Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #956: Use Case

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

In this podcast, I talk about a tool R&D uses called a use case. ...

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today's topic comes from... So, recently I was at San Diego Comic-Con. I just did a podcast on it. Where we introduced stickers. That Infinity was doing stickers. And there was an interesting response from the public. Some of the people were very excited. They're like, ooh, we get to use stickers. That sounds a lot of fun. And some players were like, wait, I play a legacy format.
Starting point is 00:00:31 So you're telling me that, I mean, it's possible that when I play a game, I could use an effect that steals my opponent's creature, and that creature could be capable of stickering things. And it's possible that I have a legal target for those stickers. So you're saying every game I play in Legacy, I have to bring stickers? So today, we're going to talk about something we use in R&D called the use case. And I'll talk about how it applies to stickers, and I'll talk about how it applies to a whole bunch of other things. But it is an important tool that I've never talked about.
Starting point is 00:01:09 So one of the things I like is when things pop up, I'm like, oh, here's something I've never talked about. Okay, so what a use case is, is so imagine we had omnipotent powers. Omnipotent powers. We could see everything. Or is that omniscient powers? Anyway, imagine that we could watch and see every magic game that was ever played.
Starting point is 00:01:31 And we had a little clicker so we could count. So first, we click it every time we see someone playing a game with Infinity cards that use stickers. And it's like, oh, I'm playing a game. I want to be playing with stickers. I'm happy to be playing with stickers. This is something that I'm opting into. And we click. Every time someone does that, we click that. Option B, or scenario B is somebody's playing a legacy game. They, in their deck, have the means to which to steal an opponent's card.
Starting point is 00:02:04 The opponent plays not just a stickering card, but a stickering card capable of stickering while on the battlefield. Most of the sticker cards, you guys don't know this, but most of the sticker cards are enter the battlefield effects. Like, they're one-time things. So stealing them once they're already there isn't going to mean anything. So let's say you're stealing something. Now, we showed off a card called Wicker Picker
Starting point is 00:02:26 that has a kicker sticker. Or sticker kicker, sorry. It is sticker kicker. So the idea is that is a card that could allow, if you had control of it, would allow you to sticker other things, the things you control. So A, you can steal it.
Starting point is 00:02:40 They have a card that is able of producing stickers while on the board. And then there's other legal targets for it. And every time that happens, we click the clicker. Okay. This is basically the idea of use case, which is anything we do, there is different ways to use it. There's different uses that's going to happen.
Starting point is 00:03:00 And what we have to weigh is how often is one particular case going to happen versus another particular case. So in the case of stickers, how many times will people playing stickers, they're playing them because they enjoy playing stickers. That's going to be a lot. That's going to be you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of players. Okay, how many times in a legacy game, or vintage I guess, legacy to vintage game, an eternal game, but a competitive tournament game. So in a legacy to vintage game, will somebody have the means to steal a stickering card that's capable of stickering while on the battlefield and have a legal target for the stickers?
