Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #113 - Day in the Life

Episode Date: April 11, 2014

Mark talks what a typical day is like for a R&D member.

Okay, I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. What does that mean? That means I'm dropping off my daughter at midwinter break camp. But it also means it's time for drive to work. And because I had to drop my daughter off farther away from my house, you get a longer podcast today. So I thought of something that I could talk about that would fill up my extra time. day. So I thought of something that I could talk about that would fill up my extra time. Okay, so one of the most common questions I get is, what is a day like as a magic designer? And so today I've dubbed my podcast A Day in the Life. I had a similar, by the way,

article called A Day in the Life in which it was showing you how the R&D day worked, but through a choose-your-own-adventure. I did that many, many years ago. But today it's a similar thing. It won't be choose-your-own-adventure, but I want to talk about what exactly, what do we do? You know, you read all about, like, I talk about my work, but like from day to day, what is it like? What do I do? So I'm going to try to walk you through a typical day and I will talk about sort of each day there's different things that happen but okay so in the morning I wake up get ready

on the way to work I do this I do my podcast the way it always works is I have to do two a week and so I Monday and, I always do podcasts. And then Wednesday and Thursday, if I need to do extras is when I do them. And then the ride home is when I listen to them and make sure they work.

Um, usually about half my podcast, I take more than one take on. So usually on Wednesday, I'm recording often on Thursday. I'm not, sometimes I am. Um, the one other exception is when I do a sequence like I'm talking about a series, I will do them back to back so I don't forget anything.

So let's say I'm doing a four-parter, I might do them all in one week. That's very common. Okay, so I get to work. I go inside. So we work at a building. It's a four-story building. And R&D is on the third floor. Wizards actually takes up almost all the building.

We're not on the first floor. First floor has, like, you know, workout facilities. And there's some space down there, but we have nothing on the first floor. There is food on the first floor. We are on a good chunk of the second floor, all of the third floor, all of the fourth floor and R&D is on the third floor okay so I get to work so the first thing I do is

I will check my mail and see what's so I have a bunch of social media so I get the first thing I will check is I check internal email through wizards and that's actual work email.

Like, did people send me stuff, the things I'm supposed to be aware of? Did I get meeting invites? We have a program that does all our meeting scheduling. So first in the morning, I guess, is double check my calendar, see what I have for the day. Most of my meetings are standing meetings, meaning I have the same meeting at the same time every week. So I have a rough idea what my schedule is.

I have to check because I have an extra one on meetings. But anyway, check my schedule, make sure I don't have meetings or find out when my meetings are. Then what I need to do is I read my mail. First is I will read my internal mail because that's work stuff. Then I have external mail. I always try to read all my email. Sometimes I get behind, but I eventually will catch up. Also, I'm, you know, in the morning is a time where I might, if there are certain topics of the day,

what often happens is, you know, in the social media-verse that there's some issue, someone might write an article, you know, I might read an article or read some forums or, you know. It's a chance to sort of get a touch on what is going on. And I have a bunch of means through my social media to know when something's happening. For example, my blog is a very good place where people will ask questions. And so if something happens, someone asks a question about it. I can track it down and figure out what's going on. So anyway, usually in the morning, I will catch up and just make sure

that I'm up to date on all the messaging and such. And then, some mornings I have a meeting. So the way it works is every design team meets twice a week. We usually meet for two two-hour meetings twice a week. And their schedule is such that they're somewhat separated. And so I am in all the design teams. And so it depends what time of year. Usually there's two design teams ongoing at any one time. Every once in a while, there's three.

Um, there has been known to be four, uh, although that's very rare. Um, so anyway, I, so often, for example, in the morning I'll have a design meeting. So what does a design meeting mean? Um, well, it depends. Some of the design meetings are my team. I'm running them. Some of the design teams, I'm just a design team member. I mean, I mean, I'm also there in capacity of head designer in that while I'm sitting on the teams and

doing team things, I'm also making sure everything, like the reason I'm on all the design teams is just making sure I understand what's going on with everything. Usually if I have issues with the design team lead, it's not done in the meeting. In the meeting, I'm just another team member. If I have issues, that happens one-on-one outside the meeting. So what will happen in a design meeting, I mean, it's a bunch of different things. A very common thing we'll do is we'll have a topic. The lead design will pick some topic.

