Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1147: Demand vs. Innovation

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

This podcast talks about the spectrum of giving players what they're asking for and surprising them with things they never thought of.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work Okay, so longtime listeners know I love spectrums. I love talking about all sorts of different spectrums So today I have a brand new spectrum. I've never talked about before So today spectrum talks about design new design and so At one end of the spectrum is what I call demand and the other end of the spectrum is what I call demand. And the other end of the spectrum is what I call innovation.

So the idea is we are doing new content. And the question is sort of on one end of the spectrum, demand means we are making the things that players want us to make. Make a thing, bring this back, you know. And the other end, innovation, is we're doing things you've never seen before, right? And the idea is we want to hit all ends of the spectrum,

but I wanna talk a little bit about the history of the demand versus innovation spectrum, what it means, and how it's changed over time. That is my topic today. Talking about a spectrum you didn't even know existed. Okay, so let's first talk a little bit about what the spectrum entails. So on the far end of demand is what I'll say, reprint.

You've done this before, just do it again. You printed this card, I liked it. Print this card again. That is sort of the absolute of demand is just wanting us to once again do things we did before. The next step of that is sort of completion. And the idea being there is, oh, let's say we've done the ally dual ends,

do the enemy dual ends, or let's say we've done something you really like in one color, do it it but do it in another Color, I'm like I get a lot of requests Um what a lot of people call the relentless mechanic meaning you can have as many of these in your deck as you want We haven't made a white one yet. Make a white one So the idea of completing something you started Next is the idea of returning things not necessarily

in the same form. So like bring back this mechanic I love but do new things with it. Maybe have new abilities and new colors. You know take this thing that I really enjoy but then bring it back and do new things with it. And then the next step there is sort of extrapolation. I like how you did this thing. Hey, what if you took landfall, but applied it to other card types? What if you did metal craft, but applied it to other card types?

The idea of extrapolation is I like something you did, and I can imagine I can plug in this thing for that thing. What if you did it, but you did it slightly differently, but in a way that's very extrapolative. Like, okay, you know, here's a part of the game. Well, instead of being this part of the game, make it that part of the game. And then you get into sort of true innovation

where we do something you've never seen before, right? And so the spectrum really has a lot to do with sort of how much we're delivering on what you expect versus how much delivering on what you don't expect. And I will say as I get into this, we want to do the full spectrum. We want to deliver on every aspect. We want to give you things that you want. We want to return things you like.

We want to extrapolate on things you enjoy. And we want to just innovate and do things you've never seen before. But, let's talk a little bit about the challenge of the spectrum. enjoy and we want to just innovate and do things you've never seen before. But let's talk a little bit about the challenge of the spectrum. So when Magic First comes out back in 1993, Richard Garfield makes Alpha, it's on the innovation end of the spectrum. In fact, the very first set ever made, there's no demand, no one knows what the game is. It's all innovation.

Everything Richard's doing, you've never seen before, right? Now, once one set exists, now you get circling a little bit of demand. Oh, I like this or like that, you know. For example, when Richard made Alpha, or Wizards made Alpha, I should say, I mean Richard designed Alpha, but when Wizards printed Alpha, there was a mistake, a bunch of mistakes. One of the mistakes is they left off a few cards. Two of them that are of the mistakes is they left off a few cards. Two of them that are probably the most important is there was circle protection and in Alpha there was circle protection white, blue, red, and green, but no circle protection in black.

In fact, it's funny, I remember the time because I played during Alpha, I thought that was like a conscious decision. Like black is so evil that white can't protect itself against it. But no, it just got left off the sheet. Likewise, they did nine of the ten dual lands but volcanic island, the blue red one get left off the sheet. So the first idea is just, oh, I like these. Finish your cycles. Alpha gets printed and like, oh, well, you didn't make a sub-protection block. You didn't make a red blue dual land, do those. Now, obviously beta would then bring those in.

