Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #460: Announcements

Episode Date: August 11, 2017

Back in June, we had a week with more announcements packed into it than we had ever done before in that condensed amount of time. This podcast walks through all the reveals of that week with some behind-the-scenes info about making it happen.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so yesterday, my time, as I record this, we made our big announcement for the next year's worth of products. Big announcement day. The largest, the largest announcement we've ever done. In fact, the whole week, we had an announcement week. And so, we had never done anything quite like that before. So, I want to talk a little bit about sort of the announcement week and all the different things that went to it. And sort of the making of the video. And anyway, just a behind the scenes of announcement week. So, the interesting thing is when it all started, originally it kind of came together in an

interesting way. So what happened was we have a system where we announce in six-month increments. But back in, I don't know, March, whenever we were supposed to make our normal announcement, just some behind-the-scenes stuff, we needed to dot some I's and cross some T's, and we weren't able to make the announcement on the time we were originally scheduled. And so we realized that we had wanted to do something in June anyway, because the 25th anniversary of Magic is coming up.

And we wanted to sort of make a big deal of, hey, you know, we're really doing a lot of cool things. In fact, a bunch of out of the ordinary things, because it's the 25th anniversary. And we thought, oh, well, what if we just did a video and sort of talked about a lot of stuff? And so our six-month announcement became almost a year announcement like here's the next year's worth of product and we've never announced that many things at once that was something new to us and so we were trying to figure out how best to do that and in the announcement once

I realized like I we had meetings or stuff and once I realized what we were announcing at the meeting one of the things we were announcing at the meeting was Core 2019, which is the core set that comes out in 2018. But what I realized was you guys didn't know the core sets were coming back. Like, oh, wait a second, wait a second. I had planned on writing an article, you know, Metamorphosis 2.0. We were making a bunch of new changes. I had planned to write the article.

I didn't quite know when I was going to put the article out, but as soon as announcement week, you know, announcement day was announced, I'm like, oh, okay. I have to explain to everybody what's going on before the announcement happens because it announces stuff like the core set, which you guys didn't even know existed. So, like, okay, so I have to write an article. So, the way it works when I write something that's a big article is I write it way ahead of time. Um, normally I write my article three to four weeks ahead of time because it has to be translated. My article is

translated into, I don't know how many languages. We probably in all languages, we print magic, but a whole bunch of languages we print magic in. And, but this was, whenever it's a bigger announcement, there's more eyes, you have to look at it, there's more people, so I have to turn it in extra early, so I think I turned it in like six weeks early. And, you know, I was, the previous Metamorphosis article had gone over

very well, what I'll now call 1.0, and so I knew the style of how I wanted to write it, I got, the reason I even named it 2.0 is I wanted, like, I liked the tone of how I did the first one. I'm like, this is kind of a continuation, so let's just call it 2.0. And then anyway, I wrote it, I turned it in,

and I was happy with it. The way it works is when I write, turn stuff in, and the articles that are sort of the big articles get seen by a lot of people, and then I get a lot of notes, and then I go back, and between Blake as the editor of the site, and Chris as my personal editor that does my articles, and me, between the three of us, we will sort of adapt to changes based on feedback, and then if it's a small change, he'll just make the change and show it to me.

You know, if it's just like a factual change. If it's a little bit bigger, it comes back to me so I can write it. So, you know, so it makes sure that I can sort of incorporate it properly. It's not just changing like a fact or something. But anyway, so I got that all in, turned it all in. I was ready. And then we started talking about how to announce this stuff. And so we had a long list of things we wanted to announce. So one of which obviously was unstable. So for those that know me at all, the unsets are my darlings. I love the unsets.

Unglued, obviously, I did back in 1996. I did a whole podcast on this. I was given a set where I didn't, you know, the constraints were, ah, it has a silver border. It can't be played in tournaments. You can do whatever you want, you know. And from that, I crafted what has become the unsets, which is sort of out of the box, kind of with a more silly tone to it.

