All podcast content by Mark Rosewater
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I’m pulling out of my driveway! We all know what that means! It’s time for another Drive to Work.
Okay. Today, it’s another in my series, Ten Things EveryGame Needs. Okay. So I’ve talked about needing a goal or goals. About needing rules. About needing interaction. About needing a catch-up feature. About needing inertia. About needing surprise. Well today, we get to strategy. So number seven in our Ten Things Every Game Needs.
Okay. So, strategy does a whole bunch of different things. But it has one major purpose. So the major purpose of strategy is, when you make a game, one of the goals of your game is you want people to play it many times.
And so one of the major roles of strategy is that you want players to have a compelling reason to want to play again and again. You want your games to have a continuity throughout the game. What I’ll refer to as a narrative. You want a player narrative.
And what that means is, the player wants a relationship with the game where they can see growth over time. Okay, this is very important. That when you play a game, you individually, there is a relationship between the player and the game. And it’s very important that you the game player allow the player to create this narrative.
And what the narrative needs to be is, I’ve interacted with the game, and through the interaction there is change that happens. There’s a couple different ways to do change, but the most common way to do change stems from the player themselves. That the player’s like, I played this game, and I have gotten better as we’ve progressed.
So the best way to think of it is, when you are playing in a game, you know, when you think of—I’m gonna use Tic-Tac-Toe as an example, only because Tic Tac Toe is a game in which there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. Okay. Obviously it is not the most strategic of games, but it has some strategy.
So when you play Tic-Tac-Toe, for the first time, at the beginning it’s just like, ooh, what happens? Oh, I play things, they play things. Does someone win? Does someone not win? And little by little you start to realize that where you place thing starts dictating where other people will place things.
Like when you first start playing Tic-Tac-Toe, the idea that I put an X somewhere and you put an O somewhere, okay, what’s going to happen next? And then at some point you’re like, oh, if I put my X here, they have to put their O there or they will lose the game. And if I know their O is gonna go there, you know, you can start piecing it together.
Now, Tic-Tac-Toe, the reason I chose that as an example is, it has a limited amount of strategy. There comes a point where you learn enough that you realize that you can never lose. I don't know if—most of you hopefully have reached that point. This comes a point in Tic-Tac-Toe where you’re like, oh, well I understand these steps, if I take these steps and I follow them, well there’s no way for me to lose.
Because—I mean, I can’t win. In fact, it’s the most frustrating game in the sense of, once you understand the rules enough, neither player can win. It will always end in a tie if both players understand what they’re doing. But the interesting thing is that there’s a narrative you go through with Tic-Tac-Toe, where you start and it’s fun and exciting, you don’t know what’s going on. And little by little you start to learn things. And as you start to learn things, you want to keep playing because you’re like, oh, I’ve learned from this. So in general, one of the things that strategy does is, it enables the player to level up.
So let’s talk about that real quickly. A very common thing that goes on in games is—in fact, this is so important, this concept is built into many games. Especially video games. The idea of leveling up. And what that means is that over time, there is strength that happens. That you get better over time.
Now, in games, a lot of leveling up is literally that you the character gain abilities. Gain resources. You know, you are getting things you didn’t have before. But, external to that, there is a skill level up. That when you play the game, as you understand the game better, you are more capable at playing the game. And it’s very, very important. Players, there is a lot of satisfaction that come out of people feeling like they’ve improved. In fact, it’s a basic human emotion. That the idea that I have gotten better, that there’s some sort of inherent skill.
So, one of the things, when I talk about the psychographics, when I talk about Timmy/Tammy, Johnny/Jenny, Spike, what I’m talking about is there’s just basic needs. You know. That Timmy and Tammy want to experience something. But you know what, all humans want to experience things! Everybody has their Timmy/Tammy moment. That goes, oh, that was fun, that was awesome, that was exciting! I want to do that again. You know.
And everybody has their Johnny/Jenny moment, where they just, they want to express something, and they go, look what I did! That was me, I made this, this represents who I am! Everybody has those moments.
And, important for this, everyone has their Spike moments. Which is, oh my God, I did that. I figured it out. I solved it I won that game because I won the game. I was better than the other player. I was, you know, triumphant. And that there’s a Spike moment that strategy enables which is really important, in that people want to feel good about themselves.
