Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #324 - Leaks

Episode Date: April 22, 2016

Mark explains his dislike of leaks and explains why in detail.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today's topic is something that I've written a column about many years ago, but I've yet to do a podcast on. I wrote an article many years ago called The Leak That Was, and it was talking about why I hate leaks. Why wizards in general hate leaks. So I'm going to talk about why I think leaks are a bad thing. This is kind of a controversial topic. There are a lot of people that love leaks and think leaks are wonderful. So I'm going to explain why I think they're bad. I'll explain sort of what I think some of the arguments for them are

and why I disagree with them. But anyway, that's my topic today. And if you can listen closely, it is raining today. So it's ironic that my leak article is about the water leaking from the sky, which probably means I'll have slightly longer podcasts than normal. Because as we all know, if you learn nothing else from my podcast, it's that Seattleites can't drive in the rain. So, okay.

So let's start. So there are two metaphors I'm going to use for today. So let me get my metaphors up front and center. Metaphor one is I'm going to compare leaks to trailers of movies. I'm going to talk about how movies sort of let the audience know ahead of time what the movie is about using the trailers. The second thing, I'm going to talk about the metaphor of Christmas morning. I have three kids, and for those who don't know,

I'm Jewish, but my wife is Christian, so together, we are raising our kids under both religions, so we do celebrate Christmas, and Christmas morning is an interesting experience, where the kids are, you know, we've spent time and energy getting them presents, and want them to be very excited.

So I'm going to use that as a metaphor also because I believe some of my points today, Christmas morning is a good metaphor. So I'm going to use both trailers and Christmas morning, a little setup for you so you are aware. Okay, so to begin with, there are a whole bunch of reasons that I hate leaks and I'm going to try today to put it in an orderly fashion. So first and foremost, I believe that we don't just sell product. Yes, we make a game. Yes, we sell cards. But what we are selling is more than just cards.

What we are selling is an experience, a series of experiences, obviously. And so one of the things that's important is there's more, it's not just the cards, there's more to what we were trying to do. We spent a lot of time and energy focused on trying to make sure not just that the card set itself is fun and exciting, but that the build-up to it, that the reveal, that there is a preview season in which our goal is to say,

okay, let's introduce this new set and get all excited about this set. And that there is an experience to that. Like, one of the things in general is, let's say I had a happiness meter, and I could go and measure happiness. My first contention today is that the happiness

meter is lower in a world with leaks than a world without leaks. That I believe the experience for the players involved, for all the players, is overall lessened. Now, that doesn't mean, I'm not saying that there aren't individuals that have greater happiness from a leak-laden world than not,

but I'm saying overall, I believe the vast majority of the players, the overall experience is lower. Okay, so this is where I bring the movie trailer in. So what are movie trailers for? A good movie trailer, and let me separate, I don't believe all trailers are good. I'm talking about a good movie trailer does the following job. What it wants to do is it wants to introduce you to the movie,

give you enough information to get you excited for the movie, but not so much that it in any way hurts the movie. I'm not a big fan of trailers that tell you the whole plot and give away major plot points. And, I mean, there are even some famous trailers that literally showed you the climax of the film. I'm like, oh, that's the climax of the film. Why did you show that to me?

So when I talk about trailers, what I want is a good trailer. And a good trailer gets you excited. A good trailer, you watch the trailer and like, oh, I have more questions than when I started. I'm more excited to see the movie than when I started. That it just encourages and enhances and is part of the overall experience.

And I believe previews, when done correctly, that's the goal we want. What we want is we want to create an experience. And one of the things is we've done this for a long time. We're on our 23rd year. We've made mistakes. We've learned from them. I mean, today I'll be talking about some of the mistakes we made. Meaning a lot of what we're trying to do is figure out how to excite you the most. And we've spent a long time and we've tried

a lot of different things to do that. So for example, one of the key things to making the experience work is understanding how much information to give you, in what order, and how often. What information, what order, how often. That's really important. Okay, so let's walk through that. How much information? Well, what you want is enough of a bite-sized information that the public then can have fun talking and discussing it.

