Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #462: VidCon 2017

Episode Date: August 18, 2017

For the second year, I took my daughter to VidCon, the convention for YouTube stars. As an outsider looking in, I always get a lot of insights that I can apply to Magic.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. And it means I've dropped my son off at camp. Okay, so today, last podcast I was going to talk all about my trip with my daughter and I got like halfway through. So I took a vacation with my oldest daughter Rachel. The first half of it we looked at colleges. I talked all about that last podcast. But the second half, we visited VidCon. So I'm going to talk a little bit about it.

This was a trip I did last year and I did a podcast about it last year. But it was still interesting and so I'm going to do another podcast because I have lots of podcasts to make.

Okay, so let me explain what VidCon is for those that have never heard of it. Okay, so VidCon, I think stands for like video convention. It is YouTube video

stars, and it's a convention all about them. Started by Hank Green and his brother, John Green, who is an author that wrote the false star stars and other things.

Anyway, the two of them started this thing dedicated to people who do online video. And as I am a man with two teenage daughters, that is quite popular among the younger set. So this convention really is about the video stars. Names of which I really... other than going to this thing, they're not names I would recognize or names I would know because I'm not someone who watches lots of YouTube videos. But my daughter's generation watches a lot.

In fact, the interesting thing about this convention is the main audience of this convention is teenage girls. I mean, there's some teenage boys, and then there's some older people there, but there's a lot, a lot, a lot of teenage girls. So anyway, my daughter wanted or earned the right to go to VidCon, and I was escorting her there as her chaperone, Rachel 17. So anyway, I want to talk a little bit about what VidCon is and sort of talk about this year's trip. Obviously, I talked a bit about it last year, but I'm going to sort of re-explore it and just share sort of what we were up to. And then what I'm going to try to do is talk about how a lot of the takeaways from VidCon I have about sort of magic and how I function in magic. Like one of the things that's most interesting about it is the fact that it lets me take

a look at a culture, like one of the things about magic that you have to understand is magic has a little tiny ecosystem to it, right? That, you know, and this is true of anything, which is, you know, anything that has strong passion, it's like the people that are into it are very into it and very excited by it. And there's a whole community or communities built around it. And, you know, so it's really interesting when I get to step outside,

like when I'm inside my little bubble, it's hard sometimes to notice things because I'm in the bubble. I have a closeness to magic that in some ways it makes me harder to step back and see magic as a whole entity. Because of the relationship I have with it. But it's kind of cool that when I can see another ecosystem, something that is similar. It's kind of cool that when I can see another ecosystem, something that is similar, because there are a lot of similarities I find between the sort of the video crowd and magic. Like there are very passionate fans, like the people who are invested in this and involved in this, my daughters being two of them, are very invested. You know, my girls watch a lot of YouTube and they know all the stars

and they know all the people and it's a world. And the other thing about it is it's not that big a world. That's the thing that I realized this year at VidCon that it didn't really quite pick up last year is there's a lot of different people doing a lot of different things,

but it is the people who do it, especially the top people who do it, are really aware of each other, that it's really a community that sort of has some interaction with each other, and that one of the interesting things about it is that one of the, so the way, here's how it works, is there's a giant convention hall, and I'll talk all about that, and then there is panels, and there is, you know, interviews, and there's things where you come and watch people, and then there's something called meet and greets, where you basically, there's a lottery to sort of pick people, and then you stand

in the line where you wait for quite a while, we'll get to that, and you get to meet them for, you know, a minute, not very long, but you meet them, talk to them a little bit, take a picture with them, and then on to the next person. And so one of my big things is I like using VidCon as a way to sort of look at finding all the similarities between VidCon or or this world, and the magic world. And there's a lot of parallels. In fact, a surprising number of parallels. Okay, so the... Let me walk through. So what will happen is when I get to things that I think were relevant, I'll bring them up and we'll talk about them. But I'm just going to sort of explain a little bit about VidCon for you.

Okay, so first I'll talk about the exhibition hall. So the exhibition hall, basically there's just a lot of companies that are interested in this crowd and pretty much they fell into a couple different categories. One is kind of lifestyle brands of just these are brands that they think that the people who are the majority of this audience would enjoy this product. So, for example, a really big category was candy.