In fact, the reason people do things is because it allows them—I mean not the only reason, but one of the reasons is it allows them to feel good about themselves. One of the reasons people play games is, it is fun not just to win, but to win because you know that things you did dictated the winning.
So for example, when kids start playing, the earliest—I’ll put “games” in quotes, but the earliest games that a kid can start playing is things like Candyland, where there literally is no decisions. When we talk about, you know, is Candyland a game or not. There’s no decisions. You never decide anything. I guess you could take the shortcut, but you should always take the shortcut so it’s not even a decision.
But my point is, it’s just random events happening. But kids get excited by the random events. You know, Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, a lot of kids’ games, they’re not deciding anything. But it’s exciting to see what will happen. Okay?
But as you get a little older, you want to feel as if you have input. If you have agency in the thing you are doing. You know. And the reason people do things, not just games, is you want to watch yourself improve with time. You know, the reason you take lessons, whatever it is, is you want to see yourself experience growth. Of being able to do things you didn’t do before. You know, the reason learning things is cool is you’re like, I wasn’t able to do this before and now I am.
So what strategy does for games is build that into games. That if you make your game such that there are things to learn and there are things to do, it adds a depth to your game which allows just longer gameplay time.
I mean, for example, in each of these ten things you need, one of the things I said is, every—"ten things every game needs” is sort of a primer for beginners on some level. There are games that don’t have any—each of the ten I’m naming, there’s games that don’t have it.
But a game that doesn’t have strategy really—there’s a limited amount of time you’re going to play the game. Now, there are other reasons to play games. A lot of playing games is not just about your own growth. You know. It’s not just necessarily about you getting better. There are games that don’t have tons of strategy to them.
Now, most games have some strategy to them. Assuming there’s any decisions possible, and I would argue games by definition have some decisions, okay, you can make better or worse decisions and you can maximize those decisions.
Now, some of the decisions you have to make are more layered and give you more choices than others. A game like Magic, there are a lot of decisions to make. A lot of decisions to make. So there’s a lot of room for strategy because there’s so many different things you’re doing and so many different ways and different decisions and different things you can make, there’s lots of room for strategy.
But if you take strategy out of a game, then it’s about the experience of playing the game, it stops having the linking between the games other than maybe experiential stuff in between. Now, there are games that just, they’re fun experiences you have, and you might remember a previous experience, and bond socially for example with your friends. And that’s one of the reasons to play some games is, you know, they’re just exciting and fun and they’re not strategic. They’re fun. You know.
Okay. But so that’s the number one. The number one reason that you want to have strategy in your game is you want to create this narrative for players to be able to have growth over time. You know. Because one of the things that—okay, another thing that strategy does is it enables variety in the gameplay.
And what I mean by that is, if your game is structured so there’s lots of different points of strategy, one of the things that happens is, you create a growth for your player to go through. That there’s things that they get to learn.
Because like, one of the neat things is, so, for example, I’ll take chess as my example now. Okay. So what chess is, the first thing you’re learning when you play chess is just how the game functions. How do the pieces move? What is the goal of the game? You know.
So early on, early early chess is really about, just like, functionality. How things work. And then, eventually, you know, you learn the lowest levels of strategy, which is, well, here’s the general rules of pieces. Like, one of the things you do in chess is they assign value to the pieces. So the idea is, well, as a default, this piece is more valuable than that piece. So if you have a decision between losing your queen and losing your knight, oh, well, it’s much better to lose your knight than your queen, the queen’s a more powerful piece.
And as you start learning more and more about chess, some of the default—like a lot of the early defaults that are there as sort of a template to help you slowly get taken away. You know. There’s a point where you realize that well, in general, certain pieces are more valuable than others, but once you understand game state, once you understand where things are, you start to realize that in a certain situation, yes. On average it’s better to always, you know, save the queen and lose the knight, but there might be circumstances—I mean, I picked an odd one there, but there are definitely circumstances where the value between a rook and a knight will change or something. Those are a little closer in value.
