'Magic: the Gathering': 20 Years, 20 Lessons Learned 

"Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them" this is truth right there.

"Don't confuse interesting with fun" I feel like this is one of the most important lessons here. So many game devs could learn from this maxim.

"My name is Mark Rosewater and this is my MASTERCLASS."

Dude was teaching way more than just magic. Really cool.

"So we started putting [Fblthp] back in the game." *War of the Spark comes out* *Wizards prints **_Fblthp, The Lost_*

What' I'm learning so far is that MaRo's Powerpoint Presentations look the way he talks

3:33 Lesson #1: Fighting against human nature is a losing battle 4:42 Lesson #2: Aesthetics matter 7:46 Lesson #3: Resonance is important 9:44 Lesson #4: Make use of piggybacking 13:13 Lesson #5: Don't confuse "interesting" with "fun" 16:05 Lesson #6: Understand what emotion your game is trying to evoke 19:19 Lesson #7: Allow the players the ability to make the game personal 23:34 Lesson #8: The details are where the players fall in love with your game 26:59 Lesson #9: Allow your players to have a sense of ownership 30:06 Lesson #10: Leave room for the player to explore 33:28 Lesson #11: If everyone likes your game, but no one loves it, it will fail 36:03 Lesson #12: Don't design to prove you can do something 38:27 Lesson #13: Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win 41:19 Lesson #14: Don't be afraid to be blunt 43:41 Lesson #15: Design the component for its intended audience 47:13 Lesson #16: Be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them 50:30 Lesson #17: You don't have to change much to change everything 53:20 Lesson #18: Restrictions breed creativity 55:54 Lesson #19: Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them 58:50 Lesson #20: All the lessons connect

it started a bit goofy but around 8-9 I thought "this guy knows his shit"

On Lesson #18 Restrictions breed creativity: I was once taking a test in high school physics; in this test we had a section on pendulums. All we had to do was calculate how fast a pendulum was moving at the bottom of its arc given a certain length of pendulum and a certain starting position. Nothing to difficult, it would take all of 5 minutes if you used the formula provided by the text. Not to difficult, that is, had I actually studied the section of our text that actually involved pendulums. I had a final in trigonometry the same week and just hadn't studied it.So I am facing a quandary, I have a large portion of a test that I haven't studied for....But I had studied for trig, and our previous portion of the class that had involved energy, both potential and kinetic. I proceeded to spend the next twenty minutes devising a way to use trigonometry and a completely different portion of our physics theory to calculate the speed of that pendulum. Forward ahead to next day: Our physics teacher had a tendency to grade our tests during class while we worked on an experiment that he had prepped us for. So part of the way through class he pulls me aside to ask me about my test. He was curious as to why I hadn't used the text method to calculate the pendulum, and I admitted that I hadn't studied that portion of the text. As it so happened.... My answer was right. I had, in the middle of a test, created an independent proof for our pendulum equation using trig and a different portion of our physics curriculum. He ended up using that portion of my test as part of an improvised lesson when we eventually wrapped up our pendulum theory work.

like really - this should be mandatory for every person who designs games to watch. It is full of really really valuable and important lessons/concepts.

I´ve always kinda liked Magic, but I fully like this speech. More often than not, GDC speakers are incoherent, introvert, mumbling creatures scarcely getting their point across. This guy got 20 points across with brilliance of a flying arrow. Hats off.

I'm a musician and I come back to this talk every now and then. I use a lot of these lessons when creating my art. They're very useful there too. Plus, I'm a huge Magic nerd and I like listening to Mark Rosewater. He's genuinely entertaining.

I'm a game designer, and I always come back to rewatch this talk. There's so much in there. Just want to say thank you to GDC and Mark for making this available.

Seems that guy job is his dream job. His so passionate about it, took so many additional classes to be better at it ... and talk is amazing.

This guy is an absolute titan. What an incredible presentation. This knowledge legitimately improved my life by articulating behavioral trends I had only a vague notion of before:

I'm a high school Social Studies teacher, magic player and co-founder of my school's student Magic club. I love teaching. I love Magic. This lecture had as much to do with creating a good lesson/curriculum as it does about developing a great game. What an impactful lecture. Really appreciated it. Thanks!

"Allow the players the ability to make the game personal" is probably the most important. If you give players many tools, they will spend insane amounts of time exploring and creating. It also allows them to show others their creations.

The part about lands, I felt that. I really do take my time into looking at the art before I add them to my decks

That bit about Tibalt is so funny with the hindsight of the massively pushed 2-mana Wrenn and Six.

