Designing for Spectators - Super MAGFest 2026 (full panel)

I'm Scott. >> I'm Rim. >> And we are the hosts of Geek Nights. It's a podcast if for some weird reason you want to listen to that podcast. It's free. You can just go to our website and there are thousands of episodes of us talking with no ads that you can download and listen to. If you really are that sad that you're going to spend time in your life doing that, it's an option. [laughter] Wouldn't recommend it, but it's an option. Just letting you know. Today we're going to talk about designing games for spectators. All right. Do you want spectators? >> That's a question you have to ask if you're making a game. Do you expect this game to be watched by people? Do you want it to be watched by people? Uh, a lot of games, I think, were designed from the perspective of the of the player having fun. I think a lot of people in the early days of video games couldn't have imagined that there would be events like this where people watch other people play Mario Brothers and that is entertainment, >> right? But as a game designer, when you're making a game, you might not care if anyone watches anyone play it. Or maybe you really do care. You really want a game that people are going to want to watch people play. And if that's the case, then we're going to give you some advice. And if it's not the case, you can go to the concert. You don't need to waste your time in this room. Nobody got my joke. I'm happy about that because it's inappropriate. Okay. Think about a game, right? compared to say I don't know a movie or a song, right? A movie you just kind of press play and it it plays, right? It's sort of the end product, right? Nothing really. You can't watch someone watching a movie. >> Well, you can and there are in fact plenty of YouTube channels that are let's play let's plays. >> Sure, but that's kind of weird. >> That's also meticontextual postmodern nonsense. So, >> since we're at Magfest, we'll talk about music. Think about a song as opposed to a composition, right? It's like, well, you could, you know, just enjoy looking at a musical composition, I guess, but it's probably not, right? Instead, somebody plays or performs the composition, and that performance is then a art form. It's the composition is an art form, but so is the performance. And the performance is the one that's sort of worthy of being spectated, right? The composition is sort of like it's art, but it's also an art factory because every time someone performs and interacts with the composition, a new art work is born, which is a different kind that is spectatable but kind of the end. I guess you can even go further with music because you'd be sampling and stuff, right? But >> remixes, repeats, >> games are sort of unique, right? If you think about compositions, it's like, well, only like talented musicians and people will play songs. Most people don't, right? Right. I mean, you've seen karaoke that exists, >> I guess. Sure. But games we tend to think of a lot, especially video games, as more like the end product. But no, games are like compositions, right? A game is just a list of rules. The same way a musical composition is just a bunch of, you know, notes in a on a piece of paper. >> But the musical composition is primarily instruction of how to pay the play the piece correctly. And while there is clearly I'm a musician, there is well, there are wrong ways to play songs. Sometimes >> depending on the intentions of the composer, some compositions, if you look at them, give more specific instruction. Some give less specific instruction, but you don't expect someone who's playing a Mozart sonata to start trying to frame get the frame timing right to break the piano. >> Right? >> The point is a game, whether it's a tabletop game, a video game, a sport, whatever kind of game, is more like a composition where every time someone plays it, a new artwork is generated. The play of a game is itself a work of art, right? And so when you are designing a game, you're designing the composition artwork. And you need to think, well, someone's going to perform this game the same way, right? As right and I need that performance that someone's going to make out of this composition to then be something that someone else would want to watch or listen to or experience and so forth, right? And it's not always the same. You, you know, most of the time, right? Is that the Oh, it's not the next slide. That's okay. >> I think preface this. We sometimes repeat talks. This is a brand new talk. So, this is sort of our workshopping period. >> Most of the time, right? A good game that someone enjoys playing is going to be a game that someone enjoys watching, right? Someone play most of the time. A song that's good that's enjoyable to play is a song someone would want to listen to most of the time. But it's not necessarily true, right? You could have a song that's fun to play and no one wants to listen to it, right? or a song that's, you know, really unfun to play, but is like a total jam and people are freaking out. >> Any bass players out there? A lot of great songs, not fun to play. >> Anyway, all right. So, also, right, a lot a lot of our panels, we're talking about game theory and stuff of that nature where there's like facts involved. None of this is fact, right? It's subjective because there's always going to be some sicko who wa likes watching something that's really boring that most people think is boring or there's going to be someone out there who like really loves playing something everyone else hates to play. >> I mean, I watched someone else play all of Fantasmagoria once. >> Sure. Right. And so, it's all subjective, but what the things we're going to be talking about here are things most people enjoy watching. Right. What will get you the most spectators? Yeah. If you make the paint drying game, you'll get a spectator somewhere, but probably not too many, right? These are things that will appeal to most of humanity and we're going to ignore the outliers that absolutely exist. >> Got to warn you a little bit though. We're going to talk a little bit about sports because sports, >> we talk about a lot about sports. We always talk a lot about sports because sports are games. Okay. All right. And like I was saying before, obviously the first piece of advice is just make a good game because a game that's fun to play is usually fun to watch, right? But not necessarily. But if you want advice on how to make good game, that's not this panel, right? We're not talking about that today. You can go get that advice in 10 billion other places. There's not enough advice on how to make a game that's fun to watch. And those are the things we're going to talk about today. We're not going to tell you how to make a good game, but if you do, you're probably most of the way there in making a spectatable game. >> Bad games are often also easily and genuinely spectatable, >> depending on how in the manner in which they are bad. >> Yeah. >> Right. Okay. So, why do people spectate games? >> Silence. >> Entertainment. [laughter] >> Nobody knows. We're going to go through a whole bunch of reasons that people spectate games. And each of those reasons, we're then going to talk about how you can design your game to take advantage of that reason, right? Because every different person, right, has a different reason that they enjoy watching, right? So, you know, in even if it's different kinds of artwork, I like these songs because I like to dance and they're very dable. I like these songs because I I like being sad and they they give me a sad mood, right? Every person has a unique reason. The more reasons you hit, you're gonna get more spectators because then you get an audience of spectators who are all there for different reasons, >> right? If you h if you really nail one reason, you'll get everyone who has that reason, but you won't get anyone else. Right? Because Right. And obviously each different person has a different combination of reasons. It's not like a yes no thing, right? It's like I really have this reason. I don't have that reason at all. And every different person's unique, so it's important to hit as many reasons as possible. And so for each reason, we're going to give you game design instruction on how to make that reason appear. Okay, first reason to learn the game, right? People