Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1095: How I Became Head Designer

Episode Date: December 15, 2023

December 3 marked my 20th anniversary as Magic head designer, and this podcast tells the story of how that came to be. It's also filled with a lot of tips about how someone can work toward their own dream job.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so very recently I celebrated an important anniversary for me. On December 3rd, it was my 20th anniversary of becoming head designer of Magic. So that is very exciting to me. It's hard to believe that for two-thirds of Magic's life, I've been head designer. That's a long time. So what I thought today is I have told pieces of the story, but never the whole story, of how I became head designer. My story of becoming head designer. I thought I would tell that today.

And then with sort of the framework of this is a dream job for me. How do you, how do you get a dream job? So it's not as if there's a script. It's not as if like just do these four things and you can get your dream job. But I can, in telling my story today, I just want to point out things along the way that like with 2020 hindsight was, it's very good that I did it. I'll point out some things where, like, there's steps that I took. And once again, it's not as if getting a dream job is something that just has a set path. But there are lessons to learn from my story, I believe. Okay, so let's start from the very beginning. So as a kid, so my father, Gene, is a gamer, has always been a gamer.

I grew up in a house where gaming was important, where gaming was valued, where we played a lot of games. My dad introduced me to a lot of games. And as a family, we would play a lot of games. We were very game-oriented. So I have grown up with a love for games. Now, for a good chunk of my life, including my young 20s, games were a hobby. They were something I did for fun. Now, when I moved to Los Angeles, you know, there was, I did a lot of, I mean, I was trying to make it as a writer.

But I had a lot of time. And some of the time I spent writing. But also, I spent some time on hobbies. And one of the hobbies I started, I did a little of it before LA, but LA is really where I decided, as a hobby, to get a little serious on it, was game

design. I thought it was very, I just liked the idea of making games. I thought that was fun. But I, once again, not a career. At the time when I went to school, it wasn't even something you could study. Game design wasn't, like, nowadays you can actually go and study game design. That wasn't a thing. It didn't exist. It wasn't something you could even choose to do.

But, like I said, in college, for example, I had a game group that we would play games usually once a week. So I definitely played lots of different games, which is important to becoming a game designer, just learning what's out there. But anyway, so I started doing sort of amateur game design. My acceptance speech for the Hall of Fame, I talked about how I went to Gamma.

That was my first time at Disney professionally. They had a day-long seminar I went to. I tried to read as much as I could. There wasn't a lot of material on it. I've talked about that. But anyway, so gaming started as something I did. It was a passion, but something I did just because I loved it. Not because it was paying me money.

Like, I talk about a dream job is an intersection of three things. You have to find something that you love. You have to find something that you're good at. And you have to find someone willing to pay you to do it. Those are the intersection of a dream job. So I loved it. I spent some time and energy to get better at it, mostly because I wanted to improve. But the third thing of someone paying me for it was way off the radar. So, okay, so Magic comes out in 1993, in the summer of 1993. And I was working at the Gamekeeper, which was a game store.

I heard about it pretty fast because people were asking about it. We didn't have it at the time. I would later get it into the store. But anyway, I discovered Magic during Alpha. I actually was able to buy a few packs of Alpha. And then when Beta came out, I bought multiple boxes because I knew that I liked the game and I wanted to get other friends involved in the game

was my plan at the time. Anyway, so the next important thing happens in January, I think. January of 1994. The Duelist comes out. The Duelist is a magazine that Wizards used to do. And Duelist number one came out. And I was fascinated because I like to read about things that I care about. Magic was something I'd become very interested in. Game design was something I was interested in. And I was eager to read about magic.

So the first issue came out and I read it. I mean, I read the whole thing in one sitting, and my thought on it was, it didn't seem very advanced. Like, it was very, I'd become more of a regular playing, and I felt that it was a little, it didn't have more, I wanted content that was a little deeper than it was. And so I came up with an idea. And so this is a theme you will see today in the story. Proaction. The idea that I did something. I took steps. And note that when I did these steps, the steps weren't necessarily, like, it wasn't like I made

the puzzle column because I had this eye on the head designer of Magic Job. It wasn't quite that connected, but it was sort of like I enjoyed this thing. I wanted to see if I could get involved with it. I like magic. I liked writing. You know, I'm very into puzzles. So basically what happened was I wrote a letter to Wizards stating that I had an idea for a column, a puzzle column, where it would become Magic the Puzzling. And I think I made two or three sample puzzles, and I sent it in. And as the story goes, I did not hear from them for a while. And finally, one day, after not hearing from them for months, I called up and I tracked down Catherine Haynes, who was the editor-in-chief.

