Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #597: Collecting

Episode Date: December 21, 2018

In this podcast, I talk about an aspect of the game I don't discuss often—collecting. I discuss the many ways we make the game collectible and what impact that has on how we design.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's Sunrider Drive to Work. And I dropped my daughter off at school. Okay, so today we're going to talk all about collecting. It's an aspect. It's interesting. I spend a lot of time talking about sort of the game of Magic, but it's also a trading card game, which means it also has a collecting aspect. trading card game, which means it also has a collecting aspect. So I'm going to talk a bit about what exactly it means and how we, as designers, when we make the game, try to keep collecting in mind. Okay, so to start with, let's go back to the very beginning, to the earliest Magic, back in 1993, when Magic first comes out. So the first thing to remember is, let's talk a

little bit about Richard's original vision for the game. So I often talk about how Richard Garfield, his quote is that one of the big ideas he had about Magic was it was a game bigger than the box. And what that meant was that most games, when you purchase the game, you get all the pieces. But this game was bigger than that. That when you buy the game, you're just getting a small fraction of it and that Richard was really big with the idea of exploration now you have to remember back in 1993

the internet was pretty young information was not quite as free flowing as it is now so really the original vision was when you go out and play part of the experience of playing is you would explore as you played. You would learn about what existed as you played. And that the idea was, Richard had the term metagame. He was not referring necessarily to, at tournaments,

what's the best strategy of what people are playing, which is often how metagames are used, he was talking about that there's more to a game than just the game itself. And Magic is a good example of that. Because Magic, yes, you can play the game, that's an important part of it, but there's a lot of things beyond just the game. You know, the idea being, if you sort of looked at your week and said, how many hours did I spend on Magic, yet I wasn't actually playing? Was I reading about magic? Was I thinking about decks? Was I, you know, was I collecting? You know, what was I doing that went over and above just the playing of the game? And so early on, the idea was that part of the act of

playing magic was learning about magic, was learning about things, and was that part of the act of playing Magic was learning about Magic, was learning about things, and was that exploration. And so the collecting aspect, like one of the things that got built into it is, look, it's a trading card game. Not everybody has access to all the pieces. So a big part of sort of interacting was getting your cards. So, for example, when Richard did the original playtest with the alpha playtesters, like before the game came out, he didn't give people all the cards.

He gave each person some allotment of cards. And that part of playing the game was getting the cards you needed. And that, you know, a lot of the stories about early magic, you know, the alpha playtesting was people trying to make trades with other people and that, you know, a lot of the stories about early magic, you know, the alpha playtesting, was people trying to make trades with other people, and that, you know, a lot of the game was collecting what you needed. So very early on, when collecting started, Richard's sort of vision was

that you had to kind of explore, and you had to find the things you needed. That he knew that collecting was going to be part of it, but part of collecting itself was trying to figure out what was. And once again, I think that, like, back in 1993, so for example, the Internet at the time, if you wanted to discuss something, the World Wide Web, as we know, really didn't exist yet,

but there were what we call Usenet groups, which were bulletin board groups, if that expression means anything to people. What that meant is it was text-based and you would have topics. And so somebody could start a topic and people could reply to it. And then you would get back and forth.

But it was slowly over time because people replying wasn't, you know, it wasn't instant. It wasn't instant it was instant messaging it was more of we could write down stuff and early magic got discussed on the Usenet that's where the early

internet magic discussions happened because at the time of the game coming out that was where the technology was but eventually what the game realized was that Richard's original vision kind of didn't take into account a lot of the technology that ended up sort of coming along the way. And part of what I want to talk about today is talk about sort of how the game started to incorporate collecting in a more constant way. I mean, the very basics of the game, a trading card game, was always meant to be collectible.

I mean, trading cards are collectible by their very nature. But, early on, it was not it was, we, the company, didn't do much to aid you. In fact, the very first list of all the company, didn't do much to aid you. In fact, the very first list of all the cards, so Wizards of the Coast early on specifically did not list all the cards. We did not tell you what the cards were. The first list to ever get made that I saw, there was a magazine called Shadist Magazine. It was a gaming magazine. I think they

mostly talked about roleplaying. But anyway, they figured out by opening up boxes what all the cards were. And the list wasn't even accurate. I mean, the rarities were wrong on some of the lists. They might have forgotten a card or two. It was the first time I had ever even seen a list. And one of the exciting things for me at the time was it just listed names of cards I didn't know and it said what they did which was unheard of

normally back in the day the way you would learn about something is you would play somebody and they would play a card like let me see that card oh I didn't know you could do that and that was exciting I do get Richard's vision. In a world in which you can withhold the information. Like, one of the things that used to happen early on is that, you know, when you went to a pre-release, you didn't know what cards were in the set.

You were, like, literally exploring the set as you opened up the packs. And that really has been true in a long time. And it's one of those things where it'd be exciting, like if we could somehow change things so some of the information wasn't so freely available, it'd be cool just because there's some neat exploration possibilities, but that's not the way the world works. Information is just a little too free-flowing

in the age of the internet to do that. So the game is adapted. So the first big adaptation was... So Joel Mick, remember I did a podcast on the Alpha Playtester. Joel was one of the Alpha Playtesters. He met Richard through, I think, a bridge club. And Joel was the co-lead of Mirage, along with Bill Rose. And he led both Mirage and

Visions. When I got to the company, Joel was essentially, the head designer, head developer used to be one singular role. And Joel was the head designer developer at the time. And then that job would later go to Bill. And then the job would later go to Bill and then the job would get split up and then I ended up getting the head designer part of it and the head developer part went to other people. Anyway, Joel, back in the day, ended up transitioning from R&D to brand. That for a while he was in charge, he was the magic brand manager. And one of the earliest things Joel and his team did in Exodus,

they added two things. They added rarity markers. So like black is common, silver is uncommon, gold is rare. Mythic rare didn't exist yet. And they added in collector numbers. So remember, before collector numbers, the only way you knew how many cards were in a set

was when we would announce a set was coming out, we would tell you how many cards were in the set. But that wasn't something that, that was something external to the cards that we would tell you, but it wasn't inherent in the cards. The cards never told you that. So if you were just opening up magic cards out of the booster and you weren't going on the wizard's website, you had no idea how many cards

were on the set. You just could collect cards and you never really knew when you were done. Now, given, you know, we did announce it, so there was some information out there. And if you were a collector, maybe you would track it down. But the idea of a collector, maybe you would track it down. But the idea of a collector number was, we're just going to tell you. When you open the booster pack and you get a card, hey, it says on it, I'm number 88 out of 269. Or whatever the total was. But it told you the scope.

It told you, this is what you need to collect. And that was pretty revolutionary in its day. And that was the first time that we sort of gave you information. The rarity was also important because one of the things is a big part of collecting is trading. And that a lot of the ways people will get cards is they'll trade cards for other cards. And before rarities were sort of printed on the cards, it required you just having the knowledge of what rarities were. Otherwise, you can make bad trades because you're just unaware.

It's hard when you only open a certain number of packs to always understand the ratio or understand what rarities are because I can open up, you know, 18 packs and get one of one card and one of another card and one of them could be rare and one could be uncommon. And how do I know? It's, you know, the certain, certain rarities will show up at certain frequency. Um, but it's, it is very easy, for example, between uncommon and rare to, you know, um, you can just get a little more rares than normal, a little less uncommon than normal and they might seem similar to one another. So putting the

rarity on also help people with trading and collecting of knowing what it is they're trying to get. So the big question for today is what exactly do we do when designing to keep collecting in mind? So first, let me start by talking a little bit about the two kinds of collectors that I believe there are. What I call the completist and the gatherer. Okay, so the completist is somebody who wants to collect everything. That part of the joy of collecting

is doing it all. Now, there's different levels of completists. Completists, I mean, the sort of total completist is, I collect everything. I have everything. But everything in magic can be pretty daunting. So, some completists don't necessarily collect everything. They pick a

subset, and they collect everything within that subset. So the idea is, there are people who say, oh, I collect every planeswalker, every elf, they pick some subset of things, and they're still completists. They sort of shrink

their object, but they still want to get everything. Just they, you know, it's not... Like, a true total completist. I collect everything that Magic has. I mean, they exist, but it's rare. The subset completists are a lot more common just because it is daunting to collect everything.

Now, sometimes the subset might be, I'm going to collect every card in this expansion, you know, and any expansion that I'm there for, I will collect everything in that expansion. Maybe I don't go back and get stuff before me, but I will get everything within that expansion. The gatherer is the idea of somebody who, they enjoy the collecting.

It's not that they need to get everything, just they like collecting. And on one end of the spectrum for the gatherer is the person who really has a connected theme. Kind of like the completist, like let's say you like goblins. The gatherer is not that I need to collect every goblin. I just collect as many as I can. You know, I like goblins. And so the gatherer is like, gets to show off that he has a lot of goblins. He or she, or they,

have a lot of goblins. But it's not like, oh, I have every goblin. It's just, I have a lot of goblins. And the sort of looser gatherer is just, look, I collect things and, oh, I have every goblin. It's just, I have a lot of goblins. And the sort of loser gatherer is just, look, I collect things, and, hey, I know the things that I have that are rare, and so if I'm going to show somebody my card collection, you know, I'll put the rare stuff up front to say, hey, look what I got. I believe every magic player is either a completist or a gatherer, meaning there's very few people that just don't have any sense of what they own and don't have any pride in what they own.

It's just a matter of, you know, completists are a little bit more serious. And so let's talk a little bit about sort of what each of them wants and how we design for that. So the completist enjoys the thrill of the hunt. completist enjoys the thrill of the hunt. I think the completist collector likes the challenge. Now, let me talk a little bit. I'm a magic player. When magic first started, I was a little more of a magic collector. I've become less of a collector, although I have a lot of magic. A completist collector. I used to be a completist collector.

But there is something that I'm a little bit more completist on. I collect something called mini-mates. So mini-mates are, they're about two, two and a half inch figures. They look a little bit like Lego figures. They're made by a single company. And they make a lot of different things. Mostly what I collect are the superhero Hero ones. So I collect, they do Marvel.

They also did DC for a while, but I collected all their DCs. They only did DC, they put out DCs for, I don't know, maybe, they put them out for a couple years. Anyway, they've been making Marvel Minimates for probably 15 plus years.

And I own, I don't own all of them, I own most of them. But I'm always up a lookout to try to, like, I'm as completist as I can be. I mean, I'm a completist where I know I'm missing some, I'm still hunting down. One of the things they do, for example, is they only put some of them, some I'm still hunting down. One of the things they do, for example, is they only put some of them, they're exclusive to certain places, like Walgreens is exclusive to Walgreens.

So what that means is whenever I see a Walgreens I go in and I look. For example, when I went to Chicago to drop off my daughter at college, you know, there were a bunch of Walgreens I don't normally see because they're Chicago Walgreens. And so I would excitedly go into them and look. And a lot of them, you know, some of them didn't have mini-mades.

Some of them that had them had ones they already had. But one store had ones they didn't have yet, and that was very exciting. And I think part of the completist sort of mindset is that there is a thrill of the hunt. There's a thrill of finding the things. And so for that group that really wants a little bit of a thrill, we try to make sure there's a challenge. Like, one of the things is we want to make sure that there is things to collect. So, first off, one of the things we do is we have

four rarities. So, real quick, let's talk about mythic rarity. So, in Shards of Alara, one of the things that we realized is we were the first trading card game. Many trading card games followed after us. One of the things we did is we looked at what other trading card games did, because, obviously, you know,

we were first, and I like to think we paved a way for a lot of things. I mean, a lot of stuff, a lot of other people copied what we did because we were the first. But there are innovations that other people made that we looked at because other people, well, what other people do when they try to do this.

And one thing we realized is almost every other trading card game out there did more than three rarities. And what we realized was there was something exciting that was a rarity beyond the booster. What we meant by that is, a rare, you got a rare in every booster. But it was kind of nice to get something that was rarer than that.