And then, as you get better, you start to get to the point where you start, like, looking at opening moves. You start studying, like, general strategies. Okay, there’s people who have played this game for a long time who have studied it, and you start to study the masters. You start to study people like, okay, I want to sort of get into the groupthink of understanding the people who have mastered this game, what have they learned about it? And it’s just layers and layers and layers. There’s an onion you’re constantly peeling.
And so there’s a—so one of the neat things about that is, when you play, you’re just looking at different things. Like, one of the things that’s very interesting is, a beginner playing a game and an advanced player playing a game on some level might be playing very different games.
So I’ll use Magic, and this is a fine example here, which is when a beginner plays Magic, they are focused on the turn they are playing. It’s like, okay, it’s my turn, what can I do? What am I capable of doing? How much land do I have? What spells in my hand am I capable of playing? They don’t think beyond that.
Now, an advanced player is thinking many, many turns ahead. It’s like, you know, what’s my route to victory? What do I need to do? What do I know my opponent can do to stop me? You know, one of the things to understand is, for an advanced player is picking up on what the matchup is between the two decks, what the threats are, and what answers you have for the threats that you need to save for those specific threats. They’re going to have Card X. I have an answer in Card Y. I don’t want to waste Card Y on another answer, because it’s the only answer I have to X, which is a problem for me.
And then, as you get even better than that, you start to realize the importance of reading your opponent. Of looking at what they do and how they act to understand in the moment if they have things. Oh, he hesitated before he tapped that land, that probably means he has this particular spell. I need to play around it. And I only know that information because of watching subtly about what my opponent is doing.
And the thing is, so one of the things that’s neat is, two beginners playing a game of Magic vs. two intermediate players playing a game of Magic, vs. two pros playing Magic, I mean at the core it’s the same game, but it’s very different. So that’s something else that strategy does, is it allows sort of your players to upgrade and the game to upgrade with the players.
And one of the things that’s neat is, strategy does a really good job of hiding complexity. So this is important, let me explain this one. Which is, there are different kinds of complexity built within a game. So one of the things I talk about is comprehension complexity, which is do you understand what things do? How do things work? You know. Like I was saying, with the pieces in chess, it’s like, okay, how does a knight move? How does a rook move? How does a pawn move? And that you need to—early on, it’s just like, do I understand how the components work?
Okay. Then there is—in Magicwe call it board complexity, but sort of an interactive complexity, which is, okay. First is understanding how individual components work, next is understanding how the components click together. You know. How can—oh, if I have this piece and this piece, I could put my opponent into check, because, you know, I can threaten him in such-and-such a way. And that the pieces start to work together, that oh, it’s not just that one piece is threatening him, I have multiple pieces that can threaten him. You know. If he moves here, then this piece can capture him. So he has to take that into account.
Finally, there’s strategic complexity. Which is a step beyond board complexity. Board complexity is understanding how components work together. Strategic complexity is understanding larger values of what things mean. Chess is a little quirky because board complexity and strategic complexity are a lot closer. So let me describe a different game. Backgammon for example.
So backgammon is a game where board complexity is understanding what’s on the board and what can happen on the board. So knowing if I have a singleton that can be captured, you know, knowing what threats are out there. Strategic complexity is understanding what I can roll and what the possibilities are so I can dictate how I want to move things.
You know, a lot of times for example when you’re making moves in backgammon, you are thinking about what the potential things that can happen are, and what—there’s a lot of odds that go into backgammon. Like, it’s more likely I’m rolling X and Y, okay, well let me set up so that I have the greater chance of things that are gonna happen that I can make use of them Or, sometimes it’s merely figuring out what can happen, and what is the greater chance to happen for the less chance to happen.
Anyway, the key here is, strategic complexity is something that beginners tend not to see. Because until you understand—you know, strategies come in layers. Until you understand the layer of strategy where it matters, you don’t even know to look for it.
And so this is another thing that strategy can do for you, is it allows replayability, but that it can hide itself—it does a good job of a lot of it being invisible to players until they are able to see it. In fact, the best complexity—well, the best strategy is ones in which it’s carefully crafted in the game that it slowly unravels itself as players learn more about the game. A good strategic game is a game that, as you learn something new, there’s a new level of strategy, there’s a new layer of strategy. And that you keep getting to unravel new layers of strategy.
