Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #417: Duel Masters TCG

Episode Date: March 10, 2017

In this podcast, I explore the design of a trading card game, but one other than Magic. I talk about the creation of Duel Masters, a trading card game we created for the Japanese market.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so a while ago I did a podcast not about magic. I talked about the design of the Star Wars trading card game. And it went over very well and people said, please share other design stories of games other than magic. So today is one such day. So there was another game that I was very involved in the creation of, a trading card game known as Duel Masters. So today I'm going to walk you all through the design of Duel Masters, sort of how it started, what it did, how we made it, and just give you a different vantage point. Today is full of design, but not magic design exactly. So anyway, let's get started.

full of design, but not magic design exactly. So anyway, let's get started. So we go back to 2000, not 2000, well, Duel Masters started in 2002, but we actually go back to, was it 97, I think? Either 96 or 97. So Magic had come out in 1993, and in Japan, they were making Pokemon, a video game for the Nintendo. And somebody there was a fan of Magic. And they decided that along with the video game, it would be fun to make a trading card game to go along with Pokemon.

And so they made it, and then they came to us, because we were the people that made Magic, and that's what inspired it, and they asked us to distribute it in the United States. They distributed it in Japan, but we distributed it in the United States. And so for a couple years, Wizards of the Coast was the distributor of Pokemon, the trading card game. I don't know, for those that are old enough, it was quite the phenomenon. Eventually, they would start their own company here in the US that did the game and we stopped distributing it. But anyway, it was a giant phenomenon and it became a big hit. I mean, Magic was the first trading card game, but Pokemon became the real first kids trading card game.

And we realized, oh wow, there's a lot of potency in a kids trading card game. Well, the game that sort of followed Pokemon was a game called Yu-Gi-Oh! that also had started in Japan. And so both the first two big hit kid TCGs were originally started in Japan and eventually came out for the US. So we came up with an idea. We said, okay, if we want to have a kid TCG and they seem to come from Japan, maybe what we're supposed to do is make the next big hit in Japan and then we'll bring it over.

That was the plan. So back in 2002, or probably 2001 since it came out in 2002, we decided we were going to make our own trading card game. Now, meanwhile, in Japan, there are, so for those who don't know much about comic books, in Japan there's something called manga, which is sort of a certain style of comic book. Comic books are very, very big in Japan, manga in particular. And the way manga works is they put out sort of collections of magazines that have lots of different mangas in them. And they're all sort of, you know, continued.

that have lots of different mangas in them, and they're all sort of, you know, continued. And so each month it's like, here's the next batch of, you know, 30, 40 different mangas. And they all come together, and it literally looks like a phone book. It's a giant magazine, I guess, in a loose term.

Usually they're black and white pages, and anyway, one of the popular mangas was about a boy who played magic. And the idea was that in the manga, magic sort of came alive. That when he played the magic card, you know, if he played a shiva dragon, the shiva dragon would come alive and stuff like that. And we were working with them as partners because obviously magic is our property. And so when we came up with the idea of doing our own trading card game the idea was taking that manga what if we adapted that manga and made a new game out of it now the idea was we wanted a game you know one of the reasons we liked having a kids

trading card game is what we found was once people got older they would transition into magic which was kind of the dominant trading card game is what we found was once people got older, they would transition into magic, which was kind of the dominant trading card game, but for older kids and adults. So one of our ideas when we're making the game, we said, okay, here's what we want to do. We want to make something that's somewhat in the ballpark of magic so that there's a natural flow between this game and magic. And we were going to use the main god to sort of tell the story. And so the key was we wanted to make a brand new trading card game. And so what we did is we

put together a team to make it. So the team had five people. So Mike Elliott, Charlie Cattino, Tyler Bealman, Andrew Finch, and myself. Now all the people I named all at some point had their hand in magic. So Mike Elliott was a, has led design I think more sets than anybody but me. Although he might get surpassed one of these days by Ken Nagel. But anyway, Mike Elliott was a very, he designed a lot of magic sets. And, you know, he did Stronghold and Urza's Saga and Onslaught and a whole bunch of different sets. Charlie Cattino is one of the original play tefters, way, way back when. He was on the original design team of Mirage and Visions.

