Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #925: Managing Teams with Brady Bell

Episode Date: April 23, 2022

I sit down with Senior Director of Game Design Brady Bell to talk about what it takes to put together a Magic design team.

I'm not pulling into my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so I'm using my at-home time to interview people, and today I have Brady Bell, Senior Director of Game Design at Wizards of the Coast. So, hey Brady. Hello, hello. Thanks for having me. So, one of the things that I've been having fun interviewing people that are sort of not designers per se, is I want the audience to understand that there's a lot that goes into making magic beyond just the making of it. So I talk about the product a lot. So today we're going to talk about process and people. My favorite topic, process and people.

The magic behind the magic, yes. Well, and I mean, I think the reason your job is so important is that there's all these designers that you have to make sure have everything they need. And, you know, like you and I work to figure out who's on what team. Like there's a lot of work that put up from your end of like making sure that we have what we need and the people have what they need. Yeah, it's kind of the fun part. My role is kind of like an air traffic controller for magic. So the I think I have the best job in the building, except maybe for you. The you know, I get to touch every product we make and all the people who make it. So it's kind of the best peanut butter and chocolate of having how magic comes

to be. All of it. i get to touch in a way that is super light and super fun but i'm also not responsible for the hard part that you have and everyone else has that actually executes and makes sure every single one of the cards is delightful and balanced and fun i i get to wave off long before those decisions have to be made i get to share my stupid ideas with you and you humor me. But I get to work with all the wonderful, talented people we have and try to orchestrate the right people at the right times for the right sets to make sure we're doing our best to put the most delightful magic in people's hands. Like what could be better than that job? Right. OK, so I want to give people some sense of scope.

Now, obviously, we're talking about the future, so we're not going to mention specifics, but how many magic sets, as of right now, are in some form of design? Oh, that's a great question. You're putting me on the spot. I mean, roughly. I know getting the exact number will be hard. But to give the audience some idea, because the number is higher than the audience thinks.

I know that. Yeah, I would say full large booster sets. We're probably actively working on close to 10, I would say, are in development, in flight at some stage of development right now

with dedicated teams creating content. There are probably 10 large sets right now in production. Okay, but how about supplemental sets? Oh. Like, everything being designed. I'm not talking just about the main things. Okay, but how about supplemental sets? Oh. Like, everything being designed.

I'm not talking just about the main things. Somebody, there's a team, they're designing it. It's magic product being made. Any kind of magic product. Easily over two dozen of various size. You can get up over 30, probably, when you get down into smaller secret lair offerings, things we're doing for charity offerings things we're doing for

charity things we're doing specifically that are digital only uh you can you can easily get over 30 things that we're trying to 30 balls we're trying to juggle at any one time to make awesome magic stuff and from a process standpoint um how long i mean like what is the longest a magic product can take and what's the shortest a magic product can take and what's the shortest a magic product can take? The, so let's start with the last one. The, the shortest we would put something together for is probably going to be in the secret layer category.

Um, and the mileage will vary widely versus, you know, if we're trying to, Hey, is there any original content? Are we doing new designs in this or not? But let's take the most extreme example of something that we're just going to be trying to match uh really really good reprints um people are looking for with a specific ip whether that's ours or universes beyond um that would be you know probably soup to nuts nine months is probably the fastest something is going to is going to go through the machine that that that is us uh and then on the other end boy i would say there are things we would start

talking about in real detail probably four years uh before it's actually going to be in a player's i mean mark you and i in the past week have probably had three real, largely deep conversations about a set that people aren't going to be able to play for more than three years from now. That's how in front of the trains we need to be making smart decisions around people and being aligned on what we're aiming at for a given product. Okay, so let's say you're putting together a team. What are the qualities you look for when you're trying to assemble a design team? Oh boy. So let's say it's going to be a standard legal set. You and I will start planning very, very early about having the right combination of people that are going to be operating an initial design or what we refer to as exploratory and initial and vision design,

excuse me, exploratory and vision design. So we're going to want to check the right boxes there. We want to make sure we have the right designers who are in there who aren't, they're not handcuffing themselves. They're not closing off doors in their brain in terms of, is this something we're going to be able to execute on? What type of impact is this going to have on standard? We are much more focused on having people early on in the process who are just trying to understand the creative of the set to make sure something you're always driving home with. What are the tropes? What are people going to expect here? And what does that mean inside of magic?