Starting point is 00:03:38 Meaning, how often would you have an opportunity where you're not playing stickers, but you would somehow need stickers? And that is a small number. I don't know exactly how many, but I had trouble believing it would go past double digits, but it's a small number. It just requires a lot of conditional things to be going on. And so what that means is the use case of the first
Starting point is 00:04:04 is magnitudes louder than the use case of the first is magnitudes louder than the use case of the second so when you're designing the whole reason use case is a thing is you have to understand what is the more likely way that it gets played and what is the less likely way
Starting point is 00:04:19 now Magic has made I don't know 24,000 plus cards there are a lot of cards in existence. No matter what we make, it is almost impossible for me to make a card and have the audience not say, well, under the following circumstances, you know, this could happen. Like, well, that's true. But the big question is not can it happen,
Starting point is 00:04:42 will it happen with any regularity? So to talk about this, let me talk about combo, combo pieces. So one of the things that happens all the time, this is a really common use case scenario, is we make a card that's capable of comboing. Usually an infinite combo is the kind of thing we look at, or a super large combo. But a combo in which, hey, once this combo happens,
Starting point is 00:05:03 I'm going to win the game. This combo, for all intents and purposes, is going to win me the game. So a lot of times, for example, we'll make a card, and, you know, in design, someone says, oh, well, if you play this card and, you know, this card, plus card A, plus card B, infinite combo, you win the game. And so what we have to do is say, okay, first off, the first card, how likely is that first card to be played? Second, how likely is the second card to be played? Third, how likely is the third card to be played? If the answer, now, if, for example, the way the combo works is there are two cards in
Starting point is 00:05:43 the combo, they're both really good by themselves, meaning each of them is a turn-revinable card by itself. And all you need is both of them in play to have an infinite combo. That's a problem. Oh, well, each of these cards could be played in a deck by itself. Outside of the infinite combo, it's a strong card. You would play it. Okay, well, that use case, the opportunity where someone wins the game is probably too high. You are playing cards you would already be
Starting point is 00:06:10 playing in a standard environment, for example, or modern, or any sort of 4 of 60 card environment. The chance that any one 4 of and any other 4 of interact is not that bad, especially if the cards
Starting point is 00:06:25 have other uses in the decks, you know, especially if you would play that card even not for the combo. But let's say that, you know, it's a three card combo and one or two of the cards are really not at all worth playing except for the combo, meaning you would never play them in the deck if the combo couldn't happen. So what starts happening there is the use case of that goes down a lot. Now, will it ever happen?
Starting point is 00:06:52 Of course it'll happen. There'll be slower games, like Commander tends to be a slower game. But also, Commander, because there's more opponents, there's more means by which to deal with combo pieces. So the idea is just because something can make an infinite combo to win the game, that doesn't mean we won't print it, you know. But it's a use case thing.
Starting point is 00:07:15 How often will that happen? How often, you know? And a big thing about use case is looking at viability, something PlayDesign does all the time. How viable is this strategy? How viable is this strategy? How often is this strategy? So let's go back to the stickers as a good example. So we knew that we didn't want competitive legacy in vintage tournaments to be dealing that much with stickers.
Starting point is 00:07:41 to be dealing that much with stickers. So one of the things we did is, A, the way the stickers work is, if you're playing a constructed, you bring 10 sticker sheets, 10 unique sticker sheets, and then you draw three at the beginning of every game. So right off the bat, we said,
Starting point is 00:08:00 okay, you only have a 30% chance of getting any one sticker sheet. So usually when you're making a constructed deck, consistency is important. So, variance is a lot of fun. One of the things you see a lot in the unsets is variance leads to a lot of fun gameplay, but it's
Starting point is 00:08:18 problematic in competitive gameplay. In competitive gameplay, you want the same thing to happen from time to time because you want consistency. You want skill to win out. In more casual play, you want the same thing to happen from time to time because you want consistency. You want skill to win out. In more casual play, you want a higher variance because variance is fun. The reason that Commander is a 100-card singleton is that is more variance than 60-card four-up. And so in casual things, you want variance.
Starting point is 00:08:42 So the whole reason, the sicker is meant to be a high variant thing, most onsets are. And so what we're trying to do is, here's a fun experience that's very random. And by adding in the randomness, by raising the variants, it makes it so that Legacy and Vintage less want to play the cards. So there's a lot less reason for you, the competitive Legacy or Vintage player, to play the cards. for you, the competitive Legacy or Vintage player, to play the cards. And not only did we add in the variants on the sticker sheets, but we also costed them such that they aren't going to be... We costed them so that the power level of the sticker cards, or cards that care about stickers, is lower than the average of where Legacy sits.
Starting point is 00:09:23 We, in fact, had... So Carmen Hamby was on our... We had a team deciding what was going to be Acorn versus Eternal. And Carmen's whole job is to say, oh, this could cause a prob in competitive Legacy or Vintage. Let's pull back. Let's make this Acorn not Eternal. Let's add cost to this.