You know, just sort of, hey, magic is fun. And I could push boundaries in places I'm not normally allowed to push boundaries because I don't have the restrictions of this has to make sense in tournaments, per se, that I can sort of push things a little bit. It turned out, by the way, that there's been a lot of reward from doing that. There's been a lot of, you know, when you sort of push boundaries, you find things you may not normally have found if you hadn't. And things like full art land or token cards or, you know, the packs from Future Sight or split cards or, you know, there's a lot of things that have come out of, you know, MELD. I mean, there's a lot of things that have come out of experiments we've done when we're trying to sort of push boundaries that, you know,

what today is the push boundary, 10 years from now might just be normal magic. So anyway, so we put Unglued out. And so when Unhinged came out, when Unghinged came out, we decided to do something fun, which was we announced it on, we kind of announced it on April Fool's Day. So what we did is,

people have been asking for a second unset after, you know, Unglued came out. It was six years later. People have been asking for it. They enjoyed Unglued. They go, make another unset, make another unset. And so I wrote an article. I said, basically, hey, it's April Fool's.

And what would be a better day to announce, you know, the second unset than April Fool's? And I wrote the article kind of tongue in cheek where it was kind of like, hey, is this an April Fool's joke? tongue-in-cheek where it was kind of like, hey, is this an April Fool's joke? Or no, like if we really were doing it, this would kind of be a fun time to do it. And then I did a poll afterwards where I asked people and 50.1% thought it was real and 49.9% thought it was fake, which is perfect. Exactly. Just right down the middle. So when the time to announce on Stable came around, there was some talk of maybe we're supposed to do an announcement separate from everything else. And so there was a lot of talk about maybe it's April Fool's.

We'll do something on April Fool's. Oh, because the original announcement, the six-month announcement that we ended up pushing off, was actually going to happen on March 31st originally. So the next day was April Fool's. So like, oh, maybe we're supposed to do some fun thing where we hint at it in the announcement and then, blam, we do something fun on April Fool's Day.

My big issue at the time was, oh, could we not do the one joke we've done before? You know, like as a comedy writer, I'm like, we did that joke really well once. You know, one of the things about Unstable in general is, you know, it's... So 2004 was the last time we did. It's 13 years later.

I really... Like, one of the big differences... You guys will see. I can't get too much into the details. But we have modern design technology and we have creative technology. There's ways we make sets now that are much more advanced than ones we once did and while this has this all the fun and sensibility

of the old school silver border sets there's a lot of a modern technology added to it and so we really wanted to communicate that yeah yeah yeah it's an unset if you like unset you'll like this because it's an unset but it's got a little bit more sophistication there's a lot more it's an unset, but it's got a little bit more sophistication. There's a lot more components to how we're doing it. It's a little more put together than previously we had done. Just because it's 13 years later, we've learned a lot. And so I felt like just kind of doing the same joke, just reinforced, ah, just the same thing rather than, no, no, no, it's a little bit different. And so anyway, when the thing got pushed back, it turned out, okay, we're not going to announce it then. And then it said, okay, we're going to announce this giant announcement.

How do we want to do the giant announcement? What are we going to do? And I know we had talked a bit about, should it be an article? Like, how are we going to announce all this stuff? And then the guy decided, no, no, let let's do a video let's make a video where and the idea was Nate who's one of the people that does the online online media it's like okay Nate will walk around and talk to people and then various people can can do different things and the idea was that because we're talking about a year's worth of product different parts are in different state of what we want to say you know And the idea was that because we're talking about a year's worth of product,

different parts are in a different state of what we want to say. You know, like, for example, Unstable was just merely its existence was the surprise. Or something like Ixalan, the audience knew of Ixalan. I mean, they didn't even name Ixalan. But they didn't really know what it was about. So our first chance to sort of give them a little inkling of what kind of world Ixalan was going to be. So the different sections require different amounts of information. And so like, okay, well, if different people talk about different sections,

so that way the tone would be right. Where, you know, if you talk to one person, well, they share one kind of thing. And so it was decided that we broke it up. So we ended up having, so Liz was our brand manager. So she was going to introduce things, sort of set the tone. It's the 25th anniversary. And then she was going to sort of introduce Mark Winters. So we were trying to go, we were going pseudo chronologically. So the idea is, oh, Hours of Devastation was coming up very soon. Later in the week would be the first previews.

And so we wanted to market, we wanted to be kind of visual. So the idea is to come to Mark. He's at, what we call the art wall, which is by a creative team, where it has different art and stuff. It gets hung up. And so the idea is, I mean, we sort of refabricated, I mean, remember, we work way ahead of time. So there was no actual hour devastation up.

