Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #239 - Starting in Research and Development

Episode Date: June 26, 2015

Mark shares his carpool with special guest, Melissa DeTora and what it is like to start to Research and Development.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, guys, we got a special one today. I have a guest. Say hi. Hi. So this is Melissa DeToro, one of the newest members of R&D.

So Melissa has done a very strange thing, which is how far did you drive today? I drove 45 minutes. You have 45 minutes to be on this podcast. Because people ask all the time minutes to be on this podcast. Because people ask all the time to have guests on my podcast, and I keep trying to explain to them that I literally am driving to work. And most of my guests have been people who live near me. So you are the farthest away. So I welcome you. So here's what we're going to do today. I have you guys meet Melissa, and we're going to talk about what it's like to be an R&D. And I realized something interesting when I was prepping for this is that Melissa started in the beginning of 2015.

And I started in 1995, 20 years apart. So we're going to have some fun today sort of looking at the differences between where R&D used to be and where R&D is now. But we're going to start now because Melissa is our guest. So Melissa, talk a little bit. How did you end up getting the job in R&D? Let's start there. All right. Melissa is our guest. So, Melissa, talk a little bit. How did you end up getting the job in R&D? Let's start there. All right.

Well, I was in a movie theater about to watch Guardians of the Galaxy. A fine movie. Okay. And I got this Facebook message. So, I look at the Facebook message, and it's Dave Humphries saying, Would you like to work in R&D? And I was just like, well, that was unexpected. So, the whole movie, I was thinking about this Facebook message that I received,

and I was just like, I was shocked. I didn't expect this. It was just like crazy to me. So a little background. So Dave Humphries, very famous Magic player, Hall of Famer, is the manager for the development team. And so one of Dave's jobs is to find new talent. So we have a system we use called the internship system. So the way it works is we hire someone for an internship.

How long is the internship? Six months. Six months. And at the end of six months, we sort of evaluate how the person's doing and whether or not we want to move the person on full time. And pretty much every developer who is in the pit right now went through a development internship. I mean, even like Eric Lauer, who's the head of development, my equivalent on development, he was an intern for a while. So talk a little bit about, okay, so Dave Facebooks you and says, hey, I want you to be in R&D. What happened to that point? All right. So I thought about it for

a little while. It was like, basically I would have to give up playing Magic on the Pro Tour and actually playing Magic at all, because at the time, Wizards employees couldn't play in any sanctioned Magic tournaments. So it was kind of a big decision for me. I was also, I would have had to move across the country. But after thinking about it for like, maybe five minutes, I said, yeah, this is for me. I think I want to do this. So I told him, yes, I was interested.

And then we did an interview. That went fine. And then he sent me this test called the Vapor Ops test, which is basically just this design test. And you just have to answer a bunch of questions about magic cards and stuff. Well, real quick, the Vapor Ops is cards you've never seen before, and you have to evaluate them, because the job of a developer is to evaluate cards they've never seen before. So we're not going to talk specifics,

but give me a general sense of the kind of things you had to figure out on the Vapor Ops test. It was basically like evaluate cards for limited and constructed play, build constructed decks out of these cards. So basically I had to like, you know, look at cards I've never seen before, evaluate them on the fly, and then just build a deck that, a standard deck that would, you know, work

in the format and both of these cards. So, okay, so you had the interview first or you had the vapor ops test first? I had the interview first, actually. Okay, like a phone interview? Yes. Okay, so you had the phone interview, you did the vapor ops test.

After that, what was next? Well, then after that, I was told that my test went really well, so that was great. But unfortunately, they didn't have a position for me. They went with someone else, so I was real sad. But it was okay because I could go to Pro Tour Honolulu, so that went fine, but Dave also said that he was very interested in me still, so like, he would keep me in mind in case something else opened up, could have opened up in a year, a month, who knows, but a month later, something did open up, so I, so I ended up making plans to move out to Seattle, played in one final Pro Tour, which was Hawaii,

plans to move out to Seattle, played in one final Pro Tour, which was Hawaii, and then after that, I guess after that, like, it was Christmas and stuff, so I waited a couple months, and then I moved out in January. So, something that you might not know, but it's very funny, it's very, when someone starts in R&D, especially on the development side, a very, very common request is, just one more Pro Tour. That's a very common request is just one more Pro Tour. That's a very common request. Yeah, it was like actually really sad because I just also top aided a Grand Prix, like right before the Pro Tour. So I did kind of want to play more and more Pro Tours. But I mean,

I figured if I played in another Pro Tour, I would just have to play in the next Pro Tour. So I had to give it up sometime. And I figured this was a good time you know this was my 18th pro tour um I didn't I had a decent amount of success I didn't like have the pro points I wanted like I like my goal was to like be on the hall of fame ballot and I didn't get enough pro points for that unfortunately but I think overall like it was it was a good decision and you know it was it's a lot of pro tours it's pretty impressive yeah no very impressive so okay so you uh day says okay we got a job for you you started in january i believe yes okay what's your first day like you walk in first day what's the first day of being rd like all right well first day i got to see all these people who i haven't seen in a

long time that i used to play magic with so it was kind kind of like a reunion. I saw Gavin, Sam Stoddard, Ben Hayes, Ian Duke, like all people that I played PTQs with years ago. So I got to see my old friends again. So that was pretty cool. Right. So development is mostly hired from people that are former pro players. That's where development tends to get most of its people. So then I get handed all of these books of magic sets. And they say, okay, here are the next five magic sets. Learn them.

So all of a sudden I have all these sets I have to learn. It was pretty overwhelming. So whenever you start, one of the things, we refer to it as the black hole, which is every person who starts an R&D, there's a gap where they know all the cards that they played with, and once they get an R&D, they know all the cards they're working on, but there's a two-year gap between what you've seen and what you work on. And it's very, very hard, actually, to remember things that you just haven't experienced. Like, if you've played with the cards,

you tend to remember them. Or if you've worked on the cards, you tend to remember them. But just looking at lists is a lot trickier. So what's it like catching up on two years of magic in not too long? Oh, it's really hard. So I asked a lot of people how long it took them to learn.

They said, oh, you know, like a month or more. So I was like, all right, a month, yeah, that's fine, I can probably learn these sets in a month. And it's just, like, very overwhelming, because usually, for, like, if you're preparing for a Pro Tour, you have to learn one set. So, that's pretty easy, and you also have all this knowledge of sets before it. So all you have to do is, like, learn these cards, figure out how they play well into the standard format that you already know about. But then all of a sudden, the standard format is completely new.

It was two years that you've never seen cards before. So you have to not only learn all these cards, but also figure out the standard format. And that is the standard format. FFL, what we call the Future Future League, is standard, but a year from now. And so one of the things, the sets you're talking about make up standard. You have to play a standard in now and so one of the things that sets you're talking about makeup stand like you have to play a standard which you know none of the cards oh yeah for sure

and then not only that but there's no artwork like all you have are just you know names text and casting costs so like you're like so for my first day i just borrowed someone else's deck because obviously i'm not going to build a deck when I have no idea what's going on. So I'm playing these cards, and I have to, like, read everything. I don't know what anyone's doing. And there's, like, it's just so hard. There's no artwork on any of the cards, like I said. And, like, that's, like, for most people, the art is, like, how you know the card.

You know, like, you just look at the art, you know what that is. But, like, when it's just text, you just have to learn card names and learn what everything does and like card names is something that i'm terrible at so it was definitely hard to like memorize all these card names oh and then all the card names change yes welcome to my world i know no card names because all the card names i know are all different usually from what they end up being called. So let's talk in contrast here to 1995. So when I started, I started in

October of 1995. Homelands had just come out and the next set was Alliances, which I was on the development team. My first day I went to a development meeting for Alliances and there's like 13... Every single person working on magic was on this development team it was crazy but anyway

I only had one set to learn because it was the longest gap we've ever had in magic between card sets there was a 7 month gap and we had a shorter time frame between how long we worked less far ahead back then so I had to learn one set which was a small set of alliances so

that's a very different animal than having to learn, you know, two years worth of cards. Oh, wow. That sounds way easier. That's much easier. Although it was a little wilder back then. But I also, when I started Magic, I knew every single card in existence because it was 95. And there were, you know, a thousand cards or something. There weren't a lot of cards in Magic yet.

