Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #977: UNF Flavor Text with Graham & Kathleen

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

I sit down with Graham Stark and Kathleen De Vere to talk about writing names and flavor text for Unfinity.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work at Home Edition. So I love using my time at home to have guests, because it's hard to interview people in the car. And so today I have two guests, Graham Stark and Kathleen Devere. You guys might know from Loading Ready Run, but I know them as fellow flavor text writers for Unfinity. So hi guys. Hello. Hello. Okay, so we're going to start from the very beginning. So Ari Zerilnik was the lead for the team. He was the creative lead that did names

and flavor text. And he came to me and he had an idea. He said, what if we got comedy writers to write flavor text and names for the comedy set. I said, that sounds like a great idea. He goes, do you have any suggestions? And I said, yes. I would go talk to the Loading Ready Run folk and see if any of them were interested. So I was the one that recommended you guys. And so I'm glad that at least three of you were able to participate.

So talk about from your end. how did you, how did you, what's your story of this happening? Well, I mean, I think I was on actually a previous not driving to work from home edition with you. And then after the, after the recording was done and the cameras were turned off you were like hey i have a different thing i'd like to talk to you about you know it's called the avengers initiative no you were uh you know you brought up the idea that there was a new unset coming and uh

you know would i be interested in working on flavor text i was like yes absolutely and uh i i was asking uh you sort of like do you mean like me, me personally, or like all of Loading Ready Run? Do you want us to like group write stuff, or how do you want to do this? And it was like, no, no, like you, but if there's other people, you know, let me know. And I was like, yes, Kathleen and Cameron.

I'm just still overwhelmed that I was described as a comedian and like a professional one that someone thought of. Oh. that I was described as a comedian and like a professional one that someone thought of. So I want to walk a little bit through for the people who haven't been on a creative team before. From your end, so what did it entail from your end? What did you guys have to do exactly? Well, I mean, like, it sounds very simple, but, you know, just look at a card and be like, yes, this is what we should call this card. And this is how we should we should put this.

This is the flavor text we should put on this card, which sounds really simple. But, you know, when you are looking at a complete blank slate and you just have art and an art description and stuff you know it's a lot of like all right well what is this card trying to convey how can we build up the world is there an opportunity here to like sneak some lore in here to make this seem like a larger part of something whole like how do we like make this more than a terrible one-off pun, but also make it a terrible, terrible pun. Particularly for this set. Yes.

Why are you knocking terrible one-off puns? No, I love them. Okay, so just for the audience, I'll give a little sort of context. So we use a program we call Lore Seeker, which is everybody who's on the team signs in, and then there are, waves of stuff so like you don't do everything all at once is like i think there were seven or eight weeks of waves

i believe um and then and what was it longer than that i don't know i just think it felt longer i felt longer i think there were eight waves i think there were um and we went back and revisited a few of them like there was there were some waves where we caught up on stuff and we didn't find something we liked on previous waves. But the way the wave worked, I think the wave was 30 cards, roughly 30 cards. And then in Lore Seeker, you see the art as turned in most of the time. Every once in a rare time it was a sketch, but usually it was full art.

We didn't give them to you, hopefully, until we had the art in. And then you would see the playtest name, and you would see the text, all the existing rules text for the card. And then Ari would say whether or not we needed a name, because sometimes we had a name we already liked. And was there flavor text or not? And the flavor text depended on how long the text was. And if so, he would give you a sense of, like, one line, two line, three line,

a sense of, like, how long you had. And that's so, he would give you a sense of like one line, two line, three line, a sense of like how long you had. And that's something people don't realize about flavor text is a lot of it is fitting what you want to say and the space provided to you. Yeah. And then, and we also got to see if there were occasional sort of like critical notes. I feel like there was more in this set

than a common set of like specific things to hit, like treacherous trapezist had to be alliterative. How is this a par three had to be six words. And then we also got to see, which I found very useful, the art director's description, like art brief to the artist so that we could

See even more of what Was intended from a creative Level and then Because sometimes it came up that Maybe We didn't Like that there was I'm trying to figure out how best to describe this