Here's an issue of the set that we need to work on or here's a mechanic that we need to think about. Sometimes you get homework. So sometimes, like for example, yesterday I was in a meeting on a team in which I wasn't running. And Mark Gottlieb was the lead designer. We were working on trying to figure out a way to do something. And so he gave us some homework in which he said, okay, here's the parameters. Try to make 8 to 12 cards that demonstrate

the different kinds of things you can do in this space. The team had 16 members. Every member of the team did their version. Then we shared notes and looked at what we did. Then we used the meeting to break up to figure out

the different ways people had tried it to look at different avenues. Anyway, then we generated some cards. It's very common in meetings. A lot of time now we do in-meeting card generation. It has proven quite valuable. In fact, a lot of the

cards that ended up being the most popular cards from Innistrad and from Theros, the two sets I led, both were very much done in meeting. I'm particularly a big fan of designing in meeting. I like doing that. Sometimes your design meeting will be a play test, and if it's a play test, then instead of meeting in a meeting room, usually we're in the pit, and sometimes they're sealed,

sometimes they're draft. Usually the way it works is earlier in the process it's sealed, and then later in the process it's draft for design. And the reason for that is early design is much, much more about, you know, trying to get a feel of things and get a sense of the cards and what's fun. It's less about environment because you haven't sort of fine-tuned it yet early on. Early design is much more about sort of figuring out what you want to stress and what you want to do. So you have a lot of different ideas you're playing around with so you can figure out what

the good stuff is. So you can sort of take the good stuff and make more of that and cut the stuff that isn't working. And anyway, early on, drafting doesn't make a lot of sense. You don't have cohesive themes yet. But later in design, once you've started to build in the themes, then you want to do draft because you want to get a sense of, are the themes working? Can people draft this? Now, when it gets to development, they do more drafting because the entire point of development is balancing the environment,

of which drafting helps a lot to learn. But in design, we tend to do drafting later on. So anyway, I'll go in, I'll have a meeting, usually in the morning. So I get in somewhere between 9 and 10 in the morning, depending on my day and obviously dropping kids off and this and that. Usually the meetings in the morning are 10 to 12, so they're two-hour meetings. And then after my morning meeting,

now some mornings I don't have a meeting, and usually when I don't have a meeting, that's when I'm doing my homework, for example. I'm designing cards. That's when I'm, a very common thing that I have to do as a head designer is look over other people's card files. So when I have downtime, a lot of times I'll look through card files. In fact, there's two different passes I tend to do.

One is just as a head designer, sort of, you know, it's the design of just enough, and the other is I tend to do a color pie pass on stuff. Sometimes I combine those into one thing, where I'm just making notes, like white's not supposed to do this, or, you know, stuff like that. I tend to be the watchguard of color pie. A lot of other designers definitely try to stretch a little bit, and some of that's

good. I mean, it's, bleeding in the right place in the right way is good, but people often push boundaries a little bit to see if they can get away with stuff, and my job's sort of, no, no, no, you can't do that. So, so often I'll read over other files. Sometimes there are other internal documents I need to read. You

know, R&D is a wiki. I have to sometimes read stuff up on the wiki. You know, the creative team might have put some stuff together that I have to look at. I mean, there's just a lot of different material to look at and to read. And sometimes there's correspondence. Now I read my email, but sometimes I have to write emails and communicate stuff to people. Okay, so after my morning meeting, I will have lunch. Most of the R&D folk go out for lunch. That's very common. I tend not to. The major reason is on Monday, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, I exercise. Uh, the only reason I don't exercise on Wednesdays is Wednesdays is comic day, and I go get my comics. Um, so Wednesday is my, uh, my non-exercise day.

I, Friday I work at home, so I'm not in the office on Fridays. Um, and so, uh, I always exercise during, during lunch. I've been using my exercise to catch up on, uh, on, uh, geeky TV that I have missed. Uh, this is some stuff my wife doesn't want to watch and so it's harder to watch at home. And so, uh, like in the last, you know, a couple of years, I, let's see, I caught up on Doctor Who. I caught up on Torchwood. I caught up on Fringe. I caught up on Orphan Black.

