Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #505: Reactions

Episode Date: January 26, 2018

I've often said the hardest part of my job is making cool things and then not being able to talk about them for a long time. This podcast is all about the joy of getting to finally tell people news through the lens of the fun I had watching Unstable be revealed.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I recorded these podcasts way ahead. So this morning was the first previews for Unstable. Yay! So today, I did a podcast before where I talked about the hardest thing about my job is having information that I can't share. But one of the coolest things about my job is sharing information, is finally telling people stuff. So today's podcast is all about sort of the joy of finally getting to tell people things. And I'm going to walk you through. So what happens on the day of, of preview days and stuff? So like, for example, okay, so today, uh, as we're recording this, um, I actually wrote a preview article before preview week, or I'm sorry, I wrote a, I started my design story before preview week cause I had a lot of story to tell. So my first unstable preview

column or design story column wasn't a preview column. But my second one was all about contraptions! So I walked people through how contraptions worked and I talked about how they got designed. And so the fun part is today I got to see the reaction to contraptions as well as numerous other cards. Part of previews is we just start showing people stuff and so one of the cool things is once you show your stuff then people start responding to it. And there's a whole bunch of different ways I get to experience it. In some ways, the days we release information is kind of, you know, my, it's kind of like a Christmas morning.

It's just, it's so exciting and fun to unwrap everything or watch everybody else unwrap everything, I guess. I guess it's kind of like when you're a parent and you spend all this time buying the presents for your kids. And then it's really, really fun to watch your kids open the presents and get really excited about the presents. I guess that's the better parallel. So one of the things today that was fun is this last weekend on Friday, we did this little promotional thing where we sent, we took a contraption, chopped it up into nine pieces, and then mailed it off to different magic media people. And then during the course of the day, people would reveal their piece. And the audience slowly pieced them together to make the card. So one of the fun things about it was we wanted people to get sort of a taste of contraptions without a hundred percent telling them what contraptions

were. The back of the card kind of reminds you so it helps a little bit. So the idea was it won't get you a hundred percent of the way there but we thought to get you 80-90 percent. Turns out that there were people who did guess what it did but a lot of people were confused. So my article today gets to tell you exactly. I specifically walk through how it works. There's also a mechanical article that also walks you through how it works. But anyway, one of the true joys, and I think my wife knows this,

is how I just get so excited. Like the day before the set's going to get revealed, I'm always really excited because I really, really want to see what people think and want to see what people say. Now, one of the things about giving away information is not everybody likes everything. Sometimes you reveal something and the audience isn't as happy as you like. Usually, though, we spend a lot of time and energy to try and make sure that what we're doing is fun and is good.

And most of the time, especially in previews, sometimes people will play with things and over time go, eh, I don't like this so much. But usually they're excited when they see new things. That is fun to see new things. And the talk that tends to pull to the top

is people are excited with how to use it and what does it mean and what do you do with it. Unstable is a little interesting for me because in addition to just watching everybody see everything, I'm the un-rules manager, so I also get to answer some questions today.

Like, for example, we showed off a card called Hangman today. And so one of the things that's unclear about Hangman is often when you spell out things on a card in rules text, it's hard to get the nuance of everything. But the intent of the card was, yes, you play hangman. It's called hangman. So a lot of people who are very technical are like, well, it doesn't technically say you play hangman.

And then I have to come as the rules manager and go, yes, you play hangman. That's how it works. Play hangman. So anyway, the first thing that happens is just sort of seeing the feedback. Usually what I do when I first want to see something is I go to Twitter. And that's just sort of the immediate sort of raw instant feedback. It's very, you know, bite-sizeable because of the nature of Twitter. So first I will go there and I usually will see what people think.

Both I'll see what people respond to me. On something like Unstable, I get a lot more direct responses than necessarily other sets. But a lot of people will talk to me. Even if they're not my sets, I get a lot of notes to me just because people assume that I have my hands in everything. Then I go look at what other people,

other magic people are doing. I follow a lot of magic people and I see what they have to say and look at their Twitter and their Twitter followers and see what sort of response they're getting. Another place I usually go, I go to Reddit, which usually is the place where they'll break

down card by card. If I want to see their individual thoughts and individual cards, I can go to Reddit. There's a bunch of other boards I'll also visit. There's a bunch of places where people can talk. But Reddit is the easiest place where people congregate that I can see feedback on specific things. Usually there's, on any preview article I do, there's a response to my column, and then there's card by card, what do you think of this card, what do you think of that card?