As I explained with Magic, Magic’s really good at that. That there’s a lot going on, and as you learn things in Magic, you know, you pick up, oh, I need to start thinking about this one aspect. Once that door opens and that one aspect you’re aware of, now there’s all this strategy that comes with understanding that aspect of the game.
And if you look at real strategic games, that’s a big part of it, is that there’s lots of different compartmentalized pieces, and players, beginners—the idea is, they will uncover piece by piece new strategies. You know. And that strategy can be peeled over time. You know. A lot of what’s neat is, you can compact a lot of strategy into the game, because until somebody understands that element of it, they’re not gonna see it.
Okay. The other thing that strategy does for you is it makes playing the game have a tangible outcome. So, I talk a lot about how—when I talk about writing, one of the things I say that’s very important in writing is, the idea of a tangible takeaway. That when I write something, I want my reader to go, oh. I learned something from reading this that I get to take away, and now my life is improved because I have interacted with this writing. That very good writing has this takeaway moment.
Games is the same way. You want your games to have takeaway moments. You want your player to play a game and go, oh. Wow. I as a person have walked away from this game with something I didn’t have when I sat down to the table. And that one of the things that strategy does for you is it turns time playing into a resource. It makes it have value. I didn’t waste my time playing this game, by playing this game I have learned something. And that thing I have learned has value for me.
Some strategy—I mean, different strategies have different values, real=world, of course, but you want to feel—it’s an important basic human thing to feel like, whenever you level up, whenever you learn something new, you feel good about yourself. You’re like, okay, I am better—and it’s not just knowledge, a lot of games is knowledge, but like, you know, if you go to a lesson and you learn something, and now you do something you can’t do before, or you practice and you get something and you figure something out that you haven’t done before, that there’s this sense of added value that you—humans really want to feel like the things they do matter to their life. Now, not everything does. There’s things that are sort of throwaway. But things where you get some substance out of them, just makes you feel—it makes you justify the time spent.
So another thing that strategy does is it helps justify the time. It’s like, I got to play a game. Well, I spent half an hour playing that game. Was that a good investment of my half an hour? Well, games allow you to say, yes, I learned something. I am smarter. I am more clever. I have a better understanding. You know, that I walk away from a game feeling like it was—I’m not sure if educational is the correct word, but I took something from it. Maybe educational is the right word.
That people put value when they can look at the activities that they participate in and feel that there’s a tangibility to that activity. Strategy does a really good thing of helping make time played in a game have meaning. And that is very important.
Okay, next. Strategy allows a game to adapt to a player. And here’s what I mean by that is, when you make your game, you want your player to find some niche that speaks to them. That the way you get someone to play your game again and again and again is that they’re able to take the game and have some personal connection to the game. There’s something about the game that they feel bonded to.
Now, strategy’s not the only way to do that. When we get to flavor, flavor’s a big way for example to do that. There’s other components that do that. But strategy does do it in a very interesting way and I want to talk about that. Which is, one of the things that happens is, most games are more complex than the individual. Most people walk in a game and go, wow, there’s a lot going on here. I can’t master everything. I’m gonna master one thing.
So the best example in Magicin a draft, and I do this for example. So Scars of Mirrodin introduced the poison mechanic. [NLH--This is not true, it was introduced in Legends.] For those that don’t know the poison mechanic, it’s you have to give poison to your opponent, whenever you give ten poison counters you win the game no matter what. No matter what. Doesn’t matter, you give them ten poison, they lose.
Now, I am a big fan of poison. Scars of Mirrodin was the big return after fourteen years of poison. And the idea is, there’s a lot going on in Scars draft. So I said, you know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna get really, really good at drafting poison. I’m not gonna get good at drafting everything, in fact this is a general strategy a lot of people have when drafting is, they know they can’t get good at drafting everything. So they pick one thing. One archetype, and they go, you know what? I’m gonna force this archetype, I’m gonna get really good at this archetype.
And what it does is, by doing that, is it allows you to invest and adapt the game to say—like for example. When I played Scars of Mirrodin, I was playing poison. That’s what I was doing. I mean, I—like I said, there’s a classic story. I’ll tell this story just because it’s funny. I think I’ve done this in my article but I’ve never told it in my podcast.
