Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1320: Slideshow

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

One of our latest design processes involves a slideshow where we show off every card in an upcoming set and make final comments before everything is locked down. In this podcast, I talk all about the evolution of the slideshow.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for our drive to work. Okay, so today is all about something we've done for a long time called the slideshow. Now, the slideshow has been through many forms. So I'm going to talk about sort of the origin of the slideshow and how the slideshow's evolved. But I guess I should begin with what is the slideshow. Because some of you know, I have no idea what the slideshow is.

Okay, so we're going to go back many years. So one of the things about magic is there are a lot of different sets going on. And even back in the day, more true now, not everybody works on every set. That there's a lot of different things going on and that people are very involved in certain sets. But even someone who's working on magic, even full time nowadays, you just don't touch every set. I'm the head designer and I'm on a lot of teams. And I am not on every team. I can't be.

There's too many teams. So the point is that everybody has their blind spots, meaning everybody has sets that they didn't actively work on. And it was always important that we wanted people to be aware of what things were. And so one of the things we did, so the earliest version of the slideshow was we would invite, I think R&D always came and we would invite other related magic people and that we would sit in a room, a dark room,

and we literally would show the cards of the upcoming set on slides. And the idea was it was done near the end of the process once everything was in what we would call it in frames, meaning that we had the art in, we had the name, we had the flavor text, we had the rule text with reminder text, with the actual templating we think we were using. meaning here was an honest stab of what we thought

was the final version of the card and originally I think the slideshow began I think the earliest version of the slideshow was we are done we just want to show everybody what we're doing we just want it's sort of like okay

we're finished and there's a way to sort of both give a little appreciation and a tip of the hat to the team that worked on it and to just let everybody else who wasn't working on it, get them up to date so everyone's sort of aware of what's happening.

So that was the earliest version. And I remember correctly, the slide show when it first started was when it was done. It's like, oh, we're done. So we're going to show you what we've done so you guys can appreciate it. And it just was a cool moment to sort of see everything, even if you worked on the set,

just to see the name and the art and the rules text and the flavor, like all together. Just as, you know, that was the first chance that most of us that weren't the editors I mean, the editors would see all the component pieces, but most people, you know, maybe the head developer at the time, but most people hadn't seen it all together. And so it was just really cool to see.

Even when I worked on, even stuff that I designed it, I was very, very involved in. So it was fun to see the final version of things. So that was the original version, just, hey, we're about to hand the files off, and as a little, or we just handed, maybe it was even we just handed the files off. But anyway, we're done, we're finished.

Let's show you what we made. And what we found was that when we showed the slides every once in a while, people would catch something. Oh, that template's wrong. Oh, there'd be some little tiny thing that would get caught. So I think we've moved the slideshow back a little bit. So instead of being after we were done, because once we sort of hand off the files, for those that don't know, essentially R&D will work on it,

and then at some point it's what we call pencils down, where it goes off to editing, then editing works on it. And during that time period editing's worked on it, R&D can, you know, design can still make some changes, but it has to go through editing, so the editing wears what's going on. And then there's a point in which, okay, we're done.

Nobody can change things. Oh, once editing is done, they have to give it to graphic design, the people that basically will lay out the cards. that you, we actually, in order to print the cards, we have to know exactly what the cards are like, make the files to send them the printers, so the printers can print the cards.

And so after editing, there's a team that has to lay everything out. And also there's other, you know, arts involved, and they have to crop the art. Anyway, there's a lot of different teams that are working together so that there's a finished card. And then once the card is finished,

then editing does a pass to make sure that everything is correct, looking at all of it together. And it was, it was, I think once editing handed it off, that's when we used to have the slideshow. But because every once in a while in the slideshow, people would find something,

it was kind of a pain to make changes there. It wasn't impossible. And if it was an important of change, as the file goes later and later, it gets harder and harder to make changes. There's a point at which we've shipped it off and's done. They're printing it.

