Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #461: College Visits

Episode Date: August 11, 2017

My daughter and I visited eight colleges in five days, which spawned this podcast.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so I actually haven't done a podcast in a little while because I was on vacation. So what happened was Rachel graduated, not graduated, Rachel finished her junior year. And so normally, or as we did last year, um, Rachel and I went down to VidCon. I did a podcast on this last year on the 2016 VidCon. Um, but this year was a little bit different. Now we did, we go to VidCon, which I will talk about today. Um, but because she's a junior and going to become a senior, and when you're a senior,

you got to apply to colleges. We decided to turn our trip into VidCon to expand it a little bit and make it a college visiting trip. So what we did was we picked eight colleges, the University of San Diego, the University of California, San Diego, which are completely different colleges, UCLA, USC, CSU Long Beach, UC Irvine, CSU Fullerton, and Chapman University. So we picked, it's based on a bunch of different criteria, you know, based on sort of different things Rachel wanted. She's going to communications, so some of this was going to places that had good communications,

or she's interested in communications. Anyway, so I actually came up with an idea that actually worked out really well, which is, originally we were trying to book like official tours, but I picked a really poor time to go visit colleges from that respect because I was hitting right around when

people were like literally either people were just graduating or just you know graduated a few days earlier so everyone was kind of the colleges were a little more shut down to sort of segue between the normal school year and the summer session and so I was only able to get just a handful of colleges that were able to give me a tour. So I said, OK, well, what if is there another way to get a tour? And that was a pretty cool idea. So I went on my social media and I said, hey, we're going to visit these colleges. Would anybody like to show us around?

And I got a great response. I got responses to every single college. In fact, I think I got multiple to almost every college. So I ended up saying yes to the first person who volunteered. So people volunteered that I couldn't say yes. I apologize. But obviously only one person can show us around. Although, as you'll see, in a few cases, we got more than one people showing us around.

But anyway, so every college we went to, we had a magic player, um, show up and it was, it was really fascinating. Um, it was, first off, let me just say the guys were all great. They were amazing. They all did like advanced research and anyway, I'm gonna run through the colleges a little quick. Um, and then I want to talk a little bit about one of the cool things about this was I had a chance to talk with some magic players that aren't the normal magic players necessarily. I, I, when I say talk, obviously online, I do a lot of interacting with people, but there's

a difference between online interaction, just face to face talking to somebody. Um, and one of the neat things was this was actually a really interesting chance to me to talk pretty in depth because one of the things that I tried to do is, obviously, as we were going around, they were giving a tour to me and my daughter, but I also wanted to make sure, you know, talk magic with them. And, you know, it was an opportunity, A, I wanted to make sure that they were having fun, because, you know, they were doing this out of their goodness of their heart. And it was an opportunity for me to talk about magic with people that I don't normally get to talk to. So it was sort of win-win. This whole with people that I don't normally get to talk to.

So it was sort of win-win. This whole thing was win-win. Everybody seemed to have exciting showing us around, and I got to talk magic with them, and they enjoyed that, and I got to learn stuff. And anyway, it was awesome. Okay, so I'm not going to go in great depths on the people because I think our conversations are more private. I will just real quickly run through the people just because I think our conversations are more private. I will just real quickly run through the people, just because I want to thank them.

So first we went to University of San Diego. That was Tom. Tom wins the award for coming the farthest the show is around. Tom actually lives in Tucson, and he's a doctor, but he's an amateur pilot. So he flew down to San Diego to show us around, which is his alma mater and everybody who showed us around

loved their college, it was great everybody really had a lot of fun to say things about their college so Tom showed us around and we learned all about University of San Diego and I got to talk to Tom, he's a very casual player so it was fun. He and his children play, and so that was a really neat experience.

One of the things that is hard for us, just so people don't realize this, is we have great visibility in a very small segment of our player base, and that is people who play in organized play or they play on digital. Those are the two places where we have a lot of opportunity to sort of see things and we've you know if you play in distinction tournaments or you play online okay we have we have a record of this we sort of can see how much you play so like if you are somebody who sort of plays in our you know in the public eye in some way we have a decent sense of you.