So we’re drafting Scars of Mirrodin. So, Erik Lauer is sitting to my right. Meaning he’s passing to me in the first and third pack, because you pass to the left. And at the end of the draft, he looks at me, looks at my deck, and I’m black/green, because black/green is the poison colors. And Erik’s like, “Were you not paying attention? I was in those colors, what are you doing? Were you not paying attention? I was trying to draft that, you were to the left of me, you should have figured out that’s what I was doing, and gotten out of those colors.” And I said, “Erik, this is the sixth draft you’ve done with me, I’ve drafted poison every turn. Have you not been paying attention? I draft poison, that’s what I do, to the left of me, to the right of me, be aware, that’s what I was doing.”
And one of the things is, for me, that draft became the poison set. That’s how I identified it, and I got really good at drafting poison. Because I would dedicate myself, I understood not just what cards in poison were good, but what the supporting cards were. What colors I could and couldn’t go into to be in poison, and it changed as the draft went along. You know, that I gave myself an identity in which the game now had—I was allowed to, I sort of, from the game, crafted from it, an identity that represented to me.
And part of that was, it allowed me to focus on a singular strategy, and get good at that strategy. And that’s one of the things that strategy does is, it allows players to sort of personify the game by picking the strategy that means something to them. And then it gives them an identification.
So I’ll stress this gain, which is, players like to identify. So earlier I talked about the Spike moment, of how it’s very important that you can demonstrate—that you can do good at something. But there’s also the Johnny/Jenny moment. Where you can—hey, I’m saying something about myself. This is who I am. This is the kind of thing that I get attached to. And people go, hey, he’s the “blah” guy. You know, it gives me an identity. That’s important. People like having an identity. People like being able to associate with something. And strategy is one of the tools that you can do to do that.
Like I said, it’s not the only tool, it’s one of the tools. But it’s a very valuable tool. And it also gives a focus. Like, one of the things that’s important is, when someone’s playing your game, you want them to feel like they’re putting their time and energy towards something. So having a sort of strategic depth allows players to sort of pick a facet and focus in on that facet. And then, it allows them to sort of shine in one area. And then they can get better. Because sometimes if there’s a lot going on, they can focus on that one thing.
Okay. The next thing strategy does is it really makes your game play differently. And let me explain what I mean by that, which is that the first time I play a game—like, I don’t necessarily—I’m just experimenting, I’m exploring. You know. And the strategy A. encourages the exploring, I’m trying to figure out the different components to the game.
Like, one of the things in general is, I keep thinking about how each of these ten qualities make the other qualities matter more. So for example, the goal and the rules—strategy really makes you care about the goal and the rules. Because if you want to get better, you really, really—I mean, study both in the goals and how are the different—what are all the goals, you know, and how there are different ways to approach it. And the rules. To really understand what the rules can do. Because if you want to exceed and you want to get better, you need to understand all the components of how you win.
And then, what happens is, as you play, because you’re going to map out different components as you play, the way strategy works is, you can’t pay attention to everything at any one moment. So what happens in game playing is, you tend to focus on different aspects. Okay, this game, I’m going to focus on this element of the game. I’m going to focus on this component. And I’m really gonna go hard on this component. And the next time, I’m going to put my focus on a different component.
Like, one of the things that can make a game real fun is—and makes the game play real differently, which is my point is, you know, if your game has a lot of strategic depth, it allows your players to have a lot of different exploration. I’m just using Magicdraft because I used that before, which is, you know, one of the things we try to do is make sure that you can draft a Magicset many, many times. And the way to do that is, give you a lot of different strategies you can explore.
Like, we particularly will build archetypes out of decks, meaning we’ll say okay, if you’re playing these two colors, this is the kind of strategy you can do. And these—and we’ll map out, you know, ten different strategies that you can do. So the idea is, you can focus on one strategy and get good at it, but then you can focus on another strategy and get good at that. And as you play different times, it’ll—the reason you can play the game again and again is there’s lots of different strategic pockets to explore.
You know. And that’s something that Magic very specifically does, because you want to make sure when you play, that, you know, once you’ve tapped out one area you have other areas to explore, that there’s lots of just general game time. That strategy—not only does it make you want to replay the game, but it also just adds on the amount of hours in which it’s interesting for you.
