Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #450: R&D, Wave Three

Episode Date: July 7, 2017

From time to time, I dedicate a show to talking about the many people who have worked on Magic. In this podcast, I'm talking again about R&D—this time covering the group I dub the "third wave."

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time to run their drive to work. And interestingly, I'm dropping Rachel off at school and then starting. So what's going on is Rachel is now interning at her old elementary school for her internship, which is right by our house. For long-time listeners would know that. Anyway, and so I'm dropping her off, but I'm right by my house, so you should get your full content today. Anyway, and so I'm dropping off, but I'm right by my house, so you should get your full content today. Okay, so today I'm picking up on something I do from time to time where I talk about different people. So this is, I've done two previous podcasts on R&D, R&D people.

I did first wave of R&D, and I did second wave of R&D. So guess what we're up to? Third wave of R&D and I did second wave of R&D. So guess what we're up to? Third wave of R&D. So this stretches from about invasion block to about lorewind block and I'll walk through all the different people. I'm going kind of chronologically but I'm going to jump around a little bit because I didn't bother to figure out exactly who all went in what order. But this is, it's roughly chronological. Okay, so the person who I consider to be the first sort of, the beginning of the third wave of R&D is Randy Bueller.

So here's what happened. Let me set the scene. So Urza Saga comes out. And remember, we work ahead. So Urza Saga comes out and it goes badly for us. Very, very badly. It is clear that we did not have the development chops that we needed.

Urza Saga block was broken beyond belief. For those who know the story, we got called to the office. R&D got called to the office of the president. Got chewed out. Threatened that it happened again. We get fired. And anyway, we decided we needed to do something to sort of help the problem. And one of the ideas was, look, let's start being more aggressive about hiring people

that are really good at sort of understanding magic systems, breaking magic systems. Sort of like, let's upgrade our level of developer. Now, Henry Stern, who was the wave two, was definitely someone from the pro tour. So it's not like we'd never, ever taken someone from the pro tour, but we realized we needed to do more of that. That a lot of the developers at the time really weren't people that were, you know, me and Mike Elliott and Bill Rose, we leaned a little bit more toward designer than developer. And so we needed to get some hardcore developers. So Bill had asked me if I knew anybody that I thought would be good.

And I recommended a couple people. In fact, I recommended three people at the time. I recommended Randy Buehler, Mike Jonay, which we'll get to in a second, and Brian Weissman, who's never worked for R&D, but a longtime Magic Pro. And it was, I think we were going to U.S. Nationals. It was at Gamma. Or no, it was at Origins. U.S. Origins is a big game convention.

And we were having the U.S. Nationals. Anyway, I set up three meetings, one with each of these three people, and only one showed up to the meeting. Bill would chide me for a long time after that, because really, these people want a job in R&D. Perhaps they should show up to meetings. Anyway, Randy did show up.

He's the one in three that showed up. Mike was head judging the event, and there was a lot of stuff that went on, and he ended up missing his meeting. But I later set up a meeting. Actually, Bill Rose came to my house to interview Mike. We'll get to that in a second. Anyway, so Randy was somebody who I got to know through the Pro Tour.

I thought Randy was a smart guy. You know, he was interested in working in R&D and I thought that he had a good mindset for, you know, being able to make designs and, you know, sort of help bring us to the next level of magic development. And he started on Invasion. And I remember one of the things that Randy did was he was trying to convince us that our dual lands weren't good enough. And he was

trying to get us to put the tap lands, the come into play tapped, tapped for, you know, white or blue. I mean, obviously lands lands now that are, like, laughably below the level that we should be making. I mean, we make them. I mean, they're not the top tier, the bottom tier. And Randy was fighting that that was okay with us. That's okay. And we were like, I don't know.

That might be too good. But anyway, Randy came, and Randy grew up through the ranks. Randy eventually would become head developer. Then he would become director of R&D. He would later go on to become a VP of some digital stuff. But anyway, so Randy was the very first person. And Randy worked on a lot of stuff. I think the first set that he led the development for, I think, was Odyssey.

I led the design, and then he led the development. Anyway, he worked on Magic for many, many years. And led a lot of sets, like I said, did a lot of different things. Mike Donais. So Mike Donais came from that same sort of initial meeting. Although Mike, for various reasons, started a little bit later than Randy. But anyway, Mike was another person we brought in that just was someone who had a lot of experience. He had been involved very heavily in judging.

