Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1365: Dark Night of the Soul

Episode Date: July 24, 2026

There comes a time for many players where the game changes in such a way that it moves away from what they loved most about it. I talk about this phenomenon and detail my own personal "dark night of the soul" experience.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time rather drive to work. Okay. So today is a more serious topic. Today we're going to talk about the dark night of the soul. It's an expression I use to talk about a moment in magic when you question whether magic is what magic means to you. So the expression actually is an old expression, first coined by St. John of the

cross. He was a Spanish mystic and a Catholic poet back in the 16th century. And he wrote a poem and a treatise about his poem called The Dark Knight. And he first coined this term. It is used to mean a crisis of faith. And I, in fact, so here's the idea. I want to sort of talk about what the dark night of the soul is. And then I'm going to share my own personal dark night of the soul when it comes to magic, and then sort of walk through this thing that can happen to long-time magic players.

Okay, so I started playing magic at the very beginning, in Alpha. The real quick version of the story, I've told pieces of it before, is I was working at a game store. People kept coming in and asking me about this game, and they kept describing, and everybody described it a little bit differently.

And I really built it out. This sounded like this really cool game. I managed to see it for the first time at Comic-Con, San Diego Comic-Con, a couple weeks later. And then a couple weeks after that, I was at a game convention in LA where I was able to purchase some alpha.

So, and I quickly got into the game. My background real quickly, for those I don't know, my dad was very, very into games. He got me very into games. He got me very into games. games. And I grew up and my family always played games and I was just a big, big fan of games in college. I had a group of friends. We'd play games together. You know, I just, games had always been a pretty core part of my life. And I actually like a lot of different kinds of games.

As we get into today, it's not to like, I just like games in a certain way. There's a lot of different types of games I enjoy. So I got into magic early, obviously. I played a lot with my dad. I made a lot of friends in L.A. Went down to the Costa Mesa Women's Center. I went to a lot of game stores that had magic nights. Before I came to Wizards, so this was like 94, 95.

I played a lot of magic, and I really enjoyed magic. And then I came to Wizards. And I still enjoyed magic, but now I was making magic. And so not only had magic become something that I did for fun, it became something I did as a job. And that only meant I did more magic. I played magic all the time as part of my job. And, you know, R&D, when I first got to R&D,

I didn't really know anybody outside of R&D. Like, my social circle was R&D. And so most of the time, the way we would spend our time is we worked during the day. and then at night we'd all play games together, you know, and I'd goof off and do different things. But, I mean, we mostly spent all our time together. So the same group of people during the day I was making magic with. At night, we were playing games,

and not just magic. We played a lot of other games. Richard Garfield introduced us to all sorts of games. I played a lot of games in languages where they didn't even exist in English and Richard had to teach us the rules, and we just had to assume what he was saying was correct because we couldn't read the rules because they were in other languages. So I played a lot of games,

and, you know, magic, to say magic has been a big part of my life is an understatement. A, I'm a gamer. Magic is my favorite game of all time. I played a lot of magic. I continue to play a lot of magic. But as time has gone on, more and more of my magic has played at work

just because I have a family. The only member of my family that will play magic with me is my son, and we do play some. But occasionally. So I don't actually, most of my magic is done through work these days. And I play a lot of magic at work. So it's not like I don't get my fill of magic. I play a decent amount of magic at work.

But a lot of the magic that I play, because it's related to my job, I would say 9% of my magic is through the context of doing exploratory design and vision design. I do go to pre-releases. I do do play tests from later in the process. So I do interact with the cards. And I interact even a little bit with actual real cards with real names and the real art. I do get to interact with that a little bit. But the majority of time, I'm interacting with cards that may or may not one day become cards,

most of which won't end up actually becoming exact cards. I'm playing a lot in the phantomness of cards that could be. But my favorite part of magic, and this is kind of true for a lot of people, is when I first started getting into magic, I was very into constructed magic. I was a Johnny deck builder. And when I lived in L.A., I was kind of known for just building weird decks that, how is this deck going to win? Who knows?