In fact, so much so that I heard one of the nicknames this year was Candy Con, because there's just a lot of candy. I mean, there was, see if I can remember all the candy. There was like sweet tarts, M&Ms, Twix, Snickers, Maltesers, which are like new Whoppers from England, the little Dove chocolates. Anyway, there was all sorts of, I add a lot of samples. But the idea is,

so there's some lifestyle stuff, which is just, some of it is stuff like candy, some of it, Hasbro was actually there. Hasbro Games was there. I stopped by and said hi. You know, there were a lot of sort of things that we might, now Hasbro was getting a little bit younger, but also the audience.

When I say teenage girls, it also goes a little bit younger than that. And there were a bunch of things that were like Disney Channel or there were some movies there that were more like kids movies like Despicable Me 3 was there. And so there's a bunch of people

that are, Nickelodeon was there. There's a lot of, NBC had a whole bunch of booths there. And the idea essentially is that and then and then some of it is people who are aimed at the business, like are you selling microphones are you selling video software, there's a bunch of people who are sort of aiming at people who, like not only are there people who are famous for making YouTube videos, there's a lot of people that

make YouTube videos that their dream is becoming one of these big stars, but it's something they kind of do. And there is a, there's a culture there. Like, let's, okay, so our first similarity to magic, like, we talk about the, we have the Pro Tour, you know, and like, one of the ideas behind the Pro Tour is, hey, you know, if you get real good at Magic, maybe one day you could be on the big screen making money in the Pro Tour. Now, the reality is most people don't go to the Pro Tour, but it's aspirational.

And a lot of people sort of, now, once again, there's many ways to play Magic. Competitive is merely one element of it. I'm not saying you need to be competitive, or competitive is necessarily something that everybody wants. But for the people that enjoy that aspect of it, there's a competitive aspect. And so, you know, there's a lot of ways and places you can go and play Magic,

and there's sort of a ladder to the Pro Tour, if you will. There's a similar thing going on in VidCon in that there's a lot of people who are making videos and doing their thing with the dream of one day hitting it big, of one day being one of the stars up one stage. And the reality is most of those people, that's not going to happen, you know, but it happens to some. And like one of the panels I saw, they were kind of talking about their big break, which I found was very interesting,

which is sort of the way it tends to work is when you start, you're usually by yourself. Maybe friends are helping you or family or something. But pretty much when you start, it's you. And that what tends to happen is you do the thing you do. And at some point, for the people who are successful, they did something that just sort of caught the attention of the world. You know, something in which, like, you know, in this panel, they were talking about the first time they posted a video that had millions of viewers.

Because the way the internet works, which is interesting, I mean, most people probably know this, is that things snowball. Because the way videos is they get shared. So what you need to do is make something people go, oh, that's interesting, and they share it. And then it snowballs from there that, you know, one person shares it with two people who share it with four people, you know, and it can grow super fast. And that some of these success stories is kind of like oh i was posting my video and normally i get 3 000 views and then one day i got 2 million views you know that's when you go viral as they call it um and that once it only takes one time you to get one thing that gets noticed that starts making people come and you know that's how people get

agents and how people you know sort of most of the people that are what I learned this time is most of the people that are making content that you would recognize that are stars if you will they're not working alone that it's really a business that the people that are doing this have a whole support network um you know they have cameramen and they have producers. And, you know, you might recognize them as the talent of it. And maybe once upon a time, they started where it was mostly them. But once you get big, it becomes a much bigger thing than that. And in some ways, magic is similar in that I think a lot of times,

like I'll write articles about designing, and it sounds like, you know, a team of four made everything. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. There's a giant, behind the scenes, there's hundreds of people making a magic set. You know, I mean, I tend to talk about the R&D portion just because that's what I do. But that's just, you know, and even then, even if you just take R&D, like the number of people just in R&D, so R&D has like 45 people, I'd say. The number of people that touch a set in R&D, you know, who have some impact on it is probably 30 people out of the 45, you know, have some impact on every set. And I might even be shooting low.

Because there's lots of playtesting that goes on. There's lots of meetings and mini teams and even just people who go through and look at the file and make notes, you know, or people who just some aspect needs to get addressed and they're the expert in that area. So they come to them. There's all sorts of people. And this is just R&D.

This is not the rest of the company. And I've done podcasts. So like, you know, once you get outside of R&D, there's people who have to literally lay out the cards and do the design and make the packaging and sell it to stores and figure out logistics and worry about branding and marketing and sales. And, you know, there's all sorts of people that are working on stuff. So that was interesting when they were sort of explaining that, like, what you see here, you know, this might be the face, but it's not the whole thing. Like, in a lot of ways, I'm the face, one of the faces of magic. But, and a lot of people love to assume that I do everything.

