Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1306: Subjectivity in Design

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

Part of a designer's job involves figuring out what to include and what not to include. In this podcast, I talk about subjectivity in Magic design.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time another drive to work. Okay. So today I've dubbed what I'm calling subjectivity in design. Let me explain what I mean by that. So oftentimes I talk about how everybody has a line in the sand for what magic is to them. And I often describe how that line in the sand is just different from different people.

What makes magic magic, the line of where magic is and what's not magic. I think everyone has a line, but it's different. But R&D does have to draw a line. Like there is a lot of metaphorical lines in the sand. There's an actual line in the sand that R&D have to draw, right? There are some things that we want to do and some things we don't want to do. And so today I'm going to talk about that. How, why is it sometimes we do things and other times we don't?

Like what? Where does the subjectivity of design come from? That is today's topic. So first and foremost, let me talk about sort of what is the mission statement as far as I believe it is R&D. And boiling down to the simplest version of it, we want to make the best possible game of magic for the most possible people. Magic is an amazing game. We want lots and lots of people to play magic. And we are trying to make it something that many, many different people can.

and enjoy. One of the challenges of that mission is, and I've talked about this all the time, players don't want the same thing. It's not like players are a uniform group that all want the exact same thing. They want different things. I often use my buffet metaphor talking about design, and the idea is I'm trying to make an awesome buffet. How do I do that?

Well, I offer a lot of different food, and that people that love ham can get some ham, and people that love salad can get some salad, and people love seafood and get some seafood. Like, whatever it is that you love, whatever, like, the thing about magic that makes magic not unique, there's a few games like this, but not a lot, is the customize ability of the game, that you, the player of the game has so much ability, you can determine the cards you play with, you can determine the format you play in, you can determine, there's lots of things you get to determine. And so, magic, like, on some level, the game of commander and the game of booster draft are the same, thing, but they're not.

A Game of Commander and a booster draft, while they use the same component pieces, are very, very different experiences. And that's great. That's one of the awesome things about magic is that the variety of what magic can be.

But when we make a magic set, one of our goals is, I want to make everybody who plays magic fall in love with something in the set. not everything not everybody's going to like everything and

there's no one thing that will be universally loved you know I can make something that a lot of people love but there'll be somewhere that just doesn't like it you know I mean no matter what I mean like Blumbrough was a very

very very popular set but there's people that think it's too cutesy Innestrade was a very popular set but there's people that don't like horror and it's not what they want that's the magic they want. No matter what, I mean, there's always,

no matter what we do, our most popular things we do that there's people that adore it, there's other people that don't like it. I've talked like double-faced cards, for example. When double-faced cards first came out, there was a decent minority that really, really didn't like them.

And, you know, that is the challenge. And one of the challenges is we are trying to make magic something that everybody can sort of find the thing they love in. But, and here's where the subjectivity, this is sort of the core of today's talk, is there's things we don't do. There's things that, like, I often get players saying, you want everybody to be happy. Well, I love thing X. You don't do thing X. Why don't you do thing X?

Why am I excluded? That's sort of the thing. So I'm going to talk a little bit today. like why don't we do things? I mean, in general, our general philosophy in order to have the best game possible for the most people possible is have a lot of variety

and a lot of different things available to the game. For example, let me dig into that before I get into why we don't do stuff. I'm going to talk about what we call the Johnny Jenny rairs. So one of the things we do from time to time is we make these rairs that just ask you to do weird things.

The one that I always think of is there's a card called Seance in Inestrade. In Seance brings back creatures from the dead for a turn. But it doesn't give them haste. It doesn't let them attack. So why would I want to bring back creatures for a turn? I can't even attack with them. And the answer is, yes, why would you? And it turns out, well, there are cool things you can do with that.

Creatures have entered the battlefield effects or death triggers. Like, there's reasons why you want creatures temporarily that's not about attacking with them. and that one of the cool things about that card is trying to figure out what that is. So we call these Johnny and Jenny rarets because really they're aimed at the psychographic of Johnny and Jenny, which is here's a weird card that does weird things. You figure out how to use it.

And when I say Johnny and Jenny, it's not even all Johnny's and Jenny. There's a very particular deck-building Johnny and Jenny that just likes the challenge of figuring out how to use things. But we do the thing called a rare pulse. So whenever we, with every set, we send out all the rairs and mythic rairs to anybody in the company who wants to take the pole. And so, you know, hundreds of people, I think, take the poll. And then it gives the, usually the set lead, information about sort of general, how do people perceive the rairs?