Starting point is 00:09:43 A lot of times, I would go to Carmen and say, what do you think of this card? And she's like, well, I don't think it's going to play Legacy, but could we add a mana to it? That way, I'm positive it won't be Legacy with one more mana added to it. And we did a lot of that. A lot of the costing of things that were eternal in Infinity was to make sure that they are geared toward the casual fun play and not the high-end competitive play. Like one of the things, once again,
Starting point is 00:10:12 a lot of times what you find is when you introduce something to one group, you introduce it to another group. Okay, if we want to make it eternal legal, which is what it needs to be to be commander playable, that means we introduce it to legacy and vintage. But by using use case to figure out how to do things, we can adjust them. Okay, so let me give you another example. Die rolling
Starting point is 00:10:32 in Adventures in Forgotten Realms. Okay. So we're doing a tie to Dungeons & Dragons, and Dungeons & Dragons is iconically connected to both the 20-sided die and to die charts. It's a very key part of Dungeons & Dragons. So for those that have never played Dungeons & Dragons, it's a role-playing game. And the way you determine whether things happen or not is through die rolling. And the most iconic die of Dungeons & Dragons is a 20-sided die.
Starting point is 00:11:01 You do roll other-sided dice in Dungeons & Dragons, but the 20 is the most iconic. Dungeons & Dragons is a 20-sided die. You do roll other-sided dice in Dungeons & Dragons, but the 20 is the most iconic. So we decided we want to have some die rolling of 20-sided dice, or a singular die. And then there's a chart. But the problem we ran into was a use case problem, right? So what we said is, the use case we wanted was, you know, little Timmy or Tammy is just having fun and, you know, it's, ooh, what's going to happen? I'm going to roll the dice and see what's going to
Starting point is 00:11:31 happen. It's exciting and fun. And I rolled a natural 20. Ooh, look what happened, you know? But the use case we didn't want is, you know, it's a pro tour or some high caliber event. And it comes down to this last moment. And, you know, it's the person's or some high caliber event and it comes down to this last moment and you know it's the person could be rolling a 20-sided die and what they roll determines whether they win the tournament right you know we want the tournaments based on skill so the idea of a tournament being decided by a die roll the optics of that is horrible you know and it would make players feel bad so like okay that's a use case we don't want but the other use case we do want so a lot of the things is
Starting point is 00:12:11 figuring out your use cases and the reason you figure them out is okay what can we do to minimize that so for example with dice rolling we said we so want to minimize the a crucial moment happens where you're rolling a die in a competitive play, we really are careful in how we design the cards. We kept them sort of, the variance wasn't as high. We did do a couple roll of 20 something happens, but
Starting point is 00:12:35 you know, those are very infrequent to happen. And so what we did is we designed them such that A, we didn't push them. We didn't make any of the die-rolling cards things that we thought a high-end tournament player would play. And we sort of squished the outcomes so that the differential between... Usually the way they work is there's like a 1 to 9, a 10 to 19, and a 20. The 20 can be a little bit splashy.
Starting point is 00:13:04 That doesn't happen enough, and it's inconsistent enough that it's not going to make people play the card for it. And the difference between the low roll and the high roll, we want to make sure that that is different enough that it means something, but not so different that the variance is too impactful in a way that causes the negative game experience. So the key is we look at the use case and say, okay, this is where we want people having fun. This is where we think it's a good use case.
Starting point is 00:13:31 This is where we think it's a bad use case. And then we lean in that direction and we can take steps to make one use case happen more than the other. That's the whole idea behind a use case is for you, the designers to to understand like the way i like to think of it is you know let's think of like the multiverse of madness you know the the idea of there's many different worlds and many different outcomes i actually find it when i'm talking magic so when i say multiverse you think of a magical diverse in this particular case i mean um one of the ideas of your time travel and stuff is that there's a multiverse. In this particular case, I mean, one of the ideas of time travel and stuff is that there's a multiverse
Starting point is 00:14:08 and that every decision that gets made veers off into a different world. And so there's a whole host of worlds that's like our world but slightly different because slightly different choices got made. So in that sense, the use case is
Starting point is 00:14:23 kind of like looking at parallel worlds. You know, what, how do we get to the different places? What could happen? And then we take steps in the design to push toward the use case we like and away from the use case we don't. Okay, now it's important to understand that sometimes the use cases are very extreme. it's important to understand that sometimes the use cases are very extreme. You know, we understand that stickers is a very, you know, that's us pushing boundaries. Okay, we get it.
