Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #962: My Wizards Origin Story

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

I've briefly told listeners how I came to work for Wizards, but this podcast goes a bit more in depth into how it happened.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today is my origin story. I often, when I talk about getting my job at Wizards, usually the short version is I was up at Wizards because I was freelancing. I said to Mike Davis, who was the head of R&D at the time, I'd be willing to move up here, And he said, when can you start? That's the story I tell. And all that is true, but there's a lot more to it. So today I thought I would sort of walk through the elongated version of how I got to work

at Wizards in my early day at Wizards, because it's a lot more complicated than that. I think sometimes when you want to make a pithy story, you know, you tell the abbreviated version, but I thought today I would tell the non-abbreviated version. Okay, so just a little context before we get to that scene with Mike Davis. So basically what happened was Magic comes out in, I don't know, July? July, August of 1993. It was at, I guess August is when it first came out to be purchased at Gen Con.

So let's say August of 1993. Anyway, I was working at a game store part time. My writing was in a rough spot and I was just going stir crazy. So I started working at the Game Keepkeeper was the name, which is what they would buy them. So anyway, the short version of the early part of this, since we're really getting to me getting hired, is I hear

people come into the game store and ask about the game. We don't have the game. I'd never heard of the game. I then managed to see it at Comic-Con. There's nothing for sale at Comic-Con, but I find someone who owns a deck, and I'm able to look at the Magic Cards for the first time. And then, not too many weeks later, there's a convention in Los Angeles, a game convention.

I keep saying OrkCon, but there's like three different ones. It was one of those. It was the Labor Day, you know, the Labor Day one. Anyway, for the first time ever, I'm able to actually purchase Magic Cards. I get hooked pretty quickly. I end up buying a whole bunch of beta booster boxes and starter boxes so I can sell packs to my friends so I have people to play with. None of that goes particularly well. But anyway, I get into Magic very early. I get very excited. I slowly find other people to play with.

Anyway, Magic becomes a big part of what I do, I'd always been a game a fan of games but magic really something about magic really hit me and I really I loved magic and I played it usually on Friday night there was a store that had a magic thing and on Saturday during the day

was the Coastal Mesa's Women's Center so there were events that I would play on Fridays and Saturdays usually. Anyway, so cut to early in 1994. I'm about to go on a date. It's my first date with a girl I was wild about. Not the person I ended up with. But anybody, anyway, I got there early because I have a tendency to get places early when I'm, I don't quite know how long it will take to get there.

And I had just purchased The Duelist, the very first magazine. I had just seen it in the game store, I think. And while I was waiting for my blind date to show up, I read The Duelist. And my takeaway from The Duelist was that I was really excited to have content about magic, but it was pretty basic. There wasn't a lot in there for a slightly more advanced player. And at this point, I'd been playing a lot, you know, I mean, whatever, for six months. But I mean, I'd been playing a lot and very invested. And so I run into, I think it was Steve Bishop, at one of the local game conventions in Los Angeles.

So there's three of them during the year. So anyway, I say hello to him, and I think I mentioned the idea to him of, I think that there could be more advanced content. And he says to me, well, the editor-in-chief is named Catherine Haynes. Let her know. She's the person to talk about. So I come up with the idea for my puzzle column.

I mail it in. I think I mail like three puzzles. And I mail it in. And then I just don't hear from them for a while, a couple months. I eventually call to figure out, like, oh, okay. And I get Catherine on the phone. And she's like, oh, yeah, those were great. They're going in the next issue.

Like, no one had ever told me. They just decided to publish them. And they ended up just doing one in the first issue. But anyway, it was in, like, issue one and a half, the Duelist supplement, I think it was called. The Duelist was having problems getting the issue out, and so they did a miniature version of the Duelist in between issue one and issue two.

And that's when Magic the Puzzling premieres. So anyway, I enjoy doing the puzzles. I want to do more than just the puzzles. So I go to Gen Con in 1994, try to convince Catherine

to let me do more. I meet her. She's like, hey, do whatever, you know, pitch me ideas. You pitch me an idea, I like it, I'll let you do more. I meet her. She's like, hey, do whatever, you know, pitch me ideas. You pitch me an idea, you know, I like it, I'll let you do it. And one of the ideas I pitched then and there on the spot was covering the World Championship,

which was that weekend that I had played in. Anyway, I end up to go up to cover the World Championship. That's its own story. And I start doing work for the duelists. And then what happens is I know magic. I'm a good writer.