We can't make changes. But there's a period where we're, quote, unquote, done. We shouldn't be changing it, that if something's important enough, that we can, but the later it is in the process, the greater, the more dangerous is it is to change something. You don't want to end up with mistakes where what you mean to do and what the final card is is not right. And the later in the process you do that, the more likely. Plus, at some point we have to translate and make different versions.

There's a lot that goes on. You kind of want everything to be locked in before you get to that part. If something shows up and it's problematic, we can change up to a point and the severity of the need of the change starts to matter. Like, at this point, we don't make changes except really, really important changes.

At this point, we can't make any changes, right? So we said, oh, you know what? The slide show is probably a little bit later than it should be, because this is the first time we're showing people. Maybe when we show people for the first time, you know, one of the things that happen sometimes is sometimes there is

things that you don't mean that somehow when you're too close to it you can't see it and there's been definitely some times where somebody did something and then once somebody else looked at it like yeah did you hear how that sounds you know I know you mean this word

but it sounds like that word or oh this kind of there's this maybe you missed it but there's you know, um, we have sort of what we call the internet test. Like, will they,

you know, are we making a joke that people will, you know, laugh about the internet because it's making some, something, a joke we didn't intend. There's,

there's double entomered to it, or there's something in which we didn't intend, but it will make people, you know, giggle on the internet. Um, and one of the things that's really valuable is when you're working on a set and you're constantly looking at something,

sometimes it's hard to see the forest for the trees. Like, you're so on the details. And that showed, people who, especially people that aren't even familiar with it, you get, there's interesting notes that come about. So, we said, okay, instead of doing the slideshow after a hand-up, in which it's really hard to make changes, let's do it earlier. And so we moved the slideshow to the point where editing has finished their first pass, but there still is a little bit of time

for, you know, if people catch things, editing can still fix it. The idea of the slideshow was, It's not so late that you can't, you can't, you know, if we notice something's a problem, like the bar was so high to change things. Okay, so, and generally what happened, by the way, so we'd get in a room, invite all the people we wanted to invite, it'd be dark, the slides were up on the screen, and the other thing about the slideshow was it was a chance for us to kind of celebrate what was going on. So I think in the beginning, when it wasn't, when it was after it was done, meaning there's no responsible for anybody other than enjoy it.

We tended up a lot of fun yelling stuff in the screen and it was just, it was a fun kind of social moment for R&D to get together and appreciate what we've done, but also, you know, make a lot of jokes we'd yell at the screen and stuff like that. So eventually, the next iteration of it's like, okay, we're going to show it a little earlier. So if you have notes, you know, send us notes. If you notice something, send us notes.

I think early on people would yell things out and someone to write it down and then just became unwieldy to do that. So they started saying, okay, if you have a note, instead of just yell, I mean, you can yell it out. But that's not, no one's responsible for catching that. If you really have a note, you know, people would start bringing, you know, paper and pencil and just jot down notes or jot it on their phone. And then after the fact they would send it in. Now, eventually what happened was R&D started getting so big. that not everybody, it wasn't easy to get a room to fit everybody in. And so eventually, I think the slideshow went through a bunch of things.

At one point, we weighed pulled back on who was at the slideshow just because there wasn't enough room and we were trying to sort of focus on what notes got the best notes. And there definitely was a change over time where, not that there wasn't still some of the joke making but it became more about the slideshow was really this chance for everybody to see what's going on

and it still was an opportunity to share the information if you had never seen it before it's a chance to see it or even if you had worked on it, it was a chance to see it in its final form or very close to its final form so eventually what happened was the slideshow moved from being an online

aside from being an in-person thing to being more online So the modern slideshow, the one that we do now, I usually watch the slideshow at my desk. We will rent, not rent, there will be a room. If people want to go be around others and watch the slideshow together, you can.

