fusion together. We used digitally algorithmically generated cards so every single deck was unique. You don't have to build your deck, but you shuffle them up and go. He did Keyforge, another version of that. We've had, I went down the road for a while, and I actually did my own market research about doing this for Ascension, where we would have center decks that were algorithmically generated and built so that you would have a unique deck building game every time you purchased it.

And our fans were livid at the idea. Now, maybe that was wrong, but they didn't like it. They liked the idea that I, I know what my experience is. It's custom crafted to the thing. And so there's this weird space that you're playing in of like, you know, just like we talked about people, people that get mad at the buffet of magic gathering because they feel like with a collectible game, I want to be able to eat everything at the buffet. Yeah. You've created a, a, it's not, maybe it's not a buffet. Maybe it's kind of a, uh, it's a buffet sampler.

Yeah. It's like, it's like a little, a little bento box kind of a. here. I don't know what it is, but it's something different. It's going to create some different psychological responses in players. So talk to me about what that, you know, where you, what's like, yeah. Here's, this is my idea is that there's different levels of players. Some people want to buy a game and they own the game and they're done. Great. They can do that. This allows them that opportunity. But the idea that one of the fun things about a trading card game is there are other cards out there, you know, and that

the intent behind it is we're not, I mean, Magic's business model is a very different business model, right? We're trying to, you're going to constantly be buying cards. So this business model is, like, the idea essentially is there's a much wider market that you can, like, what if we could sell to a lot of people a game that they

normally would just buy the box and be done, but some of them will go beyond that. Some of them will get excited enough that they'll buy the second deck to mix in with their first deck. Or they'll, you know, like, the idea essentially is, can we sell somebody a basic, basic game that is expandable if they want it to be expandable, but not if they don't. That's the premise. Was that, yeah. I mean, magic in principle is that too, right? I could buy just some starters and play and then I don't have to buy anything else.

Magic definitely has. So one of the things about Moosewoods, I guess I should explain, you all play off the same deck for starters. Right. So there's no, in magic, I'm building my own deck and playing against you. And I mean, there's a lot of reasons from a business standpoint, this is great. There's a lot of like, oh, I play you and you beat me. Why want more cards so now I can beat you, right? There's this idea that I'm constantly evolving and upgrading my deck.

Yeah. Which is a big part of magic. And when I first pitched this idea, exactly. You're like, but why would people need to upgrade to the deck? I'm like, well, they don't have to. And they're like, but no, no, that's what trading games are all about. and the idea is I think there's people who will want to explore

that can explore but I'm trying to make something like essentially the idea that I was is can we introduce trading card games to an audience that will never play trading card games that has never interacted with trading card games yeah that's kind of the core of my idea is

I think that there's something fun about trading card games that a non-core gamer might enjoy but there's no way for them to ever play it because the only ways to play trading card games are kind of at a level of gameplay they're never going to experience. And so, I mean, look, this could all, I mean, this is, the game isn't out yet.

I have no idea whether or not this will be successful. But the premise of it, the premise of it is, can we introduce a trading card game to a non-trading card game audience? I believe the trading card game people will have fun with it. So one of the jokes I make is when Richard Garfield, when he originally was trying to sell magic, actually wasn't selling magic. You're selling a game called Robber Rally. He goes to me, he's Peter Ackison from Wizard of the Coast, and Peter's like, we can't make

that game because the cost of goods is too high for us. We can't make that game. So Richard said to him, well, what can you make? I can make you a game. What do you want? And so Peter said to him, I want a game that you can play in between Dungeons and Dragons games. that was the lining game. So my picture for this game's always been, I won a game you can play in between magic games. Yeah, that was also my pitch for ascension. It's very fast.

It is the essence of the game. I mean, this is the rules in a nutshell. On my turn, I play one card. On your turn, you play one card. We add up our scores. Whoever wins the turn wins, and then win three turns, and you win. It's very fast.

It's very simple. Yes. There's complexity and the card interact. Yeah, the cards all interact, And there's, you know, there's combos and different colors or the, the moods or emotions with the different colors. And so, so you get that, it does scratch that trading card game, itch in that you, you know, you can see the different combos and play off different things and some crazy turns can happen,

even though it's, I play a card, you play a card. Yeah. Go. So, so, yeah, I think, obviously, you're, you know, you're great at what you do. I think anybody that knows your background and things, you know, can, there's the, the core of the design of the game is good. And that's part of why I'm just poking at the interesting. So when I say, for example, I've been trying to make this game for 20 years,

well, why? Why have you been trying to make it for 20 years? Yes, this is the next question. And that's kind of why I wanted to come on this podcast, which is it's not enough. Like, there's this kind of dream that I think game designers have is I come up the great idea. And then that's it. Once I had the great idea, I'm done. It's write me the check, you know. And the reality is, no, you have to make something that somebody has.

has to want to sell. And a lot of the challenges I had with this game is it's like magic, but it's not magic. And there's a lot of things about it that, like, it does not have, you know, you don't have to build up your collection and buy more cards necessarily. Now, part of what I'm saying is, I think there's people who will get into this who want to experience more cards and who will do that because they want to, not because they have to, not the game forces them to, but that, like, just collecting and, and, and, you know, There's some people that will get into that.

That's part of the fun framework. Well, yeah. I mean, like, in a sense, right, this is not that different from what people expect from games that have expansion contents, right? Like, I, people buy, you know, I've done, you have 17 standalone expansions of Ascension. If you like Ascension, you just play Ascension. But if you want more Ascension, congratulations, I've got more Ascension for you. Or, you know, games like apples to apples or, you know, cards against humanity style thing, right?

Where it's like the heart of that game experience is like the new cards and the new things that you're dealing with. And once you've played through all the cards, it's actually gets stale. So you need new stuff to play with. You're somewhere in between here. But the fact that it's randomized is the only, I think, variable here. That's like not. Yeah. The thing that, and once again, we're talking before the game is out.

So like, all of this is supposition, right? Sure, yeah. Yeah. It is, I think that there is something, there's something really cool to me about, I go to your house and your copy of the game is just slightly different than my game. especially when you're talking about like a simple game, you know, that... We're playing Uno, but you've got to draw three, which I've never seen before.

Yeah, yeah. My thing is like we're playing Uno and right, here's draw three. I've never seen draw three. Or I have purple cards. I've never seen purple cards. That's part of the fun of the trading card game experience is the idea that I get to learn things and the game's bigger than it exists. And that really what I'm trying to do,

and the one difference maybe from what some of the stuff you've done in the past, I'm just aiming lower in complexity. Like I'm trying to make a game that if you, it's on par with a game you would buy at the store that you can just sit and play and that, I literally like I said, I'm trying to, what's the end of the trading card game that's as simple as we can make it?

