Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #517: Answering Questions

Episode Date: March 9, 2018

Part of my job is answering questions from all sorts of different sources. In this podcast, I talk about who I answer questions from and how I do it.

I'm pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today we're going to try something a little different. So one of the things that I often do is I answer questions. I do a lot of mailbag columns. columns. In my column, it's called Odds and Ends. And in the podcast, I've done Mailbag with Matt, and I've done Replies with Rachel. So today, I was going to do a podcast about answer, about mailbags. Now, I'm not doing a mailbag column. It's like meta. I'm not doing a mailbag column. I usually need someone else in the car not doing a mailbag column. It's like meta. I'm not doing a mailbag column. I usually need someone else in the car to do a mailbag column. I need someone to read me the questions.

But I was going to talk a little bit about mailbag columns, a little bit about doing mailbag things. I was going to talk a little about the history of doing the mailbag columns in my article and then doing mailbags here. So it's sort of, it's a podcast about replying to audience questions. And I'll even throw in, I do that live as well. So it's, today

is answering questions. That's my topic. So let me talk a little bit about the different ways to answer questions and then talk about the challenges of answering questions. Okay, so the first thing, I think the first place I ever answered questions actually was on the Usenet, which is early days of the internet. Before the World Wide Web, before there were a lot of web pages, per se, a lot of the ways people interacted were basically bulletin boards. So places where there were topics and people could post questions and people talk. So I, in the earliest days, when I first went to the Usenet board, I was making the magic puzzles at the time.

And so my first questions were about the puzzle. People could ask me clues or if they thought they had the answer, they could send them to me. But I started sort of getting a little rapport with the audience. And so when I came to work at Wizards, I decided to sort of keep that up. And I wanted to have sort of an open relationship with our fans. And so when I started working at Wizards, I went on the Usenet and said, Hey guys, I started at Wizards. Do you guys want to know anything? So the first questions I ever answered was on the internet, but it was on the Usenet. And a lot of that were pretty general questions.

And some of it was just, that's the first time I remember. So one of the things is, in the early days, when I started writing sort of a behind the scenes, that wasn't something that was very, that was done very much. That there wasn't a lot of sort of transparency in sort of behind the scenes, you know, in the sausage factory of making games. And so when I first started on the Usenet, it was more like, hey, I'm somebody who you've been talking with, but now I'm in a position to sort of answer questions. And a lot of the questions were very basic, things you guys consider super basic now,

things that I share all the time that's not really, don't even bother to ask me because I'm always sharing it, but at the time it's sort of like, hey, how do you do things? When do you work on things? How does it work? And so I got a lot of those kind of questions. So then I started writing for the Duelist. The Duelist, I didn't really answer questions in the Duelist per se. Um, one of the things that being, that writing for the Duelist made for me is it got me a

little more notoriety. Um, and it meant that in places where I ask questions, people were a little more willing to ask me questions. Um, I think the first big place where I really started doing mailbags was in my column. So in 2002, we started up the Magic website. Magic had a website. I've done a whole podcast on this. Magic had a sort of a very boring website. And we started having a website with constant content and that's when my column started. So I think what happened was, oh, so when we started doing the website, I wanted to have a bunch of daily features. So one of the daily features that

I came up with was called Ask Wizards. And the idea of Ask Wizards was people would send us in questions and every day somebody, and the idea is the correct person, would answer the questions. So if you have a rule question, maybe the rules manager answers you. You have a tournament question, maybe one of the tournament people answers you. You have a question about a design, I'd answer you. A question about development, one of the developers would answer you. Whatever was relevant, we'd go find the most suited person to answer your question.

And sometimes the questions were about specific people and they'd answer it. And sometimes they were about processes or different things. And I remember it used to be a Thorn and Aaron side. So Aaron Forsyth, my boss currently, he's now the director of R&D, a senior director of

R&D. He used to run the website. He was the first person that ran the website. He's the person I recruited to actually when we first started the website. And getting the answers, like I used to answer a lot of questions, but getting people to answer questions was always hard to do. I know Aaron was constantly sort of pulling teeth and bugging people to try to get questions out of them.

I ended up answering a lot of questions just because I would answer the questions. And so Aaron knew if he sent me a question, I'd answer it. So, and if you go back and look at the early days, I was answered about probably close to a fifth of the questions that were on the site. And then one of the things that I did in my column was that I, at the end of my column, would say to people, hey, if you have any opinions, you can write to me. And then I would give my email. And then what would happen is, I think my sixth column I ever did was a column called,

oh, sorry, I didn't set this up. called, oh, sorry, I didn't set this up. So on my Ask Wizards, one of the questions somebody asked of me is why we make bad cards. And I answered succinctly because the question of the day wasn't really long, and I sort of said it was the nature of the beast. So someone sent me an email saying that it is irresponsible of us to make bad cards. So I made an article called, what did I call it? It was, what did I call it? Well, When Cards Go Bad.

It was the sixth column I ever wrote. And in it, I explained in detail the idea of why do bad cards exist, which I've done a podcast on. It's a pretty famous article for me. Not only did I write it, I years later revisited it. So both of those exist. When cards go bad, when cards go bad, revisit it. But in my column, for the first time ever, But in my column, for the first time ever, my whole column was me answering somebody. And what I've discovered is when you answer questions and people realize you answer questions, you get a lot more questions. And so from time to time, when it was appropriate, I would bring in people's letters.

