Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1179: Cardcrafting

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Once a week, the Magic designers get together to talk through technical design issues. That meeting is called "Cardcrafting," and I talk about it in this podcast.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay today's topic from my blog. I'm going to talk all about card crafting. What is card crafting? We'll talk about it. It's a meeting for those that don't know so On Fridays we have an hour meeting where mostly the designers discuss designer type issues our meeting where mostly the designers discuss designer type issues. Um, so today I'm going to give you a history of how car crafting came to be. And then talk about, what do we talk about in car crafting? Why is car crafting important? What do we do there?

So that is today's topic. Um, the person who recommended this in my blog wanted me to spend 30 minutes mimicking what a card crafting meeting would be like but I decided that was too hard so so instead it's the history of card crafting okay so to understand card crafting we have to go back back in time so in 1995 is when I started at Wizards or full time at Wizards and at the time there was a group called R&D and R&D at the time was solely the designers or what we would call the designers and developers at the time but solely people that were making, doing game

design. Lots of other people that are now associated with R&D or part of R&D were not there at the time. Editing had its own team at the time. The creative team, which I think was called continuity at the time, had its own team and own. But sort of what happened was back in those early days, we would have a meeting that was meant for R&D like sort of it was the R&D meeting And I think it was on Tuesdays, and I think we called it the Tuesday magic meeting

And we tend to discuss very design oriented topics because at the time we were Just we were the designers also just to give you a little scope. So when I'm talking about this is back in the not so when Wizards First Guys founded it was in Peter's basement for a while. Then they were in the office that when I first came to Wizards we were in. And then we are the office that was the second place. That's that's where this story is taking place. We then moved across the street and

then a little while ago we moved to another part of Renton. So we're now in our fourth building. This is the second building. And at the time R&D was, I don't know, maybe 12 to 15 people. And it was all the games. R&D was for all the games we were making, not just Magic. At the time, Magic, mostly there were four of us that were doing Magic, which was me and Bill Rose and Mike Elliott and William Jocush. Henry Stern would join that soon, not far after that. But anyway, early on the Tuesday Magic meeting was something that was very technical. You know, we discussed designer issues. But then at some point Bill Rose becomes the VP.

I'm jumping a few years here, but Bill Rose eventually becomes the VP. I think when I got there, Mike was the VP, the person who with Richard first pitched Magic to Peter Ackerson. And then after Mike was Jim Lynn, I think became VP of R&D for a while. Then it was Bill Rose. When Bill Rose became VP of R&D, one of the things that Bill was big on, we kept joking that he wanted to increase his fiefdom. But what Bill did was he started getting other sections of the company into R&D. Editing became a part of R&D.

Continuity or the creative team became part of R&D. It wasn't just the people doing the pure card design, but it was all the people involved in sort of making the cards. And at the time, we had what we called, what was it referred to as, the idea was the company was broke up into, you sat with the people that did the same job as you did. So it was a product, not product, sorry, it was a, there was a name for it.

But the idea essentially was, oh, service, right. It was a service delineation, meaning I sat with the people that did the same job I did. Maybe those people worked on other games. Like for example, early R&D, hey, some of us worked on Magic and everybody worked on Magic a little bit, but other people worked on other games, like for example early R&D, hey some of us worked on Magic and everybody worked on Magic a little bit, but other people worked on other games. We had a lot of other trading card games and other things we were doing and so all of R&D sat together but we were working on different games. We weren't all working on the same game. That is sort of a service thing right where you sit with the people that do the same job you do.

And so we had the Tuesday Magic meeting at that time. Now as we started expanding a little bit, as we started adding in editing and creative team, it got a little broader. Our topics got a little broader. It's a little bit more about making magic overall. Then, so when Chris Cox, Chris Cox is now overall. Then, so when Chris Cox, Chris Cox is now the CEO of Hasbro. But if we go two back, two CEOs back, he was the CEO of Wizards. And one of the things that Chris did is he changed the organization. We changed from sort of what we did to our product. We became product delineated. And what that meant is instead of your group being the people that did the same job You did the people you were with were people who made the same game you did and so Whereas R&D would have members of D&D and members of Dual masters and other games we made now under this product master of the product version

All of tabletop magic R&D was together. So Bill Rose was put in all of Tabletop Magic R&D was together. So Bill Rose was put in charge of all of Tabletop R&D. For a while before that, there used to be a brand team and that the R&D team would do work for the brand team. But it was a separate part of the company and you know, we had no oversight. The people that Bran reported to were different than who we reported to. But in the product mix, Bill was in charge of all of Tabletop, and so everybody reported up through Bill.