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's an admirable area to shoot at, but like I want to, I do, well, there's a couple different rates I want to go, but you've,

you mentioned this is one of the primary reasons you're on the show. So I want to dig in further, right? you've spent more than 20 years trying to get this game made. Yes. What like I mean, I've had games on a shelf for a long time, but for the most part, you know, I just get to decide when I want to make a game, fortunately, but, but it's not. Like, what drove you for that and what was the, you know, like, how did you, how did you, one, what kept you going?

Two, what turned the tide? Is it just like, okay, like magic's making enough money now. let's give Marcus project. Okay, so there's a talk I've been putting together right now talking about the game

and I tried everything. Let's try this. Let's try that. I literally, at one point, I had a friend who programmed it. We made a digital version of it.

I had a version where we were putting pop culture images on it. I had a version where we took pictures of employees. You know, I tried a lot of different things. But here's how it eventually got made.

So in 2016, there's a guy named Mark Hagen who joined Wizards, he joined an R&D, and at the company holiday party, I played moose swings with him. Why did I play moose swings with him? Because I just played moose swings with anybody

that I could play moose swings with. And so anyway, in 2006, in December of 2016, I play moose swings with him. Now, let's flash forward into 2024. Secret Lair. So Mark Hagan went on to make secret layer. those that don't know what secret layer is, Magic has sort of a brand that sells directly to the consumer. And the idea is there's things that are whacking fun and weird that is just,

because Magic's so big, it's hard to go through stores. Some ideas are small enough that, like, it just doesn't make sense financially to sort of make enough to go through the stores because the volume you need is so high. So what if we just sell directly to consumers? We make things that, okay, a small number of people could want this and we can make it, and it still makes sense to do it. So Mark had done that, Secretal Lair, had been very, you know, very successful. And he was just looking at new things to do with Secret Lair. And so he came up the idea, what if we sold a game?

What if Secret Lair sold a game? And he remembered my game from eight years earlier that I had shown him at the party. And so he comes to me and he says, hey, Secret Lair would like to make a game. Would you mind if we made mood swings? And so you understand. I spent like 20 years like spinning everywhere playing with like CEOs and directors and anybody who play making pitches like making every possible version of this game. That is so good. Oh my God.

And that's what happened was I showed to the right person among the thousands of people I showed it to who eight years later was in position where it, you know, it mattered. And the reason by the way, the interesting thing is the big strike against it all these years is it's a little experimental, right? Like you and I were talking like is this a workable plan? Is this business model? Can it work? Like there's all these big questions that are unanswered. But secret layers like we want to do something big and bold and different. Our brand is we do things that aren't normal, right?

We do quirky things. So the very thing that was the stopping block everywhere else, all of a sudden became the thing was most excited him. It's like, let's try this thing that, you know, like he knows I've been trying to make it forever. And so like the thing that finally got it made was the weird corky. of it ended up being its feature eventually. I instead of find the right person to him, it was a feature. And then that's what got it made. Wow.

Wow. That's hilarious. I think, you know, I mean, at a deep level, the, you know, never give up, never surrender. There's a, there's a degree to which you never know what path things are going to take and just like putting your game out there. I have a few games that are like this myself, right? I have a variation of something I tried to get.

I don't know if you ever played the ringmaster game. I released like seven, eight years ago. I have a new version of that I want to do, but it's basically was my attempt that like, it's kind of a cross between like flux and type one magic with, with a circus theme is the easiest way for me to describe it. What that means is I think flux is one of the best examples of like, like the purest TCG type experiences, right?

Because for me, outside of the like collectible like purchase model, the idea that the rules are all, all in the cards is one of the things that makes TCG special. And it's like that magic of that and flux is that as much as, you know, there's literally a card in the center that says what the rules are. I don't know flux. Flux basically is there are, there are no rules.

The cards will tell you, like, I don't think there's a win condition when the game starts. Maybe there's one win condition, but. Yeah, I don't think so. And then the cards just say,

well, here's a new rule. Here's a rule that the game now has. Yeah. And there's many, many different versions of flux and different flux and different rules. You know, but that's the nature of flux.

You start and there's no rules. Yeah. There's one rule card in the center and that just tells you basically draw a card, play a card. And then the cards will tell you, like, put this card in front of you. And this is a new goal. And you win the game if you do this and this. And it was like that always really inspired me as like when we talk about making the simplest version of a TG. Like to me, that's one of the things that came to mind.

And so I made a version of that that was like a little bit more of like the magic kind of crazy cards. Still still no complexity like, you know, no creatures are attacking or anything like that. But I think like playing at that space is really is really interesting. And it just, it took me a decade. to get that game, the first version of that game made. And then now the second version is still sitting. It's been six, five or six years. I haven't figured out exactly how I want to make it yet.

So there's just, I think it's just worth highlighting these things. Because even for designers, you know, like you and we've been successful and we've done, but, you know, out there, there are still things and projects that can take decades to come to life. Oh, I mean, when you say, when I say to people, look, I've been the head designer of magic since 2003. Okay, so over 20 years, I've been the head designer magic. Like the number one trading card game in the world, and I come up with a trading card game, I have trouble selling a trading card game, and I'm the head designer of, you know, the top trading card. And that's one of the things, I mean, sort of, I'm excited to come on the podcast, which is that no matter who you are,

you still have to sell your idea. And that I think that the interesting thing about me is one of the lessons I learned, learned in magic was, if I have a good idea, it'll find a home. And there's things, like, for example, there's a mechanic and magical energy

that I originally made for a set called Mirrodin. But we took it out. And it got, we finally did it in a set called Kaladesh 13 years later. And it's, I think it's,

there's something about if I find something that I just thinks is good, I just, I will not give up on it because I'm like, I will find, you know, The core of Muslims, I think, is, in my heart of hearts, I just had total faith in it, and I just refuse to give up on it.

And I'm just stubborn. Maybe that's another important element here. I am, Aaron Forsyfe, my boss, he jokes that, like, I have a 20 in stubbornness, you know, if I was a D&D character. Like, I've maximized stubbornness. I will, you know, and in fact, why do I keep writing on these articles? Like, why haven't I given up? Haven't I written enough articles?

No, I'm just, it's my name. nature is I don't I don't give up one thing well one one one lesson that you taught me more than 20 years ago that has always stuck with me is the your greatest strength is your greatest weakness and but you know and so this idea of stubbornness and and and I would use the word tenacity yeah uh is a superpower and sometimes it can frustrate the hell on everybody around you in trouble all the time yeah yeah yeah yeah but it is it's never caused me problems because it had yeah no and it's it's important i mean yeah i've had ideas I've had, you know, and I've worked through and built up and, you know, I've been, you know, for, for 15 years plus and you for 20 years plus. And it just, you know, being willing to believe in an

idea that you have and work through it and then find that, that balance where you can, you know, trust your gut in something, but also listen to the data and listen to the world where you get feedback to either refine it or improve it or figure out when the right time is or like, there's like, there is an art form to that, like how you navigate the leveraging your strength and leveraging other people or other resources to help you, you know, realize when, you know, when you need to shift gears. And I mean, in some ways, the answer to how I got this made was other people. Like, the correct answer was I just tried to get everybody I could to play it.

