Mark Rosewater is a designer that makes the game Magic: The Gathering. When magic turned 20 years old he went to GDC to talk about mistakes that helped shape the most famoust and profitable card game in the world. He shared 20 lessons that Wizards learned over the course of 20 years. It's a card game but can the same principles be applied to level design?

Note: when Mark talks about players he's talking about an average. Not every player is the same and there is variance among the player base.

Part 1, part 2, part 3, Mistakes? I've made a few, Because salt makes mistakes taste great

In each of the lessons I can see how it's possible to relate what Mark Rosewater said to level design:


  • Lesson 1: Fighting against human nature is a losing battle

  • Lesson 2: Aesthetics matter

  • Lesson 3: Resonance is important

  • Lesson 4: Make use of piggybacking

  • Lesson 5: Don't confuse "interesting" with "fun"

  • Lesson 6: Understand what emotion your game is trying to evoke

  • Lesson 7: Allow the players the ability to make the game personal

  • Lesson 8: The details are where the players fall in love with your game

  • Lesson 9: Allow your players to have a sense of ownership

  • Lesson 10: Leave room for the player to explore

  • Lesson 11: If everyone likes your game but no one loves it, it will fail

  • Lesson 12: Don't design to prove you can do something

  • Lesson 13: Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win

  • Lesson 14: Don't be afraid to be blunt

  • Lesson 15: Design the component for its intended audience

  • Lesson 16: Be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them

  • Lesson 17: You don't have to change much to change everything

  • Lesson 18: Restrictions breed creativity

  • Lesson 19: Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them

  • Lesson 20: All the lessons connect

  • Extra lesson 1: If your theme isn't common, it isn't your theme

  • Extra lesson 2: Every set is someone's first set

  • Extra lesson 3: Sometimes on the way to beautiful, you have a lot of chaos

  • Extra lesson 4: You have to be willing to question your absolutes

  • Extra lesson 5: Stop trying to make the thing everyone else wants you to make. Make the thing you want to make. You're at you're best when you're passionate about what you're doing. Find your passion

  • Extra lesson 6: The right answer is not always apparent at first

  • Design lesson 1: Look outside the box only after you've looked inside it (I changed the order in comparison to the original lessons. No particular reason, it's just that I didn't read and write in the same order as Mark)

  • Design lesson 2: If you can do without it, do without it

  • Design lesson 3: If it doesn't fit, don't force it

  • Design lesson 4: Listen to the uninvested

  • Design lesson 5: Nothing is set in stone

  • Design lesson 6: Everything affects everything

  • Design Lesson 7: Give yourself time

  • Design lesson 8: Mistakes are valuable

  • Design lesson 9: Don't fight human nature

  • Design lesson 10: Pay attention to feedback


Lessons by Sam Stoddard, one of the developers of Magic. For people unaware of the difference between design and development in regards to making Magic. Design is about concept. Development is about making that concept a real card, with tweaks to its concept to make it work in the game's environment. There is more than just that, but for now it suffices.

Top 8 lessons I've learned from leading a development team (Wayback machine archive. Sam has left Wotc in March 2019)


  • Development's lessons 1 and 2: Nothing beats good process | Iterate, Iterate, Iterate

  • Development's lessons 3 and 4: Math is more reliable than intuition | Don't try to fix everything at once

  • Development's lessons 5 and 6: Try the wrong way first | Change is good... and frightening

  • Development's lessons 7 and 8: Listen to dissenting voices | Making Magic sets is really hard