It has been a while since the Magic: the Gathering's set Born of the Gods (BNG) has been out in the public and, while I've been itching to write about it, I wanted to wait for the next set to come out to get a better view of how BNG fits within the Theros block.

For those who are unfamiliar with Magic's formula, here's an abridged explanation. At the Fall of every year, Magic releases a new "Block" which is usually divided into three "Sets" . Each Block is set in either a new or previously visited world that ties in all cards and narrative. Each Set also contains a handful of brand new mechanics meant to spice up the game while also embodying the themes of the Block.

Born of the Gods is the second Set of the Theros Block, a top-down designed world inspired by Greek mythology with a clear Magic spin to it. The focus of the Block lies on the interaction between Gods, Heroes and Monsters and the heavy use of enchantments is used to allude to domains and favors of the Gods.

Let's take a look at critical look at the two mechanics introduced in BNG:

Inspired

Ironically, "Inspired" is the least inspired mechanic Magic has featured in a few years. It favors creatures that are generally aggressive and that a player would want to attack with. The problem is that it is frequently featured on creatures that are meant to be played defensively, jeopardizing the player's ability to make it trigger.

Another problem with Inspired is tempo investment that it requires. When you play an inspired creature you'll have to wait until next turn to attack and only on the third turn will you finally get the trigger. Moreover,  Inspired often inquires additional costs for its activation, and because it almost always triggers during the untap step, it forces players to commit to it before they have the chance to draw their card of the turn and plan out their strategy accurately.

The flavor behind Inspired was that the creature would draw powers from the world of dreams; the untapping represents the creature waking up and being able to use the power it acquired while sleeping. Not only the flavor is very loosely connected to the world of Theros, it is also very hard to understand it without someone just outright telling you what it is.

In conclusion, Inspired ranks low on both gameplay value as well as flavor and is possibly one of the weakest mechanics designed in the last five years of Magic.

Tribute

Tribute was the monster-related mechanic chosen for BNG. It followed on the footsteps of the widely popular Monstrosity mechanic which, in my opinion, was better designed in both gameplay and flavor. Tribute shows up exclusively on creatures and pushes your opponent to make a choice of whether to allow you to have a bigger creature or to gain some other effect instead.

Gameplay-wise this often creates a feel bad moment for the player casting a creature with Tribute. On a surface level it might seem that you'll get one of either two good effects when, in reality, you'll always gain the worst of the two for any given situation. Sure, it would be nice to cast a 6 mana 12/12 but it will never happen unless your opponent has a way to deal with it in his hand or board.

Ironically, the best of the Tribute creatures are the ones that feature similar effects no matter what choice your opponent makes. If that sounded weird to you, welcome to the club; as opposed to enable variety as the original design intended for, it fuels the opposite behavior. It was not a surprise when the designers chose to ditch this mechanic and bring back Monstrosity later in the third Set.

Card Review

While Born of the Gods only introduced these two new mechanics, it did bring back earlier well received mechanics from Theros such as Heroic, Devotion, Bestow and Scry. The best designed cards in BNG expand and continue the exploration of the design space set forth by its predecessor and it was clear that some of the good ideas that didn't fit into Theros were explored here.

As far as the competitive scene goes, here too Born of the Gods fell short in delivering a good selection of new cards to excite players and had a surprisingly little splash on Standard and Modern with only a few cards seeing competitive play:

-Bile Blight: an uncommon removal that proved to be useful in dealing with pesky Pack Rats. It is very likely that this card was created solely for balance reasons as it doesn't seem to fit Theros particularly well unlike most of the other spells in the Block.

-Brimaz, King of Oreskos: a continuation on the trend of pushing creatures to the limit. Brimaz doesn't feature any of the new block's mechanics but packs in raw power and low cost. Nothing about him is particular characteristic of Theros which makes it a let down that the most memorable card of the set could have been featured in nearly any other Block.

-Courser of Kruphix: offers some decent card advantage in green with some nice incidental lifegain and is also an enchantment to trigger constellation. Combined with its pretty good defensive stats it will likely be a staple throughout its stay in standard.

-Mogis and Xenagos: have seen some competitive play but whose merits are split between the Devotion and God mechanics, both of which were introduced in Theros.

Conclusion

Among color and rarity imbalances, two poorly designed mechanics that fail at both flavor and gameplay and being part of the trend that the second Set on a Large, Small, Small Block structure often feature lackluster designs; Born of the Gods gets my rank of worst designed set since Eventide.

Hopefully, Wizards of the Coast will look back to this point and realize that the second Set in the Block has to carry a lot more weight and help tie the block mechanics together rather than just being a pile of new cards with random mechanics that are all bound purely by flavor.