My friends like to borrow my decks, and I would just do weird things, and I'd win in odd ways. And I just, you know, when you played one of my decks, who knew what you're in for? And I obviously liked a lot of combos. And, you know, I build my decks in such a way that they didn't play the same all the time, that they were just fun to play in a vacuum. But when I got to Wizards, I did a little less constructed. I did a little bit of constructive playtesting. But mostly our playtesting is limited.

And even when we do constructed playtesting in like exploratory, we're building 30-40-card decks. And mostly we're using existing cars. We're just throwing in, you know, 8 to 12 new cars to test something out. So most of my interaction, when I want to play magic, probably when I'm playing for fun, you know, if I'm in a magic con and I have a little bit of time, I mostly play limited. That is my format of choice.

Mostly because limited doesn't take a lot of prep. and as you age and you get, you know, more responsibilities and just have less time to play, it's a little bit easier to play limited. And the thing I enjoy about limited is it's just different every time. There's lots of variety, you know. I don't get to play quite as much, you know, I'll call it, you know, actual magic, you know, with actual cards with real art and names and stuff. I don't get to play with that all that often.

And so when I do, I like to get a lot of exposure to a lot of different things. And so, you know, limit is the format that I just have the most fun playing. Okay. So the thing that's really important to understand is two key things to this. Number one is that Magic is many different games. I've talked about this all the time. It's not one game. Booster draft, Commander, Standard, Popper, Modern, I don't, pick your format.

They're different. They're not the same thing. They are different for one. another. And one of the joys of magic is you get to make magic what you want it to be. Even within a format, you get to choose what you want it to be. If you want to take it really serious and it's all about like, you know, proving what you can do and maximizing every car choice, you can do that. You want to be goofy and fun and do silly things. You can do that. And obviously, interestingly, I've always aired on the more casual side of things. I've never been

I mean, way back in the day, I did play in World 94. And it's not that I never, ever played in tournaments. I played it a little bit. But what happened early on was I started writing the puzzles. And then what the duelists wanted is they wanted me to use the cards from the latest set. So if we're going to do a new, you know, if they're trying to say, oh, here's the newest thing. Well, why not make Mark make puzzles out of the newest cards? So I got to see the cards ahead of time.

And I got to see all the cards because I got to build a puzzle. need to see all my available things making puzzles are tough. So I would see all the cards ahead of time. And because of that, I couldn't play in sanctioned tournaments. So I started judging. I got very involved in helping to run magic events, but not play in them. And so, and once again, even when I came to Wizards, I was very involved in the creation of the pro tour.

But, you know, I ran the feature match area. I ran final day. I did the production on the final day shooting for a while. But even then, other people were playing competitively. I was just sort of enabling the audience of getting it. A lot of my job was making it more, allowing people that weren't the competitive players to enjoy the competitive play. And even then, like I said, I'm a pretty casual player. Like, some of my favorite things I've made are the unsets, which are, you know, very casual.

It's like, don't treat this game too seriously. we're going to throw all sorts of wacky and wild stuff at you. Okay. But the one thing I will say as we search... Oh, sorry. So the game can be many things to many people.

And one of the things that sort of determines where we as R&D go is kind of what I call the zeitgeist. It's a term in psychology. What it means is it's kind of the collective unconsciousness. meaning when we want to do something, we will try it,

and then we have a lot of ways to gauge metrics. There's play, there's sales, there's online discussion. There's just a lot of different places. We do market research. We have a lot of way to get information, and we can learn what the majority of players like. So we'll try a thing, and the more players that like it,

the more likely we're going to do more of it. If it's really beloved, we definitely do a lot more of it. If there's a small audience that really, really likes it, we will try to do more, assuming it doesn't cause problems for a larger audience. But mostly what happens is this collective unconsciousness of the players kind of drives the direction of magic. That we, the people make magic, try things.

We get feedback from the audience, and positive feedback means we do more of that. Success breeds repetition, I'd like to say. Okay, so it's important to understand. that different people see magic differently, the game is constantly sort of evolving in what it is. And I should stress,

magic is what we call a lifestyle game. What that means is it is a complex game and it's the kind of thing that you tend to absorb into your personality. And what that means is that a lifestyle game is

it's not just something I do. I have a lot of games that I play. I have shells worth of games. But there's some Some games that sort of hinge, my identity hinges on, and it's not just games. Like, for example, comic books for me have been a big part of me growing up. I have this great affinity for comics. And so a lot of my personality that's absorbent.

