Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #423: Virtual Tour

Episode Date: March 31, 2017

Wizards of the Coast doesn't give public tours, but occasionally we give them for special guests. As someone who has done a lot of these tours, I thought it would be fun to do one for all of you, virtually.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive New Work. Okay, so today, I have an interesting idea for a podcast today. So, people ask all the time, do we do public tours? And the answer is we don't. But, occasionally we get special guests and we do tours, but it's a special case-by-case thing. It's not, the average person can't walk off the street and get a tour. We don't have public tours. It's a special case-by-case thing. It's not the average person can't walk off the street and get a tour. We don't have public tours.

But we do have special guests, and I am called on often to give tours of the building. So I realized today, I can't actually take you into the building, but I can. See, I've done the tour so many times that I'm going to walk you virtually through it. Today is a virtual tour of... Hold on one second. There's a car in the way, hold on. Always trying to be safe here on the show. Okay, sorry. So today is going to be a virtual tour. So I'm going to walk you through, I'm going to have to describe it because normally on the tour you get to look and see. So I'm going to walk you through a tour that we actually have through the building and I'll take you to all the sensitive parts that we normally can't take you to because you would see things you can't see. But luckily

you can't see it so I still can take you there. Okay so this is the tour as I would give the tour if I was going to all the different parts of the building. Okay, so we would start on the first floor. So on the first floor we have a main area, a room we call Dominaria. So welcome everybody. I see you're all here in Dominaria. So this is a big room that we use for employee pre-releases, all-hand meetings. It's a place for players, I'm sorry, a place for employees to relax. You can have lunch here. There, you see over there, there's a ping pong table. There's a lot of space to play games. If you look over there, you can see a network LAN where you can play computer games. Anyway, it's just an area for the employees of Wizards of the Coast just sort of hang out, relax, and it's a big room when we need a big room.

And you'll notice that there's some rooms off of this. Right there, there's Zendikar and Ravnica and Tomb of Horrors and one other one that's named after Dungeons & Dragons. There are little tiny rooms that people can book that occasionally have meetings here. A lot of times when we have people from outside, some of the meeting rooms will set up to have meetings with them. But anyway, this is just we made this a couple years ago.

There was a big contest to see who would name it. And six people turned in the name Dominaria. I was one of them. And we named it Dominaria after the original world of Magic the Gathering. Now let's take a look here. Now we can walk outside, see the lobby. This is, so this is the third building that Wizards of the Coast has been in. In the very, very early days, Wizards of

the Coast was actually in Peter Atkinson's basement. Peter was the president and CEO. So it started as a little tiny company in his basement. Eventually we got an office space, which was about three blocks from here. And then in 1985 we moved to across the street from here, where we were for 10 years. I'm sorry, 1995 to 2005. And then in 2005 we moved across the street into the building we are now, where we have been since 2005.

Now, you'll notice there are other companies that work in this building. We actually take up all of the fourth and third floor. We take up a good chunk of the second floor. And on the first floor, we have Dominaria. Also on the first floor, if you up a good chunk of the second floor, and on the first floor we have Dominaria. Also on the first floor, if you look around here, you'll see there's a Bright Horizons, which does childcare. All three of my kids were in Bright Horizons, which is really convenient so that if you come to work you can bring your kids and take them to daycare. There is a weight room, an exercise room where I work out three times a week.

And there also is a dojo where some classes and stuff will be given. There's some big meeting rooms down here that if we want to have a meeting that just requires more people. And then there's Julie's Cafe, which is a place to get food, which is they do coffee in the morning and then there's Julie's Cafe which is a place to get food which is they do coffee in the morning and then they do sandwiches and such in the afternoon for lunch and things and if you want to get food without leaving the building that's the one way to do it.

You'll notice there's a building right behind us. This building technically is called the Landmark and there's actually two buildings. I think there's like north and south. I forget how the buildings are separated. But there's two buildings right next to each other. We're in the front building. So anyway, the only other thing on the first floor is there's, like I said, a few other businesses.

