Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #420: Top 10 Cool Things About R&D

Episode Date: March 24, 2017

This is another Top 10 podcast. In this episode, I talk about the Top 10 coolest things about working in R&D.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today is a top 10 day. So I'm doing a fun one today. So today I'm going to talk about my top 10 favorite things about R&D. Now I don't mean about the job, although I do enjoy the job and that might be another future topic. I mean the people, the people of R&D. So I'm talking about the people today. I consider my job a dream job, and one of the reasons it's a dream job is the people. So today I'm going to talk about the people. What are the awesome things about R&D?

I'm going to talk about my favorite top ten things. And I came up with more than ten, but I narrowed it down to ten. So these are, and once again, I always say this when I do a top 10 episode. I got things, I figured out my favorite 10, and then I put them in order because, you know, drama for a top 10 issue. But, top 10 episode. But, if you ask me tomorrow, maybe it'll have a slightly different order. So these are the top 10 as I felt today. Okay, at number 10.

They have expertise in many different backgrounds. They have a lot of expertise and they come from many different backgrounds. So one of the neat things about R&D, people ask me all the time, they say, what do I need to do? I want to be in R&D. Give me the path to get to R&D. And the answer I always give is there's no single path. That so many different people have been in R&D and have come from so many different places. For example, Henry Stern was literally a rocket scientist before he came to R&D. He used to work on rockets. He was an engineer who built rockets. You know, we, I obviously, I wrote sitcoms. You know, there's people who, I think Bill Rose ran a department in one of the colleges. Charlie Coutinho, I think, ran a chemistry lab.

Obviously, you know, Richard Garfield was a math professor. We've had people come from the military. People come from, like Ethan Fleischer before he, in his previous life, I think did web design. Sean Main was a director. You know, we've had people come from all sorts of different walks in life. And that one of the neat things about working in R&D is there's so many different people with so many different expertises. Like one of the things that I used to get surprised by, and I just learned not to get surprised by it,

is, like, something comes up and someone goes, oh, I have some training in this area, let me do this. You know, and like, Ken Nagel, for example, used to program tanks. Used to program tanks. And he's a programmer. And, you know,

so one day we were doing something, and Ken's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could program something to do. You know, I wasn't even, like, it's like people just sort of have these skill sets, and then they pop up, and they're like, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could do something there. And so one of the neat things about working in R&D is you never quite know. Because it's so diverse, because the skill set of R&D focus is all over the map, Because it's so diverse, because the skill set of R&D focus is all over the map, it's really cool that you'll just find people pull tricks and things out of their sleeves that you never knew.

Like, I remember one day, for some reason on the Vine, I did some juggling. There's a Vine of me juggling. You've never seen it. And everyone was like, how can you juggle? And I'm like, well, I used to do kids' birthday parties. I did magic, and I used to juggle. They're like, you did magic? how'd you, you know

so people have skills hidden away things they've done and it's one of the fun things I really enjoy the breadth of how different people in R&D are as far as what they bring to the table we have a lot of similarities I'll get to that in a little bit

but this first one's kind of really looking at the coolness of our differences, that we each sort of had our own path to get to R&D, and it's a very different path. There's no, like, singular one-way people got into R&D or one series of things they learned. One of the advice I give to people who want to be in R&D, I'm like, here's what I would recommend doing.

Go get skills. Get good, cool, unique skills that are your own skills. And when you come to R&D, bring a variety of things. Bring things we don't have. Bring, you know, one of the neat things, one of the things that I think really makes magic design and development sing is people coming to the table, bringing just expertise from different areas. Because one of the things about finding new ways to do things is being able to say, hey, here's a neat thing we used to do in this other area. Now we're doing it here.

And sort of talking about, you know, like, that's how you find new and exciting ways to do things is by bringing expertise from different areas and combining them. So that, I think, is a big reward for R&D. Okay, which segues into number nine. They are very creative. So growing up, for those who know anything about me, I've written about it, I've always been obsessed with creativity. I think creativity is an awesome thing. And I'm a very creative person. But I think one of the things

that I realized, and I'm over the last, you know, this October is my 22nd year here, working in R&D. And I think what I, before I came to R&D, I tended to think of creativity really narrowly. Because I tended to think of creativity as I was creative. I'm very into what I would call blue sky creativity. Which is like, there's a blank page and you form something out of it. You know, that you have to sort of find something. And I'm really excited by sort of creativity where you're sort of hunting the unknown, if you will. But what I learned in R&D is there's lots of different kinds of creativity. Like, so one of my jobs as head

designer is I'm in charge of sort of making a bullseye. I'm in charge of saying this is what we're trying to do. This is what the set wants, you know, and I'm always pushing us in new and different directions because I want us to try things we've never tried before. But one of the neat things is watching the members of R&D take my, you know, for example, let's take exploratory design. A lot of exploratory design is me saying here are neat kinds of things we could do, hey go explore these spaces for example