Like I said, he was the head judge of the U.S. Nationals of that one origins. And so Mike had a lot of experience with organized play, knew the rules really well, and also was a very strong and good developer. All the people, by the way, both of them were brought in as developers, mostly the development, but we did occasionally have them on design teams and stuff.

I know that Randy, for example, was on the design team, I know, for Betrayers of Kamigawa. He was on a few others. And Mike Dornay was on the design team for Onslaught. Also, when Randy came, not too long after, Del Lago, who is our editor editor and still is our editor, the head editor for Magic. Randy and Del were married. So there was an editor job that opened up. At the time, editing was not yet part of R&D at this time. One of the things you'll see as we go through this is this is the period of time where R&D picks up more parts.

At the time, design and development were under R&D. And during the course of these years, editing will get picked up, become part of R&D, and the creative will get picked up, become part of R&D. So anyway, Dell technically did not start working in R&D because she started working in editing. But eventually editing became part of R&D. And Del has been the head editor for Magic for many, many years now. She is one of the old timers in R&D. And she's awesome. She really, really likes the, like, she has a perfect skill set to be an awesome editor

in that she has great attention to detail, and she remembers things like, you know, we'll make a decision or something. She's like, oh, well, four years ago, we made this one card that did this thing. Shouldn't you, you know, and she asks really good questions, and Del is very thorough. Okay. Also during that time, so we were trying to pick up more people off the Pro Tour to be developers. Matt Place. So Matt had won a Pro Tour Mites, the one held in a castle.

And I remember we were at a world championship in Berlin, I believe, when Matt came up to me. Matt and I had been friends. And Matt said that, you know, he was interested in working for Wizards. And so I lined up the interview, and he did great, and Matt came and worked for us. And Matt and I, for example, Matt helped me. We were the co-creators of New World Order. Matt led a whole bunch.

He had worked on a lot of development teams, led a bunch of development teams. I know, for example, he led Eventide. He led a whole bunch of stuff. I'm blanking on sets that he led. I think he led, for example, was he Rise of the Odrazi? I think he led Rise of the Odrazi.

Anyway, he led a lot of different sets. And Matt was, Matt had a really good eye for understanding players and understanding kind of what would be interesting, what would be fun. I had a great time working with Matt. I mean, he's obviously still a good friend. But he was awesome to work with. Another pro that we brought in was Mike Turian.

So Mike Turian won a team event, one of the team events that was in New York, that was in Madison Square Garden. He won with Potato Nation, which was him, Gary Wise, and Scott Johns. Scott Johns would later work for the online team to run the website. Turian was one of the best,

if not the best, drafter of all time. He really had a great insight into sort of how drafting worked and did a lot to advance kind of our technology and how we thought about draft and how we thought about limited. And he led numerous sets as well. Future Sites is the one I remember,

but he led a whole bunch of sites. He led, he would literally start some Mirrodin. Anyway, he would lead a lot of sets. Okay, I'm not going in order, but I'm pulling from similar periods. So Eric Lauer comes near the tail end of this. But Eric Lauer was another person who we knew off the Pro Tour. I think Randy brought him in. Eric Lauer was Randy was on a team. Randy and Mike Turney and Eric Lauer were on a team at one point called CMU for Carnegie Mellon.

A bunch of them had gone to Carnegie Mellon. Not all of them did, but it was called Team CMU. And they were all together. And Eric Lauer, who obviously is the head developer right now, was one of the top ten deck builders of all time. They used to call him the mad genius. Eric is insanely, insanely smart, super analytical, you know, just does like hard math in his head. I compare him sometimes to Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory in that he's just crazy smart.

The interesting thing, he and I always get into it because the area that he's not as strong on is psychology. And so we always get into the math versus psychology fights about, you know, what is something versus what it is on paper versus how it's perceived. But anyway, Eric is insanely talented. He is one of the major players right now in Magic. And like I say, there's all sorts of sets that he has run. The first set I think he did, he did one of the core sets. And then the first small set he did was Mirrodin Besieged. And then he did Invasion.