Like, you know, I get some odd letters where people are unhappy about something, or they're happy about something, and I get all the credit and all the blame, even though lots of other people deserve, you know, well, credit, I'm not trying to blame other people. But it's very interesting watching sort of that dynamic. But anyway, so one of the interesting things about VidCon is there's an aspirational aspect, which is very interesting to watch because magic has an aspirational aspect to it as well. The other thing that was really interesting was on the showroom is they're trying

to create experiences. So for example, there were three, NBC had three booths set up. One was American Ninja, where they had the ramp, where you could try to run up the ramp, and you could watch people try to run up the ramp. It's very hard, by the way. Number two was The Voice, which Rachel did, where you can audition

to be on The Voice, a little glass booth, and you can sing. And the third thing was a Jimmy Fallon Tonight Show where they do this thing with this egg break where you break an egg on your head. I think they call it egg roulette. And here instead of being an actual egg, because I guess they figured out it's smelly to have an actual

egg on you, it was powder. And so you would take turns picking eggs and then you crack the one. Either they're hard-boiled eggs or on the show they're raw eggs. But here they were eggs filled with powder, and they would make all this giant yellow powder and cover you. And the interesting thing about the exhibition hall was they were very much trying to be, everyone had to have an activity.

Or at least the successful ones were trying to do an activity. You know, like Ferdinand is a new movie coming out by the makers of Ice Age. And they had you make a little flower like Laurel. I guess Ferdinand likes the bull from the story as a kid. It's the bull that just wants to sit by the tree

and relax and they want him to be a bull and a bullfighter. He doesn't want to do that. There's a movie coming out. You know, if you guys are Nickelodeon, you could they put garbage bags over you, but they dump the green goo on you. It's got a name, but whatever the green goo is called. So there are a lot of different things you could do, and there are samples, and you know, Food Network, you can make a donut. I actually, if you guys watch my Twitter feed,

I made a magic donut. I made a color pie donut. And it turns out four of the five icing, or sorry, the four colored icings they had was red, green, white, and like a dark brown, which kind of red is black. And then I ended up using a blue Froot Loop for blue because they didn't have any blue frosting.

But anyway, I, there's lots and lots of things to do. very, very much aimed at this younger audience. So anyway, you could wander around there, and there was plenty to do there. Then there were panels. Some of them were just one person. Some were a whole group. I guess panels is a whole group.

But there are Q&As and different things. And so one of the things interesting watching is, so for example, San Diego Comic-Con this year, I'm going to do a Q&As and different things. And so one of the things interesting watching is, so for example, San Diego Comic-Con this year, I'm going to do a Q&A all by myself. And then at HazCon, I'm doing Q&A all by myself. So it's interesting watching the Q&As and sort of seeing how they answer questions and, you know, how the fans address them. It is neat sort of sitting someplace and watching somebody else do a Q&A. One of my favorite Q&As, by the way, we went and saw, I don't remember his name correctly, John Cozart? Cozart?

I think is his name. He does, he's a singer, and he's really famous for doing, I think it's called Happily Ever After, where he imagines what happens after the story's end, and he sings the parts of the different princesses. I guess he has one coming up soon where he sings the parts of the princess. But anyway, he is an entertainer. And his manager sat on stage with him, which was very interesting. Last year, we actually saw him last year, too. His manager was in the audience. And so it has been very interesting watching

the manager sort of, she would chime in from time to time. And the neat thing about it, which I actually really enjoyed, was that she kept interjecting kind of the business. Like, one of the things that was going on was he was not producing a lot of content because he had a bar, he had a standard that he wanted to rise above. And she was like, okay, I'm just going to make the best stuff I can make. And she was like, okay, hey, fans of of his would you like to see a little more stuff even if it's slightly lower

in quality you know is his quality bar super high but could he make stuff that's a little bit less quality but to see more of it would you rather see more of it yeah yeah I would see more of it and she was just trying to get it's very funny she's trying to get his fans to convince him that you know it's okay to, you know, lower the quality of art just a little bit so you can get more content out.

