#cube design

Lost in the Hedron Network, or “Goodhart’s Cube”

[The first draft of this was written before hearing Arlo's episode on Recross the Paths, and you should listen to that instead, because we say a bunch of the same stuff]

[I also recorded myself reading this if you prefer weird voices speaking to you]

I don’t want to follow the wrong incentives.

CubeCon and the cavalcade of regional events over the past two years are incredible. They’ve grown interest in the best way to play a great game. They’ve spawned BCW boxes packed with creativity. Cube has never been in a better spot…

…and it's also found a weird way to measure success. In scare-quotes. Which cubes will be selected for these events? Who will win social media voting? Which cube was the most frequent top-pick on Hedron Network? This past year the answer was often clown-shoes rule-change cubes.

In the meantime, we're left wondering how a "normal" cube can sell itself, differentiate itself, or otherwise convince anyone to pay attention. How do you sell the idea of a cube where you play normal Magic? As a person whose five year old cube could now be described as "Foundations-style," it felt bad for a while, but I think there's a way out. 

The selective pressures on a designer who wants to see their cube ranked at a cube event or discussed online bias heavily towards anything with a hook. Not just rule-change cubes, it's stuff that can be sold in a sentence or two, or even just an evocative name.

Having a good name is good. Having an enticing elevator pitch is good. If there's a way to "win" at cube design, it's obviously to make a cube that people want to play. That feels like a reasonable goal. 

But is that why you built your cube? Now that we have a measure of success, is it a good measure?

I want to design an experience. Selling that experience is necessary, and I bet having your cube at an event is super cool, but I really believe that the way people experience your cube is what your cube is. To quote gaytransmulldrifer, my cube is played “with gay people at my house.”  

Pink Sleeves is the first cube I built, and is still my main cube. The first year was stitched together from the limited environments I had played, but as COVID progressed and I had a kid, the theoretical design vision of “what if this is the only way my friends and I play Magic?" drifted a lot closer to literally true. Over the past five years I think I’ve got it very close to embodying that.

I don't think Pink Sleeves is a great name, but it nods towards the community I've tried to foster, which is very queer-positive, with the same bristliness that comes out when I tell people my favourite movie is Clueless, or if I wear my Carly Mazur Faithless Looting pin. It tries to set an expectation about who is welcome. It's a name with a purpose other than selling the gameplay… and would make no sense in an event context.

My cubes are for my friends. For them, I don't need to differentiate Pink Sleeves from any other "normal" cube, because they know it. They recommend it to their friends. I do not need to make decisions about its design with an event audience in mind. The ways my friends play it IS the cube.

I just cut Flash and Dread Return, because despite what those cards could do, my friends have never noticed or at least never shown any interest in those paths. I held onto them for a long time, because they felt like they fit what I was going for, but if it never happens what are they contributing?

It would be awesome for one of my cubes to be selected for an event, but that's not my goal (I have never submitted a cube to an event, nor been able to attend one!). Being picked or not doesn't make it a success or a failure. I already have my success: people who don't really play Magic, and who might not feel comfortable in an LGS have played my cube and have kept coming back to play my cube, and have become my very good friends.

As much as I love the online cube community, and am thrilled at all the events popping up, I want to encourage you to remember your local context, and the play that is already happening. Getting our online friends excited about new ideas rules, but your cube is how it gets played, so please remember that designing something for your own community is healthy, even if it doesn't get other people excited.

And so, when I put together a new set of changes to one of my cubes, I’m making those changes for my friends.

Thank you for the gift of cube.

Can we reduce experienced complexity by being thoughtful about where we allow complexity?

Successful decision-making often involves recognizing situations where you are not (and should not be) guided by averages or typical cases. The rules of thumb don't apply evenly across the distribution, and recognizing that gives you an opportunity to benefit from those differences.

Breaking symmetry with the Magic card Balance is an example. If you're not thinking about how to break the symmetry there's a ≤50% chance that it's an advantageous spell, but if you plan for it it's incredibly powerful.

Complexity is not absolute in its effect. That should be clear if you think about games of Magic.

All else being equal, the complexity of permanents creates a bigger mental load than instants and sorceries; The sorcery creates a temporary spike in complexity, while the permanent is a step up.

Cards that are played more often also disproportionately drive complexity—a labyrinthine 7-drop in hand isn't contributing much to anyone's mental load until there's mana to cast it. If that 7 drop finishes the games rapidly, that's arguably also an outlet but your mileage may vary.

Permanents that are harder to remove (like enchantments) contribute more to complexity than something likely to be destroyed.

Let's refer to these concepts as absolute and experienced complexity. Absolute complexity includes but is not limited to comprehension complexity; more or less judging the card in a vacuum. Notably, it's irrespective of mana value.

Experienced complexity speaks to how much burden the card actually places on players. In the 7-drop example the absolute complexity of the card may be through the roof, but the experienced complexity will be lower.

How can we reduce experienced complexity in a draft? I've thought of two exploitable factors.

I’m spending a chunk of my parental leave learning more about game design and my current read is Unboxed: Board Game Experience and Design by Gordon Calleja (The MIT Press, 2022, check your local library). The second chapter argues that attention is the foundational aspect of game experience, and a central constraint for all games. I hope this perspective can make us better at achieving our Magic: the Gathering cube design goals.

