3:33 Lesson #1: Fighting against human nature is a losing battle 4:42 Lesson #2: Aesthetics matter 7:46 Lesson #3: Resonance is important 9:44 Lesson #4: Make use of piggybacking 13:13 Lesson #5: Don't confuse "interesting" with "fun" 16:05 Lesson #6: Understand what emotion your game is trying to evoke 19:19 Lesson #7: Allow the players the ability to make the game personal 23:34 Lesson #8: The details are where the players fall in love with your game 26:59 Lesson #9: Allow your players to have a sense of ownership 30:06 Lesson #10: Leave room for the player to explore 33:28 Lesson #11: If everyone likes your game, but no one loves it, it will fail 36:03 Lesson #12: Don't design to prove you can do something 38:27 Lesson #13: Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win 41:19 Lesson #14: Don't be afraid to be blunt 43:41 Lesson #15: Design the component for its intended audience 47:13 Lesson #16: Be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them 50:30 Lesson #17: You don't have to change much to change everything 53:20 Lesson #18: Restrictions breed creativity 55:54 Lesson #19: Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them 58:50 Lesson #20: All the lessons connect
On Lesson #18 Restrictions breed creativity: I was once taking a test in high school physics; in this test we had a section on pendulums. All we had to do was calculate how fast a pendulum was moving at the bottom of its arc given a certain length of pendulum and a certain starting position. Nothing to difficult, it would take all of 5 minutes if you used the formula provided by the text. Not to difficult, that is, had I actually studied the section of our text that actually involved pendulums. I had a final in trigonometry the same week and just hadn't studied it.So I am facing a quandary, I have a large portion of a test that I haven't studied for....But I had studied for trig, and our previous portion of the class that had involved energy, both potential and kinetic. I proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes devising a way to use trigonometry and a completely different portion of our physics theory to calculate the speed of that pendulum. Forward ahead to next day: Our physics teacher had a tendency to grade our tests during class while we worked on an experiment that he had prepped us for. So part of the way through class he pulls me aside to ask me about my test. He was curious as to why I hadn't used the text method to calculate the pendulum, and I admitted that I hadn't studied that portion of the text. As it so happened.... My answer was right. I had, in the middle of a test, created an independent proof for our pendulum equation using trig and a different portion of our physics curriculum. He ended up using that portion of my test as part of an improvised lesson when we eventually wrapped up our pendulum theory work.
Got into a similar situatuion at school. In a test I had to calculate the area of a regular hexagon, but I couldn't remember the formula at all. Had the idea of dividing it into triangles, calculating the area of one of them and multiplying by 6. For a pre-teen, it was a good idea.
This is how I ended up a math major after failing algebra 2. I had many tests after where I studied a little and then devised a way to come up with a solution and it still helps me now in my undergrad math classes
My favorite story on this quickly is that I was retaking calc 3. On the first test of the unit, we had to just find. The volume of a sphere, super easy. If you remember the formula. So I used what I had learned the semester previous and did a triple integral in polar coordinates and got the right answer
That's one thing that is pretty incredibly when you deconstruct Magic: the Gathering in general. That the core concepts/mechanics apply to game design as a whole since the game functions like very basic code, which make Mark's blogs/articles consistently interesting even if you're not into Magic. There are just additional quirks that might only apply to subscription/collectable game genres where replay-value and player-retention are weighed much more than others.
I'm a game designer, and I always come back to rewatch this talk. There's so much in there. Just want to say thank you to GDC and Mark for making this available.
those are game design lessons, some could applied to business, but he probably dont have a say in that matter. Also the fact the game is free to play might be part of the problem : investor are not ready to invest fully in a product they dont trust yet, so they only invest in a few game mechanic at the time. (Investors probably dont realise it weaken the faith of "gamers" into their product because we have standards)
I'm a musician and I come back to this talk every now and then. I use a lot of these lessons when creating my art. They're very useful there too. Plus, I'm a huge Magic nerd and I like listening to Mark Rosewater. He's genuinely entertaining.
like really - this should be mandatory for every person who designs games to watch. It is full of really really valuable and important lessons/concepts.
I´ve always kinda liked Magic, but I fully like this speech. More often than not, GDC speakers are incoherent, introvert, mumbling creatures scarcely getting their point across. This guy got 20 points across with brilliance of a flying arrow. Hats off.
This guy is still an introvert. Introvert gets excited and can look extroverted when certain conditions are met, for example, talking about something they really like, like this guy. Truly great talk and I admire his enthusiasm
+Chan Tim Can confirm. The only reason I scan through comments sections is to spot that one delicious question pertaining to anything I'm deeply interested in.
Turns out this was in fact the top rated GDC speech of 2016: markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/158080188633/excited-to-discover-i-was-the-top-rated-speaker-at
I'm a high school Social Studies teacher, magic player and co-founder of my school's student Magic club. I love teaching. I love Magic. This lecture had as much to do with creating a good lesson/curriculum as it does about developing a great game. What an impactful lecture. Really appreciated it. Thanks!
My thoughts exactly. Switch "players" with students and "game designers" with teachers and you have wonderful advice from MaRo. Even if I think he has taken part in some questionable decisions about the game, there is no denying that he clearly knows his "humans".
What a coincidence, I just came back to this lecture and started taking notes after thinking that a lot of this can be applied to teaching (pre-service teacher now, finishing up my last semester). If you don’t mind me asking, how did you go about establishing a Magic club? I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing something similar down the line, either with Magic or DnD.