And one of the other things that's been interesting is, you know, as somebody who makes a lot of content, one of the things I'm always trying to figure out is what's the right amount

of content. Now, I am on the side of making a lot of content just because one of the things I've learned is there's a lot of different audiences and the different audiences want different things. And that I try to create a lot of different stuff so that whatever people, however people want to experience it, I'm crafting something they enjoy. Like, for example, some people like reading my articles because, you know what, they don't have a lot of time. They can quickly read it, other people like the podcast

because like well I'm going to be driving anyway and it just lets me fill this time I do my comics, I do my blog I do my head to head I do all sorts of things because I'm just trying to get a lot of content out there and I think it's interesting that I've made a different decision than John Cozart which is

I have definitely shot a little more toward volume, uh, of trying, like one of the things about my blog, for instance, that was really interesting is there's a, there is two options of how I can handle my blog. One is I answer questions much more infrequently, but I get very detailed answers that I sort of a high quality level blog where, you know, everything is just really worth the time reading. And it is, um, you know, it's, it is low and the quantity is lower, but the quality is higher. Or I can take a thing where I answer a lot of questions. I don't go really in depth. Um, but I take the time to answer more people

and get more interactions. Um, and what I did is I take the time to answer more people and get more interactions. And what I did is I spent some time kind of investigating that, and what I found for me with the audience I was dealing with is the happiest the audience was is when I was interacting directly with them. That, for example, one of the interesting things when I meet people and I say to them, you know, do you follow my blog? If they say yes, then I say to them, do you ever ask me a question? They go, yes. And I'm like, did I answer?

They go, yes. And then they name whatever thing I answered. And that the me directly answering their question was really important. It's really important. The idea that, you know, that felt like the closest connection possible is I ask a question and Mark answers my question. And so I made a conscious choice in my blog that I was trying to connect with more people rather than give more detailed information. And the reason I decided that is, look, I have a column. And my column, you know, it's like 3,000 words every week.

And I can go really in-depth on stuff. And I have this podcast where I talk for half an hour. I can go pretty in-depth on stuff. And so I made an interesting choice of sort of quantity over quality. I mean, I don't think my answer was bad or anything. But, I mean, I'm choosing to have more smaller sound bites than having a longer one, at least on my blog. Which is interesting because that was the very conversation that they were having, and he was obviously going a different direction. Now, once again, the difference between that group and me is

the content the audience enjoys is solely made by the artist. Where, obviously, I'm making magic, and that's what people enjoy, but the stuff I make on the side, you know, the stuff I make the blogs and the podcasts and the articles and stuff, are supplementary to the main things. It's a little

bit different. Like, I'm trying to sort of get you to enjoy the primary thing more. Not that you can't enjoy this for itself, but it's tied into that. And that's a little different. So we went to a lot of panels. Went to a bunch of female empowerment panels. So there's a lot of interesting discussions.

One of the things that we're always discussing is, you you know we have we we are well aware of our demographics and i'm always looking how to expand of how to take audiences that we have in smaller number and sort of how can you make content for them that's rewarding um and so i i'm very interested like one of the things that uh i I'm always trying to do is figure out, and females are a good thing, where we've gone up in percentages over time. If you go back to early, early magic, it was a lot lower. In fact, we've somewhere between tripled and quadrupled,

or I'm saying quintupled the female audience. But still, there's more room to go. And are we procreating content? The very interesting thing for me is there's different audiences for media content. There's different places to make content. There's different kinds of content. I'm always very fascinated to try to understand what is the best content? How can I do that?

And that came up a lot in some of these panels of sort of how do you make content? How do you do that? And that was, anyway, that came up a lot in some of these panels of sort of how do you make content? How do you make your audience happy? And it's really interesting to sort of think about that. So the final section is called a meet and greet, where you get in an insanely long line and you wait for an hour or so, but you wait in line for a while. And then you get to meet your, meet the person that you, it's a while. And then you get to meet the person that you saw. It's a lottery system, so everybody gets to meet somebody, but you don't get to meet everybody. Before they did the lottery system, people would just wait in line all day long.

And then the only way to meet the stars was pretty much not doing anything at VidCon, but waiting in line. So they now set up a lottery, so you have to wait in line a little bit, but you still have time to do other stuff. So anyway, Rachel ended up meeting four people. I guess you get to meet two people, but because I had to buy a badge as her chaperone, I got to meet two people but I could give them to her.

That's allowable. So essentially, my meeting greets went to her, so she has four meeting greets. It was fascinating watching the people interact with the public. Like I said, one of the interesting things for me is if in the right place at the right time, I am one of these people, you know what I'm saying?

Like in my bubble, I'm a celebrity. But when you get outside the bubble, like at VidCon, for example, I think I got recognized four times at VidCon. And two of the four were by content creators, not by audience, you know, not like fact. Yeah, two of the four. No, take that back. Three of the four.

