Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #901: Casual Play with Melissa DeTora

Episode Date: January 29, 2022

I sit down with Designer Melissa DeTora to talk about the new casual play design group she's leading.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for Other Drive to Work, Coronavirus Edition. So, using my time at home to interview interesting people all about magic. So, another interesting person has joined us, Melissa DeTora. Welcome. Hey, everyone. Thanks for having me. So, today we have a topic today, because you recently, relatively recently, put together a brand new team called the Casual Play Team. So we'll talk a little bit. What does that mean? What is this team up to?

And then we're going to talk about casual play and what casual play means. Sounds good. So I guess I can start by talking about what the Casual Play Team is up to and like, why did we even make it in the first place? Well, a big reason why we make it, why we made this team is because we are making more and more products these days. And we need more resources for playtesting these products. And we didn't really have an efficient way to playtest Commander. So it was really important to us to like actually have a playtesting team dedicated to playtesting commander because it was not really something that was done uh as efficiently as we wanted to in the past and like i said as we're making more and more cards and sets and especially commander products like it's really important that we have ways to test them so

our team was born. So one of the things that's always fascinated me, and I've written articles on this and stuff, is just what exactly casual play is. And I think there's no one single answer. I think casual play actually covers a bunch of different things. So I want to talk a little bit with you about what does casual play mean to you?

Sure. So as some of you may know, I come from a very competitive background. I've been a pro player in the past, but I've actually done a lot of different magic playing in my life. I played lots of casual games, I played lots of commander, and I played lots of tournament magic. So for me, one thing that casual play means to me is something where you can just sit down and have a good time and have just very low stakes. Like you're not playing for any big prize. You're only playing to just have a good time with friends. There's nothing on the line.

There's no tournament setting and just like low pressure games. Yeah. One of the things that's interesting to me from a design standpoint is we have have to think about like like i'm big on psychology right like part of being a good game designer is understanding the end user how are they using what you're going to use and while there definitely are people that are very competitive that you know a big part of magic is can i make the best deck possible and can i maximize my win percentages that there's a lot of people for that's not the priority when they sit down and play a game of magic um like a lot of people for example it's like did i have a good time doesn't matter what i won or lost like did i enjoy was the experience worthwhile did i have fun

just interacting with my friends and did i did i get to do things that were cool and different you know did i did i get to have an experience when i played? And it's not that I didn't want to win, but whether I won or not was not the defining quality of, you know, was it a good experience for me? Yeah, definitely. And, like, don't get me wrong. Casual players do love to win. I mean, who doesn't love to win?

But, like, for me, like, what is a successful game of casual magic is did you get to do your awesome thing? Did you get to put together your sweet, infinite combo? Did you get to put together your card draw engine and make a bunch of resources? And that kind of thing. Or even something as simple as, did I get to just attack my opponent to death with all of my sweet creatures? So if I got to do my thing, regardless of if i won or lost like that's a successful game of magic to me right a lot of things it's interesting when the game ends like

one of the game designer things i always think about is when the game ends was it a net positive experience do you want to play this again you know did did you have a good time and that i think it's very easy to get caught up in winning. I mean, it's not that casual play cares about winning. I mean, winning is fun. It's a goal. It gives you something to try to do. Obviously, you're trying to win the game.

But whether, like, for example, there are games you could play where you won, but it was a miserable game. Maybe the person you were playing with was just being mean to you, or you just have experience where, look, I might have won the game, but the play experience was not something that meant something to me. It's so important to me that we are making a product that people have a general positive experience with. Yeah, totally.

One thing that I ask myself is like did my game actions matter in this game you know like was i able to effectively interact did i have agency um did i get to do my cool thing like you know even if i lost like as long as i was able to like make meaningful decisions in a game is like something that i think is important for the play experience yeah another thing i wrote an article about this, it's something I call narrative equity. And the concept of narrative equity is that one of the things that people value is the ability to tell stories, right?

Is that if I play a magic game and something happened that I now have a new story that I get to tell my friends and I get to share the story, that that itself has a lot of value. And my example is at one of the worlds, the world that was in Memphis, I believe,

it was, there was a new set coming out and every R&D person who was at the event was given a card to play in, there was a multiplayer event. And we were saying, play this card in the event. No one had ever seen the card before. And just, that's how we're going to preview the card. It'll show up

in this event, and people will talk about it in the context of this game. And I had, I didn't remember, Colossus Chameleon. Yeah, you have Chameleon Colossus. Chameleon Colossus. And basically, during the game, I managed to attack and gain like 55,000 life.

