Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1016: Product Architect

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Today, I talk about the role of the product architect and the importance of the position.

I'm pulling on the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about a position that's very important that I don't think I've ever talked about specifically before. Maybe I've mentioned in passing, maybe. So today I'm going to talk about the role of the product architect. What is the product architect, you say? Okay, so the idea is a lot of different people will work on a set. For those that don't know, let me walk through our traditional process. So at the very beginning, there is world building. There's exploratory world building and exploratory design, which then leads to world building and vision design, which leads to set design, which leads to play design,

which leads to editing, which leads to... Then there is printing and marketing and digital and organized play. So there's lots and lots. Like, from beginning to end, a set goes through a lot. There's a lot of different component pieces. And it turns out there's only one person, with a few exceptions,

like, for example, me on Infinity, but usually there is only one person that is from the beginning of a project to the end of a product. And that is the a beginning of a project to the end of a product. And that is the product architect. So the idea is the product architect is in charge of a couple things. One is they're sort of the business voice. There's a lot of business decisions that need to be made,

and they're the ones that sort of oversee that. There's a lot of consulting with other people. And the other thing, though, is that they're the connective tissue. They're the one that understands through all the different processes what's going on and makes sure that everybody

is staying on the same page. That it's the job of the product architect to be aware of sort of what's happening. And, you know, so just a little behind the scenes stuff today. So we have what we call gate meetings. I don't even know. There's a whole bunch of them.

The only one I know for sure is gate eight is the slideshow. But there's a bunch of meetings. I know they start at gate zero. And I think there's stuff after gate eight. So like, I don't know, zero to 10 or something. And then there's some weird stuff like there's 5A and 5B or something. But anyway, there's a series of meetings. And the point of the meetings is from a business standpoint to make sure at different checkpoints that the things that need to be happening are happening and that there's

confidence in them. And it is the product architect who comes to these gate meetings and has to walk through where the set is at that point. Now, different meetings are looking at different things. You know, early on, it's more looking at, are you setting things up? And then later on, it's a lot more tactical. You know, and there's a lot of decisions that have

to get made like i said this is the business end of things how much money is being spent on a b c and d you know we have to figure out you know there's a lot of i talk a lot of time in design oh we want to do double face cards we want to do punch out cards we want to do you know anything that we want to do that like is over and above sort of the default of the product. We need to go to the product architect because they're the ones that sort of oversee the budget. They're the ones that are, you know, if I want to do something, I have to say, okay, I'd like to do this. So I have to go talk to my product architect and say, hey, I'd like to do this. Is that okay? Now, normally, normally,

it is the role of the product architect to figure out how to make things happen. If I think the set will be better because it has double-faced cards, they'll try to figure out how to make double-faced cards work. But it is also their job as product architect to sort of, you know, there are limits to things. Like I said, I did a whole podcast on budgets before. You know, we can ask to do things and we can say the set will be better if we do X or Y or Z, but there are also realities. There is a budget.

There are limits to what we can do on things. And it's the job of the product architect to be kind of that voice of reason, meaning they're kind of the business representative. They're making sure that what we're making makes sense from a business standpoint. Now, we work with them. I mean, it is in everybody's interest to make sets that players are excited about, right? The reason we want players to purchase something is because they want to purchase it. They're excited to purchase it.

It sounds, you know, it's something that they want to be involved in. They want to, you know, that we want to make a product that our players want to go, hey, I'm willing to spend money on that product because that product sounds exciting to me. I want to play that product. So it is always the goal of the product architect to make sure that the product is as exciting as it can be,

but, you know, it is also their job to oversee lots and lots of business decisions and the other big thing to remember is it is not as if any one product lives in a vacuum it doesn't that one of the things about making magic is when I talk about making a set on some level you know I do have as head designer I have to think about other sets because I'm thinking about whether the mechanics are here. I have to think about, oh, well, if this mechanic's here and that mechanic's there, they're synergistic.

I do need to think about other sets around me. But, as a general rule, usually when you're working on a set, you're in the biosphere of that set. You're trying to make that set as good as it can be. You're trying to make the best set that you can make. And I'm not saying that we don't ever think of stuff around us. We do. But it is the job of the product architect to work with. And there's multiple product architects.