@@felizginato12 I'm a non native english speaker and I also teach english as a second language in a school here in Brazil. And since RPG is a great social activity It was pretty easy to convince our coordinator to let me stablish a RPG club where students were only allowed to speak english. I'm proud to say we're getting great results out of it.
@@GabrielRoger2010 Thanks for the reply! I'm actually getting my teaching degree to teach high school English, but I also have a minor in TESOL and might decide to go that route after graduation. Good to hear that there are relevant applications for teaching non native speakers.
+sam .t Love these sorts of comments because, being head designer for literally 15 years, odds are your favorite part of the game was also developed under his stewardship. This is a completely unique circumstance, and even if I agreed with your assessment (which I don't, GoR is solid), one would be hard pressed to find a game designer putting out better work after that long in the exact same position.
Geeze, every time I rewatch this I am simply stunned at how useful all of this information is. I don't work in game design, far from it, but use this information constantly. Thank you MaRo!
"Allow the players the ability to make the game personal" is probably the most important. If you give players many tools, they will spend insane amounts of time exploring and creating. It also allows them to show others their creations.
I'm not even planning on going into game design and I found this talk absolutely fascinating. This guy is a really strong speaker and has a lot of great points. Plus I love MTG
One reason Ravnica was so important too was that it was the first time Magic went all-in on the colors as a storytelling and world-building device. Boros, Selenya, Azorius, and Orzhov are all white, but they’re also completely different takes on white thanks to the influence of a second color. Ravnica is a world that simply COULDN’T exist outside MtG. Despite similarities to other settings like DnD’s Sigil, the entire selling point of Ravnica is that you see the interplay of the color pairs with the guilds.
@@latrodectusmactans7592It also was the first time they branded identities. They have merch, guild identities, flavor, and each player got to choose their own guild.
Lesson 16 really rings true with me; I made about 10-15 decks within a year and nobody from my group did that. I was in the process of building another deck and realized that I generally already knew how the games would play out against my group. I got up from the table and left that deck as it was for almost six months because I was so burnt out and bored that I didn't want to play Magic anymore. I didn't touch my cards for over a year. My best bud recently got into deckbuilding and it feels so good to get back into Magic with a new group because I'm finally seeing new decks and having fun again.
I don't design games OR play Magic (at least not in the past decade), yet I found this video fascinating. Also, is this the guy who originally hired Joss Whedon on his first legitimate writing gig for Roseanne? The reference to Buffy would make even more sense.
I don't think he had anything to do with Whedon. From what I've read of his writing stint at Roseanne (i.e., what he himself has said about it), MaRo wasn't anyone in a hiring position.
I love the land part, as I am a person that Is so exited about drawing my favorite land cards in a duel that my opponents sometimes mistakenly think I drew like my strongest card or so :D Really lead to some amazing bluffs^^
I used to think I could do Mark's job just as good cuz ego, then I heard this and I now bow to Mark, and thank him for helping make my life more enjoyable. (and you to Richard :) of course. May you both outlive me so I can always get new product!
This was one of the most compelling, concise explanations of not just game design but the artistic process I've ever seen. I grew up playing magic and this is applicable to music and other arts too. So amazing! Thank you
one of the most educational video i've ever watched. Well worth the 1 hour. Useful even for a non-mtg player. For a magic fan, that's just icing on the cake
@@StainlessHelena that reply was in response to a comment that has since been deleted. But lol just look at the order of the comments, did you think i was talking to myself?
One of the best talks I have ever seen. Most of these also apply to life, to be honest. Thanks for this Mark and GDC, you are changing a lot of people's lives.
It is often thought that the emotion of ' Hate ' is a negative thing. But it isn't. When somebody expresses hate, they show that they still care about that thing. They do not like it, they show they do not like it and the reason they show it is because they still do care. What is true form of total resentment? Apathy; when you don't care. When you don't care at all, it is irrelevant what happens. But when you do care, you either love it or hate it but you want that subject to succeed in both cases.
It's often an excuse for people that release a bad product. "Well, at least they care!" The truth is, "hate" is only positive when it's expressed in preference to something good. It elevates the choice you make. If everything in your product is mediocre - like in Magic for the past 5-10 years - then it will slowly die an agonistic death.
One of the best lessons I've ever heard about game design. It's just a pure awesomeness and I appreciate it A LOT! If someone read this comment and familiar with any other great stuff on game design, Any online material with helpful insights - Please, do share.
Ehm..well..I don't want to offend you, but... well... I don't agree with your username. Your avatar clearly shows a pineapple, this contraddiction is confusing. Unless... you want to go full Magritte mode ("Ceci n'est pas une pipe" kind of thing), and state that the picture of a pineapple certainly it's NOT a pineapple, and this is the big trick of your mind and... On a side note, I like pineapples.
Holy shit, I've just been sitting around going through some magic cards to work on a new homebrew for standard only to look up and realise that I've been listening to this guy speak for over an hour. Well done Mark Rosewater, well done.