Like that was, although I did a lot of other things, but one of my strategies is just, anybody who I ever met, I tried to get them to play it. Yeah. And I, in my back of my head, I didn't know where it would pay off. I didn't, I didn't, like, that's another great lesson. You don't know who's going to be your champion. You don't know who's going to be the person that them liking it is the one that gets it made. And like I said, when I played with Mark back in 2016, like, Secret Later didn't exist.

He was a brand new employee. It wasn't like, oh, I want, I need to play this person because they had this. He was just the newest hire. playing with him because I played with everybody. And that's kind of a good lesson, which is, you never know, you never know where the thing that will matter. You never know, and that if you care about something, explore lots of options, you know, and.

Well, yeah, and I think share your work generously is another piece that I give a lot of advice on, right? Like, there's a lot of people for whom they have this weird, like, oh, I've got this cool game idea, but I'm not going to show it to you because I, you know, it's like, it's secret or you've got to, like, They protect their ideas like they're these precious gems instead of like sharing them and like helping them to grow by exposing them to sunlight and, you know, the other resources that exist in the world. Like I think it makes, you know, you have to get lucky, quote unquote, to be able to succeed and have a game succeed. But you increase the surface area for luck to strike if you expose it to a variety of people and things.

And correctly, I mean, let's say I made mood swings. They go, this is a great game. And I'm not going to tell anybody it's my own private game and I never showed anybody ever. Then it would just be my little private game than my wife and I, play and that would be it, right? But like, I had the exact, my whole point was, I want everybody in the world to possibly know about this game to know about this game. Like the funny thing right now, when I tell people, I mean, we haven't,

at the time of it's recording this, we haven't officially announced to you yet. So I haven't been able to tell people. But the response I expect to get from people is like, really that I played that game 20 years ago, you know. That was my response when you reached out to me. I was like, oh, damn, that's so cool. It's finally happening. Another thing I want to talk about,

we talked about emotions a little bit, but I want to get into that. And this was from the game from the very, very beginning. So one of the things I said, one of the things about magic, that, I mean, magic is,

the flavor of magic is about you're in a magical combat, right? You're wizards dueling. And it definitely has a certain erud of it. I attack with creatures. I kill creatures. Like, there's definitely,

I don't know, violence is quite the right word, but there is a lot of, some of the flavor of it is off putting to some people. Yeah, I mean, you're definitely, there's a card called murder, right? I mean, like, there's literally a card for murder. Let's not hide the violence. So one of the things that I wanted to do when I was trying to make this more mass market is that I wanted to find what I consider to be the most universal IP I could get.

And I kind of went back once again, like I said, my core. my core message as a writer is like, we're all emotional human beings. My mom is a psychologist. I've been fascinating by this forever. And I, there's something about emotions to me that are so, like,

I talk about resonance. Like, how do you get people to connect to things? Well, if I can find something that people understand, they'll connect to it. And I'm like, okay,

there's nothing more universal to the human experience than emotions. And that one of the things to this game that I spent infinite time on is, like, I want every card to be that emotion when you play it. You're like, I got it. That's that thing.

And that's, like, it's one of the things that's really fun is just, like I remember I was playing a game and there's a cardical curiosity where you have to reveal your hand and people can see what you have in your hand. And so I had shown that I have anxiety when I've revealed curiosity. So I was talking and I said something like, well, you all know I have anxiety.

And somebody walking by the game that wasn't even playing in the game, he goes, he goes, that's where I love about mood swings. I have no idea what's going on here, but you're going to say sentences like that. Yeah, yeah. And then, so there's something that to me that really spoke of that. I'm also, a lot of what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to make something that's very universal and very sort of simple in a way that is fun and resonant.

And I'm really interested to see it. It was mood swings and emotions from day one. Like it never, ever, ever moved from that. You know, hate destroyed a card from day one, you know, and that, that is kind of, there's something about it to me that's very universal that I'm excited to sort of like

see other people experience it and I, once again, like we and I were talking before, I know nothing. The game is not out. Yeah. The game, so it's going to be on secret layer June 1st.

So anyone who's interested in buying the game, you can go online, secret layer, buy it on June 1st, but it is not out yet. In May, the beginning of May, we're going to have a convention, we're going to let people play for the first time, but it's not,

it's, we're recording this before that happened. So this is all speculation. So, yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah. No, so let's let's talk to emotions then, right? You're in a really interesting place right this moment as we're recording this. So the world does not know. Like, what does it like to be you right now? How does it feel?

I mean, so here's the interesting thing. At the beginning of my talk that I gave, I said, I'm going to show you a picture, and this picture is going to tell you my next hour talk. But I'm going to show you a picture, so I'm going to prepare you for what you're about to see. And the picture I show is Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the football. and that this has just been I kept trying to kick the football and every time I thought I was going to kick the football

nope I'm not going to kick the football and so finally okay it's on the schedule and part of me this internal part of me is like I don't believe this is going to happen this ball has been kicked and so I remember we got what's called first off line where when they print

the cards they send them in so I literally am holding in my hand printed mood swings cards and my first reaction is maybe we're actually making this. Like, I'm holding the cards in my hand. Yeah, you're still maybe. But even then, like, there's part of me right now that I need to see how the

people play the game. Like, it is, I'm an emotional state right now for sure because I'm very excited. Obviously, like, normally when I make a magic set, I have to wait three years, maybe four years of the longest. Like, I make something and I have to wait for people to see it. And then I just have to go, okay, I forget about that. I'm going to make new things and I'll worry about the new things. but hey, one of the hard part

it's about making something, and you know this, is that it takes a while from you making it to anybody seeing it and responding to it. And that's a hard part of the job. Like you want right away for people to respond to it. That's this, like, you know, if a normal set is three to four times, this is eight, nine times that, you know.

And so, like I said, I'm very excited, but I'm also like, this is, my emotions are raw in the sense that I hope it goes well. Like I have a lot of malign. It would suck to say, I try for 28 years to make this. And the response is, eh, that will suck if that happens. I don't know, you know.

Yeah, well, listen, it's a massive accomplishment to get something like this out there. And it's going to be exciting. I know that it's not going to be, whatever. I have some faith in it. Yeah. To be fair, I would not for 20 years try to get the game made. If I don't, at my core, believe it's a really good game. I do obviously believe it's really good.

And I have faith people will see that. But one of the things, like I said, talking emotions is, like, I think that a lot of insecurities just come from, you know, things that you tried and failed at. That's where insecurities come from, you know. Like in my early year, like, I took a while trying, my dating life did not, you know, my teenage years were not the best for my dating life. And hey, for a while, it was really hard because, like, you just build up with like, okay, no one wants to go on a date with me. What's wrong with me? And then eventually you find someone. I've been married now 25 years.

and okay, like, I have a lot more confidence now. Like, I found somebody. Like, okay, I'm capable of doing this. But, and mood swings is this thing that, like, it was me constantly trying to prove to people that it's a cool thing. Yeah. And mostly what I got is people going, yeah, I really do like. It's a good game, but it was always the butt, you know.