And I've told this story many times. I wrote an article about it. And I was really, really happy because like, look, that was a pretty grandiose story, right? And people were like, well, did you win? I go, what does it matter? That's irrelevant to the story. It's irrelevant.

I mean, the end of the story is i was one of the two people to win that game in advance but whatever like that wasn't the point of the story and that a lot of what makes magic magic right is the the moments that happen or the the experiences or the interactions and that a lot of what we're trying to do is hey give you the tools so that awesome amazing things can happen and you bond with people and share things and you can tell stories and that, you know, on some level, if we can make you experience something that's really joyful and something that really helps you, that whether you win or not is not key to whether that is a positive thing. Yeah. All right. I have a similar story.

So first of all, I was at that world in memphis that was my first world championship that was awesome great experience it was like 2008 that was sweet but anyway that's not the story but like similar thing to what you said about how you like had this really awesome moment so i was playing in the theros original theros pre-release and there was this card and unfortunately i don't remember the name but it was a Hydra, and it doubled the number of counters or something. I want to say it had Hero in the name or something, but I could be wrong about that. Is it from Theros?

Yes. Here, I'll look it up while you tell your story. Yeah, yeah. So we had this huge board stall. It's a pre-release, so super casual event, and typically slower games, brand new cards. Nobody knows what the cards do or whatever, so, like, the games tend to go a little bit longer.

So I kept pumping this card over and over. Did we get the name of the card yet? The two Hydras are Miscutter Hydra and Pelucanos, but neither of those are the card you're talking about. Might have been in... Oh, maybe it was a different Theros set. Maybe it could have been Born of the Gods or something. Okay, let me look. Keep going.

All right. Okay, now I need to Keep going. Alright. Um, okay, now I need to know the name of this card. I think it's called Hero's Bane. Does that... Wait, what is this card? Alright, anyway, like, I think you pay a mana cost and you double its counters, right? Okay. So,

so, like, the game was going on forever and ever, and, like, both me and the opponent were building up mana, and nobody could attack because we had, like, a million creatures in play. And I got this hero's bane up to in the thousands of power, but I could not win with it. My opponent probably had a death touch creature or something, and, like, this creature did not have trample. But I remember, like, at the end of the game, I don't even remember who won, but, like, because that's not really the point. even remember who won but like because that's not really the point but i remember at the end of the game i took a picture of what this card looked like with all the dice on it and there were like easily like 10 d6s on this thing you know like or more i don't know it was like d20s or something

it was pretty ridiculous how many dice were on this card they could not even fit on the card i was just spewing dice all over the table with how big this card was. That's it. Primordial Hydra? That's not a Theros set. It doubles the number of counter-hits each turn? Yes. I'm sure somebody...

Oh, I found it. It is Heroes Bane. Heroes is spelled weird. It's like Heroes with an apostrophe at the end. So it's H-E-R-O-E-S apostrophe Bane. And the activated ability is four mana, put X counters on this where X is its power.

So one of the interesting things, we're going to get a little behind the scenes here. One of the things about design is you are somewhat at the mercy of the structure of the system. So, for example, when the end result of your system is play design, and play design is very geared toward thinking about constructed play, without even thinking about it, it's not like play design is trying to push this.

When that's the voice you hear, whenever there's decisions to be made, it's just the loudest voices about constructed play. And that one of the things, I think the whole reason your team exists is like, normally in the process, in the old system of design development, design was always in charge of the casualness of play, right? A lot of what we're trying to do in the early part is pick themes and do things that are generally fun and exciting. And, like, we're trying to pick things we think that are universally fun for people. And then as the set gets progress later, they start making the individual cards for constructed play.

And so a lot of... I think our jobs overlap a lot in that a lot of what we both do is, how do we make this fun? How do we make this lovable? How do we make, you know, we want people to enjoy the game of Magic. And that, it's not, I mean,

obviously making strong competitive cards, people love strong competitive cards. I'm not saying that can't be fun. And I don't want anybody to walk away saying, winning can't be fun. Winning can be, I'm sure you have infinite stories of tournaments where like, oh my God, you managed to win and it was amazing. And, you know, there's great stories there. And that can be very, very fun.

