Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #988: Designing for an Eternal World

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

Magic constantly changes and evolves, which means that we as designers must keep changing how we approach design. This podcast talks about the challenges of making Magic in a world where the most popular tabletop formats are larger.

I'm pulling on the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about the challenges of designing for an eternal world. So let me first explain what that means and then I'll talk about it. So, for a long time, the center of magic was standard. And the focus of making magic was about designing for that environment that was sort of a two-year environment. But with the popularity of Commander and other factors, we are designing much more for larger formats. Commander, Modern, you know, that more people are playing with a lot more of the cards. And so there are some challenges with that.

So a couple caveats I want to start with today. One is, I think magic by its nature shifts where the audience wants it to be. So when I'm talking about this today, I'm not saying it shouldn't be here. This is what the audience wants. This is what we're providing. And if you ever listen to me on my podcast or whatever, you know that I like to say restrictions read creativity, right? That I do feel having things you are pushing to do, there's a lot of good that comes from trying to figure out and solve problems. So I want to first, before I get into my challenges, say the fact that there are challenges are not inherently a bad thing. I just want to sort of talk through what are the challenges right now. Because we have some challenges that we have not had for a long time or have never had in some cases.

And so today's podcast is trying to explain some of the challenges of modern design right now. Designing for magic in the current year. But I'm not implying that it shouldn't be this way or that challenges are inherently a bad thing. I'm just saying that these are the challenges. We always have challenges. So no matter what we're doing, there are challenges. I'm going to explain the current challenges

of the current era of design. Okay. Challenge number one. And this is truer the larger the format you get. So this is more true of Commander than Modern, although more true of Modern than Pioneer. And the idea there is that nothing really leaves the system. You know, I mean, for example,

all the popular formats right now aren't rotating. One of the things that rotation did for us was it allowed R&D to have a lot more control over the environment. That we could do things where like, oh, we're going to push in this direction. Now we're going to push in that direction. That it let us push the pendulum in different places. And we really had a lot of control. the pendulum in different places and we really had a lot of control um you know we could make an environment that was really aggressive and then make you know start leaning it more toward control or toward combo you know we could certain colors could be a little bit stronger and so we

could lean toward other colors that the system where standard was kind of king we had a lot of flexibility to change it up to change things because things left the system. So if we did something, you know, if we knew this, like one of the things that would happen a lot is, oh, magic would go in a certain direction. So we'd purposely push the pendulum in a different direction. That's a lot harder to do now. When things don't leave the system, you know, we can add things to the system. And by adding things, we can change things

and make new things and maybe strengthen old things. But we have a lot less ability to affect it by far. You know, one of the nice things of the standard environment when that was sort of king was we had so much control to really keep it a lot of variety and a lot of changes. And it allowed us to sort of try some things. We'll get to that in a second. Okay, next up, it causes a problem with new resources. So let me explain. And I've talked about this before. So if you're designing something for a 100 card singleton format versus a 60 card four of format, you need six times the cards to make it viable. And what that means is there's just too many, barring something that's just wide sweeping in a set. One set can't make enough cards of a new resource

that Commander could possibly play with it as a solo thing. I mean, maybe it can be a component of something. And not only that, like with one set, we can make something relevant and standard in one set. It takes us like five to six sets to do that in larger formats, especially in Commander, that's Singleton, 100 Singleton. So it's a lot harder to... New resources are trickier.

We have to really rethink how we invent things and how we do things. That has shaped us doing more batching, doing more of like leaning into themes that are just larger themes. It's why we're revisiting things a little more often. I mean, part of that is the lack of the blocks, but, you know, there are certain resources that Magic has access to, that Magic's always had access to, and we lean on those a little bit harder. The current system makes us we want to make sure that every set we do,

there are things in the set that will work for people that you know, like, not that we won't make new resources, not that we can't play with that, not that that won't exist. There's a lot of magic play that isn't eternal formats and such. And there's limited play, and you know And there's limited play and

there is still plenty of standard play. I mean, there is people who will play that stuff but it is something, you know, and part of what we are thinking about is we have to take those limited things and reuse them more. Like, if we want people to play with certain things in Commander

that currently aren't available, we have to be more conscious about adding things in to do that. And that is something we have to constantly think about. So when we're making a set right now, we really much have to think about the mix of what we put in it. And that is, it's a little bit more challenging than it was. Back when Standard was king, oh, if we have a brand new mechanic, we can put it in.

