Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #624: Play Days

Episode Date: March 29, 2019

About once a month, R&D takes the day off to play with an upcoming set. In this podcast, I talk all about R&D play days and how they work.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so what you guys don't normally see is before I get in my car and I drive to work, every day I have to figure out what my podcast is about. And some days I have an idea, sometimes I even do a little bit of research, and some days it's just like, oh, I don't know, what to do, what to do. So today I'm trying to figure out what my podcast is about. And at some point I go, oh, look, I got to go, I got to go. We got a play day. I don't want to be late for the play day.

And then it dawned on me, wait a minute, play days. I will talk about play days. So note I'm saying play day, D-A-Y, not play date. Well, my kids had a lot of play dates when they were little. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about play date. Well, my kids had a lot of play dates when they were little. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about play days. So I'm going to explain today what a play day is, how they came about, how we do them, and why they make magic better. Okay, so let me first explain what a play day is. So what a play day is, and they happen about once a month, is for the day instead of doing what we normally do everybody in in r&d

uh or most people in r&d stop what they're doing and they play a particular set um usually it's a set usually the set's uh somewhere in set design play days usually are based on things in set design. And any one set will usually have two play days. One in early set design and one in late set design. And the idea of a play day So here's one of the things to understand is we make a lot of magic sets. And that the average person R&D just isn't on most of them. Like I'm in a weird situation where my job is to oversee at least all the standard legal

sets. So I have an insight, you know, I'm either running or on the vision design teams of almost all the sets. So like I have a pretty good idea of what all the sets are doing because it's my job to oversee them all and see how they connect and stuff. idea of what all the sets are doing because it's my job to oversee them all and see how they connect and stuff. But the average person in R&D might, for example, I'll just use some of our code names. So they could be on archery, but they're not on baseball or cricket. Maybe they're on diving, but they're not equestrian. And then, oh, they're on fencing. And so maybe

in the scan and the timeframe of a year, maybe there aren't one or two teams. And remember, they're not just standard legal sets. There's also supplemental sets. There's a lot of things to work on, and any one person only works on a few of them. So basically what that means is that there are gaps for most people. That a lot of people are like, oh, I worked on archery. I know exactly what archery is about, but baseball? I have no idea. And the reason the Play Days came about was

we were realizing that there were just major gaps in people's knowledge of the sets. And one of the things that's important, like magic is a collaborative process, meaning that the set's not made by one person. The set's made by a whole group of people. And the people at R&D, look, this is what we do. We're very good at making magic sets.

And we want to get input from the whole of R&D. And so the idea of a play day was, look, let's get all eyes on something. Let's use the full might and power of R&D to sort of do a pass on where the set is at. And normally there's one done in roughly early set design to help, you know, the one in early set design is more about like, hey, do people generally like where this is going? Do they like, you know, do they like the mechanics? You know, is it, it's sort of like,

are they happy with the general direction that the set is going? And then late set design is more like, okay, the set is mostly done. Are there nuances of things that can improve? So the first play day is about bigger notes. The first play day might be, I do or don't like this theme, or you're missing something, or this mechanic is or isn't working. It's larger. The issues are much larger issues.

They're issues that are talking about how to shape things. Where later on, it's more fine-tuning. The later playday might be like, oh, this archetype is missing this thing. Or you have nothing in common for it. Maybe can one of the uncommons move down? Or maybe can you make a comment specifically to help it in this way? Okay, so let's talk a little bit about... Well, first I'll talk about where they came from,

and then I'll talk about how they work. So I think what happened was... So Ken Troop is one of the people that oversees R&D for Magic. And I think, so one of the things that Ken does is every year he, well, he likes to read a lot of management style books, a lot of books on business and stuff. And then once a year, basically around the holidays, he will give every member of R&D a book. Not every person gets the same book, although usually there's a few books. Like, usually there's a couple books between them that people have given out.

And one year he gave out the book. I don't remember the name of the book. It is by one of the co-founders of Pixar, Ed Cadmill? Okay, I might get his name wrong. He wrote a book about the creation of Pixar and how Pixar functions as a company.

It was a very cool book. And in it, one of the things he talked about was how from time to time they liked it. Because Pixar, like Wizards, you know, they're not working on just one movie. You know, they have a movie that comes out every year, and movies take many years to make, so any one moment in time, everybody is working on a different project. And I think in the book he talked about having times where

like everybody can come together and watch one of their movies and give feedback and stuff. And I think Ken liked that idea and said that you know, both I mean, I think when Ken first pitched the idea, it was as a means to get more information for the sets. And then it quickly

became apparent that one of the great things about it was, it also became this means to fill people in on the stuff that they don't know um once again those of us who are more you know who oversee a lot of different things you know i am much more aware of all the different sets because the nature of what i have to do um and i think as we started sort of talking to people we realized like oh there are people that just never ever were like, like, let's say, for example, baseball. There are people who weren't on the vision design for

baseball, weren't on the set design for baseball, aren't on play design for baseball. They never really touch baseball in any direct way. They're not on a team. But the idea is they might have really interesting insights, or, you know, we want both, we both want everybody in R&D to be

aware of what's going on, just because it helps. Even if for no other reason than I'm working on cricket. Well, knowing what baseball is doing, when cricket's coming right after baseball, is important. And so the more knowledgeable you are of all the stats, the more it improves the quality of even the things you are working on. And the other important thing was that you just want to get...