So you actually can know every card. It's no longer possible. Okay. So first day, you have all the new sets. weren't a lot of cards in Magic yet, so you actually could know every card. It's no longer possible. Okay, so first day, you have all the new sets. You got all the new sets. What else did you do on the first day? Well, I did a Dragons of Targaryen draft. Okay. That was really fun.

I didn't expect that. And also, during this draft, Feverforge wasn't even out yet. So I got to open packs of a set that isn't going to come out for months. And we did a draft, a real-life draft. It was, like, super fun and definitely, like, something I didn't expect to do. So let me explain what's going on there. So one of the things we have to do is we have to check packs before it comes out.

So the very first print run that comes off is a test print run. They send it to R&D, and we need to make sure that everything's correct, that the packs aren't messed up. So Brian's one of the development guys. His job is to look through and make sure the collation and everything is correct. But, hey, we have sealed packs.

We don't want those to go to waste. And so it's very common that R&D, you know, just for quality assurance purposes, we'll draft it and make sure that it's good. Yep, and so it's very common that R&D, you know, just for quality assurance purposes, we'll draft to make sure that it's good. And unfortunately, we had to give back all the cards. Oh yeah, we cannot keep the cards. Yeah, I had a

draft for, we did the same thing for Magic Origins, and I opened up both Jace and Foil Jace! Thatil Jace. That was crazy. That was crazy. But anyway, so, okay, so you had a chance to play in a draft in a format you'd never seen before with real cards.

You had to learn our systems, right? You had to learn multiverse and all the different tools. You had lots of stuff to learn. Okay, so you had to learn the tools. You got to get up to date on all the cards. What else? What else after your first date? I got a free lunch.

Oh, that's very common. Yes. It's very, very common when someone starts that the team will take them out. The whole team will go out to lunch to welcome. The design team, for example,

we tend to go to California Pizza Kitchen if we tend to go whenever we get a new designer. So be aware, R&D, once again, people who aren't aware of this, there's a bunch of different sections in R&D. So there's a development section, the head developer is Eric Lauer, and the manager of the development team is Dave Humphries.

The design team, I'm the head designer, and then Mark Gottlieb is my design manager, there's a design section. There's also a creative team section that's broken into a story section and an art section. There is an editing section. There is a digital section that's broken up into different digital products. And so all those different groups exist in R&D. So it's just meeting everybody, right? That's probably a big part of the first couple of days is just learning everybody's name. Yeah, I did go to all the departments

and meet everyone and then forget everyone's name. But I did learn them over time at least, so that's good. But yeah, there's a lot of people to meet on your first day. I did know most of the development and design though already,

so that was good. Did you know most of the design? Yeah, like Gavin, Jackie. Oh, sure, you knew Gavin and Jackie. Yeah, because a, Jackie. Oh, sure, you knew Gavin and Jackie, okay. He teased with her. Yeah, because a lot of the designers

don't come from the Pro Tour. You're correct. Gavin and Jackie did, so some of them do. But like Ethan and Sean and Ken. Yeah, but I did meet them

during, like, you know, various times. Like, I went to the Community Club last year and got to tour Wizards and I, like, met almost everyone then. Oh, that went to the Community Cup last year and got to tour Wizards, and I, like, met almost everyone then.

Oh, that makes sense. Okay. That's, like, the number. I remember you were in the Community Cup. I forgot. That's true. Okay, so, um, okay, so let's talk about your very first team. We're not getting into specifics, but was it the first team you were on, a development team? Um, well, I guess the FFL team is technically the first team? We're not getting into specifics, but was it the first team you were on, a development team? Well, I guess FFL team is technically the first team. Okay, so talk about the FFL team. Tell me what that is. All right, so FFL is our internal standard league. Future, future league.