And there was a few different columns where I wrote a column kind of based on, inspired by a letter someone had written me. And then one day I decided that I liked the idea of answering questions. Okay, I was going to do a mailbag column. I was going to do a column where all I did was answer questions. And it was very popular. People really liked it. People like, what I discovered is that A, people like when I answer questions and usually because people ask questions that they might have. And B, people love seeing themselves in my column. It's, people love getting a sort of a direct answer. That's very, something people enjoy. So over the years my mailbag columns have sort of evolved. So I now do two types of mailbag columns. I do what I call odds and ends which is

with every set sort of the last thing I write is usually one or two columns where I say okay now that you've had a chance to see the set, what are the questions you have? And so I'm able to sort of answer specific questions about the set. And what I find is by asking people to give me questions, usually it's on Twitter, I ask for a single tweet, just to keep the question relatively short. Seeing what people ask me tells me a lot about what people are curious about. And so I answer a whole bunch of questions.

And I try to sort of, a lot of times when people ask questions, it's like, oh, they're curious about something, and I can go in depth on some aspect. The other kind of answer columns I do now is what I'll call a directed mailbag column. And what that means is, I find when I just go open-ended, ask me anything, it tends to be very, it usually is about the newest things. And I answered the questions about the newest things. So what I've been doing lately, and I don't do this one all that often,

maybe once a year, is I'll do a mailback column and I'll direct the kind of question. The one that I've been doing for a while is who, what, when, where, why, where I want questions that are who, questions that are when, questions that are why. And I think I've done, I'm almost done with that series. I think I've done five to six who, what, when, where, why, and how. And so anyway, that helps direct me so there's some sort of focus to it. What I find on mailbag columns in general is, especially in the writing, when I do a lot of them, just giving them some sort of general focus to them usually is helpful.

Okay, so now the next thing that I got answering questions was on my blog. So blogatog, for those that somehow don't know I have a blog, is my Tumblr blog. So originally I started Blogatog to post my daily comic. There was a new app I got that let me sort of take a picture and make it look like a comic strip, like a comic book panel. And I had fun with it, and then I started making a comic out of it.

And then people were like, oh, it's funny, you should put the comic somewhere so people can see the comic. So I started a Tumblr, because Evan Irwin had recommended I start a Tumblr. So I started a Tumblr so that I could post the picture. And, I don't know, day two or day three or something. I'm actually, it might even be when I set it, it might even be when I set it up. Um, actually it must've been when I set it up. There's a little box you can check. It says, do you want to answer questions? And I'm like, eh, sure. I really did not know what I was getting into, but I said, yeah, sure. So I clicked that.

like that. So what happened was I pointed toward my thing because I had my comics there and somebody realized they can ask me a question. So they asked me a question. And then I go one day and realized I have somebody ask me a question. So I answered the question. And as I said earlier, when you answer a question and people realize you'll answer the question, they send you another question. you answer a question, and people realize you'll answer the question, they send you another question. And so before you know it, I had a lot of questions. And so my blog, I mean, I still do post my comic. I post a link to my website. I post a link to my column.

I mean, I do other things in my blog. But, but, if you've been to my blog, 99% of it is really me answering questions. And what has happened is it's become such a go-to place to ask me questions that I can't even keep up. I mean, I can't even answer every question even if I had access to all the questions and time to answer all the questions. Because some people ask me things I'm not allowed to answer or I don't know the answer. But I right now get more questions than I can, I think, even read in a day. You know, I log in all the time. I always start from the most recent question, but I get a lot of questions. And anyway, so I started answering there. The other place that I answer questions, like I said, is here on my podcast.

For a while, I was doing a lot of carpooling with Matt Cavada. Matt is a, he's an artist. He doesn't do a lot of artwork now, but he works at Wizards. And Matt used to live really near to me and we'd carpool a lot. Now he lives somewhat near to me and we occasionally carpool. Although every time we carpool, just for those that matter,

every time we carpool, I will ask Matt if he can do a podcast and he will always say yes. You'll sense how often that I carpool with Matt because I literally, when I carpool with him, I tell you that I'm carpooling with him. Anyway, so Matt and I were always trying to find topics we could talk about. And a lot of times I would just pick topics that Matt knew slightly better than me.

That's my trick with carpool guests is to get questions, get topics that they are experts in. I don't necessarily even need to be an expert in it. I mean, I know enough about magic that I can, you know, I can ask questions and stuff. But we had done a whole bunch of different topics, and it dawned me one day that I had never done a mailbag column. And it's hard for me to do a mailbag column because I'm driving, and so I need someone else to pick out the questions and read the questions aloud. So I asked Matt if we could do mailbag column. He said, yes. So we call it mailbag with Matt. And we did a bunch of those. And then I started driving Rachel

to school. And so it dawned on me that from time to time I could have Rachel read the questions. So we did replies with Rachel. I think we did three of those. Rachel now can drive and has her own car. So that's why she's not in my car anymore. So she's driving herself. For a while, she has a college class in the morning. So for a while, I was dropping her off at college class. But for those wondering why, I'm not pulling out of colleges anymore.