Not Invasion, sorry. He did Innistrad. And then he and I together, he did Return to Ravnica. And he and I together did Theros. And we did Khans of Tarkir. And we did Battle for Zendikar. And he and I both,

I co-led the design for Kaladesh and he co-led the development for Kaladesh. Uh, anyway, Eric has had his hands all over stuff and obviously, uh, an amazing developer. Uh, next, Mark Gottlieb. So Mark Gottlieb originally got hired into editing, like, like Dell. Um, and he eventually drifted over from editing. Uh, he's done a whole bunch of things. He spent a long time as the rules manager.

He spent a while being a developer, sort of focusing on casual play. These days, he is more in management. He oversees a lot of the designers. There's a period of time where I oversaw people. I would do management. And finally they decided that we'd have technical specialists and people specialists.

So, like, my job was to oversee the work of the people, but not the people. And then, you know, Mark, for example, oversees people. So I'm not worrying about, like, scheduling or worrying about sort of monitoring people's long-term business or career goals. A lot of stuff that you need to do. So Mark manages people and I manage his processes and work.

You know, I'm about making sure the designs are awesome. But there's a period of time where I did some management. There's a lot for me to do and I'm much, much better at making the material. So that's what I focus on. Next, like I said, I'm jumping around here. Elaine Chase. So Elaine was a longtime Magic player. In fact, if you've ever seen the first Pro Tour New York video, the very first Pro Tour,

I interview a woman in line. I'm interviewing people in line. You see a very young me interviewing people. I interview Elaine Chase. So you can see young me and young Elaine. Elaine ended up coming working for R&D. She did a bunch of magic. She also worked on a lot of other projects. She was the one that oversaw

Harry Potter. I talked about the other day when I was going through all the different sets, the different R&D people. Because we had so many things at the time, a different person would oversee a brand. And she was a big Harry Potter fan. So she oversaw that. She has since gone on to work for Brand. She is now the vice president of Magic Brand.

So she's done very well for herself. So she's, once again, a very major player in Magic, just not on the R&D side, on the brand side. Brand does marketing and figures out sort of how much we print and all the business end of the decisions. Next, Worth Woolpert. This is another Pro Tour player that we brought in. Actually, Worth's from my hometown of Cleveland.

I remember Worth contacting me saying he was interested, and I passed it along. Worth, I talked this other day that Worth used to do a lot of sports games when he was in R&D. Worth transitioned out of R&D, and then he ended up going to digital and for a long time he oversaw Magic Online. Worth was a lot of fun to work with and he was another long line of people that really had a lot of experience playing Magic professionally

and sort of came in with a development eye for it. Also that came in during this time is Aaron Forsyth. So Aaron was originally hired back in 2001 to work on the website. When I first put together, when I was assigned the task of sort of making an official magic website, I was tasked with, I wanted to find someone who I thought would be a good editor. And I had three people I was interested in. Two of them were not interested in doing it. And one of them, Aaron, was interested in doing it.

So Aaron got brought in. And then during fifth dawn, we came up with this cool idea to bring Aaron on the design team so that he could write about it for the website. And the idea was he'd be on the design team and he'd sort of keep track of all the stuff he did. And then we just would have this cool thing. And we liked pulling in people with different experiences. Aaron was off the Pro Tour. He actually had—he was on a world championship team with John Finkel and—

who were the other two people on the team? I'm blanking on their names of people on the team. But it was the 2000 winning team that John Finkel was the US national champion on and he also came in second at a team event and then came in fourth I think at a team event so anyway

he was a Pro Troll player we had brought him on originally to do the online media stuff but then we brought him we said let's put him on the design team, you know. And then he did amazing, amazing. He invented, that's Sif Dawn. Scry was his, Sunburst was his.