And I said, hey, you may not know me. My name is Mark Rosewater. I sent in a puzzle for you. I'm just curious, did you like it? And Catherine goes, oh yeah, it's in the next issue. And I'm like, they hadn't even talked to me or anything. So it turns out that they did like the puzzle. So there was a, Issue 1 came out.

Issue 2 took a while to come out. So in between Issue 1 and Issue 2, they did issue what we sort of jokingly call 1 1⁄2. It's kind of like a mini-issue. I think it was called the Duelist Supplement? Is that what it's called? Anyway. Or Duelist Supplement was a separate thing.

Sorry. Anyway, Duelist 1 1⁄2 comes out. My puzzle is in it. And so we established that I'm going to do puzzles. And the puzzles were very popular, very fast. Okay. The next important part of this story is, so it's now the summer of 1994. The Duelist has printed my first puzzle, I believe. Maybe the second puzzle. I'm not sure. I remember the timeline. But I have one or two puzzles. I am a known quantity to Catherine. I'm the guy that does the puzzles. So anyway, Gen Con is coming up. This must have been like August. Let's use what Gen Con is.

It's at the time in Milwaukee. I have family who lived in Milwaukee at the time. And so I knew that if I went to Milwaukee, I could stay with them. You know, I just had to get into the event. But I, you know, and I decided, so once again, proactivity. I was like, you know what? I'm really enjoying working with the magazine. I want to do more. And so what happened was I go to this convention. I meet Catherine

I talked to her on the phone but I never met her in person and I say to her look I'm I would like to do more I would like to you know I'm a writer I would like to write articles

and Catherine says to me oh look you can pitch anything you want if you pitch a good idea I'll let you do it and right there on the spot I pitched and I like right there I actually pitched her two ideas. One was

an article about being a magic player at Gen Con. And the second was covering the World Championships. The very first ever World Championships was happening in 94. And I said, well, I'd be willing to cover it. Could I cover it for the magazine? So I ended up writing those two articles. She said yes. And then it just became a thing where, hey, I could pitch whatever idea I wanted. And here's another thing, another sort of little lessons here. I was very good about, I would pitch things and then I would deliver them and I would deliver them when I said I would, and I would do a good job on them. So I sort of, you know, I taught, I, I showed that I was a very, I was talented at what I did

and I was responsible. I had good ideas. I followed through with the good ideas. I always turned my things in on time and I did a good job. So that, that's another important lesson here is I, I communicate, I sort of demonstrated that, hey, you want to work with me. Look, I'm doing a good job. And what happened was, you know, being good at writing, being responsible, and understanding magic led to other jobs. So what started happening was there was a lot of freelance work around wizards. The international department needed someone to write stuff. The magic brand team needed someone to write stuff. R&D needed someone to write stuff. The Magic brand team needed someone to write stuff. R&D needed someone to write stuff.

The duelist obviously needed, you know. So when Catherine said, hey, I have an opportunity. Would you, here's a freelance opportunity for you. I said yes to every one she offered. So before you knew it, I was, you know, I actually did freelance jobs for seven different sections of the company. Another important lesson.

Look, opportunities came. I took every opportunity available to me. And again, I didn't know where it was going to lead yet. It wasn't that I did it because I understood what it led to. I did it because it said, I enjoy this. I want to build good relationships. And I want to get more involved because this thing brings me passion and brings me enjoyment. Okay, then part of doing the freelance work was occasionally they would bring me up to Renton, to Seattle.