There's a lot of very smart people uh you want to get you know you want to sort of let everybody sort of take a look at things and give comments because um there's a lot of people that can just do a few play tests and um you know give really insightful information plus the other big thing about play day information is um when you keep getting the same feedback, that's also very valuable. Of just going, oh, a lot of people are saying this. Usually that is true. If R&D does a play day and everybody in R&D, you know, everybody, but enough people are saying a similar thing.

Oh, that's really an issue you got to go look at. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about, sorry, wait, wait, so that, sorry. That is how play days came to be. Um, in the beginning, I think in the beginning, when we first started doing play days, they were a little more infrequent. I think the first play days were just once per set. Um, and I, and we didn't really do supplemental sets early on.

And then what we realized was that it was valuable enough and we were getting enough data out of it and it really also was a team bonding experience because it was everybody sort of do something together. That's another big thing that I think we realized is one of the things that's very bonding for R&D, I assume for any organization, is when you kind of stop everything you're doing and all come together and all work together and it just, everybody sort of found it as a fun way to do.

It was something that was a breather, sort of, you know, it's neat to every once in a while stop your normal routine and do something different. And it just kind of bonded. It got people to, like, there are people in R&D that just don't necessarily work day-to-day with each other. And this is an opportunity for them to sort of cross-pollinate. Anyway, lots of good things came from it. So, we started

by doing it, I think we, in the beginning, there was like, the plan was like four play days a year, I think. So, it's like, we'll have a play day every three months was the first plan. Because the idea, I think, was there were four main standard legal sets, each one will get a play day. And then, we're like, oh, you know what, this is so valuable, rather one will get a play day. And then we're like, oh, you know what, this is so valuable, rather than just having a play day once, maybe for the standard legal set, probably not the core set,

but the other three, that have more moving pieces to them, okay, maybe they should have two play days a year, so we get a play day, you know, in early in set design and play day in later set design. And then like, oh, well we also have like some supplemental sets that are, you know, booster releases and things. And, you know, those really could also use some eyes.

And so eventually it started as once every three months. And then it went to one every two months. And then now it's about once every month. And that is, you know, it's something that is very, I think we're at the point now where we've kind of settled on our thing. I've also mentioned, I did a whole podcast on hackathons. So hackathons are when we stop work for a week. Now, not everybody stops work, it's less people, And that's where you have a particular project you're working on

and you and a small team work on a project. Usually a hackathon has an overall goal, like we're trying to make an innovative product or something. And there's multiple teams that are usually trying their own version of things toward that goal. But as we found with hackathons, sometimes more than one team makes something we end up making. Or sometimes you end up making things that have useful stuff that can get used. Okay. Anyway,

so let's talk about what exactly is a play day like. So I'm going to go to work today and it's a play day. What does that mean? What should I expect when I get to work? Okay. So first off, one of the cool things about play Day is we bring in breakfast. So when you get to work, there's breakfast. And I don't... There also is lunch. There's breakfast and lunch. I'm not sure what... Part of, I think, the idea of breakfast and lunch was making a day out of it.

Making something that sort of felt different and unique and making it... I think one of the goals of Play Days, not only making it a means to get valuable information, but making it something that was kind of fun and enjoyable and an event, if you will. So we come in, we start with breakfast. And in fact, R&D had so much fun with the breakfast at Play Days. So every Tuesday we have a thing where we play over lunch.

And so lunch gets brought in. And then we play with usually the latest set on Tuesdays. And the idea of the Tuesday play days is, I don't know, play days, I guess, but the Tuesday lunch,

play lunches, is we realized that while we were playing a lot of magic, we weren't playing as much finished magic as we could. And this was an opportunity for more people just to play with the finished product. Because, you know, we work on the sets a lot while making them,

but there's just a different experience of playing with the whole of a finished set versus a set served in progress. And, anyway, the reason I bring this up is the breakfasts have been so popular that every once in a while we do breakfast for lunch for Tuesdays because people really like the breakfast. Okay, so you come to the play day, you have your breakfast, then in the morning, usually the way the play day works is, now, I'm going to give you the average play day. One of the things to be aware of is each, uh, the set designer of a set lead, um, has the ability to change how they want to do

their play day. I'm giving you the default play day, which is mostly how they work. Um, but, uh, anyway, I will, as I come, if I realize things are a little bit different, I can bring them up. Okay, so, um, in the morning, so there's two sessions, essentially. There's a morning session and there's an after the lunch session. So the morning session, for both sessions, I guess, there usually are three things that are available to you. Number one is there's a draft. So if you would like to draft with this product, you can.

Usually the drafts are for people that have some experience. Well, either people that already have some experience with the set or, you know, the people that are just used to drafting and can more easily pick up a draft, even if they're cards they haven't seen before.

