Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #283 - 20 Years Later

Episode Date: November 25, 2015

Mark talks about the difference in Magic and Wizards from when he started to today, 20 years later.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, today, well, at the time of me recording this, I'm coming up on my 20th anniversary. So back on October 30th of 1995, I first joined Wizards of the Coast. I'd been freelancing before that. I'd actually been working in the company for a while. But October 30th is my start date for my full-time employment. So it's 20 years later. And so today I'm going to talk about what's different. How has magic changed in 20 years?

And so it's a day of reflection, a day to look back. And just sort of one of the things I like to do is give some historical sort of, put magic in a frame of how things change and how they function. So one of the things today is to talk about how, you know, magic's evolved a lot in 20 years. It's different. It's a different game. R&D is different. Wizards is different. R&D is different. Wizards is different. There's a lot of, the way we approach the game is different. So I want to talk about all those things and talk about how just 20 years later, it is, we have evolved. One of the things, by the way, that I love to talk about Magic is that Magic as a game constantly evolves. That we are constantly reinventing the game.

That we keep making new pieces for it. And that allows us as a company to change as well. I like to feel that we learn a lot of things as we make magic and that we're able to learn from, you know, I talk all the time about the iterative process, how when we're in design, how we try something, we then, you know, we play test it, We see the reaction to it. We get feedback. And then we make changes based on that feedback. And we continue the loop. In some ways, the entire making of magic is a giant iterative loop.

We make magic. We see what you guys think. Not playtesting. We make cards. They go out in the public. You guys respond to them. And then we react to sort of what you say, and Magic over the last, you know, 22 years has evolved as we have learned from you. So today, let's talk about, so in some ways, it's a different blah, so that's my theme today.

So let's start with it's a different game. So Magic back in 1995 was a young game. It came out in 1993. So when I got there, I was about two years old. And Magic had gone through a lot of growing pains. So for example, when Magic first started, it was a West Coast thing. It came out, you know, there was just a limited amount of product that they were able to make. And it was popular right out of the bat, so it sold very quickly.

And what happened between 1993 and 1995, when I first got there, is it started getting to spread. It spread across America first, then it started spreading internationally. And by the time I had joined in 1995, Magic had definitely sort of made its way out into the world, but we were a far cry from where we would go. So, for example, Magic, back in the day when we were making sets, the way we would make a set was we would think of what were the two mechanics. In fact, remember, in 1995, we hadn't even started the block model yet. Mirage was really the first set that had a block model. I know that when I got there, we were working on Alliances, and Alliances would come out in 1996.

And Alliances was the first time that we ever had a set that took place in the same place as another set. So Alliances was definitely us starting to move there. But the interesting thing was, the people that made Alliances weren't really trying to make a second set to go along with Ice Age. That wasn't really what they were doing. They were just making another set. And we actually on the back end did a bunch of things to try to more play up that it was on Ice Age to create continuity. But the design team really was just trying to do

new and different things. And the fact that it was in the same place was not something they were thinking of, and really, a little bit of continuity of mechanics was more done in development than it was done in design. So for starters, the game wasn't, the game, and the idea of themes, mechanical themes, they had definitely dipped their toe in it. Antiquities had done an artifact theme. The dark had definitely had a mood to it, even though it wasn't mechanical. Fallen Empires had explored, definitely, tokens. And, you know, you started to see small themes, but magic had not, you know, would go far away from that. The idea of the themes we were building. And it was, you know, like I said, literally literally we used to sit down and be like, okay, what are the two mechanics? We're going to have two named mechanics.

That's what the set's going to have. What are they? Uh, and then over time we started to realize that, you know, two might not be as much as we wanted. Maybe we need more. Maybe there's mechanics that, maybe else that had things we just didn't label that Now we feel like, oh, we need to label these things. You know, and one of the big differences also in just the game in general is that we, just the way we thought about it, like, when the blocks came along, it was more about how sets had to move to other, you know, the block had to have a theme and a mechanic had to evolve,

and we had to have mechanics that were connected to it. The idea of story, I mean, you know, there was stories back in the day. I'm not going to say there weren't stories that go along with them, but they were much, much looser stories. And the reflection of the set and the stories, the connection between them, a lot of the ways it worked back in the day,

