Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1269: Igniting the Spark

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

A documentary about how Magic debuted at Gen Con. I had the pleasure of participating in it, and this podcast talks all about that.

I'm plugging in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. Okay, so my topic today is igniting the spark, the magic documentary. So it just came out at Jen Con. It is something that I had a chance to participate in. I'll talk about that today. And if you are at all a fan of magic and magic history, and why wouldn't you be listening to my podcast? This is a must-see. So I will say this. If you have not yet seen igniting the spark, I recommend you stop right now. Go to iTunes or Amazon Prime or whatever you get your videos and go watch it. It's about two hours long. I believe it's 116 minutes. And it is really cool. And I'm going to talk about it as if you have seen it. So if you do not, I mean, I don't know how much spoiling there is. This is magic history. But if you don't want any spoiling of the video,

stop right now and go watch the video. And then you can come back. Okay. Okay, you guys all watch the video. Or if not, you acknowledge that. Okay, maybe later you watch the video. Okay, so igniting the spark. So there have been a number of magic documentaries,

many of which that got recorded and then didn't get finished. I've been interviewed for a lot of ones that didn't end up making it. But this, so Ignatis Park was made by Brian Stillman and Kelly Slag are the directors, along with Seth Polansky. Those are the three people that made it. They previously had made Eye of the Beholder, the Art of Dungeon Dragons, and numerous other documentaries. They do play magic. They do like magic. They were excited.

You know, it was definitely something they were passionate about. And it is, they got, they interviewed, not everybody, it's a few people they didn't get to, but they interviewed a lot of people. If you are all a fan of magic history and want to hear directly from people who are core to the making of magic, this documentary is loaded with people. I'm going to start by going through some of the people. My list is not exhaustive. I got this off the internet.

I know, I know I'm missing people. But, okay, so let's start with the people who do the line share of the talking. Well, two people do the most, which are Richard Garfield and Peter Ackeson. So let's walk through that. So Richard Garfield, I hope you know Richard Garfield is, the creator of Magic the Gathering. The documentary does a really good job. And often, in Richard's voice, Richard telling it, talking about the making of magic. What magic was, where and how he came up with it.

The other thing to remember, and the documentary does a pretty good job of this, is that the idea of magic was a pretty radical idea at the time. You know, now 30 plus years in, it seems like, you know, it's one of those inventions that seems so obvious. Like, how did someone not do this before? But no one did. You know, what they call it a paperclip effect. That, you know, that some inventions are so beautifully done.

And you're like, well, how else would you do that, you know? But someone had to come up with it. And so there's a lot of talk. You hear from Richard and there's a lot of sort of, I mean, one of the things about this documentary that's super fun is not only do they go and talk to lots and lots of people. They got a lot of material. There's a lot of source material.

There's a lot of old video and promotional stuff. I think they got a lot from Lisa Stevens. They have a lot of just old, like just interviews from the early days of magic. Like one of the things for me as a magic, historian. There were things I had never seen before. And there's some things I had seen, but I'd not seen in ages. The other cool thing they did is they did some animation. So when somebody's telling the story, like Peter has this hat story about people keep coming with the bigger hat. I've heard him tell the story infinite times. But it's just, they get animated. Like the story

of Richard first telling Peter about magic in the parking garage, that's animated. In fact, That's the picture that's on the cover, on the poster. So it's really neat that they'll animate things, so you can see some stories in which they didn't have raw footage. Sometimes in other documentaries, they'll like, you know, have actors play the footage. I mean, they did an animation thing, which I really like. Anyway, there's infinite amount of really cool, actual stuff.

And one of the things I enjoy, like, as someone who loves Magic History, is even though I know a lot of the material, you know, I know a lot of the information in this, just hearing it from the source, Sometimes they filled them to things I didn't know. I definitely learned some stuff. I did not know watching this. But anyway, Richard, the creator of magic.