That's because she has her own car, and she drives herself to college. Also, by the way, my daughter just got into her first college. Very exciting. So very soon she's off to college. Anyway, sorry, I sidetracked there. So the interesting thing about answering questions

in the podcast is, A, I had a fellow person answer with me, which is not normally the case. So it allowed me to, A, people would ask questions of Matt and of my daughter. They loved asking questions of my daughter about me. That was a very popular thing where people like to sort of get behind the scenes of me. And so there are a lot of questions like how I was as a dad or I don't know, stuff like that. But anyway, and that was fun.

The other thing I like about the podcast is I have more space. Like on my blog, one of the things that I've decided to make it a preference is people are so excited when I answer the question that I decided that the goal of my blog is to answer as many questions as I can. So I answer less long, I put less long answers in my blog and I tend to do more short answers so I can answer a lot of different people. Then in my podcast, I mean, so in my column, I tend to answer a little longer when I can so that I can go in more depth.

And then on my podcast, I can answer even longer, because I have half an hour, and I have lots of, you know, I get questions the same. Usually when I get questions from anywhere, other than this last category in a second, I get them off my Twitter. So like, even for my podcast, I get them off my Twitter. Although it's interesting that when I say it's for my podcast,

I get different kinds of questions than when I say it's for my column. Probably because I sort of, I'm more narrow in what I ask for, for my column, partly because people tend to ask me more it's for my column. Probably because I sort of more narrow what I ask for for my column. Partly because people tend to ask me more casual questions for my podcast. I mean, part of that maybe was my daughter was answering questions. Okay, the one other place that I answer questions is

I do panels from time to time. And a lot of times I'll call them question mark of my meeting panel. And that's why the question marks is what I call the people on my blog. And, um, for a long time when I ran, or I still do, when I run panels that are basically question answer panels, I'll call them question marks. Um, that's my little joke. Um, but anyway, I still do question marks at San Diego Comic-Con and occasionally elsewhere.

Like I did one at HasCon last year. If I'm at another event where it makes sense for me to do a panel and answer questions, I will. For example, this year I'm going to Grand Prix Las Vegas to celebrate its 25th anniversary of Magic. Nothing has been set up yet, but that's the kind of place where if someone said, hey, do you want to do a question and answer? I go, sure, I'd love to do question and answers.

I do question marks usually. So I will try to set up a question mark there. I cannot guarantee it since I'm not in charge of the programming, but I will suggest that I do one, and usually if I suggest it, let me do it. So live questions are a whole different ball of wax. So the biggest difference between the live question and all the other things I described was, well, two big things. One is I'm actually interacting with the person, meaning there's back and forth.

Sometimes I can ask them a follow-up question or if I want to know something, I can ask them. There's a more give and take on my blog sometimes somebody will ask a question and I will reply and sometimes they'll look right back to me so there's a little bit of give and take on the blog

but in my column and in my podcast there's no back and forth so one of the fun things live is it's an actual person I mean not that you guys aren't actual people everywhere else, but you're, I'm interacting with you one-on-one and that, and that is really different. That is fun. And I, and I get to not only that, there's an audience watching me as well. And so I have a live audience. So having a live audience is a,

is a different thing. None of my answers are particularly different other than what tends to work for a live audience is a little bit different, having performed a bunch of my life. There's just some stuff you can do with a live audience that doesn't... Like, for example, when I write in my column or my blog, I'm writing. In my podcast and live, I'm talking.

Just the kind of answers you can give, that matters. And then when you're interacting and when you're live in front of an audience, for example, I can do physical things. My background, obviously, I did a lot of performing for improv and there's a lot of fun physical things you can do that don't make any sense, obviously, in writing or on a podcast where you can't see me. So one of the cool things about answering live is there's some things I can do that I can't normally do. There's some jokes and some stuff I can do.

And if you've ever seen me talk live, I like to do visual style humor and stuff. So getting to see me live is a different animal than hearing me on my podcast or seeing me in my column. So one of the things that I've long ago learned, I'm sure I've mentioned this, but Marshall McLuhan is a very famous person that did a lot of studying of media and one of his famous quotations is the medium is the message. And what he means by that is the way by which you're communicating with your audience influences the kind of message you're giving.

And so I talk about all these different places I do answers, but the answers themselves are very different. I talk about all these different places I do answers, but the answers themselves are very different. That, for example, in my column, I'm a little bit more straight-laced. I'm a little bit more giving serious answers to questions. Where in my podcast, I have a little bit more rapport. People follow me. You know, I have a little more sense of, I can be a little bit more playful,

and I can sort of do some ongoing things and do some themes. Like one of the things that happens in my blog is somebody asks a question, I answer it, which spawns other people or spurs other people to ask similar questions. So one of the things I often do in my blog is I will have sort of themes that pop up for the day where some topic and then sometimes I even have theme days where I ask the audience to do something, you know, where I'm doing a particular thing. You know, so I can have a lot of more, in some ways my blog is a lighter side of me answering questions. Also, the questions tend to be shorter, so they tend to be less deep questions, where my column is much deeper questions.