And that's fun to go see. Usually then I often will go to Tumblr. Tumblr is my blog. So people will ask me questions on Tumblr. So that's an opportunity for me to sort of respond on, oh, people like this, but they want to know how it works. How does hangman work? How does contraptions work? Can I do this? Can I do that? What counts as a watermark? And all sorts of questions I'm going to get, I can go and I can answer that. So my blog is usually a place for more longer content and more

interactive content. Usually people will respond to me. Now, one of the things about my blog is not everybody asks me a question on my blog. Sometimes people write to me just to write to me. And it's not, they're just like, oh, I like it so much. It's not necessarily, I mean, sometimes I'll post and go, thank you. But I get a lot of feedback on my blog that's not necessarily questions. But I do get questions. And so one of the things I always want to do is I want to answer the questions as much as I can. So usually when stuff comes out, I'm usually a little more active on my blog just trying to answer stuff. This particular time, being the unrules manager, I'll be probably super active on my blog, A, because I'm excited, and B, I am the definitive source for some answers here.

Also what I tend to do is I like to sort of, sometimes what I'll do is I'll use Google to sort of Google in certain terms to get a general sense of what people might be saying. There are other sites that write about magic. I will go visit those sites. Usually if there's preview articles on other sites, which we give them preview cards, I'll go and read the other preview articles. I'll see the responses to their article. There's often threads in response

to it so I can see what they have to say. I usually go all over the place looking for things just because I mean, one of the things, the point of today is, while there's a lot of reason for me to do this for my job, meaning there's a lot of reason for me to understand what people do and don't like, it helps me in the future make things better and stuff, but also it is fun. One of the neat things about what I do is I make something for other people. And so when other people get it, they react to it and I can see that reaction now that reaction isn't always positive as I said before

but usually usually magic players like new magic cards as a general rule of thumb it's exciting to see new things and even when the dust settles if you don't end up being that happy usually your initial response is pretty happy. And it's fun, like I said, to use my metaphor of Christmas Day, the parents on Christmas Day, being a parent

who's been there many a Christmas Day. For those who don't know, my wife is Christian. I'm Jewish, but my family does celebrate Christmas because we're an interfaith relationship. So I do, while growing up, I did not interact with Christmas at all. I have since I've been married.

And it is fun. My kids get super excited from Christmas morning. Also excited around the conica. And, you know, there is great joy in watching other people be happy. And when you work on something, like, unstable is this to the extreme, but like, I started this in 2011. I've been working for almost, little shy of seven years on this product.

And so it's been through a lot. You know, design lasted, I think, like three some years. Development lasted a couple years. There's a little bit of time. We were just waiting for it to get made. And so I poured a lot of sweat and tears in this. I worked on the flavor text for it, names and flavor text. I was on the development team as well as the design team. Like I was actively, and I was the, what they call the architect. I was the architect for the product.

So I was involved at every level and everything, you know. I was involved in the preview planning. I was involved, like I've been involved on every level of this product. I've been, I went and shot a Game Nights episode recently, which you guys will have seen by the time this aired.

Also, I'm going to shoot, but you guys will have already seen it, Loading Ready to Run, a pre-pre-release. So, you know, clearly there are, I'm pulling all the stops out. I really want this to be an awesome set.

I want it to do well, partly because I want to make more of them. And this not doing well will keep me from doing that. So I really want to do that. But it is a great joy. It is a great fun to watch people interact with what you do. Not everybody gets that. Like one of the things about a lot of jobs is the satisfaction of a lot of jobs is sort of a self-satisfaction, but you don't necessarily get an audience cheering you on. And one of the cool things about my job is I have a very rabid, excited audience of millions of players who get to interact with what I do and get to respond to what I do.

Now, I have to take the good with the bad. Sometimes they don't like what I do. Now, I have to take the good with the bad. Sometimes they don't like what I do, and obviously I have to accept that as well. But most of the time, people are very happy and excited when presented with new things. And so it is really neat to see. It is really fun to watch your products, the things you do, get interacted by other people. I talk about this being my dream job, and part of it is the feedback. Part of it is getting to see the excited faces. You know what I'm saying?

Getting to see people sort of unwrap their presence metaphorically and have fun with it. Like today, for example, contraptions is a long time coming, right? We made Steamflugger Boss and FutureSide as a joke. We had no intention. Assuming a contraption was nothing we were ever going to do. Aaron then mistakenly told people that was something we were never going to do, that it was just a joke for joke's sake with no intention of us ever making them.

That, of course, made the audience go, oh, you've got to make them now. And so it became this thing, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make them. I spent a lot of time, five years probably, trying to make them, or maybe more. But eventually what happened was I realized that I had some limitations. I didn't know how to make them in Blackboard or in a way that was truly exciting enough. Like I found some ways to do them, like it technically worked, but it was kind of like, you know, it wasn't something that said, oh wow, that's exciting. And so when Unstable came along and we're like, okay, let me see if I can make this work without the restrictions that Black Border has, you know.

And I was able to make something that I really, really feel sort of shows it off. Now, here's another thing is one of the things about the unsets is I'm experimenting in the future. And ironically, I considered Future Sight to be an honorary Silver Border set. It also got to mess with the future. So it's kind of apropos that the honorary third unset actually got paid off in the actual

third unset. And, you know, the I spent a lot of energy, not just me, all sorts of people my design team, the development team Glenn was our editor there was a lot of work Liz who did the design for the frame

and Don who was our art director who came up with the most awesome idea for how to illustrate them there's all these people that went into making it just this awesome, awesome thing. And, you know, so one of the things that is so satisfying is we spend so much time and energy trying to figure out how to do stuff. And there's a lot of versions of things. Like before you guys see something, we go through a lot of iteration.

I talked about in my article today in contraptions how, you know, for a while it, you physically attach the things to the bottom, top, left, or right, and it rotated around going top, right, bottom, left. So it was on a four cycle rather than a three cycle. But, you know, the nature of it meant that, and then cards had to be connected and like cards couldn't go necessarily any place. So there were a lot of problems. It took up a lot more space. It had the problem of sometimes you'd assemble a contraption but it would miss. You couldn't assemble it. Every fourth turn was a little bit too long. So we kept fine-tuning it to get

to the right place. And even then, you know, like once we got there, like then Dawn came up with this idea of how to do the graphics. And that changed how many ones we wanted to have. And there's just a lot of different components and pieces to it um so it is it is exciting um it is really exciting to um watch um like we spend so much time and energy getting getting all the details down that um getting to finally release it and getting people to see it and play with it is is so much fun it is like I said kind of the essence of today is

that there's a lot of reasons I love my job there's a lot of fun things about it it's mentally challenging I get to make a game I love I do the matches of force for good in the world but no doubt one of the awesome awesome things about this job is the immediate and positive feedback when we release information. It's not like I throw something out into the void. The second the things are known, there is just a huge amount of information. And the other fun part is once the set comes out, once people actually play with the cards, I'll get a second wave of information. Like today, for example, what I'm getting is information about what do you think of

these cards, just the first impressions. At some point, what will happen is the cards will get out in the world, people will play with it, and then I'll get a second impression, which is, okay, I told you what I thought about when I saw them, now let me tell you what I thought about when I played with them. And one of the things that's cool is I get constant feedback all the time about things that I do. And that that feedback is really, like I said, it is the secret sauce. Let's talk about this.

It's the secret sauce of what I do, which is my job is to figure out what you all want. And so the secret to my success is I talk to you and I ask you what you do and don't like. And that one of the fun things is it is neat to sort of see that. Now, unsets have an extra element to them than normal sets, which is we are experimenting with the future. If you ask me, is contraption something that we could do in Black Border?

My answer is, not now, but maybe one day. It is out there. it uses a separate deck um but it is not like one of the things that i consider is that there's a border between silver and black border um some things i believe will ever be in black border there's things that you're doing in any of the onsets that are fun and i like making those kind of cards and it's things that you're doing in any of the unsets that are fun, and I like making those kind of cards, and it's fun that you get a high five, everybody in the store, you know, there's cool things you get to do. That doesn't mean that the idea is that everything we make, I have intentions to be Blackboarder. But there are some things that I

like to experiment with, and both the main mechanics, both contraptions and host and augment, were designed to be something that we could see how people react to. They're both something that's a little out there, but not crazy out there. And that one of the things that's really interesting in watching just the evolution of magic in its relationship to silver borders is, there are things we did in unglued that are now no one would blink. Like, one of the questions I get sometimes is people look at unglued cards and they're like, why was this even a silver-bordered card? And I'm like, at the time, this was considered a little out there. And that what's happened over time is

magic expands with time. The reason for that is twofold. One is that magic is trying to do new and different things. Well, there's only so much new and different things we can do before the low-hanging fruit has been done. So partly, we stretch things a little bit because we want to push magic to new places and do new things. The second thing is that the very nature of a trading card game is it has a flux built into it. The very nature,

like even if we didn't do wacky things, just we're going to make cards that do things we've never done before. And all of a sudden, you know, that could become something. We make things in turn evergreen. We make one-shot abilities. Oh, that's kind of fun.

And then it becomes a reoccurring effect that we'll do in magic. Magic by its nature is stretching. Alpha, the second Arabian Nights came out after Alpha, magic stretched. Now there are new things you could do and magic is forever this expanding thing. So one of the cool things with doing Silver Border is I'm testing the waters to see what will happen. So one of the things I'm actually interested in when I sort of put out new things like contraptions

is I'm curious what people think. Do people go, there's a couple of reactions people could have. One could be, I love it. This should be in Black Border. I love it. I'm glad it's in Silver Border. I don't want it in Black Border. I hate it. I'm glad it's in Silver Border. Or I hate it. This better never come to Black Border. But the idea is, one of the cool things about Silver Border is, Silver Border isn't normal magic it has a little bit of a distance if we try something and fail everyone's like oh whatever it's the wacky set

if we try something and succeed you know like Full Art Lands is a perfect example you know when Chris Rush first came up with the idea he couldn't get anybody to do them it just was too out there and when I put them in Unglued the reason no one blinked is, ah, it's the weird set. Whatever. Whatever.

It's the weird set. You know, no one people weren't putting their critical eye on. You know, if I tried to do that in a normal set, I probably wouldn't have been able to do it. But I was doing it in the set and no one cared about it because it was the weird set. And then, players got to see it and experience it. And they

liked it. You know, on Hinge, they pushed it even more. I even used up even more of the frame. The art was even bigger. Ironically, on Hinge, on Stable, we went even farther. Border, we don't need no stinking borders. There's no borders. But one of the things that happened is people really took to it.

And when we did Zendikar, original Zendikar, the reason we were able to do Full Art Lands was we'd experimented, we saw the positive reaction, and we were able to do it. Same with token cards. You look at stuff like MELs or Forecast or the Pact Cycle. There's a lot of things we've done that the reason we were able to do them is we tried them first. People generally liked them and that meant

that we can expand on them. So one of the things that's fun when I look at initial reactions is you know, a bunch of people are sort of saying to me, wow, this is fun. Oh, couldn't this be in Black Border? Like I have numerous cards we previewed today is please make this Black Border. Please, you know, they're like, ah.

And one of the things that I always say real quickly on my ongoing silver border is I understand in non-un-tournaments you cannot play silver border cards. Yes, got it. But in casual play, for fun, with your friends,

for fun, you could agree to play with some silver border cards if you really have fun. If you're playing your commander games, you and your group, or at least you could say from time to time,

let's do a silver border night where for this night we're allowed to have silver border cards so you can make some decks with silver border cards there's a lot of fun cards that very very much were made with with commander in mind saying you know this would be fun to commander and there's something about this that it's hard to do in normal magic right now in black border magic but hey it's fun like one of the things that we often do in Silver Border that we can't do in Black Border is things where the rules don't technically work. Last Strike is a really good example. Last Strike and Triple Strike. Look, the rules are pretty straightforward. It's not hard to understand what they do, but actually making them work in the real rules means messing up the rules a lot. It's adding a lot of gunk to the real rules. But can people understand

what they do? Hey, I'm Last Strike. I'm like opposite first strike. I don't do a damage to after normal damage. Yeah, people get that. It's pretty straightforward. So there's things in Silver Border that aren't hard for people to grasp that would just be in Black Border if they didn't cause kind of rule issues. So they're not. But it doesn't mean they're hard to understand. They're not necessarily hard to understand. Anyway, this is my plea to you, Silver Border, if you're playing casual settings and you'd like to use Silver Border,

that is something you can do. You and your friends just have to agree to it, and then you can do it. So, one of the things, and I'm talking a lot today, just because today's the day that Unstable news came out, but there's been other times that I've been very excited. Probably the other time that I was this excited was when Scars of Mirrodin got previewed. So I was a giant fan of Poison.

A very big fan of Poison. And when I first got to Wizards, the very first set I made, Tempest, I put Poison in it. And the Poison got taken out. And Arnie decided that Poison wasn't going to be part of Magic anymore. So I began this quest to get poison back into magic. I tried to put an unglued two that got put on Hades and never made. I obviously

got a little bit of it in Future Sight with Poisonous sort of hinting that maybe poison would come back. And then in Scars of Mirrodin we were trying to bring the Phyrexians to life and sort of give the Phyrexians a feel. And I realized that poison was the perfect marriage of sort of flavor and mechanics. And it required a lot doing.

It required a lot of convincing. But I finally, and I think it was like 14 years later, got poison into the game. So that was a long time coming. I had been through a lot. I multiple times to get Poison in and failed I had had an inset that then either got taken out in development or the set itself just never came out so that, you know, there was some frustration there but when I finally got to put it out

it was exciting to see, you know and the other thing that is cool is anything that I'm excited for anything that I'm like for anything that I'm like I really like this thing but it's been a long time there are people out there that feel the same way not everybody likes poison but there are fans of poison there are people that really do enjoy poison and so just like I was excited to bring you poison I knew there were people excited to have poison um and so one of the neat things about doing this was that I was able to, you know, I really

was able to see all the poison fans out there. I was able to bring poison. And like the night before, like the night before I did the video where I revealed that unstable existed, I could not fall asleep. I was so

not the night I shot the video, but the night I knew it was coming up for you guys to see it the day before it was going to announce to the world that unstable existed that no one even knew it was a possible thing

and then we announced it I couldn't sleep the night before the night before I think we revealed the poison was out I think I also have been antsy

I get really excited when we're going to tell you things and it's been a lot of fun for example because we teased contraptions over the weekend so that people were sort of, and I, all weekend long

I was just giving away little tidbits of information on my blog. You know, that I was just sort of spoon feeding. I knew it was all coming out on Monday, so I had some freedom, more so than normal, to sort of spoon feed a little bit of stuff. So it was fun. Oh, there's a contraption deck. Oh, they go to the scrapyard. Oh, you know, just revealing things about it. And so it was kind of fun. Oh, there's a contraption deck. Oh, they go to the scrapyard. Oh, you know, just revealing things about it. And so it was kind of fun. Other times, oh, another one that I love is, so on, sorry, Invasion, we,

have I told the story? I might have told the story. I tell a lot of stories, again. So long-time listeners, you probably know this, I do this. But here's a story, I'm not sure if I told this. This is a good chance I have, because it's one of my favorite stories. So when Invasion came out, Invasion was the set that first had the split cards in it. So for those who don't remember their magic history, I put split cards in Unto, the obligatory sequel, inspired by BFM, sort of a reverse BFM, because BFM was a card so big it was on two cards.

It was the most popular card in Unstable and our guidebook studies. So I decided to make a card or a series of cards that were two cards on one that we ended up calling the split cards. I made the ally cycle to be in Unstable and on two. And then when Invasion came along, I convinced Bill to put them in the set. Now, you guys have heard the stories of split cards. Bill, I, and Richard were the only ones that liked them. Nobody else in the company wanted to do them. And Bill and I had a long, dragged-out fight to get them into the set, which we did. Then, before the set came, so what we had done is I asked not to

preview them. I said, what I wanted to do is they're so weird and cool and they're uncommon, let's let people just open them. Let's let people just not know they exist, open them and go, what is this? Because visually speaking, this is back in the day where we really didn't mess with frames much. So this was us really doing something out of the box. You know, when we first did split cards, it was out there. You know, now we're much more willing to do kind of things like that. But at the time, it was really different. Now, what happened was one of the card sheets got linked from the printer or something, and there were actual split cards on the sheet.

It must have been the uncommon sheet. But people sort of rationalized away that they were what they actually were. My favorite was that it was a test sheet, and we weren't sure which card was going to go there, so we put both cards as a sign that one of the cards would go there. But anyway, it wasn't quite the surprise that I wanted because people at least had seen, some people had seen that image. One of the things about leaks in general, by the way, is that there's a diehard audience that really cares about leaks. And with social media, leaks do permeate a little more than they used to,

especially back during Invasion. But not everybody looks at them, and so not everybody knows. So I went to Invasion. I went to the pre-release. It was at the Tournament Center back when we used to have Wizards of the Coast stores. Our big main store was at the University of Washington in the U District. And I was in the basement there watching people open up Invasion packs. And one of the things I was really excited about is I knew somebody would open up a split card

and not know what split cards were. Not everybody necessarily saw it ahead of time. Some people did. And one of my favorites is, I actually got to see somebody open it up. This guy opened it up, and... In fact, I think I saw a bunch of people open it up, but my favorite was this one guy who...

He just had... His reactions were so pure and so big, it was just fun to watch. Like, he opened it up, he, like, did a double or a triple take, he couldn't believe the card. He's, like, looking around, like, can anybody else see? Like, everybody else is busy building their deck, and he's like, like he's on a camera show, like, anyone seen this?

And then he sort of looked at it, and then you could sort of see him furrowing his brow and then he got it. He figured out what it was and then he had this giant smile on his face and like just seeing that reaction, seeing like,

one of the reasons that I go to a lot of pre-releases is it's fun to watch people open the cards, you know, talking about getting feedback. It's fun to watch people play with the cards. It's fun to talk with people. I love getting first impressions. Although these days, one of the cool things,

back in the day, we were able to sort of surprise you at pre-releases. It's a lot harder to do that. Unstable, hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, this is recorded after Unstable came out. I hope you guys were surprised. We didn't reveal everything. I'm hoping that the pre-release actually had some surprise in it since we were trying to do that.

It's hard to do at pre-releases early early in Magic a lot of times people would play and not know what was in the set now you gotta work really hard not to know what's in the set you have to actively sort of avoid social media for multiple weeks to know what's in the set just because it permeates so much but some people do that, bless their heart

and I I don't it's a different response. The reason I go to pre-releases is to watch people react to the cards and play with the cards and see what they build and see how they feel about it. So I do get a lot of fun reactions. I don't tend to get first reactions

because these days most people will look at things ahead of time before they get to the thing. Which is fine. It's the age of information. I'm not against that necessarily. Although I do miss a little bit. There was a lot of fun. I actually played in the Ice Age pre-release where I knew nothing.

I knew nothing and I opened it. That was a lot of fun. It was fun playing in an event that you just never had seen the cards before. You had to figure out on the fly what's good and what's not. I did figure out Zoran Orb was really, really good. Mostly because I played Dark Heart of the Woods

and Dark Heart of the Forest in Dark. Xuron Orb was better than that card on eight axes, so I was able to figure out how good it was. Dark Heart of the Woods was pretty good. Dark Heart of the Woods? Dark Heart of the Forest. Dark Heart of the Woods, I think. Anyway. The other fun thing, by the way way when we see things when they come

out is um it is fun to the the nature of modern uh social media is not only do i get to see your response i get to interact with people so i get to answer questions i get to sort of talk to people uh i i and one of the nice things one things, one of the really cool things about social media for me is, you know, I have a lot of followers. I'm up to like 70-some thousand followers. So whenever I want to get feedback on something, I can ask, and I will get immediate feedback. It's one of the perks of having a lot of followers on Twitter is at any one moment in time of my 70,000 plus viewers, a bunch of them are paying attention. So sometimes I, I will, I will use that to like answer questions and things. I can't solve something or I need to know something. I'm writing an article.

I need some help. Um, but it's a great tool for feedback. Oftentimes what I will do is on the day that something gets released, like I haven't done this yet, but later today, I will post on my Twitter, okay, guys, we finally released contraptions. What do you think of contraptions? And I can seek out. So like, first I get the feedback, which people just on their own free will just give. Then I seek feedback. That's the next layer where I go on. I ask people specifically. And the neat thing about social media is I can ask about specific things that I want to know. I can say, hey, I'm curious. how do you feel about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can go specifically to things. And that is pretty cool.

For example, today, I'm really curious about contraptions, what people think. And I can say to people, like the one that issues I have before, would you like this to be someday Blackboarder? And some people will say, yeah, oh, yes. And some people will go, no, absolutely not. And I can actually, I can get questions that I don't necessarily, I mean, people might offer up sometimes, but I can ask very pointed questions. I will often do this on my blog, by the way, if you guys follow my blog, blogatog and Tumblr.

Sometimes people will ask a question that I go, that's a great question. I want to get feedback. Okay, audience. And I do this all the time on my blog, which is what I call the deep dive, where I go, hey, I want to know what you think on this topic. Usually it stems from somebody asking me something and I respond to it.

Sometimes it's just me saying I want to know. Sometimes I'll just post out there going, hey guys, I'm curious, what do you think on such and such? Traditionally what I do on my blog is I'll give two or three answers and say which answer and why, just so I can consolidate to what people are thinking. Sometimes they're open-ended, depending on the question. But then I go back and I read it and I get really detailed information. We do a lot of market research, obviously, where we're doing larger data collection. But the sort of, I mean, and it's anecdotal, I get it, but I do love lot of market research, obviously, where we're doing larger data collection. But the sort of, I mean, and it's anecdotal,

I get it, but I do love sort of gathering my own information, be it on Twitter or Tumblr. You know, it is neat to sort of do something and say something and watch all the people just give immediate feedback. And that is

both useful and a joy. Like I say I hope I'm capturing a little bit of my giddiness like literally here's the funny thing I'm driving to work

as soon as I get to work as soon as I stop the car I will immediately hop on and see what else people have been saying just because it's exciting and it is it's fun

trying to think other stories of just me being excited Just because it's exciting and it is fun. Trying to think of other stories of just me being excited. I remember when we first revealed Ravnica, I was really interested in what people thought about the hybrid mana. That was another thing that I came up with that I was really, really proud of. Yeah, that's another example where I was really happy with it. I came up with it and I walked around R&D and said, guys, check this out. What do you think?

And everybody's response was like, eh. And I'm like, no, no, no. Don't you see? It's a tool. And I just couldn't get people to sort of get the coolness of hybrid. And so when it finally came out and the audience got to see it, and the audience loved it. So that was kind of like I literally had not shown anybody and had them be excited by it up until we showed the audience. And then you guys and the audience loved it. So that was kind of like, I literally had not shown it to anybody and had them be excited by it up until we showed the

audience. And then you guys got quite excited by it. The thing that's interesting, by the way, there's a difference between within Wizards and outside that you guys don't realize is, or maybe you didn't realize, maybe I haven't told you this before, is the critical eye that someone in the building is looking at is,

should this or should this not even be in the game? So if I show you something, you're like, is this good or is this not? Should you use this or should you not? That's how you think about it. Internally, that's how you think about it. Because the game doesn't exist yet. The audience, it exists. When I show you something, it's not, should this exist in the game?

It is, this now exists in the game. So you, the audience is not, I mean, not that there isn't ever doubt. You know, the first time we ever showed double-faced cards. Oh, that was another fun one. I'll get to that story in a second. Is that the audience internally is trying to figure out whether or not we should do it. And the audience external is reacting to it. You know, it's not, there's no critical, like, ooh, is this a good idea, is it not? Just, what do you think? So the story on the double-faced cards, which is funny, is, so we used to do a party at PAX, at Penny Arcade Expo. And we liked to reveal cards there.