What do they think of the rairs? And one of the things that always scores low, always scores low, are the Johnny and Jenny rairs. The thing is they're aimed at a very particular group. So most people are like, you know, that's not a good card. I'm not going to play it. You're like, normally they get dinged quite a bit. And the reason is they're very focused on what they are trying to do. And one of the things that I'm always trying to do is make sure we say,

I'm not saying every set has to have a lot of these John and Jenny Rairs, but actually have a few, you know. There is an audience, and give it a niche audience, but an audience that really does enjoy them. And we want to carve out that. So, like, there are a lot of things like that. Another big one is what I call the high variance card. Timmy and Tammy really enjoy cards that are like, ooh, crazy things could happen.

And we've got to be careful to make sure the high variance cards don't cause tournament problems. But, and just cards that flip coins or just do things in which there's just this opportunity for this wide range of things to happen. There's a subset of Timmy and Tammy that really enjoys that. We want to have a little of that. We don't want a lot of it. And that one's even a little more troublesome in that for game balance with some issues that be careful with. But the point is, we want to have stuff like that.

We want to have niche effects. Okay. So the question then is, we want to do Johnny and Jenny Rare. Johnny and Jenny Rare. So I often will get an email from someone saying, you know what? I like land destruction. I like land destruction. Where's my land destruction?

Why do you give other people things they want? you don't give me what I want. I want land destruction. So let's talk a little bit. So there are a couple reasons that we don't make something. Number one, probably the biggest reason we don't make something is we don't like the gameplay. I mean, one of the jobs of R&D is, and this is where the subjectivity comes into it, it is our job to make the game fun.

Regular listeners will know that a big part of game design is figuring out how to make sure that the audience gets to the fun part of your design. Luckily, Magic has lots of fun in it, but how do we make sure that we get there for that? How do we get to make sure that we maximize what is fun? So what that means is we are looking for, like we have to identify things we don't think are fun. And yes, there's the subjectivity.

One man's unfun is another man's fun. One of the things I think about is, imagine if we were asking people to rape things and we had a scale what I call the sort of the fun scale so imagine you know we ever go to bathrooms and there's like three buttons to hit

there's a green button, a yellow button and a red button the green button is a little smiley face on it and it means I'm happy and a yellow has a little like not a smile but like a straight line like I'm not happy or sad that's neutral and then Redhead's the frowny face, I'm unhappy. One of the things we want to think about all the time is,

how do people perceive the cards? Do these cards make people happy? Do they make people neutral, or do they make people unhappy? The thing about something like a Johnny and Jenny card is, it'll make some people happy, and it makes a lot of people neutral in the sense that they might never use them, but it doesn't actively make most people unhappy. I mean, there are people that are unhappy

because if a card is not what they're. want, they're unhappy, but I don't mean that. Obviously, magic can't make every card for every play. Players are going to like and dislike different cards. So I'm not talking about unhappy because it's not for me. I'm talking about unhappy that I don't like what it does. I don't, you know, that if I play against it, I'm unhappy. Not that I don't like it, then I won't use it.

But I don't like what it does when it's in the game with me. It makes me unhappy. I'm unhappy to have it in the game. and that one of the things we have to weigh is to figure out how much happiness does something create versus how much unhappiness does it create. And it's not that the card can't create any unhappiness. There are things that people love

that other people don't like. But let's talk a little bit about land destruction. So early magic had a bunch of cards. Sinkhole probably being the most famous of them, meaning it destroyed a land for two mana. Obviously, there were a bunch of our spells a strip mine also, which destroys, I guess, a land for no man, you'd stack the card.

But there's a point in time where I could play a deck. In fact, Kaibuda won the World Championship in what was it, 99, playing a deck that mostly kept his opponent from playing many, you know, just blew up most of their land. And that's what

land destruction decks, when I say a land destruction deck, I mean, a deck dedicated to land destruction. Really a strategy is, I'm going to keep you from winning the game because I'm going to blow up every land you play. I'm just going to keep... My answer to you is,

I'm going to remove the resource of land. If you don't have land, it's hard for you to play anything, and then I'm going to win. And even if I have small... Whatever, whatever creature I have in play, if you can't stop me, I'm going to win. And so my whole plan

is just disrupting your plan. That is not fun. You know, it's one thing to say I get to do my thing and you interact with me and you get to answer my things, but at least then I get to do my things and play my things

and I get some action with my things. But the thing about land destruction and the two other decks were discard decks. The idea of discard decks is similar to land is that I'm just going to make you discard every card. You're never going to play a card? You're never going to have a card.