will watch chess. Why? Because they're playing chess and they want to learn chess strategies. >> You want to learn a German board game. You don't want to read the rules. I know you don't want to read the rules, but that's a common topic in our lectures. So what do you do? You watch someone else play the game till you figure it out. >> Yeah. It's, you know, not just strategies, rules, right? but and you know other various techniques and especially if it's like a sport, right? There's a lot you got to learn by like watching someone else do it. You might even watch yourself because you just played and you got to go back and check the tape and and see, oh, let's check the video review. Uh and then your coach comes and is like, you really screwed up on that play. And you're like, "Ah, I see how I screwed up on that play." Right? Review is still a form of spectation. >> I play a lot of Overwatch these days. Not that I'm good. I'm like gold like eh. But uh when I play Overwatch, I enjoy it. When I watch other people play Overwatch, I actually don't care about the league. Like, I don't care which team wins. I don't know the names of the players. I don't care about anything, but I'm watching the people who play the characters I'm good at to see what they're doing to learn from them. And I'm watching the people who play the characters that always wreck me so I can understand how they are going to wreck me in the future. But I don't enjoy watching the league at all. I only enjoy learning from watching the league. >> Yeah. It's like, you know, you might not if you don't really care about any of these other reasons we're going to get to. If you yourself play the game, you watch other people play the game hopefully who are better than you but may or worse than you and that helps you study and enhance your own skills, right? By watching the game go on. All right. To learn lore, right? So, sometimes games don't really have any lore, right? It's but usually once there's an organization around the game, if it's a competitive organization or if there's some manufactured lore, a lot of games have manufactured lore like video games with big, you know, fantasy worlds or whatever, world building and whatnot. Maybe if you're just one of those people who likes lore, the kind of person who might read a fantasy novel or watch a soap opera or something, you can get the lore experience just by watching the game without actually having to play it yourself. That's a very valid reason to play a game. This is, I think, one of the reasons why a lot of us game spectation isn't new. Everyone from the earliest days of video games spent time sitting on the couch while their friend played a single player game. And we might have thought, "Oh, I'm only doing this because I can't play the game." But I think we genuinely enjoyed it. But then there was the case of Final Fantasy 10. I did not want to play that. I realized I've played half of the Final Fantasy mainline games that were ever made, one through seven. So, as a result, uh, I didn't want to play 10. I didn't want to grind. So, I watched our friend play the game, and whenever he was fighting, I wandered away and played on my GBA instead. And I got the best experience I could get. Yeah. Uh, so if you're a game designer and you want to include lore in your game, right? You can obviously just make a game that's the kind of game that has lore, like an JRPG, right? You could manufacture lore, like say pro wrestling with manufactured lore, although that's not a game. It's just it's just performance >> though it is adjacent and related. >> Yeah, it is very relevant to what we're talking about today, right? It's it's just pure spectation. Um you could do that or you can create an organization and make sure that when you create this organization for players of the game that you record the history and build traditions and build lore. You're at Magfest here. Look at how much Magfest lore there is just from it existing. There's a Magfest museum. People going in the hallway, right? That's lore and that comes just from existing for a long time and having institutional memory. So to have institutional memory, you need an institution. So if your game has an institution and it carries on and you don't forget things and you right, you carry on your traditions, the game will have lore. Okay? And that brings us to the culture and community, right? So it's not just enough to have lore. That's one thing that can bring a community together. Like the Magfest culture brings Magfest people together, but people will spectate a game because when they go to watch the game, there's someone next to them watching the game with them. You can make friends because you're watching together, right? And then you can talk to this person about what's going on. >> Like, ah, that goalie can't make a save to save his life, >> right? They a lot of people who have dialogue during like watching a hockey match don't actually care that much about hockey. They're just with someone who cares a lot about hockey. We have a lot of We're Rangers fan, so I'd say sorry, but no, our team's terrible. But when we're at a Rangers game with someone who is not a big hockey fan, we almost get them hyped up by telling about the game and getting them excited about it in a way that they wouldn't be if they were on their own. They wouldn't even watch the game if they weren't like with someone like us, right? It's like, you know, in college we would go to the college hockey games. Why? It's like, yeah, we cared about the team winning. We wanted to watch hockey, but we were also there. It was sort of a community gathering with all of the other people from the school. It was like a, you know, there was a big unity thing, right, with everyone in our university. It's like, yeah, we're on a team. In my neighborhood, there's a bunch of old Greek people who live there where I live. And they have these little like storefronts that they own because they were there for so long, they can own property somehow. I don't know how you do that. And they have like soccer clubs. So it's like the Athens whatever soccer club and the old guys gather in this little you know storefront where they have a TV and tables and maybe a kitchen or something right and it's like ostensibly their spectation is bringing them together right as a community into this space and they're also altogether fans of the same team or whatnot. Now mechanically a lot of why this happens is because when you have a shared experience in the modern world where all experiences are mediated that shared experiences brings people together more directly and intimately in a way that you can't really get in other ways. It puts you in the same consensus reality. So if you all watch the hockey game, it's not just oh you can chat about the hockey game around the water cooler. No, it's you have this shared experience whether you liked it or not. And that shared experience naturally brings humans closer together. >> You think about if those Greek guys, if they didn't have that little club, if they just watched the game alone at home and had no one to talk about the games with, do you think they would still be watching? Maybe, but I think a lot less likely, right? So, as a game designer, how do you build culture and community? Well, you have to create a community space to bring the spectators together, not the players. is you have to bring the spectators together so that they can talk to each other and build a community around what they've seen. It could be as simple as Discord server or it could be more. >> Think of AGDQ. We watch a lot of us watch speedruns at home on Twitch in the comfort of our houses. But AGDQ exists because there's a community of people who go there in person. The experience of seeing the speedrunner is not different. In fact, it's often worse if you're at AGDQ. But the experience of being next to someone watching the same speedrun is there, >> right? and you're chatting it up and you're cheering and you're yelling about orbs or deer force or whatever's going on there, right? Weeiwoo. Okay. All right. So, people will watch a game, right? Because the designer of the game is inserted artwork, right? Normal forms of artwork, visual artwork, musical artwork, any kind of forms into the game. And you don't need to play the game to experience those, right? You