Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #560: Tuesday Magic Meeting

Episode Date: August 3, 2018

In this podcast, I talk all about a longstanding meeting we have every week in Research and Development.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about an R&D tradition, what we call the Tuesday Magic Meeting. So I'm going to talk about what exactly it is, talk about the history of it, and then talk about the kinds of things we do there. Just to give you guys a behind-the-scenes sort of take of what it's like to be an R&D. So I'm going to focus today on a one singular thing we do every week on Tuesdays, the Tuesday Magic Meeting. So really quickly, before I get into the history and everything, the Tuesday Magic Meeting is a place where not just Magic R&D, but anybody who's interested in magic can get together,

and we talk about all sorts of things and discuss a lot of magic-related issues. Later on, I'm going to get into what exactly we do there, but just as a brief overview, it's the meeting every week, the big meeting about magic. It's on Tuesday, so we call it the Tuesday Magic Meeting, sometimes just the Magic Meeting. If you want to, sometimes people will shorten it to TMM, although that's more recent.

Whenever people say TMM, a lot of Arnie goes, what's TMM? I'm like, oh, it's the Magic Maiden. Okay, so we go back to the very beginning of Magic and Wizards of the Coast. So for those who remember, I've talked about this a little bit, but when Wizards first started way, way back when, it was a little tiny dinky company. Peter Atkinson had started it with some of the people, and for a long time, like, the offices were his basement. So eventually, Magic managed to hit it big, and it started making money enough so that they actually got to get a building. And so the first sort of wizard's offices that weren't in Peter's basement was, so right now the offices we have, we've been in the current offices for about 12 years.

Before that, we were across the street from where we are for about 10 years. But before that, we were in the old buildings. This is the old, old building I'm talking about. And the old, old building was in fact not even one building, it was a'm talking about. And the old, old building was, in fact, not even one building. It was a couple different buildings. I mean, we were... The newer buildings are bigger and have more space. The old building was a lot of smaller buildings put together. But anyway, R&D, even back then, had what we called the pit,

which was a big open space. The walls were all really low. It was designed so R&D could talk to each other and have room for playtesting. And it was just a big open space. The walls were all really low. It was designed so R&D could talk to each other and have room for playtesting. And it was just a big open space. So Peter liked to do all hands, which meant that he would have a meeting where every single person in the company would come. We still have all hands now, but they're a little, they require a lot bigger room and stuff. But the all hands used to take place in the R&D pit. And a bunch of things would happen there.

It was a place where Peter would explain what was going on and fill people in. It was a place where occasionally he'd have different people from different sections of the company talk about sort of things that were going on. He would introduce new employees. Whenever there was a new employee, they'd stand up and they'd get introduced. And anyway, Peter made this sort of dynamic meeting that was something that the whole office would have. So a little later, R&D decided that they'd have R&D's version of the all-hands meeting. Now, given at the time R&D's version of the All Hands meeting. Now, given at the time R&D wasn't particularly big, and I'm not even talking about Magic R&D,

I'm talking about R&D, which is all the different games. There were more people than just people working on Magic. In fact, at the time of what I'm talking about, Magic was mostly four people. It was me, Bill Rose, Mike Elliott, and William Jockish were the four people that were primarily working on Magic. There were other people in R&D that occasionally would work on Magic.

We were the only four that were consistently working on Magic, sort of official Magic R&D. So anyway, R&D would have a meeting, and it was infrequent, but we would have an infrequent sort of R&D, kind of an all-hands for R&D.

And it was called, I think it was just called the R&D meeting. And so eventually, at some point, Magic R&D got big enough that Magic R&D decided that it would do its version of sort of the all-hand meeting. And so the sort of the original sort of Peter all-hand meeting, then offshoot it into an R&D meeting, which offshoot into a Magic R&D meeting. And originally, the Magic R&D meeting really was just for Magic R&D. Magic R&D had gotten big enough there. Not that Magic R&D was huge, but...

And the idea of the Magic R&D meeting was, at the time, not everybody in R&D worked exclusively on Magic but a lot of people worked sometimes on Magic. Like I said, you know, there were four of us that were full-time I think at the time they started but there were lots of people that like occasionally worked on Magic and so what happened was when we have the Magic R&D meeting anybody who had all worked on Magic and R&D would come to the meeting. Now that wasn't everybody, there were people working on other games and stuff but anybody who remotely worked on Magic and R&D would come to the meeting. Now, that wasn't everybody. There were people working on other games and stuff. But anybody who remotely worked on Magic usually would come to the Magic R&D meeting.