I wear a lot of T-shirts that are comic book t-shirts. I mean, not just comic book, but I see all the movies. And I'm really tuned into this one thing. It's something I really enjoy. It is part of my personality. absorbed it. And lifestyle games tend to act like that. There's, there's kind of big and they're, they're deep usually. And they allow the player ways to sort of incorporate into themselves. And magic does this very well. You, the magic player, have so much decision on what magic is

to you. Okay. So now we're getting to the dark heart of the soul here. So magic means something to you. It means something personal to you. And magic keeps changing its center. Magic keeps doing different things. So the idea of the Dark Night of the Soul in magic context is that what your identity of magic and what the zeitgeist of magic is

start to separate. Meaning the thing that I enjoy most about magic is not the thing that the majority of people are currently doing. So let me get into my my dark night of the soul Okay, so I am

I have all, I mean, most of my magic play, you know, has been two-player magic play. I play limited, I play constructed. It's not that I never played multiplayer, I have, I have done free player, I've done star, I've done I've done a number, you know, Emperor,

I mean, I've done a bunch of different variants. Grand Melee, I played in a bunch of different variants. And just, you know, my center, my area of comfort, A, two-player play, and second is there's a lot of different kinds of games. One is what I will call strategic. A strategic game is one in which the determiner of whether you win or not has to do with, have you optimized your strategy. Now, note, there's luck involved. Maybe I use perfect strategy, but luck wasn't my way.

But the idea in general is a strategic game is one in which the strategy is what leads to winning. I made the better plays. I made the better choices. I adapted to environment better. That I had things to choose from and I was able to do that. A political game is one where it's more of. about your skills of interacting with other people. What helps you win the game is not necessarily

that you have the best cards or the best whatever, is that you are able to convince other people to ally with you. Or you're able to interact with other people and create a situation where those people do what is beneficial for you. Now, I should stress, I don't dislike political games. One of my top 10 favorite games of all time is a game called Diplomacy. diplomacy for those that have never played it.

It's like, I think it's like pre-World War I. You're in Europe. There are seven countries you can play. And the idea is you want to, it's a war game sort of. You want to take over Europe. You want to get as much, as much, you want to expand as much as you can. And the key to the game is that in order to do things, you need to work with other countries. And that you could fight with other countries or you can ally with other countries.

other country, you know, and that there's a way to fight when you fight, and there's a way to ally when you want to ally. And normally the way you win the game, like, you kind of don't want to fight. Fighting is not the route to victory. You can win with fighting, but really, it's not the way to win. The way to win is to get other people to ally with you. It's a game of diplomacy, literally called diplomacy. And so whether or not you win or lose the game has a lot to do with how you play the other

people. It's not that there's not skill in the games. Now, there's not a strategy in the game. It actually is a pre-skill testing game. But in the end, the skill it is testing more than anything else, more than your analytical skills, more than your personal relation skills. Are you able to convince other people that you are the person to ally with? Are you able to convince other people that somebody else is the real threat? You know, so magic to me, my center of magic had been two-player strategic game.

That's what magic was. It was a two-player strategic game. Now, obviously, I make magic. It is my job to understand the different audiences of magic. It's not as if I didn't know that. There's a lot of players out there, and it is not your job to make magic. It is not your job to understand other players.

You don't need to do that. It is my job. I do need to understand other players. You don't need to do that. But there's this thing that when you play, that because magic comes so personal, you definitely, magic means something in a very personal way. So it's important that magic is the thing that magic means to you. And like I said, you, the player, have a lot of ability to play the version that you want. So even if the zeitgeist isn't somewhere, it doesn't mean that you can't find people who share your personal feelings. and play with them. But my challenge was I have to interact with all the players.

I can't just bury my head in the sand and go, well, this doesn't exist. I can't. I have to make magic cards. And I have to make magic cards for the way people are going to play. And so, when Commander first came around, so for those that don't know the history, of Commander, Commander started as a format that people made. In fact, basically, so Sheldon Mennery was longtime Magic Player. He sadly passed away a few years ago.

