Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #580: Busy R&D

Episode Date: October 12, 2018

This podcast tries to give a sense of scope about how many things we work on at once in R&D.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so one of the questions I get all the time is what is it like from a day-to-day perspective? And there's something that I haven't talked too much about that I thought I would spend today talking about to give you guys sort of an interesting aspect of the job. And the reason this came up is recently, George Phan, creator of Plants vs. Zombies, has come to work at Wizards for six months. He expressed that he's a longtime Magic fan,

and he expressed that he... The way it came about is he had entered the GDS3, the third-grade designer search, and wrote to me and said that one of the reasons he entered was he always thought it would be fun to work at Wizards for six months. Now, he didn't obviously make the top eight, but I said to George, I go, oh, well, if you're interested in doing that, that's something we could probably work out. So we brought George in.

And so for six months, he's coming in sort of something new we're trying, where this is not a long-term job. This is just like, hey, here's a cool, here's something George has always wanted to do. We'd love to have George for a while, pick his brain. And so for six months, we get George in the office. Anyway, the reason I bring that up is that while trying to introduce George to what's going on, there's a phenomenon that I'm aware of, but just hearing somebody on the outside say it really brought it to the forefront, which is one of the quirky things about magic is magic is constantly making different things and that all those

things are going on at once, but always at different levels. So what I want to do today is talk about like today, right now, what is going on, like in my life, in Wizard's life, in R&D, and give you a sense of just the amount of things that are happening. Okay, so let's just start with, we're going to start with main sets, okay? So this month, it's August, I know I record ahead of time, so it's August when I'm saying this. So this month we started fencing exploratory design. And as I explained, I did a whole podcast on exploratory design. The idea is we get a bunch of people

and we're just sort of spitballing about, like, I have general ideas of what fencing wants to be. And so I have areas I want us to look at, and we're exploring the areas. And the idea of the exploratory design is you go wide but shallow, and that we're trying lots of different things to sort of get a sense of, okay, we're going to build a house.

Use my house metaphor. Vision design is going to build a house, but we need to do some research. What are the hot houses right now? And if we want to do certain styles, what does that mean? And it's kind of doing the prep work before you actually start doing the building, if you will. And so, exploratory design is a lot of blue sky design. And it's all about sort of getting a general sense of where we're going.

Okay, so we started fencing exploratory design. Also at the same time this month, equestrian vision design is starting. So equestrian is... so we already had exploratory design for equestrian, but now we're getting to vision design. Now we're trying to figure out what exactly... how are we going to build this? What are we going to do to build it? And I'm on the team. I'm not running the team, but I'm on the equestrian team. And part of my job is, even when I don't run particular vision design teams, I oversee the whole process.

So I work with the person that's running it to make sure that everything's going smoothly. Also, I tend to be on the design teams. I find it's just the easiest way to keep track of what's going on. And it allows me to contribute and make cards and suggest ideas. So a question design to start, we have four months. So normally exploratory design goes anywhere from two to three months, depending on the project. Vision goes on for four months. So we're starting a question right now. And that is us trying to figure out what exactly it is and how it's going to work, and we're going to build a file to sort of demonstrate what the vision of the product is

so the set design can later build the real set. Also, diving vision is not done yet. December tends to be, we have time off for the holidays and based on kind of how our, um, vacation, uh, thing works. A lot of people take vacation in December. Uh, the short version of it is that it doesn't turn over if you don't use it. And so at the end of the year, people are like, oh, I have vacation left. If I don't use it, it's just going to go away.

I'm going to use it. So December tends to be a low ebb in our office. And so normally there are 12 months out of the year, there's three sets envisioned, four, four, four. But we've started doing for the fall set is starting not in September, but in August, meaning that the four months can end before we get to December. So we're not sort of losing a month to the holiday, the holiday month. And this means there's an overlap of a month, not, not a giant deal, but that's what I mean. So I am right now trying to finish diving.

I'm running diving. And diving is in the last month now, you know, we're like today, we have a play test with the play design team to sort of get a sense of, okay, what do you think of these mechanics? Are these workable? Do you think they're balanceable? Are there issues with them? Vision meets with play design at the two-month mark and the three-month mark to get a general sense of where they're going.

