Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #106 - Games with R&D

Episode Date: March 21, 2014

Mark takes a look back at R&D and talks about the many games we played.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I have a little more offbeat topic. So one of the things that's interesting is I talk a lot, when I talk about the history of Magic, I tend to talk about the game itself and I've talked about the people, but I haven't talked about sort of the game playing. So when I first got to Wizards, I mean, I was a game player. I've been a game player my entire life. But one of the things about my early time at Wizards is I felt like I really got an education in games. And today is going to be about showing some stories of early Wizards days with a focus on game playing. A little bit of magic, but a lot of other types of games as well.

So anyway, this is kind of a reminiscent story podcast, just talking about kind of where R&D Once Upon a Time was. It's different now. Or I'm different now. But anyway, so when I first got to Wizards, like I said, everybody who worked in R&D when I got there, nobody was from Seattle. Everybody had come from somewhere else. And so really, everybody kind of, the social circle was the group of R&D. And we hung around together. And we played games together, because we were gamers. And so, a lot of my game education happened in my early days at Wizard. So, I want to talk about that. So, the first thing that happened is,

the way it would work is, we would work during the day. For dinner, we would always go out to eat at some restaurant. In fact, I think I told the story of when I was dating Laura, and she went to my cupboard to get some food, and there was nothing there. And she opened the fridge, and there's nothing there. There's literally no food in my apartment. And she's like, where's your food? And I go, oh, yeah, I don't eat here.

Because I ate out every single meal. That was my bachelor days. And R&D, we just hung out. So we'd go out to lunch at lunch, and at dinner we'd go out. And then usually after dinner, we'd come back and we would play games. And the ringleader of our game playing

was Richard Garfield. So, I mean, I've talked a lot about Richard. Here's an aspect that I haven't talked too much about. Richard Garfield. So, I mean, I've talked a lot about Richard. Here's an aspect that I haven't talked too much about. Richard loves games. Loves, loves, loves, loves games. I've not met somebody who is

as fascinated by games as Richard. And not just, I mean, Richard loves the history of games. He loves breaking down games and understanding games and he just loves playing every game he can get his hand on. And so when I first got there, Richard was very

into German games. So let me explain for those that don't know your history. Germany happens to have a culture that really highlights games as not just something for a subset of the audience. Like, in the U.S., like, there's gamers, although even this is broadening.

But it's just like you would go to the movies with your family. You will play games. It's just something that in the German culture is just very accepted. Game playing is just something that all families kind of do. The biggest game convention in the world called Essen, Essen Spiel, is in Germany. And anyway, Germany has always had a great fascination for games, and because of it, there's a lot of games that come out of Germany. Now, in the last 10, 15 years,

there's been companies that have finally started bringing those games over to the U.S. And so a lot of these German games now are very accessible and playable. But once upon a time, for example, when I started at Wizards, remember, I started at Wizards in 1995, there were no, none of the German games

had been brought to English yet, brought to the U.S. yet. And so Richard had acquired them, asked him mostly, and acquired them in yet. And so Richard had acquired them, asked him mostly, and acquired them in German. And so what happened was sometimes Richard would get photocopies of English rules,

but a lot of times he would just learn the rules and then he would teach us how to play. So for example, I remember him teaching a game called Siedler, which you guys might know

as Settlers of Catan. So I think the German name is like Siedler, which you guys might know as Settlers of Catan. So I think the German name is like Siedler de Catan or something. But we called it Siedler because that was his German name. Siedler Settlers, I assume. And I first learned that game like Richard was telling us. And the rules were in German, so I had to trust that Richard told us correctly. And it was fun.