Either that or they should completely restructure their approaches to sets and blocks. Most players would agree that the best draft experiences are often the triple of the same set (i.e: THS-THS-THS) since it lets the set mechanics shine more, I wouldn't mind if they restructured their releases to have just two or even one large set with each release, similarly to what is done in core sets but with the nice flavor and mechanics package that we all love MtG for.

This is something that I hear being tossed around in conversations about games, in particular about competitive ones. The general notion seems to be that games that strive to be competitive should strip itself from as much randomness as possible. 

Today I'm going to dissect the matter and try to point out some common misconceptions that are often made when talking about the subject. I'll also attempt to summarize what I believe to be the real underlying criticism that is posed by advocates of the "luck opposite to skill" philosophy.

My Definition of Sport

My definition sport is: "A game wherein the rules are designed in such a way to minimize random factors as much as possible".

So why is this relevant? On many occasions the Luck vs Skill proponents have in mind that a true test of skill measuring should aim to be a sport (according to my definition) and that the use of random factors will undermine the true measurement of the player's skill levels.

Honestly, part of the rationale employed on that argument is true.  When used improperly randomness (and, by extension, luck) can occasionally be detrimental by handing the victory to the luckiest player rather than the most skillful. But, on the flip side, randomness can also be used to enhance the underlying competition of the game (as well as a myriad of other benefits that I will have to reserve for a post of its own).

For a long time I have been thinking about this topic, so much so that I have devised a phrase that has now become one of my truisms: "There's just as much luck in skill as there is skill in luck". So, if you'll indulge me for a while, let me dissect what I mean by it.

Luck in Skill

This aspect of the phrase is the one most readily recognizable but sometimes also forgotten by many. What this means is that, even at absolute competitions with no overt randomness whatsoever, there are still unaccountable factors that most certainly will affect the outcome. 

We normally view this as the "human-factor" or the "external-factor" of a game. When a competitor under-performs seemingly at random because it "wasn't their day" or when teams demonstrably attain better results when playing at their home stadiums in contrast to unfamiliar ones.

We understand that these factors are just a natural part of reality and that no amount of checks, rules and boundaries can ever completely get rid of them. We embrace the competitive spirit of the game and recognize that these factors, while undeniably existent, are generally disregarded in the light of the objective and concrete skills the game demands.

Skill in Luck

Perhaps less obvious than the former is the notion that there is also plenty of skill in dealing with random factors. The most obvious of which is the skill of dealing with unforeseen outcomes. In a game like poker, a lot of the strategy lies on devising your game plan based on the initial hand you're given, and many recognize professional poker play as one of the most skill intensive games there are.

Sure, on any given hand, a beginner may even beat a pro, but given enough rounds, the more experienced player will incrementally tend to win, based on their ability to deal with the adverse random nature of the starting positions.

Another frequently ignored part of randomness is that, often, games offer possibilities for players to diminish or augment random factors. This means that the veteran player who is more skilled at the game will know at what times to press their luck or to fall back onto more reliable strategies.

The Proper Relation between Both

So if Skill and Luck are not the opposites of each other, what is the relation between them? Well, on my opinion, they can be interpreted as two different axis on a graph.

As such, there is a whole spectrum in which any given game may be designed to appeal to.

A Final Thought Experiment

As a thought experiment; how much luck is too much? In other words, when analyzing the factors that contribute to a player's victory, what percentage can be attributed to random factors and events such that it would significantly impact the outcome?

While there's no clear answer to this question (and it is likely there never will be given the volatile nature of human taste), I have come to believe that the rule of thirds seem to apply reasonably well in this situation too. That is, if on a given game at least 33% of the factors that led a player to win were purely random, that game will generally be perceived as being too luck based, especially by those who tirelessly claim that luck and skill are opposites.

At the core of a successful design lies the capability to deal with common challenges that arise throughout the creative process. To elucidate a few of these I have created this column "Design Solutions" to talk about a few of these problems that I have encountered in my journey as a game designer and offer possibilities on how to avoid them.

For this first week my topic will be focused on what I call "Creeping Problems". So what are they? Creeping Problems arise most commonly on long running games or franchises and are really tough to deal once they are set in motion. These problems usually relate to an element of gameplay that is constantly pushed and enhanced in order to top the last. In today's topic I'm going to explore the three most common ways these problems happen and how one might avoid them.

Power Creep

Power creep arises with the problem of addressing the desire for increase in user's power with addition of new content to a game. In part, it is fueled by the belief that if the new expansion has no powerful items, cards or dungeons to clear old players will be reluctant to consume the new content or quit the game in disappointment.