And the big reason we meet with play design is to understand, like, are we trying to build something that fundamentally set design is going to have trouble building? And that's really important to understand of, you know, can this mechanic A be balanced? But also, can this mechanic, if we want to make, if we want to push it for constructed, will this mechanic let us do that? Or are there problems inherent in the system? Now, sometimes the problems are, oh, it's doing something we've never done before. We have to figure out how to do that. And by meeting with play design early, it helps sort of set the tone and get people to understand what exactly it's trying to do so that they can do it.

Okay, that is diving. Cricket. Cricket is in set design. I handed over cricketicket three months ago when I stopped doing Cricket. I led Cricket in vision design. Cricket is now in set design. I know they had a play test yesterday.

And I've had a chance to play with it a little bit. I'm real excited with Dave Humphries' set lead. I'm excited with what Dave is doing with the set. And I feel like Vision came up with a really cool idea. Set design is really following through on that, finding ways to improve on it, which is what set design does. And anyway, so that is in early set design. Okay, then we get to baseball. Baseball is in middle of set design. So it is definitely sort of chugging along. You know, it's been in set design for a while now, but there's still lots of things to figure out,

so they're still working. Then archery, archery is in late set design. Archery is, I think they have another month before set design is up, a month or two before set design is up. But they're in the final stages, sort of figuring out the final touches before they hand off the file.

Then you get Core 2020. Core 2020 I think is in like super late set design. I think it's almost done with set design. I don't think we haven't seen the slideshow yet. Usually we see a slideshow in a Tuesday Magic meeting

we'll see a slideshow usually a Tuesday Magic meeting we'll see a slideshow usually a week or two before it needs to get handed off so that when we see the slideshow that's a sign that it's super late in the process. It's enough time to give a few notes but it's usually the sign that it's really coming close to being handed off.

I think then we get to milk. Uh, so milk is the, um, fall, sorry, the spring set of 2020. Um, is that right? 2020? No, of 2019. It's next year's, next year's spring set.

Uh, and that is basically done. Um, I don't think it's been, I think it's still in CAPS. CAPS is the department that sort of lays everything out, makes the digital files. Like, we make cards, and then they have to turn them into something that the printer can print. So I think Milk is in CAPS. And then, after that, we go back, it's Ravnica Allegiance. So that set is done. In fact, that set, I'm not sure if it's at the printer yet or not, but it's close if it's not already there.

And that set, I know marketing is starting to do all their preliminary work on Milk and on Ravnica Allegiance and on Guilt of Ravnica. I think they're starting Milk right now. So the other two sets are sort of in flow. So once we're done and we hand it off, then the marketing team is trying to figure out, okay, how are we selling this? What's the set about?

What's the theme? What kind of advertising do we want to do? How do we want to get people excited for the upcoming set? So they're busy working on that. Also, at some point, we have to do the release plan, which is, okay, what is the pre-release? How are we going to let people know about the set? What cards do we want to show first?

What do we want them to know? What kind of articles do we want to write? You know, we have to figure out... So we get, like, Guilds of Ravnica, which is printed already, and it's going to come out this fall. Or it's printing. I'm not sure if all of it's done printed, but some of it's printed, because what happens is once they

do the first print, they send it back to us to do what we call a print test, so that we can figure out whether there's something, you know, is it being printed correctly, is there some mistake or something. And I know we did the print test already on Guilds of Ravnica, so at least the printing has started. Now, Guilds of Ravnica is coming up pretty soon. Guilds of Ravnica, I, in fact, next week, I think, I write my preview article, because I work about a month ahead, and the previews are about, as I talk,

are a little over a month ahead of the previews happening. So we have to walk through all the different things we need to do to preview the set. Okay, so after that, then we have to walk through all the different things we need to do to preview the set. Okay. So after that, um, then we get to core 2019. Well, that set just came out from my timeline. It came out recently. Um, and so I am dealing with all the repercussions of that, of people having questions or people having issues or, uh, doing interviews or whatever we need to do around that. You know, I'm a'm one of the spokespeople,

so whatever the current set out is something that I have to deal with. And so, like, 2019 is the most recent set out. And even Dominaria, which is the set before it, it came out not that long ago. I'll still get some Dominaria in question. So it's still things that are on people's radar. So anyway, as you can see, I mean, so anyway, uh, as you can see, um, I mean, and I, once again, I've only so far got into the, the standard legal sets.