We make a lot of products. So there's more than one product architect. They have to work with all the business people and the other product architects and make sure that there's a larger issue of what's going on. And there are a lot of business decisions behind the scenes, you know. For example, you know, you want to balance revenue between quarters. And I mean, things I don't concern myself with, but are important from a business standpoint. with, but are important from a business standpoint. And so the idea is, you know, that is the voice of sort of the person who leads the product all the way through from beginning to end.

And that, so the idea is, let me walk a little bit through sort of a product architect's job. product architect's job. Okay. So early, early on, there's a team that I'm part of that does, you know, it's me and Aaron Forsythe, who's my boss, Doug Byer, who does a lot of creative stuff, Roy does the story, Jackie does art. You know, there's a lot of people overseeing different aspects. And so we talk about where we want to go. What do we, and we do some kind of big picture planning. We do the big arcs planning, maybe storylines and stuff. But we sort of line up what we think is a good, is a good general suite of products. And then at some point we get sign off from the powers that be. Okay, that looks good.

Let's make that, you know, okay. Lacrosse will be a return to new Phyrexia and we'll have a focus on the Phyrexians and be the penultimate part of the story leading up to the big finale that follows it. You know, we have to sort of figure out what things are. We get sign off on that. Um, once we get signed off on that. Once we get signed off on that, then it gets assigned a product architect. Usually the product architect doesn't,

isn't assigned until it's sort of a known thing. Now, once again, when I say known thing, in very loose terms, we knew that La Crosse was on new Phyrexia, it was a Phyrexian theme set, and it led into, you know, March of the Machine. And I had some rough idea mechanically. I think, you know, being Phyrexian theme set, and it led into, you know, March of the Machine. And I had some rough idea mechanically. I think, you know, being Phyrexian meant something.

But when the product architect signs on, nothing, like, usually they sign on before exploratory world building or design begins. That they're the, sort of, the first person to officially be assigned it. that they're sort of the first person to officially be assigned to. Now, they don't have a lot to do until world building and exploratory design starts. So what happens then is, you know, exploratory spends some time trying to figure out what is going on. Usually, I don't check in with the architect until we get to vision. They peek their head in from time to time, but vision's the first time when they really have a conversation with me. And a lot of that conversation is,

okay, what is this set about? What is the essence of this set? What is this set trying to do? So, for example, I'm just going to use Phyrexia All Will Be One, since that's the set that's out as I record this. So I can talk freely about it because the set is out. So, okay, so I say, I think,

who was the architect? I think it was Mike Turian. Is it either Mike or Max? So I go to my product architect and I say, okay, we've decided that, you know, one of the big things about doing the Phyrexian arc was the Phyrexians can be a little bit off-putting. There's a lot of imagery that's a little intense for them. There's players

that adore it, but there's ones that aren't as crazy about it. So we kind of made a conscious decision early on that the Phyrexians would be part of a bunch of different sets, but a small portion of it. And then we would have one set that's just

like the Phyrexian set, that where we really, like if you love the Phyrexians, this set is all about the Phyrexians, and that we would make it, you know, it would be the big payoff for the Phyrexians. It would have poison in it. It'd have proliferate in it. It'd have Phyrexian mana in it. It would have the things that you expect

of a Phyrexian set, right? So, lacrosse was determined to be that. And so in Vision, I spent some time figuring, like, one of the things the product architect cares about, so we have a term, I'm using a lot of business terms today, we have a term called

KSP, which stands for key selling point. And basically what it means is, what do we think is the thing that's going to most sell the product? What is the most exciting thing about the product? Sometimes it might be the environment. You know, we're doing a cool world we've never done before. Some of it might be there's a mechanic that people love. Maybe we're going back to a world that was beloved. You know, maybe there's some, we're doing double-faced cards for the first time, or we're doing something that's just more out of the box.