can hear the music of Final Fantasy without playing. >> I'll give you a real good example. You ever you ever hear that game Poker Night at the Inventory? Uh >> I pirated that entire game by watching someone else play it on YouTube >> because the game was basically a little TV show and I didn't need to play poker. I've played poker before. >> Right. The design, all the artwork that was enjoyed by Rim for that game was jokes that were in the game that the designer put there or the designers or the game developers. And so it wasn't something the players added. So, all you need to do is watch the game and you'll see it and you're good. You don't need to play yourself. >> You'll know a game has done this if there are a lot of long plays of the game on YouTube and out in the world. Uh, more so than there are commentated or react reaction streams because that means a lot of people are watching that game like a movie. >> Yeah. So, the reason Galactus is here is because I used to play Marvel Snap back in the day. I [laughter] quit like last year. And if you don't know, in this card game, this is a card game. When you play the Galactus card, he goes kneel before G. And it's like a crazy animation happens and he like destroys the board. And if you play the game, it gets boring after a while. You see it so many times. But if you're watching the game, it's kind of funny, [laughter] right? Cuz it comes out of nowhere, especially when the other player does it. And it's like a big surprise. You're like, "No, Galactis. Oh my god." Right? And that's an animation and a surprise that the game developers insert into the game that's enjoyable to see uh when the game is happening. So, if you're designing a game, make sure you got good animations, good music, good artworks, funny characters, things to cosplay, all those sorts of enjoyable, right, art. Don't just make I mean, you might be able to get away with like a Mr. Gaming watch. That's a beautiful art in its own right, right? But don't make something that's ugly and boring that no one likes. >> Crazy example, if you have a party, you could have someone people playing shapes and beats in the corner and that's the music in your party. That is spectation just not with your eyes. >> Sure, why not? Now, we talked about the designers player artistic expression. This is absolutely huge and I think neglected, right? Some games don't give players space, right, to express themselves, right? Uh you might think like, I don't know, tic-tac-toe, right? It's not really styles of tic-tac-toe, right? It's not like ah he's playing Washington's gambit, >> right? [laughter] So, if you think about if you just advance a little bit to say chess, it's like, "Oh, yeah, that guy plays really aggressively, right?" >> Well, think about all the people recently, it was popular for a while, the Bong Cloud Offensive, right? >> In chess, that's a real offensive. It's like, it works. That's a thing, but people get excited about watching it because they're It's not because it's technically that good. It's not a good chess strategy, but they I don't know if it is or not. >> It's not. But they enjoy watching a chess expert use that strategy. That player, that chess expert could choose any chess strategy. They chose the bong cloud on purpose. Probably because they also think it's funny. >> Yeah. >> What is the bong cloud? >> We don't know. >> The bong cloud is a strategy in chess, like a set of moves that you can follow just like like all the openings. You know how you script an opening in chess? like uh the uh the Polish openings is the one I use where you move this one you move one pawn forward first to open up your bishop uh chess openings are way beyond the scope of this talk however >> we don't know enough about it Google it okay and don't ask us any more questions all right so uh yeah play artistic so this your play style different players have different play styles and so a spectator might be watching right to because they go oh the way that guy plays is really cool I really like their style oh no you know she's got this amazing slow roll I love the way she slow rolls it. It's so cool, right? It goes further than that. If you think about more expressive games that give players room, maybe Magic the Gathering or the CCG, it's like, "Oh, look at the decks." Right? Making a deck is a way of expressing yourself. >> Yeah, I love to play a deck. That doesn't win the normal way. It wins the weird way. Or it's just trying to make the other players time miserable, >> right? Or even a fighting game, just choosing a character is a form of self-expression. Like, this is the character that I pick. or oh no that guy that person always plays the meta all the time right that's their right way of expressing themselves through the game and then it gets much bigger they're like Minecraft which is basically just like a canvas where people make art right it's like oh yeah you can really express yourself in Minecraft and then of course in our photo the tabletop RPG where your players people playing the game are literally writing a book or making a movie of their own I still don't think all the people in that photo know we use this photo in like all of our talks that is our gaming group from longer ago than I am comfortable. >> So long ago, I had hair. Bottom left, that's my hair. It's gone. Uh but yeah, if you are a designer and you want to make a game that people are going to spectate, make a game that gives players the opportunity to express themselves, right, in whatever way. It could be as simple as choosing characters or their strategic style, or it could be as big as your game is an artistic canvas for people to create art that people will want to see. >> Dance Dance Revolution. You don't want to watch someone doing this. Some people do, but some people want to watch someone actually try to dance. Sure. All right. Play style expression. We talked about that already because we forgot this slide was here. [laughter] Okay. The atmosphere, right? Think about the atmosphere at Magfest, >> right? How does it feel like to be at Magfest? People will come to Magfest just to feel that feeling of being at Magfest. I love the feeling of walking into an NHL arena during the playoffs because the energy is just this unique thing that no other sport has. They have their they have different energy in their playoffs, but hockey playoffs have this energy. And even if the Rangers are going to get swept in the first round, I just want to be at MSG and experience that energy. >> Right? The way I always describe it is think about your house, right? Your house, wherever you live, all right? It might be an apartment. It might be a box. I don't know. when you go to your home, your shelter that you sleep in, right? It has a certain feeling. That's the feeling you feel basically every day when you go there. Now, imagine the same house, but you're hosting a barbecue that day or some kind of party, right? Or it's Thanksgiving and people are coming or maybe someone's staying over. It's a special occasion. The same space has a totally different vibe in that situation, right? If you go to an arena and there's a preseason game happening, there's a particular vibe. [laughter] And if you go to the arena and there's a regular season game, there's a it's like a completely different It's the same building with a completely different vibe that's happening. If you come to this building when there's no magfest, imagine what it will feel like. >> It feels weird to be in this building when there's like a normal thing happening. >> You just came here and there's no con. It was not even Katukon, just like on a random weekend. It's it sounds weird if you but it it feels like it's dead, >> right? The thing that the event that is occurring in the space can create a feeling and a vibe in the space that completely transforms everything, right? You can imagine what it's like to be at a sumo wrestling contest, what the vibe might be like there, right? And so people will want to watch and a lot of it is just to experience that feeling and that atmosphere that you could not experience otherwise. So what you want to do as a designer, you need to make a game whereas when it is played in the space it occupies, whether it's a living room or an arena or a stadium or whatever it is, right, is transformed into a vibe of some kind that appeals