And then taking that, whether it's through theme or individual card or mechanical exploration, just try to find fun and interesting gameplay interactions. Absent, largely absent of is this something we really feel like we can execute on downstream at the end? And every single month a set goes along, we will be fine-tuning adjustments, bringing different people in who have different skill sets and pulling other people off so they can focus on new unique things that they over-deliver on. And so there's a real delicate balance of how a bill becomes a law or how we turn a puppet into a real boy by the end of the day that requires, you know, month to month sort of slight adjustments in terms of people, personalities,

and talents to make a magic set real at the end of the day. So I want to jump in here. It's two things I want to explain. And then I want to walk through an actual vision design to show people how this works. The first thing is something that's really important that is underlying what you're saying, but I just want to sort of say bluntly is different people have different skills that there's not a uniform designer,

different designers do different things. And part of your job is who are the best designers with the skills they have at this portion of the design? Yeah, that's right. The game that you and all the designers who work with you are making is one game. The game I play has more to do with the people who are making the game. So I'm trying to put the, you know, use a baseball analogy. I'm trying to make sure we have the right person playing first base and the right person playing shortstop at the right time for the given situation. What inning are we in? What is the

score of this game? What is the opponent doing? These are all the things that I'm looking at just from a people level to make sure I'm setting all of our leads up for success by giving them the right card designer at the right time, the right person to come in and focus on a given environment, right? We have different people who are going to really over-index and really help us shape limited versus the right people to come in who really want to nail down our constructed shots and feathering all of those things together is sort of the people game that I get to play. And the second thing that you said that I want to reinforce here is it's an evolving thing that, you know, we're going to talk,

I'm going to talk about exploratory and vision in a second, but it's not as if it's just one thing. It's an evolving thing. People might be there for the first month, but not be for the second month. The team, even if we're just talking exploratory, just talking vision, it can change over time. Yeah, absolutely. And it can change for a number of reasons. It can change because we're making adjustments. We're coming up with better ideas, better ideas always come up as we're making something and we want to take Dave Humphries as an example. Dave very much likes having a consistent team that sort of checks all the boxes in terms of the contribution he needs, the right people to go ahead. Just to jump in, Dave Humphries tends to lead set design, just so the audience understands. He's one of our top set designers, right? So he's a set designer lead.

understands he's he's one of our top set designers right so he's a set designer lead okay yeah that's right so so on within set design dave humphries largely likes a consistent set team of the right mix of personalities and talents to develop his sets uh versus adam prozac for example and another set lead adam really really appreciates having a constant rotation of new perspective, new designers, new thoughts coming on to his teams when he's leading a set. It's sort of, he uses it to sanity check his own perceptions and to make sure he doesn't have any blind spots on things. So it varies wildly depending on the set lead, their experience, their personalities. The same is probably true inside of vision design but i think everybody probably knows

most of vision design uh is is led by yourself and there's pretty consistent pieces you like as well but the struggle is trying to have enough of them available available for you when when you like them right another thing that i mean the reason i talked earlier about how many sets are going on at once is another big challenge which you have to deal with is it's not like every set gets to maximize what it wants

in some level. Like, there's people and each person can only work on so many sets. So maybe I'd love to have person X on my set, but they're working

on three other sets, so I can't have them on my set. Yeah, that is a continual struggle that we have. And, you know, as you would expect, all of our best people are in very high demand, right? And so they're even in high demand beyond the magic products that we're making. We make other products at Wizards of the Coast who often want our input, our assessment of

things. And so balancing that, prioritizing, you know, what is going to make the largest impact to Magic in different formats for different player segments, it's a lot of plates to spin. But we have grown so much, and I think we've done a pretty good job of trying to keep pace and keeping our eye on the ball to give us specifically all of our needs, all the pieces they need to make the wonderful

soup again and again that is magic. It's funny, I was going to use a plate spinning metaphor, but you beat me to it. There is, one of the things that's interesting because there's so much stuff going on, there's a lot of trying to keep all these things happening and they interrelate to one another. It's not as if these exist in a vacuum things happening and they interrelate to one another.