I mean, one of the things that was great is Richard would just introduce us to games that we had never played before. And then, some of the time, he really introduced the games we'd never played before because they were Richard's games. Because Richard would play games with us and then he would make up other games

and play that with us. For example, there was a game he made that was released under the name What Were You Thinking? It was based on a German game. I don't remember the name of the German game, but it was influenced by a game he saw in German. And the premise of the game, for those that have never played it, is you get asked a question. And then you are supposed to try to match as many other people as possible. Now, Richard, when he made the game, the playtest name is called

Hive Mind. And so the idea was that you would ask the question, and then, so let's say you said, you know, name a flower. Well, you, you know, a daisy, or maybe rose, or you know, what do you think most people would write down? That's what you're trying to write down. And here's the trick thing about the game, which was very interesting, which was, even if the answer was incorrect if the most people wrote it down it was still the right answer so for example

if they said name an insect or name five insects or whatever spider might be the correct answer but spiders aren't insects that is true but it didn't matter because it wasn't you weren't trying to get the

you weren't trying to correctly answer the question you were trying to get the answer the most people put so one of my favorite stories about Hive Mind you weren't trying to correctly answer the question. You were trying to get the answer that most people put. So one of my favorite stories about Hive Mind, so there's a guy named Joe Grace, who if you've ever seen Timmy Power Gamer from Unglued, Joe was the model for it.

His picture is on it. And Joe was the biggest Timmy you've ever met. You know, he just, he loved playing for just the thrill and the experience. He would play the giant creatures. Every sort of stereotypical thing you think of Timmy Power Gamer, that was Joe. But he was very, very bad at Hive Mind. For some reason, he couldn't quite click in and so

one of my favorite stories is we used to tease him, I mean playfully tease him about it but one of the things that would happen is we would play and Joe would say oh I got it, I got it, this time I have it and then he would always miss so one time it was name three dwarves. So you had to write down three dwarves,

and then Joe goes, I want to go first. I want to go first. I got this one. I got this one. And we go, okay. And he goes, okay. Who has Gimli?

And the correct answer, obviously, was like Dopey, Grumpy, and I think Doc was the third best answer. But anyway, everybody else was writing the dwarves of the seven dwarves, and he was writing the dwarves from Lord of the Rings. Another game that Richard taught us, I only know it as the goat game. I don't know.

It's got a name. It's got a name. I know it as the goat game. It was a game you would play that was very, very complex. You might know it as the goat game. So it was a game you would play that was very, very complex. And when you were learning the game, you thought that whoever was teaching you was punking you.

Like they were just making fun of you. Because like, oh no, there's this rule. Oh no, there's this rule. And so what happened was, when you play, the way the game worked is there wasn't a winner, there was just a loser. And if you lost the goat game, the reason it was called the goat game, is you had to make the sound of a goat. That was the cost of losing. And so one day, we had a new person, actually it wasn't even from R&D, Andrew, Andrew Finch, who was the tournament

organizer for the Pro Tour for quite a while. Andrew had just joined, and we were playing the Goat Game, and Andrew loses. And when you first play the Goat Game, it is truly like, you have no idea what's going on, because the rules are coming, and there's stages to the game, and each game works differently, and it's a complicated, confusing

game. So the first time you play, you're like, I don't know how I'm supposed to win this game. I don't understand what's going on. And so odds are, odds are you lose the first time you play, you're like, I don't know how I'm supposed to win this game. I don't understand what's going on. And so odds are, odds are you lose the first time you play because you have no idea what you're doing. But Andrew's like, I was just learning. I'm not going to make the goat noise. I was just learning. And we're like, no, no, you've got to make the goat noise. And Andrew's like, no!

I was just learning. This is not fair. I believe I should have an exception here. You know, I shouldn't be punting. I don't know what I'm doing. I didn't even know what I was doing. I should not make the goat noise. And we're like, Andrew, you've got. I don't even know what I'm doing. I should not make the goat noise. And we're like, Andrew, you've got to make the goat noise. And Andrew's like, I refuse to make the goat noise. So we're like, Andrew, let me explain what happens.

Under the rules of R&D, if you refuse to make the goat noise, none of us can speak with you until you make a goat noise. That's the rules of R&D. Andrew's like, I'm not making the goat noise. So we're like, my memory was it was a couple days, maybe it was a couple hours, I don't know. But we just didn't talk to Andrew. Finally, Andrew's like, fine, fine.