to people, right? Another example, the streets of France and right, it's just a street in a mountain. Oh, but on today the tour to France is coming through and the vibe is totally different, right? Because there's a bike race coming >> and people who they don't get to see the race. If you go watch the tour, >> you see it for like two seconds. >> That's it. >> Done. >> Right. Yeah. Okay. All right. High drama. This is sort of obvious, right? But there's a buzzer beater in basketball. Right. Now, in my opinion, basketball is one of the best games to play. And a lot of people disagree with me. In my opinion, worst game to watch, right? Except when there's a really close score at the end, right? And suddenly you get high drama [laughter] because the score is really close. Who's going to win? I don't know. Right. And so basketball, the design of basketball sort of allows for the possibility of high drama, which would make spectating exciting, but not always because sometimes it's a blowout. >> Now, this is where games really differ from other forms of media because there's no drama around whether or not the pianist is going to finish playing the composition. >> Oh, there could be. >> There could be. [laughter] But in a scripted like a TV show, it's like the drama is locked in in a TV show, right? The drama is locked in and the pro wrestling. >> Uh case in point, the the game design of ice hockey during the regular season, if they don't win after one little overtime thing, they do a shootout and the game ends. But if it's finals, if it's the Stanley Cup playoffs, they just keep playing hockey till someone wins. >> If you haven't gotten, we're going to talk. >> It could literally go forever. How you were there stuck for >> I was stuck there for three innings and at three over three overtimes. They don't serve food anymore. I almost was tired of hockey but at the same time the puck could go into either net at any second. >> Yep. Golden. All right. >> And the Rangers lost. >> Yeah, we did. Of course we did. >> Of course we did. [laughter] >> We're supposed to lose. All right. So, as a game designer, you need to create opportunities in the game for there to be high drama. You can't have the flow of the game itself be boring, right? or at least you want it to be dramatic most of the time and that means you want to have you know I don't know if it's scoring might not every game has scoring the way sports most sports do right but you want it to in basketball scoring happens a lot it's like you're scoring baskets left and right getting over 100 points 50 baskets per team each one of them is not very exciting it's like yeah you got a basket clap clap clap right in soccer a goal is a crazy deal right they almost never score a goal sometimes they don't at all score a goal and there'll be a tie high 00 or something. >> I have a I have a a co-orker from Brazil uh who basically said every goal in soccer is an orgasm. >> That's right. >> And so you want to make your game have enough because if no one ever scores, you don't get excited, [laughter] >> right? It's like there's no zero goals, zero orgasms. Let's just be >> right. You got to have the right amount of action and you got to keep it close. So there's always this uncertainty, right? intention in the game from beginning to end as often and frequently as possible. >> A great example of this, the genre of game I'm going to call make a guy go higher and if you fall it sucks until you eventually get to the top. There's lots of games like that. >> It's a benotty. >> Lots of people are very excited to watch those games because they are watching someone else on a razor's edge for potentially hours. Okay. So, make sure your game has high drama and people want to watch it because they'll be experiencing that tension through empathy, right, without having to play it themselves. >> Could be anti-mpathy. You want them to fall. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Emotional stake. So, here's the New York City marathon, right? Not the greatest thing to watch. You stand on the side of the road in the cold. You're maybe your one friend in the race goes by once. You see a bunch of people you don't know. Maybe you just keep clapping and sharing or whatever. There's some of the other things we've talked about are happening here. The community thing is happening, right? Uh you know, the tradition, right? That kind of thing is happening here. The lore, the lore is happening here. >> Well, like the community thing, the the because I ran it once. I got a pretty good time. I'm pretty fast. But, uh every burrow is almost like representing itself. Like the people in each burrow that it goes through because it goes through all five burrows are like there partly because it's coming through my burrow just like the tour to France people come out just to be a part of that moment. Yeah. But a lot of the people spectating I think you know they're willing to stay out in the cold. Why would they stay out in the cold? They have an emotional investment in what's happening. Someone they know is running right in this race right and they're pulling for them. A lot of times the people running in the race have, you know, stories, maybe a story of fighting disease or something in their lives and like this is, you know, they worked up to this. Maybe someone had, you know, was really unfit and had a had a fitness journey and became fit enough to do this or they're really old and they managed to do it and it's amazing. And it's like you're just so proud of someone. It doesn't matter about the winning, the losing, the game, the race. None of that matters. There is something emotionally tying you to what's happening here, right? It could even just be, you know, the the beauty of this thing that's happening or just the sheer number of people that are going by is just so emotionally overwhelming. This one can be dangerous, though. Think [clears throat] about how a percentage of parents get when they are spectating their children playing sports. >> Yeah, don't [laughter] do that. All right. So, if you're designing a game, how can you get people emotionally invested? force their children to play it and make them watch. >> You could say it's not easy actually, right? If your game is new, people don't have a personal history like with the game, right? >> No one who care. No one cares who wins the rim, the first annual Rim Cup in a sport I made up today, >> right? Uh and if no one they know is participating, they don't care about it in that way, right? So if it's a brand new game, you might try to find something to attach yourself to or you know create lore using the previous techniques. >> I think you've got to make it such that the people who are participating there is a high barrier or a high bar or an extreme visible effort that really put like almost puts that empathy feeling into the spectator, gives them that connection. >> Yeah. But it's it's quite difficult to do this but it's extremely powerful, right? All right. It'll get someone to stand out in the cold powerful. Okay. Real stakes for players. So, you watch the prices, right? You don't win a car for watching the prices, right? Do you? Right. >> But I'm really excited. >> If you could if you could, you know how many cars I would have? [laughter] I would have all I guess I would have been a child with a bunch. I'd have a bunch of 80s and 90s cars. I have no car newer than me. >> I mean, I feel like everyone who grew up in a certain era was really good at Prices, right? Because you watch it every time you were homesick. you watch who wants to be a millionaire. You know how many millions I would have? Oh, [laughter] it's like don't have any. Uh but when other people have stakes, right? I guess it's sort of an emotional investment, you could say, but it's the stakes is what's bringing the emotion, not some sort of story or personal connection that's happening. >> One of the favorite games I ever watched on YouTube was an old college humor thing they don't do anymore. And it was basically they did this shtick where two guys played one round of rock, paper, scissor. The loser had to walk from their office in Manhattan to one of their grandparents houses way out in New Jersey. This is like a two and a half day walk. It was one, two, three, crap. And one of them just starts walking and then the entire rest of