Magic the Gathering head designer Mark Rosewater shares twenty lessons learned over twenty years of designing one of the world’s most popular collectible card games. Watch to learn lessons such as “Restrictions Breed Creativity”, “Fighting Human Nature Is a Losing Battle” and “If Everyone Likes Your Game, But No One Loves It, It Will Fail”.
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I play a little magic and a lot of d&d. I’m excited to bring these design ideas to my d&d campaigns.
Put on it the Wall -4-
For some reason his intro reminds me of the Grandmaster from Thor: Ragnarok…
Wow. Bungie should watch this
I look at this and now know why world of warcraft is just not a pleasing game to me anymore. Sure hope blizzard entertainment is watching this.
Cool, thanks!
‘Up on the board!’ lul
Feel bad for mark zuckerburg…That lizard creature will never know the joy of Magic xD
I don’t play magic but damn nice talk!
Absolutely amazing, very interresting, I’ve learned a lot about game design.
This game is such a masterpiece,
Mark Rosewater you’re a genius.
is the pat with discarding cards actually something people di not like? I mean I never had a Threshhold-Card myself and for some reason it seemed strange when I first heard of it from friends bt… like, yu-gi-oh has a whole “race” that lives from getting rid of your cards. Lightsworn-decks don’t do anything else than discarding your cards in order to activate other ffects – or effects of the discarded cards, so why was asimilar mechanic an issue for magic? o.o
Great talk except for that the original lands plus orig layout by far was the most aestestically pleasing cards. Good talk but corny 90’s taste graphically speaking.
Rule 14 is like when bloodborne removed shields from a souls game.
it started a bit goofy but around 8-9 I thought “this guy knows his shit”
“The greatest risk is not taking a risk.” Literally broke my brain
Used this for a paper I was writing it helped a lot.
Awesome speech. Lesson 21… Don’t take the players promos! cards, mats, etc. encourage players to go play and helps shops out to boot
MTG Investment Community https://www.facebook.com/MTG-Investment-Community-1486138674747929/
Great, now I need to go find a Statute of Denial from my bulk card box
In defense of the “gotcha!” mechanic, teaching your players to stop flicking their cards in this way was an interesting choice which I really liked… that being said, I did find laughing hyena very punishing and frustrating.
Absolutely brilliant. Loved it. And for so much more than MtG.
Been reading his articles since the magic was a website…his voice is nothing like I imagined
I kept thinking of how I quit Hearthstone a while ago during this because of multiple of these “lessons” their design team does not follow. In particular, being afraid of challenging players rather than boring them. I still despise Hearthstone for repeatedly not making changes or progress with their game because they think it is too confusing for players (such as making players wait years before we could have more than 9 deck slots because it would be too confusing for us to have more than 9 decks).
Shutterstock made a killing on this
Lesson #11 is exactly why AAA gaming is starting to flounder.
what ever hearthstone is doing he did it twenty years ago
A very good talk.
Mark Rosewater blue bias confirmed. Showing only Islands… 😛 🙂
It’s the 25 this year now
WOW! I was just sitting and watchin’ an hour straight. Super!
Maybe he can focus on the game instead of political bs. Magic is starting to tank thanks to his twisted veiws.
What emotion does chess give. I don’t think all games are about emotion. Some just are about challange.
“Five elder dragons, from a set called Legend, long ago”
Which effectively is the last set I am familiar with and played extensively. I feel old…
Best game design advice I’ve ever found or heard or seen in 6 years, thank you for sharing your experience!
This guy needs to watch his own damn video. If he took his own advice he would stop injecting SJW bullshit into magic.
This is probably one of my favorite GDC slidedecks of all time.
Unhinged was a horrible set.
Very nice
He totally had time for questions! It’s just that they were all his questions to the staff, and it was the same question 4 times. XD
It’s still not Worst Cards Ever
Fascinating talk. These guy(s) are brilliant marketers.
Good talk.
With the exception to the “you can’t change human behavior” bit. As in, humans come in many forms of behaviors, and when a someone, or a company, in this case Magic, speaks about that, they are clearly pandering to the lowest human denominator.
Mass marketing is a thing I know, companies bottom lines depend on it, but really, really special products are born because of the belief of the creators in higher values, and most, if not ALL of creative products that are dear to the costumers hearts, and wallets, were born because of taking risks. Milking the cow is also a thing, and once a product is created in such circumstance, it is easy to water it down to the lowest denominator (Skyrim, Starwars, cof cof), so everyone on the planet can have their grips, and wallets, on it.
And when that happens, well, as trends have shown, it usually signals the end of the line for that product. Millions are made of coarse, but not quality, truly memorable, or life changing experiences.
I know I’m talking about a card game here, but that single argument just winds me up everytime, and thats why most developers’s talk on “how to become successful” have to be taken with a grain of salt. Otherwise, you end up with a washed down product that doesn’t stand out, doesn’t create nothing new, and ticks every box of the so called “success rules”.
Btw on the second Aesthetic issue, apart from his anecdotal evidence, there is mostly a universal praise for that card. If it were represented by the number 7 in EVERYTHING related to the card, I really, really doubt it would have an even more positive effect.
shocked it took him 30 min to mention Roseanne.
commander <33333
Lesson 2 sounds like card quality.
Someone link this to Blizzard. Their Hearthstone team could learn a loooot
one of the better gdc lectures, thank you
Yet MaRo makes the same mistake as Infect by making another un-interactable with Energy, good job buddy:P
I can’t get over how good this was. Mark Rosewater, you are a legend and if the people that make video games can’t relate to this then they were not going to make a good game in the first place.
We don’t talk about Mirrodin block.
And then the created Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare and the plants could move