Okay. The next thing it does is it also, because any one player is going to focus on different things, it makes the game different for the other players. So for example, if my opponent is focusing on one facet, and I’m just responding to them, you know, where they focus will dictate and make a different game for me.
So it adds variety not just for the person playing, but for everybody around them. Because as they pick positions, it changes what’s going on. Okay, last time I played the game, I played against a person who was doing this particular thing. But now this other person’s doing something different. I have to react completely differently.
Like in Magic, for example, I have a deck. My deck doesn’t change. But if I play somebody playing one style of deck vs. playing a different style of deck, what I’m doing changes radically. Certain spells in my deck might go from being really important to being insignificant depending on who I’m playing.
And so, having my opponent have different strategies to explore means me getting to react changes the variety of play that I have. So it both makes the game different for you as you explore, and makes it different for you as you react. So it adds a lot of variety in a lot of different ways.
Game design, building in strategy gives you a lot of future design space. That’s another really important thing. Which is—like, one of the reasons Magic can make expansion after expansion after expansion is, it’s a deep game with lots of strategic abilities to explore.
So we can take a whole set, we can say, hmm, artifacts are interesting, we’ll do a whole block about artifacts. You know. Land is interesting, we can do a block focused on land. Enchantments, you know, we can take any component of the game and look at it. You know. We can take different mechanical aspects and we can go, wow. We’ve never really explored this before but now we can. And what happens when this thing matters.
Like, one of the things that Magic does really well is, that a different set, a different thing will matter, and that different thing mattering will just create whole new sets of gameplay. So another thing that strategy does for you is it really opens up future design space.
Now, it depends on what kind of game you’re making. Magic, we’re making a game with a repeatable sales model. Meaning it’s evolving and keeps changing and keeps selling more things to it. Well, for our game it’s super important we have future design space. Some games might be one and done and you’re never making an add-on or an extra component to it. I mean, you still need strategy for other reasons, but the future design space is less important. But, having it does leave it open for you. And the key is any game that’s successful enough, there’s some at least desire to maybe want to make for that game.
Okay. So the other thing that strategy does, strategy does lots of things. Is strategy does a very good job of allowing a sense of mastery. I talked about this earlier, about how it makes you feel. But it also allows the game itself to have component pieces to it. You know, to have different aspects. And sometimes, sometimes that skill can be hidden, and sometimes you can bring it up and make it a component of the game.
So one of the things that strategy can do for you is—today, a lot I’ve been talking about what’s hidden underneath. But it also can come to the surface. It can give your game structure. You can say—like part of sometimes with some games is, part of playing this game is mastering these different things.
Like, video games do this all the time, where it’s like, okay, you know, there’s badges, whatever you get, or maybe even there’s different adventures you do with different weapons, or whatever, but the idea is that you can structure your game through walking through different strategies. That that can become a guideline for what you’re doing. A guideline for the game itself.
That it’s not just a component to make people want to play on a subtle level, it might be blatantly like, in order to advance to the next level, you must do Thing X. And it can be a framework. So strategy—like I said. Strategy on some level can be this invisible thing that slowly adds layers to the game, and it can also be used as a very blunt framework to connect how your player’s doing the thing they’re doing.
Okay. Next. I talked a lot about how creating a sense of mastery can make people feel good about themselves. I want to connect a little bit with how also it can just make things fun. Fun’s coming up, fun’s one of the ten things.
Now, as we get into the fun podcast, fun is a fuzzy thing. And fun can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. But one of the things that strategy does is, that there is the sense, and this plays a lot into the Spike psychographic, but the idea of achieving something, of wanting it, of figuring out how to do it, and then doing it, and then achieving it is very powerful. That is a very powerful, compelling sequence of events.
And I would argue, like I said, I’ve talked before about my trip to the GDC and Erin Hoffman, and how there’s a big belief that fun has to do with overcoming adversity, of having a state that you’re unhappy with, using a mastery loop, figuring out how to use it, and then getting yourself from that state to a state in which you’re happy. And that—a lot of her argument is that is what fun is.