the video is watching him walk to New Jersey. >> Right now, you obviously don't want to put stakes in your game that are going to harm anybody, right? But I just want to consider for a second. Let's say there was a game of coin toss. Not a very exciting game to watch coin toss. These smart people are going to the concert. [laughter] Go. If you want to watch some If you want to watch coin toss, that's really boring. Now, what if it's coin toss and if you miss you die, right? You got one coin toss, 50% chance of dying. Some sicko who's the kind of rich person who would watch the Squid Game or the Hunger Games or whatever is going to watch coin toss or die, right? Because, right, they're that kind of person. But what if you're just playing a game with your friends and it's loser has to just bite into a lemon, right? That's a lot. That's safe. >> What's with lemons at this magfest? >> It's a lemon magfest cuz it's Mega Man. He shoots lemons. That's why um there's some consequence that is entertaining in and of itself, right? That could be humorous, right, for the loser. And of course, rewards. If the winner is going to be rewarded, there is some sort of empathy you have with the winner. And you feel like a winner when your team, your whoever you're rooting for or just some random person at a game show is also a winner. You feel like a winner. >> Think about the pop culture notion of how many people say they watch NASCAR just in case there's a crash. Like that's a thing. >> Yeah, those are those are that's definitely drama and stakes, right? [laughter] Uh but you know, it could be stakes winning a championship or you know, I don't know. >> I saw a guy win the car at MSG once. >> Oh, right. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's just during the intermission, it's like, yeah, shoot the puck through this tiny hole, win a car, and you know, it's like suddenly there's a guy you never heard of. They just told you the rules of this game in two seconds. >> The game's basically impossible >> and now you care suddenly, right? Whereas otherwise you wouldn't care. Why? Because there's stakes and everyone goes crazy when [laughter] it happens. Uh, make sure that you make your stakes in your game, if you're going to add stakes to the game, don't make them painful or hurt people with the stakes in your game. Obviously, I don't even know. Uh, but make sure you can afford the rewards, right? There could be danger and positive rewards as well because people could end up, you know, if the reward, let's say the reward for like a really dumb game, right, is like a million dollars. >> That's the plot of Running Man. >> Exactly. Right. People >> don't play Running Man. >> Right. The reward is a positive reward, but now people actually harm themselves playing the game, right? It's like they'll stay up all night practicing and training and and you know do things they shouldn't do because the reward is so tempting that now the players are obsessed with your game and you're harming the players. The spectators aren't harmed. >> The spectators however are complicit because then they you are basically in a dark pattern system that is going to cause people to harm themselves directly for your entertainment. >> Right? So you have to be careful with stakes whether the stakes themselves are positive or negative because either can cause harm. But if they are balanced and nice and fair, like, oh, you won the trophy, right? There's nothing wrong with that. Or it's like, hey, you won the local Magic tournament, you won the Baka Magic cards. Okay, it's that's, you know, you won a silly hat for winning a Mag Fest tournament, you win a medal for It's like that's all good, right? So, but it makes people want to watch, right? Okay. Real stakes for spectators. Do not gamble ever under any circumstances unless you are the house. If you are the house, [laughter] if you are a casino, gamble. And I guess you're evil, but it it's going to work out for you, right? If anyone here has a gambling app on your phone, delete it. Now, if you have more than one, delete all of them. >> There's one exception, salty bet, cuz that's not real stakes. That's not real money. >> If you have a real money gambling thing on your phone, you delete it before you leave the room, right? Whenever you got in there, withdraw and delete. >> We have another talk you can find on our website. 70 or 80 of our talks are on YouTube, but we've talked at length about the specific nature of game mechanics that can lead to addiction. Gambling is a big problem right now and sports gambling is way out of bounds for this talk, but it's going to be a even bigger problem over the next 10 years. >> That's right. Okay. But it can't be denied that if there are stakes for spectators in the outcome or whatever happens in a game, Yeah. that's going to increase spectation. That's it. >> You can't not mention it because it's true. It will cause spectators to want to if they can influence the game in which case they are no longer spectators. >> Yeah. Now there are games that could have fair and acceptable stakes for spectators, right? Maybe uh what we said before, right? Maybe your brother or your your someone you know is competing and it's like okay well there's an emotional investment. I I I'm rooting for them to win. But it's like no, if they win, then it's like they're going to be rewarded and they're in your family and you're connected to them and you'll be sharing that reward somehow, right? It's like if someone in your family becomes a pro alete or a champion, like an Olympic gold medal, you will see material benefits, right? It's going to happen. Um, and there's nothing wrong with that really, especially for Olympians. They're underrewarded most of the time, the vast majority of the time, right? This is where tournaments with playoff structures in any game can work because if they'll do this, if you are a spectator who want to watch a game and want to watch a team or go to a conclusion and the season ends, it's over. But if they make the playoffs, the stakes are I get to watch even more hockey. >> Yeah. It's like when I watch, you know, we're going to watch hockey games and like Rim said, if they make the playoffs, we get to go to playoff games. But you know what? There's another stake. If they miss the playoffs, they promise us the ticket prices won't go up next year. So, we win either way, but it's still at stake for us, right? We the worst outcome is if they make the playoffs, but they're a shitty team and we know they can't win and then we have to pay for playoff tickets and the ticket prices go up next year and we don't win the Stanley Cup. That's the worst outcome. We want to either win it all or we want to suck. We don't want >> Sabers are up 3-1 into the second. >> Of course, they are. [laughter] We don't want anything in between is unacceptable. It's bad news. But there are stakes for us, right? Rather than just our loyalty to Laundry of wanting the people wearing our team's jersey winning the game. [snorts] Okay. And so obviously if you're making a game, if you're a game designer, how can you make stakes for spectators that are acceptable? And I think the most acceptable way is to just do gambling but not gambling with any real money. Remeion the salty bet, right? If you think about like when you go on Twitch and you bet your channel points on something, right? It's like it doesn't matter if you lose all your channel points. That's why people will go all in. Who cares? It does. It's not worth anything, but it's still fun and you will still watch and you'll still get a little bit excited when you double your channel points and you'll still be a little bit bummed when you lose all the channel points. Um, and there might be other ways to have spectators, you know, feel the impact of the result, you know, and to care about what's happening on the field or whatever the the game is. Uh, another good example would be like, um, I guess it goes back to lore as well. When I played Netrunner, the prize for winning the Netrunner World Championship when it was still a thing is you would get to design a card. The champion could design a card. So stakes for the w the actual players and that card would go into the game and be printed and become a legal card which was stakes for everyone who played that now this card would be in the sets and the card