He makes the goat noise. But, oh, so another thing. Let me talk about the game. So R&D, there's just endless games in R&D. But one of the games we called The Game, I think it was, so Scaf Elias, Scaf is one of these cosplay chapters, started the Pro Tour.

Scaf had gone to Princeton with Jim Lynn, another of these cosplay chapters. And I think at Princeton, Scaf and some of his friends had made this game called The Game. And the way The Game worked was was there were a bunch of rules. Now, you weren't allowed to, I think you weren't allowed to tell people the rules

until they broke the rule, and then there were punishments for certain rules, like certain rules got you a punch in the shoulder, although we weren't too hard about it. At college, I get sensitive to the harder punch. And there are other rules, but sometimes you did something and you couldn't speak until...

So there are a whole series of rules. In some ways, it was probably a wide variety of games, but they were all woven together, and it was just called the game. And so, for example, part of the game was there were certain words that you couldn't say. One of the words you couldn't say. One of the words you couldn't say was jinx. Now, so you can't see me driving, but when I said that, I made

air quotes, because if you put in air quotes, there were certain power words, and if you put power words in air quotes, then you were okay. But if you said the power word without the air quote, then you could be punished, then you had broken the rule. And so there were just words peppered that you couldn't say. Jinx being one of them. I'm trying to remember the other words. Anyway, so what would happen is R&D understood we were playing this game. I mean, most of us eventually learned the rules. But other people outside of R&D had no idea the game was even going on.

but other people outside of R&D had no idea the game was even going on and so what would happen was you would try in the context of just normal life at Wizards to get other R&D people to mess up and say words they weren't supposed to and so you would do things

there in fact is a card is it Homelands? there's a card called Jinx that was literally manual card names so we could mess with each other and try to get other people to say the name. And there were part of it was

one was called the circle game where if you made a circle with your fingers and it was at your belt liner below and someone looked at it then that had a repercussion. If two people said the same word at the same time and looked at it, then that had a repercussion. If two people said the same word at the same time, there was repercussion.

And there were different punishments for different things you could do. Like sometimes, like one of the ones, if you did it, then you couldn't speak until someone said your name. And so you had to go around trying to get people to say your name,

but R&D knew they weren't supposed to say your name. So you try to get people to earn an R&D. So like one of the fun things was I go up to somebody who has no idea what I'm doing, I can't speak, and I'm trying to get them to say my name. There's some tricks you learn. There was a doorknob game where doorknobs negated the power of certain things, so if you broke a rule but you touched a doorknob, then you were okay. So, like, Richard for a while took a doorknob off a door

and had it in his pocket, so he would break the rules to have people punch him, except he would reveal he had a doorknob in his pocket, so they got double punched because they falsely punished him. Anyway, to give you a sense of the craziness, when I first got into Wizards, we don't play the game anymore, but there was many years early on, maybe five years, where we were playing the game,

and it completely peppered the interaction experiences at the time. And my addition to the game, I talked about this once before on a podcast, was the Meerkat game

that I learned from Roseanne and we played that for a while. The Meerkat game is where you perch up like a Meerkat and everybody in the room has to perch up

like a Meerkat until everybody does and then you break and don't talk about it. We played that. That was my contribution to the game. The game seemed to be ever-evolving. They've entertained us. We added in. But anyway, that was...

To try to get a true sense... I always talk about how I love to make a sitcom of wizards. The idea of a sitcom about a bunch love to make a sitcom of wizards that like you know the idea of a sitcom about a bunch of people from a game company and if we did that the game would be in that sitcom

like absolutely positively 100% in the pilot no questions asked okay other things we did I think I might have talked about this one but it's funny enough I'll talk about it again. So some of our games were mental, but some of them were physical.

So one of my favorite games is we used to have this giant room that was meant for all hands. But other than all hands, in which they'd set up chairs, it was empty. It was a giant empty room. So what happened was,

when I first got to Wizards, we were in... So Wizards started in Peter's basement, and then they eventually got offices, which when I first worked at Wizards, we were in those offices. But like a month after getting there, we moved to the new offices. And then, I don't know, seven, eight years ago, we moved from the new offices to the new new offices, which are across the street. So this is in the old and new offices.

