Why I Game

I've been thinking about this all day and I'm not sure if I've come up with a good enough response. But I'm tired of waiting and the easiest thing in the world to do is not write, so I'm just going to lay it all out here.

When I was a kid, I found a glitch in the school system: They were going to give me a free year. My entire junior year could be skipped by two classes of summer school. This little caveat was due to Block Scheduling, where instead of taking 7 classes a day for a year, you take 4 classes a day for half the year, and 4 new classes the rest of the year.

The loophole was that anyone caught in the 'in-between'/transition class was going to get a free ride when it came to credits. They only needed 24 to graduate instead of 26. Hence, my 8 credits of Senior Year plus my 2 credits of Summer School meant I was a-okay to breeze on through.

Wow, how grateful I am for that experience. It was a fun time. I was 14, driving my mother's car quite a bit, and my sister had just begun to live on her own and so I had plenty of chances to get away from the house.

But the best thing that happened in the summer of ?95 was that I found Magic. And wow did it blow my socks off. I made new friends and found ?new horizons' in a silly card game. I studied its cards and I loved the art. But mostly I loved the strategy involved. It was like chess but with a constantly changing board, setup and finish. No longer were things black or white. You could exploit the system, but only through a series of deft moves.

And it was then my goal to find out just what those moves were.

At the time I didn't have the internet and so I mainly relied on my monthly subscription of Duelist and my time at the local card shop to teach me what was good. And I gradually found out on my own. Day after day, week after week, I would forego other responsibilities (sorry Taco Bell) for the lure of the tournament. And after a year or so of constant playing, I began beating everyone else and doing very well in tournaments.

It was, as they say, a dream come true. At least for my adolescence. It was so great that I was good at something, and not just good but great at something. And everyone knew it. And everyone asked me for advice. And everyone didn't want to play me because I was ?the good guy' around town.

And I think that's cool as hell. But that's me.

When I turned 16 I had to Get A Real Job and that job prevented me from going to the weekly tournaments I was so used to. I had also gotten quite jaded at the state of Magic at that point, the direction of the sets coming out, and the game in general. Basically I was in flux and the game was in flux and I was ready to leave. So I did.

I wished I hadn't and in some ways I'm glad I did. The game entered what could only be described as a ?dark period' where they printed a lot of unfair cards which caused a lot of unfair decks which caused a massive decline in the game I once loved. I didn't know this, of course, being obtuse to such developments, but I learned of it later. That probably would've staved me off for good, had I been forced to live through that, and so I'm grateful.

So when I was hanging out at work and saw some by-gone reference to Magic, I took a look at their website. They had grown, prospered. The little game that had enthralled my youth had matured. I was mired in Star Chamber (and still very very much am), but that had given me the CCG (Collectable Card Game) bug. I wanted to know how good or bad Magic had gotten.

And wow had it gotten good. They had released a pretty amazing set at the time?Mirrodin?that was, little to my knowledge, broken in many senses of the word. It was then I began to read the gospel of Mark Rosewater, the head Magic Designer, and began to actively thinking about being a game designer myself. I knew the rules, I knew how to exploit the rules, and I knew how game systems worked?specifically card game systems. I was excited to get started.

Over the next few years I would begin to attend tournaments and play Magic Online while still playing (and eventually working on) Star Chamber. I delved into the history of the game, the years I missed, and wondered what made them good or bad. What makes games like that good or bad? What is the most important thing to do to win? These questions plague what I would later come to recognize as a Game Developer.

And through years of hard work with Star Chamber, I found that developing a game means trying to find the right mix of power and pauper, the balance of fun and competition. I wanted to make games and make them work for not only myself (the tournament-winner-wannabe kinda guy), but also the fun-loving players and the casual players. I wanted to make games the best they could be and make them work for everyone.

Personally I enjoyed 'breaking' games moreso than any other activity. I earn money each month 'breaking' games and cards that others have yet to play with it. What can I say, it's what I do. There's great satisfaction in knowing that you found the exploit that the designers weren't thinking of, and that you were the one who changed the game for the better.

Must I bold? I must: Changing games for the better is what a good game developer does. And that's what I strive to do every day with my work on Star Chamber and the good folks at Worlds Apart. Though my work is now behind the scenes, it is by definition clandestine and thankless. It's funny that my 'official' career is mainly a thankless job and my most rewarding ?second' career is a largely thankless job. No player has ever said "Thanks for making this card suck a little more than it used to!? because they never had to play through the used to. They never had to see how bad and unfair and unfun it could get.

We call bad, unfair and unfun cards NPEs in development. That stands for Negative Play Experience. When I'm doing my job, we have next to zero of these. When I play Magic competitively, I try my best to create these. This yin/yang of fix/break is what keeps me enthralled with games and specifically card games. They're so modular, they're so modifiable and they're so non-linear that you create your game states dynamically, turn after turn and game after game. This brings new things all the time and it makes me keep playing and writing and working.

And once you've been in development so long, you begin to think of new ideas and new things. This is how I got into design. I landed my first official design gig recently and boy is it fun as hell. A little challenging, but what good thing isn't?

I'm sorry I ranted so long on this one. I guess I just needed to get this out. This is really becoming who I am?check out my first featured writer article over at StarCityGames?and so anytime I need to remind myself why I work so hard at breaking games on both sides of the development aisle, and why I want to make them in design, I may need to read this again.

Somewhere in 1996 there was a kid who could only dream of doing what I do today. And whatever lucky stars or Gods or fortune I need to thank, well, thanks. I have a beautiful family. I've got a great community of Magic people who don't hate my work (too much). I've got great friends who play games with me. I've got it, basically, pretty damn good.

And that's good enough for me, no matter what role or job I take.

Why can't you be more European?
Bastard child of guilt and shame