And then what we call it permission decks, which is I'm going to counter every spell you play. You're never going to play any relevant spell. So I'm going to beat you because you never play anything that's at all threatening. Those three are very similar in that the strategy of it is my opponent never gets to do anything. I'm going to keep them from doing anything.

That is pretty unfun. And, you know, when we get sort of the feedback, a lot of red buttons push, a lot of frowny faces, right? That one of the things about magic, win or lose, one of the things about magic is you want to feel in the game, right? The idea of a good game, Even if you lose the game, if you were in the game, if you feel like you had real potential.

You have to feel like you had a chance in the game. Not that you have to necessarily win, but it's like, oh, I was close, or we were back and forth, or if I just run this one card, like, you want to feel like you're in the game and it matters, and you're doing things that are relevant. But sitting through a game where you literally can do nothing, where it's pretty clear early on that I'm never going to do anything and we're going to play a game, which might be a long game, but I'm never going to get to do anything is pretty, pretty as unfun as it gets.

So what that says is we have to be careful with land destruction and discards and counter spells. It's not that we don't make those, we do. The thing is we don't want a whole deck of them, and we want to make sure their rate is such that it's not, you know, we do like, you know, like, we do make. some land destruction. We do make some card denial, some discard. We do make some counter spells, but we want them in proper proportions. So number one, why do we not make something that you really

want us to make? The answer might be we don't think it's good gameplay, you know, that it produces more unhappy players, much more unhappy players than produces happy players. Part of making a game for a large group is thinking about the group as a whole, And like I said, it's not that we shouldn't make things that are just for one group. Johnny and Jenny and Rare's clearly are that. But the Johnny and Jenny Bears don't really take away fun from other people. You know, they're not creating game states that are like this was a miserable game state. You know, like if you play against Johnny or Jenny doing this thing,

A, I'd say you're going to win. Using Johnny and Jenny cards are hard to make win. And the essence of Johnny and Jenny is it's not so much about winning a high percentage of the time. That's spike. It's more about can I win it all? I have a deck doing a weird thing. If I just win some of the time, hey, I won with a deck that's doing a really unique thing that I designed.

That's okay. And so that's one of the reasons that we don't print things is it will be unfun. And I get that unfun is a vague term. Once again, I'm talking today about subjectivity. It is R&D's job to figure out what is and isn't fun. Now, that doesn't mean we don't interact with the players. on some level the players are the determiners of what is fun and not fun.

If we make something we think is awesome and that goes out there and the players are like, okay, well maybe it was not as much fun as we thought it was. You know, that you guys get to be the determiners of what fun is in a larger sense. But what that means is there might be things that you individually really enjoy that really is not fun.

Most magic players aren't fond of that. We got to be careful with that, especially when the things that are unfun that sort of impede on other people. But like I said, we want people to have their fun. And, you know, one of the real things that's important is part of games in general is games are social experience. I'm getting together with friends or other fellow game players. I'm getting together in some place where I'm playing a game.

I'm testing myself. I'm trying out new skills. I'm sort of testing out things in a safe environment. It allows me to challenge myself and test myself, do all these fun things. And I get to socialize with other people. I get to interact with other people. And we want to maximize making that experience as enjoyable for everybody as we can. And we understand, like, you know, grieferes exist.

I mean, there's people who, what brings them joy does not bring other people joy. And so there's a balance to be had. And that is the challenge. That's part of the subjectivity is where does that lie? What is fun enough? And we spend a lot of time talking about fun. I did a whole podcast on fun. Fun, once again, very subjective.

What is fun for one player is not necessarily fun for another player. But there are, you know, we can look at players as a whole. This is generally fun for enough players. players, will enough players enjoy this? Okay, the next thing that we are careful about is maybe there is something that is unfun for people, not because, or makes people unhappy, I should say. Not because the game itself is not gameplay,

but, for example, one of the things about fantasy, fantasy, like a lot of genres, was sort of formalized in the early 19th century. Tolkien and I mean its roots go back to fairy tales and things before the 20th century I meant 20th century, the 20th century but a lot of sort of the formalization

of what we think of is the fantasy genre really came together in the 20th century but early in the 20th century and that there are you know as with any genre there are things that get baked into a genre there are tropes that get baked into a genre that come from the time it was made.

And some of those are not necessarily positive. Some of them have undermining to them, whether it's misogyny or, you know, hurting a sort of group or class or like, whatever it is, there's something about it that is, it came from sort of a not good place. And that one of the things that we are constantly looking out for.