It's not as if these exist in a vacuum. Things we do in one set will affect another set. And who, like, another thing that you plan, for example, is let's say two sets care about each other. We'll make sure to put one person on both teams so that there's someone watching both of them at the same time. There's a lot of nuance to sort of who's on what team. Yeah, there definitely is. And that's what I refer to as sort of the same time. There's a lot of nuance to sort of who's on what team.

Yeah, there definitely is. And that's what I refer to as sort of the through line. And that is to make sure we have good continuity and sort of thought and subtleties as a set goes along from exploratory design into vision design, into set design, and then landing the plane in play design is to make sure we have a through line as teams rotate. Somebody is always there who knows why we made a given decision

10 months earlier can save us a lot of trouble. So yeah, that's definitely a big part. So I'm going to walk us through an example to sort of talk about, I'm going to, because Streets of New Compendia is the set that's coming out right now, I'm going to use that as a sample just to be contemporary with what's going on right now and talk a little bit about the challenges of choosing an exploratory team or choosing a vision design team. Okay, so this particular set, Mark Gottlieb was the person that came up with kind of the concept of what the world wanted to be. We had this very loose idea of demon mobsters,

and then Mark, in a meeting, and I did an article where I literally posted his email, in the middle of the meeting, Mark has this idea, he emails it to Ken Troop, and it became the foundation of what the set was. So when you and I were talking, like, who should be leading the vision of this team, I'm like,

Mark should be leading it. It's his idea. We want Mark doing it. I mean, you agree with me 100%, but it was very clear we wanted him leading this. But one of the challenges, for example, so Mark Gottlieb has led a few other sets. He and I co-led Gatecrash together.

Mark led has led a few other sets. He and I co-led Gatecrash together. I think it was Mark. Mark led Mirrodin Bessiche, I believe was the first set he led. He's led a bunch of different Magic sets. But one of Mark's strengths, like Mark to me,

his greatest strength is he's the best top-down guy we got. Like he's really, really good of taking something that's meaty and flavorful and just finding ways to seep that flavor into the set in a way that's, like, just darling and lovable. Yeah, Mark is the dirty secret, is Mark Gottlieb is my favorite magic designer

because of the things he focuses on specifically. He is just absolute world-class at sort of doing top-down design, as you mentioned, of taking a real resonant trope, concept, or idea and boiling it down into a very simple card that tons of different players can concept. He makes the most smile-inducing cards, I think, of any of our set leads. And what's unique there, as you've hinted at, unlike other designers, Mark Gottlieb, for that set specifically, for Streets of New Capenna, because it was his original idea, he was someone, like you said, Mark should lead vision design. And what I know about gottlieb is he

can also continue leading sort of some portion of set design to make sure this set is going to resonate and as the file starts to come together he is still the right person to lead it through some portion of set design that's pretty unique we don't often do that right and so mark's strengths very interestingly is he excels at the end of vision design and the beginning of set design that's where his sweet spot of where he's strongest that's correct and it's very rare that's that's that's the part that i you know i take for granted day to day but to your point is very rare in how we make magic right but my point though is okay we want to make this set. He clearly, like,

one of the big things about the vision is not only do I want the person who truly has the true vision of the set to be the vision lead. That's the whole goal of vision is I want the person who can picture what the end result is to be the people leading early on to set the bull's eyes and do all that. That was

clearly Mark mark but the interesting thing here is um and like i said i'm not making any knock against mark mark is he has certain skills and he's great at them i think best in r&d and certain things but that means there's areas he's less good and it's not a strike against mark at all it's just people have strengths and weaknesses i have strengths and weaknesses i'm really good at the beginning of the product. You don't want me to be leading play design or anything. So one of the things that was a challenge for this