If you give not enough information, it doesn't spur the conversation you want. You give too much information, you have trouble with focus. That there's too much out there, then it's like, for example, let's say we just reveal the entire set all at once. Well, that's not a good preview.

That's not a good experience. There's just too much to digest. That the audience doesn't know what to talk about. That everyone is talking about different things and you don't have a focused conversation. One of the things you want to do with the preview is you want to say, okay, we're going to give you some information.

We want you to focus on this information and you guys can talk about this particular thing. That when information is focused, you get a much better response from the public because they're on the same page. They're talking about the same thing. And that they are, oh, did you see thing X? Oh my gosh, thing X.

And then they're focused on that. The second thing is order. And the reason order is important is context is important. That a lot of what we're trying to do is make sure you understand why it matters. For example, here's where we did it incorrectly. When we were previewing Lorwyn, my preview card was a Treefolk Lord. A very good Treefolk Lord. But here was the problem.

Prior to Lorwyn, we hadn't done Treefolk in a while. I mean, obviously Alpha had Treefolk, there were Treefolk, but we really hadn't done tree folk in a while. I mean, obviously Alpha had tree folk. There were tree folk. But we really hadn't done tree folk in a while. So when I showed you this exciting tree folk lord, oh, well, you didn't know there was eight tribes in this, like, you didn't really know that Lorwyn

was going to be this major tribal set and that one of the tribes was tree folk. So when I showed you the tree folk lord, you're like, okay, I guess. That seems okay. Like, you didn't realize the significance of it. We did a bad job of telling you context. And that is something we've gotten much better at over the years.

I mean, Lauren was 10 plus years ago. We want to, we have learned much better of how to give context. And the next thing is how often you give information, which is you want to sort of give information so there's enough time, people digest it, can discuss it, get excited, and then, okay, you move on to the next thing in preview season. Okay, so leaks don't tend to follow any of that. Leaks don't care about how much information. In fact, there's a lot of leakers that just spill all sorts of information, more so that you can digest. They often don't care about context,

meaning they'll show you things that matter, but not in a way where you understand the larger thing. And sometimes, by the way, there are different kinds of leaks. There's some leaks in which the leaker has information and they're picking and choosing what to show you, and there's some where they just show you what they got. So a lot of times, the reason they mix context is they don't know the context.

One of the things, for example, that's really important is when you have a set, you have things that I call are focused and you have outliers, meaning there are things the set is about and there are things that happen to be in the set. So one of the expectations when people see things is whatever the earliest thing you see is, you assume that it is symptomatic of what's to come. Now, when we do it, we make sure to do that. We don't show you an individual card

if that card isn't symbolic of what the set is. Now, in any magic set, there are always outliers. There are things in which, oh, you know, most things are sort of full throttle going a certain direction, but every once in a while,

we have a card that's connected, but not as such. And so if we show it to you early like for example let's say I have a set in which there's only a handful of artifacts you know there's a couple artifacts in the set but there's just a handful of artifacts if the very first thing I show you is an artifact I kind of imply that oh the set cares about artifacts there's a bunch of artifacts and that might not be the case you know we have to be very careful what we show you. So another problem with people leak thing is

they don't understand the context, sometimes because they either, I mean, A, they don't care as much, and B, they might not even know the context. And the third is leakers, there are some leakers that, I mean, there are some leakers that are a little bit better about understanding how much information to give, but in general, leakers just sort of go, here

you go. I found the stuff. Here's all the stuff. Here you go. And just gives so much information out that it doesn't allow focus. It doesn't allow time, you know. Another example, let's use my Christmas morning example, which is one of the things that can happen is, so December 25th, Christmas morning. On November 3rd, I can hand my children a list of their presents. Here you go, children. Here's what you're going to be getting. I've itemized it for you. Okay.