But, okay, you can do a draft. They're sealed, so you can get sealed pools and make sealed pools. Or, there's the equivalent of pre-constructed decks. And usually what happens is play design before the meeting will build some decks. So, if people...

Essentially, the idea is, if you have never played the set before, and you're one of the kind of people who it's intimidating to approach something you've never seen before, there's pre-constructed decks, basically. I mean, they're pre-made decks. You can just pick up the decks and play.

Depending on what... If we're early in the process, the decks are just made by play design and don't reflect anything per se. If it's late in set design, they might be early versions of Planeswalker decks or something. We eventually make Planeswalker decks.

So, if it's late enough, the Planeswalker decks might have already been started. And that is what they are. So anyway, the idea is there's as much investment as you're able to play

however you're comfortable with you know if you're new to the set and the other thing to remember in R&D is not everybody in R&D is

design and development you know what I'm saying not everybody there's a lot of people working in R&D doing a lot of different things and a good chunk of them are Magic players.

Not all of them are... I might say Magic players. I mean, most everyone on R&D knows how to play Magic, but there's a big swath between, hey, I play for fun casually, and I've been to the Pro Tour many times and top-aided once or twice. And so some people,

playing the new Magic can be a little bit intimidating. And so the other thing is the pre-constructed decks also are a product we have to make. It's something that is good to get some sort of feedback on. And so, you know, that definitely is something that is valuable. Sealed, we find, is... Sealed is the way people play the pre-release.

It's a good way a lot of people are used to playing for the first time and so sealed allows us to sort of get some sense of comfort and the people who want to build the sealed it also is very good because the first impression for most people is the pre-release so the feedback you get

from the people playing the sealed is the most going to mimic the pre-release and gives you the best information there. Drafts important because there's a lot of valuable things you can pick up from a draft and it allows people to give usually a lot more technical notes. A lot of times from drafting you can talk about how you might have been misled in the draft or certain archetypes that aren't working. It allows you to get a little bit deeper and for the people that either might have been misled in the draft or certain archetypes that aren't working. You know, it allows you to get a little bit deeper.

And for the people that either already have been working on the set or the people that have enough familiarity that they feel comfortable, you know, jumping in on a draft, it does give you a lot of insight into the product. Normally when we do this we can have a lot of people play. I mean R&D is getting pretty big. I think we are I'm not sure exactly 70 to 80 people right now.

We keep getting bigger and bigger and we keep absorbing more and more sort of roles in the making of Magic. Usually, I mean, the rule of thumb is you're supposed to play on the play date if you can. If you have a product that is under a very tight deadline, you know, essentially, if you can do the play date, it's recommended you do. But if something's going to, if some product's not going to make a deadline or something, you have the freedom to skip the play date if you need to.

Most people want to plan the play date. Play dates are fun. So the other thing that will happen sometimes is because we have meetings with other people from other sections. I mean, R&D obviously is taking off to do this. But sometimes you have to go off to a meeting because it's with other people from other sections. I mean, R&D obviously is taking off to do this. But sometimes you have to go off to a meeting because it's with other people. We also

at times will invite other sections sometimes to come join us for play days if we want other people to see the set, especially the later in set design. We will invite other people to come see. Okay, so now Oh, and then, so now...

Oh, and then... So anyway, the play day, there's the morning. So you come at breakfast. You do the morning session. You can play seal, play draft. Then we have lunch. Lunch is brought in. And there's a variety of things you can have for lunch.

I mean, I'm sorry. Lunch is usually one... Sorry. One kind of food. It could be pizzas, or it could be Thai food, or it could be Indian food, or it could be Greek food. You know, there's, and so there's lunch, people come have lunch. And then after lunch, there's the second session. Usually what they recommend is, it's kind of nice to try different things in different sections.

If you played Sealed in the morning, maybe you want to try playing draft in the afternoon some people will do the same some don't feel up to drafting so they'll play sealed twice some are very familiar with the set so they'll draft twice but you have different experiences that you can do next thing you get is you get a sheet that is made by the lead designer, lead set designer and the sheet basically is to gather information so the way it works is we do this

every play day and so you are free to ask whatever questions you want but there are a bunch of questions we tend to ask every time because one, but there are a bunch of questions we tend to ask every time. Because one of the advantages of doing play days is because we ask certain questions all the time, we've started stockpiling the answer. And so one of the questions that we tend to ask is, was this fun? Did you have fun playing this? That's a question we always ask. Was this fun? Did you have fun playing this?

That's a question we always ask. So one of the things we can do is we say, oh, well, here's the rating, and hey, compared to other sets at the same level of development, like, you know, we tend to compare them like some sets are in late set design, some are in early set design. Usually if we say, is it fun?