We have a lot of data. I mean, not individually, but we have a lot of overall sense through data. But people that kind of play at the kitchen table, it's hard for us to sort of get, we just don't, it's hard for us to sort of interact with those people because there's no direct place to do that.

And so one of the really cool things of talking to a lot of these players like Tom was getting a chance to sort of hear interest in things that they want from a player who's just a little different vantage point. Because one of the things I often talk about is how, look, my job and the job of my team is to provide a great Magic experience for the magic players. Well, what do you want? I mean, we want to know what you want. Now, obviously, I go on social media,

and some of the kitchen table players talk to me on social media, so it's not as if I, I never know, I never get to talk to them, but I don't get to ask in-depth questions and stuff, and I don't ever know when someone's talking to me necessarily, you know, people ask me questions and I answer them, but I don't necessarily know the experience of people asking me questions. So that's why I have one-on-one stuff. But anyway, I had a great chat with Tom.

He showed us around, really showed off the University of San Diego, which is a pretty small school, I think like a 4,000 undergraduate, which I think is a small school we looked at, but it was super pretty and very scenic. And like I said, it was really fun watching people sort of, in each case, like I'm passionate about magic. These people were passionate about their schools. So it was really cool to watch them and listen to them and ask questions of them and stuff. Okay, the second one we went to was the University of California, San Diego, which is radically different. So University of San Diego is this really tiny, small college. Like I said, about 4,000 undergrad.

And the University of California, San Diego is high 20,000 or something. But anyway, much bigger school. In fact, by the way, on my watch, it talks about how far I walk because I have an Apple Watch. And I got it for my 50th birthday. Anyway, so I kept track of how far we walked. And so it turns out that between the eight colleges, I believe we walked the equivalent of a marathon, 26 miles. So we walked a lot.

And we were doing it every day. So the way it worked was we flew down there. I flew to Los Angeles. On Saturday, we drove down to San Diego. So Saturday, Tom showed us around New Jersey and San Diego. Sunday, we then went to University of California, San Diego, where Nick showed us around. Nick wins the award for having the most notes. Nick was great. He obviously had done a lot of research and he had a notebook that he had written all his notes in. And I was very impressed. We'd ask a question and he'd go, no, no, I have that. And he'd look it up

and he'd answer the question. Very thorough. I was impressed how thorough everybody was. Anyway, University of California San Diego is a little bit bigger and it's broken up into six schools. Anyway, each school is very different. The other thing interesting for me is I have not been to college in 30 years. So it was kind of neat seeing what modern day colleges are like and how are colleges the same as I remember and how are colleges different from what I remember. And there was a bunch of both. So Nick showed us around. We chatted with Nick and talked with him about sort of how he plays Magic. Like I said, the thing that was really fascinating is I would

talk to people. Oh, so I asked a whole bunch of questions. But one of the questions I asked of each player, each person who shows around, was if we can make a magic product exclusively for you, what would we make? And I got a lot of interesting suggestions,

some of which are things we're making, actually, and some of which are things that, oh, maybe we could consider making. It was a neat sort of run-through of what people wanted. A lot of the people I met played very casually.

Some played Commander. A few of them were very into Commander. Anyway, yeah, Nick was definitely one of those players. I think Nick, I can't remember. Blurs together because I talked to a lot of different people. I think Nick, I have to remember, it blurs together because I've talked to a lot of different people. I think Nick occasionally went to pre-releases, if I remember correctly. So he was sort of someone who played casually,

but, you know, poked his head in every once in a while, organized play. Then on Monday morning, we went to UCLA, where we met Jeremy and Caitlin. Caitlin was Jeremy's girlfriend. Jeremy was a long time player. Caitlin had played

a little bit. I actually had some really good conversations with Caitlin about somebody who wants to get into magic because her boyfriend plays. She's interested in learning how to play. But that the first experiences they had tried weren't great, and so we talked a lot about, oh, well, how can you experience Magic, and it was really neat, because she talked about what she likes about the game, and what, you know, what is intimidating to

her, and so anyway, that was a great conversation. I talked a lot with Jeremy about sort of what he does and how he plays. And anyway, that was really neat. UCLA was very famous. It was my daughter's favorite of the eight schools, partly because, like I said, she's into communications. And actually, some of the schools went to an amazing, amazing communication department, but one of them is UCLA. Anyway, we walked all around UCLA.