And it's a place we'd start talking about Magic stuff. And then what happened was, I think originally it was like maybe once a month. And then it just started becoming this thing that kind of was a really good means and place for us to disseminate information and talk about things. And so it started becoming, I think it was bi-weekly at one point, and then eventually it started becoming weekly.

And at some point, I'm not sure when this happened, we put it on Tuesdays. And so the Magic R&D meeting became the Magic meeting became the Tuesday Magic meeting. I know ever since we've been in the new building, for at least 12 years, it's been on Tuesdays. It is possible that it existed before the new building, but I'm not sure whether it was on Tuesdays. But anyway, now it's on Tuesdays. And the other thing that happened was, in the early days, it was just Magic R&D. But we sort of like started opening it up and saying, well, we're talking about magic. And we would bring other people in to talk and stuff.

And we sort of said, hey, if you work on magic, anybody who wants to come, you can come. And so the Magic meeting kind of morphed over time. It is still R&D-centric. It's run by R&D. It has a lot of R&D issues and stuff that get discussed there. But it's become a little bit bigger. The Magic Meeting is where anybody who's interested in magic can come, and there's a lot of people that attend the Magic Meeting over and above just Magic R&D. Okay, so what do we do at the Magic Meeting, at the Tuesday Magic Meeting?

What do we do? Well, we do a lot of things. So I thought today I'd walk through and talk about all the different kinds of things that happen at the Tuesday magic meeting. Probably the most famous thing that we do at the Tuesday magic meeting is the slideshow. And that is after, at the end of any, so at one point we work on it. So like we start with exploratory design, then work on vision design, then work on set design, then play design gets done. And then at some point, editing has to go through

and make sure everything's all lined up. And then after editing is all done, after everybody's done their work, it gets handed off from editing to CAPS, our production people, to physically, we've got to now make the cards, or make the files in these days. We've got to make the files so we can get to the printers,

so the printers can make the cards. But there's a step once we have, once R&D has finished making the cards, meaning making, you know, everything about them so we can hand it off so that they, CAPS can then start working on production of them. And right before the handoff, maybe a week or two before the handoff,

we have a slideshow two before the handoff, we have a slideshow. And the idea of the slideshow is a couple things. One is just a chance for everybody to see it and get people caught up. Because one of the things you have to understand is most people in R&D do not have visibility to all the products, do not really work on all the products.

So for example, I'm going to talk about upcoming sets. You guys don't know all the code names, but they're alphabetical. So I'm just going to call them A, B, C, D. I think you guys actually know through D. I think you guys know diving. Oh, you might know E. Anyway, so the average person in R&D, they might work on A.

Maybe they're on the set design team for A. But then, oh, they're not on B or not on C, and maybe they're on D or they're on E, you know. Like, in a year's time, they work on one or two things, and there's supplemental sets, and there's a lot of different things we make to work on. So any one person in R&D is a lot more focused on the particular task at hand. I'm in a unique position because as the person overseeing vision, I oversee the vision of every single standard legal set. I don't literally run the vision design team of every set, but I do oversee the process. And so I need to know what every single, and even me, I don't see all the supplemental sets.

I mean, I have some general sense of what's going on with them. I want to know what mechanics they're using. So I have a little peek into them. But I am much more, like, if you ask me, name a set, what's it up to? I know what the set's doing because I've been involved in it. That's a little abnormal for most of R&D. So one of the things that we, the slideshow is for, is we want people to just see, like, even I who worked on the sets, for example, I haven't seen the finished products.

So it's nice to sort of get everybody on board to sort of celebrate the work we did, for everybody to sort of enjoy the finished product. And because it's a few weeks before handoff, it's also the last sanity check. Is there something that we missed? Usually the kind of things we miss usually the kind of things we miss are the kind of things where

you know there is holistic type of things where oh we did something four out of five times and not the fifth time but why was that you know a lot of times we catch things that are like

sometimes hard to catch it in the minutia and like when you sort of stand back and look at it you notice things but anyway it's a final sanity check it's a celebration of what we do it's a chance for it in the minutiae. And like when you sort of stand back and look at it, you notice things. But anyway, it's a final sanity check. It's a celebration of what we do. It's a chance for people to kind of get updated on what everything's at and get a sense of, oh, what are the mechanics?

Normally in a slideshow, the lead set designer, the set lead, will walk through and talk mechanics. The creative lead will walk through and talk story. And so not only are we seeing the cars, but we're kind of like getting an overview of what is going on. And it's kind of our big handoff.