Now, is it exciting on November 5th when they get the itemized list? Okay, it's somewhat exciting. You know, and this is another thing I need to explain is people, when they want to defend leaks or something, they're like, no, no, no, I was excited. You know, I get excited when I see leaks. And I'm not saying that, obviously, information is exciting. You don't know something, you want to know something.

That is inherently exciting. And if I gave the itemized list to my children in November for what they're going to get two months later, almost two months later, there'd be some excitement. They would learn things. But here's the thing. Have I created an experience that's better for them?

Is it better that they're going to spend seven weeks knowing what's coming, but not able to open the presents? You know, so that's the next thing which is important is the timing is important. We want to give you the information when it's relevant, when it matters. And one of the things about leaks is it often happens outside that context. In fact, usually it does. You know, someone finds information earlier than they're supposed to, and they've decided, I'm going to show this information.

You know, if someone finds information earlier than they're supposed to, and they've decided, I'm going to show this information. But it's a lot like handing the Christmas list in November. It's like, okay, yay, look at this. But it just dilutes the experience in a couple ways. One is, it shifts the experience from where you want it to be. Like, you want the excitement to be Christmas morning. You want that,

you know, you want to get up and there's a ritual and there is, you know, part of the experience is getting to go through things. You know,

having preview articles and having, you know, us to be able to do reveals and like, so I'm recording this the weekend after the Shadows Over Innistrad Grand Prix

where we did all the exposure stuff. The Grand Prix with the escape rooms and the online puzzles and all that. Like, we want to set things up and we want to reveal them and do things at the right time. And that when somebody just sort of indiscriminately

does that, then it offsets everything. It doesn't allow us to provide the things when we want to provide them. You know? And once again, my ongoing thing here is, it lessens the experience. That if I show you what you're going to get in December, on Christmas, in November, I'm not, and that's the thing,

now that you won't get excited, let's say you really, really wanted a bicycle, and all it says is bicycle. Like, well, you get excited, and that's the thing. Not that you won't get excited. Let's say you really, really wanted a bicycle. And all it says is bicycle. Like, well, you get excited. A bicycle's coming. But now, but the point is, have we made a better Christmas experience? I've now told you that you're getting a bicycle seven weeks from now. You know.

And I think a lot of players who leak, or people who leak, I don't even know. I mean, one thing to realize is a lot of the leakers are, one of the reasons to leak information is, it is exciting to put out information, that the reaction people give you when you tell them something they don't know, is people get very excited. And that's where I think some of the, is,

I'm not saying that leaking information can't be exciting in the moment. It can be. It is. Not knowing things and learning is exciting. But is it maximizing the excitement? You know, okay, I'm really excited in the moment, and then there's kind of a letdown. You know, okay, here's the list in November of your Christmas presents.

And then like, yay, yay! And then a day later, it's like, oh, okay, now I know everything. Now, you know, now I know come Christmas morning, I'm not going to have that, you know, I'm not going to be giddy the night before. I don't get the joy of opening up the gifts the night before Christmas Eve and then waking up and being all excited.

And then also there's just the experience of opening each present and getting sort of to have that moment around each present, you know, of knowing everything ahead of time. And instead of going, what is this? What is this? It's like, oh, is this this? Yeah, I know I'm getting this. Is this this? And there, I mean, obviously, if you have a list of your presents,

I mean, open presents, you don't know everything about the present. So there's a little bit of, okay, well, let me see what it is. But my point is that what we want is we want to make sure that when you are, you know, opening your presence metaphorically, we want you to be as excited as possible. Another thing, I mean, this is important, and I know when I bring this up, there'll be people that poo-poo it because it's not important to them, but one of the other reasons we want you to get excited is we want you to be able to buy

product when you are excited. You know, one of the reasons that we do marketing, the reasons that we want to get excited is, look, we are trying to sell you something. We want you to get excited when you're able to buy the thing you're excited. If we get you excited, if you get excited six weeks earlier, and by the time it finally rolls around you're just less excited, you'll buy less. That is legitimate. Leaks definitely hurt sales. I'm trying to explain today.