A great lessons, as some said more than just magic, but how to develop and not only a game, I think that this can be applied in other fields. This is the first time in a couple of years that I watch to the end, Mark Rosewater should teach all other speakers how to keep your audience interested, I remember just turning off many GDC videos only because, not matter how interested I am on the subject they make it completely boring, but Mark make me just want to hear more about it, he is a great example of someone that interest in what is doing, no just on how much sales can do.
holy shit this entire thing is absolute fire for anyone who designs anything... ever. especially love #12 ("Don't design to prove you can do something"), and the soliloquy on creators and egos that precedes it. in some sense i think one could view this list as a set of rules to maintain modesty in a fundamentally immodest profession (that of creatio ex nihilo).
Aw Fblthp is cute. He reminds me of my first favorite like him, my dad played the game when I was younger (and I play now). When I used to play with him I loved the card Squee and his Squee's Toys, I just thought he was cute and was so excited to discover the accompanying card and pun. To this day I love to play cards with funny little critters thrown in, I play black a lot partly because of the abundance of fugly lil guys to dote on.
This must be one of the most useful videos I've EVER encountered on RUclips by pure chance. Finally, this algorithm didn't offered me just the usual trend garbage content. I'm glad I stayed and took notes.
Has the thumbnail of this video been changed? Right now it's "Abaddon The Despoiler" from the Warhammer 40K Commander Deck, which was released this year... Know that channels sometimes update their thumbnails or Title of videos from the past if there's information that's relevant to happening today and to get a resurge of new views. But a little unsure on if Abaddon can really give new life to this phenomenal talk. It's been a few years since I've last seen this talk, so maybe there is a section about "cross pollinating" in different Lore Verses/Intellectual Property.
I am probably one of a very small community of gamers who have never played Magic: the Gathering. Yet, I hope that this will not diminish my thoughts on this talk. Mark Rosewater's insights are wonderful. His honesty about needing to return to school so as to acquire numerous skills is a priceless observation which acts as a positive role model. Great talk. I highly recommend this talk to gamers and to nongamers alike. 🌻
I mean HS has had former Magic team members. They're pretty good at devloping the game, they just tend to get in trouble with "trying to hard to not just be magic" and "fidling with game balance before the meta solidifes." Though on the balance end HS has less points for interaction so it's kinda hard to just seed solutions for problem children into the game.
39:29 Make the fun oart of the game thr right strategy to win. This has convinced me to finally change something in my game that the players want to do, bit i habe designated as a tool to win rather than THE way to win. I have been stubborn, and i hope this pays off, so I can lesrn to he less stubborn in the future.
Most people in 1st world countries are whiny babies. Magic players' whines actually tend to make sense, hence Mark crediting them as good identifier of problems. The general populace however... are really stupid and absolutely fail at knowing what's wrong with the system (ex: political, financial, etc.) that they are whining about.
@@bobdole8830 Shame that you found it distracting, else you might have noticed that the style of presentation was directly aligned with how he advised communicating information to an audience.
And then you get these people who scream at the top of their lungs how devs have no idea what they are doing, and that the person knows what's the best for a game. Makes me laugh man.. Awesome talk!
Wizards gave us 3.0, 3.5, the OGL and Pathfinder so it ain't all bad. I know a lot of folks didn't like 4th[1] but they have also made dumb decisions with MTG so I'm not sure I can hold that against them. [1] I've been playing D&D for *mumble* years and I liked 4th at launch. The power creep was horrible and putting the character builder behind a paywall was beyond dumb but I liked what they were trying to do.
Keep in mind that WotC has been making magic for about 25 years. For the first 5 years or so they really didnt have a good idea of what they were doing. The first sets were completely imbalanced. The sets after were completely underpowered and nearly destroyed the game. After that a long period of imbalance started again and it took them close to a decade to actually start and get things right.
I love this talk so much. It oozes value to game and product designers in all markets. 10/10, excellence. A core philosophy I discovered a while ago was that one of the most important factors in design is how your game makes the players feel. That the game serves as an engine to eliciting some emotional response from the players in order to drive immersion and investment. Seeing this philosophy validated by a veteran game designer is huge to me and lets me know that my observations on game design aren't without merit and that I'm thinking about it in the right way.
I think it was never a rare so it wouldn't have been in the rare poll? But the issue with the card is not its rarity, it would have been just as broken as a mythic rare since it was in constructed, not limited, that it was ba-roken.
+furbyfubar I'd argue that it's only really broken in extended constructed formats (Not standard), and R&D tends not to consider the effect of cards outside of standard constructed
Cruise is a really super simple card. It has just a block relevant mechanic attached to a normal effect blue can do. It makes sense as a common, since commons need to be simple. Turns out that delve is super broken intrinsically. Whoops.
+Sword of the Morning the ratio is not normal, but the base ability to draw cards is blue. In standard and limited the card was rarely cast for a single blue. And those are what R&D tests for.
I think Tibalt is an amazing card. Great flavour and a strong effects for 2 mana. I think it drives home the previous point that some people are going to love what others hate
Wait wait wait wait wait... wait... wait... wait! Did he just say, indirectly, that Griselbrand should cost 7 mana? Or did he say it should be an 8/8 Pay 8 life to draw 8 cards? Anyways, good presentation.
What he said was that people want to see patterns. So when it was 7-7-7-8, their autism kicked in and their brain malfunctioned and they started to complain why it wast 7-7-7-7 or 8-8-8-8
I think it was a missed opportunity and should've said draw 6 cards, gain 6 life and mana cost 6 but i guess they didn't want a repeat of when they included pentagrams in the artwork i.e. Demonic Tutor.