It's not like competitive is not fun. I don't want to like say casual is fun and competitive is not fun. They're both can be fun. But it's just like, we want to make sure that everybody has the tools. So no matter what they care about, we've given you the tools to have a fun experience yeah um so the thought is if standard is fun and balanced like that'll kind of trickle down into other formats where like other formats will also be fun if we're adding new fun and balanced cards into the environment right so that was kind of the thought there so like that that's a big reason why play design um exists is to just make sure that standard is fun and exciting and there's like lots

of really cool things to do and stuff um so i was on play design for a very long time um as many of your listeners uh may know so like a lot of what i say will kind of be about that here but um so a lot of what we did or or what we still do, is we'll playtest and just find the cards that are fun and push on those. So if there's a theme that's super super fun, we want that to be strong. We want that to be the thing that people go to in Standard. And then likewise, if something is super unfun, we're not going to make that one of the stronger cards. That particular card or theme might be fun for somebody, but if it's not fun for the general player base,

it's not really something that we're going to want to push on. From a power level you're talking about, not make it strong. Yes, exactly. If something is fun, we're going to want to make it stronger in power level so people have more fun with it. It shows up more often if it's stronger, usually. But if it's not super fun, we're probably going to make it a little bit weaker,

but maybe still appealing to those specific players who might like that kind of play pattern. And another thing to keep in mind is we have some control over certain formats pushing certain directions. For example, standard is very, very sensitive to mana costs in that

the difference between a card being played or not being played very much has to do with is there a window to play this card? Where something like commander is a little bit slower. It's more forgiving for more expensive cards, for example, in a way that standard sometimes can't be. It's really, for more expensive cards, for example, in a way that standard sometimes can't be.

It's really, really hard to make a six-mana card in standard that matters. Yep, absolutely. That's something that we've been struggling with forever in play design. How do we make sweet six-mana cards that are, A, worthwhile to put in your standard deck, and B, are fun? Take a look at a card like dream trawler like this card had a lot of mixed reactions as far as is this card fun a lot of people didn't think it was fun but this card as a six mana card had to be of that power level to see play in standard and in non-standard formats

it's a pretty sweet card like that card is a sweet commander card. It draws cards. It gets bigger. It gains life. Like, what more could you want out of your commander card? So, like, in general, the card is pretty sweet. But it was definitely a hard card to work on for standard. Right. And commander, for example, like, one of the things, I talk about this a lot, how that magic isn't really one game.

It's kind of, you know, magic is more of a rule system than an individual game. There's a lot of ways to play. And that draft is very different than standard, which is very different than commander and stuff. And that we also can sort of think about who's going to play it where. Like your team is very dedicated in saying, hey, for example, commander is a very popular format and that there's things that commander wants to do that other formats don't want to do. And that we sort of fine-tune things that will see play in commander that might not see play in other formats based on you know commander lets you do some things that is harder to do in other formats yeah for sure and commander like you can do a very wide variety of things you know it really comes down to like what color combination your commander is

or what kind of build around your commander is. And one thing that I think is great about commander, something that you were talking about earlier about the stories and the experience, is in commander you can express yourself with your deck building, right? You can tell a really cool story just in the deck you build.

Yeah, and other than that Commander does really well, I don't know if people think about the structure of the 100-card singletid, for example. The reason that's built into the system is, one of the things that casual tends to enjoy more is what we call variance. If you're a really competitive player, if I sit down with my deck, I want it to do the exact same thing as much as I can, right?

I want my deck to do something, be very consistent in what it does, and every game I want to win in the way that it does it. Consistency is really important on high-end competitive tournament play. Yeah, exactly. But in casual play,

really, you want the exact opposite, which is, I don't want the same thing happening all the time. I want something to happen that's never happened before. And so the reason Commander is a 100-card singleton rather than 60-card four-of is the combatorics means just

the chance of playing a Commander game and playing the exact same Commander game, barring, like, tutoring or something, it's very low, right? Just the chance that you get the same combination of cards when you have so many more cards in your deck and so many less repeats, or no repeats, that's a big part of what makes Commander a Commander.