Also, one of the things about the slideshow is there's a lot of levity in the slideshow. A lot of jokes made and a lot of people just sort of having fun. It is definitely one of the more jovial sort of magic meetings. And it is definitely, of the more jovial sort of, uh, uh, magic meetings. Um, and it is definitely, it's a fun thing. I always, I, whenever I come to the meeting and there's a slideshow, I'm always a smile

on my face because it is a lot of fun. I mean, you guys only see the product in its finished form. So to you, magic, that's what magic is. Magic always has art. Magic always has art. Magic always has names. For most of us, for the vast, vast, vast majority of the time we are working on it, it doesn't have all the pieces. And so to see it all finally come together and all collectively in one thing is really cool.

And that's kind of our, you know, opening the pack moment. Like when you guys get, when you first open up your booster pack, that's what we kind of get when we go to this live show. We sort of get to see it all together for the pack moment. Like when you guys get, when you first open up your booster pack, that's what we kind of get when we go to the slideshow. We sort of get to see it all together for the first time. Now, another big thing that we do in the Magic Meeting is the slideshow

is kind of the final handover, but I actually do an earlier handover. So we do exploratory design and do vision design, and then we hand over vision to set design. And at that handoff, I or the lead, whoever is running the vision team, it's not always me, it's me a lot of the time,

whoever was leading it does a slideshow along with the creative lead to sort of walk everybody through where the set is at the time of the handoff from vision. And usually the point of vision is we have a general sense of what kind of set it is. We have a sense of what the mechanics are going to be. Not that they can't change the set design, but usually the direction is set. And the creative has, once again, this is before the creative has done their world building, the world building push where they bring out artists.

So this is kind of before, you know, this is like early saying, here's the general idea of what we think the set's going to be. You know, we've set the vision for it. Creative has a general sense of it. Usually, I use pictures. There's some work that gets done early on to do some, a little bit of drawing of getting a sense of what things look like. So, any of those pictures I will get. Oftentimes we also will have pictures that are inspirational pictures that aren't for this set, but are the kind of things that might inspire what the set wants to be like. You know, once again, at this point, the set has a lot of ideas and both design and creative have done a lot of sort of exploratory work

to sort of get a sense of what they think it'll be, but it is early. But once again, the reason we do this is we like to use Magic Meeting as a touchstone so people are aware of what state things are in. As you will see as I go through the Magic Meeting, a lot of the role of the Magic Meeting is keeping everybody up to date. There's so many people and so many projects and so much going on that we want to make sure that the average person in our knee knows, like, we want someone to say, hey, what's the set? What's it doing?

For you to have some idea what the sets are about. Because like I said, the way that we function is people are very, very involved in one set and very uninvolved in another. And part of the Tuesday Magic meeting is to get people up to date and aware of what's going on. So another big thing we do is from time to time, we'll do sort of what we call product run through, which is there are a lot of things that we make. which is there are a lot of things that we make. So maybe twice a year, we sort of say, okay,

for the next six months or next year, here's what we envision. These are all the products that we see coming out. And we sort of run through and talk about at every stage what we think things are at. And, you know, different products are always at a different level. And so one of the things we do when we do the product run-through is just kind of say, okay, for the next year,

here's what we think is going to happen. And this month, this comes out. And this month, this comes out. And this month, this comes out. And the other thing is, as we get visuals, another big part of this is we like to make sure that when there are things to see, that we can see them. So a lot of times that the product run through, sometimes we'll have mock-ups of products, sometimes we'll have

pictures of products, sometimes we have visuals. One of the things we want to do is make sure people are aware of the products at every level that we can be. So that people are aware of not just what we're doing, but at what stage we're at. And if we have any innovations, if we're doing anything new, we talk about that. Because a lot of times it's like, oh, you might not know this, but we have this technology now. With BattleBond, for example, we finally got the technology to pair cards together,

which is something we'd wanted to do forever, but just couldn't do it at the precision we needed. And now BattleBond can. So I want people to know that, look, BattleBond, as a BattleBond, we have this technology. That's something we can make use of. Also, part of keeping up to date is not just keeping up to date with what is going on inside of R&D.

It's with what's going on around R&D and other sections of the company. So one of the things that I try to sort of voice this a lot. I talk about R&D all the time. It's just where I work. It's the part of magic that I'm living and breathing. But there are a lot of people, like once we hand off a magic set, there are huge, there are large other groups.