He just came up with a lot of material that was really good, and we saw a lot of potential in him. And I wanted to bring him on to R&D to do more design work. So for a while, he was shadowing me to try to be the next, sort of, you know, to do major design work. And then there ended up being a hole in development. And he ended up, because Randy ended up, Bill moved from being the director of R&D to being the VP. Anyway, Randy ended up becoming the director. And there was a vacancy in development, so Aaron ended up becoming head developer, but then Randy went off

to become the VP of digital, there was another hole and he became the director, so so Aaron got hired to run the website and by the time the dust settled he is the director of Magic R&D, the senior director now. Anyway, Aaron, I can't, Aaron led a lot of stuff and worked on a lot of stuff and has been instrumental in so much of Magic. Brian Schneider. Brian Schneider is someone we had brought on

to be head developer for a while. He was head developer... I think before Randy was head developer. I'm trying to remember the order of this. He was head developer. I'm trying to remember the order of this. He was head developer during... Ravnica was around the time he was head developer. I'm trying to remember the order of this. Anyway, Brian Schneider was someone else

who we'd known from the Pro Tour. Super smart. Another great deck builder. Real analytical. Was a really strong developer if you love Ravnica he had a big hand in what made Ravnica Draft

so awesome and he was head developer for a while Devin Lowe Devin Lowe was another person who worked on Magic for a while he also was head developer for a while

Devin both had design chops and development chops and Devin was on a shops and development shops and Devin was on a whole bunch of design teams, led a bunch of development teams I feel like I say a lot Devin did not come

he might have played on one or two pro tours but he was more I'm trying to think how we got Devin he came from a different place yeah he came and did an amazing interview and we're like, this is just a smart guy, and we hired him. Anyway, Devin is an... I mean, one of the cool things

about R&D is just getting to work with so many really cool, talented people. Devin falls in that camp as well. I mean, all these people I'm saying. Next is Steve Warner. Steve Warner was a playtester, and he playtested for Magic for years and years and years and years and years. He also did Collation, which was sort of figuring out the sheets, what goes on what sheet.

Paul Sodasanti. Another. So Paul was brought in more. At the time this was going on, we were working on doing more digital stuff. We had a thing called Gleamax at a while that we were thinking that ended up not quite playing out. And Paul was brought in to do more to do the other sort of design work, not magic necessarily. But we pulled him in. He ended up leading the design for

Morning Tide. And once again, just really a good designer. Brian Tinsman got brought at this point. So Brian Tinsman was originally started at Wizards in market research. And he got brought over to R&D

at the time he had a business degree, so he was brought in to sort of do business management stuff for R&D. And then he became a parent over time that he could design. degree, so he was brought in to sort of do business management stuff for R&D. And then he became apparent over time that he could design, so he started doing more stuff. Brian led all sorts of design teams. He led Chimps of Kamigawa.

He led Time Spiral. He led Rise of the Odrazi. He led Avacyn Restored. So he led a whole bunch of teams and was around quite a bit. Also, so the tail end of this, from a design development standpoint, was GDS1, the first great designer search. So Ken Nagel got brought in for that. So Ken has become the veteran now of the designers. Ken is just a fire hose of card design.

He just spits out so many cards, it's kind of crazy. Also brought in at the time was Alexis Jansen. She only worked in R&D. She was there as an intern for six months, and then she moved over to digital, where she's worked really hard at Magic Online to this day. Graham Hopkins also got brought in. He was on digital and R&D for a little while,

but then he off and went off, and now he works in digital. In fact, Graham and I are working on a little project right now, which is fun working with Graham. And then Mark Lobis got brought in from the first GDS. He actually got brought in not to R&D. He got brought in to digital, and then he ended up forming a relationship with a lot of people in R&D and ended up coming over to R&D and now he serves as a producer in R&D. And so he does a lot of work as a producer. Okay, now there's another whole bunch of people.

So another thing that happened during this time period is we picked up the creative team. The creative team started to become part of R&D. Earlier on, in the early days it was called continuity and they were and they were a completely different department. And then for a while, they were their own department. Eventually, we realized that we needed to work closely with them, so we brought them into R&D. So first person to join this period is Brady Dommermuth. If you hear me tell stories about magic, of anything going back in the past, Brady was really the first person that I worked with to help bridge design development together. Brady and I worked closely together to make Mirrodin.

Brady and I worked closely together to make the Guilds of Ravnica. Brady and I did a lot of stuff together. Really, the modern sort of sensibility of having design work with creative came from my relationship with Brady. of having design work with creative came from my relationship with Brady. Brady started as an editor alongside Dell and Gottlieb, although he was there before them. He actually goes back quite a ways. And then Brady did a bunch of different things. He did a lot of technical writing for a while.