In fact, I used to live in Los Angeles before I moved to Washington long ago. And I actually used to live in West LA, not far from Westwood. So I knew Westwood really well. So it was actually a blast walking around Westwood 20 years later, 22 years later. The most interesting thing about me was there were three stores that were the same, two movie theaters that are really famous movie theaters, and a restaurant, a diner called Headlines Diner that I'd eaten at all the time when I used to live in L.A. It was still there. I was very excited.

So Rachel and I had a meal at this place. So I got to share. It was kind of fun also, by the way, just having the opportunity to do one-on-one, like nine days with my daughter, just all alone. It was us doing a trip we'd never done. I mean, she and I did VidCon. I mean, we've done trips before, but not of this length or, you know, this was a pretty intense trip. Anyway, UCLA was really cool.

Jeremy and Caitlin were great. In the afternoon, we went to USC, where we met Christopher. So the coolest thing about the USC trip for me was they actually have a game design in their film school that you can major in game design, which fascinated me, obviously. me, obviously. Because one of the things that's real fun, I think I've talked about this, is that people like to complain that I didn't have a formal game design background, you know, before I took this job. And I keep trying to explain to people that

there was no formal, like, right now, like, it's amazing to me that you can go and you can study game and you can learn game design, which was really cool. And I had a chance to talk to a bunch of the people and a bunch of the people who run the department and stuff because Christopher took us over.

And just getting a chance to see all the stuff they do, it was really, really cool. I know, for example, one of the things occasionally when I Google myself, I'll find syllabuses that use some of my writing or my podcast or my GDC speech that's become popular to show game design students. So I like to think that I'm helping educate new game designers. So one of my big goals, and obviously I do it on the podcast quite a bit too, is I want to encourage and help new designers become designers. That game design is an awesome art form as far as I'm concerned. And anything I can do to help encourage more people to learn.

And anyway, education has been a big part of one of my goals. I want to do a lot of magic history. I want to do a lot of sort of teaching game design. I also want to do a lot of magic history. I want to do a lot of sort of teaching game design. I also want to do a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. So, I mean, there's a lot of things I do. There's certain things that I'm interested in, one of which is helping educate the next generation, you know, of game designers. And so it was really cool seeing a program.

I know there's more than one, but I'd never actually been in one or got to talk to people who ran one. So that was fascinating. And USC was also really pretty. They also, just like UCLA, have a very good communications and media program. In fact, they just built a new building. One of the weird things about USC is

UCLA and USC were both schools that I, back in the day when I lived in LA, had a decent amount of experience with. I had been on both campuses quite a bit, and it was shocking to me how little of the campuses I recognized. Just that in 20-some years, just how many new schools they built, they're constantly building things. I even went to a building that I'd known I'd been in and just because everything around it

outside had changed, just getting the orientation on it was hard for me. I was remembering that this was a building I'd been in. It was very interesting. Okay, the next on Tuesday morning we went to California State University Long Beach

where Lauren showed us around. So the one interesting thing is in the public eye, like I said, I see mostly organized play. So one of the issues with organized play is we have data where we look at larger numbers. We do what we call a deep dive every once in a while. And we did a deep dive famously a while ago where that was looking at everything that played magic, not just paper, not just tabletop magic, but all the digital formats. And we found when you talk to someone and said, have you ever played magic on any platform at any time? 38% of the respondents had said yes. Sorry,% of the respondents who said yes were female.

Now, we then did a study a couple years later where it wasn't quite as focused on the digital stuff, and the numbers dropped a bit down to like in the mid-20s, like 25%. So one of the things we kind of learned is, well, anyway, there's a bunch of things to learn there but our organized play numbers for females are way way lower

somewhere between 5 and 10% I think depending on which thing you're looking at so one of the things that's always interesting is I don't get a chance to talk to a lot of female magic players just because and the ones I talk to tend to be in a very narrow band they're the ones I talk to tend to be in a very narrow band.