Yep, and, like, similar to that is we make tons of high-variance cards all the time any dice rolling cards from the Adventures in the Forgotten Realms set, or coin flipping cards, or just cards that just pick things randomly. because they just give you a different experience every time. But if that card was, say, in a standard set, it's not really the type of card that we want to be on the highest levels of competition, right? Like, imagine the finals of a Pro Tour or something coming down to a coin flip, right? That's just not really the best experience

for any of the players involved. Yeah, and so one of the things we do... Like, for example, I'll talk unsets for a second, because unsets are definitely very much in this camp. One of the guiding, when I'm designing an unset is, I turn the variance dial up all the way.

Like, if you've ever played, like, Unstable's a good example, and Infinity does this too, but you guys haven't played Infinity yet. Unstable, like, was designed such that the chance of you having the same play experience between two games was just super high. Something like Contraptions, like, you have a completely different randomized deck

every time you do it. So, like, my Contraptions aren't going to play out the same way. Host Augment, it's all about combinatorics in that the left side and the right side, like, every once in a while, maybe they're the they're the same but you know very different things can happen based on what order you draw your things it can be very different and like outside assistants talking to other people people are huge variants if i talk to my friend bobby or my friend cindy they might not say the same thing so you know there's die rolling like the onsets specifically are very much like

every possible where we can make it higher variance, we make it higher variance. And one of the things that I... The reason I really enjoy the unsets is there's this mindset that even competitive players have when they sit down and they go, well, I don't expect this to be competitive because crazy things are going to happen

and I know they're going to happen, so I'm just going to enjoy the craziness of the experience. And that... I wish more people in more games could just go, know they're going to happen so i'm just going to enjoy the craziness of the experience and that i i wish more people in more games could just go hey i'm going to embrace the craziness because that can be a lot of fun like you're not trying to be competitive if winning everything isn't the point that it's very high variance is a huge amount of fun yeah yeah for sure um i have a fun story about one of the unsets it was unstable Unstable, not the one that's not out yet. The one that is Unstable came out.

So I'm, you know, I'm working at Wizards, just, you know, working at my desk, minding my own business. I was not in the playtest, but there was an Unstable playtest going on and Dave Humphries was in it. And if you guys don't know Dave Humphries, he's a very competitive person. He's played in, like, a bunch of pro tours in the Hall of Fame, you know. Like, I would guess Unstable is not really his thing. But he was leading development at the time, by the way. Part of the story is he was the lead developer on the set at the time. So continue your story.

I didn't even realize that. But anyway, this was a long time ago. So he plays a card that's like a thought seize variant so like the card is uh you um ask a person next to you who's not in the game hey can you pick a card out of this player's hand and have them discard it so he plays that card and he says okay melissa you're right here can you look at his hand and choose a card and have them discard the card and i look like sure whatever sure i'll play along so i look at the person's hand and he has like bomb rare and you know like lots of irrelevant cards i'm like oh i i'm supposed to take the bomb rare so dave doesn't lose the bomb rare but what's the fun in

that i can't possibly do that so i just take you know some random irrelevant card and i'm just like i'm really sorry dave but like i i feel bad for you what's coming and then like the opponent of course plays the bomb rare and crushes him with it so you know high variance i could have just easily made the quote-unquote correct play and take the bomb rare like i was supposed to but no i wasn't doing that so i'm gonna talk real quick about outside assistance because i was when we first made unstable i introduced the idea of what if we asked other people things and there was a lot of skepticism at the time when i first introduced that they're like well why would you do that and what i said

is look two two reasons one is we need a need variants, and people are high variants. And two, it's fun to interact with other people. Like, it's fun, like, all of a sudden there's a story in which you, the person, not even playing a game of Magic, got pulled into this game of Magic, and you affected the game in a way that was not something you normally get to do.

And so we got a lot of notes from people, like, we shouldn't do this and this and that. And then we started doing playtesting, and, right, this kept coming up. Like, there's a great story. Tim Aiden was one of our editors. And I think Ben Hayes, Tim and Ben are friends. Like, there's a card called Friend Slaver,

where it's like Mind Slaver, but instead of you taking over your opponent's turn, you get somebody else to take over your opponent's turn. And so he had Tim take over the opponent's turn, and then Tim just killed him. And he's like, don't ask me to do that again. And that's a great story. That's a great experience.

That's a great story. And that's the kind of thing that's... The reason that outside assistants... I mean, a little hint, Infinity will have more outside assistants. It's just a lot of fun because interacting with people is a lot of fun. And like I said, stories are important.