At certain points different people On different teams had an idea for what this card was supposed to be. But the whole didn't necessarily make that land. And so then we could use the name and the flavor text to sort of crystallize everything and get across why this art and this rules text relates. Here's a real good example. You guys probably weren't aware of this,

but it's a great example. The card Black Hole was not commissioned to be a black hole. It was just supposed to show the ride malfunctioning. But in the way they did it and the way the art came back, it really looked like the ride was being sucked into a black hole. And so,

instead of fighting it, we're like, I guess it's a black hole. Like, that wasn't at all what we intended, but it was what it seemed to be. So,

the car became black hole because that's what it looked like. Even though that wasn't, if you look at the art description, in no way was black hole mentioned in the art description. It wasn't the actual intent. But the intent doesn't matter once the art is back.

Look and see what you see in the art. And so there's a lot of, I mean, most of the time what we intend and what the art is is spot on. It's not often that, like, it's not quite what you intend. But weird, quirky things can happen. And so it's neat for you guys to see what we intended and then to see what actually happened. You're correct, by the way,

on sets, because we care about names matter in a way, mechanically that they just don't matter in any other set ever, pretty much. So how many words it had to be or what letters it had to start with, or there was just weird, quirky things that we cared about. And so the, and the other thing

that happens sometimes is um ari or sometimes me would um like for example there's a card called mistakes have happened i think the name of the card where mistakes were made mistakes were made mistakes were made here i i i'll read you guys the card so mistakes were made is a green card one in a green, instant. Destroy target artifact or enchantment. Create a 1-1 green squirrel creature token for each fire extinguisher you can see from your seat. And the art shows a bulldozer, like, bulldozing something.

And you see this little alien squirrel running out of the rubbish. And the problem was, we had wanted to have this cycle of cards that cared about things in the environment. But that happened after the art was committed to. And so we're like, well, how do we, what can we care about that somehow makes sense? And so the idea we came up with was, well, we could say it's a fire extinguisher if we convey that a fire happened. If what you're seeing is the result of a fire, that makes the fire extinguisher, if we convey that a fire happened, if what you're seeing is the result of a fire, that makes the fire extinguisher make more sense.

So, like, the note to you guys is, okay, the names and flavor text somehow have to convey there was a fire here. That's important to this card. That often happens in names and flavor text that if the things don't congeal, it's up to the names and flavor text people to make it all go

together in a way that makes sense. Mm-hmm. And that happens a lot in names and flavor text. And there's a card from, there's a card from a previous unset, like, unhinged or something that the flavor text for it literally is like,

how does this make sense? I don't know. We'll fix it in the flavor text. Yeah, Granny's Payback. Right. Yeah. Because the card is, you gain life equal to your age, and it shows this old lady

with a sword, like, hacking people up. And we're like, well, why? Okay, it's an old lady hacking things up, but why are you gaining life? You know, and we made fun of that because they didn't match. So we just made, I mean, as is often the case in unsets, sometimes you just lean into the joke. Like, if they don't match,

well, let's make fun of the fact they don't match most magic sets don't have that luxury but uh unsets do did you i don't know if you read out the the flavor text for mistakes were made which was from kathleen ended up being in hindsight chandra's incendiary experience could never have been built should never have been built next to auntie grub's house So, you know, it implies a fire happened. It implies a fire happened accidentally. And, importantly, you get to name two attractions at the park. And also, I just, I wanted to get a Laura Wynn reference in there. Yeah, one of the things about the park we decided really early on,

which everybody leaned into, was that the IP of the park is magic. Which just let us make endless magic jokes. Which was super fun. Yes, it was fun. I wish there'd been more walk-around characters. Because all we got was the meet-and-greet sissy. I wish there'd been more. Yeah, there's a mascot.

The exchange of words shows two mascots. That's true. That's a Johnny and... Angraph. And Angraph, yeah. So, I mean. That's a Johnny and Angrath. Angrath, yeah. There's a little, but I agree. It could have been a little more. Jace is the fortune-telling machine. The

Cotton Candy is what's his name? The Nightmare Guy. Oh, Ashiok. Ashiok. So I mean, there are little nods here and there on stuff, but yeah, there's not as much walking around characters as there could have been. Okay, so let's, I want to delve in deep here and talk about the challenge of particular cards.

