Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #466: Generation Decks

Episode Date: September 1, 2017

For the first time, I review a book. Okay, it's a book about the history of Magic.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And I dropped my son off at camp. Okay, so today I'm going to do something for the first time, I think. I'm going to do a book review. So recently I was on vacation. And so I had time to read a book. I actually, so there's a guy named Titus Chalk,

wrote a book called Generation Next, which was about the history of magic. Now, there's one other, Titus has written one other book called So You Wear a Cape, which I'll admit I've not read. At some point, I'm sure I will, but I've not read yet. There also was another book written a while ago called Johnny Magic and the Card Shark Kids by a guy named David Kushner. Maybe at some point I will review that book. I actually have read that book and I was actually more involved with helping him get data on that book. So let me start before I get into my book giving a few caveats. One is, here's what I think happened. I think Titus contacted me about interviewing me for this book. And whenever I get an interview request, I love doing interviews, so I'm always like, fine.

But I always pass it along to our PR department because everything has to be okayed by our PR department. I never ended up interviewing with Titus. I have no idea what happened. I basically passed it along and said, this sounds great. And then it never got back to me. So I don't know who dropped the ball. We had a big switch over of some of our PR people in the last couple years. I don't know what happened. I never actually interviewed for the book. So I'm in the book a bunch and he

quotes me. But whenever he quotes me, it's from an article or something I've written about it. And obviously I've written a lot about magic. So there's plenty of quotes by me in the book, but none of them are ever from an interview. And so the interesting thing for me is, like, I'm a magic historian, so I love reading about magic. And so this book could not be more aimed at me.

I also am, you know, I have a lot of knowledge in this field. So I have a lot of inside information. So it was an interesting read. So I want to sort of talk about my feelings about the book. I have half an hour. So first and foremost, let me say this. I love that Titus wrote this book. I wish more people would write books about magic and magic history.

I really, really enjoy, like, one of my big fears in general is that there's a lot of rich history to magic. And I don't want it to all slip away. It's one of the reasons I do these podcasts and I write a lot of articles. And, like, I feel like one of my jobs has been historian. And so I try to do a lot of things to like I feel like one of my job has been historian and so I try to do a lot of things to sort of explain how things came to be. The one thing that so Titus is a reporter. I think he's a sports reporter. So he did a lot of interviews. So one of the neat things about the book is he went and he interviewed a whole bunch of people. So here's people that I

know he interviewed and there might be a few people that I'm forgetting he interviewed. So for sure, for sure, for sure, he interviewed Richard Garfield. He interviewed Scaf Elias. He interviewed Peter Atkinson. So real quickly, Richard Garfield, creator of Magic. Hopefully you guys all know that.

Scaf Elias was one of the original playtester, one of the East Coast playtester that made Antiquities and Ice Age and Alliances and Fallen Empires. He worked in R&D for quite a while, if you've heard of my Skaff stories. He was actually brand manager of Magic for a while, and he's a creator of the Pro Tour. So Skaff did a lot of things, and he was very instrumental.

A lot of big things he did. Anyway, Skaff clearly did a bunch of interviews with Skaff. He talked with Peter, Peter Atkinson. So Peter founded or co-founded Wizards. And he was very instrumental, obviously, in magic even existing. He interviewed Lisa Stevens, who was one of the early vice presidents at Wizards. He interviewed, I think, Dave Howell, who was one of the people working early on at Wizards. He interviewed Randy Buehler, who, pro player, did a lot of commentary for us that you guys might know.

But also, he worked behind the scenes. He was my boss for a while. Actually, the person that officially made me head designer. He, who else did he interview? He interviewed a whole bunch of people. He interviewed one of the guys at ProServe. There's a company when we first started the Pro Tour that we worked with. He interviewed him, a guy named Seth.

He interviewed a whole bunch of people. He interviewed Brian Weissman, who is a good friend of mine. Weissman is creator of The Deck. So one of the first people really to, the first person to sort of understand the idea of card advantage. And he sort of was attributed with having the first deck that people copied, called The Deck. He interviewed John Finkel. He interviewed, I think, Kaibuda.

He interviewed a whole bunch of pro players. He interviewed Mark Justice, for those that don't know. So, I'm going to try to sort of wade through this. Maybe I'll touch upon different people he talked with. Okay, so the first part of the book talks about the history of magic and sort of where it came to be. He spends a little bit of time sort of, the book is meant for people who don't necessarily know magic, so

he spends some time explaining things. One of the tricky things is there's a fine line between and he does a decent job of this, between sort of explaining things in general enough terms that people that don't know magic can follow what's going on and being able to sort of explain things

for such that the people who know magic understand what you mean. Like there's a lot of like, I want to have enough basics that, hey, the general person who doesn't really know magic can get the essence of what I'm saying and then the magic player who knows more depth can sort of get the more depth I'm saying. And there's a fine line. He did a pretty good job of that. He definitely has the...