Some people want to say, that's it, that's everything. All they care about is the bottom line. And I'm like, no, no, no. There's a lot more than just the bottom line. We're trying to do the best we can to give you the best experience and make something, make magic have a larger context to it. But I would be remiss, I mean, if I'm going to walk through reasons why I think that leaks

are bad, one of the realistic leaks are, hey, it directly relates to less sales, you know. And how magic sells is very important to all of you because the more, I mean, one of the things that I don't think people necessarily realize is there are a lot of luxuries that magic gets. For example, when I design a set, when I get to design a magic set,

I have, there's years of work on it. You know, from the first moment that I'm thinking about it to doing early work to doing exploratory design to doing design, then it goes through development. You know, there is, of which I'm, you know, consulted. I mean, there is probably like a three-year window where I have some involvement in a product before it gets released, you know. Now, for example, when I worked on the, this is my go-to example, but when I worked on the G.I. Joe TCG, which wasn't a big deal.

I had three weeks of design. I did a pretty good job for three weeks, I thought. But still, I had three weeks. Three years, three weeks. That's a giant difference. And one of the reasons that we have such extensive design and development and all the resources, the fact that we have the ability to do the quality of art and world building. The reason that magic is such high quality is because we make enough money on it

that it is financially feasible to do that. That if magic didn't have the model it did, if we weren't able to make the money we were, it would not be at the quality level that it is. And that is because of our model. And I think that's important for people to understand. That part of, in order to make the

game that I think people really love, we need the resources to do that. And when we lose resources, that means we lose some resources in making the game. We lose resources in stuff that you guys get to do. I mean, we take what we make and push it out to create extra experiences, to have extra Grand Prixs, to do cool things in the store. But we want to enhance your experiences.

And part of that is, it is important for us to be able to sell the product. And we are a business. I'm not going to make excuses for the fact that, hey, you know, when people do things that impact us and hurt us, that's not okay. Okay, continue on. So I talked about how it messes up the experience. Let me talk some of the components of that.

So let me talk about timing. So one of the things to understand when we do a preview, there's a lot of moving pieces that the average person doesn't understand. So number one, we print magic in, I think it's currently 11 languages. And it is our goal to do previews in all the languages that we put out the set. So for example, when I write a preview article, normally I write my articles about a month ahead of time.

I have to write my preview articles even earlier than that because we want all the preview articles to be translated into all the languages. So there's a lot of energy and effort that goes into it. Why is this important? Okay, well, let me explain another thing, which is one of our rules is we don't comment on rumors. That if people say something happened, we don't say whether that is true or that is false. We do not comment. And the reason is the second we comment, the second we say

yes, that is true or no, that is not true, we create a system by which people can game it to figure out what's going on. As soon as you know that we will tell you whether facts are true or false, you can start making up facts. You can start testing the system. You can start saying, oh, okay, I have a hunch maybe you'll do this. Let me test the waters and see if that is true. So in order to sort of knock in information, we say nothing. So if there is real or false information out there, we don't say anything. We don't confirm leaks. We don't confirm whether they're true or false. And by the way, most leaks, most spoilers are not true. The vast majority of actual leaks and spoilers is somebody makes something up, fools other people into believing it's true,

and then at some point, usually the people figure out for some reason that it's not true. Okay, but the fact that we don't confirm things ties into the fact that if information gets leaked and it is wrong, we do not correct it. So another problem that happens is, and this is why I'm talking about the timing being wrong, we do not correct it. So another problem that happens is,

and this is why I'm talking about the timing being wrong, is once we release information, we support the information. If we're going to preview a card, and you have things you need to understand for that card, we're going to tell you that information. So a perfect example is there was a leak that went on for Oath of the

Gatewatch, in which some cards early on that had the new colorless mana symbol, the little diamond in a circle. But it just so happens that none of the cards that got leaked told you what that symbol was. And so there was a lot of confusion about what was going on. Now, I know there's people that said, I enjoyed that confusion.