Zendikar started with okay we want to mess around with land let's go figure out what can you do with land Innistrad was like we're doing a top down gothic horror we're looking at the genre of horror. What can we do there? What are cool things we can do? You know, Pharaohs

looked at Greek mythology. Ravnica looked at the interactions of the colors. You know, that every time we did something, I'm like, okay, here's the thing we're going to focus on. Let's figure out what cool thing we can do. And the neat thing is, they always come back and they explore things and try things and do things that I don't expect. Like one of the neat things I think about having like creative co-workers is that I think it's really neat that we can find things we can do. Like I'm always looking for new and different things and I'm always looking for old things that we've already done that just are perfect fits. And that one of the things that's so neat is when I bring together any random group of R&D people to work on a project that I know that I'm going to give them ideas and

send them down paths and that they're going to find all these other possible ways to execute it. They're going to find ways to do what they do and that is, it's just so much fun. And it really made me realize that creativity is a lot more broader. You know, there's a lot more elements to it. Like just for example, some of the people, Ethan Fleischer is really good at finding the thing we've done before that's the perfect fit for what we're doing here. Whether it's a mechanic or cards, like he's really good at saying, hey, here's the, here's something we've already done that's the perfect fit for right here. And that's a great skill. And that is, that's a very creative skill, but a very different

kind of creative skill. That's not blue sky creativity. That's really saying, let me understand the essence of what we're doing and then figure out, is there a way to do something we've done before that would blossom in that kind of setting. And so, you know, I really, I appreciate, and it really, it's funny how being around people that just function differently than me made me realize how many more ways, like, ironically, I was not creative enough about how I thought about creativity. So R&D has expanded my creativeness on creativity itself. Okay, we get to number eight.

So number eight is they are fun to argue slash discuss slash debate with. So one of the things that R&D does, and this is something that I don't think you would realize. When new people come to R&D, I always like to talk to them a couple months in.

Sort of say, okay, you've been here for a while. How are things going? What did you expect? What didn't you expect? You know, and one of the things I find interesting is the one thing that people didn't always expect is the amount of minutia we will get into and the amount we will argue over the tiniest of things. get into and the amount we will argue over the tiniest of things you know like i wrote a whole article once about whether or not draw effects should be targeted as a default like whether or not it should say you draw two cards or target player draws two cards and i wrote a whole article about why i prefer target player and then um uh zach hill zach wrote an entire article about why I prefer Target Player. And then, Zach Hill.

Zach wrote an entire article about why you draw as better as the New Falls. Like, we each wrote, you know, 3,000 words about our side, and that is a tiny, tiny, minute issue. You know, we'll talk a lot about, like, whether or not, you know, how things are represented, or whether or not, you know, how things are represented or whether or not templating issues.

We will argue about anything and everything that will make the set better. That one of the things that R&D has learned is nothing, we don't settle with anything. If you see something that you think could be better, even if it's a tiny improvement, we want to know that. And we will have our meetings or sometimes just discussions in the pit, not planned discussions, but we will really debate through things. And one of the things that I love about R&D is, if you know anything about me, I come into an argument pretty sure I'm right.

I definitely, I got myself a big ego and when I hold on, when I get a belief, I come into an argument pretty sure I'm right. I definitely, I got myself a big ego. And when I hold on, you know, when I get a belief, I've thought it through and I really, I think I'm right. And one of the things I love is when we'll get into these arguments, you know, other people will bring up really valid, good points I had not thought of. And so many times I've been in a meeting or, you know, or in the pit and like I start going, I am 100% sure I'm right or, you know, 99% sure I'm right. And then by the end of it, I'm like, yeah, I'm not right. I'm wrong.

That's, I'm wrong. Okay, we should change it. And it is neat because for somebody, I mean, I'll get into this a little more later. But, you know, growing, when I was arguing with people, I was right a lot of the time. It wasn't often I would argue with people and I was just in the wrong. But I find with R&D that there's so much nuance to it. There's so much things we care about and there's so many things people are thinking about. Like, one of the things also that happens is, and this is just how complex magic is, is someone might say, how complex magic is,

is someone might say, oh, well, for this reason, for this format, or for this element of digital, of organized play, of whatever, you know, of templating, of how the rules work.