would say on it this card designed by x-year world champion so and so and that's lore. So that one thing they had with their competitive structure did hit on three of these items right and made netrunner a very spectatable game. Uh as it's one of the ways it was a very spectatable game. Okay, it's debatable whether audience participation is still spectating or not because once you are participating in some way, are you still a spectator or not? Are you now a player? >> I'm going to say that we don't need to make that pedantic distinction because they are fundamentally different experiences. And Jackbox is a great example. The people who are spectating, interacting in Jackbox, you'll notice the game is the games are all designed. They have very little impact on what actually happens in the game. It's almost but not quite fake interaction. It's like you give them a box a toy to play with with a bunch of buttons, but the buttons don't actually do anything at the end of the day. >> Yeah. It's just like, okay, you you got the most likes and you the player can feel good about that, but they didn't win the game. Not Not that anyone cares who wins Jackbox anyway. >> You better not. Yeah, [laughter] but if you haven't played Jackbox, there's a whole audience thing that happens where there are some people who are actually truly playing and a whole bunch of people have some interaction with what goes on even though they're not really participants in the game. And there's other ways to do this. Think about baseball. You're like, "Wait a minute. The audience doesn't, you know, interact with actual baseball happening well. They can get loud and that could potentially interfere with what's going on in the game. They catch a foul ball. Now, that doesn't change the result of the game, but it's still a physical interaction between the person and what's happening on the field, right? That ball that was just being played with is now in their hands. Like they feel like they're part of the game. Or if they're sitting in the front row, they can interfere with play if something weird happens and it happens once a year. I don't know, something like that. I think this leads into [clears throat] the the like chance in soccer or the way the Twitch screen stream screens will blow up as people all typing the same things. >> You've seen I've seen in like college basketball all the people behind the net will like try to or behind the field goal in football will try to distract the kicker or the free throw, right? >> Notice how almost every major sport will have the sounds that play that force all the humans to do something. D clap clap clap clap clap. >> Right. Uh we're going to of course hockey. We can't neglect hockey. You can bang on the boards if you're sitting in the front. >> You're kind of expected to. >> You can go mess with the person in the penalty box if you're sitting in the [laughter] front. There's usually ways for people who are spectating, you know, even on Twitch to somehow interact in some way and participate with what's happening. >> I was at a Detroit Falcons game once and I saw a guy get into a fight with a hockey player from the crowd. You watch GDQ and it's like, well, you can donate and they read your donation and then you can pay for the incentives and you might not be, you know, meaningfully interacting with the exact game being played right now, but you're still having a part, you know, you're participating and you're influencing the experience that is unfolding before. >> Think about how invested people get in Save the Animals, kill the animals every year. >> Yeah, it's a thing. So, uh, how do you do this? Well, obviously you just have to make, you know, once you have to have spectators first, right? If you don't have spectators, the trying to do the participation first is sort of a bummer because it's like you made this little ghost town where like nobody's doing this thing that you've part of the like there's no spectators in the Jackbox and it's kind of sad. You have to get the spectators first and then you can add this and then that will make you know it's you can only add this point after you have spectators using one of the other techniques. >> But basically what you're doing is designing another game or another experience that's like a wrapper around your main game but not necessary for your main game. Bomberman's got a great example of something adjacent to this. In Bomberman, big multiplayer Bomberman game, when you die, some of the modes now you're off on the side of the map and you can kind of interact a little bit. >> You can literally throw bombs in. >> Yep. >> Yeah, that's a little more than player participation still. >> But that barely matters unless the people who are in the game are really bad at the game, >> I guess. But it does. You were former players who are now [laughter] >> That's true. But now you now you're spectators who are participating to a minor degree. I think it's the degree of participation and it's a gradient. It is a great, right? But find a way for people who aren't the players to do something or to feel like they're doing something that matters to the game itself. All right. So now, all right, we're good. Timing's a little short. All right, so there's something that's been on on my mind lately, right? And so this is the big one, and it's the reason why sports are the most spectated in my opinion, right? Is because there's magic, right? I mean, people like watching a magic show, but what is magic? There's obviously not a such thing as like supernatural powers in the world, right? But you still like going to see a magic show even though you know that's not what it is, right? Why is a magic show entertaining? Right? Or what is magic if it's not supernatural powers? >> Magic is ultimately a feat of extreme preparation or skill. >> Right? If you think about it, when you read a fantasy novel, there's wizards. And what do the wizards in the fantasy novel do? They study and they practice. And the result of studying and practicing and training is that they can then do something that other people can't do, right? Oh, they can now fly. They can now shoot fireball. They can now do something, right? A magician gets a deck of cards and studies and practices and trains and now they can do fancy slate of hand stuff that you can't do, right? And it's like, holy crap, look at what that person can do. Right? Simone Biles studies and practices and trains. And is that not a superhero? Can anyone here do that? Right? It's literally named after her. And that's not the only thing named after her. [laughter] Right? When you go to see gymnastics and Simone Biles is there, you are watching a wizard do magic, right? someone who has practiced and trained and studied and is doing things that other people cannot do. Right? And seeing someone do something that most people cannot do is in and of itself incredible. Right? You will see it a lot here at Magfest. The people who studied, trained, practiced music are going to perform music. I can't perform it. Can you? Nope. And meanwhile, the people who studied, practiced, and performed frame five frame perfect inputs in a row for a game are going to demonstrate to you live like it's no big deal, right? First of all, a if you're you're probably a wizard in at least some way. Not every magic trick is one of these magic tricks, right? There's a such thing as a can trip, right? Gandalf, yeah, him fighting the bow rug, that's a big magic trick, right? But you know what? People love the easy fireworks, right? [laughter] Everyone can do some easy magic, too. Easy magic that a lot of people can do is still magic. It still required some skill. It's still impressive to someone, maybe children, maybe more than children, right? But you need to give your players of your game a way to study, right? The game has to be deep enough. There's enough information there that they need to learn. They can't just figure out the whole game in two seconds. There needs to be room for them to practice. If they just become perfect at the game in five seconds, there's nothing to practice and get better at. And they need some way to I guess practicing, training, performing, right? There needs to be some way to exhibit once they have achieved some amazing feat. They can do a thing in your game that other players might not be able to do yet or