We'll look overall, but we'll also look at sort of like if it's a late set okay compared to other sets that were late it's the that's the best comparison um and the reason this is valuable is the more we do with these the more input we get the more we can get a sense of oh oh the fun rates only you know 3.9 oh that's that's concerned we want to you know something that you know it really gives us some sense of what people are thinking. Um, and that's another important thing I should stress about, um, having, uh, you know, having multiple people play all at once is not only are we getting

individual feedback, which is important because you want to know what individual people do or don't like, you're getting group feedback. Um me take a moment to talk about group feedback, because that is something that's important. One of the things that is tough about designing a game is there are things you have to care about that are amorphous, right? Is it fun? And it is very hard in the abstract to say, oh, well, how do we gauge fun? And the answer is there are certain things that groups do well that individuals have

trouble with. Meaning, if I said individual, gauge how fun this is. I mean, you can give your experience of how fun it is, but it's very hard to gauge what the general reaction would be. But a group can do that. That if we ask everybody how fun is this and they rank it on a scale and we measure that and then we can measure it against how other people

ranked other sets, you start to get a sense of an overall group sense of them. You can use the group as a barometer to measure things that are very, very hard. Like some things, for example, some things like play design can look and say oh it's this balance or you know like there's a lot of

objective things one of the things I refer to this is in in design development there is what I call art and what I call science that part of the job is the science part of the job is sort of the numbers part like oh well we have to make sure the as-than is correct of a certain attribute or we have to make sure that the job is sort of the numbers part. Like, oh, well, we have to make sure the as-fan is correct of a certain attribute.

Or we have to make sure that the curve is right. And the science part of it, it's not that there's not work to make it happen, but it's very exacting in that, look, if we want this particular aspect to be a certain as-fan, that's just getting the math right of making sure that enough, you know, between commons, uncommons, verbes, mythic verbes, that the thing shows up in the right value. And the science is important, but the science is because it's very mathy, it's not a matter of

it's detecting it is not the issue. I mean, you have to figure out what you want, but sort of adjusting it is much more a number crunching issue. The art part of it is, you know, what are we evoking out of the audience? What are we, you know, what emotion are we generating? How do people feel when they play? And that stuff, which is also very important, is just a lot trickier. You know what I'm saying? So, like, and the way I'll describe it is

if I want to know, let's say I take a piece of art, the Mona Lisa. If I want to know how tall the Mona Lisa is, the painting, well, I can get out a ruler and measure it. It's not that hard to say how tall the Mona Lisa is. If I want to know what colors went in, I mean, okay, that's a little more complex, but you could look and, you know, you can figure out what colors were used to paint it. But if I would say, is it beautiful? Okay, that's a lot harder to measure. That's a lot trickier. And that, that's where you start using group metrics. Because when you're

trying to figure out whether the audience will like something, that is more about group response. And so how do you sense group response? By using groups as a means to do that. And so one of the valuable parts of the play day, and one of the reasons that we want everybody playing, is there's a lot of amorphous things that we need to understand. Now, there are also less amorphous things. So the questionnaire will ask a bunch of things,

how you like things, was it fun? it'll ask how you played that day, and then it'll ask you a bunch of specifics. So, it usually asks about the mechanics, sometimes it'll ask about themes, depending on themes, like, if we're doing a theme that we know, I mean, usually we'll ask about themes anyway, but if it's a brand new theme, we're much more likely to ask about it. We'll always ask about mechanics. Pretty much, it's like, what are the things about the set

we think players will enjoy, and let's sort of test those things. Okay, here's this mechanic, do people like this mechanic? And one of the other, oh, the other thing, well, I mean, that's a bunch of things. The other thing we also ask sometimes is about how complex people feel the set was. That's another thing we have to measure. And complexity, complexity has a cross, it's kind of a cross between art and science. There is some measurement things you can do for complexity.

Like, for example, we measure how many lines of text on average the cards have each rarity. Now, that's not exactly complexity in the sense that you can be wordy and be less complex, or be non-wordy and be more complex. But there's a correlation there, which is, in general, the wordier you are, the more complex you are. And there's a high enough correlation there that by monitoring it, it allows us to sort of keep an eye on it. But there's some art to complexity, too, which is sort of like, oh, how many things are people interacting with?

Some of it is just, does it feel complex? Some of it is, can you even analyze it? But there are times when we've learned is, kind of on paper it's not that complex, but in play and actual experience it is complex and then we want to figure out, okay, well all our markers for complexity are showing it's not too bad, but the feeling that we're getting reported is saying that it is. Let's figure that out. What are we measuring that maybe is leading to some complexity?

And that definitely allows us to analyze and look at things. Another thing that will happen sometimes in the feedback is sometimes if it's later in the process, we'll ask questions about some elements of the creative. Um, usually the art is not done by the late playtest. Um, it depends.

There, there are times we've done, usually the point of a playday is you want to do things early enough that the playday, you can take the information for the playday and use it to make the set better. that the play day, you can take the information for the play day and use it to make the set better. Generally, by the time the art is in, it is just late enough in the process that the play day information isn't quite as valuable. But I think the way it works is,

if sketches are in, our new, we change how we print cards. I think I did a podcast on this too. And our newest cards, we literally print onto cards, onto cardstock. And I think the way it works is it will put on the card in the art box, whatever we have. So if we have a sketch in, it'll just put the sketch in. If we have full art in, it'll put the full art in. And I think in late, like early set design, the art is not there yet. Late set design, I think some of it is in. So some of the cards

will have art. And so sometimes there might be elements people actually can comment on. The names, usually by late set design, are, while not totally real, are closer to real. And sometimes the people who are doing the names are