I turn things on deadline. Other parts of the company start having interest. And so I write, I'm writing stuff for international. I'm writing stuff, beginner stuff. I'm writing a lot of, I'm writing stuff for R&D. I'm writing stuff for the magazine. I'm doing stuff for magic brand. So at some point I'm literally doing a project for seven different parts of the company.

And that's when, that's the reason they started bringing me up. I came up a couple times because I was just working on different projects. So anyway, now we get to the beginning of the official story here. So I am up at Wizards working on one of the projects they wanted me to come up for. So I'm up. I'm in the Wizards office. So this is the old offices.

So our current building, we've been there for, I don't know, 16, 17, 18 years, something like that. Before that, we were across the street. And we were in that building. So I guess this building must be like 16, 17, because we were across the street for 10 years. And then before that, we were in another building, which is the building I started in, which was also in rent. It wasn't far away, but it was a couple blocks away from where the current offices are. Anyway, it was in that old, old office. Basically, the very first office, if you will, when the company started, they were in Peter's basement. And then once they got an actual

office, this first office was that office. So that's when I went to visit, it was that office. And at the time, my Hollywood career was not going great the agent that had helped get me my Roseanne job had decided she didn't want to be an agent she had passed me down to the agent she worked with that agent decided that she didn't want me and I ended up getting passed from agent to agent for a while and I ended up with an agent that wasn't really even interested in having me as an agent

I'm sorry, having me as her agent. So not a great place to be. And anyway, I was really enjoying my work with Magic. And so when I was up, I think what happened was that there was talk about how they were hiring people. Because Magic was just going through. So this is, we're talking 95. So we're talking, I don't know, the spring of 95, maybe spring or early summer of 1995. And what they're saying was that magic was growing so fast that they just needed more

people. And so what happened was I said to Mike Davis, this is the quote where I go, Oh, well, Mike, uh, I actually think what I said is I might be willing to move up here. I think it's what I said, the actual technical. Um, and Mike says, when can you start? Uh, so basically it's sort of like, okay, I, uh, I expressed interest and Mike was, you know, so Mike and I then went on a walk. So, and Mike sort of said to me that, you know, they were looking for more people. Obviously, a lot of people said really nice things about me. You know, they were definitely very interested in me.

But that's the talk where I said to him that my ultimate goal was to be a game designer. And what he said to me is, look, we don't have, I mean, Richard Garfield is our game designer. We was to be a game designer. And what he said to me is, look, we don't have, I mean, Richard Garfield is our game designer. We don't need a game designer. We need game developers. And I said, you know, I said, let me think about it. So here's the big thing. Even though I was like in the moment really sort of, okay, I'll move up here. There actually were some doubts. I wasn't like, I had planned to go to Hollywood you know write for television and that that was that was the career I planned for myself and while there were hiccups I had had some successes like it wasn't you know I I mean I did have an agent it wasn't my favorite agent but I did have an agent and um and I was still, and I was still, you know, like,

it's very easy to sort of, like, Hollywood is very hot and cold, but just because you're cold doesn't mean you can't get hot again. And so I was a bit torn. Like, you know, did I want to change everything and move up to Seattle to start working for a game company? Now, the idea was exciting. I really, really loved Magic. And I had been sort of an amateur game designer for quite a while.

So another part of the story that doesn't get talked a lot is I grew up playing games, and I really liked making games. In fact, I went to Las Vegas. There's a thing called the Game Inventors Association or something. And they had an event in Las Vegas, and I went there. And they had all these seminars about how to make a game and this and that. And, you know, none of the games I'd made had gone anywhere. I hadn't got to the point where anyone wanted to publish them or anything.

But I had enjoyed making them. It was fun. I liked, like, game design was a hobby. And so the idea of my hobby becoming a career was exciting. I was very excited by it. But in the same sense, it was scary in that I had mapped out a career was exciting. I was very excited by it. But in the same sense, it was scary in that I had mapped out what I was doing. And I love television, by the way. I loved writing. I love television. I really wanted to create my own television shows. That

really was my dream. So part of this whole thing was, you know, switching up your dream, if you will. Like, not that the new thing didn't sound exciting, but it meant giving up something that I really had dedicated a lot of time and energy to. And was that okay? Did I want to do that? So I was a bit torn. I know in my short version of the story, it's like I knew I wanted it and boom. But the actual answer was, I was