But as soon as the game offered players something, players enjoyed things, they liked things. Oh, I want more of that. Now, early Magic didn't have a lot of keywords, but the keywords that did exist, people are like, oh, I like those keywords, or even things that were unkeyworded. I like Sarah Angel, I like when it doesn't tap to attack that doesn't have a name yet, but I like

this Sarah ability. Do more things with the Sarah ability. So early magic is very easy to innovate when you know, you haven't made much. So if you look at early sets, for example, so the first expansion was the rabbi nights, that was the first-down set. We'd never done that before. It was based on a thousand and one Arabian Nights. It was based on another source material. Antiquities had a mechanical theme. It was artifacts. All the cars had to do with artifacts.

Magic had never done that before. That was brand new. We get to Legends. It introduces legendary permanence. It introduces multicolor, like just wide, you know, like the funny thing nowadays is both those things are so big, we wouldn't put them in the same set.

You know, like the idea that we wouldn't, we want to introduce both those together because they're so big. But early magic, there's lots of room for innovation. There's a lot of things we haven't done before. And the other thing that's really interesting is we get pretty far into magic with some basic things that haven't happened yet. For example, like enter the battlefield effects.

Those don't happen until visions, right? Like that visions is in 96. So we're talking three years in before enter the battlefield effects. You know, like, and a lot of things that are now just like core like I created a hybrid man and for Ravnica, Ravnica, that's, you know, well, I made it in 2000. It wouldn't run. It came out in 2024. I think. But anyway, that's hybrid man.

That's like 20 years old. It's you know, it, Hybrid Manda is like 20 years old. It's, you know, it's for a game that's 31 years old, that didn't come for a while. And so there's innovations that we make that some of them take a while to come up with. Some of them were like, you know, some were very obvious, some take a little while to get there.

But the idea essentially is, early magic is just dripping in innovation. Only because there's lots of space to explore, there's lots of things to do, and every second it just introduces something brand new that you've never seen before that really can shock you. But as magic progresses, so the thing about the spectrum is early magic, there wasn't that much on the demand side of things. We haven't made that much.

But as we make things, players like things, players want things. The more Magic we make, the more things players want. And I say this all the time, but let me sort of stress this. One of the unique things about Magic is Magic players are not a monolith. Magic players want very different things and that every card we've put out there's somebody out there that that's their favorite card that they want more of that card. Okay so what happens is innovation is easy in the beginning there's lots of things we

haven't done yet but as time by, innovation gets harder to do. Especially like the far end of the spectrum, when I say innovation, is like blow your socks off. I've never seen that before. It's like us doing split cards, or double face cards, or pitch cards. Like there are different types. Like one of the things I have fond memories of is,

for example, split cards, I made them originally for unglued too. They don't get used. When invasion comes out, I pitched the bill, the idea let's do split cards here, bills in on it. They weren't very popular internally for, you know, it took us a while to get the rest of R and D warmed up to them, but eventually we do.

They come out on the set. Now we purposely did not market them. It was a cycle of five cards. Our idea was let's let people discover them. This is back in the day where we just didn't reveal the whole set before the set came out. It was a different time. But the idea at the time was, okay, we're not going to preview these. So they're just going to show up in packs. People see them for the first time. Then what happened was there was a leak. Somebody took pictures of like the print sheet that had them on it. Now, even then, even with pictures of split cards, remember at the time we didn't change

the frame. The idea of doing something that's a different frame, we just hadn't done yet. And so people, even though they saw pictures of it, they're like, oh, well, I guess this is an earlier version of the sheet and they didn't know which card is going to go on it. So that's just a placeholder to say it's this card or that. But they didn't even go, no, that's a real card. But I remember, so when invasion came out, that's at a point where Wizards of the Coast owned a bunch of game stores. And our flagship game store was in the university center, the university district by University of Washington. And we had the pre-release in the basement.

I remember going to the pre-release. And I remember watching somebody open up a split card who clearly had not seen the Wommer Mail, had no idea they existed. And just the look on his face, like the utter, like what in the world am I looking at? You know, and then just watching him slowly piece together and then he figured, like he clearly figured it out

and then he smiled, like he didn't know what was going on, he was confused and then I could see that smile, like he got it, you know. He figured out what the split card was and how it worked and it was just smiles ear to ear. And that is fun, like it is super fun innovating on things. It is super fun showing someone for the first time and watching people wrap their brain around it.