and there's a few exceptions. Antiquity is probably the biggest exception to this. But a lot of the sets were made in such a way that they kind of made a set, and the people that made the set had a story to go along with it. But there wasn't a lot of connection. It wasn't like you really couldn't possibly know the story without some

help of some external thing talking about the story. And a lot of times, the connection between the story and the game sort of evolved. A lot of decisions were made after the design was done. That design didn't take creative into mind nearly as much in the sense that they kind of knew something about what they were doing. And sometimes they would have a story, but the integration that we have now, I mean, the content, so for example, the creative team back in the day was called Continuity when I first got there. And their job originally wasn't even necessarily doing all the creative. Their job was more making sure that what we said, I mean,

they were called continuity. It's like, okay, well, we've said this, let's try to make sure that we stay true to what we've said so that, you know, we're not contradicting ourselves. And quickly, you know, for example, back, you know, 1995, the continuity

people were disconnected from the art team, for example, meaning that the person disconnected from the art team for example meaning that the person who did the art descriptions I don't even think was I think the art director did the art description so it wasn't even connected between the creative team and the art back in the day

the continuity was mostly doing story and they had a little connection to art but they not right now creative team now, a creative team has a story team and an art team, and it's very linked together. Another thing that just was very different was just the general philosophy

of how we put sets together. Like, I've talked about this before, which is we really had a philosophy that components were disposable. Like, we were going to take a mechanic, we were going to do the mechanic, and that's it. You weren't going to see the mechanic anymore. The idea that we'd bring back, you know,

I think we knew we'd reprint some cards that were staple cards, like, you know, Stone Rain or Disenchant or Giant Growth, you know, things that back in the day were staples. Like, okay, maybe the staples get reprinted. But the idea of bringing back specific things, especially mechanics, was just not something we thought about. That's not really how we functioned.

And a lot of early Magic was trying to come up with something cool and then just go dig another space. And part of that was, by the way, I think if you asked us back in 1995, would the game be around in 2015? You 1995, would the game be around in 2015? Would the game be around 20 years later? I don't know. We would have said no. We might have been optimistic and said yes. I think I would have said yes.

But I don't think we would have understood where the game was going. Nor, in some levels, should we. But the idea is that back in the day, when the game is two years old, it's like, oh, there's infinite spaces to explore. We can do whatever. Let's dig in that area. Let's dig in that, you know. And the idea that we have to preserve space, like design space is something that we have to be conscious of, that was just not a thought process back in the day. I mean, we were in some ways wasteful. The same with creative. Like, it really took us a little

while to go, you know what? These names, once we name something, we can't use that again. You know? And that, hey, maybe we want to be careful. Maybe if a card has a nice, elegant name, it should only go on cards that we may want to reprint. You know? We don't want to waste an elegant name on a card we'll use once and never see again.

Just the entire sort of idea of magic having a longer shelf life to it. I don't think that was really, you know... And it's not that I think we weren't optimistic that the game was going to do well. The game obviously, you know, even back in 1995, the game was exploding.

Now, if you had asked me in 1995, then in 2015, the game would be at its peak, that the game would be doing even better than it was 20 years earlier, I might have been surprised at that. Although, I don't know. I really, really always had a very high opinion of Magic and its ability to last. So I guess even in 1995, that wouldn't have shocked me. But the interesting thing was Magic as a Game keeps growing,

and, like, the scope and size of it. I mean, a lot of things, for example, back in 1995, that, like, there are things in the game that you take as a given that really did not start when the game began. Now, I mean, the idea of formats happened before I started working, but not too much before. The idea of standard started in 95, I mean, but not too much, not too much before. The idea of, of standard started in 95. I mean, slightly during the summer, I guess. So before I,

before I started, but the idea of standard existing was definitely something that was relatively new. Um, the idea of, um, multiple formats, like, like just the idea of limited, for example, that when we first started, R&D really had the hopes that maybe we could do something with Seal, but also, there wasn't a pro tour yet. When I started back in 1995, there was no... Organized play was very loose.

We had started sanctioning, but, I mean, there was no tournament structure. There was no... There was less formats. Limited was just not something people really tended to do. I mean, the funny thing is, every

once in a blue moon, we would do something like Sealed. Now, remember, by the way, in 1995, there weren't pre-release, well, the first pre-release was for Ice Age, so a pre-release had happened, but worldwide pre-releases. The idea that the set would come out, there'd be many pre-releases. That hadn't happened yet.

