If everyone likes your game but no one loves it, it will fail

Among all employees at Wizards most of them know how to play magic but don't take part in creating cards. The company saw the potentially useful resource that all those employees were to the game's development. They started to poll the employees to rank the rare and mythic cards in a scale from 1 to 10. A low score meant that the person would be unhappy to find in a pack. A high score meant that the person would be very happy to find in a pack. It's a practical way to assess cards.

Over time, this process lead to some insights that helped the company to make the game better. Suppose one card produced mostly positive reactions with an average score of 7. Another card received mixed reactions, with some people giving it low scores while others gave it a high score. Which one of the two would you feel better to include in a set? If you want to play safe you would obviously choose the former. If you wanted to take risks you would go with the latter. What they've found over time is that in many cases the latter is the better choice.

The lesson here is that a card that generates stronger emotional reactions is more important than a card that generates weaker reactions. The former case is a more impactful card. The latter case may feel safer because not many people disliked it. What the company found is that diluting the dissatisfaction over a card is less important than having a card that has a stronger flavour.

He uses a metaphor of a blind date to explain the concept behind which card to choose to put in a set. If you are looking for someone you make a list of characteristics that you are seeking for in the other person. Now comes the question. Is it better to have a person that meets all your criteria but has no chemistry, or is it better to have the chemistry, even though that the person doesn't meet all your criteria? Most people would choose the latter. In the end a person with fewer to no negative attributes has a much lower impact than a person with with a few, but very strong and positive attributes. The goal of the date isn't to minimize the negative attributes, but to find the positive ones.

Because attributes of people are highly subjective and his example might have been hard to grasp I'm adding my own example here. Suppose that you are moving from one company to another, what drives you to that decision? In most cases there is something that you seek in one company that you couldn't find in the current one. Can the move have its disadvantages? Yes, but for you the advantages surpass the disadvantages. A classic example is to move to something that you take pleasure in working with or that is less exhausting, even though you are going to earn less.

Note: I have read about cognitive bias and toxic relationships. I should mention that what we think is negative or positive can very much be a biased opinion. When it comes to relationships we have to be extra careful because we may have strong bias that put us in dangerous situations. In one extreme we may overvalue negative thinking or aspects such that we are too much afraid of ever going in a date. In the other extreme we may be literally blind and not see the red flags that would warn us about a toxic or abusive person. If a person perfectly meets all your criteria there could be hidden, or masked, negative aspects and we have to be very careful with people who are just too perfect to be true. Now, from the perspective of the sought after perfect person, this particular person may be using the excuse that nobody is perfect to capture, or to fish, you and this is dangerous, very dangerous.

The players don't have to love everything in your game, but they do have to love something. Something has to make them feel passionate about your game. It's more important to care about the players feeling passionate with something in your game than caring about what the players are going to hate. To not love anything in your game is worse than having something that evokes hatred towards it. When something evokes strong emotions it's inevitable that they are going to be both positive and negative reactions. There are even those players that are driven to hate what others love.

I'm going to add my own addendum here about what Mark said about love and hate. If what the players hate in a game is something that cannot be skipped, such as a level in the middle of the game or a mechanic, there is a high probability that the players are going to drop the game. The players can love or hate one or more levels in a game. However, if what they hate is the first level for example, the players are much more likely to have a bad impression that you just can't afford to have if your goal is success. If a level in the middle of the game breaks its flow and pace and causes mostly negative reactions among players, that level is doing more harm than good to your game. In the case of Magic a single card is never mandatory and the players have the choice of not playing with it if they really don't want to.