And like I said, the other thing when we innovate also is it's not like when we innovate, it's all necessarily smooth. There's always people when we innovate, they're like, you've gone too far. Like I remember when we made pitch cards and alliances for the first time, you can cast a spell even if you were tapped out Or we made double-faced cards, you know, there people like no magic has a back. What are you doing? You know when we innovate it Usually when we innovate the general rule is the public tend to be pretty happy

Most people like us pushing boundaries, but there's always people like oh this it's a step too far But a lot of magic is the innovation, it is pushing and it's discovering. And the reason that the innovation side of things is important is we want to surprise the audience. We want to, what was the term we, surprising delight, I think is the term they use. We want to do things sometimes that you just don't see coming. But, and here's the interesting thing about the spectrum is, as time goes on, the demand side gets larger and larger. That the more things we do, the more things players want. And the more that we innovate, the more that we do new things, the more space we eat up. Now, magic design space is pretty big. I have

every belief that magic will go on way beyond me, that I will die and at my wake people will play magic, right? Because there is a lot of design space there. But how much truly innovative you haven't ever thought of this space, tricks And that's one of the challenges is I mean each side of the spectrum has its own challenges The innovation side is look. It's just hard to be innovative like we can do wacky weird things, but then we've done them The metaphor I like it so in Star Trek there is an enemy in our next generation called the Borg and they're a collective And they have like a unified mind and one of the things about the Borg is whenever you use a weapon about it They adapt to it. So the weapon only works once And I like to joke that the audience is like the Borg like we can do something innovative

But once we've innovated you've seen it It's not innovative anymore and we we have to really keep thinking. Now, there's a lot of ways to do small innovation. So let me talk a little bit about modern innovation. So let's say we want to innovate now. How do we innovate? Well, number one, we can push in new territories, although the low-hanging fruit stuff gets taken first.

Like I know there's a lot of people talking now about us making extra components. And the reason that we're making extra components right now is it's more of the open free space. Like there's only so much, like we can add another side to a card, but we do that once. We can change card frames, but we can do that once.

Like there's things we can do, but you know, like once we've done them, we've done them. The board recognizes them. The audience knows what that is. And so, as we start to extrapolate and try to do things we haven't done before, it really depends on us pushing in different boundaries. So, how do we find innovation nowadays? There's a couple things. One is that we can take things people liked, well that's extrapolation. Pure innovation comes from mostly technology.

As we design things, we make new technology. The way design works is I want to do something we've never done before. For example, back in Tempest I made the card Mindslaver. Originally, it was going to be Volrath's Helm was going to be the card. Volrath was going to take you over with his mind. And the idea of taking over someone else's turn at the time, we had to scrap the card. We had to Volrath's Helm did something different because they couldn't figure out the rules how to make it work if you took over somebody else's turn.

And there was problems at the time with mana burn. Like anyway, like a lot of the things taking over your turn is just mana burning you from the amount of mana you have, which wasn't really the point of it. The point was making you cast spells. So like we had to say, Oh, but mana burn doesn't burn you anyway. Eventually mana burn went away and things changed. They figured out how to do it. They figured out how to allow you to take over another player's turn. And part of that came from as we advance rules, as we advance templating,

sometimes things that are impossible, we get the tools to pull it off. We change how a certain rule works, or we crack how to change something for one rule that opens up other things. The mere nature of making new magic cards, we invent new tools. The other thing is there's new technologies. For example, printing technology. So when we made original Innistrad, the original way we wanted to do double-faced cards was there'd be two cards in your booster. One that was the

single-faced card that went into your booster and the other was the double-faced card You only got out after you cast the single-faced card sort of like an elaborate token in some way But the problem was we couldn't get the printers. So I think what we said we wanted to cart a and card B to be next to each other They said well, okay, we can guarantee that 90% of the time well, that's not good enough. We can't one out of ten That's not good enough now eventually There was a printer that figured out how to do that

And once again got the technology to do it and we were able to make battle bond in which there were two cards that came Together now battle bonds a smaller set at the time There's only one printer that could even do it but but because it was a small set, we could print to that printer. And as time elapses, there's new things we can do. There's new things available to us. And so some of the innovation comes from us being able to do things we literally couldn't do before, either because we figured out things or because they're actual physical technologies that now exist. And so like I said, we will continue to innovate, but the big difference, you know, sort of as time goes by, the innovate end of the spectrum just becomes harder and harder to do. You know what I'm saying? It just becomes more challenging.

But we look for innovation. Like, we are constantly figuring out what is available to us. And a lot of times, you know, for example, I know I get ribbed a lot for the stickers in Infinity, but that was me really trying something new. Here's a brand new technology. If stickers actually worked, if stickers were really fun, you know, that is something we could branch off and we were testing it.

And like I said, there were a lot of logistical issues with it that one of the big problems with stickers was that we weren't able to test the actual stickers because it wasn't until they printed them that they existed. But anyways, a good example, I mean, not all new technology pans out, not all too much, but that's the thing we want to do. We want to be looking and finding new ways to do things. Okay. Let's talk to the demand end of the spectrum.

So the demand end of the spectrum, the challenge there is almost the exact opposite of innovation. The challenge of innovation is it gets harder and harder to innovate. The challenge of the demand is the demand just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. There is a giant list. Like one of the things that we as R&D do is, hey, we're aware of what people want. People want things, they tell us. I go on my blog every day, people just say, would you please make thing X? I would like thing X. Or, could you finish thing X? Or can you do thing X in a new way? Like all the things I talked about before.

So I've talked about, you know, we can repeat something slash reprint it. We can complete something. We can return something, especially mechanics. We can extrapolate and make new things based on old things. Like a lot of, interestingly, a lot of future site, for example, so future site did a future shift in cheek where we were teasing the future. And most of that was just extrapolated stuff.

We didn't do a lot of true innovation because we wanted to surprise you with that innovation so most of what we did there is we extrapolated. Okay we did this here but what if we did that? We did this like this but what if we did that? So okay so the challenge of demand is... here's the way I've talked about this a little bit but it's important to understand this concept. Let's take player a player. I'll call them Bobby Bobby's favorite card is card X What Bobby wants is more cards like card X. I love card X make more cards like card X and Sometimes by the way one of the way we do innovate when we innovate on things or maybe you can call it extrapolate is

If people really like a card like we made a card wasn't in the card Blink a little card. It was there's a card in Champs the Camagawa There was a theme in Champs the Camagawa. I don't know what you have to come down. It was onslaught miss form ultimates or miss from ultimates What's that was with Misform? Anyway, Misform Ultimus, I always blink and wonder where this comes from.

It was a card that had all the, all the creature types. I think it was an on-flat because we had, the Misforms could change their creature type and the Misform Ultimus, the ultimate legendary one, just was all creature types. That was a really cool card. And eventually that led to Changeling. We're like, okay, people like this card, card we're gonna make a whole mechanic out of it and a lot of sort of a lot of design and that's why there's a middle point between demand and like Extrapolation it's sort of there where hey, here's the thing we've done, but we can do more with it

And if you like, you know If you like miss from ultimates,us well here's the whole mechanic that's Mr. here's a whole mechanic that you can do that with and we're always looking for that okay but anyway Bobby likes Card X Bobby really wants more of Card X and as far as Bob is concerned that's his number one demand he wants more cards like Card X so every time we have a set he looks and says would have made sense in this set and as soon as it does He's like, oh this would be a perfect fit. Why didn't you do card X? Why didn't you extrapolate? Why didn't you? I've been asking this thing forever. And finally you did a set where it would be the perfect place to do it

And you didn't do it and the answer is It is not as if that one thing only exists. Everybody has the thing they want. Everybody wants their own thing. So it is not as if there's just some small number of things and we just do the small number of things. There is a huge, giant number of things. And so what we've learned is we keep track of what players ask for, especially in conglomerate. Like it's one thing for one person to ask for something, it's the other if lots and lots of people ask for the same thing.

