Design the component for its intended audience

When magic was made most of the cards had the mindset of a mathematician. The game was made by one and this reflects on the game's rules and formats. Most, if not all, the rules are based on logic. The damage, life, power, mana cost, everything is based on integers. The number of cards in a deck, the hand size, always integers. Magic relied and still relies on a lot of probability and combinatorics. Mark declares himself a passionate person that is driven by emotions and when he began creating cards he wanted to take an approach that favoured the player's emotions over thinking in numbers. To explain his goal to the other designers in the company he resorted to creating psycho graphic profiles of players. Each profile representing a player type.

Mark created three profiles. Timmy are players driven by emotions, they want cards that reflect that in the game. They want cards that have great impact and allow players to interact with each other, bound with cards or people. Johnny are the players that want to express themselves, they want freedom to create and freedom to choose. The game is designed around that, after all there are thousands of cards and strategies. Spike are the players that want to prove something. They want to challenge themselves and magic is a challenging game. It's important to stress that those archetypes are an oversimplification meant to give you a general idea. There are subtypes and that doesn't mean that players can't have multiple traits.

Mark cites that card as an example of an unsuccessful card. First there is randomness, so it's not a card for johnnies. Timmy likes the card because it has a randomness associated to its effect that feels great. There is a certain tension associated to unpredictability. Spike also likes the card because it has two sides, two possible outcomes and that means that it requires a certain degree of skill to play with it. However, for the same reasons the card is disliked by both Timmy and Johnny. Timmy wants to experience the tension, the impact on the board or the players, but the card presents two outcomes where neither one is powerful enough to fulfil Timmy's desires. Spike doesn't like the fact that although he sees that the card presents two sides, neither one requires skill to choose because it relies on the randomness of a coin flip.

It's a well known lesson that most people should know. When you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one. The industry is well aware of that. A car can have one attribute that stands out from the rest such as space, height, engine, being comfortable, etc. You can't have all in one to please every consumer. What does the automobile manufactures do? They make different types of cars for different types of consumers. That's what Mark is trying to say. A card has to be designed for a specific target audience. You can't make a card to please everyone, but you can make different cards for different types of players. One card is micro design. The whole game is macro design. The game itself is already a subset of all players of all games out there. It's important to know that the player base of your game is further subdivided into subsets.

A game have to be targeted at a certain audience and to achieve that you have to study your audience. A game can't target multiple audiences if they are incompatible with each other. In level design the same concept applies. A game is made with many levels and they are all different from each other. The set of all levels in a game must have its target audience. For example: a game presents many challenges in many different levels. If the challenges in a single level are too different from each other, the game is going to suffer from a lack of cohesion at the micro level. At the macro level, if the levels lack cohesion with each other the game ends up unbalanced and with an uncertain target audience.

Credits: LightningBoltForever

Jedi Knight 2 suffered from a lack of cohesion in one place. When the player is in Cairn Docks the first challenge is to fight Shadow Troppers. A new type of enemy that is very powerful. After fighting them the player faces a new challenge that is the exact opposite of fighting. The player has to avoid being detected by enemies and go stealth most of the time. That change of pace was too abrupt. They could have made both parts in different levels. If a game breaks the pace like this in many levels, the game ends up feeling bad.

By itself is not wrong to mix different things in the same level. A game can very well have both action and puzzles and Jedi Knight 2 does that throughout the game. The important aspect is how it's done. In the case of Cairn Docks the transition from a hard battle to going stealth was too abrupt. There is a level in which the player can take control of a cannon to shot down Tie Fighters. It's a mini game that isn't part of a mission and isn't required to progress. Could the game have include one level dedicated to shooting down Tie fighters? No, because it would feel out of place in this game.

I can see the connections between this lesson and Mark's other lessons, namely "Don't confuse interesting with fun" and "Don't design to prove you can do something". It's really easy to confuse interesting with fun and at the same time try to prove that you can do something new. Making both mistakes at the same time will inevitably lead to designs that fail to meet the audience's desires or expectations. Suppose there is a game with 4 or 5 different game modes and I decide to make a level for one of those game modes. Because I like three of those modes I pick up elements from each one and merge into one level. I'll be surely trying to prove that I can do it, thinking it'll work and I'll be seeing my idea of mixing different elements into one map as original. Mark gave that red card above as a prime example and I gave a level as an example. I could think about environment art too. For example mixing Ancient Greek with Science Fiction with no cohesion between them. I'd argue that Duke Nukem 3D was successful in combining aliens and girls, whereas Prey 2006 unsuccessfully combined native americans with aliens.