And so a lot of what we take today as modern tournaments and modern structure and a lot of competitive play, none of that was there yet. None of that had been built yet. And so the idea was we weren't as shaped. Like, one of the things that has happened over the years is the public will embrace things, and then we'll recognize them, and then we'll sort of bring them in.

Commander as a format, for example, is a good, you know. It was started by some judges that just wanted to do a fun, have a fun format they could play, you know, late night after they were done judging. And they were looking to do something that just inspired them to do fun, weird decks, and they weren't trying to be super competitive. And that thing took off like gangbusters, and we recognized it.

We made a small product as a nod to it. That product did really well. We annualized it. We said, okay, clearly there are a lot of Commander players. Let's make a Commander product. And just in general, I think one thing about 1995 was I don't think we quite...

And maybe this is just maturity of the game, but the idea of the broadening of the different kinds of players... I mean, we had obviously some idea. Back in 96, Unglued came out. So we knew there was casual players. I don't think we thought quite as much about casual formats, or quite as much about organized

casual formats. Back in the day, the only way to really run any kind of tournament at all was to run a competitive tournament. And the idea that you could say some sort of more casual formats, that wasn't something that was nearly as present in people's minds.

Also, just the methods R&D uses. I mean, it's funny that, for example, right now in design, we have exploratory design. There's exploratory world building. I mean, once again, there was no world building back in 1995. Tempest was the first set really that had anything close to what we think of as modern day world building. I mean, once again, there was no world building back in 1995. There wasn't, Tempest was the first set really that had anything close to what we think of as modern day world building. And that didn't happen, Tempest came out in 98. So that didn't happen until, I don't know, 96, 97. You know, the, a lot of the structure and the way we put things together, the process of design, the process of development.

You know, right now, development is lots of tools and metrics and, you know, quick pointing and different ways to sort of see where the set is going. Obviously, we'd later get into new world order and really have a sense of how do we keep complexity in check.

I mean, none of that stuff is going on. So just the methods by which R&D uses to sort of get a sense. We didn't do any of that stuff is going on. So just the methods by which R&D uses to sort of get a sense. We didn't do any of the market research back then. One of the things that's become a big thing for us is trying to go out and get information from the public so we can understand what it is and how you guys are, what it is you guys want and how you're appreciating the things that we've made. Market research has done a lot to change how we think about things.

I talk about it being an iterative process. Well, a big part of iteration is feedback, and we have majorly improved the feedback loop. Another big thing that's very different for them, social media. I mean, back in 1995, we had Usenet existed. We had the do list. There are some limited ways for us to sort of communicate what we were doing and even more limited ways to get back sort of communicate what we were doing and even more limited ways

to get back the information from all of you but you know I look at the contrast between now and just like the idea

that something like Twitter where like I can get feedback and within minutes no answers to things you know like previously it was kind of like

we weren't even doing market research so maybe we would say something in the do list and then maybe people would write in and I'd get some letters or something, you know.

The feedback was a slow trickle of feedback, and now I can go on my blog and ask a question, and like a couple hours later, I'll have, you know, a thousand people answer. That's just a different world, and by the way, one of the things I think is very different in the way, you know, in the last 20 years is just in the way of even treating feedback as an important part of the process. I think a lot of magic back in the day was like, let's just make cool things. Oh, this will be cool. Players would like this. And the idea of going, hey, what's working and not working?

That's not the way we thought. And it's not the way we thought. Another big change, this is one big, I think I play a big part of this, is R&D really shifted what I say from a math perspective to a psychology perspective. And the idea of, back in the day, it was very, I mean, most of early magic R&D were math people. You know, were people who met Richard through the math department. And definitely the mindset of how they made things was exploring the combinatorics of what the game could do. And they were very into the math of the game.

The game has a lot of math to it. It's not that we've moved away from the math. The math's there. But one of the things I introduced that really changed how R&D functions is the idea of what does your audience want? What is the psychological motivation? That's where the psychographics came from. You know, Timmy, Tammy, Johnny, Jenny, Spike. What do they want? What is the psychological motivation? That's where the psychographics came from.

