Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #212 - Technology

Episode Date: March 27, 2015

Mark talks about the technological tools that design uses to do its job.

I'm flying my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today is all about technology and the tools we use in R&D to do our job. Now the funny story is, the reason I chose this topic was I was going to try to use, I have Bluetooth in my car and it dawned on me that I could use the microphone in my car to try to record a podcast. And I've had a lot of issues. Sometimes I get loud, and I thought, oh, maybe this will be the new solution. So I said, okay, I'll use a brand new technology and then do a podcast about technology. And so I did it yesterday, and then on the way home I'm listening to it, and right now, the microphone's really close to my mouth, for good or for bad, but at least you hear me, but when the microphone was farther away,

when I got on the freeway, and like trucks would go by, you just couldn't hear me, because the trucks were going by, I'm like, well, I guess hearing me is probably more important than occasionally me being loud, so anyway, that's the inspiration, the funny thing is, my inspiration for my technology podcast didn't work out. So a little, I don't know, interesting note about how technology sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. But I am going to do this podcast because it's a fun one. It's actually the third time I've done it. See, one of the things you guys don't realize is I'll do a podcast,

and then if something doesn't go right, I do it again. And so the first day I did the podcast, and then I realized halfway through that I was going to do my microphone and I forgot. So I'm like, oh, whoops. So yesterday I do the microphone and then it doesn't work out. So today back to the traditional recording method. But I'm still going to talk about technology and the tools that R&D uses to get this job done. So one of the questions I get all the time, way, way back when I thought like, okay, well, I'm just going

to talk about the interesting parts of what we do. And then I've learned over time that you guys think most of the things we do is interesting. That even the things to me that are more minutiae, you guys like. So I get asked all the time about like sort of the tools we use and how do we do it. And so I said, you know what? Today is all about the tools. So let's talk about what tools does R&D use. I'm leaning more toward the technology side because I talk all the time on my podcast about like the content, like how do we structure things and come up with ideas. And I talk a lot about sort of the making, the creative making of it. But you know what? There's just a lot of things that need to be used to make that happen.

Okay. So tool number one, if you ask me, the most important tool that we use in R&D, I think the most important would be our database, which we have nicknamed Multiverse. So the database, the idea of the database is, it takes every single magic card, and I mean every single magic card,

even ones that don't see print, and it has a record for every one. And let me explain why this is so important. A, making magic, it's a complex system. There are a lot of people, on any one card, there are a lot of people working on that card. That while R&D might be figuring out what the rule text is, you know, the art director's figuring out what the art's going to be, and the creative people are figuring out the name, and sometimes the creature type,

and the flavor text. So there's a lot of moving parts all at once. And each piece is affected by multiple people, but we'll get there in a second. So anyway, we have a file where every card is recorded and kept in one place. And we call it multiverse. Now remember, when we make a card file, I did a whole article on card codes at one place. And we call it multiverse. Now remember, when we make a card file, I did a whole article on card codes at one point.

So I'll cover a little bit of this ground here. So when we make a file, what we need to do is, there actually is slots. So if your set is, depending on the size of your set, you have, you know,

200 and, I depend, 165 for a small set and large set these days. What is large set these days? It's now 101, 80, 53, and 15. So add those numbers up. That's our normal large set nowadays. 280 something. So the idea is we have for each slot, the slot has three identifiers on the slot. So number one is a rarity indicator. So you are either common, uncommon, rare, or mythic rare. So C, U, R, or M, pretty straightforward. The second indicator is technically for frame. Although remember, each color has its own frame. So, um, for each colors frame.

So white is W, blue is U, black is B, red is R, green is G. I've explained many times why blue is U. Uh, other frames, for example, that get used is land is L, artifacts is A, multicolor is Z. Um, and there's other, there's hybrid frames color frames. And there's other frames that we make. And even within one frame, when I say Z is multicolor, there's really a bunch of different multicolor frames. Because we do pin lines to match the different colors. So when I say frame, it gives a hint at what the frame is.

But it's not complete. Also, sometimes within frames, we'll do like a miracle frame or enchantment creature frame. There's different treatments we'll do at different sets. So this mostly says, what's the default kind of frame for this card? And the reason blue is you, by the way, is B is black, L is land, A is artifact. So for black, the B was the best sense for black. I know K is used in the printing industry. Just when we started, we didn't realize that.