And a lot of this is education. this is why we get creative consultants and is trying to make sure that we're not without realizing it reinforcing a negative trope. I'm not saying we never have, we have, like that's why we get consultants. Sometimes we're not even aware of things are negative, but we really, really want to make sure

that what we are doing isn't harmful to people, not in the fact that it's unfund gameplay, but that's reinforcing something. It's reinforcing a stereotype. It's doing something that it sort of makes the person who knows better, who's interacting with it, who knows what it is doing feel bad. We don't want that.

Magic, one of our goals, we have values in sort of what we do, and one of our core values is our game builds people up, it doesn't tear people down. That we want to feel, everybody feels inclusive and invited and not make people feel rejected.

And so, there are things we can do that a subset might enjoy, but would be really a negative experience, And once again, not in the gameplay sense, but in the creative sense, that it would represent something

that would make players feel uncomfortable. And we don't want that. We don't want players to feel uncomfortable. So there's some things we won't do. And once again, it's not because there aren't people that would enjoy it, but there's other people that would be actually negative for them. And we want to be careful about that.

I mean, really the core of today is we want as many people to play the game, enjoy the game, you know, and that we don't want negative experiences to really drive people away, whether that negative experiences within game, meaning it's something about the gameplay that's just not fun,

or within the IP or within the essence of what we're doing, meaning we don't want to create negative experiences in the reinforced stereotypes or do things that are harmful. Those are the two biggest categories. you know, the other category that I would say is we spend a lot of time on aesthetics.

We want to make sure that things sort of feel right. Sometimes there's things that just don't feel right that we're careful with. Sometimes there's created decisions of, you know, we think this leads to the more compelling thing. I mean, there's things we don't do for aesthetic choices, I guess. That was a lot fuzzier. That's sort of harder to describe.

but the idea essentially is and I've talked about this a lot but it's worth pointing out here magic is very good at being additive and trouble with being subjective and what I mean by that is to use my metaphor my buffet metaphor

let's say we get some research that say players really like seafood there's a lot of players out there maybe some players that don't even currently play magic but would play magic if we had seafood. They love seafood. And so we add seafood to the buffet. And it's popular.

A lot, a lot of people enjoy the seafood. Now, I get some players to go, I don't like, I really dislike. I don't even like the smell of seafood. I don't want seafood anywhere near me. The challenge for us is we can add seafoods with people that love seafood, but the only way to not have seafood

for the players that don't like seafood is to remove seafood, which means the players that love seafood don't get seafood. Like, we're good at additive. If you love seafood, we can add seafood for you. But if you're want subtractive, I don't want seafood. That's a lot harder.

Now, as I said today, subjectively, there's things we don't include. There's things we think would be a net negative experience and we don't include. But, and this is the hard part, is magic, I think, and this is true of a lot of things, but magic more so than the average game is a more personal game. There's a thing called ego investment. It's a psychological term. And the idea is the more of myself that I pour into something, the more I feel that thing is an attachment of me.

Meaning if I do an art project, I paint a painting, and somebody criticizes the painting, it feels as if they're criticizing me because I poured so much into the painting, so much of me is in the painting, that I feel you are attacking me, when you attack the painting. So one of the things about magic,

and I think this is an awesome thing about magic, but the fact that you have so much ability to shape what it is means there's a lot of you in it. You make your deck. You choose what to do. You find you in your deck. And your deck is something most people play over time.

It is something you come to, you know, Commander does this very well. You really come to think of it as your deck. It's something you play. It's something you play. something you connect with. So when somebody is critical of that thing, it hurts, right? It is, there's this really emotional bond with it.

And I think that is awesome. I think the fact that people can connect so deeply is a feature of the game. But as a side effect of that, you know, players really, really, because the game is so personal to them, they really want the game to reflect what they are personally. Now, obviously, you have some ability to reflect it in choices you make. I really like Thing X. Well, I'm going to make a deck about Thing X. But the challenge is, you don't live alone. You know what I mean? That in order to play the game, you have to play against somebody. And that person has the same free will you do. They have the same choices you do. They can pick and choose what they

want. And so let's say there's some aspect of the game you don't enjoy. Well, part of being part of a community, part of being part of a game playing group is somebody else might adore the thing you dislike. And there's many different levels. Maybe there's a deck archetype you find very unfun that they play. They really like counterspells and you hate that. But they really like it. Maybe it's an environment. Maybe it's a, you know, they really like the horror setting.