But because there's so many people, a lot of people will watch, and a lot of people at Wizards aren't necessarily in the office all the time, so it allows everybody to watch it. I think it's also tape, so people can watch it delayed if they need to. So the current system, So one of the things we realized was there's something really potent in the power of the crowd, if you will, that there's a lot of things that just getting a lot of eyes on it really can allow us to sort of fix things in ways.

It's about making tiny changes. Mostly the cards are in pretty good spot, but it just allows people to sort of bring up questions. And so what happens is there are notes that go on, like people can leave notes, and they're still a little bit joking in the notes. But the idea now is after the slideshow, there's a form that gets sent out. And for each card you fill out the form. And then there's different categories. Is this a note about rules and templating? Is it a note about art or flavor text?

And the other thing to be aware is different elements of the card. Anything that's a word is a lot easier to change. Art, for example, is a little bit harder. It's not impossible to change it. If something's important enough, we often will go back to the artist and ask them to, like, a lot of art these days is digital.

So it's a little bit easier to go, oh, we need to remove this one thing or something. We can go back to the artist. Traditionally speaking, we normally go to the artist to fix things. If there's something small, like we have to remove something for some reason. Sometimes we talk to the artist and we can do that. But the artist is always involved.

We don't change in art without making sure the artist is involved in what's going on. And so there's a chance to give notes. And the idea is, so basically it is we, and the other big thing that's different is the slide show, used to be at one time period. Everyone would come, and the slideshow was maybe two hours. What we've learned is that there's a lot of things to look at. I mean, we now don't just look at the main set. If there's new commander cards, if there's jumpstart cards, whatever, anything that's new.

Normally during the slide show, we do not look at reprints outside of the main set. We look at all the cards of the mindset. but if there's a reprint, like in a commander deck, we do not look at it. Sometimes if there's new creative elements, maybe like there's new art, sometimes we'll look at it. But usually if it's mechanically the same, we don't necessarily show that during the slideshow.

There's a place that you can download and look at everything. So if you need to be looking at art or looking at something in which maybe it's not in the slide show, but you need be getting in comments, you can't see that stuff. There's just a lot. But because there's so much, it's no longer just a two-hour thing.

It's now a multi-day thing. For example, I had a slideshow last week in which most of the mornings, two hours every morning, not on Friday, but Monday through Thursday, and we finished in the middle on Thursday. So maybe it was seven hours. So it was a whole many, many hours.

And this is something, the basic way it works for slideshows is not everybody needs to be at every slide show. We like to have a lot of, of people of the slideshow, but there's a lot of people who can give notes. And as long as you make sure you have represented from all the different areas that you need to see. But the idea is that everybody, everybody is supposed to see as many slideshirts as they can. You know, there's a priority. Like, for example, if I'm running a design meeting and design meeting overlaps the slideshow,

I'm supposed to do my design meeting. So there are times you miss it. Not everybody's going to see every slide show. But you want to get enough notes. And the idea essentially is, You run the slideshow, you run through all the different things, and then there's the form to fill out. And often in meetings, by the way, just like we used to yell out at things, people will comment and ask questions in the meeting. Just so there's conversation, and sometimes there'll be a little bit of conversation about things. Like someone might say, oh, this template seems different. Why is it different? And the editor might go, oh, that's on purpose.

Here's why. Normally, by the way, when we come across new mechanics, the set lead will hop on and talk about that. the story lead will talk about what's going on the story maybe we'll walk through the story spotlight cards so there's a little bit of explaining for people that might not be aware of certain things that are going on and that happens and then the idea is that each person sort of takes notes individually of stuff that matters to them

and the other thing I should stress is in different sets you have different responsibilities normally people have their area of expertise Oh, I'm on casual play design, and I'm more likely to give notes about commander, or I'm on competitive play design, I'm more notes about rate, or, you know, there's just different people that have different expertise. When we do, and we do this on all sets, including Universes Beyond, universities beyond, we have what we call the SMEs, which are subject matter experts.