So, pick a card that you have a fun story about and we'll share the card with people and they'll walk through the challenge of making that particular name and or flavor text. So pick pick a card any card any card what do you want i mean there's i know that there's a couple that we did a lot of revisions on uh one of which ended up not even being able to be included because of um uh just space okay, what was the card? I'm trying to remember. While you think about that...

Oh, yes, this is a good one, yes. The card that ended up as Jermaine, Pride of the Circus. Do you remember this one, Mark? I do remember this one. So let me read it to the audience. So Jermaine, Pride of the Circus is green, green for a 2-3 legendary creature cat performer. Green and tap.

Put two plus one plus encounters on target creature with four more legs. One green green tap. Until end of turn, all creatures able to block target creature with four more legs do so. Don't worry about me, folks. This beauty was well fed by my predecessor. Well fed by my predecessor. Okay, go ahead. So,

when you first saw this card, what did you have to do? What was the challenge? to set there. Okay, go ahead. So, when you first saw this card, what was your, like, what did you have to do? What was the challenge? Well, I mean, we went through, like, a definite, like, a few sort of, like, you know, how do we make his name a cat pun, but

like, not a, like, it's just, can I read out some rejected names? Sure, read out some rejected names? Sure. Well, not rejected. Unchosen. Unchosen names. Yeah. Like we got Leopold the Brave because like,

that's kind of, cause it has Leo in the name, right? Like Leo, Leo, Roy, Beast Tamer. I was going,

I suggested Leroy to make like a vague, like Siegfried and Roy kind of reference. Oh. Right? I also just suggested Leon, comma, tamer. Yeah. Oh, the other thing real quickly for the audience. The whole premise of this card from like a comedy standpoint was it's the lion tamer of this circus.

But instead of the lion being the creature being tamed, it's the person doing the taming. So that, part of the inherent joke was, it's a lion tamer who is a lion, because it's a Leonin. Okay, so any other names? Let's see. This is one that you

suggested, Mark. The main attraction. Oh, the main attraction, yes. That's pretty good, honestly. Because you had suggested Leon, main attraction. Oh, right main attraction, yes. That's pretty good, honestly. Because you had suggested Leon, comma, main attraction. Oh, right, yeah, M-A-N-E, right? Yeah, M-A-N-E. But yeah, this went through a lot of different flavor text revisions. This was one of the ones that everyone suggested one,

and then Ari was like, none of these are quite landing. And we went like a bunch of different sort of ways with it about like the idea that this creature had eaten Jermaine's predecessor came up or naming this creature. Kathleen, you called it the Thraxian Megaspider at one point yep and then just well because you know sometimes when you're writing flavor text it's like is this going to be a placeholder name for a different creature that's going to get named later is this going to you know are or are you referencing something from the set or you know what i mean so you can i i have i have found and then maybe this is mark's time to tell me to stop

doing this that you can like you know if you're doing flavor text and stuff like that, you can just put attributions in there, and maybe they stick, and maybe they change if they find somebody better. But you can have a little bit of fun with it. So I was like, I think the term Thraxian Megaspider is funny, and it sounds kind of alien and spacey. And if it stays like that, it stays, or if it gets named something else

because there's another spider in the set that I don't know about that's coming later, fine, right? Well, I think you will notice. I think you called it that. And then I wrote other flavor texts that used that because I liked the name Thraxian Megaspider. Yeah, no, several people did. Kathleen suggested, like, Thraxian Megaspiders are actually gentle herbivores, but the audience doesn't need to know that. And then further down, Mark suggested Cat got your Megaspider.

Austin said, this is no ordinary thraxian mega spider renet is a trained gymnast so you know there was a lot of there was a lot of uh a lot of different revision and sort of like uh asynchronous group writing i guess yeah i'm like you know what if we make the spider like not scary what if this is all like a big act and the spider's not in danger what if the spider is very scary and everybody is in like serious danger like you know trying all these different like ways to approach seeing what's going on in the card and that concept actually ended up getting into the flavor text for the um illu um what's it called? Oh, the merfolk. Oh, with the big beast. It's called bioluminary. Bioluminary.