Some of the work required me being there in person. So I came up and when I came up, I got to meet people. Another important lesson. There was a lot of networking that went on. Once I was there, I got a chance to get to know people. And the combination of me getting to know people and the work I was

doing, so Mike Davis was the VP of R&D at the time. Mike's famous for, he and Richard were the ones who went and pitched RoboRally to Peter that would lead to magic happening. And Mike, one day, so when I would come up, I liked

spending time with R&D. It was kind of where I wanted, well, game design was really fascinating to me, so I wanted to hang around with people that loved games and game design. And at one point, somewhere, we're sitting around, and Mike Davis says a very,

almost innocuously says to me, oh, just curious, would you ever be willing to move up to Washington? Now, when he asked that question, I had never had a thought of it. That never crossed my mind. I hadn't really thought about moving. Like, game design was my hobby. Writing for television was my job. That's what I wanted to do.

But I said something important. When he said, would you be willing to move up to Washington? I said, yes, I would. And to be honest, I said that and I kind of surprised myself when I said it. Because I was like, wow. So I spent a lot of time really soul searching when I went back home. Um, oh, so what basically happened is he said, would you be willing to move to Washington? I said, yes. He goes, would you like a job? Um, and so I said, yes. And then I went back and I really did

a lot of soul searching in that. Um that I really said, you know what? My path had been a certain—all along, my life had been planned a certain way. There's a third—I mean, I also have a passion for writing. I also love television. Like, writing for television was something—was also a dream job, was also something I wanted to do. But I realized, having had some opportunities to do writing that it you know there it wasn't even though the the actual having the job I loved but it came with a lot of not having the job and there's a lot of things that came along with it and so I said you know what I don't know how long I'll be

in in Renton but you know what this would be a great opportunity in fact when I took the job I did not like if you had said to me at the time, okay, this is what you're doing for the rest of your life, I would have been surprised. That's not what I think was going on. I honestly took the job thinking, okay, well, this is something I could do for a couple years, and I'll learn something, and it'll be a good experience. Another great lesson is when you see opportunities, explore those opportunities. I recognized it was something that I really wanted to do.

I could feel that it was exciting to me. And like I said, even though game design wasn't planned to be my job, I realized that it was something that I wanted to do. The other thing that came up was when I got hired by R&D. And actually, the other funny thing, once I said I would work there, the Duelist and the Magic Brand team and R&D wanted to hire me. So that was cool. I ended up working for R&D, said I would specialize on Magic, and I was the liaison to the Duelist.

I sort of connected all three of those things. But when I started, my job, I wanted to be a designer. That was what I wanted to do. That was my passion. But the job they offered me was not that of those things. But when I started, I wanted to be a designer. That was what I wanted to do. That was my passion. But the job they offered me was not that of a designer. It was of a developer. Terms have changed over the years.

But essentially, I was hired more for play balance, more for developing sets than designing sets. And the idea at the time was, hey, we have a great designer. We have Richard Garfield. We don't need more designers.

We have Richard. What we need is, we need people to upkeep this game. And the idea at the time was that a lot of people, a lot of the play testers and stuff had come, but they were interested in doing other games and other things.

And so they wanted to hire some people to be in charge of magic, whose 100% job would be magic, or 90% job. So they hired me, Bill Rose, William Jockish, and Mike Elliott. And then a year later, we would hire Henry Stern. Another important lesson. That wasn't what I wanted to do. I mean, not that I minded doing that. But my dream job, once again, was to design magic. But my thought process was, well, once I'm in the door, I'll have opportunities. You know, there's another important lesson, which is, you know, you have, there's stepping

stones to get to where you want to go. That moving forward is important. That not every job is exactly the ultimate dream of what you want, but it gets you closer to what you want. And that a lot of working towards your dream job is moving up and getting yourself in position in a place where you can do that. So I get hired. I'm a developer. I'm on all the development teams. I was on alliances. I was on Mirage. I was on visions and weather. I was on all the teams, all the development teams. Now, starting with Tempest, before that, most of the work done were by external groups that Richard or Peter had asked to do magic design. And so it was done externally.

Starting with Tempest, we wanted to start doing things internally. Now, interestingly, I got to start doing things internally. Now, interestingly, I got to know Richard Garfield. I mean, I knew him a little bit before I came to Wizards, but once I was there, I got to know him well. A lot of late-night game playing.