While the goal here isn't to address the merit of these claims, it is important to realize the problem that the simplistic approach of just "increasing numbers" creates. For one, it can forcefully coerce players to buy into the new content; and in particular, if players perceive this move as a pure money-grabbing strategy they are sure to quit it, as evidenced by the death of countless digital CCGs and webgames. 

This design pattern is really a design time-bomb waiting to set off on the day when players are no longer willing to put up with the rate of obsolescence of content. So how to deal with Power Creep?

Here is a short list of methods one might employ to address it. I've kept the list brief but I might consider expanding on each topic in the future. Also note that for any particular game some of these methods might not apply or even be counter productive. So without further ado, let's take a look at them:

Incomparables - Use elements in your game that can't be directly compared to one another. If a sword in the game deals 6 damage and its equivalent in the expansion deals 10 damage it will quickly be ditched in favor of the newer one. If instead one sword deals poison damage over time and another occasionally stuns the target, it is not clear whether one will be favored by another (provided both effects are balanced within the game's context).

The Escher Stairwell - Named after the famous painting of M. C. Escher, this technique basically entails increasing the power of certain elements in the game while simultaneously decreasing the power in others. This can create the subtle effect of making it seem that the new element is powerful as people tend to focus on the bigger flashier parts but later come to realize that it comes with drawbacks and thus must learn to strategize and circumvent them.

Artificial Incentives - Incentivize players to experience both new and old content by giving them a reward and/or desire to go back and playthrough old content. As an added bonus, this can have a rewarding effect for your long time fans that have already explored that content and can now revisit it while reaping new benefits.

Cyclical Patterns - Instead of creating a system that is additive, consider a system that is cyclical in nature. This alternative doesn't work for all kinds of design but can be extremely useful if you have a way to restrict players from using all content all the time. Power Creep arises from systems that keep adding elements into themselves; however, if these elements are allowed to go away (even if only temporarily) this creates the opportunity of new ones to come into favor.

Complexity Creep

Similar to Power Creep; this problem arises from long-running games who's designers and hardcore fanbase are well versed in the game's systems and mechanics. This ensues a creative push to design elements that are more complex or that build on top of previous ones.

The threat that this design pattern poses to a game's longevity is the steepening of the complexity curve discouraging new players when attempting to pick up the game for the first time. Without the maintenance of the player base older players will continue to gradually stop playing but fewer newer players will come to replace them, starving out the player pool.

We all want our sequels and new content to offer more depth and that is nearly impossible to do without some added complexity. But with that said here are some ways to help keep this problem in check:

Complexity Budgeting - Keep a complexity budget; set a reasonable amount of complexity in which any given expansion is allow to add to the game. This solution will help keep the problem in check forcing designers not to stuff the following expansion with all of the cool ideas under the sun, adding in the bonus to save content that couldn't fit in for the future.

Multiple Formats - Create different formats / ways in which players can come in contact with only part of the complexity of the whole system. Within this method you can segregate the game into simplified formats while keeping the intricacies and complexity on expert formats allowing players to choose where to draw the line according to their personal preferences.
This method can also have the added benefit for old players who might explore a part of the game that was previously occluded by other flashier more noteworthy portions of the game.

Lenticular Design - Named after the optical illusion, this technique revolves around introducing an element that is easy to grasp and understand at first, but as you change your perspective, it subtly becomes more complex as you acquire more in-depth understanding of how one could use it. While not trivial to pull off, this method can yield astonishing results.

Strive for Elegance -  With every iteration, look for older elements in the game that could be simplified reducing the overall amount of the game's complexity without jeopardizing depth. Dozens of articles could be written on how to execute on this properly and, although not trivial to execute (especially on games that have already been doing this for long) it's a very compelling method.

Spectacle Creep

Much like the other two previous problems, Spectacle is another element prone to creep up in long lasting titles and franchises. The idea is that, in order for a premise to be interesting, it has to be bigger, flashier and more adrenaline packed than the previous. Plot points can no longer be about the lives of a few individuals and the media has to "up the ante" and put more at stake.

Likewise this design pattern puts a higher stress on writers who, in turn, have less creative freedom and become limited to explore an ever narrower set of ideas within the confines of the piece. It is hard to include character drama and the overcoming of personal challenges when a character is tasked with saving the world. As a consequence we as players miss out on the opportunity to take a step back and be able to relate with the characters on a deeper level.

