Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #969: Feature Matches

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

This podcast is about the history of the feature matches and my involvement with them.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today I talk about a lot of things I do in Magic, but there's something that I had a hand in that's a little more off the beaten path than most of my design stories. So today I'm going to talk about the origin of the feature matches. of the feature matches. So let me give a little context, and then I will explain sort of how feature matches came to be, and then talk a little bit about sort of what made a good feature match.

And, okay, for those, real quickly, for those that don't know what feature matches are, at the Pro Tour, and high-level events in general, we will specifically pick matches that we think are the most interesting matches to watch. And then we will assign them a special place so that they can spectate it on. And then we tend to write about them.

And we put them on camera in the days of streaming and stuff. So anyway, I had a big hand in the origin of the feature matches. And it's just a different kind of story to tell. And so, since I have so many podcasts about magic, I've realized, I thought I had told this story. One of the things, a little behind-the-scenes things, is often I will come up with an idea for a podcast, and then what I always do is I go online and I look. There's a wiki that lists all my podcasts, and I always will search it, because I've

done so many that sometimes I think I haven't done something. I don't remember off the top of my head, and then it turns out I'd already done it. Now, you know, sometimes if I approach the same topic differently, maybe it's still an interesting podcast. But I'm trying not to repeat myself, and we're coming up on 1,000 episodes, so it's a challenge at times. Anyway, I searched, and I'd never done Futures. I thought I had, and then I searched, and I had not. I've done a bunch of Pro Tour. I've done a lot of stuff on Pro Tour history. So here's the backstory to set up the story. So I was, Wizards of the Coast put out a magazine called The Duelist. I was really into magic,

and so I read The Duelist. I felt like into magic, and so I read The Duelist. I felt like The Duelist was great. I was excited there was a magazine dedicated to magic, but I thought that it didn't have enough stuff for more advanced players. I then pitched the puzzle column. It gets accepted, and then what happens is the puzzle column becomes popular very quickly, so much so that they ask me if I can start making puzzles using new cards rather than just old cards. The idea, for example, is, oh, we're going to introduce Ice Age. Could you put Ice Age in your puzzle? But in order for that

to happen, they then had to send me, at the time we called it the God Books, but basically it was every card in the set on, like, on color Xeroxed on paper, like three by three, but it was the whole set, you know, in a, in a, a binded, not really a book, but a binded document, and it showed all the cards, and so in order to do the puzzle, I needed to be, now that I needed to see the set, I needed to see all of the set, right? Because to do a puzzle, I have to look at all the tools available to build the puzzle. So it wasn't like they could just send me a couple cards. I really needed to see the entire set. Now, I was now seeing the entire set before it came out.

And so with that came some rules. And the biggest rule was I wasn't allowed to play in sanctioned play. I couldn't play. So I ended up becoming a judge. I helped run tournaments. And so in Los Angeles in the early to mid-90s, like 94, 95, I was very involved in running events. I was very involved in running events. So when I get to Wizards,

I learn from Scaf, Scaf Elias, that he is putting together a pro tour. And because I had done a lot of stuff with organization, I was very interested in running tournaments. And so I said to him that I would like to be involved with the pro tour. So Scaf made me like R&D liaison to the Pro Tour. There's some titles he gave me, but basically what it meant is I was going to work with him to help him on the Pro Tour.

So as Scaf was doing all the planning, I was sort of his right-hand person working with him. So one of the things, I mean, there was a lot of factors we were trying to figure out. One of the things that was a big concern was it was really important to both Scaf and I that this seemed like

the creme de la creme, right? This was the top of Magic play. And so one of the things we wanted to do for the first Pro Tour in New York, I did a whole podcast on the first Pro Tour in New York. I've done a lot of podcasts about the history of the Pro Tour, so as I

hit upon things that I've already done podcasts on I will mention them so for those that don't know like I said this is I'm in the 960 something of podcasts so there's a lot of stuff I've done before it's on iTunes, it's on Spotify

it's on our website there's a lot of cool stuff you can go back if you want to hear things like I said there's a wiki on Making Magic so if you go to the wiki it stuff. You can go back if you want to hear things. Like I said, there's a wiki on making magic. So if you go to the wiki, it links to all my different podcasts. You want to listen to them. Anyway, so we wanted New York, the very first Pro Tour, to be like the best magic players it could be. So what we did is we did a bunch of research on, okay, how do we, like the question was, how do we know who the good magic players are?