You know, Timmy, Tammy, Johnny, Jenny, Spike, what do they want? You know, later on, we would take the aesthetics as well, North, East, and Bell, and, you know, just the idea of who is this card for? You know, that wasn't true in 1995. We weren't saying, okay, I'm making a card. What audience is this card for? What format is this card for? Who do we expect to like this card? And also, as I talked earlier, is not only did sort of the world building, but the whole creative thing also changed. And that just how we're telling,

like the fact that there is really a story and that's present in the game and we want the audience to understand, that has gone through all sorts of evolutions. And now we're at a place right now where we're telling a major, ongoing, continuing story that we are showing through the cards. And we have experimented a lot over the years to try to figure out how exactly to do story

and how to integrate it into the game. And I feel like we're finally getting, like, we finally got to a point where, you know, for example, we do Uncharted Realms, which is the article the short story article that you can now read the magic story and 1995

we couldn't get the number of people that would read anything first of all, back in 1995 I guess we had books but our books were really disconnected they weren't really about the sets per se they were kind of about their own thing about, you know, Gull the Woodcutter But our books were really disconnected. They weren't really about the sets per se. They were kind of about their own thing,

about, you know, Gull the Woodcutter and the Whispering Woods. They were about their own stories that didn't really connect into the game. And to go from that to being, now we have a weekly column that's the most read column on the website, more people read the column than any other column, because people want to know the story story and it's more in a way that's approachable. Just how the story has functioned has changed dramatically

in 20 years. Another thing that has changed R&D has changed. Just who we are. If you go back to early, early 1995 when I joined, R&D were mostly people that were the original play tefters. Like when I first

joined R&D, I mean Richard was there, there was Joel Nick, there was Scaf Elias, there was Jim Lynn, there was Charlie Cattino, Bill Rose actually started when I started, but Bill was another one of the original play tefters, but it was

people who sort of were around when Richard created the game, really enjoyed it, saw an opportunity. And that first wave of R&D was mostly just like playtesters, original magic people. And then they started hiring some of us that had grown up, not grown up, but that were fans of the game. That, you know, I and William Jockish and Mike Elliott and Henry Stern and Robert Guterra and some of the second wave people who like, we loved Magic. We weren't, we hadn't started with Magic.

We started as players. And I think one of the things is bringing in R&D people that were players is you get a very different sort of perspective to it. You know, that all of us had, had started the games as fans and it just gave you a very different sort of perspective to it. You know, that all of us had started the games as fans, and it just gave you a very different way to think about it. And I don't know, I definitely think it helped.

And the next big change, I think we look at sort of the third wave of R&D, we started saying, you know what, we need more trained people. And we started hiring off the Pro Tour, and we really started hiring what I think of the modern developer. Because early on, like I was a developer. I was hired as a developer. I had no, none of the skills we think of modern day development. I didn't have the ability to judge power level.

You know, I was doing development work, but I wasn't doing it in a way that we do modern development. And so just how we find people, how we hire people. Like, for example, one of the big things now is both in design and development. You're an intern or a contractor for six months. The first thing we do is we try you out and see, do you fit? And, you know, are you someone who makes sense? And that people go through this whole process.

We have a whole hiring process that never existed, you know. I mean, back in the day, a lot of like I and other people were just kind of around. I mean, I got hired because I was freelancing for the company. I'm like, yeah, sure. I'd work here. I'll move to Seattle. Like, OK, you're hired. You know, they were.

I mean, they weren't picky. They weren't picky. They were hiring people they thought could do the job. But it was a different animal. It's sort of like they were hiring people that were adjacent, and we started getting to the point where we would go out and be more proactive about finding people and finding particular skills and saying, you know what, design, a very different skill from development, and sort of, I think there's a, and that's also true in general. Even the creative

team is now split. There's an art team, there's a story team that we're specializing a lot more. And a lot of what we've done over time is sort of fine tune the things we need and fine tune the skills we need. And so many things, by the way, it's funny when I talk about all the tools that have changed, just the idea of understanding, I mean, I've talked about like metrics and things, but also like understanding how collation works, how we lay things out, how packs are made, you know, and even just a lot has changed in the physicality of making it. Like back in the day, for example, we were making cards with films.