I never knew how to pronounce Fblthp until watching this video

Im here, to understand why every card I play, is suspiciously turning into an elk........

This is the best lesson about game design I ever had!

Yeah, ravnica was awesome. They truly embedded the feel of a metropolis, full of different inhabitants, districts and powers into this set.

I've thought about it, and I think this might be my favorite video on youtube. It's applicable to so many subjects beyond game design.

I never get tired of hearing Maro talk about game design and Mtg

I don't design games OR play Magic (at least not in the past decade), yet I found this video fascinating. Also, is this the guy who originally hired Joss Whedon on his first legitimate writing gig for Roseanne? The reference to Buffy would make even more sense.

I'm not even planning on going into game design and I found this talk absolutely fascinating. This guy is a really strong speaker and has a lot of great points. Plus I love MTG

No time for questions? GDC plz... what an amazing talk!

31:57. That's honestly longer than I thought he'd manage to go without mentioning working on Roseanne :P

I love the land part, as I am a person that Is so exited about drawing my favorite land cards in a duel that my opponents sometimes mistakenly think I drew like my strongest card or so :D Really lead to some amazing bluffs^^

Wow, that was a very professional and useful presentation applicable to multiple fields.

once in a while i rewatch this - ita impossible to convey how much value are in his insights

This is probably one of my favorite GDC slidedecks of all time.

This was amazing, like for real i loved every minute of it

I used to read his column every week and was my favorite of the whole site. This man is truly amazing!!

I used to think I could do Mark's job just as good cuz ego, then I heard this and I now bow to Mark, and thank him for helping make my life more enjoyable. (and you to Richard :) of course. May you both outlive me so I can always get new product!

Everyone in DESIGN should watch this.

It is often thought that the emotion of ' Hate ' is a negative thing. But it isn't. When somebody expresses hate, they show that they still care about that thing. They do not like it, they show they do not like it and the reason they show it is because they still do care. What is true form of total resentment? Apathy; when you don't care. When you don't care at all, it is irrelevant what happens. But when you do care, you either love it or hate it but you want that subject to succeed in both cases.

One of the greatest design guidance videos I've ever seen. I'll be watching and rewatching MANY times!

This was one of the most compelling, concise explanations of not just game design but the artistic process I've ever seen. I grew up playing magic and this is applicable to music and other arts too. So amazing! Thank you

Reading this guys articles for 15 years taught me everything i know about design, game or otherwise

Mark Rosewater blue bias confirmed. Showing only Islands... :P :)

Best game design advice I've ever found or heard or seen in 6 years, thank you for sharing your experience!

The density of actionable information provided by this talk is outstanding.

When i look at Mark Rosewater, I'm oddly aware that there's a skeleton inside of him.

"I don't know my time" he says after delivering EXACTLY 60 minutes of talk

Geeze, every time I rewatch this I am simply stunned at how useful all of this information is. I don't work in game design, far from it, but use this information constantly. Thank you MaRo!

Been watching a lot of videos for inspiration on game design. This is definitely the most important one ive watched.

This guy is a genious. Whoa. It took me like 3-4 hours to watch this video, so I can keep up, and write thing down.

I'M STANDING ON A STAGE, YOU ALL KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS. IT'S TIME FOR MY GDC TALK

one of the best thing i've ever listen about game design, thank you!

One of the best talks I have ever seen. Most of these also apply to life, to be honest. Thanks for this Mark and GDC, you are changing a lot of people's lives.

These are really lessons for life.

Mark Rosewater is a game design genius. This should have been a TED Talk.

Thanks for your awesome work Mark Rosewater! A continuous spring of insight to revisit regularly.

The best GCD talk I've heard yet! Lots of life lessons in here.

This guy right here is a legend. Insanely smart, insanely well presented.

he's apparently a very nice and brilliant guy i think i'm not the only one who'd wish to know someone like him personally

Im still watching this video again and again 3 years after. Always learning from this.

What an incredible class! So multidisciplinary! Such passion! Thanks :)

Amazing talk! Loved it!

I like how he constantly suggests that Magic's player base are whiny babies

As a game developer I come back to this every once in a while to feel grounded.

So good. Favourite GDC talks of all time.

holy shit this entire thing is absolute fire for anyone who designs anything... ever. especially love #12 ("Don't design to prove you can do something"), and the soliloquy on creators and egos that precedes it. in some sense i think one could view this list as a set of rules to maintain modesty in a fundamentally immodest profession (that of creatio ex nihilo).