And so what we realized was what we had done with rare cards, like the schism of how hard rare cards were to get, really stretched. And what we did is we essentially chopped it up and said, okay, the bottom end of what we do we'll call rare, and the top end we'll call mythic rare. Mythic rares show up one out of every eight boosters. So the idea is you don't always get one, but you can get one. And it just made OpenPax a little more exciting because you knew you were getting a rare, but maybe, maybe you were getting a Mythic Rare. And that extra excitement, we found that it just was, it was fun for people. I mean, it was

something we borrowed from other games, and, you know, it worked out really well. That's obviously why we continue to do it. So obviously we added Mythic Rare to make collecting a little bit more challenging for some people. The other thing we did is, sometimes in sets we'll do variants of things. You know, we've had different times where... Oh, I'm sorry. The next thing we added in for collecting,

to make collecting harder, happened during Urza's Legacy, I believe, which was premium cards. So, what players often will call foils. The reason, by the believe, which was premium cards. So what players often will call foils. The reason, by the way, we use premium cards is we make a bunch of different products, and we use the term to cross all our different products, and not all of our products is the premium of foil. So anyway, that's why we call it premium and not foil.

But it's fine. I mean, even home foils. So in Magic, in Urza's Legacy, we started this thing where we made a parallel every single card existed in foil, in premium. And now that made a little more challenging if you wanted to collect.

Collecting a set is not that hard to do if you're dedicated. Collecting a premium set, harder. And it gave sort of a bigger challenge for collectors. One of the things we know is that some people, really the collection is what drives them. They really enjoy the collecting. And so we want to make it like you want to make it hard enough that it's challenging, but not too hard. So one of the things that we do to make sure that it's not too hard is we have a rule that says

whenever we print something, there's a minimum we must print. I don't actually know the number. It's in the thousands. But, you know, that there's a certain minimum that we do to ensure that, you know, the card is out there that people have access to it if they need to. That doesn't mean things can't be hard to get, but we do want sort of a bare minimum. My example from my collecting, where I feel the company didn't do this,

they went a little too far, was I was a complete collector. So Minimates, one year at San Diego Comic-Con, they made what they called a gold Spider-Man, which was a Spider-Man all decked out in gold, in a gold costume. And it was, I think they made 50 of them. In the world, 50 of them.

And the way it worked is, I was even at San Diego Comic-Con. Like, I was at the place that they were, and you went to the booth, and they gave you a ticket. And then, if you, if they picked your raffle, like, if they picked your raffle ticket, and you were there

at the time of the drawing, then you could get, you could, you could win a gold mini-mate. But at the time, I was a competitive collector, right? I was, I was, I was like, oh, I want to have every single thing. And there was no... I mean, I bought the ticket.

I went to the drawing. But, you know, there was really nothing I could do other than just sort of hope to get lucky. And because there was such a tiny, tiny number of them, you know, I've never had the opportunity to trade for one. I think I saw one posted once online. I mean, like, it's just, for all intents and purposes, they vaporize. They're not to be found because they're such tiny, tiny portions, you know, and anyway, that's why we make sure when we print magic stuff that we print a certain minimum of them to make it so, you know, A, we tell you when and where, you know, you need to get them, and then

let's say you can't get them wherever, there's enough of them that you, there will be opportunities for trading and opportunities for people to sort of get their hands on one. So, that's important. Um, the other thing that we do is sometimes within sets, we'll do variants within sets. Uh, we've had times where either there's an alternate rare or alternate mythic rare, or sometimes the foil has different art on it. Um, we did, um, the masterpieces, the first masterpieces were in the booster packs. We're experimenting now with masterpieces where you can buy them direct

and you know you get the certain cards. We also do promo cards. So we do promos for a lot of different events. We've got Friday Night Magic. We do Grand Prixs. There's a lot of places you can get promos. We've got Friday Night Magic. We do Grand Prixs.

There's a lot of places you can get promos. Usually, promos are what we call vanity cards, which means that they're existing versions of cards, but done differently. So if you see it, you know it's a unique version of it, but it is a card you can get elsewhere. So, you know, we make these really cool looking planeswalkers, but you can get the normal planeswalkers in the normal packs they come from. And so that most of the stuff we do, most of the promotional stuff we do,

you can acquire wherever. The one exception is we do, in product, do, you know, we do occasionally make things where, I think we started with Planeswalker packs, where we made some unique cards in Planeswalker. You have to buy the Planeswalker pack. The cards are designed not to be

standard legal. I mean, they are standard legal. They're made to be not tournament level usually is the goal. Obviously, as you'll see in a second, once or twice, they've tipped into tournament. The other thing we do is we do the buy a box. We're trying