You know, the product's going to go to digital and there are digital, you know, Magic Online and Magic the Gathering Arena. There are ways that the work we make is going to get translated

into digital form. There's organized play. There's tournaments and pro tours and things all around the world making use of the products that we make. There is marketing. You know, brand has a lot of decisions to make about how much to make of the product and where the product's going to be sold and how the product's going to be marketed. And there's a lot of brand decisions that come up.

There's sales about we got to sell this. There's logistics. We have to actually ship it. sales, about we've got to sell this. There's logistics. We have to actually ship it. There's lots and lots of different groups that have to care about magic downstream of us. And so we bring them into the magic meeting so they can talk about it. Brand will come and talk about what the current marketing plan is and show us how they're planning to do it.

And that different sets, they'll try different things, and they'll talk about what's successful and how they want to change things. We'll have digital come to talk to us and talk about what stage we're at. And Magic the Gang Arena might come to show us where they're at right now and what they're capable of. And they might also bring up some issues

about things they've worked on and raise some stuff of, here are things that were trouble spots that you guys are aware of. Here about things they've worked on and like raise some stuff of here are things that were trouble spots so you guys are aware of here's things you've designed that in digital these are more tricky and be aware of these these are things that um you know not that you can't do but we want you to be aware when you do them you know that what that ramifications for example for digital um organized play will come in all the time and talk about what we're running and how we're changing things. Another big thing we do is whenever we have something to show, whether

there's a trailer or there is a video we've done. I know, for example, when I make the comedy videos that I make in the summer, I will make sure to bring those in and show those to R&D. Like, whatever their show and tell, whenever there's something to see, something to watch, the Tuesday Magic Meeting is a place where we make sure people get a chance to see that. And by bringing people outside of R&D, it also allows us to sort of get up to touch of what different people are doing and get a larger sense of what Magic is doing.

Like, one of the interesting things is, I'll just take Dominaria as a product that's out now. So like during its lifespan, you know, I had a meeting. So originally, by the way, we used to have meetings about exploratory design. I stopped doing them because exploratory design is about, we have an idea, we're looking at what to do for the set. We've experimented with 20, 30, 40 mechanics mechanics none of which we've gone very deep on we've just gone very shallow on a lot of things to scope out space and so in the exploratory design meetings i used to walk through all the

different ideas we had and the problem was it's most of those ideas aren't going to get used um in fact none of them might get used sometimes i mean we do use mechanics from exploratory design, but not always. And it was just causing more confusion. People want to get really in the nitty-gritty and like, well, a lot of mechanics we aren't even doing necessarily. And so, but anyway, I do talk about vision. So for Dominaria, I came in to talk about the vision and walk through the vision. I think Kelly Diggs was the creative person person so he walked through the creative of it.

And then we would have done the Dominaria slideshow where we saw where things were at. And then we would have done product things. Brand came in and talked about

how we were going to market Dominaria and we did things a little differently than normal. We had a talk talking about Brawl because we were introducing a new format and what that meant

and how stores were supported and different different sort of thing for that. I know we had Digital come in and talk about some of the stuff of how Dominaria was getting shown off there. You know, we might have even had Sales come in. I mean, we had a lot of people and like the idea is just from the Tuesday Magic meeting, I have a really good sense of all the work that went into making Dominaria Dominaria because I got to see all the pieces along the way. And that's a big part of the Tuesday Magic meeting is trying to keep everybody who works on Magic kind of informed, especially, I mean, Magic R&D, informed of all the sort of pieces that are going on. Okay.

That's just the product side of things. That's just sort of keeping us up to date on the product side. But there's much more to the Tuesday Magic Meeting. Okay. The next thing that the Tuesday Magic Meeting does is there is a lot of expertise in R&D and external to R&D. And we like to use the meeting as a means to sort of educate people. So, for example, one of the things that's very common to do is one person will spend time learning something. It might be new printing technology. It might be what other people in the game industry are doing.

It might be just something that we think might be beneficial for the group as a whole. And what we do is one or a few people will sort of spend time and energy learning about that, and then they'll do a presentation. And then it's sort of like, for example, someone might say, okay, I want to understand what are the other games in our fields doing and get a sense of what new things are they trying, and that will go people do some research, and then they'll give a presentation to what, you know, what new things are they trying and that, well,

go people do some research and then they'll give a presentation and talk about here's what we've learned. Or, for example, sometimes we send people to places.