I know you know who Richard is. Peter Ackeson. So Peter was one of the founders of Wizards of the Coast and the original CEO of Magic. And I, while obviously it's clear why Richard is one of the big, you know, the creator of the game. You get why Richard was fundamental to the making of the game. He made the game. But Peter was also very fundamental,

and this document spends a lot of time sort of going into that. That Richard had a cool idea. Peter recognized the cool idea, said, we're going to figure out how to make this thing, figured out how to make it, figured out how to finance it. Like the other thing that the documentary does a good job is, Wizard of the Coast prior to Magic was a tiny company.

It was working out of Peter's basement. like it was most of the employees were working for stock like it wasn't it was a teeny tiny company magic is what put wizards on the map um and so just the mere making of it like peter did a you know a lion sheriff effort to figure out how to get magic made um obviously nothing would happen had richard not made it right so it's key that richard made the game but peter recognizing and figuring out how to make it and there's other people involved too um we'll get to fuse them in a second But the idea of, I mean, Peter owes a lot, should get a lot of credit for what he had to do to make magic happen.

And there's a lot of talking to people. I think Peter is probably interviewed more than Richard. Peter probably is the most interviewed person in this podcast. So there's a lot of the story about the making of magic. I mean, Richard tells, like, the literal how magic got made. But a lot of how the product of magic got made, which is a very fascinating story, is in this documentary. Next is Lisa Steven

So Lisa was the very first employee of Wizards of the Coast and I believe the first person hired at Wizards that had previously worked at a game company that wasn't Wizards of the Coast Lisa was brought in

because she had some expertise and Lisa ended up also being very crucial that a lot one of the challenges when Magic was in its infancy was trying to convince people

what it was trying to sell you know, it's very easy nowadays to go, oh, this giant phenomenon. But at the time when magic didn't exist yet, when you had to sort of imagine what it was, that was a challenge. And Lisa tells a great

story in the documentary about how one of the biggest distributors they came in with a teeny, teeny, tiny order. And she knew it would just crush Peter, because Peter was depending on them really to order, you know, like they needed to get enough money to be able to produce it. And Lisa

just talks about how she had to figure out, how to convince them that this is something they should be on the ground floor of. And it is really fascinating. I mean, I don't think people, it is not easy to sell an idea that's not yet proven itself. You know, once something proves itself, yes, it's very easy.

So that's a lot of the fun here of hearing the stories behind the scenes and the challenges of trying to get it made. they also talked to Beverly Marshall Sailing who was the first editor of the company a very, very early employee of the company and she talks about how in the early days she worked mostly for stock

which means she didn't get paid this was essentially a sort of extra job for her that she did because she really cared about what she was doing but she wasn't seeing any money and obviously the story ends happy because she worked for stock and the stock ended up to be worth quite a bit

but Beverly is somebody I know like I said she led the editing department I got to know Beverly personally she's really sweet and so it's very fun talking hearing Beverly talk she shares the story about how she had her write Arabian Nights in one night

because no one had thought that they needed flavor text and she had to put it together all in one night grabbing from two different source books you know the 1,001 night books she had but anyway and she tells there's a lot of very early magic wizard stories that are really fun. Beverly

talks about it. We hear from Jesper Mirforce. So Yesper was the very first art director. He made the logo the card back. All the frames. He worked with Chris Rush to do the man as symbols to do all the graphic design.

And yesper was one of the original artists and Yesper is quite a character. I actually had a chance to work with Yesper. He worked with the company left and he came back and he was art director on unglued. So I actually had a chance to work directly with Esper. So most of these people, actually, I worked with Richard. I worked with Peter. I worked with Lisa. I worked with Beverly. I worked for Yesper. Schaff. I worked with Scaff Elias. So Scaff was one of the original playtefters, the creator of the Pro Tour. He was brand manager of Magic for a little while.