Uh, I caught up on Flight of, I caught up on Orphan Black, I caught up on Flight of the Concord, on The Guild, right now I'm watching Arrow. So anyway, I watch different things that I've been wanting to watch, that I've heard something, either I know people like or I've heard good things about or, you know, it just plays into my area of interest. So anyway, I work out during lunch. Usually after work out, I have a little bit of time that I can hop on my Tumblr. I don't blog too much at work, but I will blog during my lunch hour. And so usually while I eat my lunch, I'll blog while I eat my lunch.

Because heaven forbid I'm not multitasking. And then after lunch, we have some afternoon meetings. There's different meetings during the week. Like the R&D managers have a meeting on Mondays that we meet. Tuesday afternoons, there is the magic meeting. Oh, I forgot something. I forgot an important morning meeting. Thursday morning.

So Thursday morning, we have two meetings that are very important called Card Crafting and World Crafting. So Card Crafting is a meeting between all the designers and the developers in which we talk about kind of nuts and bolts, hands-on design development issues. For example, if we're not sure where something goes color-py-wise, we talk about it there. Or if development wants to shift something, we talk about it there. Or anything that sort of is something that affects magic but is not general enough that it will go to the magic meeting, which I'll explain in a second. And so card crafting is usually a technical meeting.

Sometimes we'll talk through rules changes and try and decide, like, Matt Tabak will bring things up on the screen and walk through the different cards, and as we talk about cards, we pull the cards in question so we can see them, and we try to examine, like, well, if we change this rule, what would happen?

It's also a place where, you know, if Aaron has issues or anybody has issues, we can bring them up and talk, you know, sometimes all of the issues. We've used the meeting, right meeting for carving out color pie issues. We've used the meeting to talk about mechanical choices. Sometimes we use the meeting to talk about bridging between different sets and how to prioritize things. Usually if there's an issue bigger than one set, that's where it comes. If it's just a one set issue, that team will figure it out.

But if it impacts all of magic, then we where it comes. If it's just a one set issue, that team will figure it out. But if it impacts all of magic, then we talk about it. World crafting, which is the meeting right after card crafting, is the same basic idea but it's on creative issues. It's another meeting that I go to every week. The meeting is about talking about

the story, implications of the story, and how it will affect things. The reason I'm there is often there's a big impact on design. Story things can have a big impact on how design works.

And so world crafting is a weekly meeting where the different relevant people can get together and talk about issues having to do with creative things.

Now, every third week on Thursday morning, we don't have world trapping. One of the two is canceled. It varies which one's canceled. And then we have a review with Bill Rose, who's the VP. Bill likes to keep abreast of what's going on, and so every three weeks we have a meeting.

It rotates what the topics are, but essentially, you know, Bill wants to see everything that's going on in R&D the person who's running it has to write up a little write up for Bill we give a little presentation

we sort of walk through what's going on Bill wants questions and it just allows Bill to keep his fingers on what's going on in R&D and it's a good opportunity for everybody

that a lot of R&D come to these meetings so not everybody knows what's going on with everybody else and so the meeting is a good chance for everybody that a lot of our need come to these meetings so they can, like, not everybody knows what's going on with everybody else, and so the meeting's a good chance for people to sort of get a general sense of what's going on. There's so many things going on

that we have to break up the meetings into different subgroupings because we can't fit everything in a single meeting. Okay, now we can get to afternoons. Let's go back to Tuesday. So Tuesday afternoon, we have a meeting called the Magic Meeting, which is the general meeting for anybody who is interested in magic.

It's not just R&D, although all of magic R&D attends. But people from Organized Play and the web team and some electronics and digital and just other parts of the company that are people who are impacted by magic or work on magic can come to this. And it's a general thing. Sometimes we fill people in on what's going on. Sometimes we have presentations from different parts of the company talking about what they're doing in relation to a certain thing.

Sometimes it's just updating everybody on kind of what's going on and where something stands. There's a lot of moving pieces. And so, I mean, the meeting, sometimes we talk topics that we have issues to discuss. But usually if we're discussing the issue in that meeting, it's a broader issue. It's a more technical issue.

Card crafting is where we'll have that meeting. So anyway, that's the magic meeting. Then in the afternoon we often will have design meetings most of the design meetings are in the afternoon what we've done is because we were having problems with scheduling because there's so much going on we hard locked the

key sets so that you know the fall set has a locked time that it meets because the fall set meets all year round. And so there's just a preset time that we're going to get together so that other people can't overschedule it, so we know it's locked in the schedule. You know, and most of the locked-in design meetings, most of them are in the afternoon.