Like, like, early on, I wanted to sell, but we're like, well, we don't do, we weren't in mass market audience. Like, we didn't sell the mass market at the time. When I first started making the game, like Wizards was just in local game stores, and we hadn't yet sold in mass. So like, well, that's a mass game. We're not doing mass things yet. Or when we bought Gamekeeper, they wanted to make games for Gamekeeper.

It was a game store that we bought. And my game was too complicated to make for the game stores, but at the time was too simple for Wizards to make. Like, each time along the line is here's the reason why we can't make it. I'm not making it. Like, the reasons were real reasons. And that's the other big thing today is I'm not at any point ever knocking wizards. Like, every time someone said no, it didn't come from a mean place.

It just came from, I'm looking at the business numbers and right now this doesn't fit our portfolio and this isn't something we're going to make right now. Yeah, I mean, I remember from one of my previous podcast episode with Peter Actison, that was one of the things that shocked me and made perfect sense in retrospect, he's like, yeah, well, if there was any project, even if it was going to be a profitable project that was going to make less than $30 million a year, it was not worth it for us to do it. We would be better off just putting those same resources into magic. And the only reason that the bar was set at $30 million a year was because he wanted to make Dungeons and Dragons and Dungeons and Dragons was making $30 million a year. And so he just like set the bar low enough so that they could still make Dungeons of Dragons. And so anything that would be like, you know, this, oh, we got a $10 million a year profitable game,

which I would be thrilled with for my company, is just not even worth paying attention to. And so you trying to make this game that does have some mass appeal, does have some repeat purchase, but probably isn't going to be magic. Here's another important thing. Let me talk about this thing. So one of the things I did do, when I first made the game, it was a three-collar game, is red, green, and blue, you know. And at some point, I realized that in order to get the game made,

I needed to be able to pitch to the people who made magic, why should we make this game? And eventually what I said is, well, I think the reason you want to make this game for magic is, look, the more people get involved in training card games, the better, right? And so I switched it from a three-collar game to a five-color game. And not just any five colors. Surprisingly, it's white, blue, black, red, and green. And, you know, and so what I did is, like, right now, if you play the game of mood swings,

all the effects in the game line up with the color pie. Like, it's color pie adjacent. If I'm going to bounce the card, it's in blue. If I'm going to make you discard, it's in black. And all the emotions. I mean, I'm a color pie fanatic. So I lined all the emotions up with the color pie. So, like, and the initial game that we're selling, all the art on the cards are sketches of actual published magic art.

In fact, the M and the G in the Mood Swings logo is the Magic M and the Magic G from the Magic logo. Wow. So one of the things about this game is, look, I mean, obviously I'm the head designer for magic. So no one's hiding magic influence on this game. But part of what this game also is part of my pitch of this game was, look, I think we get people to play this game and we'll never play magic. But I think some people who play this game could learn about the love of trading card games and maybe one day get to magic. Yeah. So this is another interesting thing since, you know, this sort of core theme of how you get something done and how you get a project made. Like you morphed it from what it was into something that would fit better into the channel that you felt was the most likely to succeed. So you actually morphed the game into a product that fits more closely into the magic wheelhouse. I'll borrow something you like to say all the time, which is iterative loops. Your game gets better the more iterative loops you get. So I think. 28 years of internet loose.

I mean, this game's gone through a lot of changes. And I, to be honest, the game is way better now than it was 28 years ago. Yeah. I'm saying? Like, if I, if the very first time I pitched it, let me put it out, it would not be nearly as good a game as it is now. Like, one of the advantages of them not doing it for a while at wilds, I kept working on it.

And guess what? I kept also working on magic. And my skills got better because I, you know, I kept refining my skills. And so, like, the Moose Swings is the best version it could be. and part of it has been, well, I've been working on forever. And then, you know, I did a lot of things. One of the real interesting things was there's a point in time where in the game right now, you draw a five-card hand and when you lose, you draw a card.

But originally you drew a seven-card hand. And one of my co-workers said, no, no, no, you people have to dream that there's something coming, right? You don't want to open your hand to go on. I guess I'm not going to win. Like, you need the dream of something. And so he convinced me, okay, don't have, like, and that's when we changed it. So, okay, I'm going to get something.

seven cards because you have to win best of three. In theory, if we're going to get the turn five, I'll have seven cards, but I don't get all of them up front. And that actually just made the game better. Yeah. Yeah. And I think from when you sent me the rules I looked at you, I don't think there was the sort of catch-up mechanic, the hurt feelings mechanic. Oh, yes. So the story behind that is I've been designing this game mostly as a two-player game. So when we got on the schedule, we had an open house so we could teach people magic, not magic, teach people mood swing so they could play.

And what came out of that open house was some people are like, oh, well, can we play multiplayer? Yeah, it works in multiplayer. But there are a lot of cards that weren't optimized for multiplayer. And so one of my goals after that was, okay, I'm not selling this as a two-player game. I need to sell this as a two, three, or four-player game. And so I had to figure out how do I adapt the cards?

So it works well in two-player, which it mostly did. But it also works well in three- and four-player. And one of my playtefters gave me this horrible review and they really just liked things and I went and talked to her and tried to understand. And like from that conversation of this, I hate this, I came out of this idea of, oh, maybe we need a component that is in three and four player games.

It's just not in two-player games. Because once you get behind two-platers, you have what we call politics, right? So a political game is some of the decisions are people convincing other people to do something. In a two-player game, there's no decision. I'm beating my opponent. I'm just going to do what's best for me to beat my opponent. But in a three-person game, I could, you know, who do I, who do I help? Who do I hurt?

Now there's politics involved and that it just needed something that's a little different. And so out of that conversation, we made this little piece called hurt feelings, which is basically the person who loses the round, gets hurt feelings and they get to play an extra card on the next turn. It's whoever like loses the most, basically, because there's still only one winner. There's only one winner each round. But the lose the loosiest person. Yeah, the loosiest person. and gets the hurt feelings. And it just made free and four-play games play infinitely better. Yeah.

And that, like I said, that just came about, like, one of the things that's really interesting is, like, on some level, when I work on magic, I mean, even such that I'm, I'm intimately involved with. I'm the lead of, you know, there's only so much, I mean, there's so many people working on it. Like my total percentage in, you know, 20%, maybe at my all-time top or something, you know, like, there's a lot of people working on. And I influence things, but I'm one of many people.

people who are influencing things. But mood swings is like, look, I did the life share of mood swings. But even then, like just having other coworkers, some of the coworkers played once or twice with me, but they gave me one good piece of advice.

