I came across Mark Rosewater's "Twenty Years, Twenty Lessons Learned" talk from GDC2016 recently. Throughout the very postmortem-esque talk, he speaks to the successes and mistakes made throughout twenty years of development on Magic: The Gathering. As someone who played throughout my youth it was interesting to watch. My own playtime with the trading card game dwindled as I started studying game development, working professionally, and teaching. Being able to recognize some of these tips from my own experiences has been quite the experience. Many tips involve players responding to a variety of mechanics, aesthetics and concepts they created.
One of them involves Griselbrand. The other, the Akroan Horse.
Once Griselbrand was released players were highly frustrated with the card. They were not happy. Was the card weak? No. Did it lack flavor or substance when it came to the game's world and lore? No. Everyone was upset because the card that allowed you to pay SEVEN life to draw SEVEN cards, a card that has SEVEN power and toughness, cost a total of EIGHT mana to bring into play. Mark goes into detail about how much aesthetics play a role in the player's enjoyment of the game. Balance, symmetry and pattern completion are important to take into account. Disrupting these can lead to roadblocks in our minds and cause us to question the content we are engaged with. So, when this SEVEN pattern was broken player perception was disrupted and made players feel uncomfortable.
For Akroan Horse, Mark emphasized the fact that we can tap into already present knowledge and understanding within our users. The Akroan Horse was an allusion to the Trojan Horse, both in aesthetics and mechanics. It infiltrated the enemy player's space and populated it with soldiers over time. The whole idea seems clear cut and was really well received, but when the designers opted to change the horse into a lion, the card was instantly disliked. There was a disconnection with that established information within the user's knowledge base. Now it did not make any sense. Why would a lion serve this purpose? Again, players had their perceptions disrupted.
Another interesting note is how he describes the origins of the "Commander" format, in which players build a deck of cards around one particular "legendary" creature that acts as their hero in that format. This very same set of rules resembles some of the ones I made up when I was younger. My friends were never interested in playing the game "Marshall's way", however, so the discouragement had me leaving the concept in the dust.
So, this tip was all about giving player's a sense of ownership. This lesson resonated quite a bit with me. In my own development I've found a fair amount of positive response from the game's nostalgic content. It had made players reminisce on their own childhood experiences, friends, family and other things they seem to cherish. I think much of this is due to the wide array of customization options for hair, armor, weapons, backpacks, capes and rattails. The game also begins with several introductions to your pirate crew, consisting of characters with unique personalities, body types and methods. They seem to remind people of these nostalgic traits, which makes sense since so many of them were inspired by my own nostalgia. Players connect with these people and by being able to define who they are or resemble in the game it makes them feel so much more connected to them.
Other tips he had involved providing players with a sense of ownership, allowing yourself to be blunt at times, and not being afraid to take a risk with certain ideas as long as you make sure you actually need it implemented and flood your game with mechanics.
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