It's up to the product architect to figure out what are the things that are most exciting. And they turn to vision design initially to say, okay, what are the exciting things here? And one of the challenges for Phyrexia All Will Be One was balancing making a Phyrexia set for people who love Phyrexia with making a Phyrexia set for people who have never heard of Phyrexia. You know, Phyrexia is a magic maid thing. A lot of what we do

is playing in archetypes of familiar things. Now, I would argue the Phyrexians hit a certain archetype. They're a horror archetype. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the bored zombies to a archetype. They're a horror archetype. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the Bored Zombies to a certain extent. They're a horror trope where you become them, right? They come, and then they take you

over, and then you become part of them. It is a trope, but the Phyrexians very much are a magic-oriented thing, and so it's not as if you pick it up for the first time, you necessarily know who the Phyrexians are. Not that they're not cool,

not that you might not enjoy it in a vacuum, but there's just a lot of balancing of how to make a cool Phyrexian set that is cool for the fans of Phyrexia and cool for people that might not be as much fans of Phyrexia. We'll make a Phyrexian set that everybody could love, but more so than anything else, make sure the Phyrexian fans are happy. We're making one Phyrexian else, make sure the Phyrexian fans

are, like, we're making one Phyrexian set, make sure the Phyrexian fans are happy. So, early on, I'm trying to figure out

how we're doing that. Vision design is messing around with mechanics and stuff. So, one of the things we figured out during vision design

is the idea of, we were doing poison, but we weren't doing, in fact, we weren't doing minus one, minus one counters. We were going to do toxic, we were going to do corrupted, we were doing poison, but we weren't doing infective, we weren't doing minus one, minus one counters. We were going to do toxic, we were going to do corrupted, we were going to do oil counters.

That whole framework got figured out. And another big thing that we figured out during it was that we liked the idea that in Phyrexia, you, the audience, were kind of rooting for Phyrexia. That 80% of the set were Phyrexians. Now, if you didn't want to root for Phyrexia, the word of the rebels, we gave you something that you could root for.

But we really kind of leaned into, hey, this is what the set's about. Let's make this as glorious as it can be. Let's make being Phyrexian as fun as it can be. And so the big thing we sort of talked with the product architects about was saying, okay, we're doing Phyrexia, we're going back to Phyrexia,

you know, it's in new Phyrexia. So the key selling points were a couple things. One is that Poison was returning, Proliferate was returning, Phyrexian Man was returning. So a lot of old favorites

were coming back. We were returning to a place you knew, which was both New Phyrexia slash formerly Mirrodin. And we had introduced in the story in New Kamigawa Neon Dynasty that the Phyrexians had figured out how to

Phyrexianize Planeswalkers. They didn't know how to do that before. They figured it out. Tamiyo got completed. Then in Dominar United, Ajani got completed. So one of the big selling points was we were going to have five completed Planeswalkers.

And then we figured out what would be fun is the set had five completed and five not completed. And so we would later get a marketing thing around that. But anyway, another KFE was there was ten planeswalkers in the set, five of which were completed planeswalkers, something new. So anyway, I explained to my product architect kind of what's going on.

And meanwhile, there are gate meetings going on. And I'm not necessarily at all those meetings meetings I sometimes show up from time to time sometimes they'll invite me if they you know as a special speaker but usually I'm not going to the gate meetings those are more business meetings and the representative of the set really is the product architect now then the product moves from vision design to set design now there's a lot of parts of our process to assume a smooth handoff. There's a document I make called the vision design handoff

that I put online many times. There's a presentation that the lead vision designer will do. And often, in most cases, the lead set designer will be involved somewhat in the vision design. It varies from set designer to set designer. There are a few that really don't like being in vision, but most of them usually have some active role in vision, some of which have a very active role in vision. So one of the other things a product architect has to do in the next phase is make sure that all the stuff they're hearing from Vision is carrying

on through set design. Like, Vision does a really good job of saying, here's what's going on. Now, we do a lot to communicate that, but, you know, I might, let's say I lead a set time for X.LV.1. I kind of peeked my head in from time to time. But meanwhile, there's a lot

of plates spinning, and I'm doing a lot of future sets. So, I don't have infinite time to keep my eye on for example, LV1. I'm not saying I never look in on it. I'm not saying that I don't do play tests. I mean, I check in from time to time, but I'm there sporadically, and so it's up to the product architect

to be one who's just sort of like keeping tabs on things, and if they ever think something's awry, every once in a while, Product Architect will get in touch with me of a product that I led the vision for and say to me, I just want you to check in on this

or they're doing this or whatever. Sometimes they'll make sure that I'm aware of things. Sometimes I am. Sometimes maybe I'm not. Like I said, I'm checking in, but not, you know, infrequently. And so they'll make sure that if they think that the thing is straying a little bit from the vision, they will check with the vision designer.

