Allow the players the ability to make the game personal

Mark remembers a talk that he had with Christopher Rush, one of the most famous cards illustrator. Among one of his illustrations, the Black Lotus, the most famous and expensive card from the game. In that talk Chris pitched the idea of making basic lands with no text and full frame art. The argument to support this idea was that basic lands are something that every player knows, why not skip the text box all together? The argument against it was that basic lands shouldn't stand out on the board and draw more attention than all other cards that should be more important for the players.

After some time Mark was making a new, comedy inspired, set (Unglued). That set was meant to break the normal rules of the game and allow for some wacky new stuff. Mark used that opportunity to persuade the company in printing full frame art lands. The set wasn't a regular one and wasn't meant for competitive play. Nobody was against printing such lands in such set. The huge success of the new lands proved that the players loved the idea and over the years it was repeated on other sets.

A personal comment: sometimes the developers forbid themselves based on beliefs that are later disproved. In this case, nobody wanted to support the idea of full frame art lands, except for Mark. Could it have failed? Yes. But without trying they would never known.

Mark learned, in college, some interesting fact about advertising. If you are facing a multitude of products to choose from and you have never bought of any of them, which one you are more likely to choose? The brain has a tendency to look for the option that is the closest to something you are familiar with and that often means looking for a known brand. The reason for this is that if you already know the brand you assume that that brand has the overall same quality across many products. The lesson that he's giving is that full frame art lands have an emotional value. Magic is well known for allowing players to choose colors, different strategies, each card evokes some emotion and there are multiple forms to win. Magic is a strong brand and the brand new full frame art lands are one more way to strengthen this connection between the players, the game and the brand.

The essence in Mark's lesson is that the players want to play the game in whichever way they desire to. If the players hate a card, they can choose to not play with it. If they hate a format, they can play another or create a format of their own. As Mark himself notes, your audience is very powerful because their voice is very loud. If they stop playing your game, that's the nail in the coffin for that game's makers. Let's think about Bioshock. What made Bioshock stand apart from other first person shooters? It offered a deep story and customization. The players were offered powers, upgrades, different weapons and they could choose their own path to progress. That's all more related to game mechanics and design philosophies but if we go down to level design, what can we learn?

Think about car racing games. There is a fixed track and you can't change that. Some racing games such as Need for Speed brought the idea of shortcuts. The track is still fixed, but now we give the players the option to take a shortcut and use it to their advantage to win more races. Going further and we have games that allow players to build their own tracks. Doom in 1993 offered secrets and the players could pit monsters against each other to save their ammo. F.E.A.R. offered different paths in each level and players could attack from different points. F.E.A.R. took one step further and had an A.I. that could use the secondary paths to ambush the player. Now I lack the professional experience, but look at the Jedi Knight games. The level design made sure that the players can complete each level in multiple ways, some being harder or faster than others. That's the key: the players want to have their own personal experience. The fact that there are multiple channels dedicated to speed runs or players that challenge themselves to complete an RPG without levelling up or a game without taking damage proves Mark's point.

The details are where the players fall in love with your game

This card wasn't meant to cause any major impact, but it did. The card itself wasn't powerful. The impact came from a little creature on the top of the dragon's head. It's called "Fblthp" (can't pronounce it). Players fell in love with it and produced a lot of montages, memes to the point that the company itself sold products based on it. This proves that very often the players are very passionate about little details in a product. Players can be very passionate about an artist or a character as in this case.

The lesson here is that grandiose things or things that are common attract too much attention. Players have a natural desire to seek individuality within the game and to do so they are naturally attracted by small details, as in the case of the creature above. This is true for the game as a whole. Some players are attracted by lightning bolts. Some players are attracted by angels. Some players are attracted by a character. Some players love a certain type of card. There are unlimited details, some larger than others, that attract players in some direction. Often the impact of such small details is underrated or wasn't predicted.

Does this apply to level design? Yes. Very often the players fall in love with some small detail in a game. It can be a particular level among all levels. It can be a character among all other characters. It can be the clothes that a character wears. It can be a certain room from a level, a small piece of a level. It can be a poster in a level. Some players feel delighted with the level's background, mountains for example. There are also players who experience joy with a scene such as a body placed on a chair inside a building for example (I'm talking about beauty, not about dark thoughts mind you). Many other details can capture a player's attention such as sounds, textures, lights and it could even be non intentional or predicted by whoever made the level.

Allow your players to have a sense of ownership

Magic has a property that it has multiple formats to choose from. Each format restricts what cards you can play with. The official formats are sanctioned and adopted in tournaments. But the player are free to create their own rules and formats. "Commander" for example was created by judges that wanted to have fun after long hours judging tournaments. Commander has its own set of rules and one of them is to restrict decks to have exactly 100 cards, not fewer and not more. The company saw the format growing in popularity over time and when it was clear that people loved it, they sanctioned it and started to sell pre constructed decks made for this format.

The lesson that Mark is teaching is that the players are more likely to embrace what they feel they took part in its creation. It's only natural for people to have a stronger connection with their own work. This applies to jobs, objects, art, children, etc. We could go further and discuss psychology and what makes a person feel attached to its own creation but that is another topic. Magic creates attachment through many channels. The most basic form is attachment in magic is the freedom to choose your cards and build your deck. Every player owns the cards and this really makes the game personal.