GDC is the Game Developers Conference. It's the big sort of gaming conference that happens usually in, I guess, in the spring

in San Francisco. It's where I gave my speech a couple years ago, the 20 years, 20 lessons speech. And we send people there every year. And then one of the things we'll do is people will come back and every person who attends will give like a 20 to 30 minute talk. And it might be about a particular talk that inspired them.

It might be about a theme that they picked up looking at multiple talks. You know, whatever struck them, they'll come and they'll talk to us. And so a lot of the Tuesday Magic meeting can be education where somebody who's learned something either through research or through a trip they've taken. Like another big thing that happens is that somebody might go to an event. Like after every Pro Tour, for example, we'll have a meeting after every Pro Tour where we walk through what happened at the Pro Tour,

what the decks were, how the game played in Limited, how it played in Constructed, how the people in the event, how the pros thought about it, how it played, you know, how the numbers were, how many people watched it, the sort of general tenor of the audience and social media.

We'll really sort of do a dive on how that event went. Sometimes, for example, we send people to events, they'll just come back and report on the event. They might go to a distributor conference, or there's just lots of different places you can go. Maybe someone went out to look to another country to look at how stores work in that country. And there's a lot of outreach we do

where we go and we go to things and then we talk about them. Another real common thing we'll do is after pre-releases, we'll always sort of talk through numbers. Oh, another big thing that'll happen is brands sometimes will come, or sometimes just the leadership of R&D

will walk through how products are doing. We want to have a sense of what's successful, what's less successful, you know, where. Because we're always looking at where are our successes so that we can build upon them and improve them and use them to make things better. If something's really successful, especially if something is new and successful, we want to know that. Because maybe there's lessons to be learned of how to change how we do other things to take the lessons of that success. So for example in pre-releases, usually we'll talk about how the pre-release goes and get some sense of how the early signs of the set is. We'll talk social media and then we many many members of R&D will

go out to different pre-releases and there's lots of different kinds of pre-releases. And R&D will spread out. There's some pre-releases that are done at big stores that have hundreds of people. There's some that are done in little dinky stores that have maybe eight people. There's ones that focus on kids and ones that focus on all sorts of different factors. And so we go to all those and come back and talk about it and say, OK, what were the first impressions of the set? What were the rules complications?

You know, where were people having a good time? Where were the things that were stopping them? Were the new things we tried, were the things that players got or didn't get or really enjoyed and really sort of do a lot of dissecting? A lot of the Tuesday Magic meeting is analysis. You know, R&D loves doing analysis. Oh, another team that we bring in, by the way,

we call BMI. What does BMI stand for? They do all the statistical, the data, the deep data dive stuff. And there are many, many, many ways that we track data. I mean, obviously we do market research. We have a lot of data from both Magic Online and Magic Gathering Arena. We have sales data. We have data from the stores. We have online data. We have, you know, there's metrics to track social media.

There's a billion ways to track things. And our BMI department is always crunching all the data and trying to figure things out and looking at things in different ways and showing us, you know, from the data we have, you know, here's attendance and here's sales and here's usage of this card on Magic Online. And anyway, there's all sorts of stuff we get to look at and we sort of crunch that. And that's something that happens a lot. They come in and they talk to us. So the Tuesday Magic Meeting

has a lot of introspective qualities to it where we're sort of looking at what we've done to try to better understand it. Which brings us to our next big thing. So another big thing that we like to do in the Magic Meeting is we like to have discussions. So some big thing that we like to do in the Magic Meeting is we like to have discussions. So some of the time we're there to watch and, you know, one person or a few people are talking and everybody else is listening.

But some of the times we like to have discussions. So one of the things that will happen is sometimes we'll bring in a topic, something that is a hot button topicton topic with the audience or something that we, in building something, are struggling with. Recently, for example, we talked a lot about, like, Dominaria was really successful. Why was Dominaria successful? We might talk about, you know, we're trying something new. Is this the right thing? Or whatever the topic is, it could be about things the audience has seen, hasn't seen yet. Just any topic that R&D thinks we're interested in talking about.

And then we'll discuss it. And we'll talk about it in the larger meeting. We'll talk about values. We'll talk about individual decisions we're making. We'll talk about sort of philosophy. We'll talk about all sorts of things. And the magic meeting is a cross-section of all these people in the company that work on magic. And these are also people that have a lot of different connections to our audience so you know when we're having a conversation it's a really in-depth conversation it's really something where we can talk a lot about sort of um what makes what makes things tick what you know and we can delve in deep about what we feel and what we believe.

And, you know, the Magic meeting has been a really good soul-searching time. There's a lot of introspection. There's a lot of us sort of having conversations with one another.