Right, so the joke that they were safe because the creature didn't want to eat them, yeah, it became... So bioluminary, two in blue, one, three, creature, merfolk, performer. When bioluminary deals combat damage to a player, you get two tickets. Then you may put a sticker on non-limb permanent you own.

The Garganticari Astro Serpent hated the taste of merfolk but the audience didn't need to know that. So that concept did get used but it got used on a different card. And that's something else people need to understand is sometimes ideas come up and it's a great idea but another card could use the idea

and so it's very possible this card influenced that flavor text. And the other thing about that one is Garganticari is making a reference to a plane that I think Ethan Fleischer named, where it was the reverse of the plane where everything's super small, Segovia. So we have Segovia, which is, you know, everything's tiny. It's a running joke in Magic. So he made the reverse where everything's giant, and he named it.

So we're referencing that world. There's a lot of deep cuts in flavor text when you can make references to things. Wow, that's awesome. I like that that one went a couple different directions, too. The flavor text was like, it ended up with, she's not actually in danger because this giant serpent really doesn't actually like her,

like how she tastes. But there was also an angle where it's like these are just performers and off stage they're good friends you know which i also enjoyed there was a subtext that was important to us and you guys we i know we've talked about this is that we didn't want any of the creatures at the circus having any sense that they're poorly treated or no, like the very clear that like they get along and you know, I think even the germane flavor text in my mind was he was just joking with the audience. Like he was never in danger. It was never in danger. It's just,

he wants it to seem scary. You know what I'm saying? So he's making jokes. Sounds like performer pattern for sure. Yeah. Um, in my sense, they get along fine.

The thing's not a danger to him at all, you know, and it just looks scary because it's big and giant, but the reality is, you know, it'll go where his food is, whatever. Okay, let's pick another card to track park. Oh, yeah. Hmm, let me think.

Oh, we went back and forth a lot on the name of the... Oh, shoot went back and forth a lot on the name of the... Oh, shoot. The dinosaur. Oh, yes. Resolute Vegasaur. Resolute Vegasaur.

That's a fine story. Let me read the card real quick. So, Resolute Vegasaur, two and a green, three, three, creature, dinosaur, employ, trample. Whenever you roll your third die each turn, put a plus one, plus one counter on Resolute Vegasaur. This dinosaur doesn't know what will kill him but he's determined it won't be heart disease so what happened here is we just

early on we loved the idea of just this dinosaur employee I think there had been and we did world building somebody had done some sort of sketch of this dinosaur and it wasn't quite this but we liked it and so we said oh we want to see the the dinosaur employee that seems funny to us uh but naming this thing was oh my goodness so let's walk through so we we went like sometimes we have a week and then we don't find it we have to come back on a second

week and this one didn't get named until even after that this went through many many name changes yeah this was like uh vegasaurus rex uh you suggested v-rex uh like kathleen you suggested parsnip predator uh it could have needed an illiterate name an alliterative name yeah yeah um nervous rex uh oh smoothie baristasaurus that was from sean herbivorous concessionaire from cameron yeah there was just so many different ones and like nothing was quite landing and then uh i think actually what we ended up running we ended up landing on like where we left it was a suggestion from ari of justad Bartender. Yeah, but that was its name when we stopped, was Salad Bartender. Yeah. And then I think what

happened was while we were in editing, Ari realized that we had called a previous dinosaur Resolute Regisaur. And so he says, oh, we can make a riff on Regisaur and make it Vegisaur

which is great but it took us a long time to get there that far off the took us I say us, it wasn't even us at that point but it took the team that long to

land on what ended up being i the best name of all of them really absolutely also if you'll permit me can i read a truly dreadful flavor tech suggestion from myself okay go ahead potatoes fear him it's just so dumb i want that on like a hat with like, you know, like the, the, the fish fear me hat. Yeah. Yeah. Like that's, that's, that's too, you know what you're allowed, you know, I think I did. I think I put in more than two suggestions for that one because I think I might've known that one was bad,

but sometimes you're allowed to put in a dumb joke, right? Yeah. The thing that it worked by the the way is we asked each writer, I think it was like three names and three pieces of flavor. Like, we asked to do a certain number of them. And then there was a process in which people could vote. You could vote thumbs up or thumbs down, although people tended to vote thumbs up and just didn't vote if they

didn't like stuff. And you also could reply to people. So sometimes, so for example, I want to talk about a card called Killer Cosplay. Oh, yeah. So Killer Cosplay, green artifact equipment. When Killer Cosplay becomes attached to a creature, choose a creature card name with an identical mana cost.