So anyway, one of the interesting things is that there's not a lot of overlap right now, you know. Not tons of teenage girls playing Magic. I'd love for more to, though. But it was really interesting of watching the, sort of, the celebrities interact with their fans. Because these are celebrities,

I mean, they're probably a little bit more celebrities than I am. Some of these have millions of views. More than I get. But it was very interesting. As a minor celebrity, watching people deal with their fans... One of the big things that I've tried really hard

is I want every fan experience for the fan to be positive. And that means every time I meet somebody, you know, I want to be an ambassador of the game. I want to be somebody who, like, it's very interesting. Like, one of the dynamics that would happen is, like, people would walk up to the star and they would start crying. Now, I don't get people to start crying because I don't have teenage girls mostly coming up to me, but they had a lot of emotion.

Like, this was a big deal to meet them. It was really exciting for them. And what I find when people meet me who are really excited, usually the more common thing is they just don't know what to say. They're kind of taken aback. That's a common... And I've learned, for example, to start asking questions. Like, okay.

Because sometimes people are just really excited to meet you and a really common response is they just kind of blink. They're like, ah, I have no idea what to say. And so I've learned to give them some easy questions to answer. But one of my goals, and this was interesting watching them, and I was very impressed watching how they interacted with their fans, is I want to be a good celebrity, if you will. I want to interact. Like, I mean, I say this, I've said this multiple times.

Have you ever seen me in public? I mean, there's two different kinds of public, I guess. There's magic public where I'm clearly an event where I'm a magic celebrity and 100% come up to me, gladly take pictures, sign things. If it's out in more general public, I still don't mind you coming up to me and saying hello and I'd be happy to take a quick picture or something if I'm with my family just be aware that I have a shorter amount of time to do that but I'm always happy if you want to take a picture

you want me to sign a card you want to ask me a question I get that the fans are what I love my job, it's a dream job and I wouldn't have it if not that the fans are what get, like, I love my job. It's a dream job. And I wouldn't have it if not for the fans. If there weren't people playing the game,

if there weren't people passionate about magic, if there weren't communities and all the stuff that happened, if magic wasn't the phenomenon it was, and that wouldn't happen without the audience. And so, you know, I really, I have great respect for the audience and that one of the things that I'm always working on is sort of how to be the best sort of celebrity I can be. And VidCon was really interesting for me

of sort of watching other people do this and how they handle it. And anyway, it's sort of like, the interesting thing is I'm going to San Diego Comic-Con later this year. I'm going to HasCon. That's my two conventions this summer. And at both of, like, the interesting thing is, I'm going to San Diego Comic Con later this year, I'm going to HasCon, that's my two conventions this summer,

and at both of those conventions, I'm going to have opportunities to interact with fans. I think I'm doing a signing at San Diego Comic Con, and I'm not quite sure

what's going on at HasCon, but I'm sure I'm doing signings and stuff at HasCon. But what I realized is I will be in a similar boat to they are,

where fans have come to see me, and I will interact with them, and I want to do as good a a similar boat to they are where fans have come to see me and I will interact with them. And I want to do as good a job as these people did with their fans. I was really impressed watching them. And be in mind, what they were doing is they would be there for hours. Usually they would do two hours at a shot.

And it's just fan after fan. It's like, here's a fan excited to see you. And this is their fans one shot to see you. And they're really excited. Okay. Now the next person, now the next person. And you're just doing that for two hours. That's a lot. You know, that's, that's, that is, there's a lot, you know, that's not easy to do. And I don't know if I'll necessarily have a two hour stint or not. But I, I don't know. It really made me sort of say, how can I step up? You know, how can I do that? But anyway, I'm now here at work.

So that's our VidCon trip. I didn't get into the Twix prom or the... There's a lot of things that go on there. Twix prom is this thing at the end where they have this giant dance where they play music louder than I understand why you'd ever want to play music. And then I stayed out in the hall and my daughter danced. Yeah, there's a lot of different

events that go on there. But anyway, that is VidCon 2017. It was really interesting, and I'm hoping as I get to San Diego Comic Con and get to Hascon, which I'll do podcasts, obviously, in both of those, let you know how they went. But anyway, that is VidCon 2017 those, let you know how they went. But anyway, that is VidCon 2017.

So I hope you guys enjoyed it. Yeah, I just realized, I'm so used to like, all year long, I'm driving Rachel to school, and now I'm actually coming to work. So I actually,

under 30 minutes. That hasn't happened in a while. But anyway, I do have to go, because I'm at work. So as I'm parked in my car, or my car is parked, we all know what that means.

That is the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you next time.