And they're on the first floor. But let's go up. We're going to take the elevator now. We're going to go up to the fourth floor. So I'm taking the order I want because I sort of want to end up to the fourth floor. So I'm taking the order I want because I sort of want to end up in a certain place in Alaska. There's a method to my madness. Okay, so we

take up the elevator and we go up to the fourth floor. So as we step off the elevators you'll notice the hall keeps changing colors. So we have a neat thing in the hall in our lobby on the fourth floor. It's a little light display that goes through different patterns and it can change the color. You'll notice some of the pictures on the

wall there are art. We have art from different properties of ours. The one right, the main one right there is from Dungeons and Dragons, painted by Matt Cavada. But anyways, you walk down the hallway, you will change colors and things. It's kind of cool. Okay, so now everyone turned to the left. We walked through the glass doors, and now we come to the main lobby of Wizards of the Coast. First off, I will point up. There's, you'll notice a giant Shivan dragon

hanging from the ceiling. We call her Mitzi. So what happened was, Wizards of the Coast, a while back, got into the business of doing retail. We had Wizards of the Coast, a while back, got into the business of doing retail. We had Wizards of the Coast stores that sold games. And our main store was in the University of Washington district. It was actually two stories. And when you walked from the first story down to the basement, we had a giant Shivan dragon hanging in from the ceiling.

In fact, all of our stores had different casts of characters from, some were from Magic, some were from other properties. And if we can go through the tour, I'll point some of them out. But anyway, Mitzi has become kind of the mascot of the company. If you actually come here, look right here, there's a little heart that says mom on it. And we tend to dress her up for different occasions. Sometimes on social media, you can see her dressed up. You know, the year we were in the Seahawks were in the Super Bowl. We dressed her up in Seahawks colors. And on various occasions, for Halloween, we often dress her up in costume.

We tend to put a little Santa hat on her for Christmas. Anyway, different holidays and different occasions, we'll dress her up. If you guys want to take a picture with her, you can take a picture. So in the lobby you can take pictures. Once we get outside

of the lobby, you're not allowed to take pictures anymore because there's confidential information. Obviously, you've all signed the NDA

so I can show you the stuff that I can't show normal people. Anyway, so this is Mitzi. So on the floor right here, you'll notice there is, up above, there is a thing that shines words. And you'll notice on the ceiling there are words in a green light. And every day we change it.

And different employees can make suggestions. And it's always wizard- centric but it's some cutesy thing and we like that changes every day but people submit ideas for it and it'll come and it'll always change you might miss it because it's it's on the floor a lot of people walk by and don't even notice it okay so now let's let's let's look at the lobby itself so here's the main desk This is where you would sign in if you wanted to come visit somebody. We have a little computer screen that you get to sign in, and you say who you're visiting, and then you get a little badge and everything.

And then back here is the lobby where people can wait. And then you'll notice there's a whole bunch of shelves, and the idea is the shelves show off all the different Wizards properties as well as a shelf for Hasbro properties. So we'll start all the way in the back. Also, I said there's a bunch of statues, so let me point out another statue. Can anybody identify what this statue is? I'll give you a hint.

It's from Legends, way back in early Magic. It is Dakin Blackblade. Yes, so this is a legendary creature, a magic legendary creature from way back. We have a full statue of him. Most people don't recognize him only because he's a pretty old character, but occasionally someone who does. Okay, let's look at the shells here.

First off, we have our Hasbro shelf. This is a shelf dedicated to our parent company, Hasbro. So you see stuff like an Easy Bake Oven and Mr. Potato Head and Transformers and Mr. Potato Head and Transformers and My Little Pony and Nerf. It's just a lot of tributes to all the different brands that

Magic has. So it's interesting that Magic, by the way, is Hasbro's second largest brand, beaten only by Nerf. They have so many, so many, so many items. But anyway, we were purchased, Wizard of the Coast was purchased by Hasbro back in 1998, I

believe. Before that we were an independent company and now we are a subsidiary of Hasbro. So not, by the way, people ask all the time what has changed being owned by Hasbro? Not too much. The biggest changes is, I mean, there's some general corporate things that are, you know, like lining up how vacation days work and things. But other than some general functional stuff, not too much has changed. They did give us control of the Avalon Hill line, which is something they own, because we are the company that's more aligned

of sort of what we call core gaming, you know, people who game as a hobby. So obviously we have Magic, we have Dungeon Dragons, we have a game called Toolmafters that's sold exclusively in Japan, and we have the Avalon Hill line. And so that has a lot of different, you know, access and allies as part of Avalon Hill,

and there's a whole series of games that are, you know, more advanced games for more advanced gamers. Okay, so next to it, we have our award shelf. So this is the shelf where we stick all, I'm sorry, next to that we have, it's a lot easier when I can see things. Next to our award shelf is a shelf dedicated to all our different books. Most of these are Dungeons & Dragons books. We do some publishing, and so this is showing off some of our books. Next to that is our awards. Over the years, Magic and Dungeons & Dragons and Duel Masters have won lots of awards.