Anyway, the idea is it radically changed, and so at the time we made this group, they called it Studio X, with the idea that we were supposed to replace the name with something. But somehow the studio liked the name Studio X, so we kept the name Studio X. So, just to get a difference, before that R&D was, you know, the designers, and at this point it was vision designers, set designers, play designers. It was the people that were doing the creative. It was casual and competitive play design.

It was all the creative teams, the artists, all those people were in R&D proper. But then when it shifted over to Studio X, well now we got the people that did the packaging and the advertising and the advertising and the printing and the logistics. Like everybody who at any level had a hand on making magic became part of Studio X. So the Tuesday Magic meeting persisted but it became a much more big picture thing, right? It is meetings for everybody who works on magic. And so the Tuesday magic meeting sort of transitioned and it became a little broader,

a little more about big picture things. And at the time, pre pandemic, we used to have a giant room that we would all meet in. So in our last building, the third building, on the bottom floor there's a giant meeting room and we would get together there once a week on Tuesdays at the Tuesday Magic Meeting and we would talk through big issues. Now eventually what would happen with the Tuesday Magic Meeting is when the pandemic happened, it moved online. And then after we came back to the offices, we were sort of in a hybrid mode where we

would come into the offices, well, we'd stay home Monday, Friday, we would come in the office Tuesday, Thursday, and then Wednesday was play testing for anybody who needed play testing. For most of R&D proper, we would come in on Wednesday. So it would mean we'd be in the office Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we'd be home Monday, Friday. So the Tuesday magic meeting was mostly a meeting

where they talked to us, moved to Monday, and became the Monday magic meeting, which it continues today. The only difference is it used to be an hour and a half thing, put it down to an hour. And a lot of people, even though R&D is in the office now, R&D is no longer, we're in basically we're in every day I personally home Fridays to do writing and stuff

But we are in all the days for R&D, but most people are hybrid and they're only in like Tuesday Thursday So the Monday meeting makes sense staying on Monday Anyway, the reason I bring all this up is at some point. I think Aaron, an Air Force Scythe, my boss, realized that the Tuesday Magic Meeting, which became the Monday Magic Meeting, had changed the nature of what it was. It had got a little bit bigger in scope. We talk about big picture things, but Aaron still needed us to talk about technical things,

right, that when the Magic Meeting had begun, mostly what it was was about technical things, right? That when the magic meeting had begun, mostly what it was was about technical things. And as it grew, as R&D grew, as Studio X grew, it sort of transitioned to something else. So Aaron said, you know what? We need to have that technical meeting. And so he made CardCrafting. So CardCrafting, like I said, is on Fridays.

It's online. Well, it's live and online, but most people are at online. And the idea of card crafting is that there is some, well, there's a couple different types of meetings. Let me go through the types of meetings. One is it's used as a place to convey information. So let's say something is changing that's more specific to the immediate groups. Mostly, card crafting is for the designers and developers.

A bunch of the creative people will sit in, the editors will sit in. But like I said, it's a little bit more technical usually. So sometimes it's information. Hey, this is happening. We want all of you to know it's happening. Some of that can be internal stuff. Hey, we hired some new people.

Hey, we're changing the process. Hey, the internal database is changing. Hey, we're having a problem with this system. Hey, on this day, the office is gonna be down, the website will be down. It's just sort of conveying information. Sometimes that information might be about the day-to-day workings of R&D.

Sometimes it might be about updates on what magic is doing. Like sometimes, for example, we make a change, like somebody, some group makes a change, and we just wanna make sure all the groups are involved in it. For example, card crafting might be where every once in a while the council of colors will come and we'll give a little update on the colors and here's some changes we made just sort of update everybody on where things are at.

Likewise play design or casual play design or you know different groups can come and walk through changes. Maybe Jess is the rules manager will say hey here's some changes in the rules that we're making or maybe there's some template changes and we'll talk about templating changes. So some of the meetings are informative we're just informing people what's happening. Some of them though instead of being informative are we want to sense what people think. So some of the meetings aren't so much we're telling you what is happening and more of, hey, here is something we're thinking of doing.

For example, I'm going to try to give you examples of things that are public now. And so a lot of things that happened recently won't take place for a while. So I'm not using those. But for example, in a in Bloomberg we made a change. We changed enter the battlefield to enters. So when this creature instead of enters battlefield enters. And so, hey, is that a good idea? So we actually had a meeting where we said,

here's a template change we're thinking of doing. And what we decided to do off that was, you know, everyone was like, oh, it seems like a good idea, but the group can say, I mean, there were people that were, mostly people have a good idea, I guess, that one wasn't too contentious. But part of what we said on that meeting was, why don't we play with it a little while? Let's start making sets using the templating and then come back and sort of feel how it feels and the funny thing there was We would do play testing with people that weren't aware of the change and then ask them What do you think of the difference they go the difference in what?