I think he was technically rules manager for a while. But eventually he went over to the creative team and spent a lot of time overseeing the creative team. When, I don't know what else to say about Brady. But Brady was very smart and really understands story and understands, I mean, he was, I think he studied lit in school, literature. Okay, next. Tyler Beilman.

So Tyler originally came to Wizard as an advertiser. I mean, as someone who did advertising, did marketing. He had a partner named Mark Jessup, and the two of them originally were doing, were working for a company that did freelance work for Wizards and eventually got brought in. Tyler spent a bunch of time in marketing and they spent some time on the brand team and eventually came over to R&D. He ran the creative team for a little while and I loved working with Tyler. He and I did a lot of work on Mirrodin. A lot of the early work about Mirrodin in the metal world was. He and I did a lot of work on Mirrodin. A lot of the early work

about Mirrodin's metal world was stuff Tyler and I did. And he was, Tyler was a blast to work with. Next, Jeremy Cranford. So Jeremy, Jeremy was the first art director that I believe was an art

director while working under R&D. One of these days, I will talk about all the art directors. That's its own probably podcast, going back to the earliest days of the art directors. But Jeremy was the first one that was part of R&D. For those who know my history, when I first became head designer, I also oversaw the creative team, and Jeremy was the art director at that point. And that's around the time where we had pulled,

shortly before I oversaw the creative team, we had pulled them into R&D. And so, anyway, Jeremy had a great eye. There's a lot of good artists that Jeremy found that we still use today. Next, Brandon Bozzi. So Brandon mostly did names and flavor text. That was the area that he was in charge of.

And that, because we've gotten so big, we, at the time, there was a period where one person was in charge. Like, the creative team, like, when I took over for the creative team, I think there were three or four people on it. And then I added one or two. But, like, it was a very small team. Now the creative team has 20 people on it. You know, it's a much different animal than it was back then. Ray Nakazawa also worked on.

He also did. I brought him on, I think during Odyssey, I think. Um, Ray started out doing names and flavor text and then started doing some other stuff. Um, uh, card concepting and stuff like that. Um, also, uh, Jeremy Jarvis, Jeremy Cranford had a, uh, someone who was working for him doing concepting. Our first concept illustrator, well not our first

one, but our first within R&D our first concept illustrator, which was a guy named Jeremy Jarvis. And Jeremy Jarvis when Jeremy Cranford left to go on to do other amazing things, Jeremy became the art director for Magic. And since he's

gone on to get bigger and bigger and bigger, he's doing all sorts of stuff now and really looking at Magic. I mean, not just trading card game now. He's looking at Magic as a whole. And anyway, there's a lot of cool stuff going on. And Jeremy has really been one of the major players on the creative side of things. But anyway, he started as a concept illustrator. I mean, well, he started as an illustrator.

He was a freelance illustrator. And if you go look up, there's a lot of cards that Jeremy illustrated. And then he came in as a concept illustrator, and then eventually he sort of got thrown into becoming art director and did a wonderful job. Also, Matt Cavada. I brought Matt Cavada in while I was overseeing the creative team. Matt ended up doing names and flavor text.

I think Brandon moved over to do card concepting. But anyway, so Matt still works at Wizards. What happened was Matt worked on the creative team for a while, left Wizards for a bit, and when he came back, he ended up coming back on the graphic design side of things. So he's not in R&D anymore, but he did start in R&D, and he is during this time period that I'm talking about.

Also, when Matt left the first time, I replaced Matt with Doug Beer, who has gone on to be a very big player on the creative side of things. One of the major players on the story side of things now. But Doug also, by the way, not only is he really good at the creative side of things, he's a good designer. I put him on a bunch of teams. He actually led one of the core sets. And he's been on a whole bunch of design teams. I've used him a lot. And he is great. He's great. The way it works these days is we'll often have a creative rep on a team. And it's always fun to have Doug on a team because he's just,

he's as good as any of my designers. So, like, I get an extra designer whenever he's a creative rep on the team. Also that happened during this time was, so when I first became head designer, so I became head designer in the middle of Champions of Kamigawa. I mean, Ravnica was the first set that really was under my reign. And I was, I oversaw the creative team for a couple years. And then it became clear that being head designer was a lot of work. And overseeing the creative team was a lot of work.