not sure. So I went and talked to my friends. And what happened was, my friends kind of fell into two categories. I had my friends that, mostly friends was my friends kind of fell into two categories. I had my friends that, mostly friends from college that lived in Los Angeles, but I had met a few other people. But sort of my LA friends

that are people that I got to know from my jobs or from college or just people I knew through different means. Then there was my magic friends. I had made a lot of friends playing magic. You know, most Saturdays I went to the Costa Mesa Women's Center the same people were there, I really got to know them we became very friendly actually I knew Henry Stern prior to that

but Henry and I used to go down a lot together and I met a whole bunch of people, I really had a series of friends so I would talk to my sort of Los Angeles friends that were connected to magic. And they were all like, what are you doing? What is this upstart game? Like moving to Seattle? Your dream is to write television? Like, what are you doing? Your dream is here. What are you doing? Why are you leaving? leaving. And then my magic friends were like, when can you start? Obviously, of course. Of course you want to work on magic. That's amazing. And so I got really mixed messages. And I did a lot of soul searching. And what I finally decided was that just because I went and tried out games didn't mean I forever gave up on writing. I was like, you know what? This will be an awesome experience. And it'll be something that like, you know, I wrote an article once about life lessons

and talks about how you don't regret things that don't work out, but you do regret things that you don't try. And I'm like, this seemed like a cool thing. And like, I actually, I was dead honest when I started to work for Magic. If you had told me this is your lifelong career, I don't think I really, like, like it's a game. you know what I'm saying? Like, I understood Magic was the hot thing at the time, but I, I at the time really didn't think it was going to be my, my career for life.

That, that was not, when I first took the job, I did not think that. What I thought was, hey, I cooled off in Hollywood, things are going great. If I leave and come back three, four years later, okay, but I'll still be cold, you know, but at least I'll have this experience. I'll do something that's a little bit different. And so I ended up deciding to do it just because it was kind of like I knew I'd regret if I didn't try it. And so that was really the thing. And I was, I think that I was at a point in my career down in LA where I was frustrated. And this just seemed like something very exciting. So I decided that I should try it. There's something about it that was really exciting to me. Like I said, well, you know, once I'm there, once I'm inside,

you know, I'll demonstrate what I can do. Because I knew I had the game design qualities within me. I mean, I'd done a lot of amateur game design. So anyway, so I call up Mike Davis and I say, okay, I'm in. And then, I don't know, a couple months go by. So the next time I get flown somewhere by wizards was in 1995. That summer was the 1995 World Championship. The previous one in 1994 had been at Gen Con, but this time they decided they wanted to be at its own event. So it was at the Red Lion Hotel near the airport.

And it was a standalone thing. And for the first time, I mean, the 1994 did have people that traveled. In fact, in the top four, three of the top four were from Europe. So there were definitely, there had been some nationals in 1994. Obviously, the U.S. had nationals. A Bow Bell one. But there was, I think, a French Nationals and a Belgian Nationals, I think. Maybe there are one or two more that I'm not remembering. But anyway, this year there were,

I think, 18 countries sent teams. So I might be off by a little bit, but around 18. And it was a big deal. Like we were the whole event and they brought me up. I had done, so what had happened was when I started writing for the duelist, I was, because I advanced, I needed advanced information because I was doing puzzles on cards that weren't out yet. I wasn't allowed to compete in events. So I started running events. So I started judging. And so I don't know, they, I'm not sure exactly how I got flown there, but I got flown there. Um, uh, and I, I judged the event. So I was one of the judges they brought in.

In fact, um, I don't know if you've ever seen pictures of the event, but in the, on the finals on the stage, the final day, I was the spotter on the stage. I was the person talking to the director, sort of telling them where to go and what to do. Um, and that would be kind of the precursor of me getting very involved into doing the video. But anyway, once again, another story. And when I'm there, I get to see Mike Davis because everybody from Wizards is there. And I'm like, hey, Mike, what's going on?