Well, strategy lets you do that. According to Erin Hoffman, the mastery, the thing that gets you from the thing you do not want to the thing you do want is a mastery loop. And a mastery loop ties to strategy. It means I need to identify my problem, figure out the solutions to my problem, figure out how to use those solutions, use those solutions, and get myself extricated from the problem.
So I would argue that strategy is a very clean component, or a very important component for a lot of fun for players. That the act of a lot of fun is through the act of figuring out the strategy. That’s very important. That strategy will make games more fun.
That if you have strategy—now once again, it’s important—one of the things to remember about your strategy is, you want to make sure that there are tools within your game to help the player understand things and get better at them. Meaning strategy should not be in a vacuum, strategy needs to be layered in so there are tools to help the player.
Now, some games, the strategy is built into the game, some it’s external. The act of playing chess doesn’t tell you tons about chess. I mean, you’ll get better through playing. A lot of chess comes from external—you know, reading books, things about chess. But most games aren’t chess. You know. Most games, you want the strategy kind of built into the game.
But, and here’s another thing. Strategy also builds community. Because once there is strategy, you have a joined thing to talk about. In fact, if you look at most articles written about Magic, the majority of articles written about Magic are about strategy, is here’s how to get better. Here’s how this deck can play. Here’s how you play this deck. Here’s how you play against this deck. Here are cards that are good. Here are combos that are good. You know.
That strategy creates a community, and creates content. And content is key to making a community. One of these days I will do a podcast all about community, a very important aspect of games. But strategy allows a lot of content. Produces a lot of content. And through that content, there’s a shared thing that helps community. So strategy builds content and builds community. And both those are really crucial things for a game. Especially—the bigger the game is, the more this is important.
But like I said, the shared experience, it’s very, very important. And that one of the things that’s neatest is, when you sit down with someone that’s played the game you played, one of the funnest things to do is to sort of—even when you’re playing somebody, or in fact when you’ve finished playing. There’s a great moment. One of the ways you can tell that you’ve done something well with the game is after the players finish the game, they spend some time analyzing the game itself. Meaning the game is over, and they opt in to look and think about what happened in the game. Meaning there’s a post-game.
And that’s a really important idea. That your game is compelling enough that your players, when the game is over, want to go back and look at the game and understand what they learned from the game. And that is strategy. That’s a lot of what strategy does, is it gives context to the game to allow you after the game to figure out what happened. And that context, that post-game, that analysis builds community, creates content, and allows you to bond with other players. It allows you to have—you know, [interpersonal] connections through the game itself.
Also, another thing to remember is that we—I talk a lot about winning, and what winning does. Winning is great. Winning is fun. Losing is also very important. So let me talk a second about losing. Because strategy also allows people to lose.
One of the things about losing is, I talked about this in my mistakes podcast, about how—I talked about how mistakes are great teachers, because losing is a great educator. Winning teaches you, do the thing you’ve done before. Winning’s like, this is the thing that made you win! Do that thing again.
And you can learn strategy from winning. I’m not saying you can’t learn from winning. But losing, there’s even more motivation in losing. Because you’re like, I did not have fun losing. I do not want to do that again. What do I need to do to not lose in the future? You know, what caused me to lose?
You know, when you win you analyze a little bit less than when you lose. When you lose, you are forced into analysis. You’re like, that’s not the outcome I wanted. I need to figure out what I need to do to make sure that outcome doesn’t happen.
And strategy allows that learning opportunity. And once again, it is not bad for your players to lose. In fact, if there’s one winner in your game, and not all games have one winner, but if there’s one winner in your game, most of your audience is going to lose. So that’s another important thing is, make sure losing is fun. Because if losing isn’t fun, then your players are eventually going to get frustrated. And remember. The majority of your players lose.
Now, strategy’s a big part of why losing can be fun. Because if you walk away going, oh, I learned something—I lost, but I learned something. Which means next time, I can apply what I’ve learned. And that’s a big thing that strategy does for your game is, when somebody loses—okay, someone wins your game, they have this euphoria. They’re like, I won the game! Yay! They probably want to play again, because there’s a strong emotional connections, like, I played the game, you know, I got my little reward. Well, ooh, that was fun. And rewards will get you to come back.