Sometimes it's straying, but in a way that's good. The set's getting better. Sometimes it's moving a little bit away and there's some recentering that happens. But the designer is checking in. Now also what's going on at that point is the set designer is starting to figure out the logistics. The actual logistics of what would have to happen. Do we need

new frames? Do we need new symbols? Do we need to do something that's different with printing? For example, with Infinity, we were making stickers. Magic had never put stickers. I mean, Wizards had made stickers in other products, but we had never made stickers in a Magic product before. The first time we did punch-out cards, we had a talk.

The first time we did double-faced cards, you know, could we print in both sides? I mean, we could, but what does it mean to do it? There's logistical issues when you try to print something that's different. And so it's up to the architect to coordinate with the different people that need to get involved. Also, there's a point at which editing gets involved and rules gets involved. Now, a lot of that set design and the set design lead is the liaison for as many things as possible to make sure that it is happening. But the set designer, the lead set designer, their number one issue is gameplay, right?

Their number one issue is this set plays well. It is the product architect's job to do the business end of things. You know, are we spending the right amount of money on the product? Are budgets being met? Are we allocating the right resources? Is it coming out at the right time? Are we spaced apart from other products in the right way? There's a lot of larger technical business concerns

that is not what the set designers like. I will interface with people to make the set like. I will interface with people to make the set better. I will interface with editing and with rules and with digital. I will do all the things I can to make my set as good as it can be, knowing that there's lots of other people I need to interact with. But,

usually, it's the product architect that is doing more, like, for example, marketing has to be done. Somebody has to figure out, okay, how are we marketing this product? Somebody else has to do logistics.

Where are we printing it? How are we sending it to where it's going to go? Other people have to do, you know, there's a bunch of digital concerns. There's organized play concerns. There's a lot of moving pieces.

And some of that gets through the set designer. But when it's more about the product as a product and less about the product as a game, that's where the product architect comes in. You know, the lead set designer is not worrying about how much we're printing. They're not worrying about where we're printing. They're not worrying about where we're printing. They're not worrying about component pieces. There's a lot of elements that is beyond the lead set designer's purview. Now, I can say, like I said,

Infinity is my one chance being the set lead. And there are a lot of things that come up, and there are a lot of things that you would think have nothing to do with gameplay that, in fact, do have something to do with gameplay. A classic example will be, there's a card called The Greatest Show on Earth, which is an artifact, it's a saga, but it's an artifact enchantment. And the whole story behind that is we get

the card back, the art ratio is wrong. Normally when you do a colorless card, the art ratio is wrong. Um, normally when you do a, uh, colorless card, um, the art is the full length of the card and it bleeds through. A saga though is a thin picture that goes on the right side. So we were making a colorless saga. We'd never made a colorless saga before. So, um, I, as lead, as the lead set designer, I, I'm like, yeah, it's a saga. Make saga art. I'm not in charge. You're like, I just wanted to make sure that the gameplay plays well, right?

We're making a saga. You get saga art. But when it came back, it turns out that we had never made a colorless saga before. And technically, it would involve a different art ratio. I didn't know that. It wasn't, you know. involve a different art ratio. I didn't know that. But now that we have that wrong art ratio, how do we solve that? We didn't have time to redo the art. Now it becomes, can we solve it?

And then it came to me because we had to figure out, was there a way to solve it? That's why we added artifact. That's why it became an artifact enchantment. Because we could make, although an artifact frame was brand new, we could make, like, we had a saga frame that existed for different components. We had to make an artifact saga frame, but we could make it, and it would use the same art ratio, right? So,

the product architect is responsible for a lot of the different aspects of things, but sometimes that peeks back in. Sometimes, or a very common thing is, let's say we want component pieces, and it turns out we price out the component pieces, it doesn't work for the budget.