Then my podcast, once again, I have a lighter tone in my podcast. I mean, it's not that I can't answer serious questions, and occasionally I do. It's the kind of questions people tend to want to hear me talk about tend not to be the serious things. Talking is really good for stories, so I tend to get questions that spur me to tell stories. So the podcast stuff is a little bit different. You know, tell me about the time you did something. It's more often something that I would hear on a podcast than no one would ever actually write to me in a written question. So the other big difference about being in front of an audience is

in every other thing, I choose my questions. Meaning if I ask for questions for my podcast or my column or just my blog, I get a sift through them and pick the ones I want to answer. I don't have to answer any question. Now, in general, I think that's good. I mean, it allows me to sort of get to the meat. There's a lot of repetition questions. Sometimes people ask me questions

that I can't really answer so curated questions for the most part leads to better answers but the one nice thing about a live show is a little bit more a bit of danger if you will which is I don't have any control of the questions

it's funny that whenever I do a live question mark know, question mark, there's always somebody from our PR department who's there. Just because whenever we do live, whenever anybody does a live thing, there's a PR person there that's sort of how we do things. You always have a marketing person there just in case they need to step in or whatever. I've never had someone step in. I've been doing this a long time, so I can handle tough questions.

Oh, actually, there's one other area. I realized there's one other area that I didn't address. As I'm answering this thing, I'm coming up with new areas to talk about. So anyway, I... The one of the interesting things about doing a live thing is I have less control of sort of the content.

On some ways, there's a little more danger there like when I can control the questions I can make sure they're entertaining answers. When I don't I'm a little immersed. I mean I have to answer the people asking questions but one of the things I've learned and let's segue into the final place where I answer questions is interviews. So one of the things of my job is I'm one of the spokespeople for Magic. And so that means that

I do a lot of question answering. In fact, there's, what I would say, there's a couple different categories. One is official interview, like I'm being interviewed either on camera or on tape, or sometimes I'm interviewed through email,

where it's someone's writing an article or a podcast or something and they are coming to officially interview me and I'm being interviewed. And an interview is a lot like a live thing where I don't necessarily pick out the questions. It depends on the interview. Usually the way interviews work is if it's an email interview, they send me the questions. Now, I don't get to pick which questions to answer, but I get to see them and I get a little bit of time to think about it so that I can write sort of, you know, thought out answers. And usually the way it works when it's written is I'm allowed to, you know, show it to our PR people and stuff

and just, you know, make sure that I'm, they can double check things. Now, when it's a live question, so for example, I've done radio shows, I've done podcasts, I've done phone interviews, and then I've also done live interviews. I've done video interviews. I've done a lot of that. Usually there's, once again, a PR person there. But I've done so many interviews over the years that I'm pretty good doing interviews. Like I said, I both have training to sort of be on my feet.

And one of the interesting things about doing my blog, for example, is when you answer questions, and I answer a lot of questions. I'm not even sure what I'm up to, but I've been doing my blog five or six years now, and I'm well over 100,000 questions. I might even be up to like 120,000 at this point. I answer a lot of questions on my blog. And one of the side effects of answering a lot of questions is it is hard for someone to ask me a question, or maybe hard's the wrong word. I get a lot of the same questions.

So if I'm live doing an interview and someone asks me a question, especially somebody that's usually when I'm being interviewed, there's two types of interviews that we divide them into is what we call a mass interview, which is mass media and a core interview. Mass media means it's anybody who, look, they're just a media source and them interviewing magic is just, they've decided to do a story on magic. Core means it's somebody who, it's a podcast on magic, or a website that writes about magic, or somebody who, what they are is magic is their topic. And so when I'm talking to a core press, they're going to get much more narrower questions.

You know, usually when I'm interviewing for core, it's about a set that I've been working on and them wanting to know details specifically about, hey, this mechanic or this car, going into much more of the nitty gritty. Where a mass interview is more about larger magic things. Sometimes it's tied to a set release. So for example, for Unstable, just the most recent one, I got a bunch of mass media Unstable interviews, but it was more about, tell us what it's like

to make a set with comedy. Where when I do a core interview, it's like, tell us about rules lawyer. We want to talk about rules lawyer. And we get much more nitty gritty. Where in a mass interview, it's more general things. And a lot of me doing mass interviews are about

the same questions again and again it's people wanting to just talk about magic as a whole like one of the biggest things when I do an interview with people that are mass media is tell me about magic how does magic work you know I'm answering a lot of very basic questions because the audience for that is people who don't know what magic is or I've heard of magic but aren't magic players and I've done tons and, but aren't magic players. And, I've done tons and tons of interviews over the years. So, one of the things

they do to sort of train us is every, I don't know, three, four years, they do media training. And the way media training works is they bring in one or two people, usually, that this is what they do. You know, they do media training works is they bring in one or two people usually that this is what they do.

You know, they do media training. And they walk you through sort of the rules of media training. I mean, a lot of what they assume in the training is they teach you what to do in adversarial situations. Because usually, essentially they explain what are bad things to do, how do things go wrong, and they train you

how to deal with those things. Usually the thing that most leads to bad interviews is the interviewer leading it somewhere they're trying to go. And the interviewee

doesn't recognize that and then goes to a place where they don't want to answer questions. I talk about how when I get up in front of an audience, I don't choose the questions. I answer the questions that are given to me. But the biggest difference between a panel and between a mass interview is a panel is magic players.

And magic players mostly, they just want to know about magic and they're excited about magic. And I'm mostly there telling stories about magic as a whole. When I do interviews with masks, I mean, most of them are super, super benign. I actually, I've only been in a few adversarial interviews. Like, I'm saying this is my 23rd year this year, and I've been in a handful of adversarial, and my entire time at Wizards. And even then, they're not even,

the ones they train you for are like when someone's coming with an issue to get you. And usually, the adversarial ones is somebody who thinks, like, who asks you a topic that you'd rather not talk about that thinks they're doing you a favor than asking the topic. But anyway, you do training,

and it's nice to have training, and they always film you so you can look back and see yourself. And what they tend to do is they try to do interviews that are high-stress interviews to see how you handle it. Here, for those that want to know, the biggest takeaway,

having done a whole bunch of these interviews, is the idea of what we call controlling the narrative. Which means that when you're interviewing, there's something you want to say. There's a reason you're being interviewed. Either it's because there's a new set you're promoting, or maybe you're just promoting magic in general. And the idea is, understand why you're there and what it is, what's the point you want to make.

Like, in this interview, for example, I did some press interviews for Unstable. Well, what am I trying to say? I'm trying to say, hey, this is a product for magic. It's a little different from normal magic, but here's why we did it

and here's what's fun about it and here's why, if you're a magic player reading this, you might want to check it out. And the idea is, no matter what they ask you, I mean, you want to answer their questions, but the goal is to always get to the message that you

want to get to, because the whole point of doing the interview is you're trying to do something. And so a lot of the training is talking about, like like one of the big things about media in general is repetition is really important

that if I want to say something and want that to be the message of what I say I got to say it more than once if I say it once it easily gets passed by but if I hit the theme multiple times

then it becomes sort of the message of it and so one of the things that definitely you know when I do media interviews, I, because I've been doing this a lot, I, I've gotten pretty good at sort of making sure I'm real focused and, and, you know, directing narrative and stuff.

So the other thing that I do, um, which isn't really, it's me answering questions, but it isn't, uh, an interview per se is se, is from time to time we'll make promotional videos in which we are trying to sell product. So for example, one of them was called Access, sorry, Access, Access Magic. So Jimmy Wong was the host and it was done for, I think, Eldritch, Eldritch Moon. So it was done like a talk show and there were three segments and then each segment, a different person sat on the couch

and talked to Jimmy and it was done kind of like a talk show. I did the first segment. Interestingly on that one, I talked about the story. I didn't talk about mechanics or anything. Usually the way those work is there's a topic and then I'm brought in and said

here are the questions and then I in something like that I will study the questions so I know all the answers so that I have a well thought out answer to all the questions I'm being given as a general rule of thumb if you're being given questions ahead of time you do make sure you

understand the answers so you're giving nice thorough clean good answers. And so I do some of that. I actually do some of, like, if you guys saw, we just made a, or just released, when I say just, I mean as my time frame. But at the end of December, it's January for me, so if you guys, it's February, March, I'm not sure how ahead I am. We, it was our 25th, or 2018's

our 25th anniversary, but we started celebrating a little bit early, and so we decided to make a video for the end of the year which was a thank you video for 25 years of supporting us in Magic. And what they did is they interviewed lots and lots and lots of Magic employees, and they put together

a, it wasn't that long, three minute video. So the interesting thing about those, that's an interview as well. And those are something where they send me the questions ahead of time. And then it's sort of like...

But the thing there is I answer all the questions that they have and then I say, here are things I'd love to talk about. Can you ask me the following questions? Now the interesting thing about the video was, it's a good example.

Some videos are, the format of the video is, it's a question and answer, like Access Magic was. This video was just people talking about magic. And the questions were never shown. So it's not a question and answer. mean as far as you guys are concerned it's not like there's a question asked and the answer given it was more like people

just talking but questions are used to sort of generate that topic and so one of the things that would happen when I'd shoot is I say things I want to say and then I would say oh by the way let do this, and I would talk about some stuff that I wanted to talk about. Now, those interviews that I did run recently for Matches at an Arena, I did one for the 25th anniversary, those are a little fancier.

You know, we'll come, we'll put makeup on, and we have a wardrobe check, and you have to bring three different things with you, and they pick the one they like best. It's funny. I always pick three outfits

and I always have in mind what I think they'll like and they always pick not the ones I think they'll like. But the big things we do interviews. If you notice by the way whenever I do an interview

whenever I do a video interview I'm always wearing a magic shirt. The rule is that you have to wear something that's not you can't wear other people's logos when we're doing our own videos. Um, but you can wear a plain, you know, a red shirt or something, but I always wear

magic stuff. So I, I have a lot of magic shirts, so I make a conscious effort. Um, I also try to, by the way, um, whenever I, um, whenever I, um, do an interview, I try to wear the latest and the same with panels and things. Whenever I'm somewhere where I'm being seen, I try to wear a t-shirt that's the latest, newest t-shirt. A lot of times, to be some people I've even seen, usually when I wear shirts in videos and things,

it encourages other people to want the shirt or at least become aware of the shirt. And then, you know, they go, oh, that's a cool shirt. I love that shirt. Oh, okay. So I keep coming up with other places to answer questions, which is good because there's lots of traffic.

How are we doing on time? Wow. 35 minutes and I am far from work. So hopefully I could ride this topic all the way. This is one of those topics, by the way, just for those who like behind-the-scenes stuff. I wasn't sure what to do today. And normally the way it works is when I get ready in the morning,

after I do everything, I was like, in the morning, I do my head-to-head, which is my voting thing I do on Twitter. I do my comic, Tales from the Pit. And I get my kids up and everything. And normally at some point during the day, once I finish my other things I have to do, I try to think of my podcast for the day.