We had to remake it because things you can't see in a row. And so that way, Mark could talk and do a little more visuals. That part we wanted to actually show some art and stuff so we can show you pictures. Then we threw it to Allison, who was going to do the Ixalan portion that would sort of talk all about, you know, it's pirates and dinosaurs and, you know, it's pirate fresca and all the cool stuff.

And then she would mention the art book and stuff. And Allison actually has a bunch of training in comedy. She is an improv troupe and she does a lot of comedic speaking and stuff. And so she was a great person to sort of do that. Then after Allison was me and Kelly. So I decided the two of us would do 25th Anniversary Masters Edition, Dominaria, Anniversary Masters Edition, Dominaria, and the Core set,

Core 2019. And once again, the farther out we were, the less we were allowed to say. So we really just kind of told you we were going to Dominaria, but I begged, I go, please, please, could I mention that Richard

was on the design team? Because that meant a lot to me. That one of the things that's really exciting about doing Dominaria is, like, it very much is our past. We really,

from the 25th anniversary, we wanted to go back. You know, the idea of, like we knew one day we wanted to go back to Dominaria and the idea of being in the 25th anniversary,

it just seemed too perfect. And once I knew we were doing that, I really wanted Richard involved. Richard had let it known that he was interested in doing another magic design. In fact, here's a funny story.

I had talked to somebody and I had said, oh yeah, I'd love, you know, whenever Richard wants to do another magic set, I'd love to have him. And then Richard had been somewhere and he said, you know, whenever they want me back, I'm glad to do it. And somebody had figured out that I both said I was eager to have Richard back when he was interested and that Richard was interested in a comeback and that each one of us was kind of waiting for the other person to say they were interested.

And that person said, hey, hey, hey, you both said this. So I called Richard up and I, once I realized that, I was like, oh, and I said, I have the perfect set for him. We're going back to Dominaria. And that one of the fun things about going back is, you know, there's a lot of nostalgia. Like, Dominaria is where magic started, right? So, you know, we knew, like, I can't get too much

into this, but we knew that it was going to be sort of a homecoming of types, and just having Richard involved, we thought would be awesome. And, anyway, I will tell more of Dominaria as we get closer to it. But, anyway, oh, the funny story, by the way, is just behind the scenes video thing, is Kelly and I were supposed to be in a different section of the building.

By the way, if you actually know the Wizards building, the video doesn't make any sense. Like, what we did is we set up locations that we thought were fun locations to shoot. So the idea, it was neat to be in front of Mitzi, the Shivan dragon, in the lobby. Or in front of the art wall. Or, you know, we just picked places that had cool art. Like the place they interviewed Allison is in front of the printers with the big angel art. And the last scene is in front of the elevators with, you know... Anyway, we were trying to look for cool places that we can do things.

And they had a completely different location for me and Kelly. I don't remember where it was. But for some reason, we couldn't do it. And the last minute, we had to, like, make an audible and change it. So we ended up doing it downstairs. Basically, we have an area that's sort of the employee, I don't know what to call it, the lounge area for the employees. And one of the things

in the lounge area is this old Dungeons & Dragons video game from way back in the day. So the idea is like, oh, it's fun. Okay, we'll do, we'll, we'll, hey, you and Kelly, like, I haven't played that video game probably ever. But anyway, it decided to be fun. Kelly and I were playing a video game and then Nate I mean, well, but anyway, it decided to be fun. You know,

Kelly and I were playing a video game and then Nate walks by, so, and so we changed it and we did a bunch of takes and then in between takes, Kelly and I were trying

to play the video game just because I'd never played it before and it was actually kind of fun. So you can pick, like, one of four, like,

you can be a fighter or a thief or a wizard, you know, you pick your class. And then each class was a different race and stuff. Like, you know, elf. Like it was like...

Anyway. So we set it up and then ran through a bunch of times. But anyway, that's not the exciting part of the story. The exciting part of the story was the final scene. So the one thing that I was given some ability is, originally, when they wrote the script, Trick, who wrote it, wrote something different for the end. And I came back and I said, you know, I have an idea for a funny bit.