Both Mike and Charlie were with me on my first design team, Tempest. Tyler Bealman was someone who got into Wizards through advertising. For a while, he worked on the Magic brand team. And then he ended up taking over the creative team for a while. And I on the Magic brand team. And then he ended up taking over the creative team for a while. And I think at the time this was happening, I think he was overseeing

the creative team. Andrew Finch was very involved. He first started Wizards as our tournament organizer. He ran the Pro Tour for a while. He eventually would transition to R&D. But he was very involved, especially in the organized play side of Magic.

And then me, you guys hopefully know who I am. So the five of us were put together as a team to make the Duel Master trading card game. We didn't have a lot of requirements. Here's the requirements we had. One was we wanted it to be a kids' trading card game. So we had the restriction of it wanted to be a little bit simpler than Magic. You know, it wanted to be something we think that kids could play.

And we wanted it to have some similarity to Magic such that to ease the transition between this game and Magic. So the thing we decided to do was that we would have five colors and have the five colors match up with the five magic colors. Now, in Duel Masters, they're not referred to by their color. White is known as light, blue is known as water, black is known as darkness, red is known as fire, and green is known as nature. And if you've ever seen the Duel Masters trading card game, light ended up being a little bit more yellow game light ended up being a little bit more yellow and darkness ended up being a little bit more purple. So the colors in the game on some level from a pure color standpoint

are a little more yellow, blue, purple, red and green. But they represented the same basic ideas. I mean there's a not 100% but the color pie was mostly intact. It was a little simplified in some of what it represented. Like, you know, red was more fire,

but it had a lot of the qualities that red represents. Okay, so we wanted to use the magic color pie, and we wanted it to be a trading card game. So, you know, those were the two things that kind of said, okay, that's what we needed to have. But the goal was we wanted where we could to make it simpler. So the first goal that came up was, okay, is there a way to make a game, we wanted to be a little bit more focused on creatures. I mean, Magic obviously has evolved over time to get a little more creature-centric than it was back in 2002 or 2001.

And so what happened was we sort of took some of the assumptions that people had from Magic that we knew. Like, one of the things we knew in Magic was that players really believed that creatures could attack other creatures. And so we knew in Magic was that players really believed that creatures could attack other creatures. And so we said, okay, well maybe, actually I'm getting ahead of myself. Before we get to the creatures, the first thing is we wanted to figure out how to

track the game state. Now in Magic, there's life. You have a life total, and usually you keep tracking it on a pad of paper or with a 20-sided die or something. We wanted something so that the players didn't have to have any extra materials to keep track of what was going on. Now, we had made a few trading card games where library depletion was, like, once I deplete, every time I do damage to you, I would mill you, essentially. I'd make you take cards from your library and put them in your graveyard, and when you ran out of cards, you would lose. There were a few games we tried that with.

I think the biggest one being BattleTech. But we decided to go a slightly different route. So we decided, we ended up making what we call shields. And what shields were is the very first thing you did before you drew a hand is you put down the top five cards of your library, of your deck, in front of you. And this is considered your shields.

So the way the shields work, the shields were a way to do the score that also had a catch-up feature built into it. So here's how it worked. You would put five shields in front of you, face-down cards. Whenever your opponent would hit you, you the player, they would break one of your shields. And what that meant was one of your shields, and they usually would pick which shield they were breaking, and then that card would go into your hand. And so the way the game worked was if you ever got hit and couldn't break a shield, you lost.

Essentially, they attack you and instead of losing, you could break a shield was the idea. But if ever they attack you and you have no shields and they hit you, then they win. So essentially, there's five hits that break a shield and then the sixth hit would defeat you. And so we made those shields. And there was a way to sort of keep track of what was going on in a way that was a little more visible, a little simpler. It wasn't a light total of 20. It was essentially a sort of a light total of five, kind of six, depending on how you think of it. And so we made the shields. The next thing we did is we wanted to simplify the creatures. So first thing we did was we decided to make

just one number for power and toughness. We didn't have a separate power toughness like Magic does. The other thing that was going on was we played this little game where I think Magic had, you know, creatures in Magic had a power of like 3 or 4. So when Pokemon came along, he decided to up a little bit. So instead of single digits, he had double digits. So in Pokemon, you could have a power of 20 or 30 or 40. So what happened was, when Yu-Gi-Oh! came along, they thought, well, let's up it again. So instead of having 20 or 30, you had a power of 200 or 300.

Well, we saw where this was going, and so we decided we'd play along. So in dual masters, you only have one number, but it's in the thousands. You might be 2,000 or 3,000 or 4,000. And so what we did was we gave you one number, but it was just a very big number. It sounded impressive. And then the way it worked was you could attack the player. And to win the game, you needed to attack the player. Because that's how you broke shields and eventually got through and defeated them. But you were also allowed to attack creatures.

