You have to be willing to question your absolutes
Adam, Mark's son, was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) in kindergarten. Mark and his wife were scared that medication could put their son in danger somehow and so they attempted all sorts of treatment options that did not include medication. Some treatments did had an effect on improving Adam's condition but the lack of medication was hindering the treatment's effectiveness. One day Mark had the opportunity to open up about his fears of medications and from that day onwards he and his wife decided to give medication a try. The medication proved to be the key in Adam's treatment.
Mark tells that we are much more comfortable with right or wrong answers. That black and white are more comfortable than gray. In the case of Adam's ADHD they had limited information and that limitation was imposing a harder time to Adam's life and also his parents. The example that he gives is of the legendary creatures. The original rule made sure that legendary meant that no other copy could exist on the battlefield, no matter who controlled it. For this reason they weren't making many legendary creatures because players would avoid playing them. During the set Champions of Kamigawa they decided to change the rule to favor the players, as they seemed to like legendary creatures. It sounds contradictory that players liked something but at the same time avoided playing that same thing, no? The other example that he cites is about black spells not killing black creatures. They did it because the first black spell was like that and nobody questioned it.
The lesson is about questioning your own beliefs. Sometimes decisions are made within a certain context and that context can change over time. The game can change and go in new directions and thus, some decisions made in past may no longer make sense in the future.
This lesson is deeply related to mental health itself. What I've read about personality disorders is that they all share the same core issue related to one's beliefs. There isn't an easy answer on to why a person is stubborn and Mark himself declares to be stubborn. If you read about depression, phobias, anxiety, compulsions and obsessions. There is a lot of those conditions that relates to one's beliefs. People can believe that they are above everyone else as in pathological narcissism. Or the complete opposite, believe that they are the worst person in the world, as in depression. To question ourselves and to reframe the way we think is something that takes up a lot of effort, energy and can bring up ourselves to the brink of madness. This is precisely why treating personality disorders, depression, anxiety and other mental health disorders is hard. Sometimes we may have beliefs that we aren't even aware of, but they are there hidden in our subconscious. Why do we love this and hate that? Sometimes we don't know the answer or the answer that we know is wrong.
From what I've read about mental health not even physicians and doctors with many years of experience are exempt from false assumptions or false beliefs. I've read some stories telling that some people were faced with life threatening conditions and they refused to accept that it was all over. No, they decided to step up and challenge common beliefs. Now I'm not discussing faith or religion, but the fact that we are often lead to believe that a solution doesn't exist, or that it's too costly or too hard but the information that we have that lead us to that conclusion is incomplete or wrong. Think about how much bias we can have about pretty much any subject. Racism for instance is an example of an extreme bias. Mark told us about his son's ADHD and his belief that medication could do more harm than good. He was biased towards accepting medication.
Another example is psychopaths. Most research about psychopaths concludes that this condition is untreatable and there is no hope, yet this is precisely why there are researchers who question "Why? Can't we find something that works?". If you read a bit about diseases in general one piece of wisdom is that it's much easier to prevent the diseases from beginning in the first place. In here I'm trying to say that to be willing to question your absolutes as Mark says brings up another point of view. We often have to change what we are questioning to find the answer that we are looking for. Going back to the psychopaths' case, another way to look at it is to question "We can't change the psychopath's mind, but can we change the rules? The laws? The society? The environment? Can we change our way to react to a psychopath?".
Sometimes it's something deeply rooted in traditions as in any culture. Can we question any tradition? Yes, but that doesn't mean that we should question every tradition just because we can. Mark's lesson is not about being a rebel, although Mark himself admits that he is quite a rebel in regards to seeing things from a different perspective. I'm pretty sure that franchises that have spanned decades of titles such as Need for Speed, Assassin's Creed, Final Fantasy and so on have their traditions. I'm also pretty sure that with names that lasted for so long and with uncountable developers working on these games over the years, one or more voices must've challenged the traditions multiple times. I can't provide an answer here because without experience we can't know for sure whether challenging a tradition is going to have positive or negative consequences in the future.
To give a few examples: Final Fantasy has some monsters, spells and character's names that always show up in every title; Star Wars always have lightsabers, light side vs dark side, force powers and highly advanced technology; Tomb Raider always have traps, high jumps, running, acrobatic skills, etc; If we break the signatures of a game we are under the risk of losing the game's identity but it can certainly be done. Mark himself gave the example of questioning some rules and making the bold move of changing them. In regards to level design or game design in general I could certainly relate that to pushing ourselves out of a comfort zone, but at the same time we have to be careful to not go too far and do more harm than good.
A question may arise which is "Have we became attached to a rule or a tradition?". If the answer is yes, then what made it so? What does that rule or tradition mean to us? Finding the answer for this can be quite enlightening. I'd argue that with more confidence, more self awareness and more trustfulness we can make better judgements and take better decisions.
Reference: