Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #475: Giving Input

Episode Date: September 29, 2017

In this podcast, I talk about how players can best give their input about Magic.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work and drop my son off at camp. Okay, so today's an interesting topic. One of the things that people ask me all the time is how can they, all of you, the players, influence the game? How is it, you know, what input could the fans have in actually affecting how the game functions? And there's actually quite a number of ways.

So I'm going to walk through today and talk about all the different ways you can do things that will help affect things and change things. So today is all about audience interaction and how the audience is able to give us information that we then act on. Okay, so first and foremost, let's start with the surveys. Okay, so something that we do, we do the surveys in a bunch of different ways. So there are a couple of different kinds of surveys we do. The most common thing we do are surveys that are run off our website, which is if you visit

our website every once in a while, and I think it's random, you'll get picked and go, would you like to take a survey? Sometimes the surveys are up for a while. We do surveys a bunch of different ways. Sometimes it's like, hey, we're doing a survey, and we put a lot of links out to say,

hey, come take the survey. Sometimes when you're on the site, randomly it'll ask you if you wanted to do a survey. There's a couple different kinds of surveys. Also, sometimes we do surveys that aren't online, they're in person, what we call deep dives, where we'll actually go out in malls and places and actually hire services to do stuff on us. The simplest one is if you pay attention to social media, when we do surveys, we just want as many people to respond as possible, we'll put links up.

That's the easiest to do. Next easiest is if you just visit our website. If you visited enough, you'll eventually get asked to take a survey. The deep dive stuff, that's very happenstance. There's no real way to plan that stuff. But the surveys are really important because it is our one chance to sort of go in depth on asking people. There's a lot of different kinds of surveys we do. One of the biggest is what we call the God Book Survey. So a

God Book is what we call something we actually used to make. We don't make as much anymore, which was a printed thing that had every single card. Long before the internet was just made it easy to look up any card at any time, we used to have something where, and before we started making the player's guides and things, we used to make one of every card and hand it out so that people could look at the card, so if you needed to see the cards. Anyway, we used to call those God Books. And so a God book study basically is, you're going to come, we'll ask you some general questions,

and then often we'll show you some portion of the cards. Depending on how long the survey is, it could be all the cards, but that's a pretty long survey. Or usually it's a subset of the cards. And the idea is, we ask enough people that between all the people, we get comments on all the cards, but we don't make every person answer every card. One of the big things when you do surveys is is you don't want to make it too long, because if you get it too long, then less people will take your survey.

So we're always trying to keep it short enough that people will take it. But anyway, if you ever see a survey, either a link to take a survey, or if you're on our website and you randomly get asked to take a survey, if you want to input the game, that's a great way. Those surveys are very valuable, and we very much listen to market research. Now, like I said, there's different places, different ways we do the market research, but as far as the ways, the easiest for you is the online stuff, because that's something, like I said, the straight-up links, we just give you links from time to time, or when we ask you when you're on the site.

Those are things that you should come across if you're a regular Magic player that reads our site on any occasion. Also, one of the things is we do a lot with social media. We interact with a lot of social media. I in particular. For example, for those who do not know, I have a blog called Blogatog. It's on Tumblr. So if you search Blogatog in Tumblr, I'm sure you will find it on Google. I also have a Twitter, at Maro, M-A-R-O-T-2-5-4.

I have, I'm on Google+, I think it's just Mark Rosewater, and I'm on Instagram as mtgmarrow. So all those places, the easiest places to interact with me, mostly on, most of the places that I talk to people are on my blog on Tumblr and on Twitter. I'll have conversations with everyone through Blue Moon on Google+. Instagram is much more about posting than replying with people. But if you want to sort of talk to me,

Twitter and Tumblr are the easiest places. There are a whole bunch of magic R&D folk on Twitter. Less on Tumblr. There's a few on Tumblr, but nobody answers at the frequency that I do on Tumblr. But on Twitter, there's a whole bunch of people on Twitter. Pretty much almost every magic R&D person you could think of

is on Twitter to some level. Some more than others. But there definitely is a presence. And if you want, I, for example, follow, I think, all the R&D people. So you could always go on my Twitter, see who I follow,

and you'll find all the different... And it's not just R&D people, it's wizards people, people from brand, from online media, from all different sections of the company. So if you're interested in sort of interacting, and then one of the things about social media is, you know, I mean, obviously on my blog, I'm asking people to send me questions, which I answer. And like I said, I've been doing it for over five years.

I've answered over 10,000 questions. And not only, by the way, I mean, well, I'm happy to answer questions, which is what I do. Another very important part of my blog is to hear what people have to say. You don't have to write me a question, by the way. If you want to say something and write to me, you can write to me on my blog. Now, the caveat I need to say is I get so much mail on my blog that I cannot guarantee I will read everything on my blog. I try, but you guys just,

you just write so much. Another thing that you can do is you can send in letters. I, for example, in my column, my Making Magic column, at the end of every single Making Magic column, there's always a link to my email. Sometimes it can take me a while to read my email just because I do fall behind. But I get a little less email than I do stuff on my blog. So I do try to read all my email. I try to read all my blog and I'm unsuccessful. I try to read all my email and I'm mostly successful there. But there are, there's numerous emails you can find. If you look through different articles, usually if someone wrote an article on the website, there's an email for them at some point, usually. And even if you can't find who to write into, if you know who you want to write into, you can always send it to me and say,

could you send this to and name whoever you want me to send it to in Wizards and I will forward it to whoever. So, and the thing about letters, let me talk a little bit about the feedback. If you're doing surveys, the one thing I would recommend is almost all our surveys have a section at the end which is more freeform where you can write in things. We do read those things. That is the best place in a survey if you have very specific information you want conveyed. Take advantage of that.

Those do get read. And R&D does, we have some technology to sort of conglomerate sort of what people say. So if you have thoughts, you know, if you're taking the survey, make use of that extra, I mean, take the survey, answer the whole survey, and then make sure at the end that you can write down the extra things that might not have come through in mean, take the survey, answer the whole survey, and then make sure at the end that you can write down the extra things that might not have come through in the questions in the survey. If you're writing me a letter, usually what I say is, shorter is better, that if you write

a really, really long letter, it is harder for me to focus on what the thing you care about. We've read a short letter that's to the point. It's easier to read and I will understand what you want. And, you know, I mean, one of the things I ask on my blog or in my letters that are written to me is, you know, be polite, but that doesn't mean you can't have constructive criticism. That doesn't mean you can't tell me things you didn't like.

That is fine. When I say be polite, I'm just like, you know, treat me nicely. I'm a human being. Some people give me feedback in a form that is very hard to read and that is just so abusive in its language. Be polite. I'm happy to hear constructive stuff. If you don't like something, let me know or whoever you want to write to. But the key in letter writing is don't, I get so many letters where people just kind of like go off on so many different tangents. I have no idea what it is they actually care about. That I, you know, people will write me five page letters and like, what, what, what, I don't know what they want. Whereas you wrote me a two paragraph letter

and like, you know, I, to the point letters are the best because I get what you want. And that it also allows me to focus, you know, if the letters get really long, you know, I have to start skimming them a little bit just because I only have so much time to read all my mail. So please, to the point really is the best thing when writing letters. But whatever issues you have, anything, I really do want to hear. If you have any sort of, you know, and by the way, I don't, you shouldn't just give negative feedback. If you dislike something, fine, write in, tell me what you don't like. But if you do like something, you know, equally important is if you like something and you want us to continue to do something, if you're like, that was awesome, do more of that, let us know.

People often make the mistake of using their opportunity for feedback only to criticize and not to compliment. And the reality is a lot of what people like is, this was fun, do this again. Well, write in when it's fun. Write in when you do like it. Don't just give feedback when you don't like something. If you really do enjoy something, give the feedback that you enjoyed it.

That greatly increases it happening again. Like, one of the things that I always am on the lookout for is trying to understand where we did things that made players happy. Now, so let's segue into social media in general. You know, not only can you write me letters, but I do a lot of reading on social media. That includes also different bulletin boards or different sites where people talk about things. R&D in general reads a lot of those different places. You know, we look, we read Reddit. We read a lot of different places where people give their opinion on things that we do.

If you have anything like, dislike, talk about it, we can see. Another thing which is a little more focused but equally valuable is writing articles. So if you have thoughts about how something whether what you liked

about something or how something could be better, another place to do it is write articles about it. And one of the things that's very valuable for us is people who go really in-depth. Articles that are sort of, I love review articles. I love articles that sort of go in deep and talk about things that worked and didn't work. We in R&D read a lot of material and especially if you write a very thought-provoking article, people will pass it along to us. You know, whenever somebody reads something they agree with, they will link it to me and say, hey, this is a good article. Have you read it? So I get a link to articles all the time. So if you have something to say, that's another possibility. So you can write an article about it.

You can talk about what you do and don't like. And remember, it's possible to write an article even if you're not a regular contributor to a site. That if you can put together something thoughtful. Now, be aware, if you've never ever written for a site before, I'm not saying you're getting paid for your very first article, but I do believe you can get posted if you write a very well-thought-out article. Another part about that is, if you prove yourself someone who can write well-thought-out articles, there's a good chance there are websites that will pay you to write.

So that's a little side effect. But that is some way definitely to give the communication. Another way that you can do this is we occasionally do promotions where we allow people, like I can't look at, I'm not allowed to look at unsolicited material. But occasionally we do a promotion like you Make the Card or Selecting Nth Edition or The Great Designer Search where we allow people some opportunity to design stuff that we can see. That's another opportunity to sort of give feedback through demonstrating things you want to see. One of the things I find very interesting in You Make the Card is watching what players make.

What players are interested in. I find that to be very interesting. I will stress, though, that unless it's in a position where it's been solicited, unless it's on our website where we ask for it, I cannot look at unsolicited material. So if you have the greatest idea for a new card or a new mechanic or a new theme, you. Got to be careful because I can't look at that stuff. The thing I can look at is if you like a card and say, I like this card, but could you change it to a different color? Or I like this mechanic. Could you do it again? Or I like this world.

Could you go back there? Things that reference pre-existing magic cards, you're just asking something about it that's without redesigning it. That is fair game to talk about. Okay, what is another way that you can communicate what you want? Another big way is organized play. That one of the ways we determine whether or not formats are popular is, are people playing them? We have the means at your local game store to sanction just about anything. If you want to play

certain things, get them sanctioned. You know, and like I said, you can sanction Commander, you can sanction all sorts of casual things, you know, you can sanction Unconstructed, where you're using silver border cards mixed with black border cards. All of that is

sanctionable. All sorts of weird and fun. And obviously you can sanction any competitive tournament you come up with. Standard, modern, vintage, all that is obviously sanctionable as well. But the important thing is when you play in a sanctioned event, one of the big ways to give feedback is to get in the eye. One of the things we try to do is we get a lot of feedback based on what people do. So if you want to sort of demonstrate you like something, getting involved in organized play and doing it is very helpful because it lets us see it.

It's a place where we can see what's going on. And it lets us understand sort of what ways people like to play. So similarly, if you like to play digital magic, and there's a couple different ways to play digital magic, that's another place. One thing about digital magic that's different from paper magic is digital magic is the one place where we have very good ability to see what you do.

What cards you play, what decks you build, how you play, when you play, how often you do. What cards you play, what decks you build, how you play, when you play, how often you play. Digital is a great source of material for us to sort of learn things about what your behavior is and how you do things. And that,

so just playing on digital is a very good way to sort of help get information out. You know, it might seem like playing a wacky, fun deck on digital doesn't do anything, but we do look at cards that get played. So if you're making use of cards

that, you know, one of the problems, I'll be honest here, one of our problems with feedback in general is there's a certain group that we see more of than any other group. And that's the group that does the organized play, that's more likely to come on our digital platform, which in general tends to be more experienced players. So we have a pretty good eye on a subset of players that play a lot and tend to play very