to encourage people to go to their local game store. And so if you buy a box in your local game store early on, while supplies last, um, you can get a unique buy a box that's unique there. Um, the thing about the buy a box and the Planeswalker decks and the, um, we also put unique cards in commander decks that things in which you have to buy a product in the store store we are willing to do unique stuff in those products you know you want to get these certain commander darts you got to go buy the commander decks in the store um you know you want to buy a box we got to buy the box in the

store um that we do we do have some unique things but we they're always tied to buying products specifically. Back in the day, the thing called Dragon Con, we, well, we did a couple things early on. Early on in Magic, we were, we'd do promos that were unique that were a little bit harder to get. Like we did these book promos where you bought a book and then you sent in a, you cut out this token or a coupon from the book and sent it in and we sent you the card. And the one that really sort of tipped the edge was there was a convention called Dragon Con and we made a little tiny dragon. And the only place to get the dragon was to go to Dragon Con. And that was just a little bit too much.

The audience, because, you know, literally if you wanted to get the Dragon Con card, you had to travel to, I think it was Atlanta, I think that's where Dragon Con is, and it was deemed that that was a little too hard.

You couldn't just go to a local store and get it. You know, you literally had to travel to a certain city in a certain country. And so that's when we said that we would not,

when we make you, like when there's a unique thing somewhere, it's a variant version of it. It's not a unique version. That the stuff that is unique, you can buy in your store. That you can go to your local store and get. You don't need to travel across the country someplace to get it. Anything that's promotional outside of your store, it's an alternate version of something. It's not a brand new unique thing.

outside of your store. It's an alternate version of something. It's not a brand new unique thing. For the completist, we do a lot of things to make things that are a challenge to collect. There's different levels of things we do. One of the things, as I explained earlier, is the completist collector can self-select how they want to collect. What's on-limits, what's off-limits? You know, what is the, how hard do they want to make it for themselves?

I know, for example, when I made Unstable, we definitely, we knew that we hadn't made a lot of sets that had been hard to collect. I mean, not necessarily the premiums, but the basic set. And so we messed around in Unstable with having alternate versions, and there were cars that had the same name, but different rule text, and different art, and different watermarks. And, you know, we really sort of messed around with alternate versions to make it something a little bit more fun to collect. And, you know, we've been trying to do that in making sure that there are things built in

that really play to that completeness collector. Okay, so what do we do for the Gatherer? So the Gatherer is more, I mean, A, part of the Gatherer is just that they get to get exciting cards. So a lot of the things we do in general overlaps. You know, having Mythic Rare cards or cards that are hard to get or promotional cards. So a lot of the things we do in general overlaps. You know, having mythic rare cards or cards that are hard to get or promotional cards. You know, it's kind of fun to show that off if you have it. The gatherer collector is not, doesn't have to get everything, but it's, they do enjoy getting things that they know are hard to get because it's fun to say, hey, look

what I got. And a lot of what will happen with the gatherer is very common is, well, one of the ways to be a completist can be, I have a deck, I'm going to change every card in my deck to be the ultimate version I can. The gatherer is more like, I have a deck, I'll change what I can to say fine things, I'll get it. And some of my deck has it, but I'm not so worried about it all being that way. The completest version is every single card is different. And the gatherer version is some cards are different.

But we do like to give people opportunities to sort of upgrade their deck. And so we, you know, that is something we think about. Another thing that we do is we're very conscious of what are subsets that players like. Let me take creature types as an example. We do a lot to sort of be aware of what creature types do people enjoy? Because one of the most common things for people to collect is creature types. It's a very common, and so we're kind of aware of what people like, and we make sure to both... The ones we know are the most popular,

we tend to hit those more often, but even the ones that are popular but a little less so, we make sure they come back from time to time. And so, for example, we put a cat in Innistrad, and then we put another cat into Dark Ascension. Mostly because they just fit the... they fit the set we were making. But there's a, there's a, a higher, um, like, when we make something, if it gets a higher reception than we expect, that, that tells us