Could we, you know, can I just change things a little bit? And what I said is, look, the bit that Trick had kind of written in was that there was this reluctance to tell about Unstable. Actually, I don't remember quite how Trick's version came out. But what I said is, well, how about this? What if the idea is people want to talk about it, but it keeps getting shut down.

And at the end of the video, I come up to Nate, and I'm like, okay, come on, we're not going to end the video and not tell them. And then Nate will go, no, no, you know, Liz, the brand manager, said we can't do it. So nope, we're not going to do it. And then I would say to him, you know, oh, well, are you still filming?

And there would be a beat. And then there's this moment where, like, both he and I kind of understand what's about to happen. And then I just start revealing everything. And then Nate is supposed to stop me, is the idea. So the first time we did it, and we did it a whole bunch of times. So one of the funny things is the way the scene is supposed to work is I come running out of the elevator, if you remember the scene. So I come running out of the elevator.

So what had to happen was I had to get in the elevator, I had to close the doors, and then I had to open the doors. But the problem was if somebody else had pushed the button calling the elevator, the second the doors closed,

the elevator left. It didn't open again. And so multiple times I would get calling the elevator, the second the doors closed, the elevator left. It didn't open again. And so multiple times I would get in the elevator to sort of close it so we can start our scene. Because the thing is, Nate has to talk for a second before I come in.

And so what happens is, multiple times I would get in the elevator, someone would call it, and then I would leave. And then when I would come back, I would just, wherever they're at, I'd jump in the scene. And so, we did a bunch of different takes. A few of them,

I'm actually still there, but a lot of them, I actually, I'm literally coming back. I'm not sure which take we ended up using. But anyway, so I said to Nate, okay, here's what's going to happen,

is I'm going to splurge this out and you're supposed to stop me. Now, Nate is, I'm not quite twice my size, but much bigger than me. And so we did the first take and really it's just me screaming in the camera. I'm like, no, no, Nate, you got to hold me back. So Nate tries to hold me a little bit and basically each take I'm like, no, no, no, like really, really try to stop me, Nate.

Try. I will not let you stop me. You try to stop me. I'm not going to let you stop me. And we did a bunch of different takes on it. Each time I was like, no, no, you know. And I think the take that we finally used, there's a point where Nate was actually trying to subdue me.

And he said that was squirrely. It was hard to hold on to. See, squirrely for unstable. But anyway, he said it was hard to hold on to. Because I was trying. So anyway, the reason it looks pretty realistic is Nate is really, I mean, not that he doesn't want me to have my lines or anything, but he, he, he's honest to God was trying to subdue me. Um, because what we said is if he actually subdues me, then we'll reshoot the shot.

But I'm like, you know, cause the more he tried to subdue me, the harder it was cause I'm just, I'm hard to grab onto. And I was really trying to get away from him so I could talk to the camera. So anyway, we're shooting this. And like I said, each take is Nate manhandling me more than one before. Like the first take, he's like, he's holding my arm or something. And by the end, he's just trying to take me down. So one of the funny things is, so we're recording.

And now remember, we're in the lobby of the third floor. so we're recording and now remember we're in the lobby of the third floor that's where the shot happened oh it's like I was saying before if you actually know the Wizards building by the way the video doesn't

there's no actual like Nate was like on the fourth floor and then the third floor and then Wander's around the second floor like it doesn't actually have any logical

but most of the audience doesn't actually know the layout of the building, so it doesn't matter. But anyway, so we are in the middle of the third floor lobby, which is on the third floor with elevators. And he is wrestling me, and we're doing our scene.

And one of the elevators opens up. And it was a bunch of people from R&D. And they have no idea what's going on, other than there's a bunch of people, a camera, and Nate wrestling me to the ground. And so they open up, they look and just see this chaotic scene, and then they just stay in the elevator, and the elevator closes. Which, if we had the camera, if we had the ability to tape that,

that would have been in the shot, because that was really funny. But anyway, so Nate tries to subdue me and I get the information out. Oh, the other little touch I wanted to do was I wanted to wear my unglued shirt. There's sadly no unhinged shirt. But unglued had a t-shirt. Oh, I hope unhinged has a t-shirt. I hope unstable has a t-shirt. Unhinged did not have a t-shirt.