So if you're a SMEs, you make extra effort to see the universe is beyond ones, because a lot of your notes is, oh, this is, isn't reflective of what we're trying to capture. Oh, you know, if we made this one small change, it'd be so much more flavorful. And so there's some notes, like, I'm one of the smeeze for Marvel. So when we do Marvel Slashers, a lot of my notes are talking about how to optimize cards to make it more efficient

to capture the flavor that we're trying to capture. Oh, we're doing that character. Well, I might do this or this or make this change. And so anyway, you fill out your forms, and then you send them in. And then the way it works is, so I will talk about this a little bit from, I've run one set design team, which was Infinity. So I have been through this process on the side of the set designer, set lead. So what will happen is you show all the cars.

So Infinity didn't have, you know, we had no commander to X or jumpstarting. We just had the main car. So we showed the cards in the main thing. And then every card, people are giving notes. Now I wasn't sure. I was the set lead. I also, Ari Zirlnik, was the lead for the creative names and flavor text, but I was working very close with Ari. I did a lot of the writing for that.

So, and then there was art notes, and Don Mirren was my art director. So we would get notes, and the notes could be on the rules slash what the cards do, could be on names, on flavor text, on art, and we would collect all that data. And then everything gets divided up by what people say. And then the way the list goes is it's every note on the same card, but then divided. You can, well, it's a spreadsheet. So you can just look at the parts that apply to you, but it's sorted by card. So if you look at everything and then it's like every note on this card. So I, because I was really involved, I would look at every note.

Now, some of the notes, like for art, that's Dawn's thing, not mine, but I might have some, you know, some input on it just because Dawn and I had been, I worked very close with Dawn on the art of the card con. accepting. So anyway, so you would come in and like for example, I mean, I've talked about this, but the number one note I got in the Infinity slideshow was there's a green subgame card called Tug of War. And I, when we were going through to figure out what was going to be eternal legal and what was going to be acorn slash only, you know, not tournament legal, one of the things we did is we, one of the people in that meeting was Jeff Dung's, who was the rules manager. And so when we got to the subgame card, Jess is like, yeah, we got rules for subgames.

You know, the rules aren't preventing you from doing it. And we said there's reasons you don't want them in tournaments, but none of, you know, we don't have a lot of legacy tournaments. And so, you know, actual tournament play was a lower issue. So I made Tug of War Eternal Legal because the rules could handle it. And it was like, okay, well, this might be fun. And so I got a lot of notes.

And literally, this was the number one note I got. And what people were saying to me is, I don't care why you're making an eternal legal. It doesn't feel eternal legal. That subgames feel like, hey, the whole point of making un-cards is doing wacky, weird things that normal cards won't do.

And enough people said, I think sub-games is one of those things. And I got enough notes that I just changed it. I'm like, okay. And that's a pretty example of what the slide show can do, that, you know, I had a bunch of criteria. I was meeting my criteria. But one of the things that's hard is

the dividing line between what feels right and doesn't feel right is fuzzy. There's a gray area. But I was able to put it up, and enough people are like, that does not feel right that I could change it. I could adapt to that. And a lot of, like,

Infinity was interesting because Magic in general likes cars to be holistic, meaning all the pieces working together. But the unsets more so than most sets, I think the more top-down you are in some ways. But a lot of

the way unsets work is there's larger jokes going on. And the rules text at times is as much part of the joke as the art or the names of the flavor text. And so a lot of the reason we wanted people to see this was, is it working? Like, does

the joke come through? Is it funny? A lot of the things we were sort of wanting to get audience reaction to are very subjective things that are hard when you're deep in the, you know, when you're working on something like, as someone who used to write comedy for a living, once you've heard the same joke 20 times,

it gets harder to go, is the average person going to find this funny? I think it's funny. And just hearing people laugh at something helps a lot. And so and there are a lot of little notes, you know, one of the things about unsets in general is we're messing in really weird space. And so, it's neat to get a lot of people giving feedback

on stuff just based on, did they get it, you know, and did it hold true or was it weird to them? The other thing was, especially with names and flavor text, is we're of a joke's playing. Sometimes the note we're like, ah, this joke fell a little bit flat, and then Ari and I would punch it up to make it a little bit funnier. Like, oh, we could tweak this or tweak that. So the way it works is you do your slide show.