So not the basement, not the first offices, but the second offices, the ones that are across the street from our current offices. And there's this giant, giant, giant room. So what we did is we would take up our office chairs that were on wheels, or maybe there were office chairs up there. We would get office chairs, and then we got hockey sticks, and we got a little rubber ball, and then we'd set up, we might have even had goal posts, we might have even actually had little goals, and so we'd play office chair hockey.

And the way it would work is that you had two teams, you were allowed contact between chairs, although you weren't supposed to hit people if you could but you could check chairs which we did all the time and the idea was that we played hockey so you had to stay seated in your chair and the chairs could smash into each other and we would play this multiple times a week and it was full contact

you were sweating by the end of it. It was, because you were just, it was a big room, and you used your legs a lot because you had to push. And there was a lot of swiveling you had to do, and when you would check people, you wanted to swivel with the back.

And people would knock people out of their chairs, and it was full contact hockey, but in office chairs. And then the thing, Barry was the guy who was in charge of operations, and Barry used to yell at us because we had a tendency to make chips

in the ceiling, and Barry, we'd also make marks on the wall, but Barry could get the marks on the wall off, but he couldn't get the chips in the ceiling out, and he's like, guys, guys, please don't chip the ceiling. That was his big note.

But anyway, that was office cheer hockey. That was a game that I always got a big kick out of. And like I said, we also did some physical stuff. So another thing we did is at lunch. So Bill Rose loves trick-taking games. In fact, Bill Rose met Richard Garfield in a bridge club. And so Richard and Bill, there's a lot of R&D folks that really love different Trump games. So a Trump game is usually a card game in which you're putting down cards and picking up cards, and then different suits have different values at different times, or certain games, certain suits

are Trump, you know. But anyway, both Bill and Richard love trick-taking games. So we, there was a period of time where we'd always go to lunch and we'd play trick-taking games. Now you have to understand that I, so, when I got a Wizards, I've talked about this I think before, but, so when I got a Wizards,

it was very interesting in that I was used to growing up being one of the smartest kids in the class. You know, whatever room I was in, I was one of the smartest kids in the room. And I got to R&D in which every kid was one of the smartest kids in the room. You know, that, it was cool, it was very refreshing, but it was

different, you know. Usually if I had an argument, I could win my argument because I could argue anybody who I would be in a room with. And then I got in a room full of people that learned how to argue really well and took it to the whole next level. Now, game playing is similar, which was, I came, where I came from, I was one of the best gamers, you know, from where I came from. I was a very, very good gamer. But I got to R&D and like, that's nothing. These guys are the best gamers where they come from. And that, in certain games, I was fine. I could hold my own. But I got to R&D and like, that's nothing. These guys are the best gamers where they come from. And that, in certain

games I was fine, I could hold my own. But in other games I was way outclassed. So one of them was trick-taking games. Like I said, Bill is like, Bill is so good at trick-taking games that you honestly think there's a hidden camera and he's just screwing with you. You know? Like, you will play a game with Bill and he's like, yeah,

on that fourth turn you should have played the four spades. And I'm like, I turn you should have played the four of spades. And I'm like, I didn't even know I had the four of spades. Did I have the four of spades? Like, Bill would remember every move of every game

and know everybody's hand at the end of it. You know? He's like, why on the fifth turn did you not play the two of clubs instead of the

four of spades? You were void and you could have played the two of clubs. And he's like, was I? And what's interesting like when you would make a mistake bill would like identify exactly where you made the mistake and so it was

intimidating because like i i was you know i knew how to play trick-taking games i mean and with with a normal audience i was okay i wasn't great but i was okay but with this crowd um especially bill i was like we used to keep track. We used to have a score. And they still do this today. Today, Bill still does the trick-taking lunches. I just don't play them anymore. And they keep track. There's an ongoing score.