That's a big percentage of the environment. And so, yeah, that was viable. And with four of you could do it. Next, this is the one that probably hits me the hardest as a longtime magic designer. Eternal formats are defined by R&D mistakes to a good extent. They're defined by power level mistakes. They're defined by power level mistakes. They're defined by color pie mistakes.

You know, there's a lot of things where we did something we shouldn't do. And especially if it's something we shouldn't do, meaning we don't do it again because we shouldn't do it, those cards become outliers, you know. And it is a little, it's a little bit frustrating.

Like, one of the things about designing for standard was, you know, we would learn from things. Like one of the things about magic in general is, hey, it's an iterative process. We do things, we learn from it. And I think we, we make better magic now than we did 20, you know, 25, 30 years ago. Like we've learned from what we've done. You know, this is not a knock by the way against 30 years ago. We've learned from what we've done. This is not a knock, by the way, against 30 years ago. I was designing magic cards 25 years ago. But it's sort of like looking back at the Model T and like, hey, the Model T was an amazing car for the time the Model T was made. It was an amazing versus what existed. But then you build on the technology. And so there's so much

technology and magic design that we amazing versus what existed, but then you build on the technology. And so there's so much technology and magic design that we have a lot of ability to do a lot of cool things and we can learn from our mistakes and change them. So in a standard driven environment, those mistakes are a thing of the past. They don't exist anymore. But in an eternal world, they continue to exist. You don't get away from them. And so it is tricky that no matter how much I say to people, hey, white really isn't supposed to be making treasure. You know, here's a card in Commander that's one of the best cards making treasure and it's white. And so there's a lot of communication issues that happen as well where there are things

that like, that's not how things are supposed to function. But hey, where I play with the cards I have, well, that's the card that's doing it. And so it makes messaging, messaging can be a bit harder. And anyway, the mistakes living on has all sorts of issues that are a constant pain in my side. Next up, in a world in which things rotate, where your main format is a rotating format, you are encouraged to be a little bit riskier. And the reason for that is, let's say we make a mistake. Okay, it rotates out in two years. You know, what you live with when you make a mistake is not something that is something you have to live with for a very long time.

That doesn't mean we're trying to make mistakes. It just means that, you know, there is risk in anything you do. short rotating format, I think we are more willing to sort of push boundaries in a way of, okay, you know, if something turns out not to work, okay, you know, it'll rotate out. You don't have to live with it for too long. And in an eternal world, like I said, when you are defined by your mistakes, when your mistakes live on forever, wow, you are a lot more careful about trying not to make mistakes. And so that's another challenge is, you know, we want to push boundaries. We want to really try things and we want to experiment. But there's some pressures now that there's a much greater cost to making mistakes than there used to be.

And that doesn't mean we won't experiment. I'm experimented by nature. It doesn't mean we won't try to push some boundaries. But it does create more disincentive than the previous system did in a way that I already see, you know, where, like, an interesting example is, you know, when I was making Infinity and we decided to make Eternal Cards, you know, I was really, really cautious. And so there are some things that maybe I would have made, like, if it was something that would go into a system and leave the system, I'd try. But the idea is if I do this, it's forever in the system, you know, made me, I was conservative on a few cards, you know, nearby planet was like, well, we just didn't have the time to test it. So we didn't put it in the system. And so, you know, there, I think, for example, if it had been

something that would rotate out, oh, maybe let's try let's try, you know, it ends up being a problem. And so one of the offshoots of things not leaving the system is that it is, there's a discouragement from being as risky as sometimes we were in the past. I'm not saying we won't. I'm just, I'm saying that you really have to think about stuff when you push. And one of the interesting things about magic is there are a lot of pressures that are on you when you design. And some of them are very loud and some of them are very subtle. And some of the stuff I'm talking about today is loud, but a lot of it is very subtle where you're just like, well, you know, do I want

to introduce this to the system? Now, obviously, in internal formats, there's bannings. The problem there is twofold. One is bannings really are a last resort. So they only happen when something's really problematic. And the second is, in something like Commander, we don't even control the banlist. So it's not, like, we put things in the system. If it's going to cause a problem, it's going to cause a problem. And, you know, banning means it causes a real, real big problem. So, yeah, there's something against super large mistakes, but it's not something we want to use all that much. Banning things is not ideal.