The issue is that people would misread the card and cast it for 7 mana. It would have been better to make it a 6/8 or something so people didn't see a pattern so they would read the casting cost correctly.
Masaru kun one of the best yes, but that is not what he is talking about. he is talking about fun(not saying dregs is no fun although one could make that argument) but best doesn't equal fun.
I remember one of my favorite cards was this 'Medusa' queen, where she could turn creatures to stone, and I just found it to be the most satisfying mechanic to try and use.
Really sorry, you lost your money. Mark strongly confirmed they aren't in Kaladesh(He could be lying, but he said it was because to many people strongly believed it)
"Don't confuse interesting with fun"
I feel like this is one of the most important lessons here. So many game devs could learn from this maxim.
I think this happens most with rookie designers but I might be wrong.
This was the biggest thing that blew my mind. Changed my perspective on game making honestly. I’m glad I watched this.
"Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them" this is truth right there.
Being bad doesn't mean their solutions won't work though, as Overwatch devs proved:P
No, the only reason somebody wouldn't like it is because they're a bigot racist homophobe
Almost as much as Restrictions breeds creativity
9
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3:33 Lesson #1: Fighting against human nature is a losing battle
4:42 Lesson #2: Aesthetics matter
7:46 Lesson #3: Resonance is important
9:44 Lesson #4: Make use of piggybacking
13:13 Lesson #5: Don't confuse "interesting" with "fun"
16:05 Lesson #6: Understand what emotion your game is trying to evoke
19:19 Lesson #7: Allow the players the ability to make the game personal
23:34 Lesson #8: The details are where the players fall in love with your game
26:59 Lesson #9: Allow your players to have a sense of ownership
30:06 Lesson #10: Leave room for the player to explore
33:28 Lesson #11: If everyone likes your game, but no one loves it, it will fail
36:03 Lesson #12: Don't design to prove you can do something
38:27 Lesson #13: Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win
41:19 Lesson #14: Don't be afraid to be blunt
43:41 Lesson #15: Design the component for its intended audience
47:13 Lesson #16: Be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them
50:30 Lesson #17: You don't have to change much to change everything
53:20 Lesson #18: Restrictions breed creativity
55:54 Lesson #19: Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them
58:50 Lesson #20: All the lessons connect
Muchas Grazias for lengthening the time I can spend my lifetime searching for cat pics on the internet.
You're an amazing person
Thank you.
@Axel Kusanagi : You're welcome!
thank you.
On Lesson #18 Restrictions breed creativity:
I was once taking a test in high school physics; in this test we had a section on pendulums. All we had to do was calculate how fast a pendulum was moving at the bottom of its arc given a certain length of pendulum and a certain starting position. Nothing to difficult, it would take all of 5 minutes if you used the formula provided by the text.
Not to difficult, that is, had I actually studied the section of our text that actually involved pendulums. I had a final in trigonometry the same week and just hadn't studied it.So I am facing a quandary, I have a large portion of a test that I haven't studied for....But I had studied for trig, and our previous portion of the class that had involved energy, both potential and kinetic.
I proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes devising a way to use trigonometry and a completely different portion of our physics theory to calculate the speed of that pendulum.
Forward ahead to next day: Our physics teacher had a tendency to grade our tests during class while we worked on an experiment that he had prepped us for. So part of the way through class he pulls me aside to ask me about my test. He was curious as to why I hadn't used the text method to calculate the pendulum, and I admitted that I hadn't studied that portion of the text. As it so happened.... My answer was right.
I had, in the middle of a test, created an independent proof for our pendulum equation using trig and a different portion of our physics curriculum.
He ended up using that portion of my test as part of an improvised lesson when we eventually wrapped up our pendulum theory work.
This needs more attention! Thinking outside the box should be done more often! lol
Just goes to prove the old saying: There's more than one way to solve a problem. (or skin a cat, but I like cats.)
Got into a similar situatuion at school. In a test I had to calculate the area of a regular hexagon, but I couldn't remember the formula at all. Had the idea of dividing it into triangles, calculating the area of one of them and multiplying by 6. For a pre-teen, it was a good idea.
This is how I ended up a math major after failing algebra 2. I had many tests after where I studied a little and then devised a way to come up with a solution and it still helps me now in my undergrad math classes
My favorite story on this quickly is that I was retaking calc 3. On the first test of the unit, we had to just find. The volume of a sphere, super easy. If you remember the formula. So I used what I had learned the semester previous and did a triple integral in polar coordinates and got the right answer
"My name is Mark Rosewater and this is my MASTERCLASS."
Dude was teaching way more than just magic. Really cool.
this
That's one thing that is pretty incredibly when you deconstruct Magic: the Gathering in general. That the core concepts/mechanics apply to game design as a whole since the game functions like very basic code, which make Mark's blogs/articles consistently interesting even if you're not into Magic. There are just additional quirks that might only apply to subscription/collectable game genres where replay-value and player-retention are weighed much more than others.
It really is magic XD
Indeed, this is very inspirational. Motivational speaking right here.
This presentation was awesome. Much more than game design.
I'm a game designer, and I always come back to rewatch this talk. There's so much in there. Just want to say thank you to GDC and Mark for making this available.
"So we started putting [Fblthp] back in the game."
*War of the Spark comes out*
*Wizards prints **_Fblthp, The Lost_*
We made him an actual Legend
You're as beautiful as the day I lost you
What's funny is that, Magic Arena follows none of these lessons. lol Almost like they just forgot everything when money started pouring in.
those are game design lessons, some could applied to business, but he probably dont have a say in that matter.