I said yes months ago. And he says, well, so here's what's going on. and he says, well, so here's what's going on. Once it became known that you were interested in working, that you were willing to work at Wizards, obviously R&D was interested, but also the Duelist was interested, and Magic Brand Team was interested,

because I had worked with all those teams during my freelance time. And he goes, well, we're trying to hammer out, you know, we're trying to figure out who should be hiring you. Now, as a little side note, I've never worked in HR, but probably if you are, I'm not sure he was telling me things he was supposed to be telling me, but anyway, eventually it was decided, I don't know whether I decided R&D or they decided R&D, I think maybe what happened is he asked me what I wanted,

and I think I said I was most interested in R&D. I think it's what happened. So they did give me some input of what I wanted. But I think the deal they struck was that I was going to be in R&D, but I would be the R&D liaison to the duelists. And so I was the R&D person that worked with the duelists. Obviously, that would later lead to me becoming editor-in-chief and anyway. But when I was hired,

my relationship with the dualists was intertwined into my hiring. And then what happened was because I knew it was coming and I had some time, basically the way it worked was your health insurance kicked in the first of the month after you started. So I decided to start at the end.

Basically, they said I could come start in September. And I'm like, well, if my health insurance kicks in the first of the month, then I should start the day before that, right? But the day before that was Halloween and I wanted to be there for Halloween. So I said I would start on the 30th. So October 30th, 1995 was my official start date. One of the funny things, by the way, is because I knew that they were really interested in me, I went to somebody who did negotiating for jobs. And what they said to me, the advice they gave to me was,

salary is very tricky to negotiate, but a lot of other things are a lot more willing to give you. So instead of fighting too hard for your salary, instead ask for other things that will have other value. So one of the things I asked for was I wanted my start date to be January 1st for all benefits. And that ended up proving to be January 1st for all benefits. And that ended up proving to be very valuable for me because we later got stock. Anyway, a cool choice. But anyway, the only way they knew how to do that was in their computer, their HR computer, they just put my start date as January 1st.

So in the official computer, my sort of official start date is January 1st, which makes me currently the longest Wizards employee. There are employees that worked at TSR that still work at, like Don Merritt, for example, that still work at Wizards, so their continual time, including TSR,

is longer. But if you count January 1st, I am the longest sort of employee at Wizards employee. But the reality, Charlie Coutinho started in February. So he actually is the longest. I'm only on record the longest, which is a weird, quirky thing. Anyway, so I started on October 30th. So I get there, and it turns out that they don't have a desk for me. And the reason they don't have a desk for me is we're going to be moving to the new site, now our old site, any day, any day.

And so the last desk, Bill Rose, who had started three weeks before me, and he was good friends with Joel Mick, who worked there. Joel Mick was the head designer, I think, at the time. Anyway, Joel had saved a desk for Bill. And so when I started, and then shortly after me, William Jocker started, there was no desk for me or William. So what they said is, look, we're moving any day now. We're not going to move everybody around for a week.

So when anybody's not there, you had to sign in for your... I could sit down at anybody's desk, sign in as me, and then I'd reach my stuff on the computer. And so they're like, well, just use anybody's desk when they're not using it.

So I was a little bit of a desk nomad. Now, the interesting thing was any day now ended up being about two months that we didn't end up moving. Well, I guess we moved sometime in December. So maybe six weeks, maybe. So I sort of had no desk for a while. And then finally we got to the new office.

And I had a desk, but I had no chair for like a week. So I always joked that I needed to be more specific when I said I needed a desk. Um, so anyway, the, uh, so I get, I get officially hired. They say yes. So they, uh, they paid for moving. Um, so what happened was I had my mom, um, my mom flew out cause I had to drive up. So they came and did all the moving. So I didn't have to move anything. Movers came and got my stuff, but I didn't need to drive up. I had my car. I needed to get my car up there. And so, um, my mom flew out. And so we drove, we drove from Los Angeles to Seattle. We did it in two days. I mean, it's, it's a little bit long for a one day trip and we decided to be a little leisurely about it. And then we stopped and, you know, had dinner. And so we, we made it a two day trip. So the

interesting thing is when we get to Seattle, it's like 10 at night. And I say to my mom, do you want to go see the office? Do you want to go meet everybody? And my mom was like, it's 10 at night. No one's going to be there. I'm like, oh, no, no, the R&D people will be there. And my mom's like, really? So we pull in at 10 at night.

We walk in. All of R&D is there. Because back in the day, for those who don't know, R&D pretty much were people hired from elsewhere. Early on, it was like the first hires were people that were alpha play tefters. Scaf Elias, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty, Joel Mick, all people that had played Magic. Now, Bill had been an alpha play tefter, but he had been working, like running a chem lab, so he couldn't quite leave quite as quickly. But anyway, the second wave, which was me and Bill and William Jockish

and Mike Elliott and a little bit later Henry Stern, were all people that, other than Bill, that they had met who had shown interest in magic that had, you know, that they'd been impressed by. And so the next wave were people that didn't start on magic but had become, you know, into magic very early on and then had met somebody from R&D, basically, is how it worked. Like, I think Mike had met Joel down at a convention in Arizona, I think.