Um, I right now have to keep track of fencing and equestrian and diving and cricket and baseball and archery and Core 2020 and milk and Ravnica Allegiance and Guilds of Ravnica and Core 2019 and to some extent Dominaria. Like all of that, all of that is going on. Now, that's just the core sets. Not core sets, that's just the standard legal sets. Now, every year we do an innovative product.

The innovative product, for example, this year was Battle Bond. So there's always an innovative product going on. There are always various other type products happening. So there's commander products and there's a variety of different things. So not only all the standard stuff going on, all that stuff's going on, okay? So we have to deal with, like, I mean, I personally, for example,

I have less responsibility for the non-standard legal sets, but I still got to be aware of them. As someone who's in charge of making new mechanics, you know, if Commander makes a new mechanic or if the Innovator product makes a new mechanic, I need to track that. I need to know what it is. So I make sure that, you know, we're not doing something in one of our sets that's too similar to that. Like, for example, Ixalan changed what it was doing because Conspiracy 2 needed a mechanic that was too similar to

what I was going to do in Ixalan. So like the fact that that set did that meant I had to change Ixalan. So like you have to keep up on all the various products because even things that I'm not directly responsible for could have impacts on the things I'm directly responsible for. So I have to keep track of that. And then layered on top of that is the future. So another big part of my job is I have to help map out the future. Like right now, I'm talking about sets that we're currently working on,

but we have to map out stuff. We have to sort of put together, I always call it the seven-year plan, but it varies how far advanced we are. But we need to sort of let the powers that be at work sort of say, okay, here's what's coming. Here's what we're planning to do. Here are, you know, for many years in the future, here's what we plan to do. Here's the sets we plan to do.

Here's the worlds we plan to use. Here's the story, the overall story we think we're doing. Like, what exactly is going on? Let's sort of explain to you and tell you this is the essence of what is happening? And one of the things about my job is that I have to do a lot of sort of future testing. So, for example, right now, there's a project that came up that we're not sure what to do with. And it's the kind of thing that maybe it could be a standard legal set. Maybe it's supposed to be a supplemental set.

Maybe it's something different. We're not quite sure. It's a neat idea. And when the idea first came up, we weren't quite sure. And so I've been assigned, in my voluminous spare time, to do some work on this and do some testing and say, okay, well, if you were going to make it, what would it be? How would you do that?

So I have to think about that and start to put together ideas of, okay, if I were going to do something, then I got to do some future work and pull some other people in and do that. Also, for example, there's another big project I'm working on right now where we are testing out some stuff and I have to do some prep work. In fact, some of the sets that we're testing aren't even in exploratory design yet. You know, some of the stuff we're looking at is stuff that's, you know, stuff that's, I will often work on things that are ahead of us doing exploratory revision on. And so I have to do some sort of

exploratory revision on. And so I have to do some sort of a little bit of head work to sort of test some things. And so that requires me sort of coordinating. And sometimes, like one of the things that's really interesting is

the more I've been doing this job, the farther ahead I'm asked to look. Like there was a period when I first started doing this job where really I was just looking at the block I was working on, the year I was working on. Yeah, I had a rough idea. I mean, I would do like seven year sort of things where I would do like rough, rough ideas of where I'm going, but they usually were

pretty rough. And as time has gone on, we're getting more and more detailed on where we're going. Like in order to get sign off, it's like, okay, well, what's the world? Okay, what's the story? Okay, what's the mechanics? What's the mechanical heart? Then I have to work on stuff that's, like, way in the future, where we know way little about, you know. And I'm sort of, and not only am I going to have to work and figure out sort of what each set wants to be,

I also have to look at them in conjunction with each other and think, well, if this set is this, and this set is that, then there's synergy between the sets. But not too much synergy, so the game will twist and turn. So I have to look at all that stuff. And then, none of that is even looking at some ongoing stuff. We have meetings that we do every week. I talked about some of these.