experimenting a little bit, so sometimes we'll get feedback on some of the creative elements. And then each set designer is going to have different things they care about. And so we want to weigh those. The set designers are free to do whatever they like with the questionnaire. All that we ask is just a few questions that we suggest that we put them on every time, just because we're trying to build a base of response to it. And it allows you to compare your set on certain functions, like fun and complexity, things that are a little harder to

have a complete gauge by comparing against other sets. Now, one of the things that's very interesting about Play Day is that...oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Let me finish on the questionnaires. Uh, the final thing on the questionnaire, uh, usually is the, okay, now, what, what, what did you play with? Um, oh, let me talk a little bit about the pluses and minuses. So one of the things we do during Play Days, and, and, uh play days, and it is something a guy named Peter Lee came up with. So what happens is if you're playing in a play day,

and you like a card, and it's fun. It doesn't have to be your card. It can be your opponent's card. Just be like, oh, wow, I really like that card. You put a plus on it. And if you come across a card that you really don't like, like, really? I'm not sure about this. I didn't enjoy this card. You put a minus on it. And so one of the things that we do is we collect all the pluses, and then we add up the pluses and

minuses and get a sense of, oh, what cards were sort of people, really made people happy, and what cards were frustrating people? We gather that information. The other thing we ask for you in your thing is we ask for you, do you have any card-by-card notes? You know, do you have any sort of other, what cards did you really enjoy? What cards did you not enjoy? And you can go and look through your pluses and minuses if that helps.

And we also sometimes will ask, hey, what did you play? You know, did you enjoy what you played? Um, there's some open ended questions that get people to sort of talk about more specifics. Uh, and one of the things that is encouraged is the crunchier the data, the better. Like if you dislike a particular card for a particular reason, Hey, point it out why you look like that card. Um, and then there's one last thing, which is, is okay anything you really wanted to say that is not has not been asked yet

anything you really want to get across that is something something that we hadn't hit yet and for me for example one of my big things when I play sets is I'm big on feel. I'm big on, like, did it have, you know,

I mean, one of my jobs as the vision guy is every set is supposed to evoke something out of the players. That we're supposed to do something to go, ooh, I'm enjoying this because. Now, there's a bunch of different ways that people can enjoy something. Maybe we're doing some topic we know people will like, and it's top-down, or, you know, like, oh, wow, you've really captured this thing that I enjoy. Or

maybe it's us taking a certain aspect of the game and putting it front and center. You know, oh, you normally like this part of the game, but now it's the major thrust. Hey, you like artifacts, but it's an artifact set. You like enchantments, it's an enchantment set, or, you know, whatever it is we're focusing on, that you really are playing that up. And sometimes it just, there's a new twist on an old popular thing. Hey, we've done this before,

but not like this. And so I'm really interested in the general feel. And so one of the things that I do on all, I mean, on all the sets, everything that goes through the vision, whether or not I'm leading the vision or somebody else from my team's leading the vision is I want there to be a goal of what do we want the audience what about the set is supposed to make the audience happy and make them enjoy the set?

Where is the fun, if you will? Where is the excitement there? And what are you trying to evoke out of the audience? And different things can evoke different things. I talk all the time about how I like my sets evoking emotions. I like that Innistrad, the gothic horse

that scares you. Or that I like that when we were in Tarkir, I like the idea that this is a place where war is happening all the time. How do you get that feel across? And every set that I make, Dominaria, I wanted a little bit of a sense of wonder and the idea of these people idolizing their past. And I wanted to use the player to idolize their past. There's a lot

of sort of work that gets done. And so one of the things I do when I'm playing the play days is unless we're playing a supplemental set, I'm playing the playtest, play days, is unless we're playing a supplemental set, I'm much more familiar with these sets. So I'm, one of the things I use it for is, am I happy with, you know, we set a bullseye in vision of saying this is our goal. I sort of want to give notes about how much I'm getting that feel.

Because normally what's supposed to happen is vision design sets the bullseye, and then set design is sort of improving it. You know, the house metaphor I always use. You know, we have floor plans. We've made the blueprints. Okay, now our set design is building the house. And as the guy who either made the blueprints

or oversaw the person who made the blueprints, I'm sort of like oh hey looking good or you know you moved this wall much you might want it to look about you know you this was a bearing wall i'm not sure you want to move it or or you seem to be taking liberties with the bearing wall be careful um so i'm giving notes and sort of how i see things are going um because one of the things that I do in my job is I need to check in from time to time and make sure that

I hand something off, okay I'm going to go do the next thing, but I need to poke my head in and make sure that the vision that's been established is being followed most of the time it is. Usually it's me saying, oh wow, good job, I really enjoy how you did A, B, and C.

That really is enhancing what the set is doing. Every once in a while it's like, oh, I see you removed something or you changed something and here's the purpose that we're serving. So if you remove that, make sure you have something fulfill a similar role, something like that. Okay, so what happens is

everybody turns in their forms we then collect the forms and collect all the data we look at all the pluses and minuses and then the lead of the set gets all that data and what can they do with that data well there's a bunch of different things they can do with the data

some of it is very crunchy data which is this card would be better if changed in some way, or this card, a lot of people don't like it. Get rid of this card or change the card or this card. People love this card. Whatever you do, there's something special about this card. Be very careful.