ever. They need a way to make that visible to the audience. So the audience watching goes, "Holy crap, that person did something I can't do." a a mo a moment whatever evo moment whatever was 30 something right where he blocks all the Chun Lee kicks it's like I can't even block one of them [laughter] right it's like it's just obviously amazing even if you don't know what the hell's going on that someone has done something amazing and magical and this is hard to design for but we're seeing an evolution in games now es right now it's happening the most in platformers uh especially platformers that are very movementbased a lot of these games are building in shortcuts cheats, frame perfect inputs that are intended for the speedrunning community to engage with while not being required for less powerful wizards to engage with. I can play Celeste and have an okay time. But someone who's good at Celeste can do absolute magic. And when those two things exist in the same game, that is one of the most powerful magical environments you can make. Dance Dance Revolution. I can be really excited about the fact that I passed a one- foot song because I'm really bad at DDR and I can play the exact same game next to someone like DJ 8ball who's like dancing around in a circle like crazy doing handstands next to me. Same game, different levels of skill afford different levels of performance, but they're all enjoyable to the players and the spectators. If your players can perform magic while playing your game, people will want to watch them because they're seeing a magic show. All right, so here's some aides we got to talk about is um if you have I this isn't I just searched League of Legends screenshot. >> So we were at PAX long time ago the Perk Expo for a while when MOBAs were getting big but they weren't big big. They had a big moa tournament. I think it was LOL. I don't remember. It was L. So they had like this big L tournament at PAX but most of the people at PAX were not like they hadn't played MOBAs. They didn't really like know how the game worked. So we're watching >> played them a little bit but not this one. >> Yeah. And I full disclosure, I really don't like Mobas for a bunch of technical reasons that are way out out of bounds for this talk. But there was a moment where something happened on the screen and a small group of people cheered suddenly a lot and the rest of the audience was silent for like a couple beats and then they all just started clapping, but it's clear they had no idea what they were clapping for. [laughter] >> Right? >> Some games, some magic is only visible to the expert eye. Like imagine the hobbits watching Gandalf. They see the fireworks. They're like, "Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing." Now imagine your Sarum. You're watching Gandalf do the fireworks. It's like he's breathing. He's walking around. Why are these hobbits so excited? He's clipping his nails. Like what's this? >> Well, that's the opposite. That's an expert sees that it's not magic. >> But now the other way around. The wizard who does the very subtle magic and the other wizard in the room sees that that wizard's doing the subtle magic, but none of the other people in the room realize what's going on. I once went to a juggling show, very small juggling show, accompanied by an expert juggler, and he they were cheering when nobody else was cheering, [laughter] right? Because they saw that the jugglers on stage had done something that was really difficult. And I'm just like, I thought that was just the normal juggling. And then they do some really flashy thing and I'd be like, "Woo, that was cool." And the other guy was like, "I don't care. That's easy." >> And this is a this is a fundamental thing in life that you really got to internalize and it's very non-intuitive. The effort you put into doing something has no bearing on how impressive that appears to someone who does not understand that effort. So running a marathon is not actually that hard if you are a runner and you don't have anything preventing you from doing it. But if you don't know those mechanics and haven't been a runner before, it feels way more impressive than it is. So my family members like, "Oh my god, you ran it in 4 hours and 12 minutes. That's amazing." And meanwhile, anyone who's good at running four hours? That's like twice as long as it should have taken me. What's wrong with me? >> Yeah. My in-laws were shocked. I like biked to their house, which is 100 miles away, and I was like, [laughter] it's not a big deal. >> So, juggling the there are a lot of tricks that are really, really flashy and crazy, but they're actually really easy to do. H, and magicians often take advantage of this. If you ever watch a magic show or a juggling show and you see them like talking a lot about how hard the thing they're about to do is and they do a lot of really complicated setup and they even fail at it a couple times or like almost >> pretend to fail a couple times. >> Those are usually the easiest tricks in the world and they are just performing for you. >> Meanwhile, the tricks that are the hardest, ballet is a great example. Some of the moves in ballet just look like that. But if you understand how ballet works, you're like, "Wow, she must have just broken her." >> I was on the subway one time and this person came on and I could only see them from the back, but I could see the shape of their body. And I'm like, "That is a professional athlete of some kind. Look at that body. Oh my god, it's it's incredible. What the hell?" [laughter] I'm like, "What does this person do?" And they turned around and it was like something something ballet school. I'm like, "Makes sense." >> Okay. So, when you have a game, you need to make sure, especially with video games, right? Normal with sports, you're just looking at the real world, you can't really do too much, right? But if your game is being broadcast in some way or if it's just a video game where everything visual is up to the game designer to put in there somehow, right? You need to make the UX so that it is apparent, right, what is going on so that people watching can understand it and enjoy it. Depend, you know, even if they are not very well informed, they have not yet learned what's up with the game, right? The only people who can really watch and enjoy watching League of Legends are people who play it or know how it works or used to play it. I don't know what I like I'd like to watch and care, but I can't tell what the heck is going on. And some of this is what do the players see or not see. So a tra traditional physical sports, you see everything that's happening on the field or on the ice. So a guy skating really fast that is intrinsically interesting. A hockey player like she makes this makes this really hard slap shot from the outside. You hear the stick hit the ice and it sounds impressive. They crash against the boards. The puck goes in the goal. That was obvious that that was a good idea, >> right? So, sadly, we cannot give a lot of specific advice because that would be an entire panel, right? >> We're going to make this an entire panel. That's >> maybe you you can do that. But basics like this the important things that people should be paying attention to should be bigger. It shouldn't be all cluttered, right? Things of that nature, right? What's important to the spectator should stand out. A lot of this stuff that's on the screen is important to the players maybe and not so much the spectators. If there are actions that are subtle that are necessary for the skill to be demonstrated, you need to find a way to portray those actions on the screen. An example would be in a lot of MOBAs, there's a lot of APM, like people are doing crazy kiting and like going crazy on the keyboard and the mouse, but if you're watching the screen, you don't see any of that. The avatar is moving individual pixels that you might not even see on the projector, >> right? You got to get cameras on those hands. cameras on the hands or things in the game that are reacting to the maybe the character gets redder the higher the APM actions per minute for anyone who is not how many buttons they are pushing per minute the character gets redder the more they're slam and jamming the keyboard >> right and so that brings us to the role of broadcasts right uh so most of the time when there's