And it was just pathetic because I was just outclassed completely. I mean, they let me play, but I was outclassed completely. And it was... I mean, I got better at trick-taking games, that's for sure. I mean, one of the things they say about how to get better is, play with people better than you, you will get better. And so I learned, although I never learned enough in spitting distance of their games, so I do not play their games anymore, their trick-taking

games anymore. Okay, another very fun opportunity. I'll talk magic. I finally get to magic. One of the things that Richard loved to do was invent drafts. Richard would love to make drafts.

Often they were two-person drafts, although sometimes he made larger ones. In general, let me leave it a little bit. Richard is a game inventor. Richard liked making games. So, Richard was always making games. He's always making games.

He's a game inventor. Every waking moment, he's making a game. And so Richard would often come to your desk and say, do you want to play a game? And you could tell, he had a tone he would ask when you're like, oh, okay, he's a playtester. He wants to play Richard's games. And what would happen is,

people would always say to Richard, well, how long does it take? How long will it take? And Richard finally learned that the correct answer to get people to play your game was 15 minutes. Now note,

that didn't mean it was 15 minutes. It just meant, you needed an answer, Richard would give you an answer, and so he would tell you 15 minutes, because people would go, oh, okay, I can play. And eventually you would learn, because Richard would have this little glee when he said 15 minutes because people would go, oh, okay, I can play. And eventually you would learn

because Richard would have this little glee when he said 15 minutes that you just, if you knew him, like, it was just his line. It wasn't 15 minutes. It wasn't the truth. It was just what he needed to say to get picked up in playtesting.

And, by the way, playtesting Richard's game was a lot of fun. One of the things that's very interesting, by the way, for those that don't do a lot of playtesting in games, and that one other thing about playtesting a game is that it's very interesting

early on to see a game come together. Like, people ask me my favorite magic games, and I love design playtests. Now, understand that design playtests are rough.

They're not nearly as polished as, you know, the magic that you all play, and it has a lot of quirks, and there are bad moments, way more bad moments, and there's plenty of ugliness that comes along with playtests, because you don't have things right. But there are just moments of joy, because you've... I mean, I guess in some level you guys experience this

the first time you play a card set, but when I play a set, I have no idea what's going on, and that even I, the person who made it, don't really understand what's going to happen until we play it. Like, one of my favorite things is the very first common play test. When you sit down, and you've never played before, and you've looked at the cards, and you've thought about the cards, you know, and you have a mix of things, and you have no idea what's going to happen. And sometimes it's a horrible, crazy train wreck, although the funny thing is, horrible, crazy train wrecks are not bad playtests.

You learn a lot. The worst playtests are ones where things are good, but could they be better? You know, those are the worst. You're not quite sure if you have it right, but you didn't get enough bad stuff to know you need to change things. Anyway, one of the fun game playings at Wizards was playing with Richard, playing new games. Like, name a game that came at Wizards was playing with Richard, playing new games. Like, name a game that came out while I was working there. Like, I played early versions

of, you know, most games you can name that Richard did. And that, it was fun, you know, playing you know, King of Tokyo for the first time. In fact, King of Tokyo I played at a World's, and it was Yokohama, I think.

Well, one of the Worlds in Japan. And Richard was not working Wizards anymore, but he and I met up at Worlds, and he had, like, on index cards and things, an early version of King of Tokyo, which, again, my family and I play all the time now. And I was super tired because I was jet-lagged, but I played. It was a lot of fun.

