Designing 'MARVEL SNAP' 

55:20 for those wondering what the questioner and Brode were saying that sounded like "fatooie", "FTUE" is "first time user experience".

Ben is such a great presenter and energy. I love everything about Marvel Snap. Never been this addicted to any mobile game before.

I worked this talk and helped get Ben comfortable as he had just lost his voice traveling to SF because his flight was canceled. Glad it all worked out! Was great meeting and "chatting" with him. =)

Great presentation. I find Ben to be one of the best spokespersons for any brand, ever. His personality is infectious, you can see his passion for what he does. While I don't play Marvel Snap any more, I stand behind a statement I tell anyone who asks me; it is one of, if not the single best designed card game I have ever played, and I have played a lot over the years.

I could listen to Ben Brode talk all day, really interesting talk and a great game

29:20 very interesting that the idea to not reveal all 3 locations at start was a simplicity choice essentially, and has resulted in adding a lot of depth to the snapping mechanic and how to hedge your starting hands even after one good location.

I love what this man has done. That being said, I suffered piloted shredder for years because he wouldn't nerf digital cards.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Ben around 2008 at GamesCon in Leipzig, Germany. At the time, the WoW TCG was still in the making and scheduled for a release later the same year (I might mix up the exact date by a year, sorry if that's the case). He was just as full of energy back then as he is right now. It was a "big deal" for someone from the mighty company Blizzard to interact with us lowly folks from the TCG company Upper Deck or at least that's what everybody told me. Ben was down to earth, humble, as I said FULL of energy and he had such a passion for the game. It's no surprise to me that he kept climbing the ladder and I think that what he's achieved with Marvel Snap deserves gigantic kudos. As someone that's been playing TCGs for more than 10 years, all the innovation that Snap brought to the table can't be underestimated. It truly is revolutionary in my humble opinion. Several other card games will benefit because of Marvel Snap as it will draw more people in and have them (eventually) try out other card games. Often those that have more complexity (whether or not that's a good thing is up to everybody's own taste). I hope he won't stop what he's doing at the moment as he's such an important voice for the entire industry. 🙂

His part about limiting the card descriptions to roughly eight words is brilliant. I've done some billboard designs in the past, and the first piece of advice I got was to never use more than eight words. When people are driving 70mph on the interstate, they need to be able to understand exactly what you need them to as quickly as possible. When there's so much competition in games, it's good to be as clear and concise as possible.

Great talk and what a trooper to save his voice all day just to not let everyone down.

Ben is lovely and the best

Ben WAS Hearthstone, and since he left, it can never be as great. I eventually rediscovered his skill in SNAP and now I'm a fan of his all over again.

I really like how this basically also contains other top GDC design talks such as input and output randomness, depth vs complexity, loss aversion etc. Plus Ben is somehow such a captivating speaker

One of my favourite GDC talks. Great job Ben.

There’s a lot in here than can be applied in some way to other creative spaces. This was an awesome talk.

We need an multiple episode in depth style series for this game

00:20 - Introduction of Ben Brode 01:12 - Start of Ben Brode's talk 02:20 - Complexity and depth in games 03:34 - Reducing complexity in Marvel Snap 07:12 - First-time user experience (FTUE) in Plants vs. Zombies 11:47 - Inspiration from Plants vs. Zombies and applying it to Marvel Snap 13:45 - The zero-sum nature of card games 15:55 - Creating positive-sum gameplay in Marvel Snap 17:42 - Using bots to simulate player experience 19:19 - Playtesting and iterating on the design 21:52 - Audience Q&A begins 22:20 - Question on how to balance rules and interactions 26:29 - Question on expanding the Marvel Snap game 30:13 - Question on how to reduce complexity and not lose depth 33:21 - Question on player choice and agency in Marvel Snap 37:07 - Question on the role of randomness in the game 40:28 - Question on the balance between depth and complexity 44:01 - Question on balancing short card text with clarity 48:47 - Question on first-time player experience and design choices 52:32 - Question on keywords and card text balance 55:00 - Question on Marvel IP and game mechanics 58:00 - Question on monetization and player-friendly design 1:00:30 - End of Q&A and conclusion of the talk.