The slideshow will take anywhere from two to ten hours, depending on how many cards are in the thing you're showing off. Usually a day or two after the slideshow is finished is the deadline for turning your notes in. And then normally there is one week for all the different people to sort of make changes based on their notes. And then there is one week for editing to sort of do final cleanup of all those changes.

So it's like a two-week period where you're trying to fix everything. And normally the way you do it is that you go through every note. Now, just because someone gives you a note doesn't mean you have to change. Maybe someone gives you a note I disagree with that note.

A note is not a requirement to change. A note is just somebody pointing out here's an issue I see. Now, the people who are pointing out things might not necessarily know. I talk to us all the time. Players are really good at identifying problems, but not as good at solving the problems because they don't know the behind the scene stuff. And even on here, you know, for the person who's worked on the set,

they're well aware of all the issues of the set. Someone might have an issue with something, but maybe the fix they're suggesting isn't, like a lot of times someone saying this is a problem, but what they, you know, often in note sometimes you suggest to fix. And the one thing that's nice is because you see a problem, and look, this is R&D, we're like, okay, this is the problem, but I think you can change this and that, right? You can give a note about how you can alter something.

And now, sometimes those suggestions aren't right. Sometimes, like, just because someone says to change something, doesn't mean you will change it. Just because someone has a problem with something, you know. Oh, another thing we do is not, it's not all just criticism. We also have what we call raves. So what a rave is, is if you really like something, If something's a slam dunk, let us know that too.

It's actually really important to know when something really does hit. And that list that we generate a list of raves when we start to do marketing or do previews, that's something we take a look and said, okay, when we as a group looked at it, what was really strong to us? Let's say we have something that, you know, just everybody really connected with it. Everyone thought it was so cool. Maybe that's something we wanted to preview. Maybe that's something we want to show early.

Maybe that's the set of its absolute best, and we want to show that off. So getting the raves is also really important because you want to sort of understand not just what needs fixing, but what is working. And sometimes, for example, you get a whole bunch of raves and one note. Like, I'm not changing that. Look at all the raves, you know. Or maybe you can, maybe what they're raving about, you don't change, but, you know, there's a little thing you can fix. So just because there's a raves doesn't mean you can't make it better. But so anyway, you're going through.

And the idea is you literally go through every single note. And then what you do is sort of you say, have you addressed a note or not? And addressing it might not be changing things. It might be acknowledging it, understanding it, thinking it through, and going, no, there's reasons we're doing that, or there's an audience for whatever the reason is. There's some reason that, you know, you don't want to make a change. But it's because you thought through it. So you spend the time, you spend that week going through every single thing.

And then you, normally, by the way, the way set design works is set design comes together for about a year. And there's a point in which you stop having set design. set design meetings. Set design isn't officially done yet. Play design starts working before set design is done, but play design continues after set design stops having meetings. The set lead is still involved in the set and still interacting with play design, but the meeting stopped for a while.

Normally during that week, it's common to get the set design team back together. The set lead will usually compile all the notes. Now, sometimes they do it on themselves. It depends on the notes. But sometimes it's good to get the team back together and go, okay, here's the problem we're trying to solve. A bunch of people said this. And it depends a lot on how you're running your team. I've definitely seen teams that have pulled back together.

Sometimes just the set lead will do it. Sometimes the set lead will make a small group. They'll take elements of the set team rather than call the whole set team back. It depends. It's up to the set lead to do what they want to do. But the idea is you make a collection of all the problems to solve and then you solve those problems. And then you have a week to do that. You then hand it off, and then there's a week for editing to sort of consolidate everything. Sometimes you will do something and not realize in your solving of something,

you introduce a new problem that you don't realize. That's why the second week is there. Editing is taking everybody's changes and pulling them together. And for example, maybe you change something about the rules text, and flavor text change something with the flavor text. And now, all of a sudden, they don't line up anymore because each one of you is changing it unaware that the other was changing it. That is what editing is doing in that final week of sort of looking things together.