There's so many different reasons that you might do one thing over another, and that even if you think you've thought through everything, someone will just say, hey, hey, hey, no, no, no, you haven't thought about that. And I, as someone who, I i mean the other thing i should say about our our debates if you will is i would say 98

of the time they are not emotion what i would call emotional debates they're not where people are like just screaming at the top of their lungs because they feel so passionately and it gets really emotional it's much more like all of us want the best for the sets. All of us want the best for magic. And then what we're doing is we are trying to use this as a tool to make sure we're doing the best things. In fact, some people are like devil's advocate.

That happens all the time where if no one is taking a certain side, someone will jump in and take that side just so the side is being taken and then we can argue through and make sure we're making the right call. You know, and that it is seen as a tool for us.

Now, I'm not saying we never get emotional. I left 2%. It happens every once in a while, but that's really not what we want. The goal is not to sort of upset one another or get us, you know, you know, it's about to use this as a tool to sort of debate things through and figure out what we're doing and making sure we have the right thing.

And it really is one of the aspects of R&D that is endearing to me. I love debating things. I love walking things through. I like kicking the tires. And it is really nice to have a debate with people that are really good at debating so that, you know, we really can test ideas. Okay, number seven. They always drive to be better. Well, one of the things about, I mean, I've had a couple jobs.

I mean, I've been at Wizards a long time. So Wizards is the longest job I've had. But it's not the only job I've had. I've had a bunch of other jobs. And one of the things that is really refreshing is how much everybody in R&D wants to make things better and just has a drive to do it. You know, I've been in a lot of jobs where there are people who are like, you know, what's the minimum I could do and probably not get fired? You know, what is the least I can do? And in R&D, it's always what is the most I can do?

In fact, one of the biggest problems in R&D is, in fact, this is a very common problem when new people start. And we now, actually part of the training when you start in R&D is people taking on too much. That the number one problem early people have in R&D is overcommitting and starting to burn themselves out because they're just doing too many different things. And that one of the things we have to teach people is, hey, you've got to pace yourself. You've got to look at how many things you're doing.

And one of the things that's hard is the projects in R&D are fun. And it's really, oh, that sounds interesting. Yeah, I want to do that. That sounds interesting. And it's like, look, a lot of what you hear is going to sound interesting. There's a lot of interesting things going on. And just because it's interesting doesn't mean inherently you're supposed to be doing it. You have to pick and choose what you're doing and you know if you are capable of doing you know four or five things and you try to do seven or eight things you're not doing any of the things

as well as you need to be doing um but in general one of the things that is just a really i don't know just awesome thing is everybody is working so hard to make to make magic the best it can be. And that, you know, it is just lovely to come in every day and be passionate. If anyone pays any attention to my podcast, I love what I do. I'm passionate about what I do. You know, I care about the work I do. Obviously, when I finally get to talk about a set, I am excited because I worked on it really hard and I wanted it to be really good. And I want all of you to be as excited as I am about what's going on.

And it is neat to walk in every day and have everybody who I work with just as excited as I am. They may not be as, you know, vocally, you know, I have a, my energy level might be higher than some of them on video, but they have, they share my passion for making things as good as they can be and working really hard and trying to do everything they can do. Okay, number six, a willingness to be critical. So one of the things that I've talked a lot about is how, what we do in iterative process, that we're going to do something, we figure something out, we make it, we try it, we get

feedback, and then we improve upon it and continue the cycle. So one of the key things to that is the importance of feedback. Like one of the things that I, part of the R&D culture is the idea that we are trying to make what we do the best we can, and feedback is essential. to make what we do the best we can and feedback is is essential and so one of the things um and uh one of the things that that we we do in design development is we sort of have this this policy with one another that we're going to be blunt not in a mean way i mean the the goal is not to give information um cruelly or anything but we want to be matter of fact. If you play something and something is not good, this thing, you tell people who are doing it, this is not good.

You know, I don't, I didn't enjoy that or I don't like it. A lot of times it's like, here's the aspect I think is not working. I mean, maybe you give suggestions. Maybe you have, oh, if it was, you know, instead of A, it was B, that would play better. You know, a lot of times you're trying to be constructive in your criticism, but we're trying to be blunt. We're trying to say this is or isn't working. And the reason is I'm going to do a whole bunch of iterations and I want to find out a mistake that needs to be fixed in iteration one, not iteration three, not iteration five. Like, if you know, I mean, if you don't know, some things won't be figured out to iteration three or iteration five, but if you know in iteration one, I don't want to be like,

well, yeah, the first time we played this and I knew that was a problem, but, you know, we're going to let you go through three iterations before I mention it's a problem. No, no, no, no, no. There's something wrong. Tell me now. I'm going to fix it. You know, and then one of the things, like,

I interact a lot with the public and I get a lot of feedback. And one of the things I've learned is I have a thick skin. R&D in general has a thick skin. The part of doing your job is like, look, I honestly want to know what people think. Now, the public at times, like I say in R&D that we try to be constructive and critical without being mean.

