Main public logs

Combined display of all available logs of Henry's personal library. You can narrow down the view by selecting a log type, the username (case-sensitive), or the affected page (also case-sensitive).

• 02:10, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Iterate, Iterate, Iterate (Created page with "The process of making cards of magic is iterative. From each card throughout the final set there is a lot of iteration. This applies to anything, not just magic cards. There is the first draft and even many many drafts aren't going to make it perfect. Maybe close to perfection. But is perfection really a thing? They make a schedule and make cards to be released in that set schedule. This means that there isn't infinite time to make cards and this is mostly a good thing....")
• 02:08, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Nothing beats good process (Created page with "Many people who join Wizard's ranks are used to being the smartest person in their social circle or environment. Once you join the guys who make Magic the reality comes crashing down. If you believe that from your very first day you are going to make a huge impact in any way you can imagine. No, you aren't. Over time you are going to notice that just because you are in a team of very bright people, that doesn't mean that everything is easy. That every problem is going to...")
• 02:04, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Pay attention to feedback (Created page with "Mark cites the book ''"Outliers: The Story of Success"'' to tell that feedback is essential to get better. The book gives a figure of 10.000 hours of practice to become great at something, 10.000 hours with strong and consistent feedback. Mark tells that the only way for design to evolve is to receive feedback. They, the designers, can be excellent at thinking in the same way as the audience but no matter how excellent they are, the audience itself is still better at kno...")
• 02:00, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Don't fight human nature (Created page with "Mark teaches that human nature is a double edged sword. It can kill design or it can enliven it. It depends on how you approach it. He gives the example of a mechanic in Odyssey that was meant for players to gain an advantage by discarding their own cards to boost another. This mechanic failed and wasn't popular. Another mechanic from another set rewarded players for doing something they wanted to do. This time around the new mechanic proved to be successful. The lesson...")
• 01:56, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Ut design lesson2.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 01:56, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Ut design lesson1.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 01:56, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Ut design lesson2.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 01:56, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Ut design lesson1.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 01:50, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Mistakes are valuable (Created page with "Mark argues that without mistakes we never learn to be better at anything. When we are successful, the beast that we can learn is that something is working and we may even be unaware of what works and why. We tend to repeat the formula because it just works. We aren't encouraged to change or to try a different way. Mistakes, on the other hand, force reevaluation. Mistakes demand some analysis and to do so we need to stop and think. Errors come with a negative emotion and...")
• 01:48, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Give yourself time (Created page with "Mark advises that design in the corporate world is deadline centric. Every time he begins working on a set one of the first questions is ''"When is it due?"''. With time being so much important we are often caught on an impetus to never waste any minute and this means to be working at all times. For most people creativity requires time and rushing things creates a scenario which disfavors one's creativity. Mark says this applies to him, without telling that this is a rul...")
• 01:46, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Everything affects everything (Created page with "When Mark began his career all his designs were made on a card by card basis. His though was that if each card was good, then a whole set of good cards would also be good. The mistake that he understood was that the value of each card was dependent on their context. The same card could be good or bad depending on the set it was included in. Over time he learned that everything on a card matters under a context. The art, the card's type and subtype, the name, so on. Every...")
• 01:43, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Nothing is set in stone (Created page with "Mark is very stubborn but at the same time he is able to step back and review his own actions. If you decide on something, it doesn't meant that you can never go back. It surely means that you are going to spend some extra time in undoing something, but the alternate is to keep pushing something forwards that shouldn't be pushed. This lesson is about overcoming your own pride. People want to be right and it can be quite difficult to accept that your decision was flawed....")
• 01:40, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Listen to the uninvested (Created page with "Mark highlights an important and often overlooked detail about your audience. Playtesting is a key in developing any game or product. Your audience tells you straight away whether your product or game works as intended and is accepted as intended. Theory is important, but you can't foresee everything without testing it. Very much true. However, there is a hidden trap set up among the testers. The trap is that the more enfranchised they are, the more they know about you,...")
• 01:38, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page If it doesn't fit, don't force it (Created page with "This lesson is a continuation of the previous. One side of the coin is ''"If you can do without it, do without it"'', while the other is ''"If it doesn't fit, don't force it"''. On one hand we can live without something, on the other we can't force something in if it's not doing any good. Mark teaches that getting rid of stinkers, the obvious bad cards, is easy. The same can't be said about designs that are good by themselves, but not so much when you take into account t...")
• 01:36, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page If you can do without it, do without it (Created page with "Mark teaches that designing a game is a game of resource management. You have limited resources and you have to make the best use of them to make the best possible product. Magic is already a complex game and if they make a set that is overly complicated the chances are that the players are going to turn away. They see this happening in prerelease events because players tend to avoid the cards with the highest count of words. They also notice that players like when cards...")
• 01:33, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Look outside the box only after you've looked inside it (Created page with "They do break rules, but not because they can. They do it when there is a problem which requires something new, an answer that can't be found inside the box. That's when creativity is called upon. Beginners tend to be attracted by the unexplored because they want to innovate, do something that has never been done before. That or they want to create an identity for themselves by striving to be unique. Mark points out the problems with this. First, you are breaking convent...")
• 01:31, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page The right answer is not always apparent at first (Created page with "Rachel, Mark's daughter, excelled at school until her sophomore year. That year her grades began to fall and her happiness took a nosedive. Mark and his wife were right to suspect that their daughter needed some help and they got to therapy. For a while therapy seemed to not solve anything, until Rachael finally opened up about wanting to move to a different school. She wanted to go to a school were there were no grades, the system focused more on creativity and gave her...")