So I wore my unglued t-shirt and Unhinged did not have a t-shirt. So I wore my own glued t-shirt, and at the end of it, I take off my flannel. And you can see I'm wearing the same shirt in the previous scene with me and Kelly. But anyway, then he's trying to subdue me, so I like how the video comes out. So anyway, the... I'm trying to think what else the announcement was. So my article went up Monday.

The Metamorphosis 2.1. 2.0, sorry. And I was really happy with the response. People seemed really excited. The corset coming back had a lot of positive responses. And the move to all large sets and drafting alone. Each set drafted by itself. Oh, one of the things, a little clarification here

for people who, things I said in the article but have a little, since I have some time, a few clarifications about my Metamorphosis 2.0. So number one is, the plan moving forward is

that we now, it used to be that every block was on its own world. That, you know, back when blocks were one large set, two small sets, well that's how long we stayed on a you know, back when blocks were one large set and two small sets, well, that's how long we stayed on a world.

And then when blocks were one large set and one small set, that's how long we stayed on the world. What we're saying now is the duration that we stay on a world is not at all indicative of how many sets we're there. If we have a story that requires us being on a set for one world, we're there for one set. Two sets, we're there for two sets. Two sets, we're there for two sets. Three sets, we're there for three sets.

Whatever the story and or, you know, whatever we need, how long we need to be on the world. The parameter that I set is if we're on the same world, I will make sure that the mechanics feel in accord with the world. that the mechanics feel in core to the world, but I will make sure that each draft experience has its own identity. So what does that mean? What does that mean exactly? So what it means is that I have the right to extend mechanics if I need them.

My example was, let's say we went to Kaladesh and we decided we wanted to went to Kaladesh, and we decided we wanted to stay in Kaladesh for two sets. What would have happened is, set number one would have been Inventors' Fair, and we would have done probably, I don't know, similar to what we did.

And set two would have been Rebellion, and Rebellion would have been much, had more of a different tone from the first set. But maybe, for example, if I felt like, wow, it's hard to be in Kaladesh and not have energy. Like, energy is so core to Kaladesh. Maybe what would have happened is the first set had its mechanics, and it's all about building and inventing. And the second set would have been about this great revolution, and it would have been more, I mean, mean kind of what we did do but in a way where we're not trying to make them play together

but the idea is that if we're staying on the same world I have the freedom if I want to to extend mechanics where I need to now the plan is I'm not planning to do what we normally do with large and small sets where the small set has some obligation to carry a certain amount of the big set. Like, the way small sets have always worked is we introduce new mechanics in the big set. Most of those mechanics are in the small set. Not all of them, necessarily, but most of them. And usually, we introduce something new in the small set. The idea moving forward is large set would have all new mechanics.

Second large set, if we're staying in the same world, would have mostly new mechanics, but I reserve the right to extend a mechanic or two if organically to the world that's important. And if I do that, one of the things I'm on the hook for is making sure that that mechanical element has a different facet that we play into. So what people were asking is one of the things they were worried about in the loss of the small set is that we wouldn't have mechanical evolution. And my answer there is no, we can. That if we're on the same world, we reserve the right to do that. But and here's the trick is not every mechanic really has space for all that much mechanical innovation.

The other thing, which I didn't say, but I'll tell you now, is one of the things moving forward is, and this is not just Metamorphosis 2.0. This actually has to do with a lot of other things, is we're trying to pull back a lot how much we do in a set, and one of the beliefs we've had is that we have gotten... Like, if you go back to Khans and to Battle for Zendikar and Shadows of Innistrad, we

push a little tooming mechanics. That part of what we want to do part of the the thing i'm working on is trying to say sort of a less is more strategy which is i'd rather have fewer mechanics explore those mechanics in greater depth than just have lots of mechanics that i i i feel like we do a disservice when there's just too much stuff going on at once and and so my new dictum moving forward is that a large set has what I've been calling three and a half mechanics. Which means if they're large mechanics, three. If two of them are a little smaller, sometimes four.

But that is it. That we're going to try to go cleaner and simpler and have less mechanics. But the side effect of that is we get to explore them a little more. and have less mechanics. But the side effect of that is we get to explore them a little more. So what used to happen in the small set where, hey, large set does the basic thing and small set does a little bit of a tweaking of it

will appear more within the singular set, assuming it's on the small side of tweaking things. If we're talking more major things, that is something where maybe we're taking the mechanics and it can branch between sets. The other thing is, what this means for story is that we have kind of got into this, the nature of the block said, the story and the blocks tended to be lock-sync, meaning each sort of sub-story.