I found that confusion fun. Us trying to figure out what that was, that is fun for me. And my answer is, that is not the majority opinion. You know, that when people say I had fun, you know, a lot of what you're saying is, I enjoyed the experience, but was it the maximal experience for most players?

You guys didn't see the people writing to me really distressed. Like, what is this? What's going on? I heard this. Is it that? And that it's not people. What you want to do when you preview something is make sure people understand what it is and get excited about what it is. Not wonder what it is.

Not, you know, panic or get confused or, you know, watching. Like, it's painful. It is painful watching leaks, especially when there's not enough information, or people get misconstrued, or people get misled. And then, for example, a couple things. Either people believe something that's not true, and then when it turns around that isn't true,

they get upset because they believe something got invested, it got emotionally invested, and then they get let down. Or, it is true, but they don't necessarily understand the components or the pieces of it, and then they have wrong information and they start believing things, and then when it's time to actually preview, we have extra work, because we not only have to teach something, we have to un-teach something first, which makes it more complicated. And that, remember, when we release information, we make sure that we give all the things that are necessary so you can properly understand that information

if there are rules that go along with it we'll tell you the rules if there is some errata that's happening with it we'll tell you the errata if what we are showing you means something has a larger context we give you the context leaks don't give you context and one of the things that's problematic is what we want to do is we want you to focus on the set at the right time and in the right way. And that leaks really don't often will send you down the wrong path. Oath of Gatewatch is a good

example where what we wanted was not the conversation we wanted when we revealed the color symbol is, oh, how are they going to use the color symbol? What kind of cards can we expect? Not, what is that? I don't get it. What's going on?

Is that, you know... And people, like, it wasn't even clear that it was colorless mana symbol, right? I mean, there are people who properly figured it out. But once again,

there's a big difference between knowing something and not knowing something. When you read it on the official site, when Wizards is saying something, you're like, okay, I can show my friends

that Wizards said this. I know, you know, there's the air, not the air, there is actual, what's the word I'm looking for? There's rock solid, like I know this is true.

And some people are very uneasy when it's like, well, you know, I don't know this is true. And some people are very uneasy when it's like, well, you know, I don't know this is true until I hear it from an official source. And so there's a lot of people that get very uneasy. Like, one of the things I think people focus on when they look at leaks is, they look at the people that are all excited,

you know, and go, oh, this is awesome. Everyone's happy. Why would you not want this? Everybody's happy. And I'm like, you are focusing on the people in the moment. A, you don't see the people that aren't happy, who are like, I don't like this, because that's not the people joining in. And second, you don't see the people who might be happy in the moment. Hey, here's the Christmas list.

I'm excited about it. And then a week later, I'm like, ah, there's a letdown. Now, you know, Christmas is not as exciting as it once was. Likewise, when you look at movies, for example, movie trailers, one of the things they'll do is, there are different trailers they show you early on than they show you closer to the movie. The early trailers, they try to give you an essence. Oftentimes, by the way, the early trailers are not even showing you scenes from the movie.

You know, for example, it's very common nowadays with animated movies, for example, is they'll make a sequence that's just for the trailer. You know, like, okay, well, we're going to show you the trailer, and this is just for the trailer. This isn't even the movie. But we're introducing to the characters or the world. We're giving you a taste of it. But we're not even showing you the movie yet.