That creature becomes a copy of the card with the chosen name until Killer Cosplay becomes unattached from it. Equip three. Akhan's run. Get the camera. He's adorable. Steffi, Bob's daughter. Next words. Okay, so you guys are in Lore Seeker. Akhan's run, get the camera, he's adorable Steffi, Bob's daughter, next words

So go Okay, so you guys are in Lore Seeker Does it still have what was asked Is that still there, what was asked of us? Or just the Well, so the Art description mentions that it's a bear cub Wearing a cute little zip-up costume

Of a Tarmogoyf So that much we knew And so then yeah, I suggested Akhan's look, it's adorable, as the entirety of the thing. And then so you replied to that with Riffing on of the Akhan's run dot dot dot and get the camera, he's adorable. To which Kathleen responded A plus. to which Kathleen responded, A+. And then eventually Ari sort of then properly codified it as a quote of Akhan's run, Get the Camera, He's Adorable, and then asking for names. And Mark, I think you suggested Steffi, Bob's daughter.

Yeah, so the idea I wanted is I needed to sound as much like Safi, Eric's daughter, as possible. So Steffi, Steffi seemed more modern, but it was as close to Safi as we could get, but being a modern name. And then obviously the joke is Eric's daughter means

she's the daughter of Eric. That's what Eric's daughter means. So I was just trying to get the, what's the one syllable funniest name I could get that plays this, but like obviously play against type. So I wanted just trying to get the, what's the one syllable funniest name I could get that plays this, but like obviously play against type, so I wanted to sound as not, you know, as not Scandinavian as I could. And Bob just

seemed funny to me, so I think Bob's a funny name. Bob is a funny name. A plus funny. Three out of three comedians agree. So that's, yeah, so that's where Steffi Bob's daughter came from. I was just trying where Steffi, Bob's daughter, came from. He was just trying to riff off Safi, Eric's daughter. And then it's last words, so we were like, okay, next word?

Like, she didn't die or anything, so. Yeah, that'd be weird. Just a tiny bear cub in a costume. Okay, so another example, let's see. Here's one where I think it was the reverse, where I suggested something, but then you got the final version of it, was Petting Zookeeper. So two and a green, zero, four, creature, elf, and ploy reach

when Petting Zookeeper enters the battlefield, open an attraction, and then the flavor text says, calling it a petting zoo, really saved on cages. So let's walk through this one, because I think this is a good example where the opposite happened.

I suggested an idea, but I didn't have the right execution of the idea. Yeah, so you suggested Myra knew the zoo didn't need cages, just some clever rebranding. And then I said, I replied to that. I'm like, I'm going to build off this one and suggested calling it a petting zoo, really saved on cages. And I put the quote in the wrong place at one point. And you were like, I think that's incorrect. And you're like, oh, or then I was was like yes yes i need to need to correct that but yeah that was the same kind of thing where it's sort of like here's the joke but it's not quite there

and then yeah but it's a surf set spike right yeah exactly like in the volleyball yeah yeah yeah i mean i love the idea that my remember like it's very entertaining to me that my was trying to figure out how to save money all the time and it's like, just, we can rebrand the zoo as a petting zoo, that way we don't have to buy cages if it's funny to me. But right, your execution of the joke was just a funnier execution.

And a shorter execution, too. I also, I quite like one of Kathleen's suggestions of, attributed to Myra the Magnificent. Does anyone who thinks children like attractions that are safe and non-threatening has obviously never spent time with a child? That wouldn't fit on the card. Yeah.

Okay, so here's another one. This is one, Kathleen did both of these. How is this a par four? Three. Par three. So real quickly, how is this a par three? Two blue blue. Enchantment.