And if editing catches something, like, oh, okay, I got to get set design and flavor, you know, creative in a room together. Oh, you both want to change something. But in the act of changing it, you know, you need to be aware. And maybe, okay, maybe you tweak flavor text or, you know. So you, that's why there's a final week of passing of because different changes are getting made. You want to make sure that those are being accounted for. and then then it finally gets shipped off to

the same process that we had before you then ship it off meaning it's time for the files to go do the things they need to do to actually get turned into actual forms so the printers can print and nowadays by the way we have many

way back in Magic's early beginning back in Alpha we had one printer Cardamundi was our one printer Magic has grown much much bigger than alpha. And so we have many printers around the world. So when we're making files it's a lot more complicated because you're not just making files for

one, you're making files from multiple printers. And not every printer. Some printers have different things. So you can change it up. Also remember, we have to translate. And so not only are there are files for English, but there are files for other languages as well. There's, you know, the booster fun. Sometimes there's bonus sheets.

There's a lot of moving pieces. And all that has to get turned in made into things. But anyway, one of the things that I like to do with this podcast is I like to sort of document not just big things, but

small things as well. And the slideshow has been going on almost as long as I've been at Wizards. I think the first slideshow was a little bit after I started, but not that much after I started. I mean, the slideshow is probably 25 plus years old.

and maybe it's maybe it's more than that but the interesting thing about it and the reason I was interested to talk about it today it's gone through a bunch of changes you know I talk about how magic is iterative design right that you I mean game design in general is iterative design but as magic

and iterative design just means you do something you get feedback on it you make changes and you do it again so one of the things about magic and our processes is our processes themselves go through iterative change we make a magic set we learn about it and then the next magic set we try to improve

And the slide shows a really interesting example of how over time we've spent a lot of time refining. When it started, the purpose of it starting is very different than its current purpose. Not that that purpose is gone. I will state that it is still nice if you haven't worked on magic or on a particular set for magic. It's nice to sort of see what that set is. It is fun to sort of get to experience that. And one of the things that's neat is if it's a set you haven't worked on at all, it's nice because in some level,

it's kind of like being a magic player again where you open up the packs, you see something that you haven't seen before. Now, the interesting thing for me is I have to keep my ear in on all the mechanics and stuff. And so even on the sets that I'm not actively on the team, I still have to keep off. I'm looking at things.

So, like, I'm, it's fun for me in the slideshow just because I don't see all the things together. I don't, a lot of times, slide shows first time where I see art and often names and flavor tech. So it's still a lot of fun. And there's plenty of things that happened that I didn't see. Plenty of cards change in set design that I was not there when they changed.

So I'm always, it's also super fun for me. I'm less surprised, but oh, this mechanic exists usually. But I'm, it is fun to see the whole thing. But anyway, guys, that is the slideshow. So I hope you enjoy. One of the things I, like I said, I try to do with my podcast is hit different elements of making magic. And that includes the small, intricate things that we may. improve over time. And the slideshow

to me is just like an honored part of magic. Like I said, the slideshow itself is older than most of people working on magic. So, uh, it is a cool thing and I'm glad it exists. And now I can share it with all of you. But guys, I'm now at work. So we all know that means, what does it mean? It means it's time for me

for me. It's the end of my drive to work. I'll remember what I, my name. And instead of making magic, it's time for me. Sorry, instead of, I'm messing up my ending. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making. magic. The funny thing is I mess up my beginning all the time, but because it's the beginning, I always will stop and I'll go back

and I'll re-record. But when I mess up the end, I'm like, oh, this is a good podcast. I'm keeping the ending, so... But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.