They're the ones that are sort of more involved in organized play. And so one of the cool things meeting Lauren was, this is somebody who, I think she went to pre-releases, but not, she was not super connected to organized play. And it was interesting talking to her and learning about sort of her community. She was very involved in social media. She's big on Tumblr, I know. And so it was interesting talking to somebody. It was interesting talking just to

a female Magic player who we had so little vantage point into that, that that was really interesting conversations. So I had a great time talking with Lauren. She showed us off on Long Beach, which was very cool. My favorite thing about Long Beach, which was very cool. My favorite thing about Long Beach, by the way, is the stadium at Long Beach is this giant blue pyramid.

In fact, if I was in the middle, like, whenever we have previews, I tend to make my tales of the pit about that. So maybe one of these days I will use the Blue Pyramid in a comic. I mean, I've been doing our Devastation-specific comics right now. But anyway, it's for you guys, you know, it's ours, Devastation Preview Week as far as I'm concerned. To you, that was weeks ago. Then in the afternoon, I went to University of California, Irvine, in which I had three guides.

I had Chris and Victor and Addison. So here's a funny story. When Nick and I, when Nick was showing Rachel and I around University of California, San Diego, I got recognized by a person who was, I think, that day graduating. Addison was his name. Turns out that Addison was the brother of Victor, of Vincent, sorry, Vincent, one of the people that was showing me around Irvine. What had happened, which is a funny story, is the first person to volunteer was Chris.

And then Vincent had also volunteered, but I said, oh, sorry, Vincent, Chris is, you know, another person already volunteered, and I took the first person. And he goes, is it Chris? Is it Chris? And I said, yeah. And he said, oh, Chris and I are friends. Chris and I are friends. Could we show you around together? And I go, look, Chris is okay with that. I'm fine with that. And so Chris and Vincent were showing me around.

But then Addison found out I was there, and he came up. He had just graduated from San Diego. So anyway, the three of them showed us around. It was really cool. Irvine was really nice, all in a giant circle, I learned. It's interesting, each campus has its own, you know, like, you know, University of San Diego has six schools. They each have their own philosophy.

You know, the University of San Diego is up on the cliff. You can see all the views. And anyway, Irvine, it's based around this giant circle, that the whole school's kind of around this giant circle that you walk away they even walk around which I think I didn't know anything about that I'd never been to Irvine before it was very cool and one of the things that was kind of neat was um they had a magic club on the campus and so we ended up um they showed me around and we ended up at the student union where some members of the magic club had showed up so I could meet them

so I got to talk to people about magic like who played magic at a club in college that's a very different experience that's another thing where a lot of times we think organized play is organized play that magic does but there's a lot of people

who sort of create their own organized play and it was fascinating talking to a lot of people who sort of create their own organized play. And it was fascinating talking to all the club members and sort of what do they enjoy about Magic and, you know, how do they get involved. And, you know, anyway, I asked a lot of the same questions and then I'd ask the other people about what's your favorite thing about Magic and what are you excited about what's coming up. And if you're going to need a product, what would you like to see us do? So I got to meet all of them. I also got to see, by the way, there is a brand new at Irvine an eSports section. And the funny thing is I peeked my head in to look at it

and the guy who was running it recognized me. He's a Magic player and let us in and gave us a quick tour. But anyway, they have scholarships now for esports at Irvine, UC Irvine. I just kind of see where the future is coming. I really think there's going to be a day where there's not as much differentiation between sports and esports. You can slowly see the lines, you know, not quite as separate as they once were. And once in a while, they're very separate, and they're blurring a little bit over time.

But the idea of having campus teams and scholarships, and anyway, that was really cool. And the new lab, which was brand new, is gorgeous. Really nice. Okay. The next day, which was Wednesday, we went in the morning to California State University Fullerton. Now, here's one of the coolest things about it. So, Casey was my guy there. So, Casey's twin brother, Corey, is an intern this summer.

He goes to DigiPen, which is a place you study game design. Game design courses. And he's here in Seattle. And anyway, he's an intern with them. I haven't even met him yet. I'm going to meet him today. So the funny thing is, and they're identical twins. So I met his brother Casey before I met Corey, who I will meet, like I said.