So we use B for black and we use U for blue. That's what we do. Okay, so for example, the very first slot in most files is common white O1. So CWO1. And then the numbers go by rarity. So if there's 19 commons, then it goes from C1 to C19. And then uncommon, let's say there's 10 uncommons, you go from UW1 to UW10. You start over

at each rarity. And the idea is, so for those who don't know, so we go in what we call Woburg order, which is white, blue, black, red, green. If you look at the back of a magic card, I think at the top it's white, and you go clockwise, that's the order of the colors.

There is a natural order to the colors at the top it's white and you go clockwise. That's the order of the colors. There is a natural order to the colors and we start with white. All are files. In fact, there's a running joke that white tends to get a lot of attention

because we always start with white and green gets the least amount of attention because we always end with green. Although sometimes we'll start with green

just to mix things up. But we joke in R&D that you're always fresh at white and you're tired by the time you get to green. But anyway, one of the things that Multiverse does is it can create files so that we can print up our files.

And our meetings fall into two categories. Either we have meetings in which we sit and discuss the file or we have meetings in which we playtest. For playtesting, we'll get to that in a second. That's a whole separate set of tools. But for a discussion meeting, we need our file. That's the biggest tool we have. And the idea is we're constantly updating the file, and the file has a whole bunch of things in it. So let me walk through what Multiverse does exactly. So first thing it does is it takes every component and gives it its own field. So there's a field for rarity. There's a

field for the color frame. There's a field for the number. There's a field for the title. In fact, there's a field for the title in English and then a localized title because not only is there a record for every card. When I say every card, I don't even just mean every card in English. I mean every card. There's a record for every French card

and Japanese card and Spanish card. I mean, we're up to 11 languages. So every card is duplicated multiple times. So there's a frame for the English name. So no matter what language you're looking at, we can tell what the card is duplicated multiple times. So there's a frame for the English name, so no matter what language you're looking at, we can tell what the card is. And there's one for the localized name. There's a slot for mana cost.

There's a slot for card type, for subtype, for rules text, for flavor text, for power, for toughness. There's just lots of different fields so that we can separate out. And that allows us to be able to look at things. One thing that's nice about Multiverse is if you want to isolate and look at one particular facet, you can. Also, it's a searchable database. So much like Gatherer, if we need to find something, we go, oh, well how many whatever in the set? We can pick by different facets and we can look for that, and that's important.

It's a tool we have to use quite a bit when you're trying to figure out things. I talk a lot about the math behind it, and so just being able to look at things. We'll get to the math in a sec, but some of the tools we use has to do with a lot of math. Okay, so we have all the different fields, and then you can output the file in any order you want. You can tell it, I want these criteria in this order. So one of the funny things is R&D has different preferences. So, for example, when I print a file, and usually whoever is controlling the file, so usually the lead designer slash lead developer or the strong second in cases where somebody is controlling the file.

Like when I lead files, I tend to have my second control the file. It's a good teaching tool and one of the things I have to do just because I'm a busy man. So what happens is when I print a file, I go by color first, by rarity second. So what that means is you open the file. First are the common white cards. Then are the uncommon white cards. Then are the rare white cards and mythic rare white cards. Following that is common blue, then uncommon blue, and so on.

But in contrast, Canego, for example, he likes to go rarity first, color second. So if he prints up a file, it's common white, then common blue, then common black, then common red, then common green, then common artifacts or multicolor land or whatever, if those exist. And then uncommon white, uncommon blue, uncommon black. So all the commons come before all the uncommons. Now, it's interesting, different preferences.

He likes to look at the commons all together. I like to look at colors all together. I find that a lot of times things switch between rarities but within color. Like, oh, we're doing this effect at white uncommon. Maybe we should tweak the white common. So I like having all white together. But it's just, I mean, the nice thing about the multiverse and the database in general is that we can export however we want. And that's pretty important. Okay. So one thing, one thing that it does is it exports McFiles. Now, a part of that also is there are fields beyond the records of the card.

There are also fields where we can leave descriptions, for example. There's an art description area. There's a card concept area. So the difference, real quickly, what a card concept is, is what is this card supposed to be representing? What is the flavor of what this card is? So the card concept gets written first, and then the card concept gets turned into an art description

by usually the art director. So the idea is the card concept sort of says, what is it? And then the art description says, well, how do we want it to look? And so a lot of times those overlap a lot. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes there's a very particular need for the look of the card. Usually the way it works, though, is our artists are all freelance, and so we have awesome artists,

and so we try to give as much creative freedom to the artists as we can. We have to make sure that they're covering what we need to do. And one of the things, I talked about this when Matt and I had the world development thing, is there's a little world bible for each world that shows what characters look like and what creatures there are and what they dress like and what weapons look like and different landscapes. So that there's something to work off for the artist to model off of.