He errs a little bit in trying to make sure that the magic players understand what's going on, which, as a magic player, that means I got it. I don't know... It's hard for me to sort of judge this book as a non-magic player. There's a lot of interesting things in it that I don't know. It's hard for me to sort of judge this book as a non-magic player. There's a lot of interesting things in it that I don't think you need to know magic to know.

Although he gets in the nitty gritty every once in a while in some of the tournament talks and stuff. So anyway, he starts by talking about the history of magic. And the funny thing is while I know the basics, while I know, I mean I've obviously heard the stories and I've shared the stories and I know a lot of the basics.

Like, so I started in 1995. Magic comes out in 1993. Obviously, you know, the initial stuff with Richard and Peter, I think it's either 91 or 92. So there's about three or four years worth of stories that I've heard, but I wasn't there for. And that's the stuff that's most fascinating to me, because he goes and he interviews actual people, and you know, like, I, well, I've had plenty of interaction with Peter. I've never really sat down and interviewed Peter, so, like, I don't, I didn't know some of these stories. It was neat. One of the things I enjoyed in the book, as a magic historian, was there were a lot of good, cool, sort of early stories of magic.

And I think of all the different time periods, the one that he actually got the best coverage of was the really early days. He shares a bunch of stories. And like one of the things that's really interesting that was neat to see in this book is Peter Atkinson starts and co-found, there's five people that founded it, but he starts this company. In the beginning, it's a tiny, tiny thinking company. There's no offices or anything. Peter spends most of the time just working late at work. After he finishes his work at Boeing, he works on his company and he's there late into the evening,

many nights. And that, you know, the first official office, I guess, was in his basement, you know, and the early, early days, it was a tiny, tiny company making role-playing game supplements, you know. Now, it was a passion of Peter that he poured great love into it and he cared, but it was, until Magic comes around, it was a really tiny little company. And one of the neat things about this is there are all sorts of things that could have prevented magic from happening because they did not have the resources like one of the things Peter talks about in the book I thought was

really interesting was this fear of he recognized how awesome an idea was and he knew other people would figure out that it was a good idea so he had to be really careful sort of how he was sharing information because the last thing he wanted is somebody bigger to do it. That, you know, he really saw the potential in the idea. And there's a lot of neat details in sort of how it came to be. Richard talked a little bit about like the actual moment of epiphany. And anyway, there's the other cool thing, which I know some of, but I didn't realize until I read this book, was Richard made a game called Five Colors

that essentially was the precursor of the color wheel and of the mana system, but it didn't have the trading card game aspect in it. It didn't have, you know, the game wasn't bigger than the box. You got all the pieces in it. It was a locked deck. And Richard knew he had something cool, but that it was missing something. And that something was trading cards.

That it was a game in which, you know, the whole idea behind a trading card game, that you have all these pieces and you build what you want, that was sort of the rocket fuel that lit this idea but one thing I didn't realize was the the color wheel and the mana system which are if you ever I type of the golden trifecta one of them is the idea of a trading card game the other two is the color pie and the mana system this is the three of the golden trifecta he had two so the one thing is interesting is heread of Ecta. He had two. So one of the things that's interesting is

he had a game he had made that had two of them, and he realized he didn't quite have what he needed yet, and he was sitting in a closet. And that one of the things that Richard did was, Richard loves games, you know. And another fun thing about reading this book is, I don't know how often people have heard from Richard. I mean, he's written some articles,

and there definitely is some Richard stuff out there. It's not like Richard's never written anything. But it was fun to have someone sort of interview him and just hear some from Richard early stories. So that was one of the fun things about the book for me, is getting to hear straight from Richard, from Peter, from Scaf, really early stories. I mean, like super like,

and one of the things you realize along the way is there were so many things that could have stopped magic. There were so many things that could have gone wrong that in some ways, when something like magic happens, it was a phenomenon, right? It was kind of, you know, these don't come along all that often. Something that just kind of defies normal expectation and just sort of

becomes this thing that's bigger than any of the people involved. And so one of the cool things is whenever you have that magic something, it's like the historian in me is like, okay, what happened there? And like there's a great story in the book about, so Peter had gotten some samples and showed off the samples at Origins. So that's the first time the game was revealed, the actual cards were revealed to the public. But the first time the game went on sale was at Gen Con that year. And what happened was, Gen Con was, I think, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

And the cards had clear customs that they were going to sell from card to Monday. And they didn't show up on Thursday. And they didn't show up until the middle of the day on Friday. And I, like, I had kind of heard that. It wasn't like I'd never, ever heard that detail. But just hearing the story of them, like, pacing in the back of, you know, trying to wait for the truck to show up so they can offload it and then getting all the people so they could get it to the booth.