You know, this card is, is one of the things that really seems to be driving people toward having this positive response. So look, you, you, you want to keep that. Um, so first is the card by card sort of stuff where they are trying to. So, look, you want to keep that. So first is the card-by-card sort of stuff where they are trying to figure out just individual choices. And sometimes one of the great takeaways of a play day is just tactical notes.

Like, so we have a database called Drake. Used to be called Multiverse, now it's called Drake. And I think I did a podcast on our Multiverse, I mean, on our database. And in it, people can leave notes, what we call dev comments. And, you know, whenever you see a card, whether you see it in a file or you're playing with it,

you can give notes about, oh, I think this card could be better if something. And the Play Day is probably the best place to sort of pick that up. And there's a lot of card-by-card notes usually from the play day, especially the later play day. And so one of the first things that they want to do is just go through and say, you know, these are just smart people who are used to making magic sets, looking at cards, and oftentimes it's just a matter of, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we did this once before, you know, when we tried it once before, this of oh yeah we did this once before you know when we

tried it once before this is the problem we found i think that you're you know you could tweak this a little bit and avoid that problem or like you know eli might look at cards and um or not just eli but you know there might be oh there's some rule thing you might want to think about or talk to eli i know we tried this and such and such a set and, you know, this was a problem. So just a heads up, make sure Eli's aware of that, you know, stuff like that. So you get a lot of the card by card data and a lot of the the crunchy stuff. So that you get a fix. By the way, just a little side note here. I'm normally at work by now. So it takes me about 30 minutes to get to work

so real quickly is they it's been snowy as I'm recording this it's early February and we've had a bunch of snow and for those that don't know anything about Seattle we don't get a lot of snow so we don't have an infrastructure to really deal

with snow so for example earlier in the week, we had a day off work because there was so much snow that we just had the day off. And then the rest of the week we came in, but the roads are still snowy. And so anyway, I have an extra long podcast because people are just driving slow because of the snow.

So this is one of those podcasts where if I had actually finished in 30 minutes, I probably would have had to leave some information out. But this podcast is going to be a lot longer, so I'm stretching a little bit for those that recognize when I stretch. The telltale signs are going to go, oh, let me tell you about this one thing. Let me spend a few minutes talking about it. That's what I do when I go, oh, let me tell you about this one thing that, let me spend a few minutes talking about it. That's what I do

when I have to stretch. It's like, oh, here's an interesting tidbit about this thing. So, anyway, I am, my commute is, there's two different freeways I take,

and I get, the changing from one freeway to the second freeway is my halfway point. So I'm hitting my halfway point. Now, traffic's moving now because I'm on the freeway. So secretly this won't be... Right now we're at the 37th minute.

We're not going to have 37 more minutes. But I predict I'm not going to get done in 30. Actually, I know that. Anyway, just a heads up. A little behind the scenes. How our bad weather means more content for you. Traffic, more content. Bad weather means more content for you. Traffic, more content. Bad weather, more content.

Overturned bread truck, more content. So, anyway. Bad things for me means good things for you. Okay, let's get back to this. Okay, so they take the data. They figure out the cards. They get data off cards, how to improve the cards. They'll get feedback on mechanics.

Sometimes, usually going into a play day, the set lead is aware if a mechanic is having problems with it. Sometimes, especially the early play day, you're coming in to field test a mechanic to see whether you want to keep it or not. Usually, if it's there, I mean, the goal is to keep it if you can. But oftentimes, you come in knowing that it's a problem child and that you want to get the feedback on it. Sometimes it's because you get... The other thing to remember about play days is one of the things about working on a set is that you quickly lose sort of the newness perspective. That one of the things that we're going for is we want the set to be fun and bright and like the first time you see it, it's exciting. Well, the problem for people who work on the set is you've worked on the set for a while and anything that's new or novel just becomes ingrained as being part of what the

set is and it's hard for you to like things that when you first start playing that you really enjoyed and appreciated you know you you lose a little of that as you play with it more because you're you know the 18th time you play with something or the 30th or the 84th you know the newness has worn off some. And when you're trying to see, oh, is this fresh and new, it's hard to gauge that. So one of the really valuable things about play days is you get first impressions. And first impressions are very valuable for us. In fact, whenever somebody new comes to work in R&D, I always say hi and introduce myself. And one of the things I always ask is, because they have to

catch up what we call the gap. When you come to work for R&D, you have not, you've been playing Magic up to what recently came out, and you're not going to work on what we're working on, but there's a one to two year gap that you've never played before.