Anyway, I'm deviating. So one of the things Richard would do is he would make up ways to draft magic. And a bunch of the drafts, I mean, there are some drafts. If you know a lot of two-player drafts, a bunch of them started with Richard. Richard created them. And the funny thing is, I don't know

what all of them were called. Richard had a draft called Let's Make a Deal that R&D really liked. There's a bunch of different ones. But what's fun is that Richard always found a way to just take things and tweak them and try them in a different way. Oh, like, another thing Richard would do. So,

not only did Richard introduce you to German games and stuff, Richard would introduce you to classic games. One of the things that Richard loved is, Richard really, like, introduced it, like, one day we would go out to lunch, he goes, we're learning dominoes, you know, and, like, I played dominoes, but, like, did I know the real rules to dominoes? Not

really. And Richard taught us, like, okay, here's the rules to dominoes. You know, here's the variance, here's the things, and, like, it's kind of like Richard teaching game was, like, this educational little seminar, you know, and the thing that was awesome is, we would just play some, like, let's play checkers. Let's play Chinese checkers. Let's play a fellow.

Or reverse it or whatever. Let's play some games that, like, you probably have played, but have you really played? And you understand where they come from? And Richard would fill you in, like, where the game, like, like Richard actually at one point at the University of Washington he and Scaf had a class in game history that was about games

but it just talked about kind of like the evolution of games and where they learn things and I never had a chance to go to it just because

at that point I had my family and it wasn't easy to get away but I was very jealous of the people that got to take that class because like

I mean I got bits and pieces of it over the years of you know Richard explaining things, and, but it was fun, just, just kind of having a Games 101, I mean, with Richard Garfield, I mean, absolutely, you know, like, a pretty awesome experience. I think I'm almost to work. The last thing I'll talk about, this was, this was not all of R&D. Richard was involved

and a few other R&D people were involved and some other people and wizards were involved in this one. So one of the things we did one time was we decided that it would be fun to have a puzzle hunt. We thought it would be good for morale. That it would just be fun for...

But the idea was something unannounced that it just happened. And so we decided to base it around Alice in Wonderland. For those that aren't super familiar with Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll was a big fan of puzzles. There's a bunch of puzzles woven into Alice in Wonderland. He did puzzles afterwards related to Alice in Wonderland. A lot of other puzzle people have done Alice in Wonderland puzzles.

It's a popular puzzle theme. And so we decided we were going to do an Alice in Wonderland puzzle day. And the idea was there was a special event that we didn't tell anybody about. What happened was at Wizards, there's a thing, I don't know if it exists anymore, but it used to be called Non-Essential, where people could just post things and talk, and there were some chat rooms. And so we had Alice Little, which is the actual name of the character from Alice in Wonderland, called Non-Essential, where people could just post things and talk, and there were some chat rooms. We had Alice Little, which is the actual name of the character from Alice in Wonderland,

posed as an employee, and was saying weird things on the public employee channel. That was the only clue that something was coming. And a few people figured out that it was Alice from Alice in Wonderland, but only a couple. And so what happened was, one morning

I volunteered to be the white rabbit, so I put on a white rabbit suit, and I had my little watch, and I ran all over the building going, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late. And I think I

ad-libbed a bit about how late I was. And in the end, by the way, we had four buildings in the old one. They were connected in a big square. I was so tired, I collapsed. At the end of it, I had to catch my breath. But what happened was, there were all these,

scattered around the building, all these Alice in Wonderland-themed puzzles that we had made. I don't remember the puzzles exactly. I just remember the experience. And, like, people could go and find the puzzles. And it was just this bonus little thing we did. Just like, here's a fun experience.

And, I mean, there's stuff like that nowadays. It's a little different. Back in the day, Wizards was just a lot smaller. Like, at the time I'm talking about, there was, I don't know, 150, 200 employees. Maybe 250 at most. It was just a lot smaller. The time I'm talking about, there was, I don't know, 150, 200 employees, maybe 250 at most. It was just a lot smaller. Now we have,

you know, closer to thousands, I guess. And so, we'd like to do fun activities like that. I mean, we used to have

Nerf wars all the time. Anyway. But it was fun. The thing that I enjoyed is it was a great amount of fun making puzzles with all the different Arnie folk and different Wizards folk. So one of the things is there's a bunch of people, um, Mark Gottlieb is, is a big one. And there's a guy who used to work at Wizards named Mike Selinker.