Whenever you cast a spell, you may have target player mill X cards where X is the number of words in that spell's name against the infinite backdrop of space. It's an all-golf miniature. So this was an interesting one. It was a mill card. So we came up with the idea of showing a little windmill because it's a milling card and we often show we show uh windmills on milling cards because

it's a milling card and then we said well i mentioned that specifically yet but it's it's very clever uh and then we're like well how do we get a mill how do we get a mill at a carnival and then we're like oh we can have a miniature golf course and so but but here's a miniature golf set in space and you know like it was very a you know it's very up in the air what it meant and then our only rule was we needed for mechanical reasons to have six words because if you were building a deck with in a 60 of four of we wanted future ones of them to be relevant so we wanted to be six words so we said okay make this make so we wanted it to be six words. So we said, okay, make this make sense and it has to be six words long.

So we had a lot of suggestions for this, I know. So many good suggestions. One of my rejected ones, obviously, for length was becoming absolutely demoralized by the windmill, which I think is a good way to say, ah, you've played against mill before. I had like, time to navigate the old mill, the endless grind of the mill.

My old nemesis, the windmill from Cameron. I like that one. I liked yours, Kathleen. Time to put cards in yards. I think it's a bit too like. Yeah. Alternate wind condition. Here I come.

Austin suggested Dr. Golfo's Old Mill Putting Challenge. That's also good. Yeah, a lot of these, by the way, didn't remotely fit on the card type line. That's something that people don't even realize, though, is depending how long your mana cost is, that's how much

text you get. So this was two blue blue, so it's three symbols. So we wanted to get six words, but we had not a lot of space, so that was part of the challenge, is getting some short words for our six words. I like, I love

your flavor text on this, Kathleen. I do want to shout out to Cameron for, the existence of mini-golf implies the existence of macro-golf. Philosophers believe we are all playing, and the universe will end with a hole in one. I like when Cam gets to get existential with his flavor text. Yeah.

Yeah, that's another good example where that never was going to fit, because we have two lines, and that is longer than two lines. Yeah. But it is very funny. Are there other suggestions for flavor text? It's hard to remember. It was a while ago, so it's hard to remember. What was some of the ones

that we really struggled over? Oh! Done for the Day. Oh, okay. That's good. Let me read Done for the Day. Done for the Day is's good. Let me read Done for the Day. Done for the Day is two green. It's an enchantment. At the beginning of your end step, if you control and employ

a performer or a robot, you may get ticket or create a treasure token. If you control all three, you may put a sticker on a non-land permit you own. Punchy was programmed to do two things. Punch tickets and love punching tickets. So the premise for this card was I wanted to do

a card mechanically that cared about a bunch of the creature types that are unique to this world. So employee, performer, robot were all things that people who worked there. So we saw this as a golden opportunity to go behind the scenes and see the, like, you know, in Disneyland, we, everybody who goes to Disneyland sees the front of Disneyland, but obviously

behind the scenes, you know, there's a whole we wanted that little peek of, like, what's, like, sees the front of Disneyland, but obviously behind the scenes, there's a whole... We wanted that little peek of what's behind the scenes. So the idea was that someone's clocking out, and because we have robots, and it's a comedy, why not make the punch-out clock itself have personality? And we thought when we made the card that the woman, the person checking out,

would be the focus. But make a silly robot, and checking out, would be the focus. But make a silly robot, and the silly robot will steal the focus. Yes. I like Ari's suggestion in all caps of feed Punchy your time cards. The proof of your labor is delicious. Oh, yeah. The other thing, we decided early on somebody, I'm not sure if it was Cam or Sean Baby,

but somebody put all caps on the robot, like the robot was just screaming at you and we found that funny so in the set all the robots talk in all caps it's just how robots talk on the astrotarium yeah i think i think cam was slightly under the wire on draconian gatebot naming that one or doing the flavor text on that one with all caps but then everyone just everyone just ran with it well because it's great yeah we're all professional comedians as i was described as earlier so we know something funny and run with it right because it's a it is a group effort right yeah a lot of times what happens is somebody suggests something then the team goes yeah that's it we should be doing that and then just that's what happened like once we decided everyone just started writing all robots in all caps.