A guide on creating enjoyment. So well-thought out with philosophical implications. 10/10 talk although this man sorta gives me Matt Cox kinda vibes.

Second time watching this. Still one of my favorite GDC talks!

Amazing, simply amazing. Thank you. BTW, your lessons can be useful for another areas of design, and fit very well with a new method that I'm adopting for product design. I'll incorporate the 1/19 lessons that you gave. Even if you saw it before (even if many of these things I saw in college) Mark really gives a very amazing way to see problems and solutions that I was missing. He's so good at explaining, and gave it so organised that I have to say again: Thank you. Amazing lecture!

awesome speech. Teaching a lot about design in general! and kinda a little about life too!

Most of these teaching can be 100% applied to our own life. Afterall, life is just a big game with just many more rules :)

This is probably the best game design talk I've ever seen

Lesson 16 really rings true with me; I made about 10-15 decks within a year and nobody from my group did that. I was in the process of building another deck and realized that I generally already knew how the games would play out against my group. I got up from the table and left that deck as it was for almost six months because I was so burnt out and bored that I didn't want to play Magic anymore. I didn't touch my cards for over a year. My best bud recently got into deckbuilding and it feels so good to get back into Magic with a new group because I'm finally seeing new decks and having fun again.

Someone link this to Blizzard. Their Hearthstone team could learn a loooot

And then you get these people who scream at the top of their lungs how devs have no idea what they are doing, and that the person knows what's the best for a game. Makes me laugh man.. Awesome talk!

Fantastic talk, I'm a D&D player and many of these lessons were so applicable to my running of games.

This is such a high quality in-depth talk. This wasn't about Magic the Gathering, this was about understanding life.

Has the thumbnail of this video been changed? Right now it's "Abaddon The Despoiler" from the Warhammer 40K Commander Deck, which was released this year... Know that channels sometimes update their thumbnails or Title of videos from the past if there's information that's relevant to happening today and to get a resurge of new views. But a little unsure on if Abaddon can really give new life to this phenomenal talk. It's been a few years since I've last seen this talk, so maybe there is a section about "cross pollinating" in different Lore Verses/Intellectual Property.

Holy crap! Summoner's pact puts the creature into play!? Thanks for the sick errata Rosewater!

This is one of the best GDC I watched, I know magic but never really played it that much.

Best 20 Lessons ever. These are significant in so many more ways than just gaming. I wish I had seen this years ago!

31:55 there's the necessary "I worked in Roseanne" part of every MaRo speech.

I just watched the whole 1 hour video and it felt like it was just 5 minutes... fucking amazing talk!

Whenever I'm feeling sad, I watch this video and it makes everything better

I want to know who was on the rare poll that made treasure cruise a common

THIS is how you use visual aids in your talk. Not with a meme cannon.

This is one of the best (game) design lectures I have seen.

This conference is such a good value!!!

Wait wait wait wait wait... wait... wait... wait! Did he just say, indirectly, that Griselbrand should cost 7 mana? Or did he say it should be an 8/8 Pay 8 life to draw 8 cards? Anyways, good presentation.

Aw Fblthp is cute. He reminds me of my first favorite like him, my dad played the game when I was younger (and I play now). When I used to play with him I loved the card Squee and his Squee's Toys, I just thought he was cute and was so excited to discover the accompanying card and pun. To this day I love to play cards with funny little critters thrown in, I play black a lot partly because of the abundance of fugly lil guys to dote on.

Great talk! Many of these points apply to creating/designing almost anything.

Amazing lecture. No doubt I'll refer to this over and over in the future.

"Death became scary" lolol

14:25 and yet dredge is one of the best decks in modern lol

One of the best lessons even. Thanks a lot.

one of the better gdc lectures, thank you

Someone should show this to Jeff Kaplan; Overwatch is lacking in almost all of these points (except #19 lol)

AAA in the audience: "Uh huh. Well no, I can just get them hooked on gambling instead."

Just found your channel. I love the documentys/lectures

There is a lot of wisdom and thought in this, compiled in a way that's easy to process.

I am 20 min or so in and I just wanna say I'm one of the few people that really doesn't like full art lands. They actually violate a couple of important concepts he talked about earlier, at least for me they do. It's consistency, expectation, and aesthetics. For me it's very much akin to his example of a creature card with so many rules of 7, that costs 8. Or the Trojan Horse changed to a Trojan Lion. Especially with the Unglued and Battle for Zendikar lands, where the borders are not square, something feels distinctly "off." I'm surprised that so many people loved the full art lands. Maybe I'm a total obsessive or something. I just appreciate the uniformity in card design.