We can't have all the component pieces. Then the product architect will come back and work with vision designer, set designer, whatever the product's at, usually set designer, to figure out what are the dynamics of how we're going to make it work. Okay, well, we can't do thing A. What's plan B? So the product architect has to interface with all these different people.

And like I said, I'll just use marketing as a good example. There's a lot of component elements to marketing. There's an entire marketing team. How we market a set is very valuable. And it's important when we market a set, are we marketing the right things? Once again, the product architect being the keeper of the, you know, KSPs, the key selling points, has to say, hey, you know, this is the thing that's important. A good example was when we were making Throne of Eldraine, Throne of Eldraine had two component pieces. It had a Camelot piece

and it had a Fairytale piece. And one of the things that I learned while making this set was that the Camelot piece, while fun and people enjoyed it, it didn't really stick out as something new just because magic has, you know, magic has done high fantasy castles and knights

infinite times. So what we found was people, it just didn't even register as a brand new thing because we had done it too many times. But the fairy tales, we'd never done fairy tales or very, very lately. I mean, we maybe teased a little bit and maybe Lorwyn,

but we really had never done fairy tales as a theme. And so one of the things that I had communicated to our product architect was, look, what's going to get people excited about the set, the new thing about the set is the fairy tales, not the Camelot part. Not that we can't talk about the Camelot part. Not that it wasn't there. Not that players wouldn't like it. But from a marketing standpoint, you need a sell on what's new and different, right?

You need a sell on, why should I be excited about this? So saying we're doing something we've done 20 times before usually isn't the thing that's going to excite people. Okay, yeah, you do that. It's the thing that like, oh, wow, you've never done that before. That seems exciting. And so, for example, we had to communicate with the marketing people that the fairy tale part of the set was the new part of the set. And it was the thing that was going to excite people. And so when marketing figured out how to do the trailer, they leaned into the gingerbread people.

You know, when they figured out how to do the marking, you know, they really, for example, the big push they did early on was very fairy oriented. Um, for example, uh, the big push they did early on was very fairy oriented. Um, you know, they, there very much was a, you know, the marketing has to figure out how to market it, but that has to match what the essence of the product is. Likewise, you know, if there's product, like, let's say we're doing a certain kind of production. So like Battle Bond needed to have two cards show up in the same booster together. Well, at the time we made that, there was one printer in the world

that was able to do that. And so part of making sure that product would work is having the product architect interact with our printing people to make sure that we carved the right time at the right place so that, you know, it wasn't like sometimes we can change around where things are printed.

In this one case, we couldn't. Only one printer could pull off what we needed to do. And we had to say, could they print enough? How big was this? It was a supplemental product. So it turned out, it turned out it had to have been a normal Premier set. That one printer couldn't have printed enough. We couldn't have done it.

But because it was a supplemental set and we planned ahead and we booked, we, you know, planned out time for it. But because it was a supplemental set, and we planned ahead, and we planned out time for it, and what we had to do is we had to print, like, it was a smaller printer, and it would take longer to print because they were smaller, so we had a longer period of time for printing than we might have had somewhere else. But that's the kind of thing, like, depending on

what you're doing, you know, Infinity's making stickers, well, we need to deal with the component pieces to stickers. That's the reason why it got delayed is because the glue company went out, you know, went out of business because of COVID stuff. So, um, there's a lot happening. Um, like when I talk to you guys, I, I'm always talking about the, you know, the, the game side of things, right? I'm trying to make the best game. I and my team,

we're trying to make awesome magic and we're trying to make new mechanics. We're very focused, sort of what I call inside the booster, right? We're very focused on the experience and you having an awesome time and you wanting to buy it because this is a great set.

This is a great product. I want to get it. But the point of today is there is infinite things behind the scenes that are going on. There are whole departments. For example, I didn't even talk about

somebody has to do all the graphic design of the packaging, of the boxes. They have to work with marketing to do the graphic design of the ads. And that's a whole team. the box is a good sense. You're going to make the box and the packaging, right? There's a bunch of different products. You want to make sure the product lines are distinct. You want to make sure people know what they're buying, and you want to make sure that the box conveys what the set is, right? That what we don't want to have happen is someone goes to the store, they see the box,

it doesn't probably convey what the set is, so even though they would love the set, they're not interested because they think it's something other than it is. So the people who make the packaging have to have the same understanding of the general vision of the product. What is the product about?