I mean, I understand there's a larger story being told, but the individual stories tended to be like started and ended on the same world. Oh, we're in Theros. Well, let's tell the story of Theros. And that the block nature made our stories match the blocks. the block nature made our stories match the blocks. But once we open up this freedom and say, you know what, the blocks, you know, we will stay in worlds as long as we need to and we will tell stories at the length we need, means that not only now do we have the freedom,

like it used to be a block was one world and a block was one story. So one story was always one world. We're now detaching those two things. If we have a cool story to tell in which Act 2 is on a different world, we could start the story in one world and the next set goes to a different world and the story continues. The joke I've been saying is we can start telling planeswalker stories where people actually planeswalk.

One of the funny things in the nature of our stories is that the stories always started and ended on the same world, so the act of planeswalking was usually not relevant to the individual story. Like, I show up when the story begins, I leave when the story is over, but not enough was part of the story itself, you know, things that moving places wasn't part of the story. And you know, things that moving places wasn't part of the story. And this new model will allow us the freedom to do that.

That we could start a story in one world and part of the story is they're planeswalkers, they go to another world. And that is pretty cool. That is something that is quite neat. The other thing about Metamorphosis 2.0 that... There's a lot of nuance there.

Is the... There's sort of a bit of a tempo change in how we're building things. Large sets... Small sets have always been at the mercy of a large set. That a small set is always like, I'm trying to sort of speak to what the large set is. And so we now move to a world where each of the sets get to sort of dictate their own thing. And that it's hard to explain.

The other thing that's coming that i sort of teased out that i i can't talk too much yet but there's a big revamping behind the scenes of how we make magic a big one like probably the biggest we've had since i have worked at wizards which is a long time um and so i'm going to do an article in the fall about this. But behind the scenes, sort of what I'm, the piece that I'm not telling you that is going to, you'll come out soon. I'm kind of waiting to get closer to the sets that, like we have this problem where we work two years in the future. And so when something changes for us, you know know we kind of wait until it affects you like it doesn't make a lot of sense to explain the change in our processes

till you get to the point where the sets you're seeing are changed by the process you know like for all intents and purposes the system as you know it hasn't changed yet because the sets you're seeing

are under the old system so it doesn't make a lot of sense to get to the new system until hey these are actually the sets that happen under the new system. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to get to the new system until, hey, these are actually the sets that happen under the new system. But I will give you the little tiny tease that it is the biggest change we've ever made, ever. I mean, given the two years before my time, you know, I started two years in and not major changes happened before I started. And I've been there ever since that.

But I think this is a good thing. And it is a natural extension of what we're doing. The changes, when I announce them, I announce different changes at different times. But there's an organic album that goes on. All the changes kind of moving toward one unified goal, making the best magic sets. So, oh, oh, I'm traffic. So, okay. What else, what else can I expand upon? Cause, uh, I started speaking about the announcement. I've

made it a little more, uh, I mean, it's about different elements of announcement week. Um, the, so Tuesday, Tuesday we announced, uh, the sort of, well, Tuesday was two things. One was we wanted to talk about sort of our digital future. And I admit, I admit, we had basically, so there's a big thing in the spring, in the fall called HazCon. HazCon stands for Hasbro Convention. It's a convention of all of Hasbro's IPs. So Transformers, My Little Pony, Nerf, Monopoly Clue. There's tons and tons of stuff.

Hasbro's a giant company. And Magic is what we are part of that. We are really trying to do some fun stuff. By the way, if you happen to be able to attend, it's September, I think, 9th through the 11th in Providence, Rhode Island. I am going to the event. I have never been, well, I've never been to Hascon before,

but I've never been to Providence. That's where the headquarters to Hasbro is. In fact, the event is like across the street from the headquarters of Hasbro in the Dunkin, the event is like across the street from the headquarters of Hasbro in the Dunkin' Donuts Center, I think it's called. But anyway, we really are doing some big splashy stuff