something. So we went to Amonkhet, we played around with making some cat tribal. Um, we had toyed with cat tribal a little bit, but, but, um, you know, it was Egyptian themed, themed to that. Um, we had toyed with cat tribal a little bit, but, but, um, you know, it was Egyptian themed, themed to that. Um, cats were revered in Egypt. So we, we, we thought it was a good place to sort of try some cat tribal and it really, people really liked it. And so one of the things we realized is, oh, people really like cats. Okay. So we try to find opportunities. And when I say cats, I mean, I mean, while we make cat people and stuff, uh, I'm talking about, um, I mean, while we make cat people and stuff, uh, I'm talking

about, um, I mean, we make Lien and we still do that, but they also like, literally like cats, like, you know, meow meow cats, um, I'm not sure why, in case you don't know what a cat is or the sound it can make, um, and so, um, likewise, for example, in Ixalan, we realized that there was a lot of affinity for dinosaurs, so we've gone our way now to Ixalan, we realized that there was a lot of affinity for dinosaurs. So we've gone out of our way now to make sure that, hey, are there opportunities to do other dinosaurs? So we look out for that. So one of the things that we do is we find subsets that we think people really will enjoy, and we really make sure to include that, because that's one of the ways to help the collectors want to collect more is,

oh, you made it into this, you made it into that. Now, it's not always just creature type. Sometimes it's mechanics. Slivers is probably the best example here where original Tempest made slivers. People really liked them. There weren't that many slivers. I mean, there was enough that you could sort of collect them all if you wanted to. So we brought slivers back in Legions. And we brought them back in Time Spiral. And we brought them back in a core set there's people who collect slivers and so every time we bring them back

oh I gotta collect that thing and one of the things we keep track of are the mechanics that people kind of what are the things that people like to collect and then we're conscious about trying to be good about bringing those things back sometimes in standard legal sets sometimes maybe in supplemental sets. But we find things like, supplemental sets do this a lot, for example,

is we knew that people enjoyed ninjas, but there weren't a lot of ninjas. Collecting ninjas wasn't that hard. So we made more ninjas. So the people want to collect ninjas now, okay, now there's a little bit more ninjas to collect. And we want to make sure that we do that. The other thing that we do is we make cycles. So cycles

traditionally, the most common cycles are five card cycles, one in each color, usually the same rarity, but not always that. Sometimes we do vertical cycles where it's common, uncommon, and either a rare mythic rare, sometimes both. You know, we've done cycles in four, like in Torment know, we've done cycles in four.

Like in Torment, we did a bunch of cycles where black interconnected with the other four colors. Like we made a land cycle that was four. You know, sometimes we'll make a cycle with artifacts, so there's six in the cycle. In Ravnica, we'll make ten card cycles. Also, sometimes we make cycles so they extend beyond a single set.

So, for example, in Odyssey block block we did an alternate wind condition cycle uh battle of wits is probably the most famous one from that but like in odyssey we did a blue and red one uh and then in torment the black set we made a black one and then in judgment the green and white set we made a green and white one so we sort of spread it throughout the block um also in in Mirrored and Black, we made what's called the Cauldron Cycle, which was three cards. Sword of Cauldron, then Shield of Cauldron, then Helm of Cauldron. And then when you got all three together,

they did something in play when you got them together, but we doled them out over three sets, all in one block. Then we have the Mega Mega Cycles. In Mirage, we made a card that was a Legendary Land that tapped for blue, and it was the only legendary land that tapped for colored mana. And then, a year later, in the next block, we made the next one, I think it was black. And we eventually made, over the

course of five years, we made all of them. Sometimes it takes place over a little bit more time. Aetog showed up in Antiquities. And then in Mirage, we made Foratog, which was the green A-Tog. And then every set for a while, we made then we made a blue A-Tog. We made a, you know, Chronotog. We made a black A-Tog with Necrotog. And then Tempest made the final

one, the white A-Tog with Oratog. And then in Odyssey, we made multicolored, allied colored A-Togs. You know, that we, it's something where we'll make cycles and continue them. We made a card called Morphling, for example, that was in Urza's Saga. And then many years later, we made Torchling, which was a red Morphling. And then we made Thornling, which was a green. And then just recently in Battlebond,

we made Brightling, which was a white. We haven't even made the black one yet. But we're sort of making this promise of, hey, there are things we're going to make. Another famous example was in was it original Mirrodin? We made two sword, Mirrodin block. We made the sword of fire and ice and the sword of light and shadow, which was two allied colored, or not light and shadow, no, I'm sorry, two enemy colored swords. And then when we went back in Scars of Mirrors, we made the other three.