publicly. But one of the things we have much less sort of viewpoint to are players who play, but kind of play out of the public eye. So if you're one of those people, you know, whenever you have a chance to sort of play somewhere where people can see you playing, it does help get a sense for it. Now, maybe the answer is write an article about it or send a letter in, you know, but if you're one of those people who doesn't do organized play or doesn't play on digital platforms

and you really want us to know about your experience, write about your experience. Another big one is we do events from year to year. I don't, I'm only at a few events. Like this year I was at San Diego Comic-Con. I'll be at HazCon. But if you go to an event where you see a Wizards person, not necessarily me, but any Wizards person,

you can approach us and you can talk to us. And that, one of the things I learned so much from talking to people just face-to-face is it's amazing how much information I get one-on-one or multiple people on one with people. So if you see a Wizards person, you can talk to them and tell them what you want. That is another great way to give feedback,

is in-person feedback. And once again, I will stress, make sure that you communicate both what you would like to see different and what you would like to see the same. I can't stress enough that people are so much more motivated when they're unhappy about something than when they're happy about something.

But ironically, we care when you're happy. Like, obviously, if you're unhappy, we care. But we want to know when you're happy. We want to know when you're excited. And like I said, the surveys, there's things we do to get some sense of that. Well, the other thing that we can do is, and this is social media, is there's a lot of tools these days to aggregate social media.

So if you want to talk about magic, literally anyone on the internet, any place, pick a social platform. If you want to talk on Twitter, on Tumblr, on Snapchat, on Pinterest, on wherever, wherever you want to talk about magic in any place, we have metrics that can find that. So the mere act of talking about magic is something we will also be able to pick up on. But, you know, one of the

things that we're, I mean, I talk all the time about how we want information. And I don't, I mean, the point of today is to talk about some of the places we collected and how you can get your voice heard.

Because we want, we always want to make the products that you want us to make. We want you to be excited and to want to buy the product. You know, there's no, it is in everybody's interest.

It's our interest and your interest for you to communicate what you want and us to know what you want now be aware I stress this not every player wants everything or the same thing that there might be something you care passionately about that you really want

but that's not shared with most Magic players and we do err on the side of trying to make the most players happy now we do cater on the side of trying to make the most players happy. Now, we do cater to all sorts of different groups. We do make cards for lots of different types of players, and, you know, one of the cool things is we don't, usually to make a player happy, you don't need to make 249 cards they love. You need to make a handful of cards they love, and other cards they'll play. But, you know, if you really

love something, especially on a card level, and you communicate with that, we can make sure to try to do a little bit of that, you know, assuming it doesn't hurt the overall gameplay. But, you know, we... Part of our goal is to communicate with the players, find out what you guys want,

and then produce that material. Okay, so now I left the biggest way. The biggest way to guarantee that we do things that you like is your pocketbook. It's all said and good. You can go on social media and say how much you love something and you can play with it and you can do all sorts of fun things.

But in the end, the thing that probably has the best chance of us recreating something, if you love something, is people buying it. I can't stress enough of when not enough people buy something, it is thought of within the walls of Wizards that players didn't like it. And if it sells really, really well, then it's thought of as players liked it. That I can't stress enough how much buying something matters. That, you know, I've been talking a lot about Unstable because that's coming up this year.

And like the same message I've been saying about that is if we don't often do the silver border things, if that is something that you really enjoy and really want to see more of, you have to buy some. If people love the concept, but nobody buys it,

it just won't be a concept anymore. It won't be something we produce. And so, you know, when I talk about feedback, I mean, my final point here is your pocketbook is in some ways the most important feedback because the highest correlation between us doing something again is how well it did the first time. You know, like we all, I often on my blog talk a lot about Kamigawa. Like the big strike against Kamigawa is it just did really, really badly. It sold badly. It sold badly.

It tested badly. The market research was bad. All the feedback on it was poor. You know, people didn't like it when we did it. And there's a lot of people now that sort of know it through, I don't know, Commander or whatever. They're excited for it to return. And I'm like, guys, it on every metric did badly. People weren't playing it.