And so one of the ways combat worked was if I was afraid of a creature, I could attack the creature and fight with the creature instead of attacking my opponent. Players in Magic all the time mistakenly thought that their creatures could attack other creatures and it's something we were always explaining. So we said, okay, this is a game for

slightly younger kids. Let's just let you attack. Let your creatures attack their creatures. We'll let that happen. In fact, one of the big decisions we had was if I attack, you know, let's say you have a creature, your creature A attacks my creature B, and I have a creature C. Can my creature C get in there and stop you? Can I block you from attacking my creature? And what we decided was we ended up making blocking an ability, meaning not every creature, like in magic, every creature naturally has the ability to block. But in Duel Masters, what we decided was that some creatures, and I can't remember what color, I know it went in white, in light. I think it was light and water. Two of the five colors in the original game, a lot is, I mean this came out in 2002 and it's 15 years

later, so obviously a lot has changed since the original. But anyway, we decided to make blocking an ability, a creature ability. And so what happened was, basically, there were creatures and there were spells. We wanted to keep things pretty simple. 15 years later, more stuff's been added to the game. But we first started the game, there were creatures and there were spells. We wanted to keep things pretty simple. 15 years later, more stuff has been added to the game. But when we first started the game, there were creatures and there were spells. Now, the other big thing we

wanted to do was we wanted to figure out a mana system that was a little bit more consistent and easier for the kids to do. So we actually played around with something that magic, we had talked about in magic over the years. People had suggested ways to, I use this in quotes, but fix the mana system. So the way it works in Duel Masters is on your turn, you have, I forget what it's called,

but there's an area where your mana goes, essentially, your lands. But the way it works is any card in your hand can be turned upside down and become essentially a land or a mana resource. It's not called land, but a mana resource. So the idea is every card doubles. So there's no separate mana resource in your deck. Every card in your deck doubles as a mana resource. So the idea is in my turn, I always, assuming I have a card, I always have a land if I want to play it. And the way it works essentially is when you're going to play a spell, it cares about do you have the right number and do you have the color? And that's the way it sort of tracks is, you know, I require five, one of which, and you must at least have one red.

That's sort of how it works in Duel Masters. And we were worried early on that maybe deciding which card in your hand to put down would be problematic. Just because there's a lot of decisions. Like on turn one, I have seven cards. I have seven choices what to put down. But what we found was what kids tended to do is they would put down the thing they were least excited by. Now, strategically, that's not always the correct call, but we weren't really concerned about the kids playing strategically correct as we were about the kids understanding what to do and having fun. And so we found what the kids tended to do was,

okay, I opened my hand. I'm excited by a couple cards. Well, one of the cards I'm not excited to buy, that's going face down to get me to the point. And the thing about mana in resources in Duel Masters is because it requires a card and you always draw a card a turn, you always have access to the resource if you want it. Like if you have a seven drop, on turn seven, you can drop your seven drop. You know you can because you can have a mana every turn if you have a seven drop, on turn seven, you can drop your seven drop. You know you can, because you can have a mana every turn if you want to. Now, in dual mafters, it became more about having the right cut. Like, you didn't really get mana screwed, as the term is in magic. Meaning you didn't, like, magic sometimes you just don't draw land, and like, oh, I need to get to five, and I'm stuck at four.

That doesn't happen in dual mafters. In dual mafters, you always get to the number you want to. The area sometimes you get into trouble is if you're playing more than one color, you need to have the right color to be able to play the spell. So for example, let's say your deck is red and green or you're a fighter in nature. And let's say I've only drawn red spells because I just have more red spells in my deck than green. Until I get a green spell, I can't play green things. Now, be aware, if I get one green spell, that doesn't do me any good, because if I play it, then I don't have, I can play it to get green, but then I don't have the spell anymore. So, usually once you have two spells, then

you can play the first one to cast the second one. And if you really get stuck, well, you just play that as mana to build up and just play the other color. So, what else is different? Oh, okay. My contribution to the game. Or my biggest contribution. So one of the things that happened was we were working with, not only were we going to make a main

go with it, but we had partners that were going to make, eventually we made an animated show with it. And so one of the things was they asked us, they wanted, from a story standpoint, they needed ways for our character to get behind and be in dire straits and have dramatic comebacks. And so they're like, you know, that's important in the story. We need our main character to be, oh no, I'm in deep trouble. What do I do? And then somehow there needed to be a way to have exciting moments where there was a comeback.