It just became a thing we did. And I didn't know if it was stated. I didn't even know anyone ever said, oh, from now on, let's do this. We just all started doing it. Yeah. Well, same with this. Someone said Punchy, and then just everyone else named this robot Punchy. Well, it's a great name, so.

Yeah. Mark, you had one suggestion for this card of, Punchy's actual job was cleaning break rooms, but he did so love the taste of time cards. And I had suggested everyone's favorite story about Punchy was the time he accidentally got left on Shred. The joke that to me was very funny was, he didn't punch cards, that wasn't his thing.

Yeah. He liked to do it for personal reasons, but it wasn't his thing. Yeah. They just, he liked to do it for personal reasons but it wasn't his job. That tickled me to no end. Punchy's first directive was to devour time. Wow.

That's a good one. Yeah, but like somebody named him Punchy and then we just, we all decided he was named Punchy and that's what it was.

So, yeah. I think the first person who named him Punchy was Ari because that's the first suggestion there. OK, the second suggestion or no, the first suggestion came from you. Punchy was the only one who knew every Astratorium employee. OK, well, did I? So that was that.

There you go. It's a good name for a punch robot. I mean, it's not that hard to get there, I guess. It's not like, you know, I think originally possibly in the world guide. It's not that hard to get there, I guess. It's not like, you know. I think originally, possibly in the world guide, I don't know. I think there had been a suggestion,

a gentle suggestion to like not name the robot specifically. But then I think in this instance, it was like, well, if Mark's doing it. I mean, to be fair, we did like assembled ensemble, whichled Ensemble, which was, like, originally it was just a triangle-playing robot, and we called it, like, Trianglebot or Dingbot or something. We did name... It's like a Ding-o-matic or something. Yeah, Ding-o-matic for a while.

Let's go to that one real quickly. So, Assembled Ensemble, four and a white, artifact creature, clown robot bard, star six, vigilance, Assembled Ensemble's power is equal to the number of robots you control. Whenever you cast a spell with an artifact creature and its art, create a one-one white clown robot

artifact creature token. Known for their hit single, your wait from this point is seven hours. So, this is a good example. All of that got done during editing. None of that was submitted during any of this period. So, but here's a funny story so originally

we were trying to focus on the triangle robot when we did the world push somebody made this giant robot that just played the triangle that we thought was the funniest thing in the world so we asked the artist to draw it but the artist said well he can't be alone he's gonna be part of a band so it drew him as part of a band um but when we were naming it we were trying to name the big robot so let's go through some of the names of what the triangle playing robot's name was. So Austin suggested the Idiophone, which is apparently the instrument classification for a triangle. It is. I suggested the bot that goes ding.

Kathleen suggested Ding-O-Matic, which is the name that we settled on before editing. Yeah, yeah. That was the name we settled on before editing. Yeah, yeah. That was the name we went into during editing. You had the Triangulator. Cameron had Percussatron. Sean had Ding-Ding Six. Which I also quite like. And then, yeah, there was so many different flavor texts.

The Triangle really ties the parade together. Kathleen, that was mine. Kathleen, it really holds down the top end. Because it was like a five drop X6 because it's like the top end of your curve. It plays the high notes. Too clever.

Mark, you have little known fact. Ding-O-Matic was originally programmed to play the tambourine. Its performances always resonate from Ari My solo album is available in the lobby Oh right and Cam just suggested Ding

And then we settled on one from Ari with 1,267,594 Blorb alloy gears, 876 meters of iridium-plated wiring, one slightly used triangle. What happened was, so in editing, what often happens is you get a fresh pair of eyes, and Matt Tabak was our editor, and one of the things we realized was the way the art was done, there's a light source that's right by the triangle. So you somehow don't quite make out it's a triangle.

You have to really look to realize he's playing a triangle. And so what we realized is we needed to sort of name the whole band, like just trying to name it after one. It wasn't working. And so then we came up with a new name to say, well, okay, it's a whole band of performing robots and then

the flavor text we originally had A played up the triangle robot and not the whole so we had to redo it everything got done during editing and that was me and Ari and Matt we would do like little mini pushes of flavor texts

and come back and look at them and pick our favorite from them. The other thing I want to bring up real quickly before we have to wrap up soon is I took great care. I did some research on how robots got named in pop culture. And I made a whole document of like Tron, Bot, a number usually ending in thousand. know i and i made a list

of all the different ways robots got named uh and then i made sure when we were naming them that we used all the all the different tropes so that we never we didn't have one trope for robot naming we used all the tropes for robot naming so if you actually look through it they're like all the different think of any famous robot you can think of We use all the robot naming tropes on the robot. So I was very proud of that. There's like, there's Doodle, there's Celebrate Thousand, you know, the whatever bot.