Also the fact the game is free to play might be part of the problem : investor are not ready to invest fully in a product they dont trust yet, so they only invest in a few game mechanic at the time.
(Investors probably dont realise it weaken the faith of "gamers" into their product because we have standards)
Yeah, that's called "pandering".
I'm a musician and I come back to this talk every now and then.
I use a lot of these lessons when creating my art. They're very useful there too.
Plus, I'm a huge Magic nerd and I like listening to Mark Rosewater. He's genuinely entertaining.
What' I'm learning so far is that MaRo's Powerpoint Presentations look the way he talks
btw I'm just joking, I love him
AMProductions you don't need to say you're joking, you're absolutely right.
I wonder how many slides the presentation has
@@Nimora all of them.
like really - this should be mandatory for every person who designs games to watch. It is full of really really valuable and important lessons/concepts.
I´ve always kinda liked Magic, but I fully like this speech. More often than not, GDC speakers are incoherent, introvert, mumbling creatures scarcely getting their point across. This guy got 20 points across with brilliance of a flying arrow. Hats off.
Truly a legend in the industry.
flying arrows are brilliant?
This guy is still an introvert. Introvert gets excited and can look extroverted when certain conditions are met, for example, talking about something they really like, like this guy. Truly great talk and I admire his enthusiasm
+Chan Tim Can confirm. The only reason I scan through comments sections is to spot that one delicious question pertaining to anything I'm deeply interested in.
Turns out this was in fact the top rated GDC speech of 2016:
markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/158080188633/excited-to-discover-i-was-the-top-rated-speaker-at
I'm a high school Social Studies teacher, magic player and co-founder of my school's student Magic club. I love teaching. I love Magic. This lecture had as much to do with creating a good lesson/curriculum as it does about developing a great game. What an impactful lecture. Really appreciated it. Thanks!
My thoughts exactly. Switch "players" with students and "game designers" with teachers and you have wonderful advice from MaRo. Even if I think he has taken part in some questionable decisions about the game, there is no denying that he clearly knows his "humans".
What a coincidence, I just came back to this lecture and started taking notes after thinking that a lot of this can be applied to teaching (pre-service teacher now, finishing up my last semester).
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you go about establishing a Magic club? I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing something similar down the line, either with Magic or DnD.
I'm an ESL teacher and I couldn't agree more.
@@felizginato12 I'm a non native english speaker and I also teach english as a second language in a school here in Brazil. And since RPG is a great social activity It was pretty easy to convince our coordinator to let me stablish a RPG club where students were only allowed to speak english. I'm proud to say we're getting great results out of it.
@@GabrielRoger2010 Thanks for the reply! I'm actually getting my teaching degree to teach high school English, but I also have a minor in TESOL and might decide to go that route after graduation. Good to hear that there are relevant applications for teaching non native speakers.
Seems that guy job is his dream job. His so passionate about it, took so many additional classes to be better at it ... and talk is amazing.
and yet the game is stagnating under his stewardship
some things you can learn in theory, but still suck at them practical
False info bro, nothing is stagnating
+sam .t Love these sorts of comments because, being head designer for literally 15 years, odds are your favorite part of the game was also developed under his stewardship. This is a completely unique circumstance, and even if I agreed with your assessment (which I don't, GoR is solid), one would be hard pressed to find a game designer putting out better work after that long in the exact same position.
@@dogdriver70 Couldn't possibly disagree more.
it started a bit goofy but around 8-9 I thought "this guy knows his shit"
Geeze, every time I rewatch this I am simply stunned at how useful all of this information is. I don't work in game design, far from it, but use this information constantly. Thank you MaRo!
The part about lands, I felt that. I really do take my time into looking at the art before I add them to my decks
That bit about Tibalt is so funny with the hindsight of the massively pushed 2-mana Wrenn and Six.
Or 3 mana okko
"Allow the players the ability to make the game personal" is probably the most important. If you give players many tools, they will spend insane amounts of time exploring and creating. It also allows them to show others their creations.
I've thought about it, and I think this might be my favorite video on youtube. It's applicable to so many subjects beyond game design.
Ikr you could apply these things to writing, marketing, art, and life maybe so many more things I haven't thought about
The density of actionable information provided by this talk is outstanding.
I'm not even planning on going into game design and I found this talk absolutely fascinating. This guy is a really strong speaker and has a lot of great points. Plus I love MTG
Yeah, ravnica was awesome. They truly embedded the feel of a metropolis, full of different inhabitants, districts and powers into this set.
One reason Ravnica was so important too was that it was the first time Magic went all-in on the colors as a storytelling and world-building device.
Boros, Selenya, Azorius, and Orzhov are all white, but they’re also completely different takes on white thanks to the influence of a second color. Ravnica is a world that simply COULDN’T exist outside MtG. Despite similarities to other settings like DnD’s Sigil, the entire selling point of Ravnica is that you see the interplay of the color pairs with the guilds.
@@latrodectusmactans7592It also was the first time they branded identities. They have merch, guild identities, flavor, and each player got to choose their own guild.
This is the best lesson about game design I ever had!
I never knew how to pronounce Fblthp until watching this video
Me neither
I always just blew a raspberry when talking about him.