A visionary and it's a really smart guy. I've talked about Scaff many times. He's one of the East Coast playtefters that I mentioned quite often. So Scaff is in this as well. He talks a lot about the early days, and they actually don't interview a lot of the original playtasters. A few of them, scoffing one of them. But Scaff spends a bunch of time talking about making the early playtest cards. And then there's a section when they talk about organized playing.

Scots very involved in that. So we hear you from Scaf. Scaff is always a fun person. He is, in some level, a character larger than life. And so he's a great person in interview. And then are the early people, the other one, Dave Howell. So Dave was more on the production end of things. I overlap with Dave just a little bit.

But it is interesting to hear somebody talk, like, one of the things that's hard to sort of wrap your mind around is what Magic was asking to do no one had done and just trying to figure, like, there's a great interview, I forget his name, but the guy who was their original contact with Cardamundi where that's the original printer magic used. We now have lots of printers. It's still Cardamundi, but we now have more printers than one.

And there's a great story where they met him at Origins, I think. They met him at a convention, and they were trying to walk through what they needed. And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, we can do that. And secretly he's going, I don't know how to do that. Be like, I'll have to figure out how to do that. And so there's a lot in the production of making magic that, you know, the act of, I mean, nowadays, we do it all the time. But back then, like, okay, how do you make a game like magic? How do you do it?

You know, just figuring out rarities. Anyway, it was quite a challenge. And Dave talks a lot about that. So they interview a lot of artists, including some very early artists. Some of the artists they interview. Mark Poole, Liz Danforth, Natta Giancolo, Jeff Menjee's, Winona Nelson, Gerald Frette. I know there's more. That's the ones that were listed online.

So they talked to a lot of the artists. And, like, another thing about magic is magic really did a lot. of reinvigorating sort of fantasy art. There just wasn't a lot of places for fantasy art. Imagine it's become one of the biggest purveyors of fantasy art. And so there's a lot of talk about that. And then there are just infinite Wizards employees.

Now, everybody named Richard, Peter, Lisa Scaff, Beverly Jesper and Dave, all were early wizard employees. Other wizard employees, they talked to, obviously, me. I'm in quite a bit. Jess Linzillo, who led the creative team for a while, Gavin Verhey, who's a designer that most you I assume know. Elaine Chase was in R&D for a long time, was a brand manager for Magic for a long time.

Mike Turnion in the Pro Tour Hall of Fame was in R&D, now is a producer. Ken Troop, who runs Magic now. Jefferson Dunlap, who's been there as many years of AI, who is behind the scenes and does a lot of the technical of printing magic. Melissa Datorra, pro player, magic. Now she runs the creative team. She runs the casual play team. Aaron Forsyth, my boss, former pro player and a long-time R&D person.

Charlie Catino, Charlie is one of the original playtifters. Charlie worked on magic early. Now he does dual masters and other stuff at Wizards. Joel Nick is another one of the playtifters. He was the first sort of head designer for magic. Joel then builds me. And they talk to Joel.

They also talk to a whole bunch of people that are magic, aren't employees, but we're connected in different ways. Like, Reed Duke and other people that talk about pro-magic. Brian Kibbler, Olivia Gowbray Hicks, the professor, Dana Fisher, Sheldon Menary. They actually

had an opportunity to interview Sheldon. So, for those that haven't seen it, let me real quickly run down sort of the overview. It's about two hours long. I would say about the first hour and a half are mostly the origin story. The vast majority of this movie

is the origin story of magic. And I will say, as someone who loves magic history, there is no way in a two-hour movie to tell all of magic history. There is a lot of magic history. And so they really, really focus on magic's origin. There's nothing wrong with that Like I said

I think if I was making a documentary You know I might focus on some different aspects I don't know I mean I also was The early days or the one part of magic That I know of but I wasn't there for And there's a lot of really