Now the original comeback mechanic we'd worked in were the shields where when something is broken you get to draw it. And so the suggestion I made is I said, well, what if some shields, because all the shields are cards, what if some cards not only, instead of it going to your hand, what if when you hit it, it went off, it got cast? So we ended up calling it a shield trigger. So the idea is every spell does something, but some spells, when you place them as shields, if they get broken, instead of going to your hand, you automatically get to cast them.

And so that ended up being a pretty dramatic thing, because sometimes your shield breaks could not only, could do dramatic things. Like for example, imagine having a kill spell that's a shield trigger. So the idea is it gets put down, and then you break it, and then all of a sudden, ha-ha, I get to kill one of your creatures. And maybe I killed the creature that broke it in the first place. So it created dramatic moments where you could have, you know, spells that just happen. And so I, this was my solution to the problem, and it took a little while convincing some of the people because it was definitely a little bit more random than we're used to with magic.

Like one of the things that we were trying to do in making Duel Masters was we were very focused on being a kid's trading card game. And part of that meant you wanted a little bit more variance. You wanted a little, you know, one of the things that kids really enjoy is just big, exciting moments. And so the idea that anytime you broke a shield, it could go off, made breaking shields really exciting. Now, there was some concern that because shields could go off and do things, well, that discouraged people from attacking players. But that wasn't the problem. In fact, one of the things we found when we did playtesting, we actually did a bunch of playtesting, we actually did a bunch of playtesting in both the United States and Japan. And Japan was actually one

that was more important to us because that was our target audience. And what we found was the kids were uber aggressive. We were worried that they would be passive because adults sometimes will be afraid to attack. But what we found with kids, especially Japanese kids, who were used to playing trading card games, they showed no fear. They would attack constantly. They would attack probably in situations where they weren't supposed to attack. They weren't afraid of turning the card sideways and going in.

And so it turned out that they, like we thought, were they going to take too much time playing land? Nope. Were they going to take too much time deciding whether to attack or not? Nope. In fact, what we found was the kids played blisteringly fast. I did a podcast a while back about the Junior Super Series, and I used to say that the kids in the Junior Super Series also used to play really fast. So I think it just might be a trait of youth. But anyway, so what happened was we took all these different component pieces, and, you know, one of the things that was neat about it

was there were five of us working together, and each one of us brought different things to the table, and we ended up making a game that we thought was a really fun game. You know, I mean, I've been very involved in Magic, but I hadn't been there from the beginning, obviously. I told the story of being involved with Star Wars. So Star Wars is a trading card game, and Duel Masters are the two trading card games that I was there from the very beginning that got

made. There's a few others that I made that didn't end up making it to print. Maybe one day I talk about those. I'm not sure. We'll see. But anyway, so what happened was we really sort of spent a lot of time and energy. I think we spent maybe a couple months putting this game together. What we used to do is we used to have off-sites where we would go. In fact, I think we rented an apartment, if I remember correctly. We rented an apartment or was it Andrew's apartment? We used to have meetings off-site where we'd go to this apartment.

Maybe it was Andrew's apartment. It wasn't super far away. And we would just, we would really go off on all the minutia. I mean, we really would stress test every piece of it, every, you know, little nuance. We debated whether or not to have one power or two powers. Oh, here's another, this is another clever story. So one of the things that we did in Duel Masters is we always used to look at magic, because look, all of this came from magic. That was our shared sort of, you know, that's the trading card game that we all sort of started with. So one of the things we constantly would do is we would ask questions about whether

or not there were certain things that we had in Magic, whether we wanted them in Duel Masters. So one of my favorite stories had to do with First Rank. So in Magic, obviously you have a power and a toughness. And so

First Rank meant something in Magic just because the idea of does my power, is my power greater than your toughness is so first rank matters. Um, so when you had the same power toughness, it was a little bit different. So we, the thing we were in is, so let's say for example, you have a 2000, you have first rank. Well, what does that mean exactly? And if I had another 2,000, don't I, you know, I'm supposed to beat a 2,000, but if I'm

a 3,000, then how is it first strike? So the answer to doing first strike was, what it meant was, we wanted you to beat a 2,000 but not beat a 3,000. How do you do that? So we ended up doing half. So what first strike essentially is, and we didn't even label it just we did this, is some creatures, instead of having 2,000 or 3,000, have 2,500. What that means is if I have 2,500, I'll beat a 2,000, but I won't beat a 3,000.