And William, I think, somehow knew Richard, maybe, because William was a mathematician. Anyway, different connections, people knew people. I got in through my, you know, freelancing through the duelists and stuff. So anyway, we get in and they're there. So one of the things about early Magic was

this crew, like, we were, like, our friends were each other, and we were all really into gaming. So we would work basically every night, and then we would, you know, at nighttime we'd play games. Usually we would all go out to dinner together. Yeah, one of the stories is when I first started dating Laura,

she was over at my place, and she went to the refrigerator because she was hungry, and she opened it up, and it was literally empty. There was nothing in my refrigerator. And she's like, what's going on? I'm like, oh yeah, I don't eat here. Because at the time, R&D would go out for lunch or go out for dinner and so every meal was out. Probably not the healthiest

for me. But anyway, so early on, the early life of R&D was we just spent all our time together. Now, at night we do, I've had podcasts talking about this. Like, some of the time we'd play games. Richard would introduce us to all sorts of games. German games, lots of different games we'd never played.

And then sometimes we'd just do things. I think I told the story in my other podcast about we used to play this game on the wheelie chairs. There was a giant room that was empty that was meant for all hands. But at the time, there was nobody in it. And so we would get on our wheelie chairs and get hockey sticks and play this version of hockey where you ran around on a wheelie chair playing hockey

indoors. Anyway, we would do a lot of fun stuff like that. Okay, so the ending of my story, because I'm not too far from work, is, so I get there and I really, really am having a great time. I'm, you know, I've been a little bit hesitant, but I really am embracing and having a fun time, and I'm working on magic, and I'm working on other things, too, just because back in the day, wizards, there was a lot more games being made than just magic. And I was working a lot, I mean, magic was my priority, and most of my time was on Magic. But I was working on other things as well.

Anyway, so I started in October. So in the middle of December, I believe. It was on a Wednesday, because we call it Black Wednesday. So at the time, not R&D, Magic, not Magic. Wizards had been divided into two teams. Basically, I think they called like team one and team two. So team one was magic. Uh, and team two was not magic.

So we made a bunch of role playing games. We did a whole bunch of things at the time. Role play was probably the biggest thing of it, but we, we did magic and a bunch of things that weren't magic because before, um, wizards was aards was the magic company, it was a role-playing game company. So they made, you know, Talithlanta, and they made a bunch of different things. So anyway, there was a meeting, and we divided it into our groups. There was a Type 1 group meeting and a Type 2 group meeting. Our meeting was basically them explaining that there was going to be some layoffs

and that Wizards had decided to get out of the role-playing business. Obviously, years later, it would buy Dungeons & Dragons and get back into it. So, mostly what was happening was the vast majority of the company that wasn't Magic, most of the departments that weren't Magic, were shutting down. Now, what happened in the other meeting was that was the Group 2 meeting. Now, Catherine Haynes, who ran the duelist,

didn't get along with the main guy that ran magic, so she convinced him to put her group into Group 2. So Group 2 was non-magic plus the duelist people. So when they made the announcement in the other room, it's sort of like, we have really bad news. This entire group is getting laid off. Oh, except the duelist people. And Catherine said it was like one of the most uncomfortable things

she's ever experienced in her life. But anyway, so there's this massive layoffs. And it was very scary because six weeks earlier, I had left everything to start working at Wizards. Now, it turns out that Magic was, you know, Magic was, no one was cutting anything in Magic. Magic was doing just fine. But it was, it was really scary, you know what I'm saying? It was, when I first got hired, within six weeks, right before 1995 was even over,

half the company or a good chunk of the company, I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but a good chunk of the company got let go. And it was definitely rough. And I think what had happened was Bill and William and I got hired in October. And then Mike Elliott got hired in January of 1996 and then the four of us for a good chunk of time, like we were

the magic team there were other members of R&D mostly they were working on other things some I mean, each of them contributed somewhat to magic and obviously after the layoffs, they did a little bit more on Magic. Although, the one thing we were still doing was other,

we were making other games, not role-playing games, but we were making the Great Del Moody type stuff. We were still making some of that. And we were working on other trading card games. You know, early on there was, it was called Jihad originally, and then Vampire the Eternal Struggle and then BattleTech and there were a bunch of trading card games

so we were still making trading card games and we were still making some board games but anyway Bill and William and Mike and I were kind of like the four magic people and we were the development teams for every magic set for a while.