They like Inistrade or Frexia Albion or something and it eats you out. You don't really like it. or maybe, you know, there's something like Bloomboro where they really adore it, but it's just not the vibe, it's a little cutesy, you know, like, there's things that we can do in which you have to sort of, you're interacting with somebody else. And one of the fun things, the things I have sort of stress is, one of the things that makes games amazing is the fact that you get to share your passion to somebody else. Like, one of the needs, and then this is not even just gaming, that one of the reasons that

it's fun to hang around with people that enjoy the things you do is it's fun to share the love of that thing. And part of gaming, part of magic in my mind is that one of the things I enjoy is I like seeing people have a great time, enjoy themselves, and that one of the things that I, you have to come to realize is magic's feature of being so many different things also means it can be different things and that it can be things that aren't your favorite. But that part of being in a group is, well, I'm interacting with other people. And that normally when we make something people don't like, the answer I get is, I don't like it, I don't want to experience it.

And I always say, well, don't play it. But they're like, oh, but I have to interact with it. You know, that if this exists in the system, I have to play against it. And my answer to that is sort of like, do you like? like happy people. Like, you know, part of a game experience is letting everybody sort of enjoy the thing they enjoy. And that try to find the happiness in other people's happiness. You know, maybe you get freaked out by horror, but your friend loves horror and has such a fun time with horror.

You know, let them have that joy. I mean, the other obvious one is universe is beyond. Maybe you hate universes beyond. But somebody else, their favorite thing of all time is their Final Fantasy deck or their avatar deck. Like, let them have their fun. And that is a big part of sort of the subjectivity for us is we want to make sure that we enable the joy. And that we recognize where the unhappiness comes from. But the goal is not, I don't want, I'm not willing to eliminate tons of joy to eliminate some unhappiness.

Like some joy with it will bring unhappiness. And that that, that, I mean, I want to say, again, there's a balance there. That is the sort of the core of today's thing. It is not as if there is to set rules and all we have to do is A, B, and C. It is subjective. That whenever we do something that some players

adore and some players don't like, we have to figure out how much of that do we do. I want to bring the joy to the players that have the joy, but I want to respect the players that it doesn't bring joy to. And part of that is, there's a certain part of matching that I'm sort of saying today

that, look, players have There's a certain amount of embracing of other people's joy. Yeah, there's things you don't like. Yeah, other people are going to play them. But my argument is their joy can be a net bonus to you, the player. Playing with happy people, playing with excited people, playing with people that love what they're doing, there's a lot of benefit that comes from that. There's a lot of, like, other people's joy is a boon to you.

It is, I mean, maybe it's not something you recognize right off the bat, but there's something infectious about happy people. And that if we make something that makes your friend really, really happy, but makes you unhappy, the thing I'm sort of saying is, look, you don't have to focus on that thing. You can focus on the thing that brings you happiness. Find the thing that brings you joy. And we make a lot of things.

One of the things about magic, you know, we have 30,000 cards plus. there's things to find that should bring you joy but don't let the other people have their joy let the other people enjoy the thing they're enjoying and try to find fun in their happiness not necessarily in their decisions in their choices in their gameplay but in their happiness and that is one of the trickiest things

of this subjectivity is I want to be additive I want to bring as much joy as possible to the players I want to make the greatest game for the most number of players. Greatest game is a lot of choices of just making it fun and making neat decisions. For the greatest number of players means I'm trying to find as many different things that bring as many different people happiness as I can. Like one of the things that we are constantly exploring is how else can we make people happy?

How else can we bring joy? How else can we make, like, I want you to connect to magic in a way that is core and essential. And like one of the reasons that people play magic for so long. Magic has a very, way, way longer than most games, people play magic is because we do allow you the ability to find the thing that excites you and let the game be that. And that, in order for us to do that,

in order for us to make more people happy, we have to find more, we just want to keep expanding. We want to keep growing the buffet. And I know there's people like, hey, I remember when you guys first started, you know, it just was a breakfast buffet and you had breakfast food

and I loved the breakfast food and breakfast food was great and I don't think we need all this lunch and dinner food breakfast food was ideal. I love the breakfast food. And my answer is we have the breakfast food. We didn't get rid of the breakfast food. If you want to go have your French toast and your scrambled eggs, it's there.

We've not taken away that. The buffet still has that stuff. in fact, the very French toast that you ate the first time you came is still there. But that there are newer clientele or even old clientele that just have other things they enjoy. And that is a lot of the subjectivity.