I will literally meet today. Although I know what it looks like. But anyway, Casey showed us around Fort, which is really nice. I think there's another college that Rachel really took to. I mean, there were elements to all the colleges that Rachel really liked. It's interesting

watching my daughter of what sort of strikes her fancy in colleges was really interesting, but that's not really the topic of this conversation. Anyway, Casey was another person who was a little more casual. I think he and his brother both play Magic, obviously. And so it was interesting talking about sort of growing up.

And I think his brother had gotten him into it. Remember the story correctly? That Corey got Casey into Magic, I think. But anyway, it was interesting talking about sort of how they had grown up playing Magic together. And it's kind of this relationship of brothers playing. Like, every story was fascinating. That's one of the things that was great. I mean, obviously, we got a lot of that.

They were awesome guys. They showed us around, which was very appreciated for that. But one of the cool things beyond that was the stories they got to hear and talking magic with them. And each one had their own sort of just different, like it's neat when I talk to people that there's so many different experiences and ways people play magic and ways people learn about magic and ways people experience magic. Um, anyway, it was the whole, the whole thing was quite fascinating.

It was, the whole thing was quite fascinating. So the final tour of the, our mega tour, our eight-person tour, was Aaron, who showed us around Chapman University, which was probably the university I knew the least about. Although I didn't, I'd obviously visited UCL and UCL. I'd been on campus of those two. I guess all the other six, I'd never been on the campus, although I'd heard things about some of them. Although I admit, I didn't know a lot about University of San Diego,

and I didn't know a lot about Chapman. Those are the two I probably knew the least about going in. Even then, even the stuff like Fullerton or Irvine, I'd heard a little bit about. You know, it was really fascinating seeing everything. Irvine I heard a little bit about. It was really fascinating seeing everything. Anyway, Chapman also

was very different. It's an interesting campus in that it's kind of a campus that's kind of strewn through residential. Meaning most campuses are like, it's a campus and there's gates on the outside and it's a campus. And this one's kind of like, well, you walk by this guy's house to go from the science building to the language arts building or something. You know, like, it's just, it's kind of ingrained in the community.

It's really different. Cool, but it's very different. Aaron was an awesome guide. Aaron's another person who, I think, was Aaron more into Commander? I can't remember. I apologize, guys, if I get this. I just talked to so many people in such a short amount of time, trying to separate everything.

But the other thing that was really interesting was, oh, so the one thing they all had in common, there was one string that most of them had in common, all had in common there was one string that most of them had in common is um all of them had some interaction with the internet because that's how they they were to know although not all of them actually some of them didn't like i think casey found out from cory his brother who was active on either my tumblr or my twitter um but it's interesting that a lot of them, I had a lot of interesting chats about online communities. Like, for example, Lauren is very active in the online Magic Tumblr community

and trying to get more understanding of sort of, like, one of the neat things about Magic is Magic forms a lot of communities. And it was kind of neat to see like I don't have necessarily great vision, great visibility into all the different possible communities

that are out there and so it was really cool it just was really neat to sort of talk with people and see, like for example when we were done I posted on my Tumblr a picture of

me, Rachel, and whoever our guides were and then I thanked each person individually for the tour. I got permission for everybody's picture before I put them up. And then it was neat watching the community react to me posting it. And for example because Lauren was the most active on the Tumblr community there was a huge amount

of response because a lot of her magic friends could respond within there. And that was, I don't know, it was really interesting. The other thing that was kind of cool as I talked to everybody was, so one of the questions I asked them was, so timeline, I was there last week I was there the week after we had made the announcement about all the upcoming if you guys remember announcement week where I talked about the change and I talked all about the change in a block structure and then we talked about changes to different digital forms. And we talked about all the new products that were coming out. So it was definitely a, you know, it's definitely a week of information.

So one of the things I asked them was trying to get a feedback of what do you think of all the information? And because these people mostly were on social media, because they contacted me, they were all aware of it. And everybody was excited and interestingly for just different things. Like one of the things that's fascinating is how when you go online, it's very easy to sort of, the loudest voice can pull focus. Like, if we do something and the majority are excited about one thing, you hear more about that one thing. But when you kind of go individual and say, what are you excited about? You know, like, who was it?