particular set was the early part, the sort of, there's a blank page and you make structure out of nothing. It's not something Mark is great at. To be fair, few people are very good. I'm good at it, but it's not a skill that a lot of people are great at. It's a very, very weird skill set that. I'm good at it, but it's not a skill that a lot of people are great at. It's a very, very weird skill set

that I happen to be good at, but it's not something a lot of people are good at. Yeah, and you weren't good at it probably right from day one, right? Oh, no, no, no. You've been doing this a long time and owned that skill that is very unique to you. Yes, I've led 40 plus sets, so it's not as if the first set out I was great

at it. Like, I at like I you work at things and you get better over time so the challenge with Streets of New Campano was I had somebody who had a great vision who I really loved

but I knew that there were some challenges and so how we built the team was okay how do we support Mark in early parts of vision

so that he's supported but that he has what he needs and that meant you know we wanted a team early on that was stronger in early parts of Vision so that he's supported, but that he has what he needs. And that meant we wanted a team early on that was stronger at that sort of structural aspect of making the set. That's right. All of our team composition is trying to make sure

we have the right person at the right time who over-indexes on what a given set most needs and then build enough scaffolding around them for where they have blind spots or things that just aren't in their wheelhouse and that that's that's what we do on every set month month and on streets of new capenna right it was finding that right time through set design to sort of give mark gottlieb a partner as a lead and slowly hand the baton from one person to another as it goes. And that person was Jules Robbins.

Right. And Jules is another of our set designers. So this particular set, we're like, okay, we knew that we would have to sort of give a little more support to Mark in the beginning, but Mark could handle vision and the beginning of set design and then he would transition to sort of give a little more support to Mark in the beginning, but Mark could handle, you know, vision and the beginning of set design, and then he would transition to hand off to Jules.

Jules would do set design, and then probably Andrew did play design, I assume, but, you know, at some point, it would transition to play design. That's correct. Now, the interesting thing, so one of the things that's kind of neat about this, and much like making magic sets,

making magic teams has the same quality, which is everyone's different. So, for example, exploratory for this set was different than a lot of sets. There's sometimes we start exploratory, we have no idea, I mean, we have a germ of an idea, but we don't know exactly what it means. You know, when Ikoria started, it's like, it's a monster

set, what does that mean? Like, it had a very open-ended idea. Where when we started this set mark had an idea like we had this concept of you know um three color faction families you know like we started an exploratory way farther along than a lot of sets start in exploratory so that meant it was a different kind of exploratory team. Yeah, and one of the things that that allows me to do, when there is, you know, in this example, when there's a lot of meat already on the bone

versus, you know, other sets that are much more of a blank slate, we're also able to adjust things in terms of the caliber or experience level of the designers that we would put on that kind of team, their specific areas of focus, and the one that drives you the most crazy that I do, the amount of time we will spend in a given phase. If we already have a lot of questions answered, that's when I'm not your best friend. And I'm trying to sort of condense some of those time frames to free up those people for other teams. Yeah, so that's so the audience understands.

Brady will often come to me and say, do you really need three months? Would two months work? And the general rule, whenever someone says, can you take less time, you're supposed to go, no, no, no, I need the time I have. That's the answer. I try to be a good partner.

I really, really do try. Yeah, and the thing that hopefully people understand, I mean, Brady and I get along great, and the end goal of anything is we're trying to make the best product and trying to have the best team, and you know, part of the thing that we're trying to do in making anything

is figure out what we need. Like, Exploratory for Streets of New Capenna was a lot different than Exploratory from Neon Dynasty or even Crimson bow i mean each set has its own kind of requirements on how you have to put it together um okay so the interesting thing about this set was um one of the things that we did very early on is mark and i

came to an agreement that we would model this set after Kanzatarkir. Because Kanzatarkir was a three-color faction set. It was wedge and not arcs, but, you know, it was similar in structure. And that one of the things we did, and we don't always do this, this is not how all magic sets work, every magic set's