We, you know, we would make, you know, the way we physically made cards is we made films and mailed films to the printers. That's how they printed it. And now it's all digital, which just changes. It just changes a lot on how we're, what we're able to do, what technology we have available to us. You know, like the idea that we can do something like a double-faced card, that would have been really, really hard to do back in the day. And, and just, for example, I mean, a lot of little things that people don't

think about, but like, for example, since the beginning game, we added a rarity that's now mythic rare. That wasn't there. We have premiums or foils. That wasn't there. Things like collector numbers, that wasn't there. There's so many sort of small tools in the ways, you know, the idea of

just like having colored rarities so that you could tell. If you go back to the beginning of the game, or let's go back to 1995, I guess. If you saw a card, there was no way to tell what rarity that card was. I mean, it had an expansion symbol, so you could tell what set it was from,

but you couldn't tell where it was from. You couldn't tell within the set what rarity it was, or there wasn't a collected number, so you couldn't organize them. You didn't even know, without external sources, how many cards existed in the set. That's something you had to get externally.

And the way we talked about the game, the way you could learn about the game, like I said, back in 1995, we had the Do List, which was a magazine that came out bi-monthly, every other month. So the idea is, six times a year, we could put out a magazine.

Now, we would use it to do some previews. I mean, some of the stuff we do now, but now we have every weekday, there's information, there's multiple columns every weekday. There's behind-the-scenes stuff. Now, I'm not saying we didn't do some of that before, but just the sheer volume. You know, I used to write maybe, I don't know, two or three articles in a doula, let's say. So let's say I wrote maybe two and a half articles. So if I wrote two and a half articles on average, and there were six, that meant I was doing 15 articles a year.

I also was doing the puzzles, but 15 articles a year. I also was doing the puzzles, but 15 articles a year. So contrast 15 articles a year to now where I'm doing 50 articles a year. And that's articles. That's what I'm writing about. That's not talking about my blog. That's not my 100 podcasts a year. Or just even the way people learned about us was we could write articles. That was it. You know, that was really the only resource we had available for people to learn

about stuff. You know, now we have articles still and they're daily and they're much more frequent. Um, but we have lots of other means to learn. Like we have, I have a podcast, I have a blog. I, you know, like the fact that I do like a comic strip, that's, that, you know, I mean, I guess we had back in the day was Phil Folio did a comic strip in The Duelist. But that wasn't daily. That wasn't, you know, like a lot of the jokes I can make were literally like the thing the audience is talking about. And the next day I can make a joke about that thing, that topic, you know, that I can, I have the ability to sort of respond to things and be making jokes about what the, and not only that, the community in general, like the community was really split.

I talked to the story about how, you know, we would collect up moats when we traveled from LA to San Francisco, because in San Francisco, people really wanted moats because the deck, Brian Weissman's The Deck was the rage. And, you know, like you could trade for, you can make really good trades, but people wanted moats. No one cared in LA about moats. You could get them easily. Up in San Francisco, they were a much-desired commodity. The idea of how communities

exist has gone much more global. The idea that you can just interact with people that weren't from where you lived, that is very different. Or just the fact that you can play Magic online. That was a very different animal. Not only that, you can play Magic Online. That was, you know, that was a very different animal. Not only that, you can play Magic on the computer or on Magic Online. There's Magic Duels, which is a console.

You can play on your phone. I mean, be aware. I mean, and part of the thing that how Magic has changed is the world has changed around it. I mean, that's the perfect example, which is in 1995, I didn't even have a cell phone. People didn't have cell phones. You had a phone in your house, and I had a phone at my desk. And if you wanted to talk to me, you had to catch me when I was somewhere.

If I wasn't somewhere, well, then wait until I was. I mean, we had answering machines, I guess, back then. But the idea that, you know, now your phone is on you at all times, and that same phone that's on you now has the graphic abilities to allow you to play magic on it.

You know, that's just, that's a different world. Another big thing is Wizards is a very different thing. When I started back in 1995, Wizards was a little tiny, a little tiny role-playing company that just, I mean,

to their credit, I mean, correctly sought out, found, and, you know, did a good job of marketing the game. But they went from a little tiny company to one of the giant players in the industry. And that, when I first got there, it was a company that was struggling to sort of, there was a lot of growing pains.

That a lot of people who were in jobs were doing things they had never done before. You know, I got hired by someone in HR that had never worked in HR before. You know, we had people working in departments, running departments, that did not have expertise in that department. You know, and the reason is, this is growing so fast.