And that I wasn't, I wasn't of work. And I wasn't doing justice. Like, I wasn't... It was too many things. It needed to be more than one person doing them. And so we ended up getting a different person to run the creative team. And that man was a guy named Ken Troop, who has gone on to be one of the directors in Magic, at Magic R&D.

He oversees a lot of the, you know, he does a lot of the you know he's does a lot of the day to day stuff and oversees the managers and does a lot of major stuff in R&D now Ken is really good has a very creative background like I said he oversees the creative team

for a while and so and Ken also from time to time he'll be on design team. Most people I've mentioned have probably been on a magic design team or development team at least once. Most of them many times. And a lot of them have led some of those teams. Also, so like part of what I, a lot of what I'm doing today is running through all the different people that have spent a lot of time

sort of on magic. There's people that had some tangential times. A few names here are people who worked on magic things but magic was not their main priority, meaning they had other responsibilities. Andrew Finch. So Andrew Finch originally

got brought in to run tournaments. He was a tournament organizer. A Finch. Andrew Finch originally got brought in to run tournaments. He was a tournament organizer. A tournament organizer. Yeah, the tournament organizer. He ran the Pro Tour for a while. If you remember my story about the riot at PTLA,

he was the one that broke the tie that decided to disqualify Tommy Hobie, but let him keep his prize earnings. And anyway, that's Andrew. So Andrew eventually came over to R&D, and mostly he did a little bit of Magic. A lot of his stuff was in other games other than Magic,

but he had his hand in Magic. in other games other than Magic. But he had his hand in Magic. Nate Heiss was also brought in to do a lot more digital things. But he was a longtime Magic player, a Magic pro. So we definitely used him. If you like the Persist mechanic, he designed the Persist mechanic. And Nate was on a bunch of design teams.

Cormac Russell, another person we brought in to do a lot of the digital stuff, he was on a few teams. I don't really know Cormac's background, but I know he was on a number of design and development teams, or mostly development teams, I think. Ryan Miller. Ryan Miller is a great designer.

Not from the great designer search, mind you, but he was someone who we brought in to do a lot of other design work. And he was just someone we would bring on design teams from time to time. He was on FutureSight, I know. And he is just an amazing designer. He did a lot more work on other things

rather than magic, but from time to time, he would chip in and do a little bit of work on magic. Also, Jake Tice. That's somebody else who I think he started on brand. I think he was in brand for a while. And then he came and started working in R&D.

A lot of these people I'm mentioning now, if you go back and look at old design development teams, their names show up from time to time. Magic wasn't their focus. But it was something that, you know, they got involved in magic. Three last people to mention. These are people who were interns

that ended up not staying full-time, but worked as interns for some period of time. Noah Weil was one of the original contestants from the First grade design research. So not only did we hire Ken Nagel and Alexis Jansen and Graham Hopkins and Mark Globus, but Noah also was an intern for a while doing development. I think he decided to go on to become a lawyer, but he had a very analytical mind, was really cool.

Also, Zvi Mausiewicz worked as an intern for a while. I know he was there. He was on the design team for Future Sight, I remember. And, yeah, Zvi decided that it's just... Sometimes we'll get people in to sort of, like, what do you think of being a designer, developer? And they'll come and they'll try for a little while. They'll go, oh, this was fun to do.

But yeah, nah, this is not what I want to do. Also, Pat Chapin was an intern for a little while. Pat is, I mean, if you guys, he writes columns and stuff. Obviously, he's a magic celebrity. He's in the Hall of Fame. Both V and Pat are in the Hall of Fame. Pat has a great analytical mind.

I love talking with Pat. He, he, Pat was, was interesting in that he has a very, like, he, Pat was the one who walked in the door and said, what do I need to do to design a set? I want to design my own set. What do I need to do? Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Pat. There's some steps you got to, okay, hey, what's step one?

What's step two? What's step three? What's step four? And so, Pat is, Pat was a lot of fun because Pat has a really interesting mind and sees things in a really cool way

and he always came up with just things that no one else saw. So, I really enjoyed working with Pat. He was great. So, anyway, that, my friends,

in, how long have we taken here? In a little over 30 minutes is the third wave. So be aware, one of the things I'm trying to do is just to break these up so that I can talk about them. And I don't do them too often because it's the kind of topic I feel

is best left in small doses. But just to remind everybody, the first wave were the people that basically made the game of Magic with Richard during playtesting in the early days. The second wave, which I was part of, was when that first wave sort of decided to go make other games, that they pulled in a whole bunch of new people to make Magic. So the first wave goes through Ice Age.