Lesson 16 really rings true with me; I made about 10-15 decks within a year and nobody from my group did that. I was in the process of building another deck and realized that I generally already knew how the games would play out against my group. I got up from the table and left that deck as it was for almost six months because I was so burnt out and bored that I didn't want to play Magic anymore. I didn't touch my cards for over a year. My best bud recently got into deckbuilding and it feels so good to get back into Magic with a new group because I'm finally seeing new decks and having fun again.
Im here, to understand why every card I play, is suspiciously turning into an elk........
Don't mistake interesting with fun.
Oko is interesting. He's not fun.
Lesson 11 I would guess.
It would be so funny to have maro sign your oko
Ah, the good old times, when Oko was the problem.
@@Qualcuno111 we have uro now xd
I don't design games OR play Magic (at least not in the past decade), yet I found this video fascinating.
Also, is this the guy who originally hired Joss Whedon on his first legitimate writing gig for Roseanne? The reference to Buffy would make even more sense.
Could be, he wrote for it, mentioned at 31:55
I don't think he had anything to do with Whedon. From what I've read of his writing stint at Roseanne (i.e., what he himself has said about it), MaRo wasn't anyone in a hiring position.
once in a while i rewatch this - ita impossible to convey how much value are in his insights
I used to read his column every week and was my favorite of the whole site. This man is truly amazing!!
This is probably one of my favorite GDC slidedecks of all time.
Wow, that was a very professional and useful presentation applicable to multiple fields.
As a game developer I come back to this every once in a while to feel grounded.
I never get tired of hearing Maro talk about game design and Mtg
I rarely play magic now a days but you bet your sweet ass I still listen to two episodes of his podcast every week.
31:57. That's honestly longer than I thought he'd manage to go without mentioning working on Roseanne :P
I love the land part, as I am a person that Is so exited about drawing my favorite land cards in a duel that my opponents sometimes mistakenly think I drew like my strongest card or so :D
Really lead to some amazing bluffs^^
No time for questions? GDC plz... what an amazing talk!
he could have made his speech shorter :)
Mark Rosewater blue bias confirmed. Showing only Islands... :P :)
Mono-stormcrow deck is the most OP, everyone know this.
There are only 2 colours, blue, and the wrong colours.
@@jelloman8476 Nah, since white has Gideon, it is the true Chad color
Basic Island is the most powerful card in the game.
blue is objectively superior (in magic, not as a color itself)
This was amazing, like for real i loved every minute of it
One of the greatest design guidance videos I've ever seen. I'll be watching and rewatching MANY times!
Everyone in DESIGN should watch this.
I used to think I could do Mark's job just as good cuz ego, then I heard this and I now bow to Mark, and thank him for helping make my life more enjoyable. (and you to Richard :) of course. May you both outlive me so I can always get new product!
+nomakym If you enjoyed this you should check out his podcast 'drive to work'.
Reading this guys articles for 15 years taught me everything i know about design, game or otherwise
This was one of the most compelling, concise explanations of not just game design but the artistic process I've ever seen. I grew up playing magic and this is applicable to music and other arts too. So amazing! Thank you
This is probably the best game design talk I've ever seen
one of the most educational video i've ever watched. Well worth the 1 hour. Useful even for a non-mtg player. For a magic fan, that's just icing on the cake
When i look at Mark Rosewater, I'm oddly aware that there's a skeleton inside of him.
spooky
True
Don't be fooled, dudes a werewolf
@@machochocolate7679 Werewolves don't have skeletons? :O
@@StainlessHelena that reply was in response to a comment that has since been deleted. But lol just look at the order of the comments, did you think i was talking to myself?
One of the best talks I have ever seen. Most of these also apply to life, to be honest. Thanks for this Mark and GDC, you are changing a lot of people's lives.
This guy is a genious. Whoa. It took me like 3-4 hours to watch this video, so I can keep up, and write thing down.
Whenever I'm feeling sad, I watch this video and it makes everything better
Mark Rosewater is a game design genius. This should have been a TED Talk.
Best game design advice I've ever found or heard or seen in 6 years, thank you for sharing your experience!
It is often thought that the emotion of ' Hate ' is a negative thing. But it isn't. When somebody expresses hate, they show that they still care about that thing. They do not like it, they show they do not like it and the reason they show it is because they still do care.
What is true form of total resentment? Apathy; when you don't care. When you don't care at all, it is irrelevant what happens. But when you do care, you either love it or hate it but you want that subject to succeed in both cases.
I think this is why Sonic gets so much hate nowadays, even people who aren't fans on SOME level want him to succeed lol!
True.
@@Alienrun No better example exists.
It's often an excuse for people that release a bad product. "Well, at least they care!"
The truth is, "hate" is only positive when it's expressed in preference to something good. It elevates the choice you make. If everything in your product is mediocre - like in Magic for the past 5-10 years - then it will slowly die an agonistic death.
To much attention in something is indeed love in a way
This is such a high quality in-depth talk. This wasn't about Magic the Gathering, this was about understanding life.
These are really lessons for life.
One of the best lessons I've ever heard about game design.
It's just a pure awesomeness and I appreciate it A LOT!
If someone read this comment and familiar with any other great stuff on game design,
Any online material with helpful insights -
Please, do share.
This guy right here is a legend.
Insanely smart, insanely well presented.