It's not time yet to see the movie. And then as you get closer, they give you a little more sense of, okay, what's the movie, so I understand the movie. And, like, that's careful. They're carefully doing it, you know? And it wouldn't be okay to take, even take a trailer they mean to show you but show you at the wrong time, you know? You're undercutting the experience that they are building. Okay. Next. I mentioned this a little earlier, but let me do it with

a little more expression, is the idea of a lack of context. It's also important that when there's a preview, that we want you to understand what's going on and why things are going on. And we want to show off the set for what the set is. You know, part of getting people excited for a set is saying, hey, it's A, B, and C. And sometimes with leaks, you get misled

because they show you something that's not symptomatic of what's going on. And so, once again, when we need to do our job of getting you excited for the set, what I don't need, for example, imagine if someone made a trailer for a movie and people believed it was true, and the things in the trailer weren't true. Then you might lead people to believe the movie is a different kind of movie than it was and then when you're actually trying to sell the movie people are like now they have expectations in a different place you know that part of giving the best experience for you is I want you excited for what the set is I don't want you

excited for those that could be I want you excited for what I'm going to deliver if I'm going to give you stuff I want you happy for what I'm actually to deliver. If I'm going to give you stuff, I want you happy for what I'm actually going to deliver. Another thing leaks do is they often will throw off the context. They make people believe things that aren't true.

They get in the paths that aren't. Oh, and another thing is leaks can often get things wrong. And that's problematic. So, for example, one of the things

that's one of my greatest pet peeves about leaks is we have a card. It's a good card. It's an exciting card. It gets leaked, the wrong information goes out there and either it is stronger than the real card, so when people see the real card they'll let down, even if it's a good card, it's like, oh, it costs one more mana? Oh.

And contextually, that's bad. But in reality, that card, if that's all you've seen, if you've just seen the real card, you would have been excited. The other thing they do sometimes is they make it weak and then people go, oh, that sucks. And that's not even the real card. The actual card's better than that. And then when they see the real card, you know, they've already had

an association with, this is something that I'm not happy with. That we don't get the moment of joy of I'm joyful about this card. The other thing is if I, my wife and I spend a long time picking up my kids' presents and going to stores and finding things and shopping online

and doing research and we spend hours and hours and hours picking so our kids will have the optimal Christmas morning experience. And then somebody who happens to know what we've got in our kids says, hey kids, guess what? You're getting this. And the reason they want

to tell them is, ooh, the kid's isolated. You're getting a bike. You wanted a bike. You're getting a bike and it's red and it's got a bell on it and whatever. Now what would you do if someone else just starts telling my kid about what they're getting for Christmas? I would be upset because I'm like, hey, person, that was not yours to tell. I'm the person who spent the energy figuring out the bike and doing the research and figuring

out what they wanted and going in and buying it and purchasing and wrapping it. Hey, hey, hey, what are you doing? And there's the same simple thing going on is I and my fellow workers spend a lot of time and energy making something special so you guys can enjoy it. And you know what? It's ours to tell. I mean, not only is the experience lesson, there's lots of other reasons. There's just a simple of, look, it is privileged information.

It is private information. It is private information. It is something that we have the right to choose when and how to share it with you. It is our right to tell you. It is not somebody else's right to do so. And when someone observes that right, it is upsetting. Okay, so let me walk through some of the counter arguments. Why leaks are awesome. Okay, so number one, it's exciting. And my answer there is, one, it's exciting. And my answer there is, yes, it's exciting. Learning new information is exciting.

But look at the larger picture. Are the majority of players overall better for that information, overall worse? And I get the emails from people who are upset. You know, one of the things is this idea, or another thing they say is, well, if you don't want to know, just don't look. Okay, we live in an information world that if information is out there, that once something is known, you know, once

information is known, it obviously seeps to social media. Then it seeps from social media into articles and podcasts and people just go, okay, this is known information. I'm just going to, I'm going to talk about it. You know, you could be at your local store and people you know at the store are talking about it.