The second wave goes from Mirage through Invasion. And then this third wave starts with Invasion and goes through Lorwyn. So I promise you in future podcasts, we'll get into the fourth wave. There's a lot of cool, fun people, many of which still work in Wizards from the fourth wave. And I think we're just getting into the beginning of the fifth wave. There's an interesting challenge to always try to figure out when exactly when you're trying to sort of make separations between

things. I decided to make GDS1 the separation for this one just because it felt like, because GDS1 and 2 felt very different for me. I didn't want to put them in the same wave. So I decided that maybe the GDS1 got to be the tail end of the third wave. The third wave, like I said, is a little bit longer.

The waves get a little longer over time because in the early days, we were hiring people a little bit faster, and then we slowed down a little bit. So let me recap all the people I talked about today. So Randy Buehler, Matt Place, Mike Donais, Mike Turian, Eric Lauer, Del Lago, Mark Gottlieb, Elaine Chase,

Worth Wolpert, Aaron Forsythe, Brian Schneider, Devin Lowe, Steve Warner, Paul Sodasanti, Brian Tinsman, Ken Nagel, Alexis Jansen, Graham Hopkins, Mark Globus, Brady Domermuth, Tyler Bealman, Jeremy Cranford, Brandon Bozzi, Ray Nakazawa, Jeremy Jarvis, Matt Cavada, Doug Beyer, Ken Troop, Andrew Finch, That's a lot of people. In fact, all the people I named, let's see. Ken Nagle. Alexis Jansen, Graham Hopkins, Mark Lobis, Jeremy Jarvis, Matt lot of, I mean, there's some turnover, obviously, but there's a lot of, I'll call lifers, who really love making magic. And not all of them have stayed in R&D.

Like I said, Elaine is now the VP of R&D. And Mike Turian works over in digital. And there's all sorts of things that are going on and people that are expanding and going beyond R&D. We like to joke that the reaches of R&D spreads out throughout the company. There's a lot of people

that worked in R&D that went on to do lots of other things in lots of other places. But anyway, the reason that's important to me, I'm almost at work here, but the reason that I like

to do things like this, the reason that I think it's so important to do the occasional podcast is the people matter. I know when we announce a new set and we list the design team and development team, it's very easy to gloss over the names and just, ooh, tell me about the new cards and this and that. But the things you love, the magic you love, the sets you love, the cards, the mechanics, the themes, the art, the creative, all the things that make magic what you love

are because there are people who work really hard to bring that so. And so from time to time, I like to do podcasts to sort of tip the hat to everybody that's worked on magic in any large capacity in R&D. At some point, by the way, I will try to do some podcasts to people outside R&D. The biggest problem I run into is I worked closely with all the people in R&D, and I haven't with all the people people outside R&D. The biggest problem I run into is I worked closely with all the people in R&D and I haven't with all the people outside of R&D.

So it becomes a little trickier. But I'm going to try to see if I can do some of that. I've talked about, like I will do some podcasts at some point where I talk about major players and people that had

a big impact on Magic that weren't in R&D. I just, this is where I've spent my time. Every name I listed today I've worked with, I had fun working with. Like I said, these are smart, talented people. A bunch of these people have gone on to work for other companies

and done amazing things. You know, if you take some of the people's names I said today and search for them, they have gone and made other games, other than Magic. I'm not going to tell you the name of those games here, but you can search for them there's a lot of cool games that these people have made and done a lot of neat work

so anyway guys I'm now pulling into work I did not just drop Rachel off at school so I'm actually going to work it's old school drive to work ending at work but anyway I look up these people's names and I just want you to sort of take a second to say hey thank you to all these people that work on making magic because magic doesn't just make itself.

It's a lot of really hard, talented people working many hours over many times to make it happen. So this is just a small grouping of them, but I like to say to the third wave of R&D, I tip my hat to you. And anyway, guys, I've now parked my car, so we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time to me to be making magic. See you guys next time.