And then I changed things based on that, and the game was better, you know? And then that is, it's funny because, like, one of the advantages of the game, I've just played with so many people

and everybody gives me, you know, opinions on stuff and figuring out, like, I kept, like I said, I kept iterating on it, and that, it just kept getting better, I felt.

Okay, well, I can't wait to play it since I finally got the 20 years ago version. I think the last time I played it was probably, you know, somewhere in that neighborhood. So I'm excited. Yeah, I've had some coworkers come back who hadn't been at Wizards for a while. And I've said, I'm putting the game on. They're like, I haven't played that and whatever. I'm like, we'll play again. So.

Yeah. Well, I, so there was one comment you made throughout this process. And I don't know if you were just saying it because you wanted to get mood swings made or if you think it's really true. You said that there's more trading card games is good for magic. Yes. And so. A rising tide raises all boats, I believe, is the impression. Okay.

So that I think is generally true in gaming. And in fact, one of the reasons why I love being in the tabletop gaming industry more so than, you know, I've dabbled in the digital games as well in other industries is everybody is like, this is the friendliest fricking industry. Everybody loves to share information and lift to help each other lift up. Trading card games, traditionally there has been a theory that like, listen, trading card games are a big investment. you have, you put a lot of money and time and, you know, personal identity into these games and that most people are only going to play one, maybe two trading card games. Do you not feel that that's the case or do you think that that is still net positive? I mean, I believe, so once again, we get to the spectrum. I believe on the magic side of the spectrum, yes, it's hard to play a lot of trading card games when there's so much investment.

You know, like, it depends how kind of, how much space the game fills to some extent. I mean, the idea of mood swings is, look, it's a fun game you can play once in a while. Like, it is not, I don't think of mood swings is ever going to fill the space of something like a magic. It just can't. It is, by definition, it can't. It's a lighter, smaller game. Yeah. Well, but let's speak to the, let's speak to the industry more broadly then, because I think it is, it is, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, I believe that at any one moment of time, it is hard to dedicate yourself to more than one trading card game. But, but, like, I have. believe that if you like trading card games, at some point, maybe you change trading card games. You know what I'm saying? And that, for example, there are certain trading card games that get kids into trading card games. Great. And at some point, maybe they all grow that game. And like, magic's competitive advantage, I mean, to be blunt, it's a great game. It's just a really, really good game. And that I believe that if you can sample magic and you were receptive to what magic is, we have a good chance of you playing magic.

It's just a really fun game. Now, and when I say a rising type, Braves-Wa-Bowdows, the more people to play trading-card games, the more people that are aware of trading-card games, the more people in the, you know, just the more people that, the bigger the audience is, I have faith for magic at least, they will sample magic at some point. Yeah. If they're in trading-card games. Yeah.

And not all of them will come to magic, but some of them will come to magic. Yeah, yeah. Why not magic? I think that, well, because I'm curious to get your assessment of this because we are in, like, the biggest trading card game boom in history. Oh, yes. You know, and in ways in ways that are, you know, like back in the early 90s, right? After Magic was released and everybody was like, oh, my God, trading card games are amazing. Let's all do trading card games.

And then there was this massive boom of a bunch of trading card games. And then most of them crashed and burned. And then there was, you know, a few, you kind of basically had magic and Pokemon and Yu-Gio as basically the big three that survived. and then now there's there are dozens of like what seem to be very successful in fact as we're recording this the the most successful trading card game crowd fund ever is happening with the the cyberpunk TCG and and so there's it's it's quite remarkable like what do you what do you see is going on there is it like is this sustainable is it just like there's why is this such a why is this resurgence happening now I guess well okay for starters I do believe trading card games as a core concept like when When Richard made magic, there's a thing I call the Golden Trifactor, which is like, I think there's three genius ideas that Richard made when he made magic. And one of them is the idea of a trading card game. People inherently like to collect things, that people like flexibility. They like, like, I mean, magic does a lot of things.

Trading card games in general do a lot of really good things. Like, the idea that I could shape what the game is, and I have control of how to play it, and I can, like, I have some ability to influence what it is. I think it's very compelling. And I think that there's different, like, different games are tapping to different elements of it. But really what I think is going on is, like, the first boon of trading card games were people just getting into it because Magic was doing well. And most of them, most of the training card games, the early age were horrible. Yes, they were. They were.

I mean, literally people that, like, I'm just going to make a trading card game and not understand what trading card games. And I'm just going to make one. Like, okay, but they were, they didn't understand what trading card games. So trading card games have now matured, magic is. 33 years old, right? And so you now have people who grew up on trading card games, be it magic, Pokemon, U-Guel, whatever, who truly do understand trading card games.

And now there's a new level of designers, although I should joke, the majority of training card games are designed at people I've worked with What's at Wizard? So, but anyway, there's just a whole new swath of game designers that kind of respect and understand trading cards. And there's a lot of cool things you can do with them.

And so I agree. And I think that there's a, there's a higher caliber. You know, I still think that there's, you know, it's in the, the dozens of people in the world that can do this job well still at this stage. But there's, there's many out there that are now making trading card games. I like to think of myself as one of them. And then my question is, what, when you think about the, the blue ocean space of games, right? You made, you've, you obviously, magic is the behemoth. It's number one.

It's going to stay number one. But there's a lot of other territories out there that maybe aren't claimed. And you've got, you're going for this interesting kind of starter, pseudo-TCG experience now with mood swings. What else do you see as exciting space? Like if you weren't working at magic and you had the opportunity, I was like, Mark, we're going to go and make, you know, cool TCG outside the box thing now that really has a, you know, decent, decent, what, what, what excites you now? Well, I mean, to be honest, we're in tricky area because I do work for a trading guard game

company and like, if I have really innovative ideas, they would like to hear them. Sure. Yeah, I guess I think about in terms of, yeah, I mean, say, obviously don't say anything you're not allowed to say, but like things that like you couldn't do with magic, right? Like, so I've had this experience when I made Shards of Infinity, my deck building game was like, there was things and mechanics and things I wanted to do, I wanted to bring the life that I couldn't do in a sense. Like, you know, most things I'll find a way to put it in there.

Like, magic has a niche. There's things that maybe would be really cool that, like, you can't touch with a 10-foot pole because it's magic. I mean, for example, I mean, moot swings does a good example of me explaining this concept, which is, mood swings let me make a trading card game that wasn't magic and that I was able to make concepts. And, like, there's a lot of overlap. I mean, there's certain ideas of what you, like, I can draw a card.