It’s the best card game I’ve played since Magic as a kid way back when. Truly amazing.

This is one of the best design talks I've seen in a long time. I'm a game designer and hardcore Marvel Snap player myself, so I enjoyed this excellent talk even more.

Oh man I missed seeing Ben Brode on stage. I have not much interest in card games but his delivery made it super interesting and fun and I ended up feeling like I want to prototype a card game.

I’m surprised air land and sea wasn’t mentioned for inspirations. But this was such a cool presentation. I love this game so much.

Ben Brode and his Marvel Snap ads were so good I literally downloaded and played just because of him. I had no ideas what the game was lol

Ben is just incredible. The positivity, the design philosophy and presentation charm.

Great talk! It was inspirational, educational, and engaging! ⭐

Great talk Ben. When you're playing snap, a lot of the design decisions seem pretty intuitive but obviously they're not given how many design iterations the team went through. It certainly very interesting to hear about how even a simple game like this can go through such a wide variety of different iterations. Big fan of snap, played everyday and in fact I have every single card unlocked. As an aside I feel like Ben Brode would probably be a really good boss; the fact that he went to every single employee to explain the big pivot that they were doing, very few bosses would do something like this. I just started my own company, so I'll have to keep that in mind.

We need that 2v2 . Great video

Simple and deep. Two seemingly disparate qualities that Ben Brode somehow married and MASTERED in Marvel Snap. I've learned so much from all Brode and co. have done in the TCG space. Thanks for this presentation, Ben. I'm adding this to my repository of game design knowledge in Notion. :)

Ben is the big-head hero we don't deserve but are incredibly lucky to have.

This is awesome!!! thank you so much GDC and Ben Brode. I am currently designing a digital card game and this definitely helping out. Cheers!!!

Such a great speaker. I would love to see him have a podcast or made his own videos where he spoke about various game mechanics and the methodology of development across the game genres in the industry

I just watched full hour without me realising that Good job from ben and hope for the best

Absolutely brilliant public speaker. I’m taking notes! Thanks for sharing your thoughts and expertise, Ben.

Very interesting, loved this! ❤

Thank you so much for this 🙏🏾

Hell of a presentation, both entertaining and educational!

Loving marvel snap since launch and what a guy.. could listen to him all day. great talk.

The Eye of Judgement showed up and unlocked a childhood memory I had no idea was there. Thanks Benny boy.

He has really good energy. Nice presentation 😊

Miss the Ben Hearthstone days, always enjoyed his presence and it's nice to see him again :)

excellent presentation!

This talk was amazing!!

Snap is an amazing game. Team at Second Dinner is top notch. Wonder what they'll make next.

The best and most fun CCG. A must try for everyone who enjoys card games! I played almost all other CCG’s but literally can’t stop playing this one. So addictive lol..

Great to get an update from Ben Hearthstone

Wow very cool, thanks Ben for this in depth talk!

Installed it yesterday.. man, Brode, it is the heisenberg of virtual cardboard

Oh my gawd! I love this so much, I wanna work with these people so bad.

Amazing talk. Thank you so much for sharing.

So hooked on this. Excited for DC Dual Force coming soon as well.

Very good talk, i work on a indie game wich mix Cards games and Dice building games (Dice Of Olympus) and it's was so refreshing to listen to him ! Thx Ben, hit me for a steam key haha

Awesome talk thanks!

Ben talking about change management somehow comforts me in my daily work.

This man is amazing. He is the worthy successor of Richard Garfield's title as master of gamr design. My children (which ill never have because im a millennium) would say "just like ben brode intended" and i think thats pretty cool. Keep your awesomeness, ben 1:00:33

These videos are so helpful as a futur game designer

Awesome talk and i hope we see that 2v2! In game some day!

Great talk! I wonder how hard some design decisions were. Like the fact they simplified some cards to prevent the user from needing to target cards. Seems like a somewhat big decision, removing choice from the player, adding randomness, "just" for easier interactions. The way he talks about it, the choice to go that way seemed kinda obvious, but I wonder if in reality it was a tough choice or not, with backpedal from the team and all.

"Mostly known for having a weird laugh" A *delightful* laugh, Ben. One that brings people joy to hear it.