Starting point is 00:14:57 You know, I mean, right now, for example, there's a lot of the legacy players are upset by the concept of stickers. Even though we took all these steps to ensure that the chance of stickers meaning something meaningful is super, super low, just the existence of them is a little off-putting. Same with die rolling. When die rolling came to, you know, to a premier set, there was a lot of like die rolling, you know, that had long been just an un-thing that hadn't been something we did in normal sets. So when the differential is something that is high, you know, we are more willing to sort of push apart the use cases. But let me give you an example where the use cases were a little closer. Okay, so double-faced cards first showed up in Innistrad. They came about because we were trying to figure out how to do werewolves.
Starting point is 00:15:37 And as the story goes, Duel Masters, Tom Lepilli was on the Innistrad team. He had worked on a Duel Masters set. Duel Masters had double-faced cards, set. Dual masters had double face cards. And so we knew we could print them. And anyway, the idea came in and it was a cool idea. But we knew that the concept was controversial. I mean, internally, when we were making the cards, so I made, I did the design, handed it off to Eric.
Starting point is 00:16:02 We did the development. This is pre-vision design, set design days. And Eric got a lot of pressure internally to take them out of the sack. There were a number of people, and not an insignificant number, that were like, this is so fundamentally not what magic is. Magic cards have a back. There's all these logistics. How do we draft?
Starting point is 00:16:22 Having double-faced cards really brought a lot of issues. And one of the things that's tricky is, hey, the reason we made double-faced cards is we thought there was an audience for them. The reason I put them in the set was I thought the majority of the audience would be very excited by them. That would be a big plus to the set.
Starting point is 00:16:40 One of the things about doing magic design is we want to introduce new things. I want, I mean, not every single set, but from time to time, I want us to do something that you, the audience go, wow, I didn't know you could do that. You know, and devil face cards were that moment. Um, in a previous podcast, I talked about the story where we introduced them and people like, it was so con it was so outside the idea that we would do that, that they didn't understand what we were showing them. But anyway, so the interesting use case there was,
Starting point is 00:17:09 we're like, look, we know there is a lot of positivity. We know there's some negativity. But we said, we think that there's enough positivity that we are willing to be more aggressive with this. That we know there's people that are going to be unhappy. Like, for example, one of the things we could have done with Devil Face Guards, which is what we did with die rolling in Avengers Forgotten Realms,
Starting point is 00:17:30 is cost them such that no competitive Devil Face Guard exists. Devil Face Guards are just fun and for limited and for casual play, but we don't push any of the Devil Face Guards. Now, if you've played original Innistrad and played Delver, whatever, I mean, there were different things that ended up in competitive play. Actually, I don't know how competitive Werewolves got, but Delver of Secrets, for sure, got played.
Starting point is 00:17:53 And so the idea is, we were like, you know what? We think enough people that the use case of people who are really going to enjoy this is large enough that we are willing to push in that direction, and you know, our belief was that there would be initial, like, when people first see something, they react.
Starting point is 00:18:09 And we knew that there would be a lot of initial, what are you doing? But we played with them. We really thought they were fun. We thought the gameplay was very compelling. We thought the creative was very compelling, getting two states of things. And we're like, you know what?
Starting point is 00:18:21 We believe when the players play with it that the audience, the use case for enjoyment is going to really outstrip the use case of unenjoyment. And because of that, we were willing to be more aggressive in where we push things.
Starting point is 00:18:38 And that's one of the big things about the use of use case in the first place is that it makes R&D think about how will something get used in good and bad. I mean, the thing I should stress is there's no... Okay, let me give you another example where I think use case failed. I'll give you an example from the past where this is kind of before we did the use case thing. So I am a pretty Johnny deck builder.