Monday has a manager meeting. It doesn't always happen every Monday, but there's an R&D manager meeting that I often have to go to. Tuesday, there's the magic meeting, which is a lot of download of information. Actually, not Wednesday. Thursdays is now um um what's it called uh click on the name of the meeting uh it's the meeting where we talk about sort of fine fine details um card crafting uh card crafting has been on wednesdays thursdays so now we sort of talk about things having to do with rules changes or color pie or structural things. Things that

are for design developers. Very crunchy topics. Also, there's the console colors that I help oversee. It's not a weekly meeting, but we meet once or twice a month and we go over different things that sets want to do and talk about whether it makes sense in the color pie and whether we're somehow violating what's going on. And a lot of time they'll make designs like, well, this is a bend and it's okay. And this is a bend and we'd rather you not do this here. This is a break.

You can't do that. And, um, you know, so there's a lot of overseeing on that kind of thing. Um, and then like, for example, the Great Designer Search just ended. There's always this ongoing, we need to find new employees and we need to train existing employees. And there's a lot of work that goes into sort of teaching and getting people up to speed.

If they're new, it's just sort of getting the lay of the land for them. For example, George started, so I'm spending some time right now working with George, getting him up to speed. You know, Ari, the winner of the GDS3, starts in September. And so there's some prep work to make sure that he has the tools and stuff he needs. So there's a lot of work, sort of people work that happens um and then um

one of the things that r&d likes to do is have a lot of check-ins um often we'll sit down and we'll take a look at a set in flight and see how the set is doing um ideally i try to peek in on sets from time to time i mean that's a whole other thing i need to do is you know i work on exploratory and vision and then I hand off the set, but I need to sort of keep abreast of what's going on a little bit just to make sure that they're not sort of

fundamentally violating something that's core to the experience of what was built. I mean, usually that doesn't happen, but every once in a while, like with Dominaria where, you know, build this wasn't really up on historic and historic was kind of the glue that was holding everything together. And I did spend a bunch of time. That's a good example where I had to go back

and I had to sort of produce some material and design some stuff and sort of just prove the concept and then do enough research that I could sort of say, look, this is understandable by the audience and stuff like that. So there's that stuff that goes on. Then there's playtesting. And another way that I can stay up to date

on different sets is playtesting the set. And there's always playtests going on. Usually the way it works is the earlier the playtest is, the more likely it is to be either sealed or some sort of pre-constructed deck. And then as we get later in the process,

you start getting drafting and constructed where people get to make their own deck rather than it being pre-made for them. Oh, and the other thing is R&D does these things called play days where roughly once a month, sometimes it's more than once a month, we don't do our normal work and instead we all play a set that's currently in some format, usually somewhere in set design,

and get a chance for everybody to be on board. The one thing that's unique about me is, me and a few other higher-up people, is I have to track everything. Some people who work in R&D, they just work on certain projects, and other projects are kind of a mystery to them. They don't work on them. Because everything has to go through me, I have more of an eye on everything. Like I said, some of the higher up people sort of have to monitor everything.

There's a lot of people, for example, where you'll work on archery, but not baseball or cricket, and then work on diving, but not equestrian. So a lot of people will see one or two of the sets and maybe one of the supplemental sets, but, you know, and, and for example, I have a lot of viewpoints on the main sets. I have less on the supplemental sets. I'm aware of what's going on. Um, but I, I have less vision on that, um, or less visibility on that. Um, so one of the things that's important about play design, not sorry, not play design, play days, is that it gives us a chance to sort of see where things are at and get a sense. Like normally for me, it's I either oversaw something or at least was on the vision design team.

And then I can sort of say, oh, what is that design done with this? Where is it at? And I can give some notes. And usually as someone who's worked on the file earlier on, there's some, you know, there's some insight I might have of, oh, you know, you're doing this, but maybe think of that. Or you drifted a little bit from this idea. Have you thought about this? And give a bunch of feedback. Also, on top of that, I have my social media. Well, so I write my article. I do that on Fridays.

And I have my podcast, which obviously I do as I'm driving to work. I have my daily comic. I have my daily poll. I answer a lot of questions on my blog. Now, a lot of that is done outside of work. In fact, I mean, I write at home on Fridays, which is when I do my column. My podcasts are done on my drive to work. And most of my social media is done outside of Wizards. I do a little bit at work, especially if there are sometimes issues pop up, I'll sometimes jump in if there's stuff to talk about.