The audience isn't always, I have that goal in mind. But what I've learned is, if you listen to anybody giving you criticism, no matter how mean the presentation could be, if you pull apart the presentation and listen to what they're saying, all criticism, there's a grain of truth to what they're trying to say.

There's something about it. And now, it might be something that they care about that other people don't care about. It's not that every criticism is of equal value or is always necessarily the right call. But one of the things I've learned is turning out feedback because you don't like the person or the presentation of the feedback is detrimental to you.

Because if your goal is to make things better, well, you need to listen through and hear the feedback. And one of the reasons that I talk with the public all the time, and if you read my blog, for example, I post plenty of people being, let's call it aggressive in their dislike of things. But I want to understand why.

I want to understand why. Why does something upset people? Why does something, you know? And look, I'll stick by my guns. And in R&D, like part of having the criticism and part of being critical is you want to take everything you have

and make sure that it's being put through the grinder. Like I tell a whole bunch of stories. If you ever split cards or hybrid mana or double-faced cards or pick whatever, pick something where I was doing something really, really off the beaten track. And I always talk about how there were a lot of people that were trying to stop me

um and I think sometimes that gets portrayed as like this big negative thing like oh my god what were they doing no no no I love the fact that when I try something new that there's people pushing against it no matter what it is even if I truly believe it's an awesome idea because sometimes what I think is an awesome idea when it gets pushed against the gauntlet of R&D, I come to realize that it's not as perfect as I thought it was or it has flaws or sometimes it's like it's a good idea but it could be better and that I could take them and improve upon it. And a lot of what I want is, look, any idea you have, whether it be a concept for a set or a mechanic or an individual card, there's a gauntlet you

have to go through. That you have to, it has to prove itself. It has to prove its worth. And that one of the things I enjoy, 22 years in, one of the reasons that I don't get bored of this job is that R&D tests me every day, every idea, everything I do, that there's never ever a, yeah, yeah, whatever, just do that. It's always people sort of questioning and figuring out whether it's the best thing. And that, one of the things they say in sports is, one of the best things you can do in sports

is play with somebody who's better than you. Play with somebody who will push you and make you play the best you can play. And I think a lot of ways R&D does that for me as a designer is they make me a better designer because they are pushing and challenging everything I do. There's none of this like, well, Mark knows what he's doing, so we just don't have to worry about it. No, no, no. They worry about it. And when I try something, they're like, really?

Really? That's what you're trying to do? And that even when I have an idea that I truly believe in, like double-faced cards or whatever, where I truly believe in the idea, I like the fact that there's people sort of keeping me honest and creating pressure so that I, in fact, prove that I'm making the right call, that I'm doing the right thing. That makes me double-check things. It makes me safety-check things. It makes me sort of, you know, I can't just do things without having ramification

of what I do. And I think that is a really compelling part of my job and a great part of R&D. And that criticalness, you know, it is easy to look at that and sort of want to see that as a negative, but it is not. It is actually a huge positive. And I really enjoy the, I do enjoy the bluntness. You know, I mean, it's not really arguing. Like, part of making good ideas is fighting for your ideas

and is really pushing back and having people sort of make you... You know, I know like when you do a dissertation, for example, you have to get in front of a committee and they make you prove your dissertation. They make you defend it.

I like that. I feel like every set I make is my dissertation that I have to defend. And that by doing so, I make it the best set it can be. Okay, number five is they're good at what they do. It is not easy to get into R&D. In fact, R&D is probably the hardest department at Wizards. It's not easy to get into Wizards. Wizards is hard to get into, and R&D is probably the hardest department at Wizards to get into. It's not easy to get into Wizards. Wizards is hard to get into, and R&D even so.

I think part of it is that people who get into R&D tend to stay in R&D. We don't have a lot of turnover. People really enjoy being in R&D. It's a very rewarding job. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of work, obviously, but it's a lot of fun, and it's very rewarding work. It's a lot of work, obviously, but it's a lot of fun, and it's very rewarding work.

And the other thing is just we demand a lot of people who work in R&D. We really have high standards. And so just to get a job in R&D is not easy, that you really have to sort of prove to us what you're capable of. And so by the time you get into R&D, you know what you're doing. You, you know, we have very high standards. And that means that the people who work in R&D are good at what they do. And one of the neat things is not everybody's good at everything. We actually are good at hiring lots of different people to do lots of different things. For example, I am awesome at taking a blank piece of paper and making something out of it. I'm taking a theme and figuring out what's the best part of that theme. I'm good at making a blank piece of paper and making something out of it, of taking a theme and figuring out what's the best part of that theme.