Starting point is 00:19:11 I like, you know, back in the day before I worked at Wizards, when I just had lots and lots of time to do crazy deck building. I don't have as much time these days. But there was a time when I did. And what I was known for among my friends is I'm going to make a deck that you don't even know how it's going to win. You're going to start playing it, and you have to figure out, how does this deck win? I just like making really goofy decks. So one of the decks I made had in it a lot of cards that never saw play, because they
Starting point is 00:19:42 were really harsh upkeep cards. Like in early Magic, there were a lot of cards that had upkeeps to them, but the upkeep was so severe that it just wasn't worth what the card was doing. And I thought it would be fun to make a deck where you wanted those in your deck. Okay, well, how do you use cards that have horrible upkeep costs? You give them to your opponent. So at the time in early Magic, there was a card called Gauntlets of Chaos,
Starting point is 00:20:09 and there was... I think there was two different ways to do it. But anyway, Gauntlets of Chaos let you swap permanents, I think, of the same type. So the idea was I get out a creature, and then I swap my really hard-to-keep creature with your very minorly, you know, whatever, whatever creature, whatever tiny creature you have, or whatever
Starting point is 00:20:31 creature you have. It could be a good creature, but I would trade it for a horrible creature, you know, a 1-1, because I want you to have this thing that you can't deal with. And a lot of times, you know, I would, Spirit Link was from Legends. It's kind of the precursor to Life Link. But it's different in the fact that you, the owner of the enchantment, get the life, not the creature. So, like, I would put the, I would give you a horrible creature, but then Spirit Link it. So, even if you hit me with it, I gain the life. So, I offset the damage. So, you couldn't really harm me with it, but it was harming you. Anyway, I had endless fun with that deck.
Starting point is 00:21:05 So when I was making cards, I guess sometime in Urza Saga block, I made a card called Donate. And the idea of Donate was, oh, you can give one of your cards to your opponent. And I just wanted to do what, like, I thought it was a lot of fun to give bad cards to the opponent. And I'm like, okay, let's make a card that lets you do that. And when I made the card, I wasn't thinking through all the use cases. I was thinking through one use case, which is, I'm making a goofy deck and I'm giving you things you don't want to have.
Starting point is 00:21:36 And that use case, the sort of casual, fun, goofy, I'm like, okay, that's great. What I didn't think through, and part of this had to do with, like, we now have a very evolved, developed play design team. Before that, you know, it was a development team. Meaning we had people who are former pros that are really good at analyzing and breaking down and really understanding, you know, how a card could be abused. Back during Urza's Saga Block, it's not, I mean, if you've ever seen Urza Saiga block, development slash play design was not our strong suit. So there wasn't anybody really saying,
Starting point is 00:22:12 oh, what is the dangerous way to use this card? So we print the card. So the way the card got used, I mean, it got abused in a couple of ways, but the major one is there's a card called Illusions of Grandeur. I think from Ice Age. I think it's from Ice Age. So it was a blue enchantment that when entered the battlefield, you gained 20 life. And when it left the battlefield, you lost 20 life. I'm not quite sure why it's a blue card.
Starting point is 00:22:39 But anyway, the idea is you temporarily gain life as long as you have the card. But the idea is you temporarily gain life as long as you have the card. So the way it would work is you would play this card, gain the 20 life, trade it to the opponent, and then you would get rid of it. And they would lose 20 life. And this was in a format where the opponent had 20 life, so it was a kill condition most of the time. And so what happened was, I had made a card for one use case, but the more used case, the larger use case was something different. And because I hadn't sort of thought through that, that I hadn't done the homework of understanding all the
Starting point is 00:23:20 use cases, I made something that sort of got abused in a way that wasn't my intention. And that, like I said, that is why the concept of use cases is so important, which is you got to look at a card and say, how might people use this card? How do we expect people? And when I say card, mechanic, you know, theme, you know, you want to look at it and think about how are people going to use it. You want to look at it and think about how are people going to use it. Now, it is not, like I said, no matter what we do, there are sort of use cases that will upset people.
Starting point is 00:23:53 It's not a matter of do they exist. They always exist. It's a matter of what volume they exist. You know, going back to the legacy sticker thing. It's not as if it can't happen. But it is, you know, I'm playing, like, for example, what we really care about is in more high-end legacy, like in a tournament. So for starters, we costed stickers so that they're not super viable in tournaments.
Starting point is 00:24:25 So the idea that I'm playing a competitive game and I play my opponent let's assume I have a stealing effect there are some good stealing effects so maybe I have one but the idea that my opponent in a competitive legacy game is playing stickers in the first case is not high stickers were not made to really be competitive and even then
Starting point is 00:24:41 they have you playing a handful of sticker cards a lot of sticker cards like I said are into the battlefield so not only do they have to be playing stickers they have to be playing a handful of the sticker cards a lot of sticker cards, like I said, are into the battlefield so not only do they have to be playing stickers they have to be playing the right stickers and there's only a handful of those cards that sticker while sitting on the battlefield and then they have to you know, have the steal card in their hand
Starting point is 00:24:58 when the opponent has the sticker thing on the battlefield and then once they get it, there has to be a situation, because you can't sticker things you get it, there then has to be a situation, because you can't sticker things you don't own. So there has to be a use case where then, this lets me sticker something else, and I have a legal target. Like I said,
Starting point is 00:25:15 it's not at all a it can't happen. It's a how often is it going to happen? And then that's weighed against all these games that people are playing and having fun and using the way, you know, the way that's sort of intended to be used. Another example, let's talk about like,
Starting point is 00:25:35 the game has some effects that we think in mass are not fun. Land destruction is the most common one. You know, early Magic, there were decks where the way the deck works is I keep destroying land so you never get to play the game. And then I beat you with whatever, little dinky guys, because all I'm doing really is keeping you from
Starting point is 00:25:56 playing your land. And then, hey, there's a few cards that are creatures that do that. You know, ETP, destroy land, and then fine, I attack you with Avalanche Rider to your death. That just wasn't fun gameplay, because the opponent, the use case
Starting point is 00:26:11 for the opponent was, I never get to do anything. My opponent does his thing, and I sit through the whole game never getting to do anything. Likewise, you use what we call permission decks, where there's so much counter magic that do anything. Likewise, I use what we call permission decks, where there's so much
Starting point is 00:26:26 counter magic that my opponent just counters everything relevant I do. So nothing ever happens because they counter everything I do. Likewise, there's a discard deck where they just make me discard every card. So I never get to play a card because I discard all the cards. Now, the interesting thing is
Starting point is 00:26:41 land destruction, counter spells, hand denial, you know, all of those things in small doses are fun. I'm not sure land destruction is inherently fun, but it's a tool that is useful. And counterspells and discard, I think, are even more, have general utility to them. We want all of them to exist in the game. I think counterspells and discard are a little higher than land destruction, but We want all of them to exist in the game. I think counter spells and discard a little higher than land destruction, but we want all those. So the interesting thing was, in that case,
Starting point is 00:27:10 is the use case was, well, the really horrible use case is not that a spell got countered. It's not that a land got destroyed. It's not that a card got discarded. It was the style of deck in which all the lands get destroyed. All the cards get which all the lands get destroyed,
Starting point is 00:27:27 all the cards get, or all the relevant cards get countered, you know, all my cards get discarded, where I, the opponent, don't get a chance to have a game experience. And so what we did is we said, okay, we don't want the use case of the you don't get to do anything. So we affected where and how we did land destruction and counter spells and discard. We limited how much and how, where we pushed it. You know, we were very careful in how we made use of it, at what mana cost. I mean, each one was a different use case. So like discard, for example, as we start adding in non-land. So if you're below a certain amount of mana, you know, and your
Starting point is 00:28:03 discard spell, you now say non-land. In the early days, I could strip certain amount of mana you know and your discard spell you now say non land in the early days i could strip mine your land you know um i'm sorry strip mine plan instruction i i we had spells were very early on you could um discard make them discard land um we also had a lot of random discard early on um we really have removed random discards from cheap spells like him not expector for example was a real good... On the first turn, I Dark Ritual up my Hymn of the Specter. On turn two, I'm making you randomly discard things, and if I'm hitting lands, that could be game over right there. So, like, we really controlled the cost of them, whether they were random, if they hit land. Like, we really fine-tuned looked at it, and then
Starting point is 00:28:39 we overall looked at how many there were. Land destruction, we were even more cautious with. Okay, we don't want land destruction to happen, like, you know, we don't want it except it's four more mana. We want it to be higher late game, and we made it more pinpoint late answers, or sometimes we made it where you destroyed something but got a basic land in its place. So I'm not going down on land, but I can get rid of utility land.