and one of the big things we're doing is we're making our big announcement. We're making a lot of investment in a digital future. And I think we want to scream from the rooftops all the stuff we're doing. But the problem is that like, it takes time to make things. And, you know, we want to sort of announce things when we're at the right stage, because we don't want to, the thing we don't

want to do is, hey, cool thing, and then do the other things, like it just comes out later than we expect. And then you're just sitting there waiting for something. We want to announce things when we can say and you know, here's the tangible thing. So the announcement on Tuesday about the digital stuff, I admit it was a little on the it was kind of

an announcement but an announcement as they say. But there is a lot of cool things. While I can't talk specifics, I can say as someone who's seeing things behind the scenes, I am more optimistic about our digital future than I've ever, ever, ever been. And not only... There are multiple projects.

There are a lot of things going on. Some of it was talked about in the article. There's even more that you guys don't know yet that's coming. But there's a lot of cool stuff coming digitally. There's a lot of neat things. And so I know that Tuesday's announcement wasn't quite as exciting as we wanted it to be. Kind of like Unstable. Like I've been wanting to...

Oh, so by the way, something I mentioned real quickly is for people that don't know, I started to work on Unstable in 2011. In fact, when I started working on it, it didn't even have a release yet. When I get closer to it, I'll tell the whole story. But basically, I was kind of doing it on spec, as they say, from my Hollywood days, meaning we kind of felt like if we made something, it would be easier for us to convince people to do it. So we sort of started making it before we had to go ahead.

Like we didn't know it was going to get released when we started making it. But anyway, I started my blog, I think, in 2012, Blogatog. So for the entire duration of my blog, and I've answered, I think I'm getting close to 100,000 questions since 2012. So in five years, I'm close to 100,000. I haven't looked at it recently. But anyway, I'm somewhere around 100,000 questions since 2012. So in five years, I'm close to 100,000. I haven't looked at it recently.

But anyway, I'm somewhere around 100,000. So I answer something like 20,000 questions a year. Some crazy number. And all that time, unstable is a third onset. It's a topic that comes up all the time. It comes up constantly. And

all that time I had to play dumb. I had to sort of, you know, act as if it wasn't coming out and how would I respond? And so I was so happy to tell you guys like yesterday, just the weight off my chest. I literally woke up early.

I couldn't sleep. I was so giddy. I was so excited that we were talking to you guys. And everybody, the reaction was so awesome. So thanks for that. It really was an awesome response. I'm to you guys. And everybody, the reaction was so awesome. So thanks for that. It really was an awesome response. I'm glad you guys are as happy about it as I'm happy about it. Because I really, really, really hope there's an audience.

Because if this set doesn't do well... So what happened is the previous two sets on Gluten Unstable, these were some of the earliest supplemental products we ever did. And the problem was that the problem was that we didn't really know much about supplemental products. So we treated them like they were small sets.

So we printed them in the volume of a small set. Which is way, way more than you're supposed to print a supplemental product. Especially this product, which was, look, it's not a tournament, you're not playing this in tournaments. It's fun. It's something that you might supposed to put a supplemental product. You know, especially this product, which was, look, it's not a tournament, you know, you're not playing this in tournaments. You know, it's fun. It's something that you might want to have, play with your friends. And you can do casual, constructed and stuff, you know.

There's a lot of fun things you can do with it. But, look, it's not going in your standard deck. And anyway, both sets did well. Both sets sold well. But we made too much. We overprinted. And the way I try to explain to people is, anything is a failure. Overprinting will make anything a failure. It's not like, oh, it didn't do well.

It didn't do well because we made too much. Let's, for example, take our best set ever, you know, or whatever. Take a set like, you know, pick your favorite magic set, whatever it is. If we print 20% more than what we did, it would have been a disaster for us. You know what I'm saying?

Like, if you print too much, it doesn't matter how good the set is. It doesn't matter how popular it is. It doesn't matter how much people buy that. If you just print more than they're going to buy, then it becomes a problem. And the big thing with the unsets was there was a

sense in the building that, oh, they both were failures because we had to get rid of product. Because if we make too much product, then we end up destroying product. What happens, for those who don't know. And in both cases, we destroyed product. So this feeling in the building was, oh, this isn't something players really want.