Now, every once in a blue moon, I'm good and I've done advanced work. But a lot of times, like, I come down, I'm going to get my breakfast. I'm like, okay, what am I going to talk about today? And because I'm over 500 in, there's a lot of topics that I come up with and I'm like, oh, no, I've answered that topic. Like, even today's topic, bits and pieces of what I've talked about today, I've talked about in other places. Like, I've talked about my column and I've talked about my blog and I've talked about

my podcast. And, like, each one of those, I've touched upon this, but I, you about my podcast and like each one of those I've touched upon this but I you know this is a more connected theme where I'm driving through everything but anyway it's interesting in that when I first sat down I thought about mailbag columns I really thought about my podcast and my column like literally in the column like oh yeah of course my blog I answer questions like I keep adding things to it. I'm like, oh, yeah.

So the other thing that just dawned on me was I talked about doing, as a spokesperson, doing videos, for example. And sometimes it's video, sometimes audio and podcasts and stuff like that. The other thing that I occasionally have to do is I occasionally will do presentations. I forgot about this. will do presentations. I forgot about this. So, for example,

I did a whole podcast on PAX where we, not this year, it must have been, so 2016, I believe, is when we were doing Battle for Zendikar was coming out. And we did this big show and Will Whedon was our guest and so he and I went on stage

and he was asking me questions and I was answering them. Now that's a completely different animal. That is rehearsed questions. Right? Same as when I did a presentation at PAX 2017 for Kaladesh.

Occasionally we'll do these presentations where, and the format usually is we have a host Jimmy was the host in 2017 Wilween was the host in 2016 also there's a woman named Ashley Ashley Burke I think

there were two hosts like Doug Beyer was answering all the story questions and he was talking to Ashley and I was answering the mechanical questions talking to Will but in those things those are done in question and answer form, but all of it is rehearsed ahead of time. Like, for example, when I did both shows, both the PAC shows, we had rehearsals, we practiced before the day of the event, at the event we practiced. I had a wardrobe picked out for me.

Like in 2017, I don't know if you remember this, they got me a, what was it, like a sports coat? If you know me, which hopefully you do, I'm not really a sports coat kind of person, but they were trying to dress me up a little bit. So they got me a flannel sports coat. And I had a t-shirt underneath. I mean, they were trying to keep my aesthetic, if you will.

And I mean, whatever they ask, I'll dress up whenever we're doing official presentations. But that's another place where I'm answering questions. That, though, is a completely different thing. Like, when I'm getting up in front of an audience at a panel, I don't even know the question. So obviously, my answers are thought out only in the sense that I answer the even know the question. So obviously, my answers are thought out only in the sense that I answer the same question a lot. So if you ask me a question, and it is not often these days that I get asked a question that I really have never had to answer before. One of the things about answering questions as much as I have over so much time is even if they ask me a

question that I've never answered that specific question, it's the me a question that I've never answered that specific question it's the kind of question that I've answered I at least understand the structure of the question being asked to me like one of the things is the reason I've gotten good at answering questions is if you do something a lot you know you talk about you that the way to get good something is just do it well I've answered a lot of questions in a lot of context over a lot of time. So, you know, I've gotten really good at answering questions. Now that said, that said, I do mess up, especially my blog. But because my blogs where I answer my most questions, there are some mistakes I make. I've made mistakes live. I've made mistakes in my column.

But my column, I answer, then it gets edited by somebody. Like, it's harder, I mean, I still messed up. What are the area of my biggest mess-ups? Some questions about that. My biggest mess-up areas are, I tend to, I've made a lot of rules where I've gotten the rules wrong, or the card is slightly wrong. I've learned I have to go read the card and make sure I understand the card. So here's the biggest problem I tend to run into is they ask me about a card that I remember because in design we had a card. But what I don't realize is even though the card made it through the process and made it to print, some little aspect of the card was changed.

So I'll answer it as I knew it, but the point is that's not the actual card. So I've learned now whenever someone asks me, I go double check the card to make sure. I mean,

if I'm in a place where I can't, live I can't always do that, but if someone asks me in writing on my blog, I either go to go look it up. I'll make sure to check the card. Sometimes, especially on my blog,

I'll misunderstand the question. This is a common one, where someone's asking something, and I just interpret what they mean to be slightly different. And usually when I do that, people correct me. Sometimes I get a fact wrong. Sometimes I'll talk about something historic, and I just get the fact wrong, and people go, hey, hey, that's not right. My memory's pretty good, especially on historical things, and I'm right most of the time.

I'm not always right. Like I said, you answer 10,000 questions, or not even 10,000, 100,000 questions, you get something wrong. My hit rate's pretty good, though. And when I'm wrong, I own up that I was wrong, and I try to correct it. I have an edit function on my blog, so I can go back and edit and say, oh, I made a mistake here. I can do that. And then there's the questions where I give the answer, and I'm right, and people think I'm wrong.