And that there's just something fun about getting your friends or getting a stranger. It's just a lot of fun to interact with people. People are fun. And so one of the things that's really interesting to me, the more we... What's happened over Magic's time is, like, what matters keeps changing as far as where's the focus. And this, right now, in Magic's life, this is the most

casual-friendly Magic has ever been. Like, there's more resources allocated. Like, you started a whole team about casual play. We've never had this many resources allocated to, like, let's make casual play as awesome as possible. And so I'm, as someone who loves casual play, it's really exciting to me to see

that we're spending a lot more time and energy on this. That's great. Yeah, I mean, like, also I would argue that this is, like, the first time that we really know that casual play is a really important part of Magic. Like, in the past, like, we're like, oh yeah, competitive Magic. That's what everybody's doing.

That's what players care about. And we didn't really have a lot of visibility into how people interacted with Magic casually, especially years ago before the internet and social media and all that stuff. But now we see so many like content creators like youtube videos of commander games and like commander podcasts and i feel like commander is is everywhere but but like i think it casual play has always been everywhere we just weren't really aware of it

was not very visible to us you know because for us like all we really saw was like hey here's some magic coverage of competitive games or like that's like kind of what people were talking about mostly on the internet like that's what the websites are all about you know but like i just feel like things are just very very different right now with like how much of like the twitter community is talking about casual play and stuff like that yeah it's it's interesting because like so 1996 was when unglued came out right and i remember at the time i was like guys no no there's an audience that's doing goofy fun It's interesting because 1996 was when Ungaloo came out, right? And I remember at the time, I was like, guys, no, no, there's an audience that's doing goofy, fun things.

And it's just funny watching that sort of evolution. In R&D, we refer to the group as the invisibles because there's a certain group of people that we have high exposure to, right? That, you know, through social media and through all data mining and this and that, like there's a certain audience that we see very loudly. And for many years, there was this group that we just couldn't see. And that's why we called them the invisibles. Like our market research didn't see them. But we would sort of get offshoots of them existing. Like we could could look at sales. Like, there's things that would say we're missing something, but we didn't quite understand why. And so we've come a long way.

Like, the fact that we have much better understanding of who some of this casual audience is, is, I don't know, to me, really cool as someone who's been at this forever of trying to convince people they existed at a time when we didn't have the metrics to say they existed. Yeah.

Like, yeah, it's super interesting because there are some cards. So years and years ago, I worked at a game store, and there were certain cards that were just so popular. Like, for example, angels or high mana value things or whatever. And it would always boggle my mind because I was like, wait, these cards are not playable in standard. I don't understand how people want them. But like they were more popular than like, you know, the Chase Standard Rare at the time, you know, which was just at the time.

Like, you know, this is years ago when I was a Pro Tour player and I didn't really have a lot of visibility into like casual magic, you know. So it was just very weird to me. Like, how are these angels flying off the shelves you know like they're angels they're not competitive standard cards i don't get it you know but but now i get it casual magic is just popular and again that's the other big thing is like i this idea that casual magic is has somehow found its i believe casual magic has always been a big part of magic. I believe that from the very, very early days it was there. It just was a matter of us having the tools to see it.

And I think as we started making more products for it, so that more people could... Part of making magic from our side is understanding an audience so that we can make a product for them. And then as we make products for them them we start seeing them more and more because the products exist for them to sort of react to yeah yeah definitely like i'm thinking about back when i first started playing magic and like i was not a competitive player i started playing casual like my first decks were cards i opened in booster packs you

know and like people i played with that was also their decks you know cards they own dot deck is kind of what we call it sometimes i didn't start playing competitively until years later right and like whenever i like asked somebody uh you know how did you get started in magic it's a very common story of like oh i started playing casually with. And then I found out about the local game store and that kind of thing. But like, think about how many people started playing casually with friends and like never found competitive magic. You know, they just like play casually forever. It's like a huge number of people. Yeah. So here's a stat I give to give people some idea.

So we believe that under 10% of all Magic players have ever played in a sanctioned event. So of the things we can see, like we see sanctioned events, right? You play in a store or online or whatever. You play somewhere where we can see you playing. We have some record. That is a tiny, tiny percentage of the magic play and like you it's funny people often

say to me what's the most popular format and my answer always is cards i own right that that is the most popular format that probably have structured formats commander is probably the most popular right now but that is dwarfed by i play the cards i own and i put them in a deck that that is the way most people probably the the majority of people, play Magic. Yeah. I bought a couple packs and, you know, like, I opened a red-green multicolored card, therefore I build a red-green deck

so I can play with this card I opened. So it's interesting for me, I mean, one of the things that I'm happy with is that we're starting to sort of acknowledge this audience more and like i say actively designed for the audience in ways that in the past was harder to do and i'm i'm excited you have a team like i'm super like on some level i feel like i have new allies because you know a lot of a lot of my job is to come up with what like fun things and then I have to argue with people whether they're fun or not.