unique, we realized that there was a structure that existed that Mark could map off to start with. And that was very, very helpful for Mark because Mark is great once he has the structure, but the making of the structure is complicated. And so him and I agreeing on a structure really let him sort of take off in vision. Yeah, it sure did. So, you know, we kind of refer to that as, you know, building on the bones of something we know works, something we know players really, really like. I let's take our new ideas, the creative of this,

and we will just build a top list and it'll work out fine. Magic is so, so complex and every set ends up being so, so unique that it's really, really rare when we're able to do what we did on Streets of New Capenna. Yeah. And like I said, one of the interesting things on every set is each set is unique like we're talking about streets in ukapena but if we talked about you know nian dynasty that was just a completely different set of criteria different needs had a different team you know and that it's cool on set by set we sort of figure out what does this product need what does this team need what what people do we need? And one of the things that you're really strong at that I appreciate is kind of knowing what the right mix of skills is

so that like you're putting together a team that will have all the component pieces we need. Yeah, you know, the secret is my job is actually really easy if I listen to our super smart, super talented leads. So, um, Dave Humphries, those who use, let's use, um,

Neo Kamigawa as an example, since that, that just came out and everybody seems to have really, really enjoyed it. And it's one of the better recent examples of both creative and game design, just blending together beautifully to deliver just a wonderful experience okay um it it would suggest that we just make no mistakes and start to finish we had the right people at the right time throughout i will tell you three months into

set design like i think vision design was was really strong i was a i was a wallflower on a lot of early exploratory meetings you were having and and through vision design was was really strong i was a i was a wallflower on a lot of early exploratory meetings you were having and and through vision design three months into set design i remember specifically having a conversation with dave humphries who said i just don't see it i'm just not resonating and connecting with the conflict of uh you know modernity and you know history or whatever tradition to it as um and that was sort of a stopping point to go like okay let's let's regather all of the people who have been shepherding this to this point uh even outside of game design and creative and world building and can we align on this and and get our heads wrapped around it to where Dave is going, okay, I got it. Now I know

how to build my set around those core principles. And it works to great effect, but it's just to highlight, you know, the best end result doesn't always map to our best execution day by day. And you bring up an interesting thing. Dave, for example, as a set lead, likes to be on the entire vision design team. So for example, I've like Neon Dynasty, Icoria, War of the Spark. There's been a bunch of different teams that I did the initial design and I handed off to Dave and Dave was with me on the vision team. And that is how Dave is most comfortable because Dave really enjoys during the, you know,

the molding process early on to be able to, hey, make comments or, you know, I always, when I'm working with Dave, he gives very interesting insight because he understands downstream really well. And so he will help me form and make sure that he's asking the questions that allow me and my team, of which he's part of, to make the right decisions. So we enable what we need to do down, down road.

Yeah, it's a, it's a great example that I use with our sort of, you know, mid-level or less experienced set leads who are, we're trying to grow and who are getting more opportunities i hold up that as an example right of of hey i would love to have you be part of the vision team but what they what they struggle with is what dave doesn't struggle with and dave will be part of every vision team if he's going to leave the set but he's But he won't be a throttle as any vision team. He's not going to try to close off any part of what's going on during vision design because he knows he has to execute on this, and some of these ideas seem wacky or crazy,

or how could I possibly make that work and limit it? Dave will very deftly sort of help give feedback to Guy to kind of keep things in a range that he knows he will be able to execute on to delightful cards. Other designers, without a lot of reps, don't know how to do that quite as delicately. And so that can be disruptive, right, to the actual purpose of what vision design is. So we have a lot of examples of things we'd like to get to. We wish every single designer had the capability to do, but the truth is every single one of them is unique. And so learning the dance of where to plug them in and how to guide

them and keep them focused on the right things is something both you and I, you know, deal with it coming from different angles. And just an example. So vision design is traditionally four months long. Day, for example, would be on four months of vision design. But other designers might be on one month or two months. It really does depend on how they function, where it's most useful to plug them in. And Dave is very interesting in that he wants to be there from the very beginning, but that is not true. That's not how some set designers work. And that, um, one of the things that's really interesting that I try to communicate to my vision designers is it matters who you're