on, okay, how do we, like the question was, how do we know who the good magic players are? So I had worked in California in the Southwest region, and that is where Mark Justice had come from, where the East Coast, I mean not East Coast, the Pacific Coast Legends, the PCL, Henry Stern was from that, and there were other people. the PCL, Henry Stern was from that, and there were other people. Anyway, I knew of sort of the top players from the area I came from, and so we extrapolated that from a little bit. Okay, well, who are the people that won, you know, who won regional events?

Who won national events? Who did well previously at Worlds? Because there had been two World Championships at that point. Also, in New York and Boston and in California, I believe, there were some high-level events run. Grey Matter in New York ran events. Your Move Games in Boston ran events. I'm blinking. There's someone in San Francisco that ran events.

Anyway, there were a bunch of people that were running a little bit more high-profile events. Plus, we had had the Ice Age pre-release. Like there had just been a few high profile things. And so we sort of collected all the names, like anybody that made a name for themselves anywhere. It was sort of a list. And like I said, at the time, there hadn't been a lot of high profile tournaments.

There had been some regionals. There had been some two nationals. I think one regionals, two nationals, and two world championships. And then these isolated individual things and a few random events like the Ice Age pre-release. But we collected all those names. For example,

the Ice Age pre-release was won by a guy named Dave Humphries, which you might know because he now works at Wizards. So basically what we did is we made this master list of, from all the data we can tell, right now, who are the best magic players in the world? And then we, we basically, uh, offered invites to all of them.

Um, so the way that, for those that don't know, uh, about the first Pro Tour, which is kind of funny, um, we put out invites to, like, special invites to anybody who had done anything that we thought was a good magic player. invites to anybody who had done anything that we thought was a good Magic player. We then put out invites based on ranking. So based on how you did... There was a... The DCI

had a rating at the time. It was based on the ELO rating of chess. It was out of 1600, basically. Or I think you started at 1600. I don't remember exactly how it worked. But anyway, you started at a certain score and you went up or down depending on whether you won or lost. Anyway, we invited people based on rating.

And then the last bit literally was a call in. It's like, okay, from this time to this time with this many slots, call in. And if you get in, you can get a slot. And that was how the first Pro Tour was done. So I ended up going to the first Pro Tour. I did a little bit of judging, but I also was brought in to do the commentary for the final day.

At the very first Pro Tour, there were two Pro Tours, basically. There was the normal Pro Tour and a junior Pro Tour. And anyway, I did commentary. I mean, the first couple days, I would do judging and help with, you know, setting things up and stuff. And then the last day,

they brought three of us to do commentary. Me, a guy also in R&D named Glenn Elliott, and then somebody from customer service that I don't remember. I sadly don't remember his name. But anyway, so the first pro tour, I was sort of there. I was judging.

And one of the things I was really intrigued by was because Scaf and I had done this homework, I was actually familiar with all the sort of names in Magic just because I had put together the list. So whenever I saw two people that were paired against each other in which I recognized their name and really the only reason for me to recognize their name was I mean, other than I knew some locals from from, you know, Southwest. But the reason

I knew their name was, oh, they had done something. And so I think at the very first bookshop I was starring them and then it just meant, oh, a star meant a match to watch out for or something. It was just me saying, hey, these are two particularly well-known players, whether or not you knew that or not because it was early in the Pro Tour. And so I did that.

And then for the next Pro Tour, so the next Pro Tour was in Los Angeles. It was on the boat. So for those who don't know, the Queen Mary used to be a cruise ship that went across from England to the United States. And at some point they retired it and they kind of turned it into a hotel. So the Queen Mary sits in dock at Long Beach.