I'M STANDING ON A STAGE, YOU ALL KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. IT'S TIME FOR MY GDC TALK
Ehm..well..I don't want to offend you, but... well... I don't agree with your username. Your avatar clearly shows a pineapple, this contraddiction is confusing. Unless... you want to go full Magritte mode ("Ceci n'est pas une pipe" kind of thing), and state that the picture of a pineapple certainly it's NOT a pineapple, and this is the big trick of your mind and...
On a side note, I like pineapples.
LOL
I actually bought pineapple juice today.
Second time watching this. Still one of my favorite GDC talks!
Holy crap! Summoner's pact puts the creature into play!? Thanks for the sick errata Rosewater!
Noland Moore odd
Holy shit, I've just been sitting around going through some magic cards to work on a new homebrew for standard only to look up and realise that I've been listening to this guy speak for over an hour. Well done Mark Rosewater, well done.
he's apparently a very nice and brilliant guy
i think i'm not the only one who'd wish to know someone like him personally
So good. Favourite GDC talks of all time.
A guide on creating enjoyment. So well-thought out with philosophical implications. 10/10 talk although this man sorta gives me Matt Cox kinda vibes.
A great lessons, as some said more than just magic, but how to develop and not only a game, I think that this can be applied in other fields.
This is the first time in a couple of years that I watch to the end, Mark Rosewater should teach all other speakers how to keep your audience interested, I remember just turning off many GDC videos only because, not matter how interested I am on the subject they make it completely boring, but Mark make me just want to hear more about it, he is a great example of someone that interest in what is doing, no just on how much sales can do.
"I don't know my time" he says after delivering EXACTLY 60 minutes of talk
This is one of the best GDC I watched, I know magic but never really played it that much.
holy shit this entire thing is absolute fire for anyone who designs anything... ever. especially love #12 ("Don't design to prove you can do something"), and the soliloquy on creators and egos that precedes it. in some sense i think one could view this list as a set of rules to maintain modesty in a fundamentally immodest profession (that of creatio ex nihilo).
oh man the #16 bit is even better ("Be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them") starting at ~48:58
Best 20 Lessons ever. These are significant in so many more ways than just gaming. I wish I had seen this years ago!
Aw Fblthp is cute. He reminds me of my first favorite like him, my dad played the game when I was younger (and I play now). When I used to play with him I loved the card Squee and his Squee's Toys, I just thought he was cute and was so excited to discover the accompanying card and pun. To this day I love to play cards with funny little critters thrown in, I play black a lot partly because of the abundance of fugly lil guys to dote on.
Absolutely amazing. As a player and fan of Magic, Mark Rosewater is a master of game design, this is gold for those learning.
I just watched the whole 1 hour video and it felt like it was just 5 minutes... fucking amazing talk!
What an incredible class! So multidisciplinary! Such passion! Thanks :)
Most of these teaching can be 100% applied to our own life. Afterall, life is just a big game with just many more rules :)
Or alot less depending on your perspective.
This must be one of the most useful videos I've EVER encountered on RUclips by pure chance. Finally, this algorithm didn't offered me just the usual trend garbage content.
I'm glad I stayed and took notes.
Has the thumbnail of this video been changed? Right now it's "Abaddon The Despoiler" from the Warhammer 40K Commander Deck, which was released this year...
Know that channels sometimes update their thumbnails or Title of videos from the past if there's information that's relevant to happening today and to get a resurge of new views. But a little unsure on if Abaddon can really give new life to this phenomenal talk. It's been a few years since I've last seen this talk, so maybe there is a section about "cross pollinating" in different Lore Verses/Intellectual Property.
I am probably one of a very small community of gamers who have never played Magic: the Gathering. Yet, I hope that this will not diminish my thoughts on this talk. Mark Rosewater's insights are wonderful. His honesty about needing to return to school so as to acquire numerous skills is a priceless observation which acts as a positive role model. Great talk. I highly recommend this talk to gamers and to nongamers alike. 🌻
Someone link this to Blizzard. Their Hearthstone team could learn a loooot
Learn a loot? What?
I mean HS has had former Magic team members. They're pretty good at devloping the game, they just tend to get in trouble with "trying to hard to not just be magic" and "fidling with game balance before the meta solidifes." Though on the balance end HS has less points for interaction so it's kinda hard to just seed solutions for problem children into the game.
@William Coburn no, HS had members who played Magic. Big difference. Wotc's dev team is very different from a random Magic player.
No, some of their designers actually worked for Wizards of the Coast as designers on Magic. A simple Google search reveals that Mike Donais did.
B-but they already follow most of this?
39:29 Make the fun oart of the game thr right strategy to win. This has convinced me to finally change something in my game that the players want to do, bit i habe designated as a tool to win rather than THE way to win.
I have been stubborn, and i hope this pays off, so I can lesrn to he less stubborn in the future.
I like how he constantly suggests that Magic's player base are whiny babies
I am a Magic player. Can confirm. (but this is a good thing...a product cannot improve if a fanbase fails to speak up)
Most people in 1st world countries are whiny babies. Magic players' whines actually tend to make sense, hence Mark crediting them as good identifier of problems. The general populace however... are really stupid and absolutely fail at knowing what's wrong with the system (ex: political, financial, etc.) that they are whining about.
Mc Lovin that's because he keeps destroying the game every 12 months (except for that one time)
you're being a whiny baby right now LUL
Games are a consumer culture that thinks they are a maker culture. This means gamers tend to be very whiny babies.