Just hearing that actual story was kind of cool. I tell a lot of... I've tried really hard to share a lot of the stories about behind the scenes stuff that I first hand did and I feel like I've done a pretty good job of sharing a lot of that. Some of these stories in the book have not been shared that much. And so if you, you know, I will recommend this book to anybody who cares about magic history.

He talks to a lot of people, and there's a lot of just neat little stories. Some of which I didn't know, and I probably know more magic history than most. So it was cool. And it's also neat meeting all the different people. Like I know Richard and Peter and Scaf and Lisa and Dave and Randy and Brian and John and I know these people. I've met them all. I know who they are.

You know. And so who they are, you know. And so it is neat for you all to start to listen to some of these people firsthand. And like, for example, I was really happy I interviewed Brian. So like Brian Weissman's a good friend of mine. I met him way, way back in the early days playing Magic and on the Pro Tour and stuff. And Brian is a really sharp guy

and was really instrumental in early Magic. But I feel like I kind of got lost over time. Like, you know, I'll introduce new magic players to Brian and I'm like, it's Brian Weissman! And they're like, who is that? And I'm like, oh, it makes my heart sad. That, you know, that's one of the reasons that I was happy to have just read the book

and why it was fun to read and I recommend. Like I said, the thing that I found the most interesting was the early stuff, but also I think because I wasn't there for that. So it's the stuff in which I'm learning things. I mean, this book was really interesting for me because

I was there for a lot of the stuff he talks about in the book. So, and I do show up from time to time in the book. It's crystal clear he did not interview me because he only talked, like, all the quotes for me are kind of stuff he picked up in articles. So there's

contextual stuff that's missing that I could have provided that just wasn't there. I mean, one of my criticisms, and let's let me stress, I really enjoy the book. I heartily recommend reading it. My criticisms are not meant to, I like the book a lot. I just want to sort of, I'm critiquing, I'm doing a review.

So I'm trying to sort of take an analytical eye. I do like the book, so please don't take any criticism as some slam on the book. I like the book, so please don't take any criticism as some slam on the book. I like the book. Read the book. So the number one problem, as a historian who read the book, is he's really good at covering the early days. He didn't interview a lot of people.

Like, part of this, he didn't get to interview me. He didn't interview a lot of people from the middle to later days, especially from wizards. So he tends to talk about the part of magic that's really public. So a lot of the talk, for example, is about stuff like the Pro Tour. It's very sort of outside, outside-ish. And so it doesn't, I feel like there's a lot of information about early magic's forming

and there's a lot of information about the pro tour, but it's missing, I mean, there's one chapter where he talks about me walking through the stages of magic. I mean, there's a little bit of it, but it really, like, for example, there are a lot of people that were very instrumental on magic. You know, and, I mean, one of these days, I don't know, I'll make a top ten list. But let's say I made a top ten list of the most instrumental people on magic. He didn't interview, like, half of them. Like, there's a lot of people that are really,

so, like, I feel like the book did a really good job of covering the early years and did a really good job of covering certain aspects later years, especially the pro tour. But it doesn't... There's a lot of things Magic had to go through. There's a lot of growing pains that Magic had to go through. And I feel like this book focuses on the early days and focuses on sort of the showy parts, the pro tour especially. And there's a lot that is missing from sort of the showy parts, the pro tour especially. And there's a lot that is missing

from sort of the... Magic is going to be 25 next year. There's a lot of interesting things that happened beyond just it got made. No, those stories were fascinating. And to be honest, if the book was nothing but how did Magic get made

and it started in 1990 when the Wizards got founded and ended in 1993 when the game came out, I would be all over that. It's not like I'm not interested in the early stuff. In fact, I'm fascinated by the early stuff. It just was trying to be something that was more the history of magic and I feel like it really focused on very specific parts. And it also had a little bit of, and then this is the nature of interviews, kind of, it revolved around the people that he was able to interview. So it really makes it sound like, hey, the key people that did the magic things were coincidentally the people he interviewed.