We want to use all that much. Banning things is not ideal. We don't want to use banning necessarily as the means to solve some of the, I don't know, it makes it tricky. Okay, the next problem we run into is that you are fighting against everything that's ever done the thing. Meaning, if I'm doing something in a standard environment and I want to play around with something, well, I should get before that. It's easier to be novel in a rotating world. Let's say, for example, that I haven't done three-color magic in a couple years. So when you see, you know, oh, look, we haven't done wedge. We haven't done wedge in a while.

So when we do wedge in the old system, the system has nothing. There's no wedge in it. And so it is super exciting because you haven't played with wedge, maybe in years. Maybe we're doing a theme you like that we just haven't played in a while. It's easy to get people excited because if you're just a little bit patient things will rotate out

and then now you go oh i i get this thing that i haven't played for a while but in an eternal world it's like those things already exist it's not that people can't get excited you know if someone likes wedge more wedge cards are good so it's, I'm not saying there's zero excitement. I'm just saying it's a little bit trickier. It was easier, let's say it that way. It was easier under the old system to get people excited by old themes because the old themes had more time to be, you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder. Oh, I haven't played with these in a while. But now, you know, in eternal formats, I might't played with these in a while. But now, you know, in Eternal Formats, I might have played with it last week. So that's a little trickier. Now, an offshoot of that is that you fight against existing versions of things. So in a world in which

things rotate, if I make a card that's worse than a card that existed once, but is the best in the environment, okay, I'll play the card. It's the best there is. So, you know, if we did something in the past where we're like, well, we overshot a little bit. That's more powerful than we meant. When we make new cards, we can make them such that they fit the power level

they're supposed to be at. But when you're dealing in an internal world, well, that card still exists. People can still play it. So when you make something new, it's compared directly against that. So before, we're like, oh, here's a thing where in standard, yeah, yeah, yeah, in the older format, you can play this other card. But in standard, this is the card you'll play because it's the best you got in standard. Now we make that card and we're like, oh, why would you want to play that card? Because instantaneously it gets

compared against the more powerful older card. And again, when we make mistakes, if we do something stronger than we want to, it is very hard to set a new line for things in a way, like, because that one card is sort of definitional, that people go, well, I don't want to play another card that's weaker than that card, and so you get trapped in your mistakes a little bit, where it's like, well, in modern design, we don't want to, you know, we don't want power creep, I'll get to that in a sec, okay, we're going to do these effects at this level, but there's an existing card that just is so much better than them that everyone sort of gets upset every time they see it

because it just doesn't compare favorably. But again, you know, like, it's, you know, I often talk about how the present can't live, the present can't be held hostage to the past. And that

was always true, but even more true in an internal world because there is a pressure to sort of follow along with what the mistakes were. Oh, here's the most powerful card that does this. Okay, we shouldn't have made that card. Yeah, but it exists in this format. So if you want to excite me,

make me another one or make me something that's even better. And we're like, oh, we can't do that. And then that makes... And it forces us... So the answer on our side is it forces us to do a lot more niche things. And what I mean by that is

that we have to slice things thinner. So, like, it's powerful, but only in a very... like, in a particular deck. So what we can do is we can say, okay, well, if you're playing this particular strategy, we can make very powerful cards that work in this particular strategy, but aren't good in other strategies. Like, one of the things that in the past is we could make more uniformly powerful cards. Like, in a rotating world, it's just like, here's a great card that blue decks will want to play

it's just so good that every blue deck is going to play it we don't really want to make those anymore because in an eternal world well then every we don't want every blue deck to play it it's fine if we say you know what for a little bit of time we're going to put this in the final set of the year