Anyway, Richard, after Arabian Nights, had stopped working on Magic. He made Alpha, he made Arabian Nights, and then he went on, if you remember the Deckmaster on the back of the Magic, he was making other trading card games. He was making Vampire the Eternal Struggle, and Netrunner, and

Battletech, and Star Wars, and he was just making lots of other trading card games. So, he had not worked on Magic. So, we were talking one night or something, and Richard talked about how, hey, he missed working on Magic, because he hadn't worked on Magic in a couple years. And I saw my opportunity. hey, he missed working on magic because he hadn't worked on magic in a couple of years.

And I saw my opportunity. So another great lesson here is it's important to recognize when you see opportunity. So what happened was, so at the time when I got hired, Joel Mick was the head designer. So I go to Joel and I say, hey, I know we want to do Tempest internally. You know, I've been talking with Richard. Richard wants to be on a design team. I would like to lead Tempest and have Richard with me. And Joel was like, okay, we were talking about doing internal.

You know, Richard, Joel trusted Richard implicitly. So Joel said, okay, sure, you can do that. And so I got to pick my team. I also brought on Mike Elliott, who Mike and I had, Mike and I both wanted to be designers and commiserated a little bit, like, oh, we're developers, but really we want to be designers. So I put Mike on the team, and then Charlie Coutinho rounded it out. Charlie was also, when Charlie was one, both Charlie and Bill were,

when Bill, sorry, when Richard and Bill were, when Bill, I'm sorry, when Richard first started trying to do magic, there was a group of people he had met through a bridge club. And that group included, included Bill and Charlie and Joel, William,

Howard Kallenberg, Elliot Siegel, Don Felice. Anyway, that group would go on to make Mirage and Visions. Anyway, so I make Tempest. It's a big hit. Very, very, very popular.

Does well. And that really put Mike and I on the map as, hey, we're designers. We're not developers. We're designers. And for the next, I don't know, chunk of years, four or five years, Mike and I and Bill Rose really led the vast majority of the designs.

The three of us did most of the designs. Now, during that time, Joel got an opportunity to become brand manager of Magic. So Joel moved from R&D to be, at the time, brand was external to Magic. So he moved off to the brand team to be in charge. I think Scaf Elias had been brand manager for a little while. It was a temporary thing. Joel decided it's what he wanted. And so Joel went there.

When Joel went over to there, Bill became head designer. Now at the time, head designer and head developer were the same job. They were a singular job. So Bill becomes head designer. The first set that Bill does, I think it's Head Designers Invasion, in which he leads it and has me and Mike Elliott on the team.

And that really starts the idea of like themed years and stuff. So what had happened during that time period is I started working closely with Bill. So Bill was the head designer slash developer. And Bill had a lot on his plate. And when something would come up, Bill usually, I was sort of Bill's right hand person. For example, Onslaught, Mike had handed over Onslaught. I told him I had a podcast about Onslaught, but it had some issues. So I was the one that went in and helped fix it. Prophecy, William Jockish

had done Prophecy. The design was really rough when it came in. So Bill and I together had went in and helped fix that. So I did a lot of sort of work for Bill helping fix things up. And I worked closely with Bill. I was a big advocate of theme blocks. There's a lot of stuff that Bill did during his reign that I was a big advocate and helped be one of the people to push it forward with Bill. So,

meanwhile, Mike Davis, I'm not sure what happened. Mike Davis stopped being the VP of R&D. I'm not sure whether he left Wizards or he wanted to do something different. But Jim Lynn, who's part of the East Coast Playshifters that made Ice Age, made Alliances, made Fallen Empires, made Antiquities. Jim Lynn, who had been in R&D, ends up becoming the vice president of R&D after Mike leaves. president of R&D after Mike Lees. Then when, okay, so the next important thing is, well,

I'm trying to remember the timeline of this. I think what happens next is that Jim gets promoted to becoming an executive VP and they need a VP of R&D. Bill ends up taking that job. But while Bill takes that job, he—oh, before he takes that job, though, Bill realizes that head designer and head developer need to be two different jobs. So he splits up that job, and he makes, somebody else becomes the head developer. Bill's realizing that there's too much work, that the head designer and head developer were both full-time jobs,

and they required different skill sets. And while Bill was okay at development, there were people, we had started hiring, you know, like I hired, I'd hired Henry Stern, I'd recommended Henry Stern, who was off the Pro Tour,

that we had people that were a little more skilled in that. So Bill started somebody else being head developer. He split head designer, head developer. But Bill liked being head designer, so he stayed on being head designer. And at some point around there, Jim goes up to be executive vice president. Bill becomes head of R&D, VP of R&D. But he likes being head designer, so he stays head designer. Meanwhile, Bill had asked my opinion of we needed more R&D people.