That is a lot of what we are trying to do. And I get it. I do understand, like, one of the things about my blog is I get very personal replies. I get people saying, look, I'm going to share with you very core feelings that I'm having. And I never want to dismiss this. It's why I'm glad I have the blog. It's why I still answer questions every day after, you know, I've had the blog for like 15 years.

I've answered hundreds of thousands of questions. And the reason I do that is I do want to hear what people are thinking. So I never, I never dismiss somebody saying, here's the thing that brings. me unhappiness. The challenge is, is that I'm also listening to somebody else who's like, that's the thing that brings them joy. And so trying to have the balance between making sure that you have things that bring you joy, but not taking away things that bring other people joy. And that, like I said, that's one of the tricky things about subjectivity. That's one of the hardest things about our job is we are balancing a lot of different things. And I know it's

very easy to sort of focus on, I mean, I'm at work, so I got to go soon, but I will just wrap up. Magic is an ever-changing thing. It's ever-evolving. We do things. We get feedback. We try new things. We get feedback from the audience. The things they like we do. The things they don't like, we stop doing or do less. And then magic sort of changes as that happens. And as major things happen to magic, like magic is through a lot of transformation over the years. But that's kind of the cool thing. Magic keeps becoming the thing that its player base wants it to be.

And I understand as a long-time player, sometimes the zeitgeist of the modern player base goes in that direction slightly different than what you would choose. And I've experienced this. Look, I'm an old-time player. I haven't played since Alpha. I've experienced this. But one of the things I realize is one of the things that I really love about magic

is that it is what the community wants it to be. And even if the community zigs when I expect it to zag, like there's been a lot my relationship with Commander over the time. I was a bit of a crummergroom when Commander first came around just because it wasn't the way that I played magic. It wasn't my, it wasn't just my magic, if you will. But what I've come to realize is

it's this really fun way to play magic. It is not necessarily the way that I will always choose to play magic. But sometimes it is a way that I have played and then they do enjoy. I've had plenty of opportunities to play in fun Commander games. Some of them have been filmed.

So it's not as if I can't enjoy Commander, but even more so than that. Commander shouldn't live and die on whether I like Commander. It is, do people out there like Commander? And oh my gosh, yes, of course it is. The amount of joy the Commander format is bringing.

and I, as a person who just, I just want to see people happy, well, how can I not love Commander? It is bringing so much joy to so much people, you know? And that's the kind of key. I mean, whatever it be. I mean, the other big thing is, universe is beyond is doing something very similar right now,

which it is bringing a huge amount of happiness to a huge amount of people. It's also bringing in a lot more players and having more people to experience magic and falling in love with magic. and I get it I get it like I

magic will shift in ways that isn't necessarily what you want but find the joy there are people out there that are just ecstatic and happy and that anytime magic zigs in a way that just makes more people happy

that's not that's not bad that is kind of the game doing what it does the game sort of moving in the direction like the game with guidance from R&D and our subchiti of some shit of talking today, the game keeps moving toward max happiness

of making the most people the happy can be, making the best game possible for the most people possible. R&D is constantly guiding it so that the game keeps evolving and pushing in that direction. And the game will keep changing, because the audience will keep changing, and what people are enjoying will keep changing.

But the core essence of magic is not changing. What makes magic magic magic is not changing. The very essence of magic is not changing. Trappings will change, elements will change, but I think the core essence of what makes magic such an amazing game, I don't think that's going away or changing. Even though elements of it do change.

So anyway, guys, that is my talk today on subjectivity in design. This is a meeting topic. I'm sure I'll talk more on it just because it is... But I just sort of want to bring across today that a lot of what our job in R&D is subjective. And that when you guys are giving notes, I get it. We are making subjective decisions. but we are making subjective decisions

with a very concrete goal. Make the best game we can for the most people possible. You know, we want to bring magic to a lot of people. Magic is... Honestly, I don't mind even exaggerating. I think magic is the best game ever made.

I'm full... I believe that. I believe magic is a source of good. I believe it's a great game. I want as many people to play magic as possible. I want to expose magic as many people as possible. I think lives will get better the more people to play magic.

I believe if magic comes into your life, There's a really high percentage chance your life is better than your life was before magic in it. And so that is what I and my fellow R&D people are trying to do is bring magic to as many people as possible because it is the greatest game and keep it a great game while giving exposure to a lot of people. Anyway, that is today's topic. I hope you guys enjoyed it. You can see some passion of mine. But anyway, guys, I am at work, so we all know what that means.

It means the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make it magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye. Thank you.