Information gets out there. And the idea that I could, you know, the idea that if information is out there that somehow someone could choose not to get the information, they can try. I know there's people that try hard to avoid leaks. But, okay, it try hard to avoid leaks but okay it's hard to do that

and the idea of it's exciting is I think you're looking only in the context of okay I have my happiness meter out I measure happiness

guess that's good and I'm like no no no what you want to do is have two worlds I mean obviously we can't do this but world one

and world one and world two, two parallel worlds. In one world, you find out through the leak. In the other, you find out through the planned means of finding out. And we measure your happiness. My argument is the majority of players are happier in the second world than the first. That the leak world, and once again, I'm not saying there are no players that aren't happier. I'm just saying there are less players that aren't happier I'm just saying there are less players there's a minority of players

and the idea is you know the sense of the greater good I feel very white philosophy now but the idea is that like if more people are getting more excitement

out of things being a certain way that it's kind of it is unfair to go well I just like this so I don't care about anybody else that you know that I think that the idea of it's kind of, it is unfair to go, well, I just like this, so I don't care about anybody else.

That, you know, that I think that the idea of it's fun is, is it? Is it more fun? Is it bring more happiness? The second thing is the idea of information wants to be free. And I'm like, no, this is privileged information. The person who gave this information, now, let me explain this. I'm not upset with people sharing information. Once something is public, it's public. When I get mad at leakers, I don't get mad at rumor

sites or people who hear something and tell other people. Look, information is information. I get that once it's public, it's going to be shared. I have no illusion that somehow we're supposed to shut down public information. I don't. But if you're the person that says nobody knows this before I tell them, I telling them is going to happen,

now that people know, that's the person I'm talking to. That when you give information and now people who, the information was not out there, it was not available, and you are taking it from the private sector to the public sector,

that is what is wrong. Are you supposed to do that? Are you the person it from the private sector to the public sector, that is what is wrong. Are you supposed to do that? Are you the person that's the official person to do that? If you're not, a couple things. One, you could be breaking the law. Two, you are hurting people. You are lessening the experience for the majority of players. And you're hurting us.

You're hurting wizards. You're hurting magic. You are hurting people when you do that. Now, I understand that some people don't care about the consequences of their actions, that they're like, well, short term, it's positive, or even for me, it's all positive. I get to pay people, I get to see people be happy. And that's exciting for me to see people be happy. So it's all plus for me. I'm like, well, take a little bit larger context than that. You know, part of being in magic

is being part of the community. Are you a positive part of the community or a negative part of the community? And the idea of, well, I do something and everybody I can see

seems excited by it does not mean that the majority of people are happy by it. I get to see people who write to me all the time, you know, and look, I have people defending leaks every time. I get to see people who write to me all the time, you know. And look, I have people defending leaks every time.

I guarantee you, I'm doing this podcast, there'll be a Reddit thread or whatever of people talking to me about, once again, how I don't get it and I'm out of touch and leaks are so awesome. And my point is, no, they're not so awesome. That there's a lot of damage they do. And once again, I'm not saying there's not positive aspects to them. I'm not saying nobody enjoys them. I'm not saying they can't

spur discussion that can't be interesting. What I'm saying is they create less happiness and they spur less conversation. Or at least they spur less conversation of the kind of conversation we want, which is about what it is and not what it could be. I mean, I don't mind people speculating what things could be before they exist, but when it's time to finally start talking about something, I want to talk about what they are.

You know, the other big defense I think I give people who want to sort of defend leaks are sort of like, you know, we want to choose how we experience things. You know, it's very much like the who are you to tell us how we can get our information? And I'm like, well, two things.

One is it's proprietary information. So I do have the right to do that. It is proprietary information, you know. And second is, it is my goal. Hopefully, if you listen to my podcast today, my end goal is I am trying to maximize the experience, maximize the happiness for the majority of Magic players. We do a lot of cool stuff.

Like this last weekend, we did the Shadows of Innistrad or the fun week we had with Conspiracy. We want to do cool, fun things. We are trying to do cool, fun things. We are building that into it. But when people leak information, it just undercuts our ability to do that. And as somebody who like, that's my job, it's what I