Understand what emotion your game is trying to evoke

The example that he gives is the Innistrad set. The central theme was horror and how to bring horror to the game? Horror is tied to fear, therefore the goal is to make cards that make the player experience the fear. One of the mechanics were doubled faced cards, where the front face was a weaker creature, whereas the back face was a scary abomination. Double faced cards are cards that effectively double the space of a card, which can have different functions on each face. These are either cards that have a condition to transform from one face to the other or cards that you can choose which face to play when you play it. For example: the front face may be  a small 1/1 creature, whereas the back face is a 10/10 monster. The other player may already know the card, but even then there is a tension created by the transformation event.

Another mechanic in the set was "morbid". Cards with that mechanic have some effect that checks for the death of a creature during the turn, which has the effect of scaring players whenever a creature dies in the game. A creature can die during combat, when some spell or effect destroys it or when the creature is sacrificed. "morbid" is able to make players experience fear by making the decisions that are going to kill a creature have an emotional value. The set was very successful because it conveyed what they wanted in the same way that successful horror movies or novels do.

During college Mark learned from a teacher that "No scene is worth a movie, no line is worth a scene". No matter how good a scene is, it has to have a purpose in a movie, else it has to go away. A line, no matter how great it is, has to be there to make the scene better, else it has to be cut. The same principle applies to cards. No matter how great a card is, it has to serve a purpose to make the set better, else it has to be cut out. The worst that a card can do is harm the set by evoking an emotion that is incompatible with the rest of the set. The same principle applies to the game itself, every part of it has to be made to make the game better, else it's doing more harm than good.

In level design the game's theme has to agree with the level design. The levels have to evoke the emotion that the game wants to convey. There isn't a single way of doing such, but to known and understand the emotions is a required knowledge to achieve that goal. F.E.A.R. for example is a supernatural horror game that achieves horror by means of narrow corridors, night time and weak lights in dark places. Max Payne is a game that deals with the main character's loss of his family and revenge and all that is conveyed in the level design. It's snow, it's cold, urban environment and the levels aren't clean most of the time. Tomb Raider is a game that puts the character under stress, invites the player to explore caverns, temples and natural landscapes.

One last question before closing this page: What if I don't understand one or more emotions? First, there exists conditions that hinders one's ability to understand or feel emotions. Some of them are linked to brain damage or deficits and I'm not going to discuss that here. Second, to recognize an emotion is not exactly the same as feeling it. I mention this because there are also some people with impaired ability to recognize one or more emotions. I bring this up because emotions are often hard to understand and even harder to cope with.

Mark mentions how they were successful with conveying emotions in the set Innistrad. We have a card on the table that is some small creature on the front face, while the back face is a much stronger and scarier monster. With two players we have this scenario: the defending player may be feeling fear because he or she knows that when that creature transforms, the other side is a big threat to them. The attacking player may be feeling excitement because they know that creature is their win condition. However, what if the defending player is not feeling fear? You may ask, why not? Maybe it's because they have a spell in their hand that can kill that monster. What if the attacking player knows that the defending player has that spell and he or she has a counterspell to counter that killing spell? See? Emotions aren't predetermined and they flip from one state to another during the course of the game. I think Mark is very good at understanding all that I mention in this paragraph.

It's very easy to go wrong with emotions and make wrong assumptions because we are often biased. I'll give an example from Mark himself. In the 13th lesson from his talk in GDC (Game Developers Conference) he cited that the "Gotcha" mechanic sounded fun when it was made, but it wasn't fun for the players. How many times did you think something was fun when it wasn't after trying it? That was their mistake when they made the "Gotcha" mechanic. It has happened to me more than once that I made a level with a challenge that I thought was easy, but it was hard for many players or vice-versa. I may think that a level is scary when it isn't for many players. Think about fear of flying, aerophobia. Even if you were to have a group of ten people who all suffered from aerophobia, each one is going to have it in a different level of intensity and for different reasons. One big mistake is to assume that everyone feels the same about something just because you think you understand it. That's a lesson of my own that I'd add to complement Mark's lesson.

The essence of Mark's lesson is that we have not only to understand the emotion that we want the game to convey, but also how the target audience feels it. It's a two way road with a name: empathy.

Reference:

• https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/other-peoples-shoes-2019-02-18