Um, uh, Taewyn Woodruff, um, currently right now, I mean, Mark Gottlieb still works there. Matt Tabak also. There's a bunch of people at Wizards who are just really, really into puzzles. So there's things all around the country and world called puzzle hunts, where you go, you have to solve a series of puzzles, and they lead you to other places. And like Mark Gottlieb, puzzle hunts are his hobby. He goes around the country doing puzzle hunts.

Matt Tabak does as well. So a bunch of Wizards people were very into making puzzles. And so I both did the Alice in Wonderland puzzles. And then the National Puzzles League, the World Puzzle Championship, was in Seattle one year. And we got tasked or got volunteered to make a series of puzzles. And the neat thing about it was that they had to be language and culture agnostic, meaning it had to be from anybody anywhere in the world. So it couldn't rely on knowledge that you would only have

if you were from a certain country. And so making those puzzles were very interesting. I remember I made a puzzle that involved dice. And if I remember correctly, I crushed the Dutch team. They got all the puzzles but my dice puzzle. And I think, by the way, Games Magazine actually published our puzzles at one point.

So for those that have the backlog of Games Magazines. Anyway, so the point I want to get today, since I'm getting close to work, is that people ask me all the time, they say, I want to be a game designer. What do I need to do? There's a lot of answers to that question. But one of the answers I always give is,

you need to play games. Why? Well, you want to be a writer? Read. You want to be an artist? Go look at art. You know, you want to be a game designer? Play games.

And there's a couple reasons. One is you've got to learn what the tools are, right? And the way you learn what can be done is by seeing what people have done. And maybe that inspires you to do something that hasn't been done. But if you don't know what has been done, you might do things that have been done and not realize

that you're doing something someone else has done and maybe learn from them. Like, one of the things I find of looking at games is, like, I love playing other games because it's a great opportunity as a game designer to go,

hmm, how do they put this together? Now, I have to admit, one of my things as a game designer is I'm more than willing to change games. For example, if I read a game and go, oh, I have to admit, one of my things as a game designer is I'm more than willing to change games. For example, if I read a game and go, oh, I think it would be better,

usually I will try to play it once the way it's intended, but I will quickly tweak after playing. As I like to joke, I'll iterate any game I get my hands on, not just my games. But one of the things that I think helped me a lot that

happened early on was my complete immersion in the world of games, of just all sorts of games. I mean, growing up I played a lot of games. It's not like I didn't have an education in games before I got to Wizards, but I feel like once I got to Wizards, my education just rose significantly. And I was playing all sorts of games that I was not used

to playing. Examples of trick-taking games where I wasn't even particularly good at. But I dove in. I definitely swam in the pool, and I learned all sorts of games. And I think that having that knowledge and that breadth of understanding different games, and also having the history that Richard taught, and

learning where games came from, and just knowing the basics. Like, it's not a bad idea, by the way, to buy a game book of just basic, basic games, of dominoes, of checkers, of games you think you know how they're played, you know, and play them. Oh, another thing, by the way, to do is take a game you've played a lot, a lot, maybe since you were a kid, read the rules. Very illuminating. Because, like, Monopoly is a great example.

There are so many rules to Monopoly that you think are rules to Monopoly that are not. That are just kind of house rules. Like, free parking, for example, I mean, they might have finally changed it, but free parking for the longest time, there was no rule that said you got money off free parking. That was just something everybody did. It was a good catch-up feature. But the game,

at least, maybe they finally changed it, but for a long time, there was no, there wasn't actually a rule in the game. at least, maybe they finally changed it, but for a long time, there was no, there wasn't actually a rule in the game. So anyway, kind of my lesson of today, I mean, A, I wanted to share some stories and just tell you a little bit about, like, what early Wizards was like. A part of my podcast is kind of capturing the history of Wizards and the history of Magic. And I just, I don't know, I know. I've gotten a lot of feedback that you guys like hearing some of the stories, so today was a story episode.

And I hope you had fun. So anyway, I'm here at work. I parked. And as much as I like talking about magic, and other games, you know what I like even more? Making magic. Okay, I'll talk to you guys next time.