The difference in template and they look at the cars. I don't know what you're talking about It was so not noticeable. It made us realize that it wasn't that big a change. We also, one of the changes coming in Foundation is that instead, we used to say card name a lot, meaning we'd reference the name of the card. And so let's say we have Jolly Elf. When Jolly Elf enters, or enters the battlefield, or enters, blah, blah, blah, something happens.

And so we decided that do we need to say Jolly Elf? elf enters or enters a battlefield or enters blah blah blah something happens you know and so we decided that do we need to say jolly elf because it was confusing people a little bit because what happens when the second jolly elf well the card saying jolly elf really means this card not any card named jolly elf but it was a little confusing and so like well what if instead it's saying the card name what if we could say this card? And this, for example, is a templating conversation. So the editing is with the usually whoever is in, whoever cares most about the thing is leaving the conversation. So editing is like, well, you know, and a lot of places we could save some space and maybe be a little bit cleaner.

But here's the places where we might have problems and usually in a presentation somebody is walking us through it. So normally there'll be like a slideshow and one of the editors in this case will say, okay, here's the cases where we think it's not a problem. Here's the cases where there's some confusion. And we will walk through and then people will give opinions on what they think. So some of the meetings are about like, let's say Aaron needs to make a decision He might say okay. Hey team. We're gonna walk through this. I want to hear the pros the cons And sometimes on issues, it's very split

Sometimes some people really like the idea and other people really don't like the idea and Not everything that gets discussed happens. Sometimes we talk about it and the group as a whole decides not to do it or A very common car crafting meeting is we bring up something. There's somebody who wants it to be right? um So for example, I I will here's an example on the team where we didn't make a change but something we talked about is one of the issues we've been having is universes beyond is starting to make us make sets that have

a higher percentage of legendary creatures. Magic for a while had got, well, okay, I'll bring the whole topic. So we have a meeting and the topic is legendary creatures. Okay. There might be multiple topics. One of the topics is casual play design is like, hey, we think we're making too many legendary creatures, especially in universe magic sets. You know, once upon a time,

we made like six legendary creatures in a set and now we're making 20 or 30 and sometimes more. And so the note that they said is, hey, we think we're making too many. Meanwhile, there's a separate issue. So like we're bringing up legendary creatures. Another issue that came up is universes beyond really needs more legendary creatures because a lot of the exciting thing of doing a property is doing all the characters you know.

And so, you know, there's some discussion of one of the challenges is Legendary comes with a drawback. You can only have two in play at one time. And what does that mean? In Commander, it's not that big a deal because Commander has the singleton. But in Forav, it can not that big a deal because Commander has the singleton, but in Forub it can be a big deal. One of the things we're finding in You Versus Beyond is because the Asphand is up, it just affects how you're making the set.

So we're talking through, do we like the drawback to Legendary? That's something we want to continue. Legendary for those who don't know the history has gone through a lot of changes. Originally when it came out, it was a creature type and you can only have one card of Legend in your deck. And over the years we've changed it, you know, the Legendary rules changed I think two or three times. But anyway, in that meeting we're hashing out, what do we want to do?

Do we want to change how we're interacting with Legendary? And we sort of made the decision, you know know what we are making a lot of legendary creatures and universes beyond definitely wants to push in that space you know what in universe magic sets should pull back a little bit we don't need to be making quite as many legendary creatures and you know for a while we were making the showcase the showcase on commons the signpost legendary do we need to do that like maybe there's certain sets that make sense a lot of what we said is hey the default should be a little bit lower than we've been doing not that a particular set can't do more if it needs it but there should

be a reason you're doing it not doing it just to do it and we also decided we talked about should we do something with legendary in the drawback and we're like well let's pay attention to it so the idea of no we're not going to change anything but it's and we're like, well, let's pay attention to it. So the idea was no, we're not going to change anything, but it's something we're paying attention to. And that's the kind of meaning where we'll run through different options. Like if we wanted to change how legendary works, what are the ways we could change it? And we would list all the possible ways we could change it. And that was something where we had a lot of discussion and in the end result, we decided,

okay, we're going to pull back a little bit how many we're making in magic sets. We're not going to change anything about how the drawback works You know, we thought we we said that universe is beyond have the freedom to explore doing common but not too much in common But it's something that can be looked into We weren't quite like we weren't quite sure whether we wanted to ever do common legendaries or not So that's something that some of the universe beyond sets are going to explore to see if they want to do it or not. So that's something that some of the universe beyond sets are going to explore to see if they want to do it. But like the idea is it's a meeting in which the output of the meeting has a lot of offshoots and things. Another thing that can happen sometimes

at meetings is we do what's called a retrospective. So what a retrospective is, is we look at a set we've made and we go in deep, like crunchy deep. For example, we will look at all the digital data on the limited format, because a lot of people play limited online, we have all that data. So we can say, okay, what were the best color combinations? Which ones got played the most? Which ones won the most? How do they fare against each other and we can and