And so you have to get, usually it's about two years, you have to get up to speed on all the stuff that you have missed, um, in your, you know, image, sort of as you jump to the future, you, the time you've missed, you have to come up, you have to sort of catch up with that. And one of the things I ask people is, as you go through it, can you do a little write-up of first impressions? Because first impressions are really valuable to us. Um, anyway, um, so we get a lot of first impressions and, um, sometimes it's like, like, like I'll get, I'll give a concrete example. Um, there, we had a mechanic in a set that I handed, I handed over the mechanic and I

said to my set lead, I said, this is a fun mechanic. This to me is the anchor that I would build your set around. It's really fun. But it's complex. You know, it is definitely something where there's a lot of moving pieces to it. And I said to the set designer, look, I carved away a lot of extra complexity so that we could keep this thing. Because I think this thing matters. And I tried to sort of give you a set where I think this thing really matters. So try if you can to keep it.

And so they played with it. And what they found was it was fun. Oh, but it was complex. And so, at the play day, at the first play day, they said to the audience, okay, what do you think about this? And the feedback from the audience, which was a very interesting feedback, was, man, this is fun. And man, this is complex.

And the interesting thing was, sometimes complexity will drive down funness. You know, sometimes people go, this is complex. And the interesting thing was, sometimes complexity will drive down funness. You know, sometimes people go, this is complex. It's less fun. It's complex. And this was a weird thing where the feedback we got was, this mechanic showed up as both very fun and very complex. And it kind of reinforced what I had said when I handed it off which is, look, I think this is a lot of fun but it has the baggage of there's a lot going on and the takeaway from the play day was okay, people really seem to like this but can we keep the fun of it

like one of the things that the takeaway was is what is making it fun? What is it making it complex? And are there things that aren't fun that are complex? Are there components of it that are like, one of the things they wanted to break down is, so let's take mechanic and break it into 10 component pieces. Each piece, how much fun was that piece? How complex was that piece?

And the question was, are there pieces that are very complex but not very fun? Like if something's very fun and very complex, okay, maybe keep that. But if another component is like complex but not fun, well, maybe that's the place where you ship things and so one of the things that's really valuable is that the play day really sort of helped understand like this set was a weird set and like I hinted over with the caveat it was a weird set

but the play day really cemented that oh wow this is a really beloved mechanic it scored really well this is the kind of mechanic that we aspire mechanics to score on the fun level. But it also is a warning sign on the complex level. And so

that was one of the challenges. But I think if the mechanic had not sort of done so well on the fun level and it had been rated real high in complexity, they'd be much more likely to replace it. And so this is why play days can be pretty valuable because there are nuances that are tricky

that you really need a wider feel for. Another thing that they like to get feedback on, especially in the late set design, is a lot of the thing is trying to see if your rares capture the essence of what you're doing. For example, a different set. It was a top-down set. And we were really experimenting with,

are we hitting the tropes we need to hit? Like, are we, you know, we wanted the set to be about something, but when people were playing it, was it evoking, did we get the sense we wanted? And the challenges of that set design was we think we were playing in fruitful space, but had we captured the best thing from that?

Had we had we had we like one of the things that whenever you're doing a top-down set is you're trying to capture what it is people like about the thing that you're riffing off of and part of that is saying okay what are the components? What is the emotional feel of the source material

and are we doing something that sort of captures that essence in a way that is valuable and resonant? And sometimes what we do when we do play days for top-down stuff is the feedback is, man, I like the source material, but you aren't quite living up to it. And sometimes it's like, man, this is the card. Do more cards like this. like this and other times like oh i don't know about this card you know or i don't know this mechanic or you know and that you start getting like in a top-down set it's a little bit more about how resonant is it and are people feeling it you know and like each play day each play day might have a slightly different sort of

challenge based on what the challenges of the set are and so that's why we give flexibility to the lead set designer to adapt the questionnaire because a lot of what's going on in each individual play day is trying to figure out what is the challenge of your set? What do you need? What kind of feedback are you looking for that will help give you direction? And I will say the play days have been super successful.

We went from 4 a year to 80 a year to 12 a year is not a sign of. The other thing we started doing was we started doing supplemental sets. And where we found this valuable in supplemental sets is, A, even less people are aware of supplements. For example, I don't work on every supplemental set.

I work on a few. And while I have some visibility of what they're about, because I have a hand in sometimes helping figure out what we're doing, I don't work on most supplemental sets. And so one of the fun things about a supplemental set is, oh, I haven't had a chance to work on this. Like, for example, when I did the play day for Battlebond, I had not worked on Battlebond.

I mean, I understood the concept of what Battlebond was. It was a two-headed giant limited thing. And it was really interesting because one of the things that was fun for me is a lot of times my notes are more as, look, I've been playing around in the space because I did the vision, was on the vision team, and I'm helping you understand where you're doing based on stuff you've learned earlier.

With something else that I've never done, I get to just kind of play designer, you know what I'm saying? And a lot of times I'm giving notes, maybe they're things they already thought about, but it's just, I get to give my sort of initial impressions and stuff, and that's kind of fun. Like, I remember with Battle Bond, I really liked a lot of things, but there were some synergies I thought could be a little stronger,

and, um, anyway, you know, it was fun. Battle Bond was nice for me, because that's a good example where, as much as I'm involved in lots of magic, I don't do everything. We have so many moving pieces and so many sets that there are things that, you know,

the play day is in fact a chance for me to sort of experience something. And it was fun. I enjoyed them. Sometimes it's nice for me when the play day gets to be, you know,

I think one of the that I've worked on, I feel a little more obligated to sort of dig in deep and sort of talk about issues that I know exist. But when I'm playing something that I haven't done, I kind of just put my game designer hat on and go, oh, this is fun, and here's what I like, and here's what I didn't. Have you tried this? Have you tried that? And it's fun doing some of those, uh, play, play, play days.