Yep, and we play future standard. So basically what we do is we meet every week to go over all the cards and figure out what the top cards are in the format. And we build decks independently based on what we think, what we feel are the best cards. And we playtest. Lots of playtesting. And then, like, it's also split up into seasons. So, of like right now we have Dragons of Tarkir is the current standard format, so technically you could say that's the Dragons of Tarkir season, but we have that as well for future sets. And then when the season is winding down, we do a tournament. And if something is performing super well in the tournament, it's very dominant,

we could maybe make some of those cards worse to make the deck a little weaker, or we could improve some other cards to make decks that aren't doing so well a little bit better against this particular deck. That's pretty much what FFL is all about. So one of the roles of, I know, the interns is, you guys do a lot of playtesting,

so it's very common for the interns to do a lot of FFL. Yeah, we have the most free time, so we just play lots of Magic. And you mentioned this earlier, but I want to hit this point again, that one of the skills that's really important for a developer is the ability to build decks. So talk a little bit about what the goal is. What are you trying to do when you build decks? All right. Well, first, I want to say that building FFL decks is just so different from building decks

in real life. Like, in real life, you have a lot to go by. You have the internet, you have tournament results. But, like, here, you have to just build a deck from scratch. So you have to really know what you're looking for. Like, if a deck has a weakness, you have to know how to find it and, like, how to improve it. And just, like, being in R&D for four months,

my deck-building skills have just improved, like, so much. If I ever go back to the Pro Tour, like, watch out, because I am actually, like, much better at deck-building than I used to be. So one of the things for people to understand is the real world has what we call a static environment which means we print cards, those are the cards, and so when you go to build a deck, nothing changes.

The cards you're playing with today are the cards you were playing with a week ago. But when you're playing in R&D, cards change because as you guys are figuring out what's going on, development will change the cards. And sometimes it'll change costs. Sometimes it'll just throw them out and add new cards. So you're building in a non-static environment, a settlement that's in flux.

So what is it like building an environment where things keep changing? All right. Well, for example, if you have this one deck that's doing really well and dominant, we'll talk about it. We'll be like, okay, sure, this deck is performing too well, let's make, you know, these specific cards worse. So we do that, we even try and play the deck again, it's bad. So we just, like, dismiss the deck, never play it again. Well, that could be a mistake, because as other cards keep changing, this deck could be good again, you know? So, like, one thing that we have to be careful of is to,

like, never dismiss an old deck that we think is bad because cards are constantly changing, the decks are always changing, and decks, like, they just fluctuate in power level, like, constantly, like, every day. So, another thing that I know you guys do, we've talked about this a little bit, is not only is your role figuring out what's good and what's bad, you need to figure out what's fun and what's not fun. Oh, yeah, that's very true. Like, I might say good and bad,

but that's not actually what we're trying to do at all. Like, the actual goal is fun. So, for example, if there's cards that are, like, just producing, like, a very, like, repetitive game state, we want to avoid that. producing a very repetitive game state. We want to avoid that. One of the things that I know Eric's written a little bit about is what development is trying to do is they set power level,

but power level is not... It's about figuring out where are the interesting things. Let's put the power where the interesting things are, meaning make... So I talk about this a lot in my podcast about how the players will go wherever the game puts them. Wherever the strongest strategies are, the players will play that strategy. Regardless of the fun things to do, they'll play the better strategies.

So what development needs to do is make sure the better strategies are where the fun is. So that the decks people are playing are the fun decks. And I know a lot of development is trying to make sure that what you guys are pushing is the thing that the players will most enjoy playing. Yeah, definitely very true. Like, if something is super fun, we want to make that card good. If something is not fun, we either want to just kill the card or just not make it a standard competitive card.