So essentially that was our way to do first strike, was to do sort of half power toughnesses. Now, being that everything's a thousand, half is 500. Now along the way, we, you know, we, I mean, we made the basics. And so what happened, I mean, the thing that was also different about a dual mafters was the set sizes were a lot smaller. I believe the way it worked was there were big sets and small sets, and a big set had something like 120 cards, and a small set had 60 cards. I actually would later go on to design two small sets.

Oh, no, no, no. One big set, one small set. Yeah, the one set that I designed that ended up being a popular one is they asked me for a set that had a dragon theme, and so I made a set that had a whole bunch of dragons in it. And dragons are, well, dragons are always popular here in the U.S. and they're also very popular in Japan. So I don't even remember the name of my dragon set. The problem is our sets, they're all in Japanese, so it's hard, I don't remember the name of the things. Now we did, by the way, so the game came out in 2002, May 2002, and it was an instant hit.

It became, within a year, became the number one trading card game in Japan, which, by the way, is really impressive because, you know, trading card games happen in America and the rest of the world, and obviously Magic did well, and there were a few other games that did well, but trading card games just exploded in Japan and continued, you know, trading card games are just a thing they do in Japan. And they are very prevalent. There are a lot more in Japan than ever really were any time. I mean, right after Magic came out, there was a little bit of explosion in the U.S. And so, there's a little tiny window there was a lot of trading card games. Japan kind of had that window and it never went away.

So, to be the number one trading card games. Japan kind of had that window and it never went away. So to be the number one trading card game in Japan, number one kids trading card game, was very impressive. So in May of 2004, we decided to bring Doom Master to the state. That was our plan all along. The idea was we wanted to have a successful kids trading card game in the U.S.

So we got it to Japan. It was a huge success in Japan. And then we card game in the U.S. So we got it to Japan. It was a huge success in Japan. And then we brought it to the U.S. And it didn't quite take off. It only lasted two years. It lasted from 2004 to 2006. And then we stopped making it. Now, we would later rejigger and bring it back in 2012

under the name of Kaijudo. I always thought it was funny that the game is called Duel Masters in Japan, which is English words, and then it was called Kaijudo in the U.S., which is a Japanese word, kind of a made-up Japanese word, but it sort of meant like the fighting of monsters, I think is what it means. But anyway, we brought it back as Kaijudo and again, it didn't really do well in the U.S. Even though, for 15 years, it's been very successful

in Japan. So, in a weird case where we made something that ended up fulfilling its original purpose very well but it never quite,

somehow it never quite made it in the U.S. But anyway, the game now is just celebrated, I think it's 15th anniversary, 15 years old. There are not a lot of trading card games that are 15 years old.

And if you asked me when we made it, we wouldn't have guessed it lasted this long. I'm kind of pleasantly surprised. And the interesting thing about this is that it is neat. One of the cool things about making a trading card game that isn't magic is it allows us to sort of make decisions that we don't normally make. The mana system was something we did differently. Power toughness was something we did differently. How we represent the color pie and, you know, how exactly, like, one of the things you'll see through Duel Masters is Duel Masters has done a lot of sort of taking cool things from Magic and adapting them into Duel Masters.

And it's even done a few things on its own that have been reflected back. Like, one of the interesting things was, I would definitely, in unsets and stuff, goof around. I would definitely, in unsets and stuff, goof around. And so I made a card, what was it called, Snot. In the first, in Unglued I made BFM, and in Unhinged I made Snot, both of which were cards that kind of clicked together. And so they goofed around with that and made cards that clicked together and then they ended up sort of going one step further and making cards that changed from one state to another

which were double-sided. And so years later when we were making Innishrod one of the people on my team, a guy named Tom Lapilli who had worked on Duel Masters and knew that they had double-faced cards, said to me, okay, I know we have the printing technology, Duel Masters does it. What if Magic did that? What if Magic's a double-sided card? And so not only has Magic had a big influence on Duel Masters, but Duel Masters has actually come back to influence Magic. From time to time, the Duel Masters team will say, here's something we tried, and we'll experiment with it. Double-faced cards being probably the biggest carryover.