We were hiring, you know, if you knew a friend that could work, we'd hire them because we were growing so fast. And the big difference in 1995 now is in 1998 we got purchased by Hasbro. And the company has gone through a lot of sort of growing up, if you will. Going from this young, un-started company to a professional company. And hiring people who are like experts in their field. And just, there's been a lot of change then. I mean, there's some

fun, the early days were fun in a loose, crazy sort of way, and it definitely, it's a much smaller company as well. We used to have an all-hands in the pit where R&D works. The pit was where we had our all-hands. And now we've gone from the pit

being the all-hands to like, we have a giant, giant room. In fact, we have to have two shifts so that we can see everybody. Usually there's a shift A and a shift B. So there's two different all-hand meetings in a room, a giant, giant room where we hold our pre-releases, just to be able to talk to everybody. You know, when I first started working there, there was, I was like the 200th person maybe hired. And now we have more than double that, you know,

and just in our office. You know, now we have many offices around the world and like in the U.S., in the Renton office, we have over 500, I think. So anyway, I mean, and Wizards just the sort of how we grew and what we were, and that has changed significantly. My role, I mean, I guess at some levels I've been a spokesperson for a long time, but if you go back to 1995, it was kind of really unofficial.

Like, I'd go on the Usenets because I did. To now, we're like, I'm, you know, I'm very much, I'm a designated company spokesperson. Just that element has changed. And the other thing is just design technology itself has changed. Like just sort of, design and development technology, just sort of in how we've learned to make the game. sort of in how we've learned to make the game. We are able to take much more complicated themes and weave together things and create synergies in ways that we just didn't understand back in the day. You know, one of the things that I think 20 years later for me is, you know, when I started, I was very eager to make magic cards. But I had never worked at a game company. You know,

that was my first game design job. In fact, I wasn't even hired. It wasn't at a game company. You know, that was my first game design job. In fact, I wasn't even hired. It wasn't even a game design job. I wasn't hired as a game designer. But I, you know, I had done game design as a hobby. I was interested in game design. You know, and 20 years later, you know, I'm now a professional in the field, partly because I have 20 years of experience of actually doing game design.

You know, and that one of the things that happens, and I mean, you can even read my articles. I mean, you can watch me evolve and the game evolve as we've been going because I'll talk about things. And like I said, the first age, like I, you know, I at some point said, okay, there's a first age, second age, third age.

We're up to the sixth age of design, you know, and that just trying to like design itself keeps reinventing itself and what it wants and what its goals are and what it cares about. I feel like a lot of what I've talked about in the way that design works is we keep broadening out our scope and how we look at things and that, you know, back in 1995, we were very focused kind of on the card and the set. And now, you know, we're focused on such larger issues of, we have an ongoing story, and we have major blocks and places, and we've built a whole multiverse, and there's all these different

components going on, and just trying to build a design to, like, just evoke emotion. The idea, just the psychology of how we design, not just the psychographics, but the idea of, where are we? What do I expect the audience? how are they going to perceive this, what are we going to do, how is the gameplay going to reinforce the way we want the audience to feel? That's just a completely different animal from Once Upon a Time. You know, like I think back

in the day, I go back to 1995, it's like, I think players are like, this card, it's fun! You know, and now it's kind of like, it's fun! And now it's like, yeah, we want it to be fun, but there's so many other vectors we're concerned about, you know, how does it fit in, where's the synergy, what's the complexity, you know, where is it telling the story, like all these different things that it's doing, and I think that's a big difference as well, 20 years in is,

you know, if I talk about the iterative process, a big part of that is every time we iterate, we get better. You know, one of the reasons, for example, magic, like I said, the big stat right now is five years ago, we had the best year that magic ever had in the history of magic, best years ever had. Then four years ago, we had the best year. Then three, best year. Two, best year. One, best year. And you know, this current year, I believe we're on track to, once again, have the best year. Then three, best year. Two, best year. One, best year. And you know this current year? I believe we're on track to, once again, have the best year of Magic's life. And part of that is we are firing on all cylinders,

and that comes from all these different lessons that we learn. Imagine at a period where we made some mistakes. I mean, not that we don't make mistakes, but we made a whole bunch of mistakes at the same time. And we really took our lumps, and we learned a lot from it. You know, that we made some disastrous developmental mistakes. Let's look at something like Urza Saga or Mirrodin. We made some

disastrous design mistakes. You know, you look at something like Chimza Kamigawa block or prophecy or, you know, there's a lot of different things where we made big mistakes in design and we made big mistakes in development. And we learned from them and we got better and we made new processes in development, and we learned from them, and we got better, and we made new processes.