• 01:30, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Stop trying to make the thing everyone else wants you to make. Make the thing you want to make. You're at you're best when you're passionate about what you're doing. Find your passion (Created page with "Mark Rosewater was the lead designer during the Scars of Mirrodin block. For some reason they were inspired by the movie "Planet of the Apes" where at the end of the movie it's revealed that the planet is Earth itself, in the future. They had the same idea for the second Mirrodin block, leave the surprise to the last set in the block. The players wouldn't know that Mirrodin has became New Phyrexia till the end. Mark had a hard time trying to make it work. Bill Rose, then...")
• 01:28, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page You have to be willing to question your absolutes (Created page with "Adam, Mark's son, was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder) in kindergarten. Mark and his wife were scared that medication could put their son in danger somehow and so they attempted all sorts of treatment options that did not include medication. Some treatments did had an effect on improving Adam's condition but the lack of medication was hindering the treatment's effectiveness. One day Mark had the opportunity to open up about his fears of medica...")
• 01:26, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Sometimes on the way to beautiful, you have a lot of chaos (Created page with "Mark and his wife decided to move to a new home because they wanted to give their children a better education as they weren't happy with the schools at their location at the time. The process of finding a new home, selling the old one and renting a temporary place until the permanent house was finished wasn't smooth. They suffered from delayed schedules, lack of space and resources because thing didn't go exactly as planned. Mark's wife, at some point, told him that the...")
• 01:25, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Every set is someone's first set (Created page with "The Time Spiral block was designed around the concept of time, with a set to represent the past, the middle set to represent the present and the third set to represent the future. They mixed both new and old mechanics and rose the complexity level to astonishing levels. For the experienced players Time Spiral meant a lot of references to the old times, when they played years ago. For the newcomers it meant an overly complicated game, with many references and jokes that t...")
• 01:23, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page If your theme isn't common, it isn't your theme (Created page with "During the creation of Champions of Kamigawa, Mark Rosewater was part of the developers team. He felt that the cards that were made during the design phase had a lack of focus. There wasn't a strong thread to follow and he decided to focus on legendary creatures. Kamigawa had an ongoing theme of legendary cards in all card types, which included many legendary creatures. Mark thought that it'd be a good idea to make all the rare creatures legendary. To push even further s...")
• 01:20, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Restrictions breed creativity (Created page with "Mark says that to write a text under a restriction is easier than to write a text with no restriction. The same applies to cards. Cards that have a restriction of following a theme are easier to design than cards with no specific theme. This fact comes from how the brain works. When you come to face something familiar the brain looks for existing references. If a problem feels familiar to you, you are probably going to try to solve it in the same way you did for a simila...")
• 01:13, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Duke3d creativity.png (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 01:13, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Doom creativity.png (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 01:13, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Duke3d creativity.png (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 01:13, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Doom creativity.png (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:59, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page You don't have to change much to change everything (Created page with "In Invasion's block they tried to push players to play with as many colors as possible in the same deck. They made cards that interacted with multiple colors to reinforce the multicolored theme. However, the block suffered from poor mana base that didn't quite allow for multicolored decks and there was an excessive complexity in regards to mechanics and interaction between cards. When they made Ravnica they took a different approach to multicolor decks. Mark tried to go...")
• 00:58, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Fear lesson17 2.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:58, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Fear lesson17 1.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:58, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Fear lesson17 2.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:58, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Fear lesson17 1.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:49, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Be more afraid of boring your players than challenging them (Created page with "The most popular card from the comedy set ''"Unglued"'' was this: <center>350px 350px</center> This card is split into two pieces and to play it you have to have both pieces. Some time after making this card it struck Mark that he could do the opposite. Two cards in one. For obvious reasons the two halves had to be of the same card type and they couldn't do permanents as this would create confusion. Fo...")
• 00:46, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Fire ice.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:46, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Fire ice.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:46, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Big furry monster 2.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:46, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Big furry monster 1.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:46, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Big furry monster 2.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:46, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Big furry monster 1.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:37, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Design the component for its intended audience (Created page with "When magic was made most of the cards had the mindset of a mathematician. The game was made by one and this reflects on the game's rules and formats. Most, if not all, the rules are based on logic. The damage, life, power, mana cost, everything is based on integers. The number of cards in a deck, the hand size, always integers. Magic relied and still relies on a lot of probability and combinatorics. Mark declares himself a passionate person that is driven by emotions an...")
• 00:36, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Molten sentry.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:36, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Molten sentry.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:36, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Jk2 lesson15.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:36, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Jk2 boss.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:36, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Jk2 lesson15.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:36, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Jk2 boss.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:23, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page Don't be afraid to be blunt (Created page with "When the world of Zendikar was visited for the first time there were beings there called Eldrazi. Ancient creatures that were powerful, hungry and devastating, the enemies of the Zendikar's plot. The cards that were going to represent them had to comply with three properties: feel alien; be enormous; feel hungry and voracious. A rule that Mark commonly follows is that whenever a mechanic or idea is to be put in a set, it has to be part of the common cards. In Magic the c...")
• 00:19, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Ulamogs crusher.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:19, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs uploaded File:Ulamogs crusher.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)
• 00:19, 13 February 2025 Wikiadmin talk contribs created page File:Prey2006 lesson14.jpg (Uploaded with SimpleBatchUpload)