But anyway, I try to think of it almost like a racial school. This was a fun project to do. It was really neat to work on something that was just completely different. It was neat to work on a game where we could just make different calls in Magic. Now, lessons learned looking back, what do I think, like, what did I, did I learn much about magic making Duel Masters? One is, probably the biggest takeaway from Duel Masters is I got more respect for the mana system. I think at the time when we were making it, you know, there's a lot of beliefs that magic's mana

system sort of had some issues. And I think for a while I bought into that. And it really was the making of Duel Masters and the playing with Duel Masters that made me come to understand how special the Magic mana system was. That seeing a system where you knew, like, you knew your six drops were going on turn six and your seven drops were going on turn seven. That lack of sort of knowing when things were going to happen, the lack of drama, of suspense, of sort of not quite knowing when things would happen

or getting stuck and having to adapt. The absence of that, like having a game in which I didn't have that, really made me come to appreciate it a lot. And it's funny, I talk to a lot of different designers, especially trading card game designers, and there's this phase you kind of go through where you're like, oh, the magic mana system, you know, we can do better than that. And then you make a different system, and then as you play with that system, you kind of go, oh, wow, there are all these elements I didn't take into, I took for granted from

the magic mana system, that when I see it in work, I'm like, oh, that's actually pretty important. And I think that working on dual masters really, really cemented in my head how important the magic mana system is. I did a whole podcast on it if you want to hear me go off for a whole podcast about why it's so important

and why it does good things. It is one of the most derided parts of the game that I actually think does, it does a yeoman's job for the game. The other thing that was really interesting was it was fun working on something for kids. It was fun watching kids play or getting interactions and learning about how kids functioned. You know, one of the things they say

when I took a psychology course in college, and they said one of the reasons that they like to study kids is that kids are unfiltered adults, that kids sort of, that the emotions are emotions and what kids experience, you know, adults learn over the years to sort of like to hide elements where kids are a little more open about them. And so you learn a lot about game design by watching kids. I think a lot of what kids do, humans do, but kids are a little more open about them. And so you learn a lot about game design by watching kids. I think a lot of what kids do, humans do, but kids are a little more open and upfront about it.

And so I found that was very useful. It was also kind of cool to just work on something. Like, it was neat to see somebody... Oh, the way it worked was we didn't do the IP. We didn't do the creative. Our partners did the creative because we were trying to make something adaptive for the Japanese market.

And what we found was the Japanese market, there are a lot of quirks. There are a lot of things that really play well in the Japanese market that we as Americans just don't know. And so the dual master IP is fun, but it definitely has a very Japanese bent to it. There's a lot of qualities that really play to the local market.

So it was neat to see someone take sort of Magic's color pie and sort of twist it a little bit to make something a little bit different than we would have made. I had a lot of enjoyment watching that happen. And it was also just neat. There's something about making cards and then see them sort of made in another language I guess Magic has that

but like one of the things that's interesting is playing my cards where I couldn't even read the cards where I couldn't the only version that exists is in a language that I don't read I'd have to mark to say what the names of them were because I knew the cards because I'd made them

and that was kind of neat. You know, it's kind of neat to have a game come out that's like not even in your native language. So that was kind of cool. And like I said, there's two sets in which I'm, you know, I was the head designer for two different sets. So the one interesting thing, by the way, since the sets are so small, you don't really need a whole team.

So I think I did both sets by myself because, you know, making a 60-card set is... I mean, it's kind of funny after working on Magic. Like, making a 60-card set is such, you know, it's such a sigh of relief

how few cards it is. But anyway, that, my friends, is the story of the Doom Mushers TCG. And so hats off to Mike and Charlie and Tyler and Andrew. I think we did a really good job. I think, I'm very proud

of how the game turned out. It's a fun game. If you ever have a chance to play it, it's really only in Japanese these days, so it's a little tricky to play, but it is a very fun game, and it's a very, I mean, if you know how to play Magic, it's not hard to learn how to play. There's a few differences in Magic you have to learn.

But it was a really big insight. And one of the things that I don't get a chance to do much these days is make games that aren't magic. So it was very, very interesting to spend a good chunk of time. We spent months on it to really go really, really deep on something that was something else, that was a trading card game, but not quite magic. And so anyway, for those that have a chance, try it out.

And for those that don't, I hope you enjoyed today's story, just looking at designing a slightly different game, designing not magic. So anyway, I'm now at Rachel's school, so we all know what that means. It means this is 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 guys soon. Bye-bye.