I'm good at making a focus. I'm good at sort of design. Am I good at development? Do you want me balancing cards or making environments? Do you want me doing some of that? No. You know why? Because we have people that are excellent at that, that are experts at that.

And I'm not. One of the great things about R&D is people have expertise, we understand what those expertise are, and we lean on people and their expertise. Like if I need to do stuff that I know I'm not strong at, I know who's good at it, and I make use of them. It's how we put together our teams, for example, like my design teams. I always have a developer on the design team because I need someone who's going to cost things

and make sure that we're balancing things correctly. I need a creative person on my team because I need someone who's going to cost things and make sure that we're balancing things correctly. I need a creative person on my team because I need to believe that we're interconnecting with the story and making sure we're capturing that. You know, that I want to make sure that I have all the different people I need, you know, on the team or connected to the team. You know, one of the things we'll do all the time

is I'll run things by the rules manager or run things by an editor so I can get some templating advice. You know, that I have experts around me so that anytime if I need an expert opinion I can have an expert opinion. And the thing that's awesome is that I'm surrounded by experts so I can always get an expert opinion. I mean once again I've worked other jobs where I'm working with people that are like, how did this person get hired? Like, you again, I've worked other jobs where I'm working with people that are like, wow, how did this person get hired?

Like, you know, like people in which, you know, sometimes I've had other jobs where it's like I feel like some of my coworkers are making it harder for me to do my job. Not easier, harder to do my job. And that's never the case in R&D. Sorry. R&D always makes it easier because they really know what they're doing and they're good at what they do. And I can't express, I mean,

after working in jobs with people that are not good at what they do, it is a breath of fresh air working with people that know what they do. In fact, I've worked here for a long time. I've gotten spoiled. I've had trouble going to another job, you know, where the people aren't, you know, like, man, competence

is so awesome. Just expertise and, like, really knowing what you're doing and being good at what you do. And the fact that I can rely and trust on the other people in R&D that when I, you know, I don't have to micromanage the system because the other people doing the other things, they are good.

They're better than me at the things they're doing. And I know that they'll do the best they can do. That when I hand off a set, like when I finish with design, I'm going to hand it to development. A whole different group of people is going to take the set. I'm handing my baby to somebody else. But I know they're going to take care of my child and do right by it. And it will grow up to be an awesome child with all the skills and needs. So I enjoy that.

That's a really cool part of R&D is just being with people that are good. So another thing that's great about R&D is they are smart. They're very smart. One of the things I think about most of us is growing up, we were kind of the smartest kid in the room. I mean, I'm not saying there were other smart people around us but like you were used to being you know one of the smartest people in the room and it's kind of a place now we all get together and like everybody everybody

is the smartest person in the room you know and that I work with people who are so crazy intelligent it is you know, and I mean, it has to go to confidence, it has to go to drive, a lot of these other aspects has to go with like why they're so good

at debating things. But it's a smart group of people. And it is so awesome just working with really, really smart people. People who like, when I talk about how we argue every nuance of everything, it's because they think of every nuance.

And then when we have arguments, they're really good at really logically walking through and picking things apart and saying, what about thing A or thing B or thing C? And that it is refreshing to, it is very refreshing to be able to have that. And that, I mean, I've definitely been in environments before with very talented people. But I've never, this job is just the caliber of how smart everybody is. The other thing I learned, by the way, so one of the things, you know, I'd read about a lot before I got to Wizards was the idea of different types of intelligence. That, you know, there's actually, I don't know, seven types, eight types of intelligence. There's a lot of different types of intelligence. And one of the neat things is finding like all the different kinds of people who are smart in many different ways. And just as I've kind of learned the breadth

of creativity, how many different ways there are to be creative, I've learned kind of lots of different types of intelligence and getting a chance to interact with all sorts of different people who have a different sense of how different things work. You know, be it numbers, be it psychology, be it just inner workings of things, be it combinatorics, be it sort of synergy, just all those different things. I can find people that are just, that's their area of specialty,

that's really what they're good at, and anyway, just working with smart people is awesome. It is fun. You know, and like, once again, I have a lot of other jobs. One of my pet peeves in other jobs is, you know, having people that just don't understand something and

you know, I feel like I have to explain their job to them. And like, that is no fun. I want everybody to understand their own job and know what they're doing and not require me to explain something to them that they should already know. Okay, number three. Number three is they are funny.