spectators for a game sometimes there'll be a broadcaster and sometimes not right but what is when there is a broadcaster what the broadcasting 's job is is to enhance everything we've talked about before, right? The broadcaster itself does. No one's watching a sport because they like to see maybe some sicko, but because they like broadcasters, [laughter] right? >> I mean, I like Sam Rosen. >> I get Yeah. But it's like, would you just watch Sam Rosen just like stand there? Maybe, but regardless. All right. The broadcaster is enhancing every point that we've talked about before. They're the lore, right? They're teaching you the lore. They're teaching you the game. They're getting the the spectators emotionally invested. >> John Madden revolutionized American football because a lot of people didn't really understand how the hell it worked, >> right? They're every single one of the things you talked about, the broadcaster is helping the spectator enjoy the game in all of the ways you talked about. Holy crap, look at that magic. You know, it's one thing if like Simone Biles just you just watch her do this flip and you're like, "Holy crap." And then if this the broadcaster could let you know if you're not someone who knows everything about gymnastics. Nobody's ever done that before. Oh, so now you know that. Holy it's a lot more magical. >> Then you add the physics commentator who chimes in and says that is almost physically impossible. And then they start drawing the diagram and like based on her leg angle that was frame perfect input in the real world, >> right? It's like so you know if this there might not be any drama. You're watching a really boring hockey game. Someone's getting blown out 10 to zero goals and it's like if they they're gonna looks like they're going to lose this game and that would be the longest losing streak in history, right? They give you information about player, right? Player stories. It's like, ah yes, here comes uh Marty St. Louis into the hockey game. It's Mother's Day. His mom died yesterday. And then when he scores a goal, it's a freaking huge deal that actually happened. >> Now look what's happening in video games esports here. Esports started getting commentary relatively recently and that commentary succeeded when it modeled what sports was already doing. When in doubt, if you want to make your game good for spectators, watch a bunch of major league sports and professional sports that have commentary, watch more than just American sports and take do whatever they're doing. That is what esports did and it's working really well. >> Well, good sometimes. it well the esports that have not embraced that usually it has still failed either because the game itself does not lend itself to spectation like the level of expertise to teach someone what's going on in a mobile I don't think John Madden has enough time to explain that >> it is also kind of difficult sometimes right because like you know is your a your audience might be people who are already very knowledgeable and so if you speak to them it's like it's hard to bring new people in but if you speak to the new people now most of your audience it's like you know doesn't want to hear this they're like yeah why you saying all this obvious stuff. I don't want to hear this. Right? And you >> that's the goalie. He just made a save and prevented the puck from going into the net. That was a good thing. >> But as a game designer, if your game or you did all the above things and your game eventually gets to the point of being spectated, you need to think about the broadcast because the broadcast is, you know, going to enhance everything else. And without it, those other things might not be enough to get people to watch and to care. >> But ultimately, the broadcast has to be entertaining. The game does not have to be fun for the players. Remember, we said at the beginning, we're we don't care about the players. We're not talking about game design. The game does not have to be fun for the players. And if you're designing something where you're really aiming at spectators, you can take that into account. Think about watching fake sports like the Harlem Globe Trotters. Those are still feats of magic, feats of strength. I couldn't do anything those people are doing, but at the same time, they're not actually playing a basketball game where someone's going to win. They're using the structure of basketball as a stage to perform feats and magic tricks in the context of basketball. >> Right? The same artwork, right, that is created by playing a game the same way that you would play a composition could also just be manufactured directly, right? Okay. So, we're just All right. So, you're designing a game. A do you want spectators? If you don't, I don't know why you wasted your time here when you could have gone to the concert. If [laughter] you do do all those things we listed, especially remember thinking about a game as a composition that is going to produce a work of art and the work of art needs to be a work of art that people want to see. And right if your game eventually does get spectators, right, broadcasting and the most important of all the points is the magic one. Your game needs to allow people to perform feats of magic because that is the thing that the most people enjoy, the thing that's most obvious to spectators, the thing that most people care about. And if you're not a magician or you don't think you are, you probably are in at least some way. You know some spell. I'm guarantee everyone knows some weak spell at least even a child. >> We we have level two podcasts like that occasionally. >> Even a baby has a spell of like look cute for like or something like that. >> I've seen some very uncute babies. >> They have a spell of look ugly. [laughter] There's some spell you can do, but work on your magic and look for others people's magic and give people an opportunity to do magic. All right. And our timing wasn't too bad. We only got two minutes left. >> Two minutes left. >> All right. We have a QR code. >> If you enjoyed this at all, but I will say we literally have done 370 talks at conventions over the last 20 years and a lot of them are on YouTube. >> Did our was our spell of do panel effective? >> It seems like it was okay. People were ding along. I saw someone taking notes. >> All right. Anyway, so uh other notes, we have a QR code. You can find our stuff. We have little flyers. You can find our stuff. I have these stickers with our logo on them. They cost me a dollar each. They will cost if you want a sticker, I will give you one for $0. But if you stick this anywhere on Magfest, there will be stakes. [laughter] Okay, you need if you want this building, >> if you want stickers that are put in places that are not designated for stickers, >> right? The only place in the building you can put one of these stickers is one of those graffiti boards. But that would be kind of a waste of a dollar if you ask me. But if I'll still give you one, you just need to come here and tell me where you're going to put it and I will give you the sticker for $0. And here are the other panels we're doing. Most two of them are tomorrow and one is Saturday. >> Lifestyle games is about games like Magic or Pokemon where you just did people play play your whole life or Counter-Strike, which I still play. Tabletop game mechanics. We're going to go deep into mechanical game design in tabletop and exploring metacontext. Me and a different person, Emily Compton. Uh we're going to be talking about an art movement that we think is post postmodern and has been facilitated primarily by the existence of video games. The first new form of media that humans have invented in a long time >> in well they invented it in the 60s7s. >> Video games were invented in the lifespan of some people in this room. They are new brand new on this earth. >> Yeah. Okay. Uh, and we're done because it's we'll be done in a few seconds. >> We got like 12 more seconds. >> Timing wasn't bad, actually. >> Not bad. Yeah. >> Okay. Pretty good. >> All right. This was version one of this panel. We're going to do a more of a thorough version based on some feedback. >> You can get to the concert before it ends. >> They kept like trying to clap, then we kept interrupting them. >> That's fine. We don't need claps. >> Enjoy your magfest. >> The end. All right.