Designing for Low-Skill Players: a Postlude on Rules

There's one more LSP tendency that I didn't mention earlier. Unlike the others I discussed, it's not a question of preferences; rather, it's about knowledge of the game. LSPs rarely have a deep and detailed understanding of the rules of Magic.

This fact won't surprise anyone who has read the Comprehensive Rules. They are absurdly long and complicated. This is desirable, in one sense; Magic has a lot more space for complexity than many other games. But it also means that the average player has only a crude understanding of the game engine's inner workings.

Designing for Low-Skill Players: Conclusion

In the course of this series, we've talked about the various desires and priorities that appear more strongly in LSPs than their more skilled counterparts. We've discussed what sorts of designs appeal most to LSPs. But there's an underlying question we haven't addressed: to what extent should the game cater to LSPs?

Here's my answer: Magic needs cards that appeal to all LSP tendencies. However, only a handful of those cards need to be good in tournament play. 

Designing for Low-Skill Players: Subtle Rightness

One tendency of LSPs that I find particularly surprising and unintuitive is that they don't read cards.

Oh, they'll glance at them and get a feeling for what the card does. But they won't internalize the rules text; instead, they'll form a vague mental impression of the card's effect ("big dragon", "mana elf", or "lightning bolt") and only call to mind the actual text when it becomes relevant. In short, they evaluate cards by feeling as well as mechanics. This tendency is shared by many HSPs as well, but it shows up far more at lower skill levels.

Designing for Low-Skill Players: Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em

Here's an obvious fact about human psychology: Losing feels bad, whereas winning feels good. 

Here's a less obvious fact about human psychology: Losing feels significantly worse than winning feels good. This phenomenon is called "loss aversion", and it explains why consumers would rather avoid a $5 surcharge than get a $5 discount, even though they amount to exactly the same thing. Our brains place a heavier weight on keeping things we already have than on acquiring new things of equal value. From the perspective of classical economics, this is utterly irrational. But it's how people work, and designing against human nature is a losing battle.

Designing for Low-Skill Players: The Best of All Possible Worlds

Gottfried Leibniz may have been a brilliant philosopher and mathematician, but he just couldn't catch a break. Not only did Newton's cronies unfairly accuse him of plagiarizing the calculus, but Voltaire viciously parodied him in Candide. Leibniz was caricatured as the naive Dr. Pangloss, who persistently asserted that we live in the best of all possible worlds. 

Little did Voltaire know that this ideal world, known to us as "Magical Christmas Land", would one day be populated by millions of low-skill players!

Designing for Low-Skill Players: Get a Life

Many instructions for games begin with that magical phrase: "Object of the Game". Players need to learn the goal before the rest of the rules because that gives them a framework for understanding the available moves. In Magic, the goal is to reduce the opponent's life total to zero. 

Because the goal is to get in twenty points of damage before the opponent, it is convenient to think of the life totals as a "score" for the game. If you're up 20 to 10, you're winning by a lot. If you're down 12 to 14, you're losing, but not by much. This way of thinking is applicable to virtually every game with a numerical scoring system. (Blazers leading the Knicks 90 - 75? Good day in Portland.) 

It is also completely and utterly incorrect when it comes to Magic.

Designing for Low-Skill Players: Introduction

One of the crucial hurdles for novice game designers is understanding their target audience. It's easy to design games that you want to play; it's harder to design games that the rest of the world also wants to play.

Amateur Magic designers often face the problem that they are distinctly non-average as Magic players. They're likely to be experienced in many formats and styles of play, knowledgeable about the game and its history, and at least skilled enough to hold their own at FNM. By contrast, the target audience for Magic is the kitchen table crowd: players whose tournament experience consists of one prerelease every few years. Most of these players are pretty unskilled at the game. This fact has a great deal of importance for designers.