I laugh a lot. So my previous job, or one of my previous jobs, was a sitcom writer. I would sit in a room with a whole bunch of people whose job professionally it was to make people laugh. And they were funny. They were funny. A sitcom room is a funny place because those are people who, like, they're all funny people. So one of the things I thought when I came to, you know, one of the things I thought that I might, when I left Hollywood, when I left the world of writing, I'm like, okay.

But one of the ups of comedy writing is I get to be with funny people. And I'm like, well, okay, there's a lot of other cool things about this job. If I don't get to be with funny people. And I'm like, well, okay, there's a lot of other cool things about this job. If I don't get to be with funny people, you know, I can survive. But what I found is R&D has a great sense of humor. If you've ever read in Tales from the Pit, I do another day of productivity wasted or another day of productivity lost

where I talk about all the different things we talk about. Like, we love to argue magic, but we also argue all sorts of other things and anything and everything. We'll get into really any kind of topic down to minutiae, pop culture, all sorts of stuff. And we'll argue about it, you know, which of the seven dwarves would win in a fight. You know, we'll talk about that kind of thing. And it is just R&D has a good sense of humor um i mean it's something for example in my meetings i i believe in the value of humor i believe humor is a really good tool it is something that you

want to it it just makes it makes people work harder and work better when they're having a good time doing what they're doing and so I incorporate a lot of humor into my design teams. So one of the things that I enjoy, the number of times where I've been in a meeting where I've been laughing so hard that I have to like stop myself because I can't breathe because I'm laughing so hard is great. It's awesome. And that I have a smile on my face. You know, there's lots of reasons

that I love working in R&D. But one of the reasons is it's fun. It's fun. The people are fun. And they're funny. And it is, I don't know if people, like, a lot of the things I'm saying today are kind of duh. OK, they're good at their job and stuff.

But this one might be something people might not realize. I don't know if people necessarily understand that R&D is a funny group of people. That they really, you know, that there is a lot, and because they're smart, there's a lot of very intelligent type of jokes, a lot of wordplay.

You know, I love puns, and the pit is filled with people who appreciate puns, which is good because I say a lot of puns. And so that is definitely, it's neat to see, and it's fun. good because I get, I see a lot of funds. And so that is definitely, it's neat. It's neat to see and it's fun. And like I said, I'm glad that I can laugh every day and I can, you know, that is a big perk to me. Number two, they challenge me. They ask great questions. Oh, it's funny funny one of the ones I had earlier is I

talked about how they were critical and I think I covered some of this here but I'll cover I'll hit some different aspects of this so they challenge me um and uh so one of the things that I one of the things that that I've discovered about the creative process is that you need, you want two different types of people on something. You want what I call the cheerleaders and you want what I call the critics. Meaning it's important when you're making something that you have some people that are just there to like give you energy. That is awesome's a great idea I love that you know and you want some cheerleaders and already definitely has cheerleaders I definitely have people

who will get behind what I do and that it is hard for example to do something all by yourself I do it from time to time but it's a lot harder it's a lot easier when you and others together are working to do something. But also, you need critics. You need people that say, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That idea is not the best idea. I think it could be better. And I try hard to make sure that no matter what we're doing, that there's both cheerleaders and critics.

And I love the fact that R&D has some cheerleaders, that there are people who really respect the desire I have to push things and go in different directions that really are, okay, yeah, that is weird, but let's embrace the weird. Let's embrace something different. And at the same time, I love that I have people that take no idea as accepted. That don't just go, well, okay, hey, your team seems like it good enough. For example, one of the special sauce that I think Wizards has is the fact that everything goes through two different sets of teams. The fact that we start with one team and hand off to a different team, and the teams

while they share some general beliefs, are not 100% overlapped. That what the first team wants and what the second team wants, there's a little bit of difference, and I think that's important. That, you know, I don't want something to get put in the set and just, well, I kind of like it and no one ever critically judges it. The fact is, one team is going to go through the gauntlet of one team and through the gauntlet of a second team. And then through other, I mean, there's more gauntlets than just the teams themselves.

And by the time it gets to you, a lot of people looked at it. A lot of people have tested it. A lot of tires are kicked. There's a lot. Nothing ever gets through without a whole bunch of different people really pushing hard another thing is the skill of asking good questions is an awesome skill and something r d is really good at um that a lot of like for example i've talked before i talked about exploratory design the exploratory design is not always answering your questions,

but sometimes figuring out what the questions are. That a lot of the process of creating something is first figuring out what are you trying to answer? What are the issues at hand? And so having people that really ask me questions, and not just superfluous questions, but down deep, like, this is important. You have to answer this kind of questions. You know, like I know back in my writing days that one of the things

that really helped me as a writer is having people ask me the hard questions. You know, what is this character up to? What is the story about? How does your character change? You know, things that like a story needs to have that's easy to somehow get lost in the weeds and miss the big picture. And the same is true with a magic set. It is so easy to get sort of caught up in some aspect of something that you miss, okay, is this mechanic fun or not? Okay, fine. But does it fit?