Yeah, there's Juggletron. I can't believe it took us so long to land on taking Mind Bomb. Well, we actually had a different name and somebody internally were like, they'd say, we actually had a different name and somebody internally were like, they'd say, can we not use that name? And so we changed it. What was the first name? It might have been Payback Mime.

No, it wasn't Payback Mime. Now I think it was Payback Mime. That's the only other one that's flagged. Yeah, there's something we had tagged it and then somebody internally said, I forget what it was. It just makes something slightly different.

And so, maybe it was payback mime? I'm not sure. But yeah, we had to change it, so we changed it to Tiki. But I think Tiki Mime Bomb was one of the suggestions on the thing. I think we used it. So anyway, guys, as I can see my desk from here, I'm almost to work.

Any last thoughts of what it was like working on Infinity? It was so cool. It was like, you know, I said this before, it was like, you know, basically

my wildest dream is to get asked to help work on a comedy magic card and name and put flavor text and contribute to that world in a small way. You know, like I thought it was it was it was great. And it was very cool working with everybody else and like, you know, learning how to do that and doing the collaborative writing process. And it was an honor to be involved. It was great.

Yeah, it was a tremendously fun writing challenge to have to do all the stuff that magic card names and flavor text normally have to do, but to also try to make it funny. But backwards and in heels? Yeah, exactly.

It was super fun. Yeah, writing comedy is harder than one might think because It was, yeah, it was, yeah, it was super fun. Yeah. Yeah, writing comedy is, like, harder than one might think because, you know, it's got to be funny to everyone. It's got to, you know, there's certain things you've got to do with comedy and stuff like that. You've got to get your punctuation specific. I mean, a story that Mark told in the chat that we had

at the pre-pre-release was the draconian gatebot, the flavor text had to be shrunk to fit the space and so it had to be changed from you have 15 seconds to comply to you have 10 seconds to comply and then they had to have a real conversation about is this now not as funny now that it's 10 and not 15 right and it And it's like, that's the kind of comedy, that's writing comedy. It's like, no, it has to be very specific. Yeah.

I love it. I had a teacher, I mean, obviously, my background before being a game designer was writing comedy, and I had a class in comic writing once, and the teacher said something that was really, really stuck with me, which is tragedy is pretty universal. That, like, watching someone you love

die, you know, a character that you love on screen die, hey, that's pretty sad. You know, it's not, everybody will get sad at, ooh, they have emotional to the creature and they die. But that comedy is not nearly as universal. Like, what people find funny really changes from person to person

and that, you know, I mean, there's plenty of challenges to writing drama. It's not like drama isn't also hard to write. But it's the challenge that comedy has that drama doesn't have is that drama is a lot more universal in what people think in certain ways. Where comedy is so much more people's taste. And, like, you know, for example, when I wrote the name for ambassador blorpity blorpoop i thought it was the funniest thing in the world and the rest of the design team didn't like it they thought it wasn't funny and i'm like no no no this is funny like i was just like i don't care what you say this is funny and i remember going to ari i felt like i had to defend it and ari was

like oh no that's hilarious why wouldn't we use that? And so I knew that Ari and I were, you know, like, it was just very funny to me that like, you know, things that one person might find funny, other people are like, well, I don't find it funny, you know? And there's a lot of that in comedy, so.

Awesome. But anyway, I want to thank you guys for being with me. This was an extra long one. So it's like when, sometimes when I would drive to work and I have traffic. So we had comedy traffic, so it slowed me down.

Perfect. But thanks so much for being with me, guys. Thank you so much for having us. It was lovely to talk to you again, Mark. Yeah. Okay, and guys, since I can see my desk, we all know what that means. It means this is my end of 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.