So, starting with Mirage, the four of us were the... So we did Mirage. We did... What was after Mirage? Was Visions. We did Visions. We did Weatherlight.

We did Tempest. Starting... William... Henry Stern would get hired the following summer. And so in 90... Was it 96? Anyway, William got hired... Not William. Henry

got hired a little bit later. And then for a while, the five of us were the team. So that was kind of early magic. I did do a whole podcast on... I did a podcast on Wave 1, which was Scaf and Jim and people. And then I did a podcast on wave one, which was Scaf and Jim and people.

And then I did a podcast on wave two, which was me and William and Mike and stuff. And so, and Bill. And anyway, there's the old, old podcast. I did a bunch of R&D podcasts way back in the day. But anyway, that was my experience. That was my early magic. And so, one of the reasons I wanted to sort of give the longer version of the story is I think sometimes I make it sound as if there was no drama

or everything went smoothly or if, you know. And it turns out there was a lot of moving pieces and a lot going on. And even my decision to come to Wizards was an honest, real, like I really had to think about it. It wasn't, I mean, the funny thing is looking back now with, you know, 2020 hindsight, obviously it's the right call. Like, it's very easy now to see, oh, you know, how is this not so easy? But I do understand where I was at the time and that, you know, when you plan out your life and you really think something like, you sort of imagine what's going to be and you plot things out. And when you end up, your life sort of takes a detour.

It's very easy. It's disconcerting. And, you know, so just sort of my little life lesson for people here, which is, hey, it's great to have an idea where your life's going to go. You know, it's wonderful to plan and plot and have a sense, you know, that's a good thing to do. But, hey, sometimes life throws curveballs at you. And, you know, don't not take an interesting opportunity just because it isn't what you planned.

And that was fundamentally, I think actually, once again, I did an article on life lessons. I've done a couple of them. But one of the life lessons talked about this lesson where, once again, I did an article on life lessons. I've done a couple of them. But one of the life lessons talked about this lesson where I was really torn and that I kind of leaned into the idea of let's try this. Let's give this a shot. If I had gone to Wizards and maybe magic had been a little more flash in the pan and I worked there a couple of years and then, okay, that's it.

That job's done. And I went back to LA and then okay, I would have tried to get back into writing and stuff. That could have been a fun experience of my life and it could have been this little thing that just sort of something that I did, something that shaped me. And

also, it could be this lifelong thing, which is what it turned out to be. It is funny looking back. I mean, once know, it is funny looking back. I mean, once again, the fact that I would meet the woman I would fall in love with and, you know, and just have the job that I have and become head designer, you know. Like, I often think back to the walk with Mike Davis, where Mike Davis is like, we don't need game designers. You want to be a game developer. You know, it very easy to go, no, no, no, game designer nothing.

You know, it's funny. Anyway, so that, my friends, is my origin story, how I came to work at Wizards,

sort of the long evolved version of it. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it. Like I said, it's fun looking back and thinking about

the early days. Like it's, it really, like for example, when I say that Magic the early days. Like, it's, it really, like, for example, when I say that magic was the four of us, I mean, it's not that other people didn't, you know, lend a hand. If you were in R&D, yeah, you did a little bit of magic. But as far as, like, there were full-time,

there were four people in R&D. Now, there were other people full-time because, like, Studio X is not just R&D, you know, not just design development, but, you know, editing and production and layout and lots and lots of different departments. So there were definitely dedicated people back in the day. But, you know, if I counted all the people that were full-time magic back in the day, you know, that made magic, it was a handful. You know, it was not, you know. It was 30, 40 people maybe that were full-time. And now Studio X is hundreds of people. And that's just tabletop magic.

That's not even digital magic. So it is very interesting sometimes. One of the things that happens is we'll have all hands or something and someone will say, just five years ago, it was like this. And I go,, just five years ago, you know, it was like this. And I go, well, 27 years ago, it was this.

So it's funny to see how far things have come. But anyway, guys, I'm literally parking in the parking lot. So I hope today's story was interesting for you. It was fun sort of going back and reminiscing. But as I'm here, we all 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 making magic. I'll see you guys next

time. Bye-bye.