I can discard. I mean, there's certain things that, in any. card game will do because they're just actions you can do with a card game. But it was really fun. Like, one of the things that I love about top-down design, so for the audience, top-down design means you start with the flavor and then you match the mechanic to match the flavor. Like, for example, for Moot Swings, I'm like trying to design emotions, which has been super

fun, you know, like, and the cool thing is it gets you to, universe is beyond is the same kind of thing, is you just make things that you wouldn't normally make because you never would think to make of it, but now that you're, okay, I'm trying to take the idea of, uh, uh, the idea of, um, bashfulness and I want to make a card out of it. Well, how do I represent bashfulness? What, what does that mean? You know what I'm saying? And that I came up with the card mechanics that I love that I don't think I would have made. I only got there because I was trying to, I knew it was bashfulness, you know. Yeah. Um, and the thing that I would look for if I was making a new card game is just,

I would try to find flavor space that is new and different. That's what I would do. Meaning, where is the fun, resonant space that people could connect to? I mean, that's my big takeaway for working on magic for so long is, I mean, our theme today, Emotions Matters, our theme today, is your audience is going to experience something when they play your game. If you can make them experience something that is unique to what they're playing through your game, that's the goal of game design, right? that I want someone to play a game and go,

oh my God, I've never experienced this thing, but I love this thing I'm experiencing. I must play this game again. That's like the, you know, whatever you do a play test, the number one question is, do you want to play again? That's right.

And if they say no, you're doomed. That's the big thing. And I think a lot of it just comes down to, am I creating something in the player? And there's a lot of ways to do this. There's a lot of way to get that emotional reaction, but you have to do something that gets that emotional reaction.

And usually, here's the big secret. 90% of whatever it is that they're emotional about has nothing to do with you. You're just tapping into something that's already there. And the way I explained that, for example, is let's say, you know, like in magic, like we make cat decks. The reason people like cat decks is not like, oh, we've made the best mechanics ever with cats. No, people love cats. And yeah, yeah, yeah, we're letting them play cats or squirrels or whatever it is that make him happy. and that's a lot of cool gameplay is

I want to do something where what my audience gets to experience is something really exciting and then I'm tapping into something that nobody else is tapping into. Yeah, that's interesting. So finding that either a thematic and emotional core that's not currently being...

And for Moot Swings. I think my simplicity of gameplay is one of the song features, but probably in the end, emotions might be the thing, Like, if it's successful, emotions might be why it's successful. It's just super fun to say, I hate your curiosity or, ha-ha, I'm playing anxiety or whatever. Like, just having the ability to play a game where I'm just connecting in an experience.

Like, the amount of times I played mood swings where people just share many things about themselves that are just, because they have this card combination, you know. I remember I was playing with my friend and, like, he plays self-loathing. He goes, I understand this card. Like, stuff like that. Oh, buddy. Yeah, no, I, that's a really great point. I think that the, I don't think I can think of another,

while Magic's Color Pie, which we didn't really fully get into, it's maybe worth clarifying for people a little bit. You know, there's, there are emotions that are tied to the color pie and like how the each faction is meant to feel. It's not quite as explicit as you have here. Yeah, when I talked about Richard came up with three genius ideas, my golden trifecta. One of them was the color pie, another one of the genius ideas.

And the idea of the idea of the, color pie is, imagine if your game was built on top of core human ideas. And so each of the colors represents, it's a type of magic in magic. It represents the type of magic. But really it represents, like, white is all about wanting to be peaceful and get along and work together and chivalry. And it's just about trying to find the goodness in people. You know, where black magic is about, it's being very selfish and doing whatever you

needs to get what you want, and if you have to hurt other people, whatever, as long as I get what I need, you know, that, and each one of them represent different concepts. And the cool thing about the magic is every color has two allies and two enemies, so there's things they care about with their allies, and there's conflicts with their enemies, and I've written infinite, infinite stuff on this, but it's this really cool, really magical thing that Richard made that we've worked on for 30 years. And the reason I think the color pie is so meaningful is, again, it just taps into a core human experience. Yeah.

Like what I say to you, what guild are you? Because we did a thing called Rabnika, where we took every color and we paired them up and there's 10, if you have five colors, you can pair them up in 10 ways. And then, okay, what guild are you? I'm, oh, I'm, is it?

I'm blue, red because this is why. And blue and red combined creativity and I'm creative and stuff like, you know, and all of a sudden, it emotionally means something to you. I think that's really impactful. Is it for sure? I think that that, yeah, Well, that's why everybody loves the whole, what, you know, what Harry Potter house are you or what character and Transformers are you?

Even though like all those little poles that the personality poles or whatever, right? Like people love to be categorized and love to find these batches. Even the city character are you? Yeah. Well, even the thing, right? Like, so your psychographic player profiles is a big part of, you know, kind of design technology or, you know, lessons are there. Right. And I've broken down my own player motivations groups.

And I don't think any one of them is like magically correct. I think they are powerful, insightful lenses, right? Like the way that the color white breaks down a subset of human emotions is not like magically the right thing. But it is in fact, the fact that you can group them together and people can resonate with one or another means something.

And it's like I can symbolically represent myself and feel drawn to a thing that helps now become part of my identity and part of how I represent and express myself in a game or in a moment or in a, know thing a meme I share online like we're constantly craving that yeah here's another tip for you for your audience um if you can make your audience see themselves in your game you will you will be very successful that people want to see themselves and elements of themselves like there's something very human about i am what i am and then i can see myself in other things is so powerful and then once again, we're talking about emotional responses.

There's something very powerful in seeing that connection. And that's why I think the color pie is so powerful. It's why, whatever it is, and this is the powerful part of training card games in general is it divvies things up into some category and what category are you? And then you have to self-select and the category

means something and you can connect your life, why this category means something to you. Are there other examples of games outside of magic that comes to mind where people make the audience see themselves in the game just to kind of refresh that point. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think all games do that.

So I'll use Dungeons as an example. One of the cool things about a role-playing game is I can take elements of me that I always wanted to express, but it's hard to express it, you know what I'm saying? But if I'm a fighter who does, you know, like, if I can role-play and be something that maybe is really true to me and it's really fun to be, but I don't feel I can normally do. that, but it lets me express something about myself. And the reason I'm a fighter is, I just want to hit people.

In real life, I can't just go hit people. But in D&D, I can be the fighter and I'd go smack people. And like, one of the things that's really fun in role playing especially is that I get a sort of do, I mean, this is, you've said this. Games let you live life in a safe way, right?

You said it's infinite. I've listened all your podcast. You say it differently. That what you want to do is you want to do things that you want to do in a safe space where there's no harm that comes from it. And it's really fun to, you know, play a choir and I'm, I'm a businessman and I'm doing whatever the game is, it's fun to have that experience. And that really a good game just says, okay, here's the thing you want to do.

I'll let you do it. And then you can experience that thing. And it's fun to be that thing. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I think that's a, yeah, great. Thanks for the extra illustration there.

I know, just so I make sure, because I'm sure my audience will kill me. if I didn't do it. We said three genius ideas. We got trading card game concept, color pie concept. The third is the mana system of magic. Okay. It's funny.

It's the thing that people most complain about. But it's, for example, there's so many different game designers who, there's a moment where they come to me and they go, I finally understand the mana system. Like, you know, it's like you have to sort of not do it. And then you see the disaster that it is.

like, oh, I didn't understand. I didn't understand the genius of the mana system. Yes. And, like, one of the things is the mana system, I mean, there's a whole bunch of things, but one of the things, there's this thing, you want your game, you want your opponent to have something to blame that's not them. You know, like, the ego is a fragile thing, and that just having something, why did you lose?