Um, okay, so, I'm slowly getting to work. Um, let's see, any other final elements of the play day that I can talk about? Um, the, uh, oh, the, the camaraderie. Let me talk a little bit about that. One of the things that has happened over the history of R&D... So when R&D first started, when I first got in R&D, R&D was literally nothing but designers and developers. That's all it was.

It was the people who directly figured out what cards did. That was the only thing that R&D was. And then over time, you know, the editors became part of R&D and the creative team and now we have a lot more people that work on other aspects of the production. People that are working on graphic design and working on a lot of other aspects. We have people that now help us do frames or do concepting. There's lots of different people in R&D.

And as we've gotten bigger, there's a point in time where, like you said, close your eyes, name everybody in R&D. I could have with a heartbeat done it. And now, partly because we get so big and there's just so many people and just so many people working on so many different things

that it is, R&D at times is not quite as tight-knit, I mean, it's hard to be as tight-knit with 80 people as it is with 15 people. And then one of the things about the play days I really enjoy is it gets a chance for me to play with people that I don't interact with. Like, one of the things, for example, is there are people that I interact with that need to get the job done at the point where I work on the product, which is super, super early.

So I'm working with the creative team, for example, a lot, because we're trying to figure out the world, and so I have a lot of interaction with the creative team. But the editing team, I have less interaction with. The editing team is involved later in the process. And, you know, vision design can interact with editing a little bit when we're trying to sort of, sometimes early on figuring out how to write up, how to write certain mechanics and stuff. Sometimes we'll do it early because we're trying to figure out, can it work and can it fit in the text

box? I mean, I work with editing a little bit. I don't work with graphic design all that often. I mean, sometimes when I'm doing framework, sometimes I'll work with somebody on framework if we're doing new things. But there's a lot of people in R&D that I either work with a little bit or almost none. And so it's very cool when we're doing the play days that I get to interact with them. And, you know, it is... The other thing that's really cool is, and the other things that play days do is,

there's a thing in business called cross-pollination. Uh, and the idea of cross-pollination is if you force people to interact with people they don't normally interact with, what starts happening is that there's sharing of information between things and you find some things you don't normally get. Like if I sit down with somebody that's doing some part of the process very different from my part of the process and we start talking, we might look at the set differently and have different aspects of what we care about and that just being exposed to those other aspects, of different aspects of what we care about and that just being exposed to those other aspects, you know, making me think about a graphic design problem or something,

you know, or about a tournament issue or about a digital issue or, you know, just me worrying about things that I don't normally worry about really can have a big impact on how I design things. And so another big important part, I think, of the play days is this cross-pollination, is the people interacting with people that they don't necessarily normally.

And just from a making R&D friendlier or even just building relationships. Like, for example, let's say I play with them on play day and we have a good time. Okay, I've made a bond with them. I've started to get to know them a little better. And so if I ever have a problem, maybe I'm more going, you know what? I'm going to go ask that person this question. Where if I hadn't built that sort of friendliness before, maybe I'd be less inclined to go do that.

And so, I mean, I think the play days are, I mean, while a lot of what makes the play day valuable is the immediate sort of, hey, make this, change this card. There's a lot of very powerful long-term things about just the cross-pollination, the sort of building relationships with people that you have a little less interaction with, and just also making R&D more fun.

I mean, one of the things about being a game company is I want us to sort of be experiencing the product in not always the technical way, but in the fun way. It's why the Tuesday lunches are important. That, you know, I want to play Magic from time to time and have fun playing Magic. Go, ooh, Magic is fun. And not just always be in, like, sort of technical mode. And so I think play days are valuable there.

And the other thing, by the way, is a lot of the people who make the designers, obviously, are all pretty well enmeshed with Magic. But there's a lot of people who work on Magic and R&D that all of them know how to play Magic, but some of them are less familiar. And just getting them to play more and getting more experience with playing Magic just makes them better at their jobs. Because the more they understand the game, the more nuance they get, hey, the better it is in making it. And so play days are also just an opportunity to get more people to play. Okay, guys, this was definitely a 30-minute topic that I talked about for 54 minutes.

I hope you guys enjoyed it. There's a lot of information about play days, but it's an important process of what you do. And I like to go in the minutia sometimes sometimes of things that r&d does because like i want you to get the idea that everything we do a lot of thought went into that thing the reason we do play days and then we iterated on play days and adapt play days and are constantly working to make play days better is it's a tool and allows us to do a lot of things in a very cool way that just makes a better experience for all of you. So anyway, that, my friends, is Play Days.

But I got a Play Day to go to. So anyway, I'm now here at work, so I don't know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be playing magic. Play-dang magic, if you will. See you guys next time. Bye-bye.