So we're constantly kind of making things that sort of say, hey, maybe you want all this. You know, one of the ways to help the collector is make things that encourage us, that people go, oh, I want to get this thing. You know, we also will make different themes, like I say. Sometimes mechanical, sometimes we're creative. But we often do things and that, you know we also will make different themes like I say sometimes mechanical sometimes creative but we often do things

and that you know for example we went to Zendikar and made a whole bunch of allies and then we went back to Zendikar and made more allies and you know when you went to Ravnica we made guild things with guild watermarks and some people want to collect all the guild cards and we make a lot of subsets you know

one of the ways we make it fun for collectors is we slice and dice. And we make a lot of subsets. One of the ways we make it fun for collectors is we slice and dice our sets and make a lot of... One of the things about the game is... One of the things I always talk about Magic is that there's many ways to play Magic. That Magic is not one game, but at some level, many different games.

Well, collecting is no different. There's many ways to collect Magic. And what we want to do is we want to make Magic collectible for the bare-end, simple, casual player that's, you know, probably a casual gatherer that just, there's something that's fun for me to just occasionally have and I like to show off I have it, all the way to the, you know, the top end of the true, total, completest collector that just wants every single card in magic and i'm going to track down every promo even promos that are sold in other places that i'm you know oh that was a european promo and i live in the states i gotta get the european promo and there's the

full range you know that no matter how much of a challenge you want we're trying to make the challenge for you want a real challenge we'll give you some stuff that's a real challenge you want something that's light and easy? We'll give you light and easy. And that we try to build in our sets means and ways by which we can make you have fun collecting. Because like I said earlier,

we truly believe that at some level, every player's a collector. You know, some might be a super casual gatherer in which it's just more about having fun that I have things that I own, where on the completest side, it's more fun that I've done it, I've completed it, I got the final blah to finish my collection, or some subset of my collection. You know, we want to capture all of that. And, you know, one of the things that's interesting

is, you know, I get a lot of feedback from the audience, and it's funny that one of the tricky things about dealing with collectors is there's so many different kinds of players that want so many different kinds of things. Like, for example, some collectors love that we make hard-to-get things. They love, love, love, love it. They're like, oh, you know, the thrill of the chase is what I'm all about, so make it hard for me. There's other people like, what are you doing? That's too hard. I want that, but I can't get that. Why do you make it so hard to get? You shouldn't do that. Make it easier to get. You know, like right now, for example, we put out the Masters cards, and some players love

the idea that you can just buy them when you have them. I don't have to hunt them down, that I know where I can get them. And other players are, no, no, no. I want the thrill. Don't make it so easy to get. I enjoy when it's harder to track them down. And, you know, so it's a challenge. Like, one of the challenges of, like I say, that sometimes it's hard to make all the game players happy

because they want different things. The collectors are the same way. But we do, collecting is something we're very conscious of. It is something we're very aware of. And we are always striving to figure out new and better ways to enhance the collecting experience. Because, look, we're a trading card game. Collecting is part of it.

And we want people to get excited. We want people, when they open their booster pack, to find stuff that really excites them. We want people to go to events or do things in which they can track down vanity versions of things that they want. We want people to have fun with the aspect of collecting the cards. And so we put a lot of time and energy in that. And we are constantly trying to innovate. As you will see, we are continuing to innovate.

This is not something we're sort of resting on our laurels. We're continuing to work and find new and cooler ways to make you want to collect the cards and be happy when you collect them. So anyway, this isn't something I talk a lot about. I don't spend a lot of time talking about collecting. But it is something we wizards do spend a lot of time thinking about because we know that there are people that collecting is a big deal.

And that just as we spend a lot of time thinking about the game, because that makes a lot of people happy playing the game, we also spend a lot of time thinking about the collecting because it makes a lot of people happy with the collecting. And I just wanted to sort of say today, just, you know, hey, this is another aspect. One of the things about this podcast is I want to talk about

all the different aspects of making the game. This is one of the aspects of making magic. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed my talk about collecting, but I am now at work,

so we all know what that means. This is 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.