so it will only be in magic for a year and three months and yeah well it's in you know probably most blue decks will play this at this in the final set of the year, so it'll only be in Magic for a year and three months. And yeah, while it's in, you know, probably most blue decks will play this. Nowadays, we really can't do that, because when you make a card that every blue deck has to play, that means from now on, every blue deck has to play it. And so we are much more into niche design. So one of the offshoots of this is making us really think about how to make effects that are powerful in situations or powerful synergistically with other cards, but that in a vacuum aren't sort of universally powerful by themselves. And that's a lot, by the way, a lot of the offshoot of today is as I define challenges that we are facing, it just means, okay, how does magic get designed now? It sort of changes the nature of how we make things. Oh, well, we need things to be more backward compatible. So we think about that when I'm

building a set. One of the things I have to always ask myself now is, okay, you know, are enough, enough percentage of my mechanics backward facing, backward compatible? Am I doing something where, you know, like, I always have to ask, is there a mechanic in my set that a commander person can make a deck out of and play right away? Not all the mechanics,

but some of the mechanics have to be. And I have to, like, that's now a parameter I always think about. Okay. Next is, there's this expectation to fill in gaps versus exploring new space. So what I mean by that is... So here's a perfect example. Let's say I want to make a legendary creature that cares about something.

Some mechanical thing. Now, in a world of rotation, what I want to do is I want to make the creature that just makes the most sense in where it's made. Okay, I'm in a world where I don't know, where soldiers are white and red. So I want to make my soldier lord, my legendary soldier lord, white and red. Because that's, in the environment I'm living, that's what it is.

But there's a lot of pressure to go, oh, well, soldiers aren't really red historically. More soldiers have been in white and blue. So make this white-blue or white-blue-red or, you know, like whenever we do something, there's this desire to us include with what we've done before. Like fill in the gaps of what we did before. You know, and, for example, if

let's say we do a set where we want to shift a creature type, you know. Oh, well normally you know, elves are green, maybe secondary black. But in this world we want red and green elves. So we're going to make a bunch of red elves.

And people are like, well, my deck doesn't need red elves. I'm not playing red. Make me more elves for my deck. There's definitely this pressure to say make me more cards for the deck I'm currently playing. In the past, you've made green elves or green black elves.

So what is this with red elves? Stop making red elves. But one of the things that's important for us is we want to push in new directions. We want to expand things. We want to open things up. We want to make a red green elf deck. We want that to be a thing. But one of the pressures of sort of the eternal world

is to always sort of think about how to prop up what exists versus how to push in new space. Now, the funny thing is, if we get aggressive enough with our elves in red, then from now on in the future, they're like, oh, make more stuff for red elves. Like, it's anything we do, if we push it to new space,

now becomes space that there's expectation for us to follow up in. So the idea of we're going to go to a world, and in this world, this creature type is, a good example is, I'll use Amonkhet. So in Amonkhet, we had the mummies, and it made perfect sense for Amonkhet for mummies to be white. Now, mummies, I say mummies, mummies were zombies. So it made sense we could make white zombies. Now, white zombies don't make a lot of sense in a lot of places. We really liked that in this world, white zombies made sense. And we built a lot of cards for this world to let you have fun with white zombies. But there's not a lot of reason to make white zombies.

It doesn't flavorfully fit. So now there's a lot of pressure to go, oh, but zombies are white. Where's the stuff with white zombies? They're like, well, we did that as a special, I mean, not necessarily a one-time thing, but as a not normal thing. And now whenever we sort of push in novel territory for purposes of making a new world that just feels different, and has its own play pattern, that there's a lot of these pressures of sort of like, why are you making new things when you can make more of my old thing?

And that's something we have to deal with. That doesn't mean we're not going to push in new directions. I mean, I think fundamentally the pushing in new directions is key and important. We want to make new worlds. We want to give new worlds definitions. But it is definitely, there is pressure. There is pressure. And once again, like I said, today's the challenges.

So this is a very real thing that we feel. Next, another issue that comes up with internal formats being sort of king is there are certain effects that are harder to find a home for. And what I mean by that is that they... For example, in Commander, there's certain strategies that just aren't good in Commander. And there's certain things in general that just aren't quite as strong in Eternal formats.