These are all the various awards Wizards has won over the years. Very pretty. Like this shelf right here is all Magics awards. Magics won a lot of awards over the years. Okay next to that we have shelves dedicated to each of our properties. So this is the Duel Master shelf. You can see Duel Masters is a game, a trading card game we make exclusively for Japan. And it is definitely, the packaging you can see is a little wilder. They like a lot more splashy packaging. So this,

for example, is how we sell a deck. It looks kind of like a giant pizza, but it really is just all the cards spread out in, with sort of covered in plastic. And it's very vibrant. They like that in Japan. Next to that is Dungeons & Dragons. You'll notice miniatures and a lot of different modules and things. Dungeons & Dragons, we purchased, Wizards of the Coast purchased TSR, who are the original makers of Dungeons & Dragons,

back in 1996, I want to say, 96 or 97. Peter Atkinson, who was the original president, was a giant, giant fan of Dungeon Dragons. He was a role player. In fact, when Wizards Go started, it was a role-playing company. And so he saw an opportunity to purchase TSR,

and he did, and then Dungeon Dragons became part of the Wizards family, and it has been ever since. When Wizards bought it, I think we made, the first thing we did was made fourth edition, and it's been through a bunch of editions since then. Anyway, and the final thing here is Magic. These are all different Magic expansions and Magic tchotchkes and stuff. Obviously, Magic, Wizards of the Coast started in 1993. I'm sorry.

Wizards of the Coast started in 1990. 1990, I think. 90 to 91. Originally, it was a role-playing company that put out role-playing games. The very quick version of the story is Richard Garfield came to sell a game called RoboRally

with his friend Mike Davis. They were told by Peter that while he liked Robo Rally, the components were too expensive for his company, which was a small company. Peter said he did have the means, though, to make print cards. He had access to both a printer and to artists. And so Richard could come up with the idea to print on cards. That's something that he could make. Peter wanted something that was portable and quick to

play. Richard said, oh, I think I have something. Went off, came back with magic. Peter loved it. And boom, Wizards exploded from that point out, become one of the leaders in the game industry. So anyway, so this is the lobby. So we're going to move this way. Follow me. Before we go through the doors, I'm going to show you this is the mural so one of the things you'll see all around the building is we have murals and the murals all represent art from one of Magic's games either from Magic from Dungeons Dragons from Duel Masters or for some of the Avalon Hill games so this right here is around the building we have five different murals that hit the five different colors of magic.

This first mural right here is blue. So, right, see that? That is Jace, Jace Bellerin. It shows some islands, some of these artists from islands. Also has Nicole Bolas's, what do you call it, meditation room right here. But I'm not sure, that's not really blue. The part of Bolas is blue, maybe it's the blue part of Bolas. Anyway, I will try to point these all out as we walk around, but this is the blue one. Okay, oh, before, off to your left is a room called

the Crow's Nest. I'm sorry, the Dragon's Nest, not the Crow's Nest. The Dragon's Nest. If you peek inside, you'll see one wall is covered by a giant dragon art that's from Dungeons and Dragons. So one of the neat things about all of our rooms is that we have, we decorate with different art. Most of it is art from Wizards Project. Not all of it, actually. I'll point some out. But anyway, we like to have themed things. The way the rooms work is

whoever's near the room gets to name the room. Originally, our rooms had a lot, had very geeky names, but little by little, we've been changing things over to magic. I'm sorry, to wizard's IP names. Okay, we come inside here. To your right you'll see, everyone open the door here. Okay, so right here is a suit of armor. This was another one of the things that was in one of the game stores.