Does it advance our larger agenda? Does it fit in what the set's trying to be? And so, you know, that is something that we have to sort of think about of, for each piece of things, are we doing the right thing of making it work? And I love the fact that, and like I said, it's easy. The fact that people constantly challenge you, you could see as a bad thing. Like I said, I tell stories about how I had a fight to get something through, and oh my God, it was so hard, and so many people didn't want to do it, and I had to win so many people

over. But the reality is, one of the reasons that I tell those stories, one of the reasons, like, to me, for example, the split cards, I've done a whole podcast on split cards, is in some ways, the awesomeness of split cards was, it was an idea so good that I was able to overcome almost, like I said, when I started it, there were three people in the building. Three people that believed in them. And two of us really, I mean, Richard liked them, but he was off doing other things. There was two of us that, Bill Rose and I, that like, okay, we have to make this happen, and it's us against the world.

And the fact that the idea was so good that we managed to convince the world it was correct, you know, the world at Wizards. You know, we managed to convince everybody else it was the right thing to do. You know, and that is a really testament to it was a good idea. Now, by the way, there's tons and tons of stories that I had an idea, I believed deeply in, and along the way I realized it wasn't as good as I thought, and I abandoned it. That happened a lot more. That's just a less sexist story to tell.

I tried this. I mean, for example, Forbidden is a good example from Avacyn Restored, where I came up with a mechanic inspired by something that Richard Garfield had done at a world, I think I've done a podcast on this. And I really thought we had something cool. And there just were a whole bunch of problems with it. And I wasn't able to solve the problems. And we weren't able to figure out how, like, there were enough negative things that came with it that we didn't solve.

That, okay, it didn't end up happening. That we abandoned it and ended up getting miracles in its place. So, you know, and that is the nature of having people that are really willing to challenge me and test me and let me push against them. Okay, the number one thing I love about working in R&D is they love magic. As much as I love magic, and I, I love magic. So if I look at my life and I say, okay, what are the awesome things in my life?

I go, number one, I have a dream job. I have a job that I love doing, that I'm passionate about, that I'm excited about, that I look forward to doing every day. Magic gave me that. Magic is that job, you know. I mean, also, I'm a game player. I love game playing.

I love games. You know, that's a big part of my life. Magic is my job. Also, I'm a game player. I love game playing. I love games. That's a big part of my life. Magic is my favorite game. Another really important part of my life is I have a family that I love dearly. I have a wife that last year was her 18th anniversary. A woman that I love very, very much. I met her at work. I met her at Wizards.

I met her through Magic. Through her, I have a family that I love very much that would not have happened had I not met my wife through magic. So, you know, magic on every level, as a game player, just as a person, as an employee, as a human being, as a husband, as a father, like all of that. All of that is a result of magic. It's had a giant impact on my life.

In fact, you know, I have a taste of like a that is a result of magic. It's had a giant impact on my life. In fact, I have a taste of a little mini celebrity because of magic. If you go to the homepage of my high school, I'm written as a famous alum from my high school because of this job, because of what I do. I'm well known in the game design industry because of the stuff I've done because of magic. I've seen the world. I did a whole podcast recently on all the traveling I've done. Magic has done so many positive things for me.

And I look around and I see how many positive things it's done for other people. Like I did a whole column on people just writing in to me talking about how magic has made their life better. And I see magic as a source of good, a power of good, a force of good that helps people and does positive things for people. You know, whether it helps them make friends or helps them take their mind off something that's really, you know, helps them escape in a place when they need to, a time when they need to escape. Or something in which lets them find some passion

they have and drive their passion through it. There's all sorts of different reasons, you know, finding community. There's all sorts of cool things that Magic does, and Magic really is this amazing game. And so I love working at Wizards. I very much love Wizards. It's been a company that's been very good to me. But I have an allegiance even stronger to the game of Magic. And the cool thing is everybody else in R&D does too. Nobody working in R&D on Magic did not first come through. Like, one of the prerequisites to get in the door is to have a love for the game. Because we know if you don't love Magic, like, there's a...

Magic's, you know, it's 24 years old this year. It's an old game. There's a lot... You really have to understand the history of the game to work on it because you have to know what we've done, what we've not done. You really need a passion for the game to be able to work on a game 24 years in. And so one of the things we look for is people who are passionate about Magic. So R&D is full of people who love Magic, who long before they worked for Wizards, loved the game.