handing the set off to. I will design the set differently if I'm giving it to Dave or to Eric or to Yanni or to Jules or to Adam. You're like, depending on who I'm making the set for, I will make the set differently because I're like, depending on who I'm making the set for, I will make the set differently because I'm trying to make sure that I'm making the tools that that designer and the way they work will make the best set. Yeah, there's no shortage of people who, inside the building,

who probably wish this could be a very much a cookie cutter operation, right? It's just something that we could scale and we could put anybody on. It's about the right people for the, the right number of people for the right amount of time and you couldn't be further for the truth and what it actually takes to make uh to make magic work right there there's a reason why individual cards you know resonate with our players why it feels so good why this one means so much to an individual

and it's because everything we do is super super bespoke and hand rolled and we argue and we fought a lot about what we're doing card by card color by color format by format to make sure we're we're we are doing our absolute best and we don't always succeed but we're always doing our absolute best to give every single player type cards that they can fall in love with and keep playing this game we love so much and so just i mean like i said my hope my hope for the takeaway from the audience today is i spent a lot of time talking about the the mechanics and the the little making of the set but the making of the team that makes the set has just as much nuance, just as much,

like there's just as much, uh, craft in making the team that makes the set as the making of the set itself. Yeah. People crafting it's, it's, it's fortunately it's a really,

really fun part and challenge for me. Um, and I get to, you know, contribute, like I said, all my bad ideas, all my bad card submissions.

Everybody does a really nice job of humoring me and then dismissing my terrible ideas and not letting it turn into a card. Works out great. And so one of the things, before we wrap up here, because I can see my desk,

so we're not too far from work. I do want to say, Brady, that I have worked with a lot of managers. I've been at Wizards forever. And you are my favorite manager. The thing that I have worked with a lot of managers. I've been at Wizards forever. And you are my favorite manager. The thing that I love about you is you have such a passion for people.

Like, you look at every person and you always see, like, where does this person shine? What are they best at? And you are so good at figuring out how to, like, maximize everybody. Like, that's the thing that I really enjoy working with you is like, I don't have to worry so much.

You're going to, I mean, I do, you and I talk a lot, but you're going to give me a good team. I know that I'm always going to get something that's going to help me make what I need to make. And the other thing that we didn't even get into, like we have to train people and like part of making teams is this person doesn't have experience, but we need them to get experience and make sure that there's enough experience so this person can learn. But I

have enough people that can get the work done if the person learning isn't quite up to speed yet, stuff like that. Yeah, it certainly is tricky. But the real truth of it is that I get to spend all of my days working with people like yourself and Aaron Forsythe and all of our set leads and all of our individual designers. Folks who have been doing it for 20 plus years and folks who are brand new, have been playing the game for a long time. They're now just learning what it takes to actually make magic cards. The mix of those experience levels and perspectives and attitudes and desires is, you know, what a joy. I get the fun part because I get to work with all of you people who are smarter and more talented than I could ever hope to be, that I just get to hold on to your hold on to your capes and try to help everybody in the best way I can. So, yeah, and it works pretty well for magic.

So it's great. So anyway, I need to wrap this up. I do want to mention, by the way, that I talked in the beginning about processing people and we spent the whole time talking about people. So there's a whole other part of your process of scheduling, all the stuff that we didn't even get into, just so people are aware that not only are you balancing all the people and all the teams, but there's infinite schedules. There's a lot of process stuff that we didn't get into. So your job is very complicated and I didn't get into half the job. So we'll come back, and we'll do it again soon and talk about everything we missed.

Anyway, guys, I can see my desk. So we all know what that means. It 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 want to thank you, Brady, for being with us. This was so much fun. Thank you for having me. Thanks, everybody, for playing magic. And to all you, Brady, for being with us. It was so much fun. Thank you for having me. Thanks, everybody,

for playing magic. And to all you, I will see you next time. Bye-bye.