Like there's a lot of very interesting things About magic along the way But And I stress you get two hours You know And I don't think they wasted any of their time I think all the stuff There's a lot of really fun early stories

that they tell but it is I would say mostly the documentary is about the 90s there is just so an hour and a half is like the early days of magic

and most of the early days of magic we're talking you know 91, 92, 93 maybe 94 a little bit of 95 most of that stuff maybe goes up through 95 then

they spend 15 20 minutes maybe talking about organized play, the pro tour. And that, interestingly, I was involved in that part, but when they interviewed me, I had so much to talk about that I didn't get to, I didn't talk about organized play. So I'm not even in that section,

even though I was sort of scarce right-hand person at the time. And so I was very intimately involved in the creating of the pro tour, but I didn't actually, I don't talk about it in the video because they didn't end up asking me about it because I had so much to say. and then the last five to ten minutes

talks about Commander and like I said they had a chance to interview Sheldon which was really nice they actually the memorial at the end is to Sheldon because obviously he died before the film came out

but anyway there are so many stories shared and there's a like I said a lot of source stuff okay so let's talk a little bit about the making of it since I was involved in that Okay, so, I believe the film started, they started making the film in 2000, either 18 or 19, pre-pandemic. And the first thing they did is they interviewed, I think they interviewed like Richard and Peter and Lisa and Yesper.

They did a lot of interviewing of the really early people. I believe that's the first interviews they did. They came to me during the pandemic. They had to come to my house. I think I got interviewed I'm thinking like I'm thinking like 2002 is my guess

I had not returned full time like I was still working at home so I think it's 2022 anyway they came we went to my basement they actually I have the original Maro which they normally

is in my library where I work we took it off and in the basement in the background if you see me interviewed and the background is Maro they thought that'd be a fun back so it's a little Easter egg So they came and interviewed me

And I interviewed many, many hours I don't remember how many hours Three, four hours It was a long interview day I interviewed for quite a while They then came back later And then we had a whole interview Where I was going through like

Things I had that were kind of fun collectibles There's a section where I walk through I have a giant box of like Mirage playtest cards and I'm in my bedroom downstairs rather than the main room. Now, I wore the same thing so that you all would know that I was filming on a separate day.

But I think that a lot of the second day was shot in my bedroom and the first day was shot in the main room in the basement for those who want to look at and see what's what. So the interesting thing is I end up a decent amount in the film

and here's my theory why. I mean, A, I'm involved in a lot of magic. But I think the bigger reason I show up so much is I do a lot of interviews. I do this podcast. I've spent a lot, a lot of time, like, talking about magic history and condensing down, like, explaining things. I've gotten very good at explaining things, but I have to do it so much. So I'm in the film a lot, especially early on, just, oh, what is a trading card game and what is the color pie? You know, I do a lot of explaining of things just because I have practice explaining things.

And then there's a little bit of, there's a little segment of me, like, showing a picture and walking through some of the early people. Like I said, they really, the documentary, with the exception of a little bit on Commander, because Commander was not in the 90s, the documentary most, like, sort of the, the way they end the story is sort of Wizards getting bought by Hasbro. It's sort of like, the way their story is framed really is Peter and, you know, all the other people made magic, you know, made Wizard of the Coast and that got magic. And then, you know, the sort of end of the story is they sold it to Hasbro and everybody, you know, who, all the

people who had stock made out really well. And, you know, and so, like Peter tells the story of the janitor when he worked at Boeing, putting in money, like putting all her life savings into his company. And then she, you know, she made millions of dollars. And that's kind of the tail end of the story. So with the little blip of commander, mostly, It's telling me about magic in the 90s, with the big kind of ending being, Wizards being sold in 99 to Hasbro. So I would say that it mostly is about that.