And, like, once again, the afternoon design meetings are a lot like the morning design meetings. Most of the ones I lead tend to be in the afternoon because I do the fall set, and so the fall set just happens to be in the afternoon. So it's Monday and Wednesday, 2 to 4. And so, I mean, the big thing for me, one of the things that I like to do is, I like, iteration is very, very important, and so I like to bounce back and forth

between making corrections and playtesting. As we get closer to the end, I do more and more playtesting, the iteration gets shorter. But it's really important that I do not like talking too long I like to talk about stuff I like to make changes

and I like to play and I feel like one of the problems sometimes I see with design teams is they spend too much time what we call theory crafting which means they think about it and try to come to conclusions based on past performance of other mechanics

but like just play it I'm a big believer of, you know, you want to figure out how something's working? Play it. And sometimes we'll have multiple play tests. It's very common, for example, especially later on, to have, like, a sealed play test

followed by a draft play test so that we can see both. Also, in the afternoon, like on Tuesday afternoons, so I have a couple of what are called one-on-ones, which means that the way a one-on-one works is if you are a manager, you have a one-on-one with each employee. And so now I used to have one-on-ones with all the designers

because I used to be the manager for the designers. But a couple of years back, we made a very smart decision of I have a lot to do and management, it was not my forte so it's like, why don't we let Mark do more design and less management? And so Mark Gottlieb got brought in and Mark is the manager for the

design team so he and I have a one-on-one because the way it works is all the designers report both to Mark and me but Mark's in charge of their day-to-day scheduling, and he's the direct manager. I'm in charge of all their technical stuff,

of making sure that they're figuring out where they go and where they get placed, and do I think that they're advancing. I'm in charge of their technical leadership, and Mark's in charge of the managerial leadership. He and I meet once a week so we can walk through our employees and talk about them. He does the one-on-ones with them of the managerial leadership. So he and I meet once a week so we can walk through our employees and talk about them. He does the one-on-ones with them as the manager.

I mean, I will meet with them on case-by-case if I need to, but the weekly one-on-ones are done with Mark. Also, my boss, Aaron Forsyth, he and I have a one-on-one every week so we can talk about just relative issues of what's going on. So those are my two one-on-ones with which is with my manager, the design team manager, and with my boss, Aaron, who's the director of Magic. Also, once a week,

we have a design team meeting, which is not a particular design, but rather all the designers get together. So I have a team of designers, as I said, Mark and I together have the team. So the design team now is Ethan Fleischer.

Ethan won the second grade designer search. Ken Nagel. Ken came in second in the first grade designer search. Sean Mayne. Sean came in second in the second grade designer search.

Dan Emmons. Dan was involved in the first, I'm sorry, in the second grade designer search but wasn't one of the finalists but did a lot of work behind the scenes Dan actually got a job in customer service he came to us we started having him do hole filling

eventually he did such a good job I stuck him on a design team he did a good job and he ended up getting brought into the design team so a perfect example by the way of somebody who got their foot in the door and used that opportunity to prove what they could do and ended up getting on the design team. The last person on the design team is Gavin Verhey. Gavin works very closely with Dave Guskin, who does branded play, we call it, which is, if you remember, the Hell Vault or the Guild Boxes or Hero's Path

all the sort of, we're doing more and more experience around the game itself and Dave's responsible for that and Gavin works with Dave but Gavin's on the design team and so reports to Mark so anyway, we have a meeting every Tuesday in which the seven of us get together

it varies sometimes it's a meeting to catch in which the seven of us get together. It varies. Sometimes it's a meeting to catch us up on design things. Sometimes there's a presentation. We'll bring different people in that are relevant to design things. Yesterday we had a design meeting where Ethan did a research project where he sort of did it and then

he gave us a PowerPoint presentation where he explained all the stuff he had learned and rather than all of us doing the research he did the research and explained it to us. Sometimes we play games just to see other games and sort of learn what's going on in the market. Sometimes we will walk through a particular set to see what one designer is doing to sort of just make sure everybody's aware of what's happening. Sometimes the designer will have a problem. They bring it to the team

so the team can help them solve the problem. We often design the holiday card in the design team meeting. And we get different issues. It's a chance for the design team to meet once in a while. So what we do, by the way, is the development team has this exact same meeting