But one of the things that we have to live with is we still want to make those effects. There still are, we still have limited play. We still have standard play. You know, there are people, and the other thing that people keep, I like to talk about this in my blog all the time. The number one way people play is not Commander. The number one people play is the format I call Cards I Own. The vast majority of players do not play in formats,

do not go to their store, mostly just play with their friends at home on the kitchen table, and they make decks out of what they have. So a lot of what we design is we want to, like, one of the things that Limited does is Limited does a good job of sort of mimicking the power level of cards I own. And so there's a lot of effects that are smaller effects that is things that we, like, there is an audience that wants to play them, but man, it pushes against a lot, like, what makes these effects, and one of the notes we sort of get from, one of the notes we get from the players playing in internal formats is, why are you making this? No one's going to play this. This doesn't have any purpose. no one's going to play this, this doesn't have any purpose and so

the number of cards that are relevant in larger formats shrinks, and I'll get to some of that in a second and I'll get to the balance issues and so there definitely is more discontent with more lower level cards that are just made

for other places because I think in a standard world there's just more things that could be relevant. You know, the less cards you have in your format, the more cards that can be relevant. The larger your format gets. So let me talk about this next issue. Basically, the more cards in your format, the fewer percentage of the cards in the format are relevant. So if my format is 1,000 cards, well, a lot of cards, you know, 3, 400 cards can be relevant. That's 30, 40% can be relevant.

But when you have 24,000 cards, again, there's going to be 3,000 to 400 cards, maybe a little bit more. But let's say there's 1,000 thousand to fifteen hundred cards that are relevant. That's still a tiny portion, that's the percentage of cards that matter. So one of the challenges of being in an eternal world is we don't want to power creep, right? The goal is not to make every set more powerful than the set that came before it. So there are some real challenges from a play design standpoint of trying to make things such that we're not power creeping, but we're still making cards that are relevant and excitable to people who are doing things. And so this gets into a bunch of different things.

One is it is just harder to playtest larger formats. I'm not saying we don't try to playtest it. We do. But the combinatorics, like the stat I always tell is when we were making Magic Online, so this is back in early 2000s, Magic Online was

coming out. We said, someone came to us and said, we want to do an ad for Magic Online. And what we want to do is we want a list of the number do an ad for Magic Online. And what we want to do is we want a list of the number of decks possible in Magic Online. So again, this is back in 2000. So Magic is, you know, eight to 10 years old. Okay. Magic is a third, a third of its current age. And what we found was there were more decks that you could make in magic than there were atoms in the universe and that was 20 years ago. It's only

exponentially larger. What that means is there is no way for us to playtest for larger formats in the same way we can playtest for smaller formats. I'm not saying we don't do it. I'm not saying there aren't things we can do. I'm not saying playtesting isn't valuable. But the ability to miss combinations is huge. Like, all it takes is this card with this one other card that exists in the format, together are very powerful, that can define things. And there's no way when you're testing new cards

that you can test against all 24,000 existing cards. You can test against the obvious cards sometimes. But a lot of times the powerful is, here's a card that wasn't really relevant. But when mixed with this card, all of a sudden it's very powerful.

Those are near impossible to catch. Especially, like I said, a lot of what we test now, we play test, is making sure the new things are fun, but it is hard to stress test, are there

weird combos or things that will cause problems those are really hard to find another thing is just the power level issue in as a whole when we premier sets which is I mean part of this is why we're making more supplemental sets and why some more supplemental sets are aimed more at stuff like modern that it is hard keeping a steady power level of making cards that are going to excite people and be usable, like, not impossible,

and once again, it gets us more into niche design, but it is a challenge. It is something that is very tricky to do. Another big thing is you have a lot less control of your environment. When I am making, when the card pool that's entering the system is a fourth of the environment

or a fifth or a sixth of the environment, it has a big impact on what's going on. It has a giant impact. So you really have the ability, like if something's going in a certain direction and you want to re-stere it or correct what's going on, you have a lot of ability to do that. When you're adding, you know, 300 cards to 24,000 cards, it's a drop in the bucket. I'm not saying you can't impact it. I'm not saying you can't push certain strategies. I'm not saying you can't do

some stuff, but you're way, way, way more restricted. You have a lot less control. And that's, I guess, the biggest thing here, the play design issue, is you have so much less control when designing for internal formats from a power level standpoint, from an ability to predict things, from ability of adjusting the environment like that's another really hard thing which is if things aren't going well obviously there's banning but you know like one of the things that we do now like this has become a big part of how we design stuff is we look at formats some larger formats and say hey are there strategies that people would like to play but aren't quite good enough to play?