Most of the things were from certain IPs, this is just a generic coat of armor. You'll notice right here is another, here's a giant picture of Nicole Bolas. You might have seen this art on a card, but not the full art. There's this little guy at the bottom that's a bunch of dyed Nicole Bolas you don't normally get to see,

but you can see him on the big art. And right next to here is one of our major meeting rooms called the Meditation Realm. For a long time, it was called the Matrix, but when we changed over to Wizards IP, it became the meditation realm. If you peek in, you'll notice one wall is covered with a giant picture of the meditation realm. You'll also notice that there's a TV in here. Almost all of our meeting rooms now have televisions in them so that we can run slideshows and work on files and do different things. And so you can plug in.

This room is pretty big. It has a giant table. The way it works is there are different meeting rooms around the office, various sizes depending on how big you want the meeting to be. Each of them, there's a master scheduling thing where you can schedule rooms, and the rooms are open to anybody who wants to schedule them. Traditionally, people schedule things closer to them if they can, but the idea is take a room, you know, figure out the size of your group and then get a room that matches sort of the size of your group. Getting meeting space sometimes can be kind of tough. You know, usually you try to stay on your floor, but if things get bad enough, sometimes you'll have to travel to another floor. Okay, um, okay, if you follow me, um, so we're walking by, there's different sections right

here, um, legal and payroll and HR, so are all over here. As we turn around the corner, we get to brand, um, oh, wait, wait, there's another statue. See if you can identify this statue. Ah, yes, you're right. This is from Spirit Link. So, Caefolio did a piece of art for Ice Age, a card called Spirit Link, and this is the woman from the Spirit Link card.

You'll notice that a lot of our statues are pretty old because the Wizards of the Coast stores were many, many years ago. We're talking back in, like, 97, 98. So a lot of it comes from earlier Magikarp because that's when the stores were made. Anyway, now we turn around the corner and we get to brand. Brand makes a lot of decisions about sort of overseeing. They figure out how much to print of cards. They do a lot of the business ends of things. They make the deals. They do licensing. They do marketing. And so brand oversees all the sort of business aspects of making magic, making magic magic. Included in brand are people like online media that do the website, that do all social media, all the different brand managers that oversee all the

different aspects of the product. So there's a lot of people in brand. Right here now you'll see is all their Dungeon Dragons, different items from Dungeon Dragons that we have sold over the years as collectibles. It's sort of fun to take, like here's a dragon egg, and here are various potions and just things you can see. They're in these little glass cases shown off so you can see them. And if you turn around you will notice that we have this is the red. I said there's five murals. This is the red mural. You see Chandra, you see Nicol Bolas, you see a dragon. So this is this is the red mural

showing off different aspects of red. So keep walking with me now. So now we're passing a lot of other sections. Game support is here. You know, if you have a problem, we have support all day long. You can call up and ask questions and rules questions and stuff that will help you. We also have a lot of our online department and marketing department. Some of the stuff's over here. And as you turn, oh, here's another statue. This is of Jester's Cap from Ice Age. He's

sitting here cross-legged. People like to take pictures with him. So you turn the corner, we start getting into sales. And yes, you'll notice there's more magic art on the wall. into sales. And yes, you'll notice there's more magic art on the wall. I turn here, this is a room that we used to use for focus groups. In fact, I think it's called, it's not called Borderlands, it used to be called Focus Testing One, where we used to have focus testing inside. And this right here you see was a two-way mirror so that people could playtest and we could watch them doing the playtesting.

And here is another statue. You guys recognize this statue? Yes, it's Tim, a.k.a. the Prodigal Sorcerer. Some reason a lot of people get thrown by him, just because even if you look at the card, this is what he looks like. People have trouble guessing who he is. Anyway, over here we have... So notice what we've just done is we made a big circle.

The way it works is the office building, while it itself is square, the path that's way around it is a giant circle. And so we just walked in a big circle. We're coming back into the lobby now. So let me show you the kitchen. I didn't show you this before. The kitchen's off of the lobby. Oh, first off, there's a table right here.

In every kitchen there's a table, what we call the free table. And this is a policy that goes, this is a tradition that goes way back to early wizards. If you have something you don't want, you could stick it on the free table. And if you see anything on the free table, you know you can take it because it is being given away by someone who doesn't want it. I've seen all sorts of weird things given away on the free table. I've seen bar stools. I've seen clothing.