I mentioned a little bit earlier, like New World Order, just understanding who the new player is and what's the path to get them in. Also, we've changed completely. Forget the expansions, just everything around it. Back in 1995, do you know what we had? We had very few...

Pretty much we put out the game and that is it. The idea of supplemental products was not, we didn't really have a lot of stuff. We had a little bit, but not a lot. To the point now where almost every month there's a different supplemental product. That every month of the year,

bar, I think, not even December has the holiday gift box. So, pretty much every month of the year, if there's not an expansion, there's a supplemental product you can buy. In some years, in some months, there's maybe more than one. You know, just the options. And just depending on the kind of player you are, what you want. You know, the fact that we have a whole product line for just alternative ways to play or a commander deck every year. for just alternative ways to play, or a commander deck every year,

or, you know, there's just different kinds of things that we do that really sort of reinforce and help broaden out the kind of players and the kind of game. I tell you that Magic's not one game, but many games, and just the number of games it is, the number of formats, the number of just places to have support, that's just gone through the roof. number of formats, the number of just places to have support. That's just gone through the roof. So the funny thing is that like, as I think back on my anniversary and say, okay, yay, I've been here 20 years. It is amazing the amount of things that have changed. In some ways, almost everything has changed. And for the better. I mean, so many different things,

just, you know, I think back 20 years ago, you know, the day I started, I was in not our previous office, not the office before that, but the office before that. Well, sorry, not our previous office, not the office before that, but the office before that, you know, it's, it's like when I say the old office, I don't mean the previous office, but the one before that. And when I started, I didn't even have a desk or a phone or a computer because we were going to be moving soon. It ended up being like six weeks, but like, they're like, well, we're not going to give you anything. We're moving soon. You know, and it was just, we were in a different place in a different time. And it is interesting sort of flashing forward 20 years. And like so many things have changed. It's almost, sort of, flashing forward 20 years, and, like, so many things have changed.

It's almost, in fact, I probably, I could not have done a podcast on what is the same from when I started 20 years ago, because it would have been a really short podcast. I mean, let me end on this, because I'm driving up to work right now. The one thing that's the same, a couple things that are the same.

So let me talk about the few things that are the same in the 20 years to wrap up with. One is, Magic is still Magic. Magic is still awesome. It is still the greatest game ever. It is still a joy to work on. It is still my passion. The color wheel and a lot of the things,

the mana system, the trading card game, the golden trifecta, all the things that really were the things that made Magic magic, all those are still true. All those elements are still there. And as much as Wizards has changed, just the people of Wizards. It's a bunch of people that are gamers that love Magic, and to us, Magic means something more than just a paycheck. It is truly a passion of ours, and something that we

love being a part of. That hasn't changed. And so, you know, it's a different group of people. I mean, with a few rare exceptions like Charlie or Bill, it's a whole different group of people from when I started. But these people are just as passionate as the people who I first started

working with. And the audience is still just as passionate and the game is still just as awesome. I feel like we've improved upon the game, and we've made the game even better, and we've found more ways to interact with the audience, and the audience, I think, with all those ways to express themselves is even more awesome, and just there's more ways to be part of Magic, and more, the many game of Magic, if you will, the different ways to be part of magic has grown. I mean, so much of it is bigger. I think 20 years later, it's like,

the game is still the game I love, it's just bigger and better. The audience is the audience I love, it's just bigger and better. R&D Wizards is the same company I love, it's just bigger and better. So I think 20 years has been good for us. I'm curious, 20 years from now,

for the 40 year, you know, 20 more years, that podcast. Hopefully I'll still be driving. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast. Today was a lot of fun. I like reminiscing, and I like sort of, I don't know, looking back. That's always fun. So anyway, thanks for joining me. But I'm in my parking space.

We all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me, 20 but I'm in my parking space. We all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me, 20 years in, to be making magic. See you next time.