And we are pretty brutally honest in that meeting. It's kind of a safe space in the sense that everybody understands that we're all working toward trying to make Magic the best game it can be

and the best brand it can be. And, you know, we have a lot of very serious discussions and we talk about things. And anyway, it's very interesting to watch and people are very impassioned and people have very different viewpoints. So it's very interesting conversations. The one thing I do want to talk a little bit about is

the Tuesday Magic meeting did create a spinoff. If it was a TV show, there was another TV show that probably would be right after it in the scheduling. And then once it built up enough, then it would move to its own day. Anyway, so it's called card crafting. I'll talk a little bit about card crafting because card crafting really is a spiritual offshoot of the Tuesday Magic Meeting. And the reason I bring it up is we like to talk in the Tuesday Magic Meeting and have a lot of discussions.

But what we found was some of the discussions were very what we call crunchy, meaning they were very data driven and very, very about making of the game. Like some of our conversations are bigger philosophical things and some of them are much more like tactical. And so Aaron decided to sort of pull out the tactical conversations because we were having conversations in which a lot of the people just didn't have much to offer because they were just super tactical. So we started doing a meeting we called Card Crafting that is now on another day of the week.

And Card Crafting, the audience for Card Crafting is kind of more just hardcore magic R&D, less external people. We do invite people, and there are some non-magic people that come to Card Crafting, but it is much crunchier. We talk rules. We talk sort of execution of color pie. It is much more in the nitty gritty of just literally how the cards work and like card crafting was an offshoot a lot of what we do in card crafting we used to do in the magic meeting

and Aaron decided that just it was of more value to sort of have it be its own meeting and have its own agenda so that part of it sort of branched off and so the I mean we still do discussions in the Magic Meeting but it's more about sort of larger holistic

issues and a little bit less about sort of the crunchy really tactical issues. Another thing that we do at the Tuesday Magic Meeting is I talked about this when Peter first started All Hands. We introduce people. It also is a place where we do introductions and people get to sort of meet the new people.

We're pretty kind right now. Right now, if you're a new person, you get to stand out for like 60 seconds and just give the quick rundown of who you are. In the past, by the way, we used to be a little, we used to have a little more fun with the introductions. We had a little, there was a period of time where we would sort of prank the new people a little bit. And what we would do is we would tell them that there was something that we did at Tuesday

Magic meetings and have them do it. So like Pat Chapin, when he was an intern, we told Pat that we review games. And back in the time, there was a period where we didn't do more game review. But anyway, and so we gave him this game called Snifty Snakes, where you have to attach this thing to your nose. That is like this long snake. And then you have to use that thing to your nose that is like this long snake, and then you have to use that snake to push things on a board. It was a kid's game. So we gave it to him and said, look, we like to do deep dive analysis of things. And right now, we're in the middle of looking at kids games. So this is a game and we need you to do this.

You know, you have 10 minutes. And really, we're looking for really deep, insightful commentary. And then we gave him the silliest game we could give him. And then we watched for 10 minutes as Pat, like, very seriously analyzed Snifty Snakes. Anyway, we don't, we're kinder now to our new employees than back then. But anyway, it was, it is an opportunity for us to sort of introduce people and let people know who the new people are. Also, whenever there is any change, somebody gets promoted, somebody is moving into a department that wasn't there before,

that's common in R&D of people elsewhere in the company eventually moving to R&D. R&D is a very sought-after place to work. So oftentimes people will start somewhere else in the company and eventually move to R&D. So whenever something happens in which, you know, the Magic Meeting also is a place for celebration. So we talk about promotions

or not just new hires, but new acquisitions if you will. So we like to celebrate people. From time to time, there'll be a little sort of rewards given out. Also, sometimes if people do something that's just kind of above and beyond, oftentimes they'll be rewarded and they get given a gift card and stuff and sort of a thank you.

So the Tuesday match meeting also is kind of a period of recognition and a period of doing that. Also, there's some celebration. One of the things that we try to do is from time to time, we want to just sort of say, hey, we really did a good job. We've had cake in the Tuesday Magic Meeting, although usually the cake is broader than just the Tuesday Magic Meeting. That's usually its own separate thing.

But we have had... Oh, so one of the things that happens also is we will bring in guests to talk to us. And the reason that came to my mind is whenever Bill comes to talk to us, he often will bring donuts. In fact, other people have learned that R&D is very happy when you come to talk to us, you bring donuts. So that's become a more popular thing to do, bring donuts, we talk to R&D. So Bill will come down.