There is a lot of wisdom and thought in this, compiled in a way that's easy to process.
awesome speech. Teaching a lot about design in general! and kinda a little about life too!
Been watching a lot of videos for inspiration on game design. This is definitely the most important one ive watched.
31:55 there's the necessary "I worked in Roseanne" part of every MaRo speech.
I don't even play magic and this was a great talk for creative people.
THIS is how you use visual aids in your talk. Not with a meme cannon.
No it is not.
For the most part he is just reading from the foils that change every 3-10 seconds, that is more distracting than anything
@@bobdole8830 I agree, the content is really good but I think the presentation skills need improving
@@bobdole8830 Shame that you found it distracting, else you might have noticed that the style of presentation was directly aligned with how he advised communicating information to an audience.
ThrashRaptor sorry you fail to see the problem
Best talk on creative works i think ive ever seen. I want, no, i NEED, more!
And then you get these people who scream at the top of their lungs how devs have no idea what they are doing, and that the person knows what's the best for a game. Makes me laugh man.. Awesome talk!
the devs are good, it's the people who decide what to put into premade decks and how much of a product to run that are idiots.
I still think Wizards of the Coast had much more of a clue about Magic than about their other endeavors, including D&D.
Wizards gave us 3.0, 3.5, the OGL and Pathfinder so it ain't all bad. I know a lot of folks didn't like 4th[1] but they have also made dumb decisions with MTG so I'm not sure I can hold that against them.
[1] I've been playing D&D for *mumble* years and I liked 4th at launch. The power creep was horrible and putting the character builder behind a paywall was beyond dumb but I liked what they were trying to do.
I liked 4th just fine, but the paywall thing was ridiculous.
Keep in mind that WotC has been making magic for about 25 years. For the first 5 years or so they really didnt have a good idea of what they were doing. The first sets were completely imbalanced. The sets after were completely underpowered and nearly destroyed the game. After that a long period of imbalance started again and it took them close to a decade to actually start and get things right.
I love this talk so much. It oozes value to game and product designers in all markets. 10/10, excellence.
A core philosophy I discovered a while ago was that one of the most important factors in design is how your game makes the players feel. That the game serves as an engine to eliciting some emotional response from the players in order to drive immersion and investment.
Seeing this philosophy validated by a veteran game designer is huge to me and lets me know that my observations on game design aren't without merit and that I'm thinking about it in the right way.
I want to know who was on the rare poll that made treasure cruise a common
I think it was never a rare so it wouldn't have been in the rare poll? But the issue with the card is not its rarity, it would have been just as broken as a mythic rare since it was in constructed, not limited, that it was ba-roken.
+furbyfubar I'd argue that it's only really broken in extended constructed formats (Not standard), and R&D tends not to consider the effect of cards outside of standard constructed
Cruise is a really super simple card. It has just a block relevant mechanic attached to a normal effect blue can do. It makes sense as a common, since commons need to be simple.
Turns out that delve is super broken intrinsically. Whoops.
dude 3 cards for one mana is not a normal effect that blue can do lol its quite a broken effect blue normally does for like 5 mana not one
+Sword of the Morning the ratio is not normal, but the base ability to draw cards is blue. In standard and limited the card was rarely cast for a single blue. And those are what R&D tests for.
Fantastic talk, I'm a D&D player and many of these lessons were so applicable to my running of games.
Amazing talk! Loved it!
I think Tibalt is an amazing card. Great flavour and a strong effects for 2 mana. I think it drives home the previous point that some people are going to love what others hate
Wait wait wait wait wait... wait... wait... wait! Did he just say, indirectly, that Griselbrand should cost 7 mana? Or did he say it should be an 8/8 Pay 8 life to draw 8 cards?
Anyways, good presentation.
What he said was that people want to see patterns. So when it was 7-7-7-8, their autism kicked in and their brain malfunctioned and they started to complain why it wast 7-7-7-7 or 8-8-8-8
I think it was a missed opportunity and should've said draw 6 cards, gain 6 life and mana cost 6 but i guess they didn't want a repeat of when they included pentagrams in the artwork i.e. Demonic Tutor.
thewillingwell i don’t think that they were worried about a satanic craze in 2012
The issue is that people would misread the card and cast it for 7 mana. It would have been better to make it a 6/8 or something so people didn't see a pattern so they would read the casting cost correctly.
@@ldeguzman at 6 mana, the card is literally just busted lmao
Thanks for your awesome work Mark Rosewater! A continuous spring of insight to revisit regularly.
14:25 and yet dredge is one of the best decks in modern lol
Masaru kun one of the best yes, but that is not what he is talking about. he is talking about fun(not saying dregs is no fun although one could make that argument) but best doesn't equal fun.
Those people are not having fun lol
I remember one of my favorite cards was this 'Medusa' queen, where she could turn creatures to stone, and I just found it to be the most satisfying mechanic to try and use.
still didnt come up with the solution to contraptions
Laughed
Next set we may see them :P
Contraptions in Kaladesh- I'd put money on it
oh man I wish
Really sorry, you lost your money. Mark strongly confirmed they aren't in Kaladesh(He could be lying, but he said it was because to many people strongly believed it)
This is still one of the best videos on game design ever.
Someone should show this to Jeff Kaplan; Overwatch is lacking in almost all of these points (except #19 lol)
That was exactly what I was thinking