And so I love having more casual. Can you please back me up? This is a fun thing. People will enjoy this. Yeah, I'm really excited. We have a lot of very passionate people about Commander and casual play, very vocal people. So I'm sure they will be on your side about that kind of stuff.

A lot of them love fun and wild stuff. And, you know, also a lot of our team has experience playing competitively as well, you know. So we have a good understanding of, like, finding a balance between, like, the right rates for a competitive card versus, like, what will this do in Commander? And like, will it be fun in Commander? And that kind of stuff. And also the other thing that your team gets to do is there is trying to cost cards correctly so that they're played in Commander in a way that's fun, but fair.

Like that's something that play design has not been well suited for just because it's a very different format from what they experience. Yep. That is going to be a lot of what our our team is going to be doing like you know our team just started like uh it's january our team started literally in november so like we are pretty new at this but yeah like we've worked on a couple of sets already and like yeah that is a lot of what we're doing like a lot of it is like what is the right rate for for commander at what point in the game is it appropriate for this card to like come down and begin doing its thing right like that that is a lot of what we do you know like we're definitely

trying to avoid cards that are just like snowballing comes down too early and just kind of takes over a game like i can give a couple of examples I don't know how we're doing on time. Quick examples. I can see my desk from here, so we're close to ending. An example of a card that we are trying not to make is something like Dockside Extortionist.

That card scales exponentially well in Commander. It comes down and produces a gigantic amount of mana. And one of the problems with that card is just its rate. It just comes down too early in the game and gives you such a mana advantage that it's just kind of hard for other players to come back from.

So one thing that our team is trying to do is to make sure cards like that have the appropriate rate. Because it is fun to make cards that generate mana. Making mana is fun. Cheating on resources is fun. We're going to do that, but we want to do it in a way that is, like, appropriate for everybody involved. Yeah, that's the important thing that is funny is whenever people sort of say it's our job to, like, quantify fun on some level, like, you know, we have to make decisions. We have to cost things. We have to do concrete things.

We're going to print a card. And that part of understanding fun is what's the right level? When should this happen? There's a lot that goes into maximizing a card's fun. Yeah, we want it to be fun for everybody involved, not just for the player casting it. I'm sure Dockside Extortion is lots

of fun for the player casting it, but then three other players at the table are groaning and being like, oh, you know, what are you doing? So yeah, we're trying to just find the balance of what is the correct cost that makes this card fun for all four players involved. So anyway, as we said, I can see my desk from here, so we need to wrap this up here. So, final thoughts on casual play before we wrap up for the day.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just, like, really excited that our team is here now. Like, we're going to be working on some awesome things. It's tough because there's a lot of things I can't talk about, and I really want to, but I can't. But, like, I'm really happy that Commander is as popular as it is. And we get to make awesome Commander cards.

Yeah, I feel your pain. There's lots of awesome things that we can't talk about yet. But I'm so happy your team got informed. And maybe we'll have you on in the future when we have more concrete. Once the public, we work years ahead. So like, you know, we're working on something. You guys don't see it for a while. But maybe once the audience has seen some stuff, we can talk again.

But so I want to thank you for joining us. It was fun talking casual play. It was fun. Thanks. It's been a while since I've been on this show, but thanks for having me again. And you didn't have to drive my car, so. Oh, you're right.

I could just sit here at home. Great. I know. So anyway, by the way, Melissa was one of the few people who said, I want to be on your show. I will drive to your house so that I can sit in your car while you drive to work, which is dedication.

Only a few people did that, so. And he lives far away from wizards. Believe me, I had to drive. I drove, I don't know, 30 minutes or something. Yes, that was some dedication. Nowadays, I call people up. It's very easy to be on my podcast. But Melissa was there when it

meant something to be on my podcast, so I always appreciated that. Nice. But anyway, guys, I can see my desk, so we all know that means means it's the end of my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic so thank you once again melissa for being with us thanks for having me and i'll see all of you guys next time bye