Bill is often at the Magic Meeting, but he will come down every once in a while and talk to us. Sometimes Aaron will talk. Upper management of R&D will talk and sort will talk whenever there's new things or shifts or we've moved around how we're structuring our stuff Bill will often come talk about that Chris Cox who's the CEO comes down a couple times a year

actually maybe three or four times a year and he'll answer whatever questions we have for him usually he'll talk a little bit about a few new things we're doing and then he'll just answer any questions that we have and R&D asks some very insightful questions. I remember the first time Chris ever came, at the end of the meeting, he goes, okay, you guys ask some questions.

We're not shy to dig in deep. And it's not just Chris. We will bring in different people. We're not shy to dig in deep. And it's not just Chris. We will bring in different people. Sometimes when somebody is new, we will bring them in and have them talk and do questions. Sometimes there are presentations. So sometimes there's a combination of question and answer presentation. Let's say somebody somewhere else is doing something new or they're new to the job and

they have sort of a new vision, sometimes we'll get slide shows and then usually there's a Q&A so we can sort of walk through and talk with them and understand it. You know, and there's a lot of if you really want to sort of connect with R&D, it's the one meeting where basically

when I say R&D, I'm talking about Magic R&D. There's a D&D R&D and stuff. But if you want to talk to Magic R&D, this'm talking about Magic R&D. There's a D&D R&D and stuff. But if you want to talk to Magic R&D, this is the place to do it. Oh, another fun thing about the meeting is the way the meeting works is... So Ken Troop, who's one of the senior management in R&D, one of the directors in R&D, he manages the meeting. And the way it works is there's kind of a sign-up schedule. And then some of the time, he goes out and seeks people.

Like, for example, let's say somebody gave a presentation somewhere else. Like, there's a lot of presentations given to upper management. And that Ken is in a lot of those meetings. So when he sees something, he then will go to the people and go, could you please come show this to R&D? This was a really good presentation. I'd love R&D to see this. And so Ken will seek out things that he thinks are valuable. Sometimes it's like my vision design handoff.

There's things we regularly do, and whether it's a slideshow or a handoff or whatever, he'll sort of coordinate with that. Sometimes there is just somebody needs to do something. We've on occasion used the Tuesday Magic meeting to do a little bit of brainstorming. We've occasionally used it to walk through, like I said, a thorny issue. Or sometimes we've used it to educate things that people have done, you know, and all that has to be scheduled. So one of the fun things is whenever you want to do something at a Suzy Magic meeting,

you've got to talk to Ken. And sometimes there's just an opening. It's just like, I like to do this. How about next week? And then sometimes it's like, hmm, we're kind of busy. Well, six weeks from now, we're... And so it's like hmm, we're kind of busy well six weeks from now and so it's really like normally when I give the vision design

I hand off the vision and it takes me a little while to make the presentation but sometimes it takes me a while before I get to give it because there's other things in the docket and so we always have to sort of keep in mind oh another big thing that we will do is if there's a big presentation coming external to Wizards.

So, for example, when I had my GDC presentation, 20 Years, 20 Lessons, the very first time I gave it was actually at the Tuesday Magic Meeting. Because it was the earliest version of it, I wanted to get notes, I wanted to practice it. And the interesting thing is the version I gave to the Tuesday Magic meeting was, like, I got a lot of notes from that and I made a lot of changes. Like, the finished version was very different. And so usually if people are going to do a big talk at a conference or something from R&D, it's very, very common for us to do the presentation ahead of time, both as a means for R&D to see the presentation and as a means to get some practice in for the person doing it.

Sometimes, for example, like usually we'll do it ahead of time so we can practice it. Sometimes it doesn't happen until after the fact, but then it'll come in and have a chance for us to see what other people were doing. Oh, another thing we do at Magic Meeting is sometimes, so for example, there'll be talks that from external places that we think are very valuable talks.