Well, it's not me, not decisions I made. I'm not the cause of my loss. This thing did it. Like, just, I mean, that's just one component, but then that's super important. Or another thing it does is you want some unpredictability in your game, right? You want to not know what's going to happen and that the land does a great job

of some games just play out differently. You know, like, that's a really important part is you want every game to feel different and that, man, like the game in which I get everything I need versus the game I don't are just very different experiences. And they're both really cool. Like, for example, the story that people tend to tell

magic is not I had everything I needed and I won. Those aren't the exciting stories. It's like, oh my God, how can I possibly win from the situation? and let me tell you how I want. Yep. Yep. No, creating those stories. That's the other big game design lesson here, right?

You want to be able to create those stories. Because the emotions that you get from these experiences convert into stories that then you share to get that emotion into other people, which is what gets them to want to play that game also. And those are the things that you remember. And I have, you know, countless of these from my days, you know, my years, so many years of playing magic, whereas these moments that just stick with you,

both the thrilling, exciting victories, and the horrific defeats or mistakes. Like those are the stories I remember even more so. But yes, I think the variance that people complain about is also at the heart of the joy and the upside there that the mana system. Yeah, I mean, I like tying our themes together. The nature of how I like do these is highs and lows are important.

Yeah. That if everybody likes your game, meaning if everything's in medium, that's not what's going to attract people, you know, that you need to make them love and hate it on some level. Like, you need to evoke strong emotions

and that that's what people remember. And you're saying, even negative things, like even, oh my God, here's where I lost in a horrible way and it really mattered at the time. And I'm sure you tell that story

at the end of time, the time that, you know, like, it sticks with you. And like, there's a concept I have, I call narrative equity, which is that what does a game

have to offer people? Now, you get to have fun in the moment. You get to experience things. You get to feel things. But one of the things that also does is, what do I walk away the game with? And some of it is I learn things. I get skills.

But one of the things is stories. And as a game designer, don't underestimate the power of your game creating stories. Yes. It is not just what makes people fall in love with your game. It is the best marketing that you could possibly have. Yeah, that's right. I have to tell you about my game

and what happened. People go, wow, I have to play that game. That's sounded amazing. Yeah. Yeah, there are many games that, like, that lean into this in a way that, like, the game I actually think is not that good, but the stories from the game are so good.

Like, Eve Online is an example, and not to hate anybody that plays it, but, like, this is a game where there's, like, a real economy, and the players are the ones at the very top that, like, own battle stations and starships. And, like, you can actually destroy people's things that are worth thousands and thousands of

dollars and like you can and so there are these stories that happen where like somebody infiltrated a corporation over years and like got there to turn down their security systems and then there was a whole fleet that Armada that came in and blew it all up and took over and it was like a hundred thousand dollars worth of like destruction and do get and I read about this thing online I was like this is the coolest thing oh my god I'm going to play this game and like you start off at level one and you're like I'm a mining ship I go get the ore and I come back and I go and think and I was like after like 10 hours, I was like, I can't do this anymore. But the story was so good.

It brought me into the world. I think... Yeah, I mean, like I said, the... The thing, the more, I mean, having done this for so long now, is... In my GDC speech, the very first thing I said, like, my very first lesson is

your audience is human. Like, being a good game designer is just understanding humans. That's what being a good game designer is because like like I said you want to evoke emotions out of them well you have to understand them and that a lot uh one of one of my truisms is don't change your audience to match your game change your game to match the audience yeah and that the best games are ones that just people get to do what they want to do you know and that it makes them happy because it just naturally what they want

to do is what the game provides them yeah that's so important yeah yeah my uh my my Yeah, my my version as the, make player instincts the correct instincts. Like that people want to do a certain thing. Then like, make that the thing. Like it's a, and yeah. So I think,

I think that, you know, since you said your audience is human, I got it. I got a shift to the topic of the day. Okay. Because this is, you know,

the whole world is transforming with AI right now. And I know the, you know, art AI is, is its own thing. That's a controversy and we're not doing in magic. I'm not doing it. As a creative tool, as a thing that is a new piece of potentially workflows, have you played with it?

What do you think of it? How do you see the world evolving with it? I've played a little bit with it. So we have access at work to like chat CVT. So I named mine Bob. And so I talk to Bob every once in a while. The thing that shocked me most about AI that just wasn't prepared for is what you think, What you think a computer would be good at is not remotely what AI is good at.

It's not data. It's not data from Star Trek. For example, the very first thing I did is I said to it, so the unsets are like fun, goofy sets that I made for magic. So the very first thing I said is name five red on cards from any of the unsets. And it gave me a list of five cards. I'm like, well, two of those are red. Three of those are not red. And they go, you are so correct.

Three of those are not red. Let me give you a corrected list. and then they gave me a list and three of those, two were still wrong. And they're like, well, two of these are still wrong. And they're like, you are so correct. Well, I'll be extra careful this time to make sure that I give you a full list.

And they give me a list. Anyway, he kept getting it wrong. And it's like, the computer's incapable of just like giving me just normal facts. I'm not asking something complicated. Just give me a thing that's a list. But no, we can't do that. But when I say to it, write me a limerick about

butterscotch candy, it can do that pretty well in a weird way. I mean, I mean, I'm not, no mocking it's real, like, people writing actual limericks. But, you know, for my skill of not being able to tell a good limit from bad limerick, they seem like, okay, limits. So what I've discovered is it's really good at doing, like, like, I just need lots of ideas, give me some, and most of them will be bad, but they'll just give me a huge number of ideas. That's what it seems to be best at is. Yeah, as a as a as a as a as a as a as a partner for that sort of thing, it's quite it's quite good. And I mean, you know, we you know, whatever, even just from the the, the conversations we've had and the and the books recommended like a lot of creativity is just like being able to generate more ideas and more variety. And they've done, you know, still we've done studies on this. So the, the team I've worked with the Wharton has done studies and it's like AI today is more creative than 90% of humans like in terms of just like the amount of ideas, the originality, the ideas judged by an independent panel. And so like the ability to have a lot of different stuff,

now the person who has the taste and the ability to turn it from, this is actually the good idea and pull that out and move it forward. Well, the interesting thing is, like one of the things that you've talked about this on your podcast, the good idea, two things. One is the good idea is not as important as people think. Like everyone assumes like what you get the good idea,

it just makes itself. No, no, no. The execution is 99% of the work. That's right. And the other thing is, just knowing what the good idea is in the first place. I mean, maybe AI will get there at some point,

but right now AI can make a giant list for you, and a lot of them are bad and some are good. It doesn't know the good from the bad. It can make them, and some of them can't actually be interesting ideas. It just doesn't know what's the good ideas from the bad ideas. Like I said, maybe with time, it will, but right now it doesn't.