And like I said, it was, it was, I had a lot of fun doing it. I mean, I liked doing documentaries. I like talking about magic. Brian and Kelly and Seth were great. They really made it easy to do. If anything, there just was, like I said, I talked for hours and hours and hours

in the intersections that I could have added value to, I could have talked about that they didn't even ask me because we just ran out of time. The other thing that was really interesting that I enjoyed about the film, one of the reasons, I mean, if it's not clear yet from listening to me talk,

if you haven't yet gotten the idea that you should go watch this film, if you haven't already, you should. The thing that I, I guess I most like about it, is that I know I've heard these stories,

a lot of these stories. In fact, I've heard a lot of these stories from the people who tell the story. And I can share them with all you on my podcast I have, I do, you know.

But there's a difference between me telling the story and the people who had happened to. A lot of the fun of most of my stories is I'm telling the stories that happened to me. Those are probably the best stories. It's not the secondhand stories.

It's the, you know, hey, I was there and I lived it and here's what happened. Those are kind of the best stories. This documentary is full of that. You know, most of what you're hearing is the story from the source of the person that lived that story. And the reason

that's so much fun is, like, one of the reasons that I, the all the interviews are so fun for me is you just you just get stuff filled in that you might not know. Some of which I did know, but some of which I didn't know. Like, there definitely were interviews with both Peter and Richard

where they added in little tiny details that I had not heard. Even though I might have heard them tell the story before, you know, in the telling that I heard, they just didn't tell that little detail. And there's a lot of fun things. Like, one of the things

that the documentary does really well that I've spent a little bit of time on but not know as much that the documentary does, which is that magic, the concept of magic was a cool idea. And the people,

everybody that mattered got it. You know, Peter heard the idea in the parking garage and instantly got it. He understood it. You know, Richard made up cards and started playing with, and all the playtesters got it. And they sent the playtests cards to the office. And everybody at Wizards got it. Like, everybody at Wizards understood the specialness of what they had. But just because you understand you have something special does not mean that translate to a product that you can then sell.

And there's a lot of really fun stories about that. The other thing that the documentary does a great job is there are a lot of things that are a certain way that almost weren't that way. For example, and once again, I've told the story, but you can hear it firsthand, you know, when they were making Arabian Nights, Richard was convinced that the back of the Arabian Nights cards should be a different color, that each sort of release of magic should be its own sort of game. And not that you couldn't mix and match them, you could. and like opaque sleeves weren't a thing at the time and Richard was like well if you draw a card and you know it's from a Raven Knight

you know it's from a Arabian Knight like he didn't he didn't even see like the danger that having different card backs like he is just sort of like each game it's its own thing you can mix and match if you want and a lot of people spend a lot of time

trying to convince Richard Scaffano one being one the biggest of no no no the unified back is fundamental to what we're doing And Richard, even though everyone's telling Peter not to do it, Peter was going to follow what Richard said because Peter really believed in Richard and Richard's vision. And it was Richard who, the last minute, literally, the night before,

changes his mind and agrees to go to the unified back. That almost didn't happen. And you hear that story from Richard, from Peter, from Scaff, like that's the amazing thing about the documentary is that you get to hear a story some of which you probably will have never heard before like I said some of which maybe I've told you but I don't know all of them

even if once again I make a lot of podcasts maybe you hear the one podcast right I told the story about that particular thing and like I said there's just it's there's so many small details to the making of magic to sort of all the different things that went into magic

that is what that is the other thing they did I mentioned this but let me go a little more deeply in this and that they, one of the things you want in a documentary is documentaries are very visual, right? That you are, I mean, it's nice to see talking heads. It's nice to hear, you know, it's nice to see people talking. But you also want to get what they're talking about.

And they found all this old footage. A lot, I mean, once again, I think it came from Lisa Stevens. There was a lot of interview footage of people I know, before I knew them, very young, sort of explaining magic early on. There's a lot of, like, newscast stories, there's promotional videos. Like, they really dug deep. There's a lot of really fun, fun things. And it was, that's the other thing for me is just the reminiscence of looking back.