What are the key selling points? What is exciting about this product? And so every, like, you know, I don't talk a lot about marketing or packaging or graphic design or sales or logistics. But all of those people have to have the same sense. Like sales is another great example. We have to sell this product. We have to have people want to buy it. Well, how do we do that? Well, part of it is we want to, you know, we have to sell this product. We have to have people want to buy it. Well, how do we do that? Well, part of it is we want to, you know, we have to get people excited for the thing we think, like we have to, you know,

the store is going to sell to the player, but at some level we have to sell to the stores and or the distributors, right? We have to make them want to buy the product. Well, how do we do that? Well, we have to make something exciting and we have to figure out how to market it and do the previews and do the things that'll get the players excited

so they communicate to the stores and the stores to the distributors that they're interested in the product. And the other thing is there's a timeline that goes on. You know, when we make a product, there is a very exacting schedule, a very exacting schedule. You know, my schedule basically is, you know, exploratory design starts on this date, exploratory turns into vision on this date, vision design hands over on that date. That's most, that's most of my deadlines. I don't have a lot of deadlines because I do the product so early that I'm not, I'm not interacting with other than creative team. I'm not interacting with a lot of teams yet because we're not far enough along to do that. But once that starts happening,

once you have to start doing art waves, once you have to start doing, you know, frames and layout and, you know, and marketing and all the pieces I'm talking about today, you have to figure out, you have to make sure that's in order. You have to make sure the calendar's going on. And so the product architect is the keeper of the calendar

for their product. They have to make sure that, is going on. And so the product architect is the keeper of the calendar for their product. They have to make sure that, you know, that at each point, the people that are supposed to be doing their things are in fact doing those things. And the other thing that happens is, you know, things don't always go smoothly. Ergo, the company that sells you glue goes out of business. There are things that happen. And when those things happen, it's up to the product architect to figure out

how to adjust that. You know, is there an issue? I mean, there's infinite problems that could happen, but it is the product architect's job to be the point person to solve that. Sometimes that rolls into the set itself, you know,

and the set designers usually the set designer problems roll up the set designer sometimes has to be called to help like my example with The Greatest Show on Earth there was a problem, they came to me because they were like, can you help solve this problem

we have the wrong art ratio we don't have time to get new art how do we use this card in a way that'll work? And I was able to come up with a product solution that allowed us to solve the problem. And that's a big part of the product architect's job is to figure out, I have a problem. Of all the experts I work with, of all the people here,

who can help me solve this problem? Is this a design issue? Is it a marketing issue? Is it a PR issue? Is it a marketing issue? Is it a PR issue? Is it a, you know, I mean, like I said, there's infinite different parts to work with. And the other thing today, hopefully the part that I've communicated is, there's lots of different people making the product. I know I talk a lot about the cards from a sense of the game,

but someone has to lay out those cards and print those cards and ship those cards. Someone has to make the packaging. Someone has to make the packaging. Someone has to market the set. I mean, there's legal, there's digital, there's organized play. There's infinite people that care about a set. Any one set, there are lots and lots of different parts. And some of that is set design interacting with them, but a larger of that is the product architect.

And they see the product from the very beginning to the very end. That is their baby. Anyway, it's an important task, and like I said, maybe I've mentioned the product architect in passing, but it's an important job that I don't know really I've talked about, and I felt

it was only fair that they got their whole episode to talk about them. So if I ever talk about product architect, that is what the product architect is. So anyway, guys, one of the things I've been trying to do recently is think more about stuff I've never talked about because I'm a thousand podcasts in. So I'm thinking about some of the jobs I haven't talked about. So if any of the things I talked about today in passing you want to know more about, maybe I can do a whole podcast on any one of them.

But anyway, guys, I am now at work, so we all know what that means. It means at the end of my drive to work, instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.