We certainly do want our characters to have a meaningful growth and, narratively speaking, it seems odd that a character previously capable of saving the world would be later unable to save a single city. Fortunately, since these problems are by no means exclusive to video games we can take a look on how other media has previously addressed this issue. Here are a few suggestions on how to mitigate it:

Focus Shift - If your story isn't centered on a character or element, but rather an underlying motif or sensibility, change the elements at play. Games and other media have proven to be able to do this many times at this point so it seems to be the easiest go-to solution. Unfortunately it is harder to apply this one to series wherein the story is based on a particular character (like most super hero stories).

Cleaning the Slate - Also related to the famous and well known "reboot". This solution allows writers to embed into the story a natural mechanism of closure and repeatability. Cartoons use this technique often as it makes for a structure that's easier to understand, wiping the slate clean at each episode. In games these patterns are best suited when they are brought into context of the game's design, be it within a match structure in which everything is reset before the next match.

Preserving Space - This one goes in hand with future planning and leaving room for the story to progress towards. As a designer, part of your job in a perpetual project is also to look for limited design spaces and make sure to preserve those so that they don't get filled up faster than they should. There is a common urge to stuff a project with all of the good ideas but one has to recognize that the product doesn't just need to sell now, but also sell in the future.

Last time, I explained what I believe to be the quintessential element of game: engagement. What I didn't do; however, was explain why we humans (and even animals to some extent) are intrinsically drawn to play-like activities. So, today, I'm going to attempt to do just that.

The ludic evolutionary driver

The impulse to play has existed for several millennia  In fact, there is evidence to support that it predates humanity itself; shown by play-like behavior in various other animals, although more prominently in mammals. Everything seems to point to the direction that games offer some kind of evolutionary advantage; but what is that? 

Lets take a look at two of the primary impulses that drives us, and see what games might have to do with them. These aren't by any means the only factors that leads us to play games but they are the easiest to understand from an evolutionary perspective.

The drive for comfort

We human have ingrained in us an impulse that drives us for things that are known to work and to be safe. In plain evolutionary sense, individuals that were drawn to familiar situations fare better than others that took higher risks, living longer to pass their genes and teachings to younger generations.

This driver can be evidenced in several other behaviors that humans partake in. The fact that we choose to establish ourselves in the same location (provided the conditions are conducive to our needs), to draw ourselves to known people whom we have established relationships with rather than strangers and even the fact that we ground most of our day to day activities into routines.

The drive for novelty

On the other hand, always sticking to the known doesn't lead to an improvement of our condition, only the maintenance of the status quo. Overtime, individuals that were drawn to experimentation and the ability to discover new and better ways of improving their practices, found themselves with an evolutionary advantage over others.

This is strongly shown in all of the technological accomplishments that we humans have achieved, especially in recent centuries. We recognize that the exploration of the new is essential for solving tougher problems that known measures are insufficient to deal with. Arguably, the prominence of this driver is the strongest factor that sets us humans apart from other animals, being able to greatly enhance our lives and the lives of fellow humans (although not without some major drawbacks, as history have taught us).

The place for games

Games, in particular, offer a prime  opportunity to conciliate both drives. Through it, we allow the individual an opportunity to explore new ideas and skills while offering a safe environment in which is okay to fail. While playing, we adopt a different mindset that leads us to experiment and push ourselves harder than we would otherwise.

It is no surprise that we humans are drawn to games to far greater extents than other animals. To a degree, our uncanny impulse to play is one of the primary factors that set us apart, marrying safety and novelty into what can be a great learning opportunity.

So next time you find yourself spending a few hours playing games, rejoice! You are partaking on a humanity-wide experience that has led us to where we are today.

Way too often, game designers get tangled in the trap-like mess that is attempting to define what a game is. These discussions are often spun into a philosophical or semantic debates and sometimes even come down to an outright matter of personal preference.

What concerns me most is not that these discussions are often circular (not taking to mean that nothing can be learned from them) but they usually forsake the most fundamental aspect of games; something that all games (and even some non-game experiences) share:  All games are meant to be engaging.

“Engaging?” – you might ask – “I thought the goal of games was to provide fun…”

This confusion is commonly spawned from the lack of clarity when tossing the terms “fun” and “engagement” around and so, my goal here will be to attempt to define and contrast both.

You see, engagement takes place when you are able to tap into one or more essential human traits (which in MMDA we define as Aesthetics) and, through them, hook the player to the experience you are creating. These traits might be the desire to put one’s skills to the test, to discover new and exciting possibilities or even the desire to express oneself creatively.

When we listen to a song or watch a movie that makes us cry, we don’t think of ourselves as having fun at that moment, even thought we are still extremely engaged by that experience. When we use the word “fun” that usually carries a frivolous and light-hearted connotation with it, which is unable to include the full spectrum of what engagement is. Fun is a way that games traditionally use to engage the players but it is not the only one and, as veteran game designers, we should be aware and familiar with other parts of the engagement spectrum to empower ourselves with more tools.