Anyway, so there's that information that goes on multiverse. And one of the cool things about multiverse is so the artist, usually during development, we have, we've started our art wave where the artist, it goes in two waves normally. And what happens is we tell the artist, we get the art description and then they do a sketch and send it in. And then the creative team, especially the art director, looks at the sketch, makes any notes they need to make. Notes could be artistically, notes could be just creatively like, oh, you've misrepresented something or, you know, you chose them from the style guide, but those

two things don't actually go together. That's from this group and that's from the other group. Anyway, they take notes and then they will get back the finished art. And whenever stuff comes in, it gets scanned and then it goes into multiverse. So if you're looking at the file and the sketch is in, you'll be able to see the sketch. If the final's in, it gets scanned, and then it goes into Multiverse. So if you're looking at the file and the sketch is in, you'll be able to see the sketch. If the final's in, you'll be able to see the final. And so one of the fun things is just sort of as you go through Multiverse, you'll slowly see the cards evolve. That's pretty cool.

Okay. Another really important field is what we call the dev comments field, which I believe is short for developer comments. It's used actually by design and development, and creative, too, at times. Although creative has some of their own places to make notes. But anyway, what a dev comment is, is you put your name, your initials, and the date, and you make a comment.

So initials are important, so you know who it is. Although one of the funniest things is, they're just initials. So sometimes somebody new, like you see initials you haven't seen before, like, who is that? And usually it's one of the newer people. You're like, oh, yeah, it's that person. And one of the interesting things is if two people have the same initial, the person who comes second usually needs to use a middle initial. Sometimes both of them will use a middle initial. But one of the problems we have is like

Mark Globus and Mark Gottlieb are both MG, both Mark G. So each of them uses their middle initial so that you can tell who they are. And so, but anyway, you mark who said it so you know who the comment's from. And by the way,

anybody's allowed to make comments on any card. If you have access to Multiverse, and there's many people that do, even beyond just R&D, if you have access to Multiverse and you have a comment, you can make a comment. Now, that doesn't mean that the lead of the set, depending on its design and development, is going to act on that comment, but they will listen to that comment. You know, anybody is free to say, hey, here's how I feel. Now, just because someone feels that way doesn't mean that the lead necessarily needs to change it,

but it's good to hear it. And if enough people say the same thing, usually that's a strong message. It's something to think about. Also, as I talked about in my feedback podcast, that while people don't necessarily solve problems all that well, only because they don't know all the parameters

of the problem, they do identify problems well. So a lot of times, someone who makes a comment, while they might offer a solution that isn't the solution that will work, they often will point out a problem that you have to address. Anyway, the reason it's dated is remember CW01, for example, represents common white. Oh, and the way we tend to do our files is we tend to put them in order. Creatures come first from lowest converted mana cost to highest converted mana cost, then spells

from lowest converted mana cost to highest converted mana cost. And the idea is to be very orderly to help people when they look at the files to sort of see where things are at. We do a lot of what we call curving to make sure that there's an equal number, not equal number, but a nice mix of different casting costs, so to make sure that when you're building your deck or

drafting, that you can create a curve for yourself. And what that means is that what is in the CW1 slide, or, I mean, CW1 will always tend to be a one-drop small creature. But let's say we take CW07. That could change over time, partly because the card gets

killed and gets replaced or we just, a new card gets put in and it's a little more cheaper and so, you know, what was CW07 gets bumped up to CW08. Things move around a lot.

And one of the neat facets of multiverse is there's a thing called card history. So you can always go in any slot and look at what was there and see how things got changed.

So a lot of times we read articles about how cards evolved over time. We'll go look at the card history to see exactly who, and you see who made the changes so you can figure out when it got made. Oh, okay, well that's the lead designer that must have been during design. Oh, that's the developer. Okay, that change must have happened during development. It's also dated and stuff if you happen to know when things happen.

But anyway, we mark it and then there's what we call retired comments. So once a comment's been addressed, it usually gets moved to retired comments

just so you can see what the active comments are in the retired comments. The other thing to remember is because things can change and here's one of the reasons you have retired comments is I might say something,

for example, in the dev comments and then the car gets changed. And then if you don't understand that my note isn't for the card that's coming from the file, it sometimes people go, oh, Mark doesn't like this card. Why did Mark like this card? And the answer is, no, I like that card.