And, like I said, having lived some of this myself personally lived it, it was really cool. I, it's interesting. I shot so much material, and I really did. know what of mine they were going to, I ended up a decent amount in the film. I think after Richard, Peter, Lisa Skapp, every yes, per day, the

people that, the early people that did the brunt of the talking, I probably show up next as far as just volume of time. And like I said, I attribute that to doing this, of just being a magic historian and constantly having to contextualize

what it means. What else can I tell you about the film? Um, the, oh, the other thing that's super fun is, like, for example, there's a whole sequence where Scaff is talking about making playtest cards, where they actually found the playtest card, you know, where they actually, like, Scaf talks about different body parts that he photographed and, like, there's a card called heel, which was his heel, and then one of the cards was his face and, you know, just sort of talking through that. and then literally seeing the actual cards.

Oh, and the thing they did when they went to people and had them show off, like, their cool collectibles, like one of my favorites is Lisa Stevens had a playtest version of Black Lotus. I've seen a lot of playtest cards, but I had never seen the Black Lotus playtest card before. And Lisa believes that she had the only one, because it was a rare, in the Wizards playtesting, and she got it and held on to it.

And that was really cool. Like Mike Turian saved all his collector t-shirts from when he was on the pro tour and then somebody, I'm not sure of his wife, his wife, Rachel, or maybe his mom, somebody sewed them into a quilt, which he shows off, which I'd heard about the quilt. I'd never seen the quilt. That's a lot of the documentary for me is there are a lot of things that I'd heard about and then I got to see for the first time, which was very exciting. and it's I don't know

and the other thing for me also is that I know all the people I mean with one or two rare exceptions a few of the artists I guess I didn't know but I know the vast majority of people like there's so many people that I personally I have relationships with I worked with I know them

some of which I hadn't seen in a long time so it was it was really cool it was like I said you know So what happened was they shot this film in 2022, and I think 2023. The plans was it was going to come out, I think, in 2023.

And then obviously it came on 2025. So I don't even know behind the scenes. Like, obviously, there's a lot of challenges putting together. I think, I think the project got a little bit bigger than they originally planned. I don't think they had planned for it to be two hours. I think it was two hours because they had so much stuff that they included it all. And I'm one of the, I did the Kickstarter. I know there's additional footage for the people that did the Kickstarter that,

I haven't got my DVD yet, but I'm very excited to see the extra footage. Just because I'm dying to see what they shot that they didn't put in the documentary. So that is very exciting. And anyway, obviously, I've not conveyed you in these almost 30 minutes if you've not seen it to go see it. It was a blast to participate in. It was a blast to watch. Now I want them to do the documentary for the, like, the other interesting thing about watching it is

so they do a thing where they talk about early magic and then they show like a picture of like a, I forget an article or something like on magic's first billion dollar year, you know, and there's a whole documentary of hey, how did magic go from being

a hundred million dollar year to being a billion dollar year? That itself is its own story. So like that's a fun thing about magic. There's many more stories to tell like I think this doesn't a great job of telling a lot of the early stories, but that's not all the stories. But that's not all the stories of magic. And, I mean, I don't know if they'll do it on their magic documentary.

Probably not. But there's many, many fun more stories to tell. So maybe, maybe what I'll do is maybe I will make my own podcast talking about, that's a really fun story of how exactly, what were all the innovations magic did. The documentary talks a little bit about organized play and then Commander. And those are both two big forces. But anyway, maybe I will supplement the documentary. with some of my, with a podcast or two,

of filling in some of the stuff since it. But anyway, again, if you haven't seen the documentary, igniting the spark, you can get it wherever you buy your videos and stuff. I know it's on iTunes and Amazon Prime and such. I cannot, I cannot wholeheartedly, if you are all a fan of magic history, of going and watching it. It was, like I said, a blast to do, a blast to watch, and really was just an amazing one.

So I do want to say to Brian and Kelly and Seth, good job. I really liked the documentary, and I hope you all either have enjoyed it or will enjoy it. But with that said, I know it works. So we all know what that means that means instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.