I've seen other furniture. I've seen boom box. That's all sorts of things. And if you ever want to get rid of something that you're like, well, this is cool. I don't want to just throw it away. I can bring it in and put it on the table and someone will take it. is cool. I don't want to just throw it away. I can bring it in and put it on the table and someone will take it. It's really, really common to have games, to have CDs and DVDs or VHS tapes or all sorts of things. And when people clean their cubicle sometimes, old stuff from Magic or D&D

will end up here. I picked up a lot of Duels issues sitting on the free table. Also in the kitchens that you'll notice there is a soda. So in the early days we used to have, back when we were in the old building, we used to have Thomas Kemper root beer on tap. And then when we moved across the street, we ended We ended up getting soda pop vending machines, and they were a quarter. But then when our newest president started, he changed it. He said, a quarter no more, and now all the soft drinks are free. So if you just want a soft drink, you can come get it. There's also tea and coffee, and there is popcorn if you want to make popcorn. Over here is first aid, so if you need any medicine or anything,

you know, Tylenol or Advil or something, you can get medicine. Kitchen's also a place for people to put their lunches. And, you know, there's a dishwasher to wash your dishes. And there's a microwave if you want to heat things up or stuff. You can do that all here. Every floor, minus the first floor, the second, third, and fourth floor, which we control either the whole or most of the floor, we have a kitchen. Okay, now we're going to go down to the second floor. Okay, so we're going to take the stairs.

There is elevators, obviously, that go up and down, but we're going to take the stairs down to the second floor. I leave the third for last because the third is my floor, and I think it's the most exciting floor. my floor and I think the most exciting floor. Okay, the second floor, this whole section, the second floor is where our digital stuff, the people that do the digital programming. Most of the second floor is made up of digital, working on various magic products from, you know, magic products from, you know, magic online to magic duels to other things. And, oh, see here?

Who is this? Ah, this is a Stormtrooper. You'll notice on this floor we have a bunch of Star Wars. The early, in our stores, we had a bunch of Star Wars stuff, and all the Star Wars stuff is mostly on the second floor. As you walk right by here, you'll see, for example,

here is Darth Vader with his mask off. It's Anakin Skywalker, the old Anakin Skywalker. And the other thing we have on this floor is we have a lot of the IT, a lot of the computer help. If you have issues, you need a computer, you can come down here. Over here is where the help desk, if you need any help. And here is more of digital. There's a room called, what's it called?

The transporter room, I think, which is the second largest room in the building if you need to have a meeting. So sometimes R&D comes down here if we need a big meeting and the first floor room is not open. We'll come here. If R&D comes down here, if we need a big meeting and the first floor room is not open, we'll come here. So the second floor is, like I said, mostly digital and either helping fix computers and things or working on digital products. It's the floor I come to least to, but it is important and does a lot of good work.

So now we're going to go up to the third floor. Oh, by the way, I forgot to point this out. When we walked by the fourth floor, you notice that the elevators on the fourth floor had pictures on them, the elevator doors. Jace and Chandra were on the doors, along with a D&D thing. I'm blanking on the D&D thing. But if we get to the third floor, you'll notice that there are pictures on the third floor as well. So that is Liliana and Gideon, and then that is a Beyonder on the freight elevator. You also notice on the walls that there is... Oh, I forgot, I forgot, I forgot. When we were in the lobby,

I forgot, one of the main, like the biggest meeting hall, what we call the bridge, which is the fancy place where all the fancy things happen, is one of the biggest meeting rooms, and it has the... It's kind of where the, it's the nicest meeting room we have in the building, and it's tied in.

You can do video messaging and stuff up there. Anyway, in that, we always have the latest, we always have specially made the latest magic plane. So, like, up there right now would be Zendikar. And there's always two planeswalkers. Right now there's Chandra and Dovamban. And then there's a three-panel landscape of, at this point, Kaladesh. But down below on the third floor now, you'll notice,

we take old ones and we put it here. So this is from when we were in Innistrad. So Innistrad had Jace and had Nahiri and had Innistrad. So you can see Innistrad. Okay, so we're going to go around this direction first. Once again, on the wall, you'll see old magic art from different magic cards. And you'll notice, so this is called the House on the Hill.