And so the dynamic of that is when you interview somebody, well, they're going to explain their vantage point of the game they made, how they interacted with the game. And to every person, hey, here's why they were instrumental in the game. And to be fair, everybody he interviewed was instrumental in some

way. Everybody he interviewed was someone who really did have a big part in magic. But there's a lot of people he didn't interview that also had a big part. And the lack of some of those people sort of just made the people that he did interview as if they just did more heavy lifting. And so, for example, a lot of people worked with R&D. For example, I've done a whole series of podcasts on the various people. Like I'm up to the third wave of R&D. I haven't even gotten to fourth wave yet. And I would argue the fifth wave is starting these days. But anyway, so the, so like for example, people who worked in R&D, he talked to Richard and Scaf. He talked to Randy. He quotes me a lot. And that's

kind of it. I mean, he mentions a few people like Bill in passing. But like, for example, wow has Bill Rose been instrumental in magic. Like, very instrumental. And you would not know that from this book. Like, all this book tells you is, oh, he's one of the guys that made Mirage. You know, and maybe he was an early play drafter. book tells you is, oh, he's one of the guys that made Mirage. You know, and maybe, like, he was an early playtester. But, you know, so there's a lot of sort of, oh, he mentioned Aaron. He does mention Aaron. So it's just, there's a lot of people that spent a lot of time and did a lot of things.

And that's just the R&D part. I'm not talking about the art part. You know, like, a similar thing where there's a lot of art directors that have a lot, have pushed the game in new directions, and, like, he talks to Jesper, the very first art director, but that kind of stops there, you know, so, and maybe, like I said, maybe, maybe all of magic is just too big a thing for any one book to do anyway, but it was really, it really focused on certain aspects of it. And those aspects were interesting. Like talking to Jesper, Jesper is a really interesting guy.

And, you know, like I didn't know how Jesper got his job. I didn't know that. So that was really cool. So Jesper was the original art director. I actually worked on him. Um, he came back to Wizards, uh, and he actually was my art director for, uh, Unhinged, I think. I think he was the art director for either Unglute or Unhinged. I think he's the art director for Unhinged, I think. I think he was the art director for either Unglute or Unhinged. I think he's the art director for Unhinged.

One of the two. But anyway, it was neat. Like I said, it was really, really neat to see the vantage stories of these people that were really involved. And there's a lot of sort of nitty-gritty that happens early on. Like I said, I think the book does an amazing job of early magic and talking a lot of, like the beginnings

are really, really well covered and I think it's fascinating. I feel like the later part, the middle to later was, he touches upon it and he touches a lot on the organized play part. So if you're interested

in the organized play part, he does a pretty good job of talking about that and he does a lot on the organized play part. So if you're interested in the organized play part, he does a pretty good job of talking about that. And he does a pretty good job of even talking about some of the early histories of organized play. Like the fact that I was really happy he talked to Brian. That, for example, was really cool. And once again,

maybe my problem is I know too much. Like, you know, you could have written a War and Peace-sized novel. I'm like, hey, but wait, you forgot about the blah, blah, blah. But anyway, there's a lot of innovations and stuff that happen. I mean, one of the interesting things about magic, from my mind, is that it's an ever-evolving thing. And magic has gone through a lot of growing pains.

And there's a lot of things that that lessons we've learned along the way. And I feel, and maybe Tyson has to write another book, I feel that it didn't really cover, in some ways, really this book was about early magic and organized play. That's really what it covers. He does a little bit of covering some more stuff and he has a few individual chapters. I mean, the thing I enjoyed most is when it was in narrative form,

when it sort of was telling a story, and when it was doing that, that's when the book really sung to me. That there was just, especially, he would get in deep and interview people and talk to people, and you'd hear stories, some of which I had never heard, about how things came to be, and how people got involved.

And, you know, there's a great Lisa Stevens story about, like, she gets a call from some distributor. Like, everybody's bugging her for more cards, which they don't have. And then she gets a call from a distributor who is like, we want to return it. We can't sell this. And she's like, okay, give me 10 minutes. And she calls other distributors and says, this person has product. And then she calls them back a little later in the day

and he goes, okay, so you guys want to return your product? He goes, no, we're all sold out. Can we get more? And it's an awesome story. So anyway, I don't want to ruin this book. But like I said, there was so many fun, touching, cool moments. And if you like magic, it is definitely worth the read to see some of that stuff and hear some of that stuff.