I didn't like the card before it. Probably the reason you changed it might be I didn't like it. That's why, you know. And so it's important to retire things so people understand the comments that go there. Normally, we print up a card file for R&D. There's a couple different versions of the card file you can default to. And one of them uses dev comments are listed with it. So a lot of times in meetings when you're looking at cards,

you want to see the dev comments to see what people are saying. Now, Sam, for example, in his latest development, often does a column. It's one of his recurring columns where he looks at comments, talks about what people were saying and what they meant by them. One of the fun things, by the way, is dev comments, while a lot of what we're doing is very serious, we also screw around a bit. And so there's a lot

of jokes and things that go in there. You see some of that in Sam's column. And sometimes the point we're making is a serious point, but we will be whimsical in how we make the point. We also sometimes will just be silly. One of my favorite things to do is... So the way multiverse works is you can put in your comments in any order you want,

but normally you put them in order. So one of the things that's fun to do sometimes is you go back and you go right before someone else's comment and you make a different comment that, like, it puts their comment in a completely different light. Usually you do it very, you make it obvious you're doing it since our goal is not to actually confuse people but

you'll put a comment so like somebody might say I think this card is boring. So you'll go back to the one before it and you'll go this card is amazing. Only a crazy person would say this card is boring. And a crazy person would say this card is boring, you know, and then the next card says this card is boring. Anyway, silly things we do. Okay, so multiverse, okay, it keeps track of the cards.

It allows you to make files. Another thing that it does is be aware that the cards have a long process. I always talk about design development, but we're just beginning. After us, it goes through editing. Then it goes to the caps. You know, there's layout and there's prepping the cards. And there's a lot of things that happen. Even just getting the art. Once the art gets in, it gets scanned and it gets like color balanced and adjusted. And there's a whole process to turning art from the art into something that's usable on the card.

And then there's laying the cards out and fixing things, and there's more editing, and there's a lot that goes on. And so Multiverse does a really good job of tracking everything that happens there. Another thing that Multiverse does, which is really important, is you can export it to make stickers. So let's talk about stickers, another very important tool of R&D. So we playtest. And so when we playtest, we need to play with the cards. But the cards don't exist yet. So how do we do that? So the trick we use is, in fact, when I first got there 20 years ago, the way it worked is that we used to print on cardboard.

So, for example, I have some Mirage cards at my desk, I think, and they're on green cardboard, like if you went to a copy center and got a thick, stocked paper, cardboard-ish paper. We printed on that, and then we cut it out, and so we were playing with little pieces of cardboard.

And then eventually, somebody came up with the idea that the stickers that you would put on an envelope, kind of like an 8.5x11 envelope, that if you turn those sideways, they fit on a card just right so there was a little bit of the card peaked on each side so you could see the color, and you chopped them top and bottom and it fit the card real well. And so we started putting cards on stickers.

And then that has changed over time. The evolution of that has changed dramatically. In fact, we now have the ability for presentations outside of R&D. Because, let me explain something. R&D, we, one of the things that's disorienting when you first come to work in R&D

is almost all of our playtests are with stickers, because the cards don't exist yet. And so, we get used to that. It's disorienting. I mean, one thing, for example, is when I actually play with real Magic cards, it is like a luxury.

Like, I don't normally get pictures and flavor text, and I love playing with real Magic cards. I mean, you guys get to take it for granted because that's all you know. That's all you play with. But I don't get to play with them. I'm playing with my sticker cards, and so it is such a luxury when I get to play with art.

So one of the things we've learned is that when you're demoing your things outside of your design group, meaning you're going to people who aren't used to seeing sticker cards all the time, we want them to look pretty, to look more like normal magic cards, because it just psychologically is really important. You just want people to think better of what you're doing. This is true for any design, by the way, that when you're working internally with people that are used to what you're doing, it's fine to mock things up and it can be pretty rough. Once you want to take your thing out and get feedback from the outside of design, this

includes play testing, you want, if you can, to make it a little bit nicer, because the presentation will hugely impact the impression that you get. That if you do a set and it just looks sloppy, your game looks sloppy, some of the comments back will be, oh, this just didn't seem real professional. And even they'll say things that

they're like, oh, the game didn't seem professional, when what they mean is a lot of the trappings didn't seem professional. So it's important. So one of the things we've learned to do is we've managed to adapt to our system so when we want to, we don't do this all the time, we can print stickers and in color so they look just like a finished Magic card. Now, I mean, they're on stickers.