Look, we had to destroy all this product. And we spent a lot of time trying to communicate, no, no, no, no, that's not actually what the data says. The data shows that there was an audience, the audience liked it, it was actually very popular for the audience that wanted it, but we just made too much. And like, if you exceed demand,

well, then any product will fail. So anyway, there was a lot, the reason it took so long, 13 years to get the next unset, is we really had to sort of convince a lot of people that there was an audience. And the success of Conspiracy

helped us a lot. Because Conspiracy has a similar, like there are cards in conspiracy. You'll never play anywhere else. But yet people like conspiracy. So I'll say this a few times probably before the set comes out. But if you are a fan of silver border sets, if it's something you want to see, if it's something you appreciate, I need people to put some money where their mouth is.

That I really need people to buy the set because I'll tell you this, if the third unset's not popular, there will never, ever be a fourth, ever be a fourth unset. So the good news is I made the best unset of my life, or so far.

Maybe I have an even better one than me. But I made the best one so far. It is really cool. There's all sorts of things in it that players have been wanting forever. It's hard to put it in normal magic, but I got it into Silver Border magic. And there's a lot of fun stuff there and a lot of cool things. Can't talk about that yet. Announcement week.

Oh, also, announcement week, we announced the banning of Aetherwork Marvel. I wasn't super involved in that. I will say, the one thing I want to talk about for that is, look, we never, ever, ever, ever, ever like to ban things. Banning things isn't good. We don't want to ban things. But on the flip side, we also don't want to live in a world where we're so cautious about banning that we never push the boundaries and we never push the edge um did we make a mistake here look we ban we we've had three bannings within a calendar year when the previous banning was what five years ago or something so look we made mistakes um you know friday friday's announcement was introducing the play design team

um dan introduced his new team and like look, we understand we made a mistake. We understand we did something wrong and so we are changing things. The sign to be worried is when things break and we go, well, eh, don't worry about it. Things broke and we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we need to change the system.

And so we are radically changing things. So one of the questions that always comes up is, hey, weren't you doing that? What was the Future Future League? And the answer is, there's a difference between your primary job is this thing and one of your many jobs is this thing. What happened with the FFL is it was like a job for many people, but it wasn't their primary job. It was sort of, for a number of people, it was their secondary or tertiary job.

And when you have so much going on, well, a lot of times you're like, well, I have to focus on my primary thing. Hey, there's so many other people doing the secondary thing. I'll let some of them pick up the slack. And then enough people sort of focus on their thing because it's not their primary job that you just get the eyes off the ball.

And one of the ideas of the play design team is there's a team who that is their primary job. That's what comes first and foremost. And so, yes, we banned Aetherwork Marvel. We banned it because we think it led to unfun tournaments and we felt like banning it led to a more fun magic environment. But we are working hard behind the scenes because we do not want to ban things, you know, and we have violated your trust.

We had to ban three things in a year. That's not something we should ever do. And so what I'm saying to you is we will try to earn that back and, you know, we will regain confidence through our actions. That's all we can do, you know. We can't do it through words. We need to do it through actions. But anyway, hopefully

when the dust settles and we're looking back at this from the distant future, this will be, and wow, the silver lining was these serious mistakes made us change how we did things for the better. And for the rest of Magic, things are better in how we do it. The one last announcement was on Thursday.

We did some OP stuff. It was a pretty minor announcement. Oh, and then Friday we announced Hour of Devastation. That's all our previews and stuff. And Dan, obviously, on Friday. But anyway, at this point, hopefully you guys have seen Hour of Devastation. It's a lot of fun. I'm really happy that we finally got a chance to give Nicole Bolas his due.

He's kind of been the villain behind the scenes, twirling his fingers, going, you know, hee-hee-hee. He's been the puppet master. But we really wanted to show him being a badass. Like, why should you be afraid of Nicole Bolas? Here's why you should be afraid of Nicole Bolas. And we thought it was important that the Gatewatch, they really need to be knocked down a peg. You know, they had a few, they got lucky early on,

and we felt like part of building a team is, you know, telling a cool story is saying, hey, guess what? You know, you might not know everything. And so that was an important part of our storytelling. So our devastation does all sorts of cool things. So anyway,

I hope you guys enjoyed this. I hope you enjoyed all of Announcement Week and the stories behind Announcement Week. But I'm now at Rachel's school, so we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work.

So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.