Okay, so let's move on. You do FFL. So let's talk a little bit about being on a team. So was your first team a development team? I am currently on a development team, yes. Okay, so what's it like to be on a development team? What do you do on a development team? So I've been on this development team since the set started in development.

So the first thing is this thing called Divine, where it's like a mix of design and development. And at that time, we don't really have control over what cards can change or not. Basically, design has all control over it. But we're trying to make sure that the draft environment and sealed environment is balanced. So if we build a sealed deck and everyone plays blue-black, and no one ever wants to play any of the other colors, well, clearly there's a problem there. So we might try to make the rest of the colors,

like, make some of the cards slightly better, and then make blue and black slightly worse. Then we'll try again and, like, see if it's balanced then. So, yeah, we definitely want to try and get limited to a good place during that period. Let me explain Divine real quickly. So way back when, design used to work on the file and then would hand off to development. And what we found was that development would do a lot of work early on changing some stuff that design did. And what we realized was if development could give notes to design,

design could fix a lot of the problems that development has, but because design's a little more aware of how the set all comes together at that point, that they could fix it, but make changes that would be in tune with what the rest of the set's doing. And so Divine started as this in-between period where design still

has control of the file, but development's making notes that design is listening to and adapting to. So, we do divine, we make changes. Okay, now it gets handed off. It's development's time. What does development do? Alright, so one thing is we have to make sure that the set mechanics

work and that they're fun. So, like, so, for example, some of the set mechanics in the set that I'm on, they just didn't work. Like, so, this one mechanic, it just didn't do anything. It was like this weird mechanic where, like, it was like an ability of a creature, and, like, the opponent, like, you didn't know if the opponent could interact with your creature or not. So it was just a weird mechanic, and we were just like, alright, this isn't working,

we're just gonna kill it it and call for something else so yeah that's one thing we have to just make sure all the set mechanics are balanced and are fun to play with what else do you do? we also want to make sure that there's a good amount of

constructed cards there's like a set number of constructed cards that we shoot for like a set number of constructed cards that we shoot for. Like a certain number of Mythics, Rares, Uncommons, and Commons. So right now, we are,

we don't have enough constructed cards, so our goal is to improve some cards for constructed to make sure that like there's enough cards to play with in the set.

So something else, make sure that there's enough cards to play with in the set. So something else I want to make sure people understand. One of the things that development tries to do is, it's not their goal to solve the environment because if development understands the environment completely, then the public will figure it out overnight. There's millions of people playing Magic. So what development is trying to do is make some educated guesses and push in different directions. So, what development is trying to do is make some educated guesses and push in different directions. So, it's not that they know every card, what's going to necessarily be a hit card.

They just make a lot of logical guesses in different areas, knowing that some of it will end up seeing play, but not necessarily everything. Yeah, like if there's a card that we think is super cool, we'll just like make it good enough so that we know that it will see constructive play. Right. And there's a lot of famous examples where there's cards where the card in the vacuum is really good, but there wasn't a deck that really took advantage of it. And so it's possible for a strong card sometimes to sort of not quite see as much play as possible

because the rest of the cards supporting it aren't there. So the reason you guys are making decks is not only are you trying to make sure individual cards are strong, but archetypes are strong. Right. Okay, so anything else in the development team? Anything else that you do

that people might not be aware you do? Let's see. Drafts, sealed, constructed. What else have we been doing? I'm sure there's something I'm forgetting. Well well another big thing I know that goes on in development is the creative happens design and creative talk a lot early on

but a lot of the decisions about what's happening happen during development like it's during development that the art gets commissioned, that there's card contracts I don't know too much about the art stuff yet, but I do know that there are certain cards that get commissioned for art. And once they get commissioned for art, the art is locked in. So when you change cards, you have to keep in mind the flavor of the card and the artwork. So for example, if you want to change a card into something different, we have to look at the art and we say, all right, will this change work with

this art? And if it doesn't, then we can't make that change. Another thing that happens is, in large sets especially, there's two waves of art. And so you have wave one and wave two. So you have to figure out what to lock down earlier. What are you more sure you want to do? Because you're right, once you have art, it limits what you can do with the card. And so there's another part of development, figuring out what do we want to commit to early and what do we want to hold off a little bit on? And there's a lot of very, very tricky things about art. You know, you might think that, oh, if it's a creature or whatever, I can just change it. It's like, well, not necessarily. Certain creatures can only be so big. And if you go flying, you have to be flying in the air.