Never played marvel snap in my life, but i learned a lot in this talk. Loved it.

Honestly a great game. I don't have much time to play games lately, and Snap is nice and quick.

Love me some Ben Brode

I could normally listen to Ben Brode talk all day but my throat hurts on his behalf. I wish he could've had some honey tea for a few days and tried this again after.

This was soo cool!

someone needs to sit ben down and let him know his son is a fluffy puppy. 5:48

Thank you Ben

This shows that Ben brode came up with some really good ideas and have good reasons behind them, the bots idea was pretty cool, where one person wins but there’s nobody on the other side to feel the loss

2:01 I love the analogy of using the same ingredients but making a different product base on how differently you implement them.

This guy rocks. 😎👌

Oh and I am soooo glad you went w the graffics we see

Thank you for this talk!

one hour of ben talking, sign me up!

How I Got My Mom to Play Through Plants vs. Zombies ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fbzhHSexzpY.html Richard Garfield - "Luck in Games" talk at ITU Copenhagen ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-av5Hf7uOu-o.html

bed brode more like cool guy amiright

verry engaging talk

24:20 Rick And Morty's most realistic video game asked why the street fighters were fighting.

I'm honestly very torn about this game. I like the base game (what little there is of it) but absolutely _hate_ the manipulative progression that's built into it. And just how much of it and how blatant it is. Every design decision is made to make sure you come back _tomorrow_ or maybe _later today_ and you'd better hurry because the season is almost over and if you decided to buy in to accelerate the rate of unlocks then that only lasts until the end of the season! Add to that that the rate of rewards decreases as you go and hey, btw: We're using the same progression for card unlocks that we use for cosmetics and it's all random just to further cement the skinner box feedback loop to keep you _grinding_ endlessly. Now, that's just what freemium is like, but it really does feel like it goes beyond regular monetization to the point that the game itself seems to be apropos to getting you hooked with random rewards, three different currencies, randomized upgrading, randomized collcting, season progression, player rankings and fomo-inducing limited-time offers. It's a decent game, but it's a _weapon's grade_ narcotic. It feels like something that belongs in a casino.

Such a good talk.

I imagine me in that crowd, with a bat in hand, i go up to the microphone: "so about these pixel variants"

2v2 mode would be interesting

They need to actually launch the casual queue

I probably would never have downloaded a game called marvel groot

Te quiero mucho ben brode

Does anyone know what “fatui” is please? 55:11

That guy has always BEeN such a BRO. DElightful.

42:55 I wish we have the avatar like that

Awesome presentation. Ben Brode makes the best games. What I don't like about locations is that they are slightly too powerful and can make you lose the game instantly with RNG. I think that was the downfall of hearthstone: RNG. And I think it started with the card called Yogg, the most RNG card I ever seen. Reynad and Lifecoach, 2 of my favourite streamers, both quit Hearthstone because of RNG. Reynad is actually creating his own game now called Bazaar which be more skill and less luck. 53:10 The card is talking about is 'Shadow Madness' but ya that is a problem, text is not perfectly clear such as "After turn 3, transform all cards here into the Hulk." which my opponents and I didn't know that for every card there, it would create an additional Hulk, so you have to lose a game to find out which is not really cool mechanic.

I'm so glad he mentioned Plants vs. Zombies several times, since it's my favourite game franchise of all time. I really loved watching this as someone trying to make a game

44:10 I have never seen the nexus events. But does that bottom grey corner not look alarmingly like the token shop system

I always thought the SNAP was the sound as you would play a physical card game.

Was not expecting to see urban rivals here and oooooooh I’m happy

What is the naming technique Ben is talking about? I don't know how to write it :/

The Brode is on the Road

I love how the negative points are basicaly yu gi oh

Ben brode is the reason I’m still on the game.

Ben Brode!

When Ben mentioned Eliminate on iOS that brought back memories 😢

Legend

You didn't lose! You escaped, you're a genius! 😂😂

What is the poetry term he talks about - 'Trocky'? Where you put the emphasis on the first sylabylle?

i dont like the game that much but i love the way they made it and its uniqueness

36:47 add 2v2 pls ben. find a way u mad genius