That's always a fun one, where I get to argue with people. The weirdest one is when I argue with people where, like, it's one thing to argue over a fact, right? If I'm arguing over a history or something, okay, I could be wrong, and you could say, no, no, no, this happened. The one that I get into fights with that I find funny is where I've defined a term, like, I've made up the term,

and then they're arguing with me about what it means. And I'm like, you could argue with me that the audience's interpretation of it is drift to a time, there's arguments to make, but in general, when it's a design term used for design to explain something, and I'm giving you the behind the scenes, I'm telling you what it means, I'm telling you, you know. means. I'm telling you what it means. I'm telling you, you know, um, I also sometimes get in arguments about, um, stuff like the psychographics. There's some misunderstood things about psychographics and sometimes people get in arguments about me about, uh, you know, is this that or this so, so, um, and the, the, the thing I should point out, um, for those that read my blog, I like the back

and forth. If I'm wrong, I want to know I'm wrong. Like I said, I will own up to being wrong. If I say something's incorrect and someone informs me I'm incorrect, I will come back and say, oh, I made a mistake. That is not correct. That is wrong. And if you read my blog, I make mistakes all the time. I mean, hopefully not every day or anything, but often enough that if you read me,

the larger mistakes I make on my blog, though, are not where I'm just outright wrong. It's more where I misunderstand what's being asked of me. So, like, I correctly answered the question I thought was being asked, but it turns out that they were trying to ask something slightly different. I'm a bit a stickler when it comes to vocabulary sometimes. So sometimes people ask me something and they're using a word to mean something

other than we traditionally use the word. The one, for example, that's got me in the most trouble is it took me a long time to wrap my head around when someone says a flip card, they don't actually mean a flip card, which is a mechanic from Kamigawa, but they mean a double-faced card. And one of the things I've said in my vlog is I will use the official terminology, meaning even if the audience vernacularly says something else,

but there's an actual term for it, I will use the correct, if it's a mechanic, I will call it by its correct name. I'm not going to call a double-faced mechanic, I will call it by its correct name. I'm not going to call a double-faced card a flip card. A flip card is something. It means something. And I'm going to be exact on that. But I've gotten better now when someone says, I have a flip card. And I will try from context to figure out whether they mean a flip card or whether they mean a double-faced card. And then in my answer, if they mean a double face card, I'll refer to it as a double face card. So, let me, let me, I'll be on time. Man, this is not the topic I would have picked to be a super long show, but I guess it's plain to say.

So, okay, so, if you want to ask me a question, so now it's my tip to you to increase your chance to get me to answer your question. So this is the how to get Mark to answer my question. Number one, make your question short. One of the biggest problems I have on my blog or anywhere, one of the biggest problems I have anywhere is when you ask multiple questions and I have the ability to skip the question,

I feel rude to not answer every question you ask. So what that means is I have to be willing to answer every question and then it also becomes something that it's hard to make short. So I most often do not answer multiple question questions. I mean, I don't necessarily mind the follow-up question. It's just really like, you know, how often do you do this and why?

Okay, it's kind of one question. But when there are three distinct questions, it just lessens me answering you. So first off, ask me one question. You can ask me as many questions as you want. Just ask them as separate questions. Ask me three individual separate questions as three different questions, and I'll answer the one I want to answer. But sometimes, if someone sends me three questions, I'm like, wow, I have a great answer to question

one. Oh, I can't answer question three or whatever. Or I don't want to spend the time answering question three. Oh, I guess I can't answer this. So make it succinct. Number two, be cognizant of what I do. You know, especially people who read my blog all the time. I'm in charge of vision design.

I'm in charge of the early part of design. Now, I have some understanding of later parts of design. But if you ask me a question about something that I actually am in charge of or that I oversee or that I at least sometimes do, I have a much better chance I can answer the question versus here's a question that's not your area of expertise. Now, because there's not a lot of people that have blogs, I will take shots at it sometimes.

I will try to explain. But if you are outside my area of expertise, there's a much greater chance I can't answer your question. The other reason to keep your question short, by the way, is the audience has to read your question. If you ramble on, it's just not fun to read for the audience. So succinct is good just because it makes it more entertaining. And in general, I try to make my answers as succinct as I can.

Sometimes I'm explaining complex things most of the time my answers are actually a paragraph or less sometimes they're more if I'm talking about something but I try to keep my answers succinct I don't want to meander forever when I answer questions on my podcast because of the nature of it and its storytelling I'll go off a little bit more because of the nature of it

and in a sit down I'll go off a little bit more because it's the nature of it. And in a sit-down interview or sometimes at a panel where I see the opportunity to take it to someplace that's a neat conversation, I will do that. That is something I will do live at a panel or sometimes in a sit-down interview where somebody sort of sets me up for a perfect talk. And then one of the running jokes of people that interview me is that it doesn't require a lot of questions. Pretty much they'll ask the first question and then I'll talk for 30 minutes, is usually how it works. But I will segue into other things.

And a lot of times what I will do is I will give openings for the person interviewing me to sort of throw in a question to lead me in the direction I'm going so that it feels very question and answer-y. But I've done enough of the interviews that I really can lead it and I can make sure that I'm making an entertaining topic. That's one of the biggest things, by the way, when I'm answering questions is I want to be informative, but informative is actually my second goal. My first goal is to be entertaining. Because what I've learned is

if you answer things in ways that are informative but boring, people don't read your answers. So I always try to be, and that's why I put a lot of humor in my stuff. It's why, depending on the medium, I try to have some attitude and have some fun. I want to make my question answering entertaining. So anyway, keep your answers short.