We can look at that data and say how evenly were the colors distributed with certain colors played more than other colors And we can look at all that We could look at the data about what? There's there's place for people store their decks for commander We can look at that data of what were the most played cards in commander We can look at standard and we what were the most played cards in Commander. We can look at Standard and we can see what cards were played in Standard using a combination of digital data and some external data.

But the idea is we can use actual hard data to look at what we've done to understand the ramifications. And then some of us, such as myself, who interact a lot with the public, can also talk a little bit about what were the main issues that the public had. And we can talk through stuff. And so the idea of a retrospective is we really want to go in depth and say, hey, what did we do right? What did we do wrong?

What was our successes? What were our failures? Where is there room for improvement? Where were there changes made that we should adapt to other sets? It's really sort of looking... And the important thing with the retrospective is no set is sort of all good or all bad. You know, some sets do better than other sets, but it's sort of like even a set that didn't sort of do well, there might be things we did well in it.

Or sets that did do well, we might have things we did poorly that we can improve upon. And so the retrospectives is really a chance for us to sort of like get our hands dirty and really dig in and understand the nature. And like I said, it's very technical. And another fun thing is we do a lot of market research. And so we have stuff like what are the most popular cards from the set and people rate the set. And so we can compare how people rate different aspects historically with other magic sets.

And that can, that, the data that connects with other data can give us a sense of not just how the set did, but how the set did, you know, in, in, in, in, in a, how the set did in a way that was, give us real information, big picture of how the set did. Another thing that we tend to do is, so I'm on a team called Arc Planning. Arc Planning plans ahead many years of what we're doing. And these days there's a lot of market testing and there's a lot of balancing that has to happen making sure we're doing different kinds of things and you know we're pushing the pendulum

as I like to say. But also that we're hitting positive themes and we're balancing our revisits with our new worlds and we're just sort revisions with our new worlds and we're just sort of making a nice suite of products. But at some point we need more concrete input and so one of the things that we'll do at Card Crafting is we'll look ahead and sort of run through our ideas where we're looking for real critical like one of the things that Cartographic does well is look, these are the people that make magic, right?

These are the people that make at least the, the, the game itself. I mean, other people do a lot of other aspects, but this is the team that sort of makes the, the, the crunchy part of the game. And you know, we want to make sure when we're making larger decisions, Hey, does it make sense? So we'll run through like the upcoming schedule and say, okay, let's stress test this. This is the world we're thinking of doing. Here's a general idea, here's a general thoughts.

What are your concerns? What are your worries? And the words are not just specific for that set. It might also be in context. For example, oh, I like this theme, but you know, you've put it at the end of the year right before the set rotates. You know what?

That theme will do better right when the set rotates. You know, that theme is best when the card pulls at the lowest ab or vice versa. Oh, that theme is much better right before rotation. It's a little more of a dangerous theme. So maybe we want it in slightly less time or whatever. There's different reasons why you'd want things. So, and the other thing that happens is

one of the issues of magic is different sets are made by different people. I'm there for all the premiere in-universe magic sets. I'm there for some of The universes beyond and then Ethan oversees and make sure you know keeps his eye on the universe beyond and as a whole and he and I Have a regular meetings to talk through stuff But there's no one person seeing everything so sometimes also when we go through things it allows us to

Talk through things. Oh another thing that comes up is beside us field testing things are looking at information sometimes somebody will notice the problem. A very common example was somebody said you know what there's three different sets doing three different mechanics that are kind of like each other so why don't we talk about that so we'll have a meeting where, like I said, usually the somebody who wants to present an issue, they'll usually make a little a slideshow and they'll walk through the issue. Oh, well, set this set is doing this mechanic,

this set is doing that mechanic, and this set is doing that mechanic. Let's take a look. Notice how these mechanics are sort of similar to one another. A good example of this was we were, oh I can't, I can't, ah sometimes I want to give examples and then I'm like wait a minute, wait a minute, I can't give that example. Okay, what I'll say is a set that has not come out yet was making a mechanic that was similar to what Outlaws of Thunder Junction was doing with the saddle mechanic. In fact, this set from the future made the saddle mechanic and Outlaws of Thunder Junction at the time was using a different mechanic. But what I raised at the meeting was like, hey, you know, these two mechanics basically represent creatively creatures getting ridden, you know, like a horse, you know, someone two mechanics basically represent creatively creatures getting ridden, you know,