I had recommended Henry Stern. It worked out well. So at the time, I was very involved with the Pro Tour. And so I had a bunch of candidates from the Pro Tour, one of which was Randy Bueller. Randy had won his very first Pro Tour in Chicago and had went on to become one of the top players. He got inducted in the Hall of Fame. Anyway, I recommended Randy. And as it goes, somebody looked at Randy's resume and it ended up getting in a pile of no thank you. I realized, and then I went back to Bill and I said,

Bill, I don't know who rejected this or whatever, but I'm telling you he's a really good candidate. Could you please give this a second look? And I said, can I just set up an interview? I think Bill was coming to a Pro Tour. So I set up an interview with me, Bill, and Randy. I think it was like a dinner. I'm trying to remember exactly. Anyway, Bill interviews Randy and ends up hiring Randy. And then Randy, pretty soon after getting hired,

ends up taking the head developer slot. Randy, once again, comes from the Pro Tour, very analytical mind. And then what happens is... oh, I'm sorry. Bill did not become the VP of R&D yet. He became the VP of Magic. He became the VP of Magic, in charge of all of Magic. And while he was the VP of Magic, he still was head designer. Then Jim Lynn gets the job.

He moves up to executive VP. And then Bill goes from being VP of Magic to being VP of R&D. When that happens, he needs someone new to become the VP of Magic. Randy at that point had been the head developer for a while. Randy ends up becoming the VP of Magic. As we'll go on to be a while, Randy ends up becoming the VP of Magic. As will go on to be a theme,

most of my, the vast majority of my bosses for the last like 25 years have been people I got hired. So he went on to be my boss. And so Randy was the VP of R&D. I think he made Brian Schneider the head developer. I'm trying to remember the order of this. But anyway, he makes someone else the head developer. He becomes the VP of R&D. Bill is now the VP of R&D, but still the head designer of Magic. And while being VP of Magic and head designer of Magic made sense, when he becomes the VP of R&D, Bill just gets so busy. He's not just overseeing Magic. We make other games. At the time, we made even more games. We've consolidated a little bit. So anyway, Randy

realizes that Bill is just, that Bill isn't, not that Bill can't do the job from a, you know, Bill's capable of doing the job, but Bill has too much on his plate. So Randy says to Bill, you know what? I really think we need to find another head designer. And the interesting thing, I'm not going to name names just because, but Randy's first suggestion for head designer isn't me. It is somebody else. Somebody else who had done design. And so he goes to Bill and he pitches this person now I was not

previewed to this so this is behind the scenes so I'm piecing a lot of this together but I think what happened was Bill didn't have confidence in this other person that Bill was like yeah I don't know I'm not going to give up R&D

this is a super super important job I just don't have faith in that I don't know. I'm not going to give up R&D. This is a super, super important job. I just don't have faith in that. I don't think that person can do the job. And I don't know whether Randy then suggested me or Bill suggested me, but on December 3rd of 2003, I get called into Randy's office. And so what Randy says to me is, look, as you know, Bill has been head designer for quite a while. You know, when he became the VP of Magic, he still stayed on as head designer, though

he split off head developer. When he became VP of R&D, he still kept on Magic head designer. But look, it's just too much. You know, it's a lot of responsibility um and so bill has decided bill and i have decided um we are going to make you the head designer um the one caveat given to me and this came from bill i'm almost 100 was i also had to run the creative team so for after i got after i became head designer for like two years for ravnica and for time spiral i ran the creative team.

Eventually, what we realized was that running the creative team was a full-time job and head designing magic was a full-time job. So we actually hired Ken Troop, who now runs, who's the VP of magic now. We brought him on to run the creative team. So anyway, here's the thing that's, I mean, it's just sort of, I'm trying to give some larger scope to me becoming a hand designer is it was something I constantly

worked toward it was always what I wanted I remember when Randy said he wanted to be a hand designer I was very excited it was what I wanted to do and I knew it was what I I remember going home to Laura that day and I was super excited I'm like I knew it was what I, you know what I'm saying, when, I remember going home to my wife, to Laura that day, and I was super excited.