Sheldon was stationed. He was in, I think the Army. He was in the military, I think the Army. He was stationed. He got moved around because he got moved around when you're in the military. And he got stationed in Alaska. And so every city he'd get in, he'd find local magic players, and a bunch of ones there were playing a format they had made

that really intrigued Sheldon. He tweaked it a little bit. But the end result of that is now what we know as commander. At the time, they refer to it as EDH for Elder Dragon Highlander. Originally, when you played, you could only have one of five commanders, which were the five Elder Dragons. later we could expand it to any legendary creature, not just the elder dragons. But the idea was Sheldon played this game, and he actually would play it with the judges at the Pro Tour.

And little by little word of this format started to spread. Enough so that we had a, back in the day, there was a, we had a product line that we called it the innovation line, where once a year we would just do something we had never done before. We did plane chase, we did arch-enemy, but anyway, in that slot, we decided one year to just make commander decks. The idea was, hey, we're trying to sample cool things. Here's something we see some potential in, and so we made them. And they were a giant hit, so much so that we decided to make it an annual thing. And we did, you know, we sort of adapted.

I mean, when we made it, we adapted and the name got changed to commander. But we worked with a commander committee to make things. And we started, you know, after the first year, we had started an in-between product in the second year. But by two years later, it became a yearly thing. And over time, it obviously got more and more influence. So as somebody who makes magic, I couldn't, I can't ignore a commander.

Commander's, you know, commander little by little was slowly, you know, becoming the 800-pound gorilla. and I mean, I'll be honest, Commander wasn't sort of at the core of what magic was for me. It wasn't two-player play. It wasn't strategic. You know, it was a different animal. And as it kept growing, you know, like, there was a point in time where, okay, I didn't

work on that one product and I work on other things and I can let other people enjoy it work on it. But eventually it started getting so big that I, I had to kind of understand it. I had to make cards for it. And so, you know, I had to start playing it in the office from time to time. You know, it's something that I had to start learning what it was. And I had to sort of get into it.

And so when I say the Dark Man of the Soul is there's a point in time where the zeitgeist of magic start shifting their direction that is not your personal vision of what the game is. and it is, it is, it can be, I would say soul-cratching. Because what, I mean, magic to me, I mean, magic had been so much of who I was. I mean, obviously, it's the job I hold. It's where I met my wife. It is, I mean, it is a very huge part of my life.

And the center part of it was kind of going direction. That wasn't really what I personally, what I kind of. to want magic to be. And that was really hard. I mean, at top of everything else, like, it didn't just invade my magic playing. It invaded my work. Like, it invaded every aspect of my life

because, look, my job is to kind of be where the people are at. My job in R&D is to follow the zeitgeist. And so wherever the zeitgeist goes, that's where we go. That's our job. And so I had to get a lot more intimate with the format.

And like I said, I mean, the other thing that is hard is one of the things that's nice in magic, or at least the way magic used to work was, the magic for a long time, the center of magic was standard. And one of the nice things for standard for designers is, look, we do things. We sometimes make mistakes. But standard was a format where we only have to live with our mistakes for a couple years. Then they go away. And the idea is we could learn things and improve it. upon them. And we can make, like, one of the ongoing things of magic is, it's this iterative process

just to make a better game. Like, I think now we're just better at making magic than we were 20 years ago or 30 years ago. You're like, we keep improving. And that's not a knock against us from 20, 30 years ago. It's just, we had less technology. We knew less. You know, like, you know, like, for example, like in Ravnika, I invented hybrid mana. From then on, we could use hybrid mana as a valuable tool. And there's a lot of things like that. There's a lot of mechanics we made. Like a lot of magic as we do things, we figure out things that work, and then we reuse those things.

And some of those tools become very valuable. And so magic keeps improving upon itself. But in a world in which you live in Eternal, the cards, your mistakes don't go away. They live on forever. Like one of the classics is the car called Faithless Looting, where we decided that we wanted red to sort of have more card access. And so we made a card and said, well, you know, blue does looting. Maybe red can do

looting. So we made a red looting card. And then instantaneously, once we printed that, we're like, oh, no, no, no, red should discard first. So we would call rummage, because red's more reckless. It's not blue, more long-term planning. And so from the very second card we ever made, that's what it did. Red has rummaging. And for all the history of Red, every time Red's ever done it's rummage, except one time, the very first time, the one time where we hadn't quite figured it out yet. And what's the most popular way to play looting in red is that card, faithless looting. So if you play faithless looting, hey, Red does loot, even though it really doesn't.