Engagement is the pure design metric by which you can assess a game’s success or failure. Through the lens of engagement you can determine whether that feature you’re planning on adding next will actually improve your game or not. 

We have always, perhaps intuitively, known how to measure engagement. When you experience something engaging you tend to interact with it for longer periods of time, share the excitement it brings to you with others and come back to it time and time again.

Ultimately, our job as game designers is to craft an experience that will deeply engage our players and that should be our number one consideration when making any decision.

For my first topic I think it would be best appropriate to outline where I think Game Design is at in a historical context. I'll be referring to a paper that I wrote at DigiPen under professor Benjamin Ellinger's supervision which contributed to the creation of the MMDA framework (which I'll certainly be talking more about in future posts). So without further ado, let's get started.

Games and humanity

Games have been accompanying mankind for many millennia. In fact, for as long as there are records of human activity on the planet, there have also been records of ludic activities. 
However, it was not until later that we would come to create what we consider today as being a "game", and while the distinction is often semantic and somewhat unimportant, it alludes to the increasing consideration we have grown to dedicate to game-making.
Much like other forms of art and sciences, game design and the way it is conducted have too changed over centuries, today I'd like to share three major period distinctions that help me better contextualize where we're at today.

First Era: game design as evolution

The first era begins with the first historical record of what can be considered as game, The Royal Game of Ur and Senet being major contestants to that title. During this period games had no particular discernible creator, like songs and stories of their time they were part of the cultural reality of the society in which they emerged. Because of that, any given game could exist in several different forms and rules, varying by region and who played them, much like common stories and fables. In this era, games were not so much designed, as they were "evolved" by the same people that played them. This process led to small changes at a time, reflecting and serving the audience that engaged with them.

Second Era: game design as alchemy

The beginning of the second era is marked by the rise of traditional game designers, around the Victorian Era (1800s), starting with people that first made a living out of game-making. In this era, game design advancements are achieved through experimentation and sharing notes with other designers. Just as ancient alchemists wrote down formulas on what ingredients to combine, game designers too created their own rules of thumb and guiding principles to their praxis. This era infused games with wide innovation, helping to distinguish markets and audiences as well as provide standards to play experiences. 

The major issues with this practice of design, however lies on its faulty nature. Like with alchemy, findings and beliefs of a given designer were deeply colored by personal opinion and the audience being serviced, rendering its findings often not applicable when put to use on a different context. Another drawback to this approach is the lack of common jargon designers could use when referring to elements of play to better refine their craft.

Third Era: game design as discipline

This puts us to today, at the tipping point between the second and third era of design. While a lot of advancements are still achieved through the good old method of wild experimentation, with the burst of capital flowing into games, new methods and ideas have affected games and their design. Today, games are heavily tested and metrics have begun to affect our design more and more. In combination with that, we have a rise of theories surrounding game design and the nature entertainment.

For the first time in history, we’re providing formal training of game making in academic environments, much like the Fine Arts and more recently cinema has. As we transition into this new era we see vast opportunities and new fields to be explored such as that of Gamification. Moreover, we have begun to formalize the study of game-making, producing a variety of material and thoughts on the matter. Theories like MDA, Bartle’s Player Archetypes, MMDA, Chemistry of Game Design and publications such as What Games Are, The Art of Game Design, A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Characteristics of Games and others have helped us better structure and organize our thoughts around games.

Moving forward, these new practices will allow us to elevate the craft of game-making even further, addressing the core of the central question of the nature of engagement. As we pioneer into this new world of design possibilities and understanding, we can now begin to anticipate the promising potential that this third era is about to usher. 

It was amidst  an insightful conversation with friends over lunch that the idea of keeping a design journal in blog-like form struck me. I was among two of good game design student friends, throwing back and forth thoughts and ideas on game design and the state of our current industry. By the third hour of sitting there in the comfortable booth that I realized how much I loved to share game design thoughts with everyone that would care to listen to me rambling about it

Since then, I have tried to amass both opportunity and time to do just so. In here I'll be sharing some of my discoveries and ideas that I stumbled upon in my journey as a game designer. My hope is that it may help you, reader, to think about and mull over some questions, pushing us to think more deeply and carefully about the nature of games.

So without further ado, I welcome you and hope to make your time reading any post worthwhile. Make sure to send me your feedback about it, I'll be eager to hear from you.

PS: I have decided to only display the comments that are relevant to the post's discussion, in an attempt to cut down some noise for people who are interested on just the discussion at hand. If you want to message me or ask questions please do so via the contact page, Thanks!