and it's at the exact same time, since there's not really a lot of overlap between the design team and the development team, so to sort of save schedule space, we meet at the exact same time. What else can happen? Let's see. Oh, another

thing that's very popular is that there will be playtests that aren't for your set, but are for somebody else's set. So one of the things that happens is, when you are a designer, when you're a lead designer, you are responsible for keeping tabs on the set you did, even after you finished. So for example, right now, I am working on Blood. Blood is the Fall 2015 Fall set. The 2014 Fall set is Huey. Huey was the set I worked on last year. And right now it's in development. Eric Lauer's in charge of it. He's doing it. But even though I'm working on Blood, I'm still keeping my eye on Huey

because I need to make sure that I understand what's going on. So, in fact, one of the things I have to do today is I've got to do a file pass on it to see what changes have been made. Eric, usually the Hover the Head developer is, on false sets these days,

usually it's Eric, will come to me and whenever he makes any substantial change, not a card-by-card change, but like, oh, I'm shifting something of some more major thing. Eric will come to me and talk it through with me and make sure that I'm I agree with him on the decision.

There's a lot of collaboration between the head designer and head developer, as well as the lead designer and the lead developer, which Eric and I are both. And so, there's a lot of give and take. So what'll happen is I will get invited to playtests. For example, I might get invited to a Huey playtest, or a Dewey, or a Louie, or whatever. I'll get invited to playtests. For example, I might get invited to a Huey playtest or

a Dewey or a Louie or whatever. I'll get invited to playtests of other sets. Sometimes it's just very common that the lead developer of a set or the lead designer of a set, I mean, I'm on most design teams so I'm already playing those, but the lead developer might want my

take on something. Having been there for a long, long time, it's very, very common for people to want to have me look at this ad or play this ad and just give my two cents. I'm very good at getting feedback pretty quickly off a single playtest, just so I playtest it enough that I can pick things up pretty fast. Also, something else I have not talked about is our advanced planning meetings.

So this happens for me once a week, but advanced planning meets multiple times a week. So advanced planning is something I've talked about. Have I done a podcast on advanced planning? I don't know if I have. Maybe I should. I did an article on it. Maybe I'll do a podcast on advanced planning.

It's a good topic. So advanced planning, what'll happen is I'll meet once a week with my advanced planning team. The advanced planning team is a constantly shifting team. For each set, there's one person responsible for the set. Usually it's Ethan or Sean. And then

they'll always have another designer and they'll have a developer and they'll have a rotating fourth person. Sometimes a creative person, sometimes other people. And what'll happen is and they'll have a rotating fourth person, sometimes a creative person, sometimes other people, you know. And what'll happen is they meet during the week to work on projects that I've given them.

And then once a week we meet and they sit me down and they show me what they've done. And then I give feedback on it and I give them new, sort of a new assignment to work on. So then a lot of advanced planning is kind of like, okay, we're working in this new space for this new thing.

I go, oh, I like A, not B, C. D looks interesting, but I would make this change. Okay, for next week, why don't you try thing B, but with the change I suggested. And I wouldn't mind for you looking for this other thing that incorporates this thing. And I give them assignments, and then they have a couple meetings in which they meet to try to

experiment with it. As I explained in my article, which I guess I'll explain when I do my advanced design podcast. Advanced design is about mapping out the future and figuring out what issues we'll have to deal with. I like to explain that it's more about

figuring out what the problems are than solving the problems. A lot of times solving the problems will be the design team's job, but the advanced planning team is trying to figure out what the problems are so that the design team understands. They go in with open eyes to figure out what exactly they're doing. Sometimes we'll get a mechanic or two. Sometimes we'll get a structure. I mean, we definitely walk out of advanced planning with tangible stuff that we can give to the design team, but it's not always what of advanced planning with tangible stuff that we can give to the design team.

But it's not always what the advanced planning team comes up with and what the design team does is not, you know, a complete overlap. Usually it's mapping out ideas and giving ideas as a jumping off point for the design team. Let's see. Any other meetings that I have during the week? Oh, yeah, yeah, yes, I forgot. So the other thing that happens is there are some meetings in which all, it's where, it's what they call cross-departmental, which means, so let's say, here's a meeting I did last week where Blood is starting up.