It's one of our meeting rooms. For a long time, it was called Graceland. But now, if you're looking to peek in, you'll see the whole wall is covered by the House on the Hill. It's one of our meeting rooms. For a long time, it was called Graceland. But now, if you're looking, you'll peek in one scene, you'll see the whole wall is covered by the graphics from the game. And there's a lot of meeting rooms in this area. You'll notice, like, we have Wayne Manor. We have Goblin Warrens. There's just a bunch of different meeting rooms.

Wayne Manor hasn't changed over yet to a Wizard's IP. It used to be next door to the Batcave, but Batcave turned into someone's office, so no Batcave anymore. Okay, so around here, if you walk this way, there's caps. So caps are the people that once R&D

makes the cards, they have to get the cards from an idea to physically happen. The graphic design is in caps. Printing's in caps. They're the people that take the card from an idea to physically happen. The graphic design is in CAPS. Printing's in CAPS. They're the people that take the product from being digital files to being a printed thing. They're the ones that deal with the printers. One of the things CAPS does is we have

a big holiday celebration every year, and CAPS goes all out turning their area into some fun area every year. We have a contest and they they've won a lot they're really good I mean their graphic design but they're people that are good at making things so place of the strength you'll notice around here often than a lot of I can't take you in all these rooms because they're a sensitive material but um there are a lot of places here where we can lay things out and look at cards there's a lot of places where we can print up temporary cards

if we want to sort of see how cards are looking. There's ways to sort of do temporary printings of them. And anyway, we keep walking around here. This is one of our main meeting rooms called Grand Central Station. This is probably, I think, the biggest one on this floor, on the third floor. There's one other one we'll get to that's also decently big. Anyway, now we get to the creative team. So don't look at the walls,

because the walls are covered with upcoming art from future sets. Usually what happens is we get art in, and then art is put up here so people can see the art. Then eventually the art can take the imaging to be put in. Also, around here you'll see see when we're doing world building, this wall is used to put all the different world building stuff. World building is often done the farthest in advance. So this wall is things the most farthest away.

Yes, yes, yes, I know. There's cool stuff there. I can't talk about that. Anyway, creative team sits, they're near the pit but not quite at the pit. And this is where all the different artists and different people that do all the writing and stuff, all the creative team sit.

Here are some meeting rooms. Mishra's Factory, I have Ugin, Hell Vault. You go around the corner, you get to Ivory Tower. Then there's a bunch of offices. Right nearby is the Lost Temple, which is another one of our big meeting rooms. And then we get to the pit. So you've probably heard me talk about the pit all the time. Tales from the pit references the pit.

This is where R&D sits. You'll notice it's very low walls. Everything's very open. There's lots of tables, so we can play Magic here. You'll notice these signs that sort of say, Hey, sanctioned player, do not go inside the pit. There's a lot of sensitive material. So we don't let people inside the pit.

So it is, but you can peek in and see. Hey, everybody, wave hi. You know, this is where, and we break up into different sections in the pit. So, like, this one section here is digital. This is where the designers sit. This is developers. That is more editing. So that people who work on similar projects, you know, who want to talk to each other can sit there.

I sit right across. I sit right there near the window, right across from Eric Lauer. I'm the head designer. He's the head developer. We talk a lot. So we're right across from Eric Lauer. I'm the head designer. He's the head developer. We talk a lot. So we're right across from each other. And anyway, the pit is a fun place. Like, have you ever seen my comics where I talk about us? Another day of productivity loss where we talk about random geeky things. That really happens. This is where it happens.

So if you go around the corner, you'll see the danger room. So the danger room is, the danger room is, the origin of it is, Richard Garfield was given an office long ago in the old building. But Richard didn't want an office, he just wanted to sit in the pit.

So he turned it into a room for people to play games in. And then it sort of defunctly became a meeting room that originally was off the grid if you needed a meeting room and hadn't scheduled anything. The danger room still exists, still has its name. But it's now on the grid. People can schedule it. We have a lot of meetings in here.

It has a lot of whiteboards in it so we can write a lot of stuff up when you're making things. Also here is another statue. You know what statue this is? Goblin. You're close. Goblin grenade. That is right. This is goblin grenade. Oh no, I'm sorry. Goblin grenade. That's not goblin grenade. It's goblin wardroom. Goblin wardroom. The goblin grenade is in the third floor kitchen and goblin rock sled I forgot to show you on the fourth floor kitchen. Oh, okay. Let me show you one last section. So we walk by this section right here.