It's just that one time. And there's other cards, too, they're just, I want to go away. They're not good cards. Do you want to pay the one? No, we should never have made that a card. Ristic, it's a mechanic All sorts of things that are not ideal.

But they live on forever. And so there's a lot of these feelings that came that really was like, hey, I made magic my life, I dedicated my life to magic, and now the zeitgeist of magic was moving away from what I most loved about magic.

And that was hard. And the reason I bring this up, the reason I talk about this today is, look, when magic shifts. And magic shifts. It's what it does. Magic is an ongoing ever in flux game. And I think that's one of the most amazing things about it is that magic kind of has a life of its own. And it keeps adapting to the players that play it. And so the reason I bring this up is when I, when people talk about how upset they are that magic is going in direction that they do not like, I want to stress, I get it. I had my own moment. of like, oh my God, what has the game become? But then, but then, and this is how I got through my dark night of the soul,

I sort of said, what about magic do I love? Like what, not what do I a player love? I sort of said to myself, I as, hey, the guy, you know, is head designer of magic. What is my favorite thing about magic? And my favorite thing about magic is the adaptability, the flexibility, the flexibility, The idea that magic gets to become the game you want it to be.

And the idea that it's a game with a zeitgeist that literally can and does change based on the people who play it is an amazing, amazing thing. It's one of the things I actually most admire about the game. And, you know, I do enjoy casual play. I do, I mean, the reason I made the Un cards

is just I wanted their to be something in magic saying, hey, not everything has to be about competition. Not everything has to be about proving you're the best that can be. Yes, we should have that and we do have that. But I also want magic just be fun and silly and just enjoy the act of playing it. And so when I sort of stopped back and I said, what is commander? Like, what is it doing? And I'm like, it's just letting more people, it's just bringing happiness to people.

Like one of the things I talk a lot about is I think I think a magic is a source of good, right? It brings happiness to people. It brings togetherness. You know, like I have so many stories of people talking about how magic turned their life around, about how they were in deep, dark place and they needed something to focus on and magic was it. Or they met important people, friends, loved ones that like the thing that defined how their life came out, magic was there for them. And that, like I said, there's nobody who's mad.

whose life was, you know, more affected, magic is completely weirded everything about me. You know, I mean, magic is, there's not more definitional to my character than magic, you know, and I'm associated with magic. People literally see me, and I'm like,

one of the faces of magic. As I said, every, so many awesome things happen to me through magic. And I, I've seen the world through magic. I've done amazing things through magic. I've had such great opportunities. Like, magic has blessed me, and I get how, that's one of the things I love. I love the fact that magic has so much good that it can do.

And it's done so much good for me. There's so much positive things. And so I want magic to be that for other people. I want magic to bring joy. And so I sort of took a step back and I said, well, what is Commander doing? It's bringing joy. It's like making people, you know, it's making friends. It's doing everything we want magic to do.

And I sort of said like, okay, like how, I mean, I do want magic to be the game that I enjoy playing. But more so than that, I want magic to be the positive force in the world that it is. And that if I could choose between magic being exactly what I most enjoyed when I played it, or magic being what brings the greatest amount of happiness to the world, there's not even a doubt in my mind. Like, I want magic to be the most awesome thing it can be. And that made me realize that, look, you know, Commander is just, I mean, it's hard to pick something that's brought more joy to people. You know, it is doing, and just bringing people together and making friends and doing all the things I want magic to do. And what I realized is, look, magic gets to be many things to many people.