And the other thing that happens is sometimes I go to meetings and I arrive a few minutes early, so I'll hop on and answer a few questions. So usually if you see me answering questions during the day, a work day, that just means that I have some downtime. And so while I'm waiting around, I'll answer questions. But that's a whole other aspect and something else that I need to keep track of. One of the things about being spokesperson is there are issues that pop up during the day. Now, having stuff like my blog

and my Twitter make it pretty easy because people, when they are concerned about something, will directly contact me. So if there's some little mini crisis of the day, I hear about it because people, and I use crisis sort of in quotes. Every day there's something that somebody is upset about. Sometimes they're realistic things to be said about. Sometimes it's sort of, okay, I'm not quite sure why you're so upset about this, but people will get very upset about random things.

But part of my job also is keeping track of that. So in the morning, I will definitely do a little bit of reading and just get a sense of, okay, what are the topics of the day and what are people saying and get a little sense of that. Another thing that we do a lot of is we have a new software we've been using to communicate in R&D. And so there's a certain amount of catch-up. Like, people will post things and write things, and I have to, you know, I try to do it daily. Sometimes it's every other day. But just sort of catch up on, okay, what's going on?

And if people have issues or what's, you know, sort of if there's any fires in R&D or any issues in R&D, be aware of what that stuff is. of, if there's any fires in R&D or any issues in R&D, be aware of what that stuff is. And also, there is, also, I also have other projects, some of which, all of which, or most of which I would say are magic related. There are some other projects I've been working on, some of which for quite a while. One of the things behind the scenes is that I like to sort of try some new things from time to time.

So sometimes I work on stuff and then I'll pitch the powers that be. I'm getting, not tons of time, but a little bit of time to work on some larger things that I think will help. And there's a variety of different means and ways that we do that. But I, you know, you know, today at lunch, I have one project that I have a lunch meeting that I'm going to have to talk to someone who's worked with me on the project and figure that out. You know, there are, there's a variety of different, you know, part of working on other projects that are, like, normally I work on projects that are part of the pipeline. So there's, those are all on deadline and scheduled and like, okay, I got to get this done by that time.

But then I have projects that are a little looser. Like I want to do something and I'm trying to either start something or tweak how we do something. And those are a little different. The timeline is a little different for those. So I don't need to, it's a little less deadline oriented, but on the downside, it requires me to be a little more proactive about sort of making sure that I keep continuing on to the next step since there's no sort of definitive deadline. What else? How are we doing on time? We got some traffic today.

Hi. See, I should have, normally I would be at work in about four minutes, but I am not going to be. So I'm hoping, this is one of those topics, I often talk about this, I have topics that are about half an hour, maybe I can stretch a little bit more

and then I get traffic and I'm like, oh, can I stretch a lot a bit more? Okay, other daily tasks to worry about. There are some logistical tasks that come on about,

like I said, we're constantly sort of changing how we do things. For example, the process by which we schedule meetings keeps sort of changing. And so, like, we recently revamped it. And we've revamped it in a way that hopefully will make it easier to do the thing we're doing. But there's growing pains whenever you change systems.

make it easier to do the thing we're doing. But there's growing pains whenever you change systems. Also, every month, the way it works is we have a grid system. Okay, so real quickly, since I have the time. One of the problems is we have a lot of people and a lot of projects. Well, in order to work on a project, we have to make sure that we have a team and a time in which the entire team can meet. And one of the problems we used to run into was, okay, I put you on four teams and the teams go to try to find times to meet and there's no time because there's no point where all four people have a free time. And people were missing meetings because like, you know, the only time I could find free, one day a week you're going to miss it,

and one day a week you're going to miss it, and it just was ugly. So we came up with a thing we called the grid. So what the grid does is there's a master person who schedules the team meetings with consultation. And what they do is the grid are two-hour chunks during the course of the week. Certain times are pulled out, stuff like the Tuesday Magic meeting

where we know that it's a conflict. And I think there's like something like 15, 14 or 15 two-hour chunks that you can get out of the work week. And then what you do is, for each one of those, there are two teams per slot. And all you need to do is make sure that those two teams don't overlap in people.

So, you know, maybe fencing exploratory design and cricket set design both meet on Tuesdays from 10 to 12 and that team has no overlap so it's fine that they meet at the same time and what you do is for each team there's three meetings during the course of the week, and then you get mapped out. So fencing exploratory and cricket set design, for example, would meet at the same times all week long, since those slots we know are safe. Now, exploratory design tends to use two of the two-hour blocks. Exploratory uses two one-hour, not the full two hours. And vision uses two two-hours, but not the full three two-hours.