And we do look for opportunities. One of the things when we're making a brand new set is thinking, okay, knowing what we're doing, what can we meet? What demands can we do? And I definitely am aware of things that people want and when I'm making a new set I go Oh, we finally found a place. Let's do that thing

but the reality is that there are a lot of factors that go into it a classic example that I'm getting right now because the modern horizons 3 is Energy when we first premiered it in Kaladesh was in red blue and green And the reason it was, was it fit the flavor of what we needed to do there with what, like when you make a set, you are trying to make a bunch of mechanics. You have to divvy them between colors

and you want to balance them so that you have all your archetypes. Like you, a set has to deliver a lot of spectrum. So there's a lot of decisions you have to make. So now we put energy, energy's returns coming back in Modern Horizons 3. But energy energy in Modern Horizon 3 is blue, red, and white. Why in white? Because we have a different theme, the Eldrazi theme using colorless mana, and that green really wanted to do that more. That theme worked better in green. It helped

green. It made more sense in green archetypes. So we wanted it in green and so it ended up being, Eldrazi is blue, red, green. So we didn't want energy being exact same as Eldrazi. So we want like the way it worked it made more sense for it to be in white than green. But I get it there's players out there going we've been wanting more like I have my blue, green, red energy deck, and I've been waiting for more blue, green, red cards, and I want my commander for blue, green, red energy. Where is that?

Energy returns, you could have done it here, but you didn't do it. And the answer is one of, look, there's a lot of things we need to do. We need to make the set work. There's infinite demands. We are not guided by, yes, we understand there's people that want things. There are always people that want things no matter what we do

You know, there's also people that want energy. They want energy in new colors I already have red green and blue, you know, give me energy and black and white, you know so like it's not as if there's one thing that that's the singular demand and so we have to make the work. And so one of the challenges of meeting demand is there's so much demand. Like I said, it's the exact opposite. We're swimming in demand. We're drowning in demand.

There's so many things that people want. And we are trying to, as fast as we can, we are constantly trying to make cards people want. There's not a set that goes by that we don't look for opportunities to make things that we know players want. But, and that's the caveat, there's a lot of things and a lot of players and that no matter how much we do, no matter how much demand we meet, no matter how much we return things and repeat things and extrapolate things, there's things we're not going to do that players still want. And maybe one day we'll

be able to do those things like I said, the demand end of the spectrum is the exact opposite problem of that. We can't possibly do everything. There's more things people want than we have space and time to do. And that, hey, magic's making a lot of sense. We do produce a lot of magic. Now, I always like to say magic's a hungry monster,

meaning, look, we keep having to do things, and that, look, eventually, if something is good, we will get back there. We're aware of what mechanics work. We're aware of what mechanics are popular. Like when we see opportunities. And one of the things I always want to stress is, for example, in Mirrodin, I made the energy mechanic.

It didn't fit. I had to take it out. I liked the energy mechanic. So this is a case where I the designer This is not even the players. This is me and you know, I'm I'm well-attuned to the things I want to do right, I'm well aware you're like I I Wanted to find a home for that. I was motivated. I'm the guy that makes the sets Like you like here's the mechanics that I want that I'm motivated by and I I choose what?

Mechanics go in sets like I you know This is not like like some player asking me and then I have to do what the players asking This is just something that I want for myself. I wanted energy. I thought energy was good mechanic I thought people would enjoy energy it took me 13 years To find the right place for energy. And that is me motivated, motivated to use energy. There's three, I think two or three other sets we tried energy in.

I would try energy, oh, could energy work here? And the answer usually was, oh, it's not a good fit here. And what I had to say is, okay, it's not a good fit. I have to wait till I find a good fit. And that is a lot of how design works that is not just a matter of putting whatever or putting or even For example, I will be vague. I will be vague in this but we were working on an upcoming commander product and There is a commander that people were asking for. And they're saying, hey, maybe we can put it here.