And that's one of the areas we start pushing now is saying, okay, well, this is close. So if we give you some good cards, you know, these cards will only be usable in this deck and only if this deck is good. So we can be a lot more aggressive in how we're pushing things because it's very niche and narrow. It's not going to raise the power level everywhere. It's going to raise the power level for this deck. And that's a big strategy we take now is being very conscious of where can we push and what can we do. But again, that means we're taking strategies

that have already existed because there's enough of a... Like, the fact that it's even close means it's an existing strategy we've done before. And again, that just makes new things trickier. Not impossible, but trickier. Another big issue we run into is there's a lot of focus on old versus new. And what I mean by that is, look, we're in the business of making new cards, right?

We want to make brand new things. We put sets out every couple months, or every month, every... It depends. It depends what format you're looking at. But anyway, we put a lot of stuff out and it's playable in a lot of areas. And, you know, on some level,

we want you focusing on the new cards. What are the cool new things? And there is some focus. New things are exciting. But one of the big issues is that because things are so, because there are broken things in the past that, like, are things we're not going to fix that are just there,

there's a lot of focus on the old cards. Like, one of the big things now is, you know, we're making all these exciting new cards, and, like, one of the number one things is, okay, where are the reprints? And we're like, I mean, we'll make reprints, and it's not that we don't want to do reprints, it's not that, it's not that it's not exciting to, like, put reprints in when they make sense, but, you know, reprints can be tricky, and there are a lot of challenges doing reprints, and, you know, you, like, it is not that not that easy like one of the things about a trading card game the reason that standard exists as a format the reason that rotation exists as a format

is the very nature of a trading card game is component pieces of it get hard to get it's a collectible and the idea the reason that we made standard in the first point is hey, over time, it's going to be a lot harder to get cards that came out 15, 20 years ago and so the other thing is there's a lag time on our end, which is we make products years ahead of time

so let's say we miss something because we make a new card that's really good with this old card and because of that, this old card that wasn't relevant now becomes super relevant. The second we notice that, even if we decide, oh, wow, people like this card, we should reprint this card, there's like a two-year lag that we work ahead of time. So even if we recognize and see that something needs a reprint,

and we find a place to reprint it, and we're willing to reprint it, there's still a lag before we can reprint it. And so that's another challenge. And, I mean, two things. One is we would like players' attention to be focused on the new and exciting things. Obviously, that's what we do. And it's hard for us to always make equal access to all the old cards there's a lot of challenges

with finding old cards not saying we can't do it not saying we don't want to do reprints not saying we don't want to provide them but they come with a lot of baggage reprints aren't just and we want the new sets

to be about the new thing that, you know, I, it's sad sometimes, you know, from a design standpoint where you make an exciting new world

with exciting new mechanics and the most exciting thing in the set is, ooh, they reprinted this card. And like I said, that does get audiences excited. It does sell sets, we do do it I'm not saying we don't do it

but it is a little set from a design standpoint we spend so much time on crafting something new and exciting when the exciting thing is this mistake we made 20 years ago got reprinted so that is tricky a lot of what I'm trying to say today is one of the realities of a lot of what I'm trying to say today is one of the realities

of making magic is one of the things I love about the game is that it's a living breathing game and what I mean by that is that the game goes

where like the audience sort of enjoys things. We in R&D reflect and see what they enjoy. Now, we find new, like, our goal is to say, what do players like about Magic? What could they like about Magic? And then let's move in the direction. And it's a combination of sort of pushing toward what players want to be and us finding new spaces

that seem to follow the trends of what players want. And so a lot of designing magic is there's this magic as a system kind of goes where it wants to go. And I think people think of us as, like, choosing where it goes. But really what we're trying to do is figure out where people want it. And yes, we figure out new things. Like, a lot of times we're extrapolating. Oh, players like this aspect of things. Well, what if I push in here, which is a different way to do it than they've never done it before.

But hey, if they like thing A, they probably like thing B. to do it that they've never done it before. But hey, if they like thing A, they probably like thing B. But a lot of magic from design is sort of letting magic go where it wants to go and then innovating in that space. So, I mean, look, this is my 27th year working on magic. Why am I not bored? Because of this very dynamic. The fact that magic keeps changing.