People weren't in stores playing it. People weren't buying it. When we asked people about it, they rated it low. They rated the mechanics low. They rated the world low. Like everything about it was rated poorly. And so now it's like, oh, do we want to go back there? Well, that's a big struggle to get to

because all the feedback said that it wasn't something players wanted because none of the metrics players used to communicate that at the time was communicated. And in general, the one final thing I will say is

it is hard because our goal is to listen to all the players and find the messages that represent the most number of players. I know there are players that passionately want things and I want to hear it. Because if enough people passionately want

something, that helps me fight to make that thing happen. But if something is if the voice is a minority voice, if the same few people keep asking for something and other people aren't chiming in to back them up, you know, if, if for example, someone writes an article and you agree with the article, communicate that you agree with the article. Um, You know, take articles that you like and link them so other people can see it, so that there's more exposure. If you see something you think I should see, link it to me.

Say, I want you to read this article. That's a fine piece of information. If someone writes something that you really believe, but writes it better than you could, link me to it. That is great as well. A lot of what I'm saying is Wizards has made an effort and Magic has made an effort

to involve you, the audience, as much as we can. We want a lot of interaction from the audience. We want a lot of direct feedback. We have game support. You can call us and give feedback to the game support at any time. We have, like I said, all sorts of places on social media. We read the bulletin boards. We read the articles. You know, there are so many ways for you to sort of get out there and say what you feel. Be aware that, and this is the hard part, you might, what you feel might not be symptomatic of a larger magic

group at all. So you might passionately believe about something, communicate you passionately believe it, we'll hear it, and that doesn't always mean we'll act on it. The smaller the thing

you're asking for, the greater the chance of something happening. So for example, if you're saying, I really would like you to make a card like thing X, and enough people say, ooh, I really like card X, I go, okay, it's not that hard to make card X. A single card's not that you to make a card like thing X. And enough people say, ooh, I really like card X.

I go, okay, it's not that hard to make card X. A single card's not that hard to make. You know, when you start talking about the kinds of mechanics, okay, that's a little harder. When you talk about centering a whole world somewhere, that's trickier. You know, the bigger the ask, the more positive feedback I need in the ask

to be able to sort of say, hey, hey. But I will say this. The reason we went to Amonkhet, for example. The reason you're getting dinosaurs and pirates in Ixalan. There's a lot of things we do where the reason we did it was I got a large outcry from a whole bunch of players saying they wanted something. And not just me.

I mean, I got it and other people got it. But through the means by which you communicate, enough people communicated they really want something that it got put on the schedule. You know, Amiket exists because there are so many people that really want an Egyptian-inspired world that eventually said, okay, let's make an Egyptian-inspired world. That, you know, we make decisions and choices every single day

that are directly impacted by messaging we get from the players. And I can't stress this enough. I mean, I'm literally driving to my work. But we want to know what you think. We want to make the game that the majority of you want. And so all the memes I talked about today, take the surveys. They're very, very important. Fill them all the way out. At the end, write extra comments. Send us email. Send me things on my blog. Send us stuff on social media. Go play organized play. Play on digital platforms. Purchase the products. You know, there's so many different ways. When we do promotions, get involved in promotions when we do them.

I don't know if we don't do them often, but, you know, you make the card every once in a while. When we do those promotions, get involved in them. You know, please take every opportunity you can to communicate with us because it matters. You know, and what I've discovered is there are people that are very, very proactive about communicating with us, and there are people we are very, very proactive about communicating with us. And there are people we almost never hear from.

And you know what? The people that are proactive, probably the game pushes more in the direction they're interested in because they are louder and we can hear what they want. You know, we work hard to try to figure out what everybody wants. But communicate what you want. That's the best way to make sure that we can actually listen and interact. So anyway, I'm now at work with a shorter podcast today. But anyway, I cannot stress enough that we want to hear from you. We want to know what you think.

We want to know how you feel. We want to know what would make magic better for you. And one last thing is positive information is just as important as negative information. You don't like something, let us hear it. Be constructive. Please be polite. That's fine. But also, if you really do like something we did, you want to see us do it again, that's also

super important to communicate. So, please do that. Go through the channels I talked about today, and hopefully we can make magic more and more of the game that you love to play. So anyway, I'm here at work, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make a magic. I'll see you next time.