The purest in me, the magic historian, is there is definitely some gaps. Like one of the things that I would love to see, which once again is a little different. There's so many aspects of magic. No one book's covering it all anyway. Kind of the part that I'm most interested in, and maybe this just plays to the role I played in, so take that with a grain of salt. But the game really spent a lot of time growing and changing,

and there's a lot of sort of... One of the neat things about the game is it's not like Richard made the game and everything about it was perfect. Now clearly, clearly, it had the thing it needed. It had its magic spark. That happened from day one. But one of the interesting stories about magic

is we really over time learned a lot of things. And like he talks about organized play, but he only talks about, for example, really the high level organized play. I mean, he about, for example, really the high-level organized play. I mean, he shares some personal stories of his own magic playing, and that gets a little bit more into the Friday Night Magics and stuff. But he never really gets into the history of that.

I feel like, once again, he touches on a bunch of stuff. I mean, it's kind of not fair to Titus. There's so much story, and he only gets one book worth. So maybe he writes more books later. The international, like, the international, the spread to international is covered really shortly in one chapter.

He doesn't talk too much about lower level organized play, which is a, a pretty big thing that I feel like Wizards innovated and Magic innovated. He doesn't talk much

about innovation within the game itself. He doesn't even talk much about within the game itself. He doesn't even talk much about how magic is made. Like, he mentions really fast in passing design and development, but he doesn't really even explain it for valet people who don't know

what the terms mean already. There's a lot of evolutions for how we make magic and things that I feel like wizards and magic did first. Anyway, like I said, evolutions for how we make magic and things that I feel like wizards and magic did first. And anyway, like I said, the diehard magic historian in me, there's some of that I wish it played up a little bit more. But once again, I should say, there's so much fun stuff there.

It's really cool. If you're a magic fan, you definitely should read the book. There's lots of cool stories. Like I said, some of which you'll have heard from me but a lot of which you'll haven't some of which I will now work in like now that I've read the book and heard the stories when I find places to mention something you know I'll leave with one awesome story another great story from the book is so Peter's working late every night for his company. And there was a janitor, a woman, who saw him there every night.

And after, I don't know, after a year or something or two years, finally said to him, like, what are you, you're here late every night. Everybody else goes home and you're here. What is it you're working on? And so Peter shared with her that he had made a company and that he shared his vision with her and said what he wanted to do. And so she ended up buying stock,

buying like somewhere about, a little under $2,000, which for her was all her savings. But she bought it back in the day, so early that it was like 50 cents a share or something. And her family thought she was crazy. Well, flash forward, you know, there's a point in the book where, like, you find out, like, she becomes a millionaire, a multi-millionaire, because of her stock.

That this investment in Peter and in his passion, you know, paid wonderfully for her. And that was a really cool story. Anyway, when I find opportunities to work these stories in, I will do that. So the one thing, I guess, to wrap up here is

I want to say that I'm happy Titus wrote the book. It's a fun book. He did a lot of cool interviews. There's a lot of neat people. I would say that if he wants to do another book, there's lots more people to interview.

There's a lot of people he didn't get to that I think are pretty instrumental in magic. But I... I guess in some ways, it's a no-win situation. It's a giant, giant topic. There's only so much you can cover. I think a lot of the stuff he does cover,

especially the early, early magic part and the tournament part, he does really well. Some other parts, maybe I guess, I guess maybe what I want, and this is unreasonable, maybe what you want, is that he just makes multiple books in that he sort of,

instead of just roughly running through something in a chapter without much detail, that he saves it, but I can't make a man write many books, so anyway, it is a fun read. I really did enjoy reading, and I had a lot of fun. It also is really, really weird reading a biography in which you're in it,

reading something in which you play a role in it. So I keep popping up in the book. And obviously, I podcast and articles and all sorts of stuff. So he clearly knows a lot of information from me having shared it. And a lot of that stuff makes it in. It was interesting to see what he picked and chose of what I had said because there's millions and millions of words out there by me. So it was interesting

to see what vantage point he took. My one criticism about me is I think he doesn't he gives me too much credit for all of R&D's work that there's a lot of people that worked really, really hard. And I've been the face. But I think he gives me a little too much credit for really what was all of R&D. I mean, obviously, I contributed, no doubt. But I really think that I feel in the book, a little bit comes across too much like, hey, and I did all this stuff.

And when the reality is, I and a large team of people who worked really, really hard did all this stuff. And so, but anyway, so I would say thanks. I assume Titus is listening to this at some point. So thank you, Titus, for writing the book. And I haven't read the book yet, but I will get to it. But anyway, if you care about magic history and you like reading, uh, I recommend, um, Generation Dex. Um, like I said, I'm not, not saying there's, there's, anyway, I, I, I think it's well worth

reading. And, um, anyway, I'm now in my parking space. So we all know what that means. It 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.