Starting point is 00:29:04 So it allowed you to get rid of things that were problematic without sort of mana screwing the opponent. And same with counter spells. We were very careful about how many we did, numbers we did, what they cost. Like we spent a lot of time saying, this is the use case we don't want,
Starting point is 00:29:19 and so we can control that. And that's the important thing to understand. I'm trying to explain today in understanding use case is the whole reason behind use case is so we the people making the game can understand how you the audience will use the game and then use that as a means to then take action the point of a use case is not to go okay that's how it'll be used. It's, we make decisions in the design, you know, and a lot in the set design and play design, but even in vision design. We think through the ramifications
Starting point is 00:29:55 of what that will be. And with each of these cases, like, one of the things that's also important to understand, and the reason I talked about stickers as well as double-faced cards, is the... One second, guys. Safety first. The one thing that we always want to be careful about when we're using use case is understanding the differential between the happiness and the sadness.
Starting point is 00:30:23 Some cases, like land destruction, it's so miserable, so many people are so unhappy, that we, you know, what we do is we are very conscious about, look, we don't want the use case to happen. We do not want you having a deck where all you do is destroy your opponent's thing, and the opponent never gets to play. That is such a bad use case that we take a lot of steps to avoid it. Other things
Starting point is 00:30:50 like double-faced cards, it's like, you know what? We think they're a lot of fun. Occasionally it will be someone who doesn't like the logistics of it wanting to play in a tournament where they have to play it because it's a good card, yes, that will come up. But, we think the differential is high enough and that the amount of unfunness,
Starting point is 00:31:06 you know what I'm saying? Like, one of the jobs of use cases or design in general is unfun is not of equal value. You know what I'm saying? Like, there is different levels of things being upsetting to people. That it's one thing to say,
Starting point is 00:31:20 oh, you know, there's this card that I'm not crazy to play, but I really want to be competitive. Okay, I have to play it. And every once in a while I play it and I got to pull it on my sleeve versus I'm playing a game where I never get to play a spell the entire game. Those aren't weighted the same. I understand the first case, hey, there's some unhappiness, but that unhappiness is
Starting point is 00:31:42 not the vector or the volume of the, I played a whole game of magic and all I did is just watch my opponent do something in which I never got to interact and never got to do anything. So that's another important thing in understanding the use cases is understanding how upset somebody is, you know, and the other thing to keep in mind is in anything we do, there is somebody that really really doesn't like it every time we make a new mechanic there is somebody who writes to me with with venom of how dare we made mechanic x you know this flies in the face of what they like about magic this is the worst thing we've ever done you know so in anything we do you know we are measuring and
Starting point is 00:32:27 that's an important thing to understand these cases is we're looking at sort of larger probability you know saying we're saying well of all the people will play here's what we think the outcomes will be there will always be somebody who is adamantly against it there always be somebody that's really mad about it and what we need need to figure out is, is that a really unlikely case? Is that just a handful of people? Or is that a large swath of people? And the thing that's tricky is online, one of the things that's sort of a truism of social media is negativity speaks louder than positivity. That if you like something, you know, if we
Starting point is 00:33:04 make a new mechanic and people like it, the first day it comes out, I'll get all sorts of people really excited. But the negativity will go on. The people that are really against it, they will keep on it. So it's very easy on the internet
Starting point is 00:33:18 to see negativity because the nature of how social media works kind of rewards negativity. And so that's another important thing is sometimes you'll see things online and it feels like everybody doesn't like this. And the reality is, no, a small minority don't like it. But the nature of how social media works means they're very cautious about constantly, like it makes it seem like a much larger voice than it is.
Starting point is 00:33:44 And that's something we've gotten used to dealing with, you know, just dealing on social media and having a large, very passionate fan base. Anyway, guys, so I hope this was interesting. Like I said, it is something we use that I've never talked about before. And it was funny as I was sort of discussing the whole sticker things online. I'm like, oh, that was an interesting thing I've never talked about before, and it was funny as I was sort of discussing the whole sticker things online, I'm like, oh, that was an interesting thing I've never talked about. So I'm always happy, like 950 whatever podcasts in, when I can talk about something I've never talked about before, I'm happy to discover those things.
Starting point is 00:34:15 So anyway, that is use cases. So guys, I'm now parked at work, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Hope you guys enjoyed today's talk, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.

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