I'm like, I did it. I did it. This is what I wanted to do. And so the, a lot of this was, the thing I'm very happy with is I was very proactive. That it's not like I became head designer because, I became head designer because I earned head designer. I chose to start working with Wizards. I chose to do additional freelance stuff. I chose to make the decision to come to Wizards. I chose to take a job that wasn't quite what I wanted, but I pushed to try to get what I wanted. I took opportunities

to say, hey, give me the opportunity to do this. I pitched myself for Tempest. say, hey, give me the opportunity to do this. I pitched myself for Tempest. You know, that along the way, or I had taken the effort to work really closely with Bill so that when it came time for someone new to be the new head designer, that I was on Bill's brain because I was the person that had done the work. I was the person that Bill had confidence in. And that came from you know, that came from constantly understanding what I wanted,

doing good work, being available, and always having my eye on pushing forward. Now there's another important lesson. So I became head designer in 2003. And numerous times since then, people have come to me and said, hey, like I remember when Aaron, when they were looking for a new person to be VP of magic, they came to me and they said, would you like to be VP of magic? And I said, no, what I want to do is make magic sets. I don't want to be the person in charge of the person who makes magic sets. I want to be the person who makes magic sets. I said that this is what I enjoy doing. And I said, no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do other things. I want to do this.

And the reason I'm celebrating my 20th anniversary was, and this is an important lesson of a dream job. Recognize when you have your dream job. Recognize when you're doing what you love. And this is a lesson not a lot of people get to experience where you have your dream job. Recognize when you're doing what you love. And this is a lesson not a lot of people get to experience where you have your dream job and someone tries to lure you away. But, you know, recognize what you enjoy and that a lot of having a dream job is just staying focused on doing the things you like.

And like I said, it's hard to believe this is the 20th anniversary. I love, love, love, love being head designer. It's an amazing job. It's something that really brings me great joy. And I think I've become very good at it. I think it's something that I excel at. And not that I was always amazing at it.

It came from doing a lot of work. It came from repetition. It came from lots and lots of iteration. from doing a lot of work. It came from repetition. It came from lots and lots of iteration. And also, I think, interestingly, the fact that I spend a lot of time talking about it and writing about it helps me a lot. I think that one of the reasons, I mean, there's many, many reasons I like talking about designing magic, but one of the things was it helped me sort of ground things and get ideas and flesh them out and really think about them. Having to write about something makes you think about things in a different way. But anyway, I'm really excited. I mean, I'm happy that for the

last 20 years, like, I could do a job that literally I just get excited every day. That, you know, it is a joy. And one of the, I guess, the final lesson for you all is, I mean, I guess it's kind of a quote, but it's true, which is, you know, if you do something you love, you know, you'll never work another day in your life. Not that it's not work. You do work.

It's a lot of hard work. But it is something in which I never wake up dreading going to work. I never, I'm never sitting at work going, I can't wait for the day to end. I'm always excited at what I do. And that doesn't mean there's not a lot of work. It doesn't mean there's not things I do occasionally that are not what I want to do.

I mean, a job is a job. But it is truly something, like I said. The reason this anniversary means a lot to me is that I'm very happy. I'm very proud of myself. And I got myself to a place that I'm very happy, very proud of myself, you know, and, you know, I got myself to a place that I'm, I'm excited, you know what I'm saying? That like, I, one of the things as you get older is you sort of look back in your life and you're like, did I accomplish what I wanted to accomplish? You know, one of the reasons that birthdays can be very hard as people get older is it's a reminder that you weren't quite where you thought you'd be. And

I don't, like when my birthdays come, I'm happy because I'm like, I'm where I want to be, you know, and that is that feels really good. So, anyway guys, that is the story of me becoming head designer. So, I hope you enjoyed it, but I am parked. I'm at work, so we all know

that means it's the end of my drive to work. So, instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Happily. I'll talk to you guys next time. Bye-bye.