That it's never the same game. That the challenges I have today are not the challenges I had last year or two years ago or five years ago or 10 years ago or 20 years ago. So when I talk about challenges, I mean, there are definitely some things that can be frustrating. But I, honest to God, I love having challenges. I love having to figure things out. I love, you know, the stuff I'm talking about today keeps it fresh on our end. It's not that it can't be frustrating at times.

It very much can be frustrating at times. But that doesn't mean, but when you solve the problem, when you have a very frustrating problem that you solve, that feels great. And so a lot of what I want to explain today is, look, magic is a complex system. There's a lot of moving parts. It's an ever-evolving game.

And that means that it keeps inventing new challenges for us, the people that make it. Oh, if you're wondering, by the way, why there's such a long... There was traffic today. And so I'm almost to work, but I was sitting in traffic for a while. So when I'm at home, you never get the joy of extra traffic content.

But when I'm on the road, extra traffic content for you, which is good because this is a complex topic. So it's funny. Sometimes I do podcasts on topics that I got 30 minutes and then I have traffic. I'm like, oh, but this is a pretty meaty topic. So I think I can fill out till we get to get to work. Anyway, sorry, a little side note. So the point I'm trying to make is that I don't want you thinking like these challenges

are a negative thing. They can be a frustrating thing and they definitely can be something that can like, not every challenge is easily solved. Yes, there are challenges and we work to solve those challenges and many challenges we do solve. Some challenges it's hard to solve. I'm not saying we don't find any solutions, but we don't, not every problem has a slam dunk answer. Reprints are a great question where we're finding more and more ways to make use of reprints. We're finding more and more different ways and more like we're, we're trying to sort of say, hey, let's think of reprints as an important tool. How do we make reprints? Like rather than reprints

fighting what we're doing rather than saying here's a brand new exciting set and this reprint is just pulling focus is there a way to make reprints part of the focus?

A really good example of that was the Mystic Archive in Strixhaven, right? Where it's like okay, we want to get some things out here but is there a way

to make it organic to the world rather than like in some ways the focus of the set was instance and source, that's trick saving. So what if we use our reprints

to pull toward that focus? So a lot of when I say, okay, there's a challenge, well, okay, reprints are hard to do and reprints pull focus. How do we keep reprints pulling focus? That's been a big challenge. So let me walk through all my challenges and talk about sort of what the answers are, how

we're getting there real quickly, because I'm almost at work. Nothing leaves the system. That means that we have to be more aware of older things. But it does mean we can build on older things. So one of the things we're doing there is hey are there cool themes that we once upon a time did some stuff with but we could do more with

so trying to find old themes trying to figure out how to do new mechanics we're making use of more things like batching we're pulling in aspects of old things, we're looking at backward compatibility and we're really rethinking how we do mechanics in a way that allows us to do more

backward compatibility. Defined by mistakes. We definitely that makes us try to push in other directions to give you, make it such that there are a lot of cards that let you do something, but maybe in the direction you're supposed

to be rather than the direction you're not. Like, maybe this one card is broken in the wrong color, but a lot of cards in the right color are in the right color. So it's like, well, I have access to one card in the wrong color, or a lot of cards in the right color. Oh, maybe I do, like, we can slowly with time do a little bit of shifting in that regard. The discouragement to be risky. I think we're figuring out how to be risky. Like, once again, being more risky with niche things. Being risky is in a way where if we

miss, it's not sort of adding something to every deck. Fighting against existing versions of things. Just being very conscious of where we were before. Sometimes we lean into it. I know in supplemental products, maybe we'll make the legendary thing that involves

the old thing and the new thing. We're being more conscious of that. Harder to find novel space because there aren't time off. Part of that is trying to see can we... It just requires us to approach things a little bit differently.

Can we find a new tweak or a new twist or something that just adds a little bit of something to the system so that there's a quality of feeling new to it. Expectation to fill in gaps. I mean, part of that is finding ways where we can fill in gaps. Finding worlds where the gap can be part of what the new world wants to be. Oh, players want this thing. Oh, maybe this thing could be part of what the new world wants to be. Oh, players want this thing. Oh, maybe this thing could be part of the new world. Like, being aware of what gaps players want and then looking for places to put those gaps

in existing things where it's organic to what we're doing. Certain effects have less of a home. Some of that is trying to find other ways to combine effects. So maybe these effects are combined with effects people do want to play with. Or maybe there's ways to shift things around. So effects that aren't as valuable, maybe find a home because in enough volume, maybe they can do something. Or maybe they're combined in a way that now, when combined with this new card, they mean something in a way they haven't before. Power level.