And we, a whole bunch of the early Pro Tours, once again, speaking of old podcasts, I did a podcast of stories from the boat, I think it's called, I'm talking about stories specifically from the Queen Mary, and there's some fun stories there. But anyway, the very first time we had it there, I said, well, last time I started them on the sheet, but maybe we could do something a little more, you know, pull a little bit more focus than

I started on the sheet. So I think they made me a sign called Rosewater's Picks. And basically what I did is I just listed the matches of interest. But rather than just be like a star on the official list, we listed them out. So it's sort of like, now at the time, this is very, very early Pro Tour, you could just go and walk among the Pro Tour players. You could just sort of walk and spectate. You could literally just spectate. As they were playing, you could just spectate and walk among.

As you'll see, it's not something we continued for very long, but in the very early days. So, Rosewater's picks would be, oh, look, Mark Justice is playing Michael Licanto. So Michael Licanto won the first Pro Tour., Mark Justice is playing Michael Licanto. So Michael Licanto won the first Pro Tour. And Mark Justice had come in top eight in the first Pro Tour.

Plus, he had been U.S. National Champion, and he had top eighted at Worlds in 95. Anyway, so I listed, I would list the names of the people. And so the idea was, hey, here are interesting things that you can watch. Okay, then the next Pro Tour was in Columbus. So there were two events going on at once. There was a U.S. Nationals and there was a Pro Tour. And what we did is we sort of swapped the days they happened.

And then the finals for the U.S. Nationals happened one day, and the next day it was finals for the Pro Tour. But we sort of went back and forth between the two events. It was quirky. Okay, so at that event, I said, okay, I think at that point we realized that having people wander around wasn't a good idea. That, you know, for various reasons, we sort of wanted to contain where the audience was at.

And the Rosewater's picks had, I'd gotten a bunch of comments on it, and what had happened was people were congregating around the matches I picked. So we were also having the problem, not just like maybe it's a bad idea to be able to wander around while people are playing, but also it was gumming up certain areas because I would say, oh, check out this match and people would go watch the match. But then we get crowded around a certain

spot and then judges couldn't get around. It was an issue. So we said, OK, well, there's clearly a sign that people want to watch this stuff and we don't want the players sort of wondering about, what if we move the players of the feature matches and put them in their own special area, and then the spectators, we let the spectators watch that area. So it sort of solved two problems. So starting in Columbus, we made the feature match. Now, I also had said, guys, Rosewater's Picks as much as it just wasn't the right name for it, right? Rosewater's Picks. So I said, why don't we call it the feature matches? And so we started calling it the feature matches.

And then starting there, starting with Columbus, there would be an area for the feature matches. If you got a feature match, you would Columbus, there would be an area for the feature matches. If you got a feature match, you would come play at the feature match area. And then that is where people could spectate. Oh, the other thing that started happening was we started doing coverage, live coverage. Now, at the time, it was written coverage. Eventually, we would get to stream coverage, but that was years later. And so what we do is not only were the feature matches

sort of what the audience was watching, but we would pick some number of them. I think in the early days it was two, and then at some point it went to all four. We would cover the feature matches online. So there would be a reporter there. The reporter would watch the match, take notes, and then they would write up the match.

So if you were watching from home, there would be feature match reports where you could, you know, it's a chance for you at home to sort of spectate. That there would be a writer and they would write it up and you would sort of hear and understand what the feature matches, who they were and what they were about and the context and what happened in the game. So feature matches serve this double duty of kind of being a focal point. Both for live at the event,

you would go watch the feature matches, or at home, you would read about the feature matches. Okay, so let me get into a little bit how I picked the feature, how did the feature matches work. So basically what happened was, back in the day, Scott Larrabee, who would later go on to be the tournament manager that ran the Pro Tours. In the early days, Andrew Finch, I think, was running the Pro Tours at that point. And Scott was in charge of sort of the file. He did all the input. And then if anything went wrong with the pairings or anything, Scott would fix it.