And so we will watch pre-taped talks from all sorts of places and things that we thought were valuable that people should see. And we'll have those talks. And we've had all sorts of interesting talks on every topic that you can imagine. I'm trying to think. Anything else? I mean, the thing I'm trying to drive home about the Tuesday Magic meeting is it is this, I mean, first and foremost, it's a depository of information that if you are in Magic R&D and you want to know what's going on with Magic, this is the place to be. I mean, if you literally did nothing but just come to Magic meetings and that was your only avenue into what Magic was doing, you would have a pretty good

breadth of all the things that were coming. And you would have a pretty good idea not just of looking forward, but looking backwards, of having a good sense of how things worked and what was successful and, you know, where, what formats were successful and what events were successful and what expansions were successful. Even what, we even got a depth of what mechanics and cards, you know, we can dig very deep. And so it is an opportunity for you to learn stuff. And like I said, the reason it's become sort of an R&D staple is it's just become a really valuable resource. And the reason that I decided to talk about it today is one of the things that people have said, I got a lot of notes, is they like the inside baseball talk talk that where, you know, I kind of go deep on something that is

very integral to what makes Magic Magic. And the Tuesday Magic meeting is a perfect example of an invaluable meeting, an invaluable resource that R&D uses. And it's a hodgepodge. Like, one of the reasons it was fun to talk about today is it's not one thing. Like, I have some meetings that are almost the same thing every time we do the meeting. But the Tuesday Magic meeting is, on some level, you never quite know what you're going to get. They put the agenda on the morning. So, I mean, I don't literally mean you don't know what you're going to get.

But it is the kind of thing that if you didn't look at the agenda, I walk in and like, oh, what's going to happen? Will I see a slideshow? Will I learn about a set in motion? Will I learn about sort of the product line? Will I get to see the upcoming trailer? Will I get to learn about sales data? Like what, all sorts of things could happen when you walk in that room.

And that is pretty exciting. That is, you know, I've had a lot of new hires when they come and that it's usually the thing that when you're new, it's just one of the most exciting. A, because you had a lot of new hires when they come, and it's usually the thing that when you're new, it's just one of the most exciting. A, because you've probably heard of it. It's not like it's the first time I've ever mentioned it. I've gone more deep than normal.

And so it's something they've heard of, and it is just this kind of fine R&D tradition. One of the ugly things about it, by the way, is it normally is booked for an hour and a half. We've recently been trying to not go over an hour when we can. Like, the extra half hour is kind of like, if we need it, we have it. But we've been trying, we found that an hour and a half meeting was a little long, but we keep it on the books just in case, because every once in a while, like the slideshows will take a full 90 minutes. In fact, the slideshows, slideshows sometimes take up to two hours. We actually,

one of the reasons, you know, there's a slideshow is sometimes the Magic Meeting starts earlier than normal. And that usually means there's a slideshow. But it is something that I look forward to every week. And it is something where, like I said, I give my share of presentations there. And it is

fun. It is, I mean, I, it's funny. Today, this is one of those topics that I don't want a lot of traffic because I'm like, oh, I have a solid 30 minutes on this topic, and we're hitting 40 now, so. But actually, it's funny. I, there's plenty to talk about, and I was a little nervous when I was hitting traffic

that I felt like, oh, is there enough stuff to talk, but as I started sharing things, and like, oh, yeah, this, oh, yeah, that I started sharing things, I'm like, oh yeah, this. Oh yeah, that. Oh yeah, yeah. There's so much stuff we do in the Magic Meeting. So I'm hoping today gives you some of that insight. I'm hoping today sort of makes you realize

that part of all the moving pieces and all the products and all the people is that we need some connective tissue so that we're aware of what's going on. Like one of the biggest issues of having such a large group, having so many people working on so many products is it's easier to kind of get lost

in the mess of what's going on, of not being able to sort of keep up. And the Magic Meeting, the Tuesday Magic Meeting really is this all-important resource for making sure that everybody in R&D and outside of R&D, like I said, the meeting actually goes beyond just R&D itself,

really have a good working knowledge of what is going on. And that is why the Tuesday Magic meeting is probably my favorite meeting. Anyway, I'm not driving up to Wizard. I hope you guys enjoyed today's show. Like I said, I like to mix it up.

And today was definitely about as inside baseball as it comes. So I hope you guys enjoyed it. And let me know, by the way. I'm always trying different things. This was a little different for me. I mean, I did another podcast all about the pit, which I guess is similar to this. People seemed to like that one. That inspired me to do this one. Anyway,

this is one of the ones where I was being a little experimental, so I love feedback when I do stuff like that, just because, like, did you like hearing about this? Or, like, okay, Mark, a little less about the meetings you guys have once a week. I don't know. Or maybe it's like, oh, that's awesome. Tell me more. This is when I'm a little... Like, I know when I'm talking about

card sets. I know everybody wants to hear about card sets. When I'm talking about other stuff, I'm a little more sort of open to see what people think. But anyway, I am now in the parking lot. So, we all know what that means. We know that this is the end of my drive to work. So, instead of

talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So, guys, I hope you enjoyed today's talk, and I will see you guys next time. Bye-bye.