It's obviously not a finished Magic card, but it looks much, much better than our normal sticker thing. Another thing that stickers have been able to do is you can now, especially for Future Future League, that's the league where we play ahead of time so we can determine what the future standard is going to be like so we can fix things. But anyway, they can now put their deck into Multiverse, and then Multiverse will spit out their deck, and they'll print just their deck. Because for a long while,

we had something called blank magic cards that are like magic back with blank on the front, and we used those for playtesting. And it used to be, when you did playtesting, you had to proxy up all your cards on blank magic cards. And so people would shorthand it, just because there's a lot to write. And the classic example

was one guy, the card just says three in red. And the answer was, that was lightning bolt. Get it? It's guy the card just says three in red and the answer was that was lightning bolt get it it's a red card that does three damage but if you didn't know that and you drew the card like what's red three mean you know and that it's like oh i know it's a lightning bolt i know it costs one i know it's an instant just all the things that maybe you need to know that the person who made the card just knows it and it became hard for other people to play test like if i made a deck and proxy things up and i shorthanded and i gave it to you like okay explain to me what all these things are and just became hard to play for other people to playtest. Like if I made a deck and proxied things up and I shorthanded and I gave it to you, you'd be like, okay, explain to me what all these things are.

It just became hard to playtest other people's decks. So the new stickers make that much easier. And it's funny, like I said, a lot of the evolutions in our design is just finding ways on the stickers to just get more information on the stickers. And one of the tricky things is, sometimes you'll do a set, like I remember when I did Innistrad, well, Innistrad had double-faced cards.

And I'm like, how do I do double-faced cards? So like, I just stickered one on the front and I stickered one on the back. And I'm like, you know, and we had to play, we played in sleeves. And like, you know, that's just like, how do you do that? It's interesting to learn. Okay.

Anything else for Multiverse? Like I said, Multiverse is a very important tool because there's so many moving pieces. But not the only tool. So another really important tool that we use in R&D is known as the R&D Wiki. So what happened was Mark Lobis, who came in tied for, I think, fourth in the first great designer search, originally got a job at Wizards doing more digital stuff, but then eventually got over to R&D. And Mark is, Mark for a long time was at the producer in Magic,

and he does a lot of organizing. And he looked around and said, you know what? We have all this information, but it's scattered to the five winds. How is anybody supposed to find anything? So he said, you know what? There's a tool to consolidate information. It's called a wiki. Let's make a wiki. So Mark put together the R&D wiki. And now it is one of the most important tools we have. So wiki does a whole bunch of things. It keeps track of things. Most meaning you have notes.

And so the notes go there. When new things are happening in a different uh design and development uh the designer developer will put comments there um we do presentations once a month or about once a month to bill where we have to write up write up sort of where our set is at the time those write-ups go on to the wiki um also when new people come it's pretty disorienting when you first get there. When you first get to R&D, first of all, there's a gap because what you know of printed cards versus what we're working on, there's about a two-year gap. So first thing you have to do is you have to figure out all the cards that you didn't actually ever see and get up to speed. And then we have a lot of documents on the wiki that explain basic things so that

you can read. In fact, the first month in R&D, I spend most of the time is reading. I'm just trying to absorb a huge amount of information because there's a lot of things that R&D kind of just does that's known and you just kind of have to slowly absorb all this information of how R&D functions. And a lot of it's written down, a lot of it's in the wiki. Another important thing for the wiki is when we have issues to discuss that are a little bit more, that aren't about a specific card. Arguments about a specific card tend to go on multiverse, but let's say you have a larger issue. You know, there's an issue about how creative is done, or there's a larger scope issue. The wiki is where those conversations can happen, that somebody can write a document about something and then people can respond how they feel about it

and you get questions. I know creative does this a lot. Where a creator, for example, will say, okay, here's the next part of the story. Here's where we think we're going. And then there'll be some feedback where people can go, oh, I didn't know that. Or how about this? Or ask questions. Or maybe it would be slightly better if you can make suggestions. So anyway, the wiki, most of the wiki is done for holding information, organizing information. The, the one, I mean, the wiki essentially is a tool that people can use however they feel need to use it.

Oh, another common use of the wiki is every time we do a draft, there's notes and people go write their notes on how the draft went. So people can go back and look at the draft. There's a record of sort of how the draft went. But anyway, wiki is used to record a lot of information. It's another important tool. Okay, what else? I'm not that far from work,

so I've got to speed through the rest of my list here. Another really important, obviously we use our computers. We are a computer-oriented company, obviously we use our computers. We are a computer-oriented company, and that's very important. We want to make sure that, I mean, we're digital. We work with words, and so there's a lot of, I mean, for example, when the computers go down, when the network goes down, especially when multiverse goes down,

that can just shut down our need for a little bit because we need to have that access. A lot of people have laptops. One of the things about our meeting rooms is most of our meeting rooms have monitors now. And so when we go to the meeting room, often somebody will put up their laptop and connect to it. If it's a meeting where we're talking about cards, we'll have access to the database so we can look up different cards.