Scott knew how to jump in and fix things. So he was in charge of sort of the pairings. So what Scott would do is he would print up the preliminary pairings, and then he would have me come look at them. Basically what happened was Scott had to do a pass on the pairings to make sure nothing had gone wrong, that the correct people were paired against each other. You know, for those that don't know how pairing works,

basically in a Swiss tournament, you want people with the same record replaying each other. So round one, everybody, you know, everyone's 0-0. But then somebody wins, someone loses. So there's half the team is, or barring, you know, draws,

half the group is now 1-0 and half is 0-1. Well, the 1-0s play each other and the 0-1s play each other. And the idea is you keep playing people at the same record as you. And so anyway, Scott had to do a pass to make sure that nothing wonky was happening. That the right people were playing each other. And the idea is you keep playing people at the same record as you. And so anyway, Scott had to do a pass to make sure that nothing wonky was happening. That the right people were playing each other. That when we were doing drafts, there was

pods to make sure things were staying in pods. Anyway, Scott had to do a preliminary thing to just check and make sure that things were going right. 99% of the time it was. But since he had to do that pass, he would print two of them. And while he was doing that pass, I would pick out my feature matches. And what I would do is I would go through and I would check every match that was at all interesting. Usually what that meant is there were two players in the match that were things people would know. Oh, I guess if it was early in the match, early in the tournament,

the early rounds were about name recognition, right? Who are big-name players that happen to be playing each other? Because those are the things people really wanted to see. Oh, wow, look, it's, you know, let's say it was the winner of two different Pro Tours. Like, let's say Michael Acanto and Hammer, Sean Hammer-Ramir, which they were on PT1 and PT2. What if they were playing each other? Oh, that's exciting.

It's the winners of two pro tours playing each other. So early rounds, I would pick people that were more about name recognition. And then the later rounds, I would pick matches that mattered for the tournament. So usually it was like, I don't know, three rounds to go. It started becoming clear who was really competing to be the top eight. And so the final rounds were much more less about name recognition and more about what are the defining things in this tournament. Now, if I had to choose a bunch of different matches

and one had named players versus one that didn't, I would choose the named players in contention over the not named players in contention. But usually what would happen was over the course of the three rounds, I would get the majority of players that were doing well. One of my goals was ideally, and this didn't always happen, I would like every person who was in

the top eight to have had a feature match before they got to the top eight. Like I said, that didn't always happen. But usually I would get the majority of them. If you were all a named player, I mean, you had been in the top eight before, or you had some other accolade, odds are you would have been for sure.

If you were a brand newcomer that had never before made a top eight, usually I would get you in the last three rounds. But anyway, so that was the feature. I would go and I would pick. And my method of picking was, I would look through, I would pick everything that was potential, and then I would go back. And one of the things that I once sometimes I didn't have a lot of choices, so I picked what I could pick. Other times

I had an embarrassment of riches. Oh my goodness, there's all sorts around. And then I would start looking at, oh, are there interesting decks being played? One of the things I also would look at is sometimes what would happen is I would star someone, not just because they were named, but there was something else going on. Columbus is a really good example. This was at U.S. Nationals, but we did feature matches for U.S. Nationals as well as the Pro Tour. in that year of Columbus was 95. There was a deck that was being played by four

of the players. It was called Turbo Stasis. It was based on something that had been played in a Finnish tournament. But anyway, it was sort of the hot deck of the tournament. It was a thing that nobody expected that was doing really well. And so for example, I sort of marked that deck of the tournament. It was the thing that nobody expected that was doing really well. And so, for example, I sort of marked that down.

What are the players playing Turbo Stasis? That that was like part of the story of the tournament. So sometimes feature matches, like a lot of it was name recognition. A lot of it was who are good players playing each other. Some of it was the specific tournament as far as matchups. But some of it also was, I would try to figure out, was there a storyline? Is there something happening? And the Turbo Stasis is a good example where there's this deck that no one had heard of,

or very few people had heard of, like I said, it came out in Finland, and four players were playing it. And I remember, I know Matt Place was one of them. Maybe Mike Long was playing it. It was a very high-profile group playing it. And the, mostly,-profile group playing it. And mostly it was all a buzz because people didn't understand what it was.