And that's okay. That's the joy of what magic is. And the point is, if I want to play strategic two-person magic, that hasn't been taken away from me. Guess what? I still play lots of two-person strategic magic. I didn't lose that. But the fact that the magic center isn't there, what did I lose? I really didn't lose anything. You know what I'm saying? I still have the ability to play magic as a way I want to play magic. Is it a little harder to do in some ways? Yes, I get that. I know if you want to go to your local game store and play other formats, sometimes it's kind of hard.

because everybody wants to play commander. I see that and I understand that. And I'm not trying to dismiss the idea that sometimes, you know, there can be things that change magic in a way that is not what you prefer. But I like to believe that the zeitgeist exists for a reason. The zeitgeist exists, that's hard to say. Because there are magic players that need the game to be a certain. way. And that

need is what drives sort of the nature of the game. And you know, I've come to respect that. And the other thing that's really interesting is I, just based on where my life is right now, I don't play a lot of constructed magic. And the little that I do is mostly like, you know,

exploratory, like not normal constructive magic, but instructions imagination. So when I say I don't play a lot of commander, I don't play a lot of standard, I don't play a lot of modern, I don't play a lot of legacy. Like I don't play a lot of constructed magic. I just don't. And that's okay. We have an entire team of people whose job it is to play those formats. My job is not to balance cards. My job is not to understand formats in a big way.

I mean, I need to understand them in the like, like a larger conceptual way, but actual like, what is the right way to play this card in this format? Not my job. I'm just trying to like, my job as head designer is I want to keep pushing magic in the direction that makes the most people the happiest. I want to take the source of good that is magic and expose it to as many people as possible. And doing that means following the zeitgeist. And so I've come to realize that the thing I care more about magic is not what it brings to me alone in a vacuum by myself, but what it brings to everybody. And that that zeitgeist does so much good work. It makes so many people happy, and I still have the ability, even if it's a little harder than it used to be, I still

have the ability to play the game that I want to play. And I get it. I get there are changes to magic that make it a lot harder to play the way you want. It requires you finding people who share your vision and playing with them specifically and crafting things that specifically do what you want. But that is what magic is really good at. You know, like the rise of pre-modern is a really interesting recent example. Like, magic players figure out the thing they really need, and then the game bends toward them because it provides what players, as a whole, what the zeitgeist needs. The reason I did this podcast today is, I never want to take lightly. I mean, like I said, a dark night of the soul, that whole expression talks about a questioning of faith. That is to the

core, right? That is something where you're like, you're questioning the very essence of who you are. That is a big thing. And I get that. You know, when I had my little, not little, but my dark night of the soul, I questioned a lot of things.

I question like, should I be making magic? Like, am I, has magic changed in a way that is no longer what I love about the game? Am I right to be the person that's running magic? And what I realized is, And like I said, part of my job is I had to find the fun where the fun was.

And the interesting thing is, I do enjoy, when I play Commander now, I do enjoy playing Commander. Like when I'm in it, I understand what I'm playing, and I've learned to sort of like, okay, I'm playing Commander now. This is what Commander is. I'm playing political magic. That's what I'm doing. I will start doing things and interacting with people, and I will play that game. and that one of the cool things about magic is it is mini-games and that I could play standard or I can play booster draft

or I can play whatever and those games are different. That was really my mindset of this is a different kind of thing and that that's okay and I can enjoy it. I just have to play it for what it is and that if whatever I enjoy most I can go seek that out but that magic being what magic is and magic growing the way it grows and the natural Like the Zika of Magic existing, being a thing, is so unique and so special that I can't fall.

I have to love where that Zikeis goes because I think I care so much about that. And that's in the end what got me over. That's what got me through my Dark Night of the Soul is realizing that what I truly, truly, truly, truly loved about the game, me personal, was something bigger than just the individual choice of how I played it. that the game is more than just that. And so what I say to people out there when you have your own Dark Knights of the Soul is that

try to understand not the specifics of the game, but what does magic what has magic brought you as a person? Why does magic make you happy? And figure out how can I play in a way that brings me

that happiness. And that doesn't mean you're playing out of other people. maybe sometimes it means inventing something brand new. That is fine. Magic actually does that great. But really dig in deep and figure out not what are the ways you play magic. That is less important than what is the thing magic does for you? And is there a way to make sure that that can carry through?

So anyway, guys, I am now at work. I've actually been at work a little bit. It was a hot topic, so spend a little bit more time talking about it. But anyway, that is my talk today on the dark night of the soul. But anyway, I'm now 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 be making magic. I'll see you all next time.

Bye-bye.