Blood is halfway through design, but the other parts of the company have to start gearing up for what they need to do. So there's a lot of pieces that come together when you put together a set. There's a marketing campaign, and there is branded play, and there's all sorts of pieces that come together when you put together a set. There's a marketing campaign, and there is branded play, and there's all sorts of things that come around it. And so what we've started doing is to give ourselves plenty of time for the other parts of the company to do the things they need to do, we meet. And it's called cross-functional because a member of each of the different relevant teams or sometimes more than one are there. And so that we can talk through with them and say, oh, okay, here's what's going on.

Like, for example, these first couple meetings, we walked through what Blood Design was doing so the rest of the company knew. So, like, you know, I might be working on a set, but brand might know very little about the set. I mean, maybe they know the top line, but they don't know what exactly the details are or the mechanics, you know, and so we come in and we explain something. Um, so for example, the first blood meeting, um, I and, uh, Jenna and Dave came in and I explained the mechanics of blood and Jenna explained the creative of blood and, uh, Dave explained the branded play of blood. And so we sort of came in and get that experience. And then,

you know, you're working with different people in the company to sort of make that happen and work through it. I do less cross-departmental than most because design kind of exists in a bubble. We work with creative during design, but other than creative nobody's ready for us. Until we finish a design, nobody's ready. It's not usually until development.

I take it back. I'm middle design and I had this cross-functional meeting, so there's some. But development is a lot more cross-functional meeting. So there's some. But development is a lot more cross-functional meetings because the set's much, much farther along. I'm working with creative and story stuff, but art's not happening yet. Car concept is not happening yet.

Just the very, very beginning of marketing happened. So I don't do tons of cross-functional. Other people in company, or I'm sorry, other people in R&D do a lot more cross-functional. I don't do all that much. The other thing that will happen sometimes is there'll be meetings in which it's not a standing meeting, but there's a topic that people care about.

And I often get called in this where it's cross-departmental to sort of discuss a topic. And as one of the senior R&D people, usually Brandon likes pulling me in to, you know, get my two cents and stuff. So sometimes we'll have the one-of meetings in which I get pulled in there. Oh, another common thing that will happen is I often get called upon to do interviews, and that's done during work.

Sometimes they're online, like chats online. Sometimes I might be interviewed by a reporter, which is usually done over the phone. Every once in a while, somebody will come to Wizards and we'll do a videotape thing. We videotape stuff for the Pro Tour. Have you ever seen like behind the scenes in R&D? That stuff gets done. So another thing that often happens is, you know, just having to, part of my job as spokesperson is just talking to people and explaining what's going on and, you know, doing media and stuff like that. I'm trying to think of what else.

I'm almost to work. I'm trying to think of other things my day might encounter or entail. I mean, there's lots of one-of meetings. There's brainstorming meetings. I guess that's another thing I didn't mention, where somebody really cares about a topic and needs to brainstorm. I often get called into brainstorming meetings.

I am decent at brainstorming. So that's just sort of us really just experimenting and writing things down and, and those are more one-offs that happen every once in a while. Um, anyway, I think that is most of the different, I mean, so my day essentially is I come in, I, I have some correspondence, I have some meetings, I have some projects I have to work on on my own that I do on my own time.

own that I do on my own time. You know, I, you know, sometimes I'll have some one-on-ones. You know, it's very common. Oh, and the other thing is there's some get-togethers. Like, for example, the web team, you know, the website. Like, once a month we get together, me and the other columnists and Trick get together, the internal columnists, and just talk about what's going on and, you know, do we have any concerns or what's coming up. There's a bunch of check-in meetings like that where it's stuff where I'm involved, but it doesn't happen constantly, or we don't talk constantly,

but every once in a while we get together. But anyway, that hopefully was not too boring. That is my day in life. That's kind of what I do. I get to work. I go to meetings. I have some individual projects. And I usually exercise at lunch.

That's what I do. So anyway, I hope this was interesting for you. I mean, this is a little different vantage point. Give me a little idea of what we do. One thing I find when people actually come to see Wizards that we're a little more corporate than people like to think we are. We have cubicles, and our cubicles have a little more fun stuff on them than the average place maybe,

but we do go to meetings, and there's a lot of corporateness to what we do. But it's a lot of fun, and I get to play a lot of games, and even the meetings I'm in, we're talking about making magic, which is pretty fun to do. So anyway, as much as I like talking about magic, even more I like making magic. So it's time for me to go.

So thank you very much, and I'll talk to you next time.