Like, people weren't used to playing against it. And so it just became the buzz of the tournament. So when I'm doing feature matches, I'm like, oh, this is what's, you know, people are talking about this. So I would take other factors into account when doing my feature matches, meaning what I wanted the feature matches to be is, hey, if I could choose what to watch, this is what I would choose. And I was trying to sort of choose at large for the audience on site,

the audience at home, what was the most compelling thing. And so let me get a little bit into sort of like what made a good feature match. Part of it was, like, I was a big believer, and you can see this from my time on the Pro Tour. When I was there on the Pro Tour, I was the player liaison. I was the person that did the feature match areas. I didn't explain this. I judged, I was the head judge for the feature match areas. Once we decided that the feature match was going to be its own area, I volunteered to be the judge for it. I was a level four judge. Usually I would have one or two other judges

help me, usually one. And then that was sort of a treat because it was fun to judge the feature match area. Usually I would rotate through judges but it was an opportunity for the judges that were working really hard. Here was something that was a little bit easier there was just less matches going on. Although, obviously, more high profile.

But anyway, the, I, so I was sitting there watching. And one of the things that I learned was I was a big believer in sort of the power of personality. That one of my jobs as sort of, oh sorry, so I was a liaison to the players, I ran the feature, I was the head judge for feature matches, I fixed the feature matches, and I did the coverage on the final day. Early on I was doing commentary at some point it was clear that

there were better people than me to do commentary, and that I was just the producer. I would talk with the director, I would pick what matches to go to, I would like, I would communicate with the director so the director understood what was going on in the match so they knew what to focus on. For example, what was in someone's hand was important. I was the one saying, ooh, make sure you show what's in their

hand, stuff like that. But anyway, part of my job for the first eight years of the Pro Tour, I went to almost every Pro Tour, like the birth of my daughter, where I missed one. And so a lot of what my sort of thrust was early in the Pro Tour was trying to make sure that we could make personalities of the players. I was trying to sort of get people excited by the Pro Tour. And part of that to me was understanding the value of sort of personality, of making the players more than just the sum of their decks. And so one of the things I was really big on on the feature matches is I loved context.

Like, for example, if two people had played a big match before, for example, I loved rematches. Let's say, for example, two of the players had played in the finals of a Pro Tour, and now they get matched up again. I'm like, oh, that is subtext, right? These two, you know, they're not just anybody. These two were in the finals of a Pro Tour together, and obviously one of them beat the other one,

and it's sort of like, will the other one come back and sort of, you know, is this a second chance to win and anyway so I the thing about feature matches that I love was I wanted to understand context of who the players were and not just in a vacuum who the players were in context to each other you know did these players know each other have they played each other before are they from the same region are they from different regions? Who do they represent? Sometimes there would be larger rivalries of the approachers. It would be fun to pick people from different rivalries. Sometimes there were people that

were on the same team together. So sometimes it's like, oh, these are teammates fighting each other. One thing that's real dramatic is we're playing to see who gets in the top eight and they they're teammates, you know. Maybe even they're playing the same deck. Sometimes there might be an interesting matchup in that, you know, they're two different teams, and they're playing the two decks of the tournament. You know, these are the two teams that came up with the most innovative decks, and a member of each team are playing each other. So not only is it two different teams playing, but it's two decks. Like, I would look for symbolism and look for things that gave larger context

of what was going on. And one of the big things that I... The thing that I wanted is I knew that we were going to do feature matches on them, and either the feature matches would be in paper, the reporters were going to report on it, or it would be on camera. And then I wanted to

make sure that whoever was talking about it, that there was something to talk about. And the other big thing is there were certain players that really made it fun to watch them. This was another thing. I butt-headed a little bit with some of the head judges on this. One of the things that I liked is there were some players that when they got a feature match area would ham it up for the audience. I mean, not breaking any rules or anything, you know, just have a little bit of attitude when they were playing,

which was a lot of fun. The spectators loved it. And some head judges really sort of enjoyed it and were fine with it. And some head judges were like, no, they can't do that. And we would butt heads a little bit. I'm like, look, you know, I mean, on some level, my whole take on the Pro Tour was, look, the Pro Tour is marketing. The Pro Tour is, the reason we're doing the Pro Tour is a means to show off what magic is capable of. And that part of that, part of making those stories, part of having that drama is embracing the people. And I was a big, big fan of really sort of