So each person, each team sort of allocates its time. But anyway, we have this grid system so that we make sure that everybody can have meetings and be able to go. And then any of the teams you're on, it's the priority meeting. Any of the things you book have to match your teams. Your teams come first as far as priority. And then there's the juggling of the rooms. So we make sure we have rooms available because one of the problems in general we have is there's just not tons of rooms and there's, especially when you have larger meetings,

only so many rooms can accommodate larger meetings. So anyway, there's a lot of figuring that out. So like there's a whole bunch of logistics. It's not that I'm personally responsible for logistics. I'm not. We have people that are. But I have to work with them. And a lot of times they'll, you know, they'll send us, okay, here's my first pass.

I'm like, oh, well, you didn't include this person in my team and here's why I need this person. Or, you know, you made a team and it's a good team, but it's missing this thing. And, you know, we have to constantly be doing stuff like that. So there's a lot of business sort of stuff going on. Another big thing, I'm not a manager, but I do have a responsibility to sort of do some people work, as they say. Sometimes that's talking individually to members of my team to make sure that I understand

what I want from them. Maybe it's talking, let's say I'm not running a vision design team. I'll have a one-to-one with the leader of vision design to make sure that we're on the same page of what decisions were being made. I have a one-to-one with my boss, with Aaron. I meet with him once a week

to make sure that he and I are on the same page. And so there's a lot of one-on-one meetings with different people to sort to make sure that he and I are on the same page. And so there's a lot of one-on-one meetings with different people to sort of make sure that you and that person are aligned or whatever it is that you need to be aligned on. And we have that kind of stuff. Also, there is a lot of, I'll call it set management that goes on. For example, I'm often working with new mechanics. So I need to sort of have some time with Eli,

who's the rules manager, and say, okay, Eli, I want to do thing A, B, or C. How do I do that? What do I need to do with it? How do I make it such that this will work? And that one of the things early on is I will always consult with Eli to make sure the rules work. I'll sometimes talk to one of the editors to make sure that I rough templating that's,

you know, at least in the ballpark. And sometimes I have to go talk to the creative team. A lot of the work of vision design is designing a set that matches the vision of the world. But one of the tricky things about the way we do it is our world concepting happens after vision is done. Now, given vision feeds a lot of information that helps define the world. But I need to be talking with the creative team and making sure, hey, that the things I'm doing are thinking about, you know, or here's a neat idea that mechanically makes sense.

Is that something you guys can work with? You know, will that contradict anything you're trying to do in the world building? Or might that inspire something about the world building? One of the reasons we wait until after vision design to do the world concepting is sometimes vision has cool ideas that will very much inspire and affect how the world will be built.

And there's that thing that has to be managed. Anything else? There's a lot. That's one of the things that's funny in... Sometimes I'll be home, you know, and... I mean, I'm still getting older, but I'll just forget something. And I talk to my doctor about,

hey, I'm starting to forget random things at home. Never at work, though. Always at home. And he goes, yeah. He goes, your brain is in the red zone all the time. The amount of things you have to process is just huge. So sometimes when you're home, your brain is like, I'm tired. You don't really need to know that.

Whatever. You'll figure it out. And I'll forget very basic things. Even in the car, like I'm driving, you can tell that like I, sometimes I'm trying to remember the name of a card. And like, okay, my brain doesn't have the capacity right now to remember the name of that card. But, and finally, by the way, I guess I'm almost, almost to work. The final piece is there's a certain amount of what I'll call sort of downtime at work. Meaning there's a certain amount of just chatting or joking or talking, you know, whatever the topic of the day is. You know, I talk about the comic I do, Another Day of R&D Predictivity Lost where we'll talk about different

random conversations we have where we'll talk about who will win at basketball, the cast of Lord of the Rings or the cast of Star Wars and silly things and some of that is part of

the job is we do a lot of thinking and there's a lot going on. And part of it is you just need to sort of relax a little bit and goof around. And part of having a good team dynamic is being comfortable with the people that you're working with. And so just having a lot of sort of conversations and stuff. I mean, a lot of the conversations are about magic. I actually, in fact, I even got to that. We have a lot of off-the-cuff conversations. More of them actually are about magic than not about magic. That'll happen a lot. Things will pop up. Sometimes there's things of the day on social media I'll talk to people about.