Yeah, another thing I found that's actually pretty interesting, right, because you talked about the importance of data and obviously having access to your customer and being able to talk to your customer and talk to your players and see what they think. which is invaluable, but often not accessible for small designers, companies, or you have talk to a handful of people, but you can't really get a lot of data. I've actually found it, it's simulating, I've actually even fed it your very psychographic

profiles. Hey, you're Timmy, you're Johnny, your Spike, look at reference marks article and tell me what you think of these cards. And it'll give you feedback as a player, which is, again, not as good as talking to real humans, but, you know, for the, I can do that in 10 seconds, whereas it would take me, you know, many hours to survey and reach players. I found it to be another interesting and useful tool in the

toolbox. I don't know. AI is a weird thing. I do, like I said, it's a tool and I do believe in general understand how you shouldn't, shouldn't use a tool and stuff like that. It's kind of important. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And look, we can move to other topics. I just, to me, it's always like,

I what you know as the world evolves right and and it is shocking you know Matt it's shocking to me that tabletop games are as big as they are today I'm grateful for it and I actually now have revised my you know if you ask me like when the iPhone came out and when you know these things were and then iPad and all those things like are people still going to be playing tabletop games and are they going to keep growing I would have said no chance like this I mean you why I have a strong theory of why that is true great hit me believe that because our life has gotten so

digitized, because everything's a screen, that the need for human interaction is just gone up so much. Right. I agree. I think that is really the popularity of what tabletop games are booming is I spent all day in front

of a screen. I just need to see other human beings. I just want to interact with other human beings. And I think that that is such a need right now. And games just do that so well. that that's where I think that's where I think it's coming from. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that's, I think that's right. And I think that's where I have revised my. And I think that, that trend is only going to increase, right? As more and more, you know, there's things are,

there's more digitized things as AI agents start coming out into the world and the online, you know, like there was more, there was a study I saw that there was more content written by AI in 20205 than humans. And now it's only a matter of time before there's more AI content written than all that humans have ever done ever. And so it's just going to be very,

hard to like have real human connection online in the same way that we used to and even that has never been the same as physical you know actual connection and hanging around a kitchen table and you know seeing people at the local game store so i think that is only going to become more and more uh important uh for people for own for mental health reasons and just you know pure joy of life reasons uh and so i think is uh you know very i don't know how much you think about this but you know for me even with the more modest impact that my games have had compared to yours like like there's, you know, it's a lot of people's lives have like really been enhanced by this. And people like, you know, for magic, there's people get, you know, the tattoos of the characters and get married over the things and get, you know, they're, you know, they transform my life, you know, in ways I can't even, uh, describe. It's completely turned the, to turn the entire course of my life. How does it feel to be, you know, a part of that, you know, I mean, not just a part of, but such a, you know, huge driver for that legacy, uh, in, in the work that you do. Well, I mean, one of the things, my whole take on it is I've always said that I, I've, I've, I've, believe magic is a force of good. So I do a column every week, making magic, it's called.

And so one week I said, hey, I want you to write stories about how magic has improved your life. Share positive, I just want happy stories of how magic has made your life better. And I got so much mail. So my normal article is 3,000 words. That week, it was 8,000 words. And I mean, and I printed a tiny percentage of what I got. And I mean, the letter, the amazing thing about reading all the letters was, like, I mean, there were lighter stuff, but there was some really heavy stuff for, like, I was in a really bad place.

And I don't know what would happen to me if Magic hadn't been there. Or I met my significant other. Like, this, like, life-changing events happen because of this. And that, I take that very, like, I, that's very serious to me. Like I like to think that one of the things games does is it helps people. And I believe that like, I believe a lot of good can come from games. And so I take that very seriously and that I never, I mean, one of the reasons that I still talk to people every day, that I answer questions every day is I want to hear people directly on what they, how they feel about the game. And that doesn't always have to be positive. People also complain. You know, I, I, I, certainly people complain to me.

but I mean that is important that human connection that's the through line of our talk today we're all humans we need a mutual connection and that you know that games do a great job of that and I think that's one of the reasons that tabletop games especially just face to face sitting with my friends

you're like one of the evolutions of magic has just been you know social games have just become a bigger and bigger share because I just I have fun sitting with friends and playing and that's just fun for me yeah yeah I think that's right And I think that's also a good place for us to wrap it up. It is wonderful. And I look forward, even though we only get to interact over a screen today.

I know we're going to get to see each other face to face in a couple months. And it's been one of the great joys of my life is our friendship and our connections that we've had. And now you get to share this experience and these emotions with your new game mood swings, which is available. June 1st on Secret Layer. Okay. on the secret of our website, June 1st, and you too can be part of the Mootswings experience. All right.

Well, yeah, anything else you want to add, Mark? This is the point where you say, we're going to wrap up. So do you have any place people can find you in these? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's go. Well, first I'd say listen to the first episode with Mark Rosewater, where there's an incredible amount of this stuff. It's episode number two. Outside of the going to get Moosewing.

Is Minecraft a game or a toy? Both. Listen to that episode. So there's a bunch of places people can find me if they want to find me. So I write an article every week on the magic website called Making Magic, which I've been doing since 2002. I have a podcast that record every week. I do two, the half-hour podcast. I'm literally driving to work. That's why it's called Drive to Work.

And I do two 30-minute podcasts every week, released on Fridays. I have a blog on Tumblr. So if you Google Tumblr, Mark Wordswater, you'll find my blog. It's called Blogatog. where you can ask questions and I will answer your, I mean, I get a lot of questions so, but I answer lots of questions every day. And I'm also on Infinite Island.

I'm on Blue Sky, Maro 254 on Blue Sky. And anyway, I'm in many, many different social media places you can find me. All the places and all the content and more accessible than probably anybody at your level in this industry. So very, I know the fans appreciated, even when that appreciation shows up in the form of hate mail. By the way, while I get my share of hate mail, I do get a lot of very nice people saying very nice things.

So it's not all, it's not all people saying horrible things. Yeah, well, it's wonderful. And I will say the nice things that I have said about you in the past, but we'll continue to say, I am a better designer and a better human being because of our friendship. I love the work that you do. I love the person that you are, and you have not just inspired people with the incredible games that you've made,

but the lessons that you've taught, and as you mentioned, a lot of the people that are out there designing games, designing experiences, were trained by you directly and worked with you directly, and the content that you have put out there was a big part of the inspiration

of why I do what I do and why I try to share this knowledge with other people. And so the ripple effects of your work are far beyond even the many, many millions that play and indirect with it directly. So I'm very grateful for you, Mark, and thanks for being on the podcast.

Well, thank you so much. I guess I'll see you again in seven years. I'll see you at Comic-Con. But we'll be back on the podcast. Hopefully not that long. Okay, well, thank you so much for having me on. Game design is a craft. And like any craft, it gets better with structure, feedback, and repetition.

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