One of the people was excited by, we had a dual deck coming out, it was Goblins versus Merfolk, and they were very excited by that. And it's like, okay, wow. Like, online, I'm sure there are people excited by that product, but like okay wow like no like online you know i'm sure there are people excited by that product but i get drowned out by people you know there were bigger things that we had announced and so i knew the excitement about the bigger things but it was kind of neat to hear people talk about the smaller things the subtler things that they were excited by you know that was that was quite interesting and have people sort of Like, a number of the people I talked to were very into Commander.

And one of the things that we had announced, not even during Announcement Week, but a few weeks earlier, was that there's a tribal theme to this year's Commander decks. And they're all excited. They really like that theme. Like, oh, what's going on? What are the tribes? What are the tribes? And so, you know...

Oh, there's a lot of... Also, it was very fun. People... I always get a lot of, also it was very fun, of people, I always get a lot of information by people asking me questions of what they're trying to figure out. Because normally when I meet people, one of the things they try to do is they try to get information out of me, right? It's like, oh,

I'm excited by this upcoming thing. Can you tell me more about this upcoming thing? Now, luckily, I got a lot of experience with sort of not giving away information, but saying something to excite people without really giving away much information. Years and years of training.

So, that was quite a thing. And it was interesting looking at, like, the main three things that we had announced was Ixalan, Unstable, and Dominaria. Those were sort of the booster products we had announced was Ixalan, Unstable, and Dominaria. Those were sort of the booster products we had announced. And I really got to talk to the length about each one of those products with people about why they were excited and, you know, they were just people who were like

dinosaurs or pirates or how much they're like a Mesoamerican theme. People talk about that. Oh, whenever I talk to people on Unstable, one of the things I found most interesting was this was the number one comment I got. I've never played it on set because it's 13 years ago, but I've heard good things about them and I'm excited to play one. That everybody I talked to was kind of like, or I don't know, most people I talked to were fascinated by, they didn't quite get what it was

because they'd never played it, because it's 13 years ago. You know, 2004 was unhinged. So for most of the people I was talking to, which were more casual players, you know, 13 years ago, plus these are people, most of the people who were either in college or recently graduated college, 13 years ago they were kids. So, and most of them were not playing Magic. So it was really interesting to sort of gain that

vantage point. And also I got to talk Dominaria with a bunch of people that didn't necessarily play Magic when Dominaria was the active thing. You know, like one of the things that's really interesting is talking to people in which they'd heard of Dominaria, but they weren't...

that Dominaria was more of a thing they'd heard about than something they'd played. Because one of our big concerns, in general, about this, is that we want Dominaria to be exciting not just for... not just for hardcore, long-time magic players. We want everybody to be excited by it. And one of the things that's really positive is

that there was a lot of sort of, like, there was buzz around it because they knew that it was Magic's origins, and they knew that it was a place we'd been to, but they didn't know a lot about it, and they were excited kind of learning more about it. So it was actually, like, the number of people who had never played in a set

that ever took place in Dominaria that were excited for Dominaria gave me a lot of hope that, like, one of our goals is to make something that sort of the new player can enjoy and the experienced player can enjoy. And when I say new, I don't even mean, you don't have to be that new to not play in Dominaria. But anyway, so it turns out, by the way, I was planning today to talk all through my trips to the colleges and talk about VidCon, but I'm coming up to work. So that means I'm going to have to talk VidCon on another day.

So tomorrow, or sorry, next podcast, I will talk about VidCon and my experiences at VidCon. So today, I guess it was just about college visits and just interaction with Magic Plays. Once again, so Tom, Nick, Jeremy and Caitlin, Christopher, Lauren, Chris, Vincent and Addison, Casey and Aaron,

thank you guys so much. You were awesome. You were awesome ambassadors of your school. You were awesome guides and you gave me so much insight about magic. So thank you. I thank you guys on social media.

I'll thank you here. It really was great. It was awesome getting shown around. And I actually was... I feel like I did a lot of work while actually viewing colleges. So anyway, guys, I'm now pulling up to Wizard. So we all know what that means. It means it's 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