Sometimes as we're going over card sets, the card sets themselves will go up on the screen. Sometimes, as we're going over card sets, the card sets themselves will go up on the screen. Sometimes, people are playtesting Magic Online or Duel of the Planeswalkers or, you know, different things. We're in meeting. They need to actually go through demos and look at them or look at screenshots or something. Also, another very important part, I would say, besides laptops is also tablets and phones. There's a lot. I mean, R&D very much, I mean, no surprise, surprise,

we're a technical-minded group. I mean, magic tends to be, that's a big part of our audience is a very technically-minded group. So we try as much as possible. In fact, one of my most important tools actually is my phone because one of my jobs as spokesperson is I need to stay in touch on social media. And, for example, if I go to a meeting and I'm just a few minutes early, I'm on my phone on my blog most of the time just answering questions or checking on Twitter and seeing what the latest thing is going on

or reading Reddit. I'm trying to make sure that I'm... One of the things that we pride ourselves in at Wizards and R&D specifically is a strong interface with the public. And part of doing that is just constantly keeping up with what people are saying and what is going on. And so another very important tool is just access to that. I know there's some members who, a lot of people in R&D carry around

some means to keep notes and records to do. Aaron has a book Globus has an iPad different people have different tools but there's definitely a lot of record keeping that goes on but one of the things that you have to realize is I'm in design

design in some ways we have the least interaction I have to interact with design I have to. I mean, I have to interact with design. I'm sorry, I'm design. I have to interact with creative. I have to interact with development. But other than that, there's not a lot of other sections of the company that I interact with during the design process because it's so early. But someone like development has tons and tons of people. They're interfacing with brand. They're interfacing with digital. They're interfacing with organized play. You know, they're all still interfacing with creative. They're interfacing with digital. They're interfacing with organized play.

They're still interfacing with creative. There's just all these moving pieces. And one of the things about keeping track of all the moving pieces is having the tools to keep track of it all. We have a program, for example, that looks at dates. I forget the name of it. And whenever you have a date, it emails you to let you know that you have a date coming up.

Now, my only real date is a handoff of files. So I have like one date. I'm just like, here's my handoff. They got my handoff to development. But development will have 30, 40, 50. I mean, there's lots of different things going on. There's lots of deadlines and things. Like, there's very few deadlines

that happen before design. In fact, the only deadline design has is design's over. I mean, maybe divine only deadline design has is design's over. I mean, maybe divine starts, you know, and then divine slash design is over. So we don't have a lot of dates, but a lot of people have a lot more, and so there's a lot of stuff to track all that. And one of the things, my little caveat I'll say to people is I remember when I was in ninth grade, I had a math teacher who gave a little speech one day and said that math is important.

Pay attention. You're going to need math. And I scoffed. I said, I'm going to be a writer. I need to know page numbers and count my salary and I don't need to know a lot of math. And then after I was working at Wizards, I went back home and I stopped by school. I was giving a speech, I think,

to one of the classes. And anyway, I saw my math teacher, my ninth grade math teacher, and I said to him, I said, I go, you were right. You were right. I need a lot of math. And the other thing that's funny is, like I said, in college, I studied communications. And it's amazing how much I use my communications training because, you know what, there's a lot of communications to what I do as well uh and and all that requires a tremendous amount of technology i mean i even get into it we use word processing to process cards i know development uses um spreadsheets because there's a lot of math and a lot of of grading things and rating things and having to look at things against each other um so there is a huge amount of tools that get used there. I mean, like I said, I feel

like I dipped my toe in. I hit the major ones. I think the two most important are the database and our wiki. But then there's lots of other tools that get used, lots of programs. And like, obviously, we, a lot of the people are on Magic Online all the time. That's really important to sort of watch what's happening. And there's a lot of data collected. I didn't even get into market research. I mean, there's a huge amount of technology that R&D uses to do its job. And so, I don't know,

today is just giving you a little peek of some of the things that we do to give you some idea. But anyway, I'm happy that they say it's third time's the charm. So this is the podcast

I will use. But now, I'm in my parking space so we know what that means it means it's time to end my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic see you guys next time