They mean something in a way they haven't before. Power level. It's just rethinking about how we create sets, where we put the power, how we do it. Like I said before, we're moving away from generally useful cards, meaning this is as a great card as any blue deck, but play no matter what you're doing. And trying to push our power a little more into things that have a home and a structure and a purpose

so that in the right place this is very powerful, but not every deck wants to play it. And definitely playing more in that space. Focusing on old cards versus new is talking about how do we use reprints in a way that, like I said, that is powerful and pushes in theme. Providing access to old cards. You know, supplemental sets are doing a lot more with this. And even finding ways in Premiere sets to provide access to old things. Less control over environment.

That's really made us rethink a little bit about how we do things. And part of that is looking at old themes that are close. Or when making new themes, maybe attaching new themes so they can combine with elements of old themes that are close or when making new themes, maybe attaching new themes so they can combine with elements of old themes. That is just looking differently at how we make the themes. In all these cases,

the answer isn't we can't do it. The answer is we have to think about things differently. And that fundamentally, I mean, I guess there's probably no better lesson about being a magic designer. Like, one of the things about being a magic designer is the ground keeps shifting

from under you. Like, the very thing that makes magic so compelling as a game, the idea that something's good and all of a sudden it's not, or some strategy works and all of a sudden

it's not the dominant strategy, you know, magic is constantly shifting. And I think the players, I think you guys see it, it's constantly shifting under And I think the players, I think you guys see it, it's constantly shifting under your feet. Because oh, what once worked does not work. Or new cards change strategies or whatever. Well, it's shifting under our feet too.

The people that make the game, what matters and how things work and what tools we have access to, it keeps shifting as well. And the audience, like the audience, there's things that the players want, but with time they want different things, and different things matter. Like one of the things that's really interesting on my blog is, hey, I get people telling me what they want. And so I've

had a good vantage point for many, many years to say, what do people want? And not that there's not through lines, there's some things that generally Magic players want, but there's definitely things that become more focused. For example, you know, nobody was asking for more double-faced cards until we made double-faced cards. But once we made double-faced cards, once we demonstrated you could do TDFCs and MDFCs, like once we start showing what can be done with something, hey, players want more of that. with something, hey, players want more of that. And so it's really interesting in that

as we shift things, as we add new tools, as we come up with new ideas, as just the focus of Magic, like I said, you know, Eternal Formats being the thing right now changes, that shifts the ground from under us. So anyway, like I said,

my point of today is not, I hope it didn't come across as griping. Um, I just was kind of being honest with, okay, here's the challenges. That, that is not a bad thing. Um, like I said, I would, I would grow bored. I would not enjoy my job as much if there weren't constant challenges. So the fact that these challenges exist, hey, I, it is an awesome thing. It is not a bad thing.

I'm not upset that Magic's in a different place. It just means I've got to deal with different things. And that, that is my job. That is what I do. So, I like to think of it as job security. So, you guys get interested in different things, the game shifts, we've got to shift with it. And now, I get to make new and different Magic things. So, anyway, I'm curious because I'm almost over it now.

What do you guys think of this podcast? This was a little different. It was me talking sort of larger ecosystem things about design. I've done a little bit of this before, but if you guys like it, I can do more of it. You know, one of the things that I find when I talk to players is they get very intrigued by issues that we have to think about that they never thought of. Oh, I never realized you'd have to think about that. So, people seem to enjoy that, which was kind of the impetus for today's podcast of just sort of saying,

hey, here's a lot of the things we've got to worry about now. So, if you guys enjoy it, let me know. Or if you don't enjoy it, it's funny, I always say if you like this, let me know. If you don't like something, you're like, ah, this was boring. Or it could have used less traffic or whatever. Let me know. That's always good to know. But anyway, guys, I am literally pulling into the parking lot of Wizards of the Coast. So we all know what that means. It means this is the

end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.