There's things that you just can't change easily that you have to be very conscious of. Okay, so another thing that development has to do, which is development interacts with all the different departments. So development, like if there's frames to be done, development has to interact with CAPS and the people doing the framework and making sure that we figure out how the frames are going to work. If there are magic online issues, if we're doing something that's going to be quirky to program, they have to interface with digital to make sure that those stuff are done. If there are any organized play issues, like if they're doing something, like I know when we made the double-faced cards, we had to talk to Organized Play because we knew that was a huge drafting thing, and Organized Play had to figure out how they were going to be drafted. So there's a lot of different things I know development does, interfacing with lots of different sections.

Design kind of, we have to interface a little bit with development and a little bit with creative, but we're doing work so early that a lot of other teams aren't involved yet. Yep, that's very true. I haven't really interacted with many of those teams yet because I'm still very new and usually if you're a lead on a development team,

those are the people who interact with them. But yeah, that's definitely true. Always have to talk to creative. I know every time I suggest a change for a card, the lead on that set is like, oh, okay, let me just go ask creative.

Okay, so you're on a development team, you're doing FFL. What other kind of stuff do you do? So even if I'm not on a certain team, I could still be in playtest with that team. So I've done lots of playtests of all different sets that are either in design or development. And I know Eric has you guys look at files, and you guys will do passes on yeah that's something that he's having us do because like especially when a set

is in design he wants us to look through the file anyway just to like see if there's something off because like sometimes designers just like design a card that will just never work in constructed yeah that's something we've been spending a lot of time recently is trying to design cards that have more potential in constructed. Yeah, that's something we've been spending a lot of time recently is

trying to design cards that have more potential in constructed. Because certain kinds of cards won't work in constructed. Or just a card that won't work in magic. You know, it's like, oh, this card, it just doesn't work. Like, the rules don't support it. Or, like, you just can't

actually put this card in the deck for whatever reason. There could be any kind of reason that I can't really say. Yeah, I mean, like, actually put this card in the deck for whatever reason. There could be any kind of reason that I can't really say. Yeah, I mean, one of the things to keep in mind is, in design, you know, there's all sorts of things you have to do before you get to the final product. And there's rules, there's templating, there's all sorts of, you know, there's developmental issues, there's all sorts of things. And so, we're trying to get more eyes early in design to pick problems early so we recognize that they're problems and we don't end up with a mechanic that has to be six lines of rules text.

Yeah, like another thing that I've noticed is like a lot of designers like to make new card types. Well, most of the times I read these new cards and I'm just like, yeah, that's not a thing that can happen. You know, so unfortunately those cards just get killed immediately usually. Yeah. The, uh, one of the things that we're working a lot on is making sure like design, some of what design wants to do is just do crazy things and try to out things we've never done before, but there has to come what I call the sanity pass at some point where you're like,

okay, that's great. We can't actually do that. Or why can't we do it? Because sometimes you can solve problems by going, okay, well, here's why you can't do it as is, but maybe you could solve that problem so you could do it. Okay, so FFL, you do development, you're doing playtesting, anything else? There's weekly meetings, right? Yeah, of course there's weekly meetings. Yeah, we have a development meeting every week

where we talk about just like any development topic. It could be about like a new set mechanic that's coming up or about like products such as like Modern Masters 2, like, you know, like what cards should be in it, for example. Like it could be pretty much about anything. We also have a weekly FFL meeting where we talk about just standard and what cards are fun, what cards are not fun, too powerful, stuff like that. How about Tuesdays? Oh, we have a meeting on Tuesday, too. We have a magic meeting.