like a horse, you know, someone riding a horse. And we're like, it's kind of odd that, you know, these aren't, you know, these are going to exist in standard together. Is it weird that we're doing the same creative thing, but mechanically doing it two different ways? And the question was, could they do it the same way instead of us doing two different mechanics, what if we did the same mechanic? And so we had the conversation and it's like, okay, well, how is Outlaws of Thunder Junction doing it? How is this other set doing it? Okay, well, what if the newer set did it the way Outlaws of Thunder Junction was doing

it? What if Outlaws of Thunder Junction did it the way this new set was doing it? And we walked through and tried to understand in the end, we made the decision, you know what? Outlaws of Thunder Junction should adapt the way the newer set was doing it. The newer set was doing it a little bit more intuitively. Outlaws of Thunder Junction had a cool version of it, but it was like, it was kind of mutate inspired. The idea was you put your creature on top of the thing you're riding, and then you had to mutate sort of quality, they'd combine their things.

But it was complicated. And the way the other team had done it was more of a riff on vehicles. And that was just a little bit more straightforward. And so, all those at Thunder Junction ended up adopting saddle from the later set. But that's because it got raised. And that's a lot of the idea of the meeting is,

card crafting is about the fact that, look, we have a lot of people that are experts that really know magic and know wow and know design. And there's so much going on, there's so many different moving pieces. There's so many different people working in different products and that there really is few people that see, I mean, I want people to see most of it.

You know, Aaron sees a lot of it, but, but you know, there's only so many people that are really seeing the nuts and bolts of everything. And even then there are blind spots. And so the card grafting meaning is for us to raise issues and then let all these different teams talk about it, either share information or discuss things or problem solve.

That's another great thing that happens sometimes is, I mean, like sometimes someone says, I want to make a change, let's see how people feel. And other time it's like, I don't know the solution. I have a problem. I don't know how to solve it. Can other people help me solve this? I don't know how to solve this problem.

And then it's really nice to have a whole bunch of people that are all experts in the field sort of working together. And so that's, that mostly is what car crafting is. It is ironically the old version of the Magic meeting where we sort of, there's a lot of data, there's a lot of shared opinion, and it's a place, like one of the things that's really nice is that Magic is a complex game,

for those that haven't figured that out, and designing Magic is a complex thing. So being able to sit down with other people and sort of bounce ideas back and forth can be very productive. And the other thing that's interesting, like if I said they wanted me to mock it, one of the things that's really interesting, which is hard for me to mock, but I'll do a little bit, is sometimes we get topics where people feel very differently about the topic.

And usually the reason for that is, is people come from different vantage points, right? You know, maybe, for example, when we're talking about legendary, commander has a very different take on legendary, right? They very much care about the fact that it's your commander. The idea that it has restrictions doesn't apply to them, or it does in like, when you copy things, but it's limited. The legendary drawbacks are very limited in Commander because the nature of Commander, the solitariness of Commander usually negates most of it.

Where in a four, you know, and so sometimes we'll bring up topics and people have very different opinions because they come from very different places. And the thing that they work on thinks about it differently. But it's really important to have all those voices and all those thoughts together in the same room to walk through that kind of stuff.

And that's why card crafting is very important. That we tackle a lot of issues. And yes, it's a place to share information. It's a place to let people know what's going on. But when I think of the nuts and bolts of card crafting, it's like, look, we got to dig deep on something. We got we got data dig deep on something. We got data, we got something, we got a problem, or we have a suggestion, or we want to change something.

It's a place really where you can field test stuff and talk through things and problem solve. So anyway, it's a really important meeting. It's really good. It is probably the meeting that if you guys from the outside could peek in on a meeting, it's probably one of the ones you find most interesting because it's us really going to town and really questioning things. Not everything changes. A lot of times we have meetings, we bring big questions, you know, and then in the end don't change something. Um, but legendary being a good

thing. We had a real discussion about, Hey, do we want to change how a legendary works and what can we do? And what are the options options and we examined a lot of different Possibilities in the end like I we're gonna keep it as it is But we really had a lot of conversations about what we can do and how we could change it Anyway, so it's a fun meeting. That is what card crafting is it is the designer meeting. That's most hands-on Let's talk about really crunchy designer stuff But anyway guys, I'm now at work, so we all know what that means, it means the end of my drive to work.

Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Hope you enjoyed today's talk and I will see you next time.