So winning the game encourages people to play again because it was fun winning the game. But losing, and that’s important—remember, the majority of the time that your game player will lose, and you want them to come back even when they lose. Right? I mean, when they win, you want them to come back, but winning’s pretty good. Winning gives you a little euphoria, euphoria will bring you back. You have an emotional high that tends to encourage people to do something again.
How do you bring back your players when they lose? And the majority of players lose. And the answer is strategy. Because if they lose, but they feel they learned something, then they feel compelled to come back, because it’s like, oh. Well, I lost, but I think I know why I lost. So next time, I won’t do that same thing again and I won’t lose. Next time, I’ll win. And that is a very, very important thing that strategy does, is it makes losing have value and drives your player to want to play the game again.
And once again, I talked about this in the original Ten Things. When your game is over, you want your game player to want to play your game again. If the game ends and your game player doesn’t want to play your game again, you are in deep, deep trouble. The only way they will play that game again is external circumstances, meaning friends or other people to kind of force them there. But up to their own, if they end the game and they weren’t happy about the game and didn’t enjoy the game, odds are they’re not gonna play the game again.
I mean, they might—I mean, there are people who want to learn something, who understand that they have bad experiences, and I’m not saying a bad experience will forever doom you. But it’s not good. And you want the player walking away with a feeling of, I want to play that game again.
And like I said, winning is easy, there’s a euphoria with winning. Usually they’ll want to play the game. But losing, losing losing losing, where strategy comes in. One of the most valuable things for strategy is it makes losing the game not a walkaway experience. And that, like I said. If you’re a game designer, you don’t want your players—when the majority have to lose, and I’m talking more face-to-face games, in video games it’s a little different because it’s an individual thing. But if the majority of your players are going to lose, you’ve got to make sure the act of losing is something that compels them to want to play again.
Okay, whoo! So I’m almost to work, so let me recap. I had a lot to say today. Luckily we had some traffic. Okay. So once again, let me recap here. Why do you want strategy in your game?
It creates replayability. It allows your players to play the games many, many times and have it be fun.
It gives your game depth. It allows you to explore and look at different things.
It gives your game a narrative. It gives your player a narrative. That the player gets to think of themselves as leveling up over time. You know. It turns the time playing into a resource as players walk away having learned something and feel that there was education to their time.
It allows your game to adapt to the player, so as the player learns the game becomes a different game. It makes it play differently, so that each game is not the same thing. You know.
It makes your player focus so they focus on the goal and the rules. It makes it want to sort of pay attention. And it turn, helps them get a better understanding of what the game is so that they’re playing correctly.
It allows your game to adapt to players over time.
It creates future design space so you have more space to build into it.
It allows your player to master skills and to feel about themselves in a way that is a positive experience.
It allows you to create content. It allows you to build community. It allows you to have players bond between each other.
You know, it creates the post-game experience I was talking about, where it allows your players to create a larger context to your game.
It makes your players feel good about themselves, because winning is fun. You know. And winning, when you had a hand in what you’re doing, is extra fun. It definitely creates a sense of fun.
It compels the players—oh, I didn’t even talk about this. It compels—it can create inertia. If your game is built correctly, the strategy, if the players are trying to figure out how to win, can help compel the game to the conclusion if the strategy’s built correctly. You know.
And finally, it makes losing a positive experience that draws the player to want to play again.
That’s a lot of things. Strategy does a ton, a ton, a ton of things. Now, the funny thing is, of all the things I have to tell you to put in your game, strategy is usually not the thing—like, I don’t play a lot of games where I go, wow, there was no strategy to that game. Game designers like putting strategy in.
Interestingly, it’s not—of the things I will list, game [designers] often will not put inertia in—there’s a lot of things that beginning game designers will not do. Usually there’s some strategy put in, because I think the average person gets kind of the fun of a game is strategy.
My goal of today is not really to say “put strategy in,” because I think most people will put strategy in. But to understand why strategy is there and what your strategy is doing. Because strategy used correctly is a very, very potent tool. And I wanted to make sure you understood today the different ways that it had value. Whoo! Okay. So, yes, I had a little traffic today. I had a lot to say. A convenient traffic day.
But anyway, I am in my parking space, so we all know what that means, it means it’s the end of my drive to work. And instead of talking Magic, it’s time for me to be making Magic See you guys next time.