Calleja illustrates the concept with a story about his own game, Posthuman Saga. The game was intended to have a rich narrative alongside strategic puzzles. The interlocking systems created challenging, consequential, and absorbing decisions. They weren’t too complex for players but they placed too much demand on players for them to also pay attention to the narrative. The effect was that players are so focused on decision-making that the experience of playing failed to live up the goal of providing an interesting narrative.

This sounds a lot like a complexity budget, but it’s a more generalizable idea. It can incorporate complexity budgeting, but it also provides the “why?” Complexity budgets (allegedly coined by Richard Garfield) show up in engineering, project management, and of course game design as a rough mental accounting of how much complexity a project can afford to incorporate. That usually means offsetting necessary complexity by simplifying other elements of the project or design.

In cube design I most often see complexity budgets treated as a curb-cutting accessibility tactic, and prioritized accordingly. After all, it’s rare for a cube to reach the absolute fail case of an overwhelming, exhausting, and ultimately negative play experience. Thinking about attention helps me understand how the cube experience is tinted by complexity, but also by other design decisions that divert attention in one direction or another, even when we’re well clear of the fail case.

Think about some of the most common cube design goals:

Gameplay with interesting, skill-testing strategic decisions

Exploring interesting mechanical spaces, such as context shift cubes

Evoking a specific setting, such as the fae or a favourite plane

Evoking a specific fiction, such as class warfare or monopoly

Cultivating a visual aesthetic

Creating a positive social environment.

Most cube designers will relate to at least one of the above, and each of those are areas they would like their players to pay attention to and engage with.

Magic is a deep game. In a 50 minute match you’ll divide your attention between sequencing decisions, combat math, and navigating difficult trade-offs. You’ll spend time shuffling cards, organizing your battlefield, and trying to find the right token (or giving up, settling for an upside down sideboard card, and then trying to remember two turns later whether it was a Soldier or a Human Warrior). You’ll also spend time reading reminder text, parsing unfamiliar designs, and squinting to decipher what a Secret Lair actually is.

You probably won't be overwhelmed--although some players might be--but all of those elements, from understanding cards to physically maintaining the board state, take your attention away from other aspects of the game you could be engaging with.

Complexity is only one aspect of this, and thinking about attention this way is agnostic to your goals. Even in the Spikiest environment designed for the most enfranchised players you can still consider what you want your players to pay attention to and rethink the design decisions that distract from that. This could mean running the most recognizable printings of cards, or adjusting your power distribution to make the most difficult strategic choices central to games.

I want to think through one example: obscure cards and mechanics.

Imagine for a second you were playing chess without 100% knowing what the pieces did, and each piece included reminders. You’ll probably be able to navigate the game, but time spent double-checking what pieces do means relatively less time thinking about strategy. Is that a satisfying use of your time?

In Magic, enfranchised players are unphased by this, taking it as a requirement of playing, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a distraction. Sometimes the novelty of an environment is the point. In a context-shift cube understanding unfamiliar cards and mechanics (hopefully with reminder text as necessary) may be an important part of the experience. However, if your goals are to have players focus on decision-making or aesthetics, unfamiliar mechanics ask for players’ attention, even if they’re necessary, and will mean less attention available where you want it.

For my own cubes, I would like my players to have more space for socialization at the table, and for players to pay more attention to what their opponent is doing. I don’t think there are any revelations here that spur me to overhaul my lists, but it is a consideration I will take forward with me. It also gives me a better explanation of why I believe managing complexity specifically is important, even though the idea isn’t limited to complexity.

I like that this framing draws a clear connection between our goals and our decisions without simplifying it down to “accessibility is good.” Accessibility is good, but it often gets mischaracterized as designing for new players. Thinking in terms of what you want players to pay attention to and what can distract from that applies to any design goal, and any audience.

Anyway, the next chapter of the book is about complexity, so maybe I’ll need to rewrite this once I read that :D

Thank you to ChampBlankman, klaylk, and Stu for providing feedback on my first draft!

Introducing your cube

"[Comprehension complexity] has to do with understanding what a card does. Put simply, can you comprehend the function of the card once you've read it? What does it do?"

- Mark Rosewater, Lenticular Design (2014)

Comprehension complexity of individual cards is important to consider when designing an approachable MtG Cube.

Thankfully, it's also relatively easy to manage on a card-by-card basis if you keep it at front of mind. In the context of Limited, WotC does this mainly through rarity, but most cube designers need to think a little bit differently.

I'm not saying minimize. Complexity is a tool to entice players. It's a tool to create interesting gameplay. We just need to remember that complexity has a cost, and the more we add the more taxing and less welcoming the list will be for new players.

I will skip over situations where reading the card doesn't explain the card. This includes non-evergreen (or at least deciduous) keywords without reminder text, double-faced cards, and mechanics like Monarch, Initiative, and the Ring Tempts You. Unless those are major themes of your list they're going to be completely alienating.

I suggest evaluating cards with the following mindset:

You're a person who knows how to play magic but does not know the cards. Can you look at 15 cards and understand what they do in the 2 minutes or so that you might have a pack in your hands?

You could try timing yourself literally reading the cards. I've never done that, but you could. I think just applying the framing probably provides most of the benefit.