Ask something I know. Stay away from things that I can't talk about. Meaning if you ask me about something that's kind of a topic that's off topic, I mean, not something I don't know, something I'm not supposed to talk about, like future products and stuff. There's only so much I can say.

Now, I don't mind people teasing me with, what can you tell us about a thing you're not supposed to tell us about? And I've learned how to tease without really giving things away and stuff. There's only so much I can say. Now, I don't mind people teasing me with, what can you tell us about a thing you're not supposed to tell us about? And I've learned how to tease without really giving things away and stuff, you know, and I've gotten really good at sort of giving hints that don't really say anything, but get people excited. But if you want me to answer your question, the key there is ask me something that, you know, the better chance of something I have to ask. And the more you ask a question that I've not been asked before, the greater your chance of getting answered. I do repeat questions. There's things that people ask all the time.

And if you read my blog, I do repeat questions in the sense of somebody will ask me something one day and two days later somebody asks me something very similar. I know that very, or not very few, there are dedicated question marks that read all my questions and that's some dedication because I answer a lot of questions. But most people skim it. So it's very easy to miss some answers. So if something is getting asked a lot by the community, I'll answer it multiple times. I'll try to change up the answer a little bit and try to make it entertaining or keep it short. But I do often answer the same question and try to make sure people up the answer a little bit and try to make it entertaining or keep it short, but I do often answer the same question and try to make sure people know the answer. If it's something that's asked a lot. But if you ask me something that I've never asked before, oh, and ask me something that

can be answered in a short answer. If you want me to answer your question, if you ask me something that requires a long answer, I just have to be in a place and a time where I have the space to do it. I have the time to do it. It fits what I'm writing. There's a lot less places where I have for a long answer. I'm not saying I never have the opportunity to do that. I've written whole columns as answers.

So occasionally I'll do the long answer, but it reduces your chances of me answering your question. occasionally I'll do the long answer, but it reduces your chances of me answering your question. So if it's original and it allows me to sort of give a shorter answer, I'm just telling you how to up your chances of getting an answer. The other thing, by the way, is volume, which is, I mean by that it's A, especially on my blog. You can ask the same question more than once. Maybe I missed your question.

What I do not ask you to do is there's this thing people will do. Well, they'll ask the same question in a row. Like, they'll sort of spam me. Like, I'm going to ask the question and ask it eight times in a row. Well, that discourages me from answering your question, right? Like, why are you asking a question? If it's a good question, I'll answer it. You asking it eight times in a row is not going to make... Now, if you ask it one day and then a day later when I haven't answered it, you ask it again, no problem there. I have no problem with someone asking a question multiple times because maybe I haven't seen it or maybe you're eager and you haven't heard me answer it yet. That I don't have a problem with.

Please don't ask me the same question right in a row. That doesn't make me any more encouraging to answer the question. In fact, it discourages me to answer the question. Let's see. So those are the main things that I'm driving to work right now. So keep it short. Ask me a question that is my area of expertise. Ask me a question that I can answer.

And ask me something that is a short answer to answer and something that's interesting that maybe I've never answered before. Those are the ways to increase it. I answer tons and tons and tons of questions. My blog is the easiest place to get me to answer your questions or to get your question answered because of the volume of questions I answer. The other

thing I would say is if you want to get a question, oh, I also do answer questions on Twitter. I tend to answer very succinct questions on Twitter and I tend, I mean, the nature of Twitter means I can't go into any depth usually I answer a question in which it's a short answer but I do occasionally answer questions on Twitter everyone's in a blue moon

I'll answer them on some of my other social media like my Google Plus or Instagram but infrequently I do that but what I would say is if you most want to get a question answered ask my blog because I answer the most questions on the blog. Follow me on Twitter. Twitter's where I go to get people to ask me questions for my blog and for my column.

Or, if you're ever at a place where I'm doing a question mark, come show up. What I would recommend is when I say it's time for questions, hurry up. People line up quickly, and not everybody tends to get to ask me a question. Hurry up. People line up quickly, and not everybody tends to get to ask me a question. I try to answer, just like online, on my blog, I try to answer questions as quick as I can, but because I'm trying to be entertaining, sometimes I give longer answers, and so not everybody necessarily always gets an answer to a live show. Usually they're 45 minutes to an hour, so I only have so much time to answer questions.

But if you want to get me a question, the other thing, by the way, is if you ever see me in person, I much time to answer questions. But, if you want to get me questions... The other thing, by the way, is, if you ever see me in person, I'm happy to answer questions in person. I guess that's the final answer. When people meet me, oftentimes they go, I've always wanted to know something. You know, if I can't answer you or it's something I don't know, I'll tell you, but

I'm always happy in person. If you meet me and you want to ask a question, feel free. Ask me a question. I will gladly answer you. So anyway, today ended up being a pretty long podcast. 54 minutes. But I am at work, and I do have things I have to do, so I've got to run off to my meeting. But hopefully

today was interesting. Hopefully me answering questions about answering questions was interesting. It's a big part of my job, and as you can see, I keep forgetting all the different places I answer questions. But I'm now at work. So we all know what that interesting. It's a big part of my job, and as you can see, I keep forgetting all the different places I answer questions. But I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of

talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.