Basically, a magic meeting is all of magic R&D go in this room. There's maybe 50 people, and we pretty much talk about anything, anything magic-related. And it's not just R&D go in this room. There's like maybe 50 people and we like pretty much talk about anything, anything Magic related. And it's not just R&D. It's anybody in the company who is interested and has some hand in Magic can come. It's where we do our slideshows. It's where we do lots of presentations

whenever we do new sets. But yeah, the topics can vary greatly. You know, one week we're talking about some new set coming up. Next week we talk about what we learned in GDC. The next week it could be about talking about coalition or something. It's all sorts of lots of different things. Okay, Wednesday we have a meeting. You know what Wednesday's meeting is?

Yeah, Wednesday is card crafting. What is card crafting? That's where, like, we basically talk about a specific topic about magic cards. So for example, what can we do with red creatures? We'll talk about what red creatures can do. Well, they can have haste, they can have first strike, just things like that.

Yeah, card crafting is a little more technical. It's just design development, and it is much more in the weeds technical talk, like talking about can a certain color do a certain thing or the rules have to figure out how something's going to work and we have to come to an agreement

how we want a particular mechanic to work we also have a meeting called world crafting I don't know if you go to world crafting I have never been to world crafting world crafting is the same thing but it's for creative issues so it's like it's the equivalent of card crafting but for creative, but it's for creative issues. So it's the equivalent of card crafting, but for creative.

It's in the weed creative issues. Do you have any other weekly meetings that you would go to? I mean, obviously there's stuff like a one-on-one you meet with your manager. There's some bookkeeping type stuff. But anyway anyway we're almost to work here so what would you say here's a question I know people always ask what is the thing that you least expected

you know now that you've done it for a while what is the thing that you're most surprised that people you know you did not expect walking in that now that you've done the job for a while you're like oh wow I did not see this well I think I expected You did not expect walking in, now that you've done the job for a while, you're like, oh wow, I did not see this. Well, I think I expected that we would be playing more magic. I just expected we would just sit and play magic for eight hours.

But we do a lot of discussing, debating. A lot of talking. Yeah, sure, a lot of talking. A lot of just sitting at our desks and doing research about cards and like not as much magic playing as I thought

and another thing is basically every developer and even designer in R&D like they're all like very talented

magic players I didn't actually like I mean sure people have been on the pro tour of course they're good but I was actually like very surprised

at like how talented everyone is. You haven't played me yet, so. But we've played. We have played. I think you beat me, if I remember correctly. Yeah, I think so. So, yeah, one of the jokes is that a lot of R&D joke that their actual play skill will go slightly down over time while being in R&D.

Only because, you know, being on the pro tour, you're sort of just constantly playing specific, like, competitive magic a little more. And my claim to fame is I've gotten better. I'm one of the few people that, like, my play skill is better than the day I started. No, this is very true, though. Like, I am definitely a worse magic player. Like, I'm probably a better technical player.

Like, I can make all the right plays and everything. But, like, I'm more sloppy. Like, I go to FNM and I just miss everything and you know I just like I play so much worse because like you know we're playing we're not playing to win at R&D we're playing to like make cards better so we're taking things back we're discussing about plays all the time we're like discussing certain interactions so yeah i'm definitely a more sloppy player than i used to be the thing that people don't realize is one of the things when you're playtesting is it is when somebody does something wrong you point it out because the goal is not to win the goal is to get the optimal game so you can understand

the game state so like if you make a mistake your opponent will just go oh you need to do such and such and so you get very lazy because in the real if you make a mistake, your opponent will just go, oh, you need to do such and such. And so you get very lazy because in the real world, people don't remind you to do things or let you take things back when you didn't do the right play. But anyway, we are now, we've gotten to Wizards. So I want to thank you for joining me.

Hopefully the audience has a little better sense of what it's like to join R&D. But anyway, we are in the parking space. We all know what that means. It means it's the end of our drive to work. So instead of talking magic with Melissa, it's time for us to be making magic. So guys, join us next time.

Bye-bye. Bye.