And so all of us have this desire we're very protective of magic we think of magic as being more than just a game of like i said being this force of good and so all of us work really hard to try like like there's this personal responsibility that we all have of we can't mess up that what we are doing are doing transcends just being a game. That it does something larger than that. And so we put a lot of pressures on ourselves to make sure that what we're making is the best possible thing. And I love the fact that I'm surrounded by people who are just as passionate about the thing that I'm passionate about.

Like in general, I didn't even get into this. One of the things that's neat about R&D is growing up it was hard finding people like me you know that a lot of my high school was like well I didn't find a lot of people that sort of liked the things I liked and I got to college and I was able in college college was a little bit bigger I was able to more find you know people who liked the things I did and was able to do that um and that one of the neat things about this is that I get to work with people. Now, once again, they're different. I talked about that in number 10, that they come from different backgrounds, have different experiences.

But we have a lot of shared experiences. Obviously, I love magic. It's the biggest one. But even just the kinds of pop culture we like or the, you know, just a lot of topics that we'll discuss that pretty much, you know, the majority of us tend to be on the same page on a lot of things. Not everything, but on a lot of things. And that is really cool. So as I wrap up, one of the things I want to say as I sort of do my final run through

here is think about this and that. This is not just things, I mean, these are things I love about what I do for a living, but I think there are things that are something that you could also love. Things to, if you don't happen to have, that in future jobs, things you could look for. So number 10, having expertise in different areas and coming from different backgrounds. That it is awesome to work with people that aren't just carbon copies of yourself, that each have their own skill set to bring to the table. That is an awesome thing.

That's a good thing to look for. Number nine, creativity. That people are able to find new and different ways to do things and to embrace creativity in all its different forms and all its different means. That it is great to work with people that are very creative and that are able to sort of look and try to do new things. Number eight, people who are fun to argue, discuss, debate with. Now, this one might be a little more R&D-ish than the average job.

I'm not saying you have to have a job where you fight with people, but it is nice to have people who care about it and are willing to sort of think through all the different sides. It doesn't necessarily need to be through debate, although I do enjoy debate, so it's fun for me. Number seven, always striving to be better. It is awesome to work with people who really want to do the best in their work. Because it's so much easier for you to strive to do the best when everyone around you is striving to do the best. And it's something to look for, is finding a job where the people who are doing the job love the job they're doing and want to be better.

Number six, a willingness to be critical. You know, if you want to get better, if you want to improve in anything, in your job, in life, or whatever, you need people to be able to give you feedback, and you need people willing to give you feedback and give you honest feedback. Maybe not as blunt as we do in R&D,

but honest feedback's important. Number five, the good at what they do. It is really fun to work with people that are good at what they do, and that is a great thing to look for in a job, of being able to get a job where the people excel, and you get, like, working with people that are good at what they do

just makes you better at what you do. Number five, smart coworkers. It is just, it is refreshing to have people that just know what they're doing and understand things. And that when you get into a discussion about it, that they really understand the nuances of the things you're talking about. That is very, an awesome thing to have. Number three, they're funny. They make you laugh a lot.

That part of having a job is enjoying the job. Not just in the act of the job, but the wholeness of it. And part of it is being able to relax and sort of, you will get so much work done and so much more work and better work done if you enjoy the people you're with, if you're having fun. And I think humor and laughing is a big part of that. Number two is challenging me, asking awesome questions. That one of the things that if you want to be the best you can be, you know, as they

say in sports, play up. You know, work with other employees that are just as good, if not better than you, so that you can learn to be a better employee. And that let people challenge you. That part of becoming better is people, like, if you think that you're the best you could ever be and everything you've done, nothing can be better than that. You won't improve. You won't grow. So if you want to grow, you've got to let other people challenge you. better than that, you won't improve, you won't grow. So if you want to grow, you got to let other people challenge you. And number one, for me, it's loving magic, but loving the thing that

you do. That you should do a job that you love the thing you do with people who love the thing. And that it is such night and day between working at a job that people want to be there and people don't want to be there. That having people who want to be there just makes it so much more compelling, so much more fun. You know, find a job where the people also, beside you, find a job you love that the other people love so that all of you love it. It's a great experience. But anyway, I'm now driving up to Rachel's school. So we all know what that means. It means the end of my drive to work. So I hope you guys enjoyed today talking about all the cool things about R&D. So this is the props R&D. So for anyone of those listening, thank you guys.

You make the job so much fun. I love working with all of you. And I'll keep doing it until I fall over. So anyway, that's it, guys. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.