Don't Make Me Think

Part of being a good game designer involves knowing when to do things your players don't like. Sometimes this is because your responsibility is to give players enough challenges that they have fun while suffering at the same time; sometimes this is because you genuinely know better than your players in how to give them a fun time. There are many cases where you can't give players what they say they want because it will make the game worse for them in practice: In this article, I argue that although people say they want more control and decision points in Magic, Magic's lack of them compared to other trading card games is what has made the game both highly accessible and long-lasting.

Designing for Spike

This is the third article in my series of designing for player psychographics. I encourage you to read my articles about Timmy/Tammy and Johnny/Jenny, as well.

Designing for Johnny and Jenny

This article is the second of my three-part article series about designing for the Magic player psychographics. Check out the one about Timmy and Tammy, as well!

Designing for Timmy and Tammy: Reloaded

A couple years ago (gross, I can't believe it was a couple years ago) I wrote an article about designing for the player psychographic Timmy/Tammy. I decided to get around to writing the other two psychographic articles, but I'm a bit unhappy with the previous article because I felt like I made some points for the sake of being contrarian. This is the redo of that article.

Impact Tremors

My defining guideline for game design is impact. Broadly speaking, impact is how much a game sticks with you: How much you remember a game after you played it ("that was a good game" versus "I blew up an alien spaceship with my kicks"), how excited it makes you, and how much you want to tell the stories of the game to your friends. Well-designed games don't necessarily need impact, but a good game without impact is dry, inaccessible, and hard to pitch to your gaming group. I make sure that every game I design is as impactful as possible.

Until now, my writing on impact has focused on general/"hobby" games because my game company's blog is aimed at a general audience who might not know that much about Magic. This article views impact through the lens of Magic design: What makes individual cards, and Magic as a whole, impactful, and defining guidelines for creating more impactful cards.

Note: Impact is a subjective topic, so your experience with what cards you find memorable may differ from mine. I hope this article provides you with something even if you disagree with the examples.