So we decided we'd reveal the double-faced cards. So what we did is we put three cards on that, you know, they were double-sided, but they only one side faced out. And then it was time for the, so we showed those cards, and then it was the time of the big reveal, and we, the cards twisted and showed the back. The problem was that the audience were like, oh, they're showing us three new cards. And they didn't get that, no, no, no, this is the same side. So we literally had, I had some double-faced cards on me that I'm like,

no, see, it's the back of the card. Like, we had to spell that out. Like, even though they physically saw a card that flipped over was the back. The same, for example, with the contraption. We sent out a contraption that had, you know, a new card back on it, had a contraption back on it,

not a magic back. And people were like, oh, well, these are two separate things. No, it's the back of the same card. Some things are sometimes hard to convey even when you physically show them to people because if you're assuming something that's sort of out of the norm then people don't assume that's what it is. Well cards have magic backs. That doesn't have magic back. That can't be right. So it's one of the neat things when you do that and like I said it's not every day that we sort of

break the... it's not every day that I do crazy stuff. I mean, it's neat to see nuance of simple things. Let's just have new mechanics and things. I mean, it's kind of extra fun when you're doing something that's out there that people don't expect. I admit that there's an extra joy to having people see a double-faced card for the first time or a split card or contraptions or things that are just a little more out there. Usually because I had to fight so hard to make them happen. I mean, there's a common story here between split cards and hybrid mana and double-faced cards,

is that people's first reaction in the building wasn't always, oh, let's do that. A lot of times, they're like, oh, I don't know. I'm not sure we should be doing that. Interestingly, with Silver Border, I don't get that. People don't say, you can't do that in Silver Border, I don't get that. People don't say, you can't do that in Silver Border. I tend to have free range, and people, they don't treat

the Silver Border stuff the way they treat Black Border, in that people don't go, you can't do that. They go, oh, Silver Border. That's usually when I show something weird, oh, Silver Border. But I am, it is really, really interaction watching that, and like I said, I'm going to pull up to work in a few minutes here, It is really, really interaction watching that.

Like I said, I'm going to pull up to work in a few minutes here and I'm going to hop on social media the second I stop so I can see more stuff. So the thing I will say, as you guys listen, is I love the feedback. When you see something that you like, please

let us know you like it. It really, it is one of the greatest joys of the job to see players really embrace and love something. So if you really have strong feelings, let us know. If you don't have strong feelings or you dislike something, I still want to know that. I will admit it's not quite as fun watching people dislike the things you made,

but it is important. Part of my job is to make sure that you guys like things. And so if you don't like something, I need to know. And be aware, by the way, no matter what it is, somebody dislikes everything. There's no such thing as a universal thing that everybody loves. There are things that most people love. You know, double-faced cards are mostly loved, but there are people that hate them with a blinding passion. There are people that, like contraptions are going to be the thing. Right now, most people are very excited by them. Some people don't like them

at all. And so, if you don't like something, I actually want all the feedback. If you really don't like something, let me know. Usually negative opinions, people are more than happy to share, but please don't stop that. While me hearing negative stuff might be not quite as much fun it is valuable and it's important also by the way if you have a lukewarm feeling if you if something's like oh it's okay I do want to hear that

too I don't want to just hear extremes you know if you have a feeling of any kind I'm eager to hear that feeling I I want to know what you think. And so I, you know, it is important to me that I get a full sense of what the audience wants. So the reactions, while being a treat for me, also are super valuable. So part of today is to say, hey, this is a fun part of the experience. I really enjoy it. But also it's a valuable part. So please, please, please, Twitter, Tumblr, I'm on Google+, I'm on Instagram. I'm all over the place. If you see something, if you like it or don't like it,

or just have strong feelings or weak feelings or feelings, let me know. I really want to know what you think. And as an extra bonus, if you enjoy something, it is such a reward to the people that made it. If you want to pay back the people that made something you love, saying nice things is a really awesome payment. It really means a lot. So, um,

so please, um, give us feedback. We love to hear it. But anyway, I'm now at work. I'm about to hop on social media. Um, so, uh, this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you guys next time.