Sometimes there's larger projects. Sometimes there's some issue, you know, on a group discussion will come up and then it spills over into the pit where we sort of argue things. You know, one of the things that I often talk about, but it's until you work at Wizards you might not realize, is the amount of energy that goes into every decision, even decisions that seem so minor, like we will have our discussions and our fights about things that you probably never even thought about, but we'll have conversations about it. We'll talk about tweaks on templating or applications in tournaments or all sorts of things that we have to care about.

Digital, how this might play in digital, this and that. Things that kind of, as a random player, you know, as just an average player, you don't necessarily need to care about a lot of those things, but we do. So there's a lot of time spent managing some of that stuff and talking through some of that stuff. And also a lot will happen if somebody has an idea, they're trying to solve their own problem, or I have an idea.

You know, I'm trying to do something and I have an idea, but I'm not sure what I think about it. So maybe I'll talk to people and go, what do you think of this mechanic? Or what do you think of this card? Or a lot of times, for example, I make something, but I need to cost it. So I go to play design and go, okay, I made a card. Cost this for me. What would this cost? And so there's a lot of interplay there. A decent amount of daily work is just interacting with other people. And that is another part of the job. Oh, and then there's just, there's stuff

like keeping track of your email. And I have both a public email and a private email. So I got to keep track of my work email, but also I give out my, you know, my email address or my public email address every week in my column until people will write to me. And not, you know, sometimes they talk to me on social media, sometimes write to me. I have to keep up with that. You know, people will send me stuff in the mail to sign. I have to make sure every once in a while I'll stop so I can sign that and mail this stuff back to people. There's just endless, and then one of the things that hopefully the point of today's There's just endless... I mean, one of the things that hopefully the point of today's topic was is that the amount of things going on is kind of staggering.

Like, the one thing my job is not is boring. My job is never boring. I've had one or two boring jobs in my life. Like, the kind of job where, like, you get off at 5, and so you watch the clock tick from 5.58 to 5.59 to 6 o'clock, and, like, the second the clock ticks 6 o'clock, you're out of there, because you, you're done. This is not that kind of job. This is the kind of job where I'm like, oh, oh, oh, the day ended 20 minutes ago. I've got to get home, you know, where I'm so caught up in something that I don't even realize what time it is.

And it's an enjoyment. I mean, I'm not trying to say that I don't enjoy my job because I do enjoy my job. It's actually an awesome, awesome job. And I like being busy and I like having a lot of things. You know, I like sort of being able to jump around between different things. From a creative standpoint, I think it helps that I'm not sort of trying to solve the same problem nonstop, that I get different problems, and that the cross-pollination of different problems sometimes will help me solve problems, where when I move to a problem from a different area,

it just makes me think differently about the problem. So sometimes I find solutions just in the cross-pollinations of my problems, which is pretty handy. But really the point of today was sort of saying to you there's a lot going on. I mean, if you guys sometimes are overwhelmed on your end and other sets coming out,

at least from a player perspective, you can spend a lot of focus on what the latest thing is. Now, there's standard things in which you have to care somewhat about some other sets, but you can spend a lot of focus on what the latest thing is. Now, there's standard things in which you have to care somewhat about some other sets, but you can spend a lot of focus on what the latest thing is where we don't

have that luxury that, you know, whatever I'm working on, there is something down the pipeline that I have to do advanced work on, and there's something I've already done that I have to sort of keep checking in on to make sure that it's going okay. Or there's something far enough on the pipeline that the public's about to find out about it,

and I've got to kick into my other job and sort of make sure the players understand what's going on, and we have a market plan that'll make people excited for the set, and there's always constant things going on. So, I guess the point of today's ride was R&D is a busy, busy place with a lot going on. So I hope you guys found this interesting.

You know, I'm 550 plus podcasts in, so I'm always trying to find new things to talk about. So, anyway, I would love to hear feedback on this. Was this interesting? Me sort of, like, just talking about the everyday of R&D,

just sort of the busy work of R&D. I hope this was a fun topic. But I'm now at work, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.