getting players to be personas and getting players to be something where people could root for them or against them. Like one of the interesting things about the feature match area is there are certain players that people love to watch. Some of the players they love to watch because they love to watch them win. And they would root them on and they were very excited. Some of the players they like to watch because

they wanted them to lose. And they would root for them to lose. Mike Long is a classic example where if you put Mike Long in a feature match, that would be a crowded feature match area. Now nobody wanted Mike to win. Everybody wanted Mike to lose. But they were very invested in him losing. He was definitely a personality that, you know, people had strong feelings for. Normally it was to not have him win, but they had strong feelings for it. And so, you know, there's a lot of nuance that I learned about sort of what made a fun feature match. The other thing is there were some people that were well-known players

that were the opposite in the feature match, which was they sort of clammed up in a feature match, that they were less expressive in a feature match. And I would still use those players from time to time if the matchup was really good or if they were playing for top eight or something. But some of those I was a little less inclined just because they made it less fun to watch them. And I really

now, the other thing to be aware of is there were two audiences and I also kept that in mind. I was very conscious of the live audience because those are the ones that are literally watching them. So people that are playing to the crowd that's a live audience thing. The other thing I was very conscious of was we were doing, some of these feature matches were being written about, and sometimes there'd be a great match that I knew wouldn't

play live all that well, but would play on paper wonderfully. Usually the stuff that, what I found about the paper matches was context mattered even more. Like, live at the event, people got to see the personalities and the people,

and there was electricity between the players. Either the players liked each other or didn't like each other, or there was this tension because people were, you know, playing for big stakes or something. But on paper, when you're talking about something they were writing about, that allowed, like, context matters. So one of the things I would always do is I always would talk to the reporters before the match and make sure that the reporters knew the context.

Now, the reporters were very good, and usually they did. I mean, usually it was like I didn't need to explain much to them because they were also very familiar with sort of pro-tour history. But sometimes I'd just bring things up, make sure they were familiar. Sometimes it was a newer writer, or sometimes it was just the content. As the years went by, there was more and more to pull from. So maybe you've been writing with Pro Tour for a year or two. Maybe there's an incident that happened year one that you might not be aware of. And so I like to always give context. And the other big thing that I was a big factor of, because of sort of my role,

I was an encyclopedia of just, you know, there's a point in time where I knew probably more than anybody about all the pro players, just because it was my job, I tracked all the information, I knew what everybody had done. Like there was a point in time that

you named a named player and I could rattle off all the things they had done, what places they'd been in the pro tour, what other events they had come in, and if they had any other sort of high-profile stories, I would know that. And that's another thing we learned also is sort of who had fun stories. You know, like Zach Dolan, who won the very first World Championship, you know, his car broke down driving to the tournament. He literally, like, had to,

I think he hitchhiked to the, you know, like, his car broke down outside of town, and he had to hitchhike to get to Gen Con, which is where it was happening. And so, whenever I would find those kind of stories, you know, and that, those were a lot of fun. But once again, those kind of things worked better either in written form or when we had commentators on the final day. The other thing I always used to do is, another nice thing about being in the feature match table was I could sort of watch what's happening in the tournament and keep track of the top tables and keep track of who was doing well and understand the story of the tournament. What was the deck of the tournament? What was the, you know, what was the personal story of the tournament? And then I could share those and make sure that my commentators, when they were doing

commentating the last day, had all that information. And so, anyway, the future match, the future match also became a place for me to sort of absorb the essence of what was going on in the Pro Tour. Oh, and then another important thing is when I would come back from the Pro Tour, we always would have a meeting about what we learned of the Pro Tour and do we want to make changes based on it? Are there things that

need to be banned or restricted or depending on the format? And so the fact that I was in the feature matches and watching all day long also allowed me to become very familiar with what was going on in the decks and what were the hot cards and stuff. So it also served a secondary purpose

of making me a little more informed to be able to help with my R&D function. So that was cool. Anyway, guys, I am pert. So that was the history of the feature matches. So I hope that was interesting to you. Like I said, with so many podcasts,

I like to try different things. And this is a different aspect of magic history. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it. But as I'm now parked, we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work.

Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll talk to you guys next time. Bye-bye.