But the reality was it was a little bit, it wasn't a perfect fit there. And there was a set, I don't know, three, four later, that was the perfect fit for it. And we're like, okay, we shouldn't do this here. There's a set up coming. Yeah, yeah, we have to wait another year or so but there's a setup coming that's the slam dunk that this is what that set wants why are we doing it here

yes players want it but it's it's an odd fit here and it's a slam dunk fit coming up we should save and we did we saved it for the place that it makes the most sense and that's a lot of design. Another good example is Poison. I loved Poison as a beginning Magic player. In Legends, Poison first came out when we can innovate in the early days. The other thing that's great about the early days like Legends is it just made, I think Legends had two cards with Poison on it. Like, leave it to me, two Poison cards, let's go.

You can just throw things like that out there, which is awesome. But anyway, I wanted to bring back poison. We at R&D had chosen to remove poison from the game after, I think, Visions. But I wanted poison, so I worked long and hard. I tried to put poison in Tempest, didn't work. I tried to put poison on Galoo too, didn't happen.

But eventually, I found a place to do it. I found a place where it was a natural fit at the Forexians. It's cars of Mirrodin where it was like the slam dunk answer. And that's a lot of what happens is, you know, when we're talking about demand, it's a point of it's, you don't want to be lackluster. And, and there's so many things to do when you find when you make a new thing something's gonna be the slam dunk there is just finding the right place to do things and Having the patience to do the right thing in the right place and that's a real skill

Players are loud, you know, and especially when the players as a group are very loud Like it's one thing for one player to be very adamant about it But when you hear the same theme again again and again again you the bug Okay, the user designer what I want to find a place for this, you know But we really learned that you have to find the right place for it. It has to really Work with what you're doing So anyway, I'm almost to work here the reason that I wanted to bring up the spectrum today is a I love spectrum but B, really the idea of how we make magic sets and how we deliver on what will make

the players happiest is a tricky thing. That like kind of what you want to do is every set wants to have some stuff that's just, hey, we finally did it. This thing you that's just, hey, we finally did it. This thing you've been asking for forever, we finally did it. And you want some like, hey, you weren't asking for this. Oh, and that's the other thing about innovation, by the way. Demand is a little bit easier. I mean, extrapolation can be a little bit harder, but straight demand, I want thing

X, make thing X. Hey, we got it. We understand what you're asking for But innovation and even extrapolation sometimes there's a skill to say I Want to do something that either the players don't know about or the players have expressed They want more of this, but maybe I can deliver in a way. They don't anticipate There's a lot of skills there and one of the reasons I think I became head designer is I'm good with potential. I'm good with figuring out what doesn't exist, but could exist. And if it existed, players

would like it. A lot of my job, and it's gotten better over time, but a lot of my job is here's this weird thing we've never done. Players will like it. They'll go, really? I go, no, no, they'll like it. And I joke about like pushing a boulder up a hill, right? A lot of my job when I'm innovating is convincing the rest of our D that this is different, but there's something players would like. And in general, what we've found historically is most innovations that we're careful with, players do enjoy. Innovating for the sake of innovation, you gotta be careful. You don't want to do something just because you've never done it.

It has to serve a purpose. It has to be fun gameplay. So there's a lot that goes into it. It's not just doing things you haven't done, but it's finding things you haven't done that make sense. And a lot of innovation is playing in that space. But anyway, guys, I thought this was... When you are a thousand topics in on your podcast, I really wanna look for new and different

things. And this was a cool concept that it was something, one of the other things that happens is a lot of times, and I use my articles in my podcast to do this, there's ideas that I hadn't really worked through that have been there. And this was the idea that I, this was not my first recording of this podcast. This is my second recording. My first recording, I was really exploring things

and finding stuff and then I realized like, okay, I need to structure it a little better. So, but anyway, this is a neat way to think of how we design new things. And I thought you guys will enjoy it. But I'm literally now at work. So we all know what that means. Means the end of my drive to work.

So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I hope you enjoyed today's talk and I will see you all next time.