Now we're passing by Dungeon Dragons. This is where Dungeon Dragons sits. And then here's one of my favorite things. This is the Goblin King. This is also from the stores. So the Goblin King, the idea is, if you leave things here, people leave, I don't know what to call it, like offerings to the Goblin King. And so there's always just different things here.

It gets cleaned up every once in a while. So once it gets full, they clean them up, and then you can put new things here. But there's new offerings. Also, oh, by the way, by the way, come back here. I forgot to show you. So on the second floor, I didn't point out, come back here. I forgot to show you. So on the second floor, I didn't point out, was two murals I forgot to point out to you.

Was the, oh, I'm sorry, just one mural. The second floor had the white mural, which had, it had a Johnny and it had Elsbeth, and it's the white mural. And then here, on the third floor, right here by Dungeons & Dragons, interesting enough,'s the white mural. And then here on the third floor, right here

by Dungeons & Dragons, interesting enough, is the green mural. This has Nissa. It has Garak. It has Thrun the Last Troll. And then right past the kitchen is the black one, the black mural. The black mural has Sorin and

Liliana. So this is the black mural. So anyway, let's, we walked down the stairs. So the one thing I didn't show, I didn't show you the front of the building. So before we leave, I'll take you out and show you the front of the building. So obviously this is the parking lot. And so if you look up on the building, you can see the Wizards Coast sign. I think we had an old sign from across the

street, and then we had to move it across. Oh, I didn't tell the story of Mitzi. So Mitzi, what happened was Mitzi was hanging up at the University of Washington store in the U District, and then when that closed down, we moved it to the lobby across the street, and then when we moved to our new building, we had to get it, but because it was so nearby, we didn't have movers move it. I think we moved it. And so we had to stop traffic. We have pictures of it as we moved the dragon across the street, stopping traffic along the way. But anyway, I think if you see, if you've ever seen pictures, we oftentimes will take pictures out in front of Wizards here.

Oh, in the back, by the way, is, there's a little fountain in the back. In the old building, we had a giant fountain we called the Manipool. We really haven't named the fountain in the back. It's not quite as big as the Manipool was. But that was across the way. So anyway, this is every, I hope you guys enjoyed the tour. Like I said, you know, keep to yourself the stuff you saw. You know, clearly we saw some stuff from, that was not public yet.

So you need to not tell people that. But anyway, this is what, this is what we call home. This is, this is home for us. And like I said, we've been here longer than any place else. We're coming up in 12 years. By the way, if you ever want to see, if this was not as visual as you like, I did do an article many years ago. So this goes back a ways. It's called 80,000 Words, in which I did a visual tour of Wizards.

So if you want to see some pictures of some of the stuff I talked about today, it's a little dated because it was from, I don't know, eight, nine, ten years ago. It's from early on of us being in this. It is of this building, but you can go check it out. It's called 80,000 Words. And I did a later follow-up where I did one with director's commentary, which is the one I would recommend looking at. So 80,000 Words, I think it's like 80,000 Words with the director's commentary. If you want me sort of talking you through on things

so you can see pictures of what I talked about today. But anyway, you guys got a special tour. I do not... The funny thing is I have given this tour many, many, many times because when we have VIPs in, they often ask if I'm willing to... if I'd be willing to do the tour, and I usually say yes.

So anyway, perhaps one day you can come to VIP and come get the actual tour. But I hope today was a substitute to give you a little feel of what it's like to be at Wizards of the Coast. One of the things that I didn't really get into is that we have a lot of cubicles that we look very office-y when you actually get around and look at, Wizards is a very office-like setting. The one thing that sets us apart is, well, A, we're pretty elusive at letting people have personal, individual things,

and there's just a lot of magic things and dungeon dragon things, and you'll see, like on the third floor, I forgot to mention, there was a whole case of old dungeon dragon things from the past where you can see old things, and there was a dragon head hanging on the wall, like a mo to mention, there was a whole case of old Dungeon Dragon things from the past where you can see old things. And there was a dragon head hanging on the wall,

like a moose head, but a dragon head. Those are new. I forgot to point those out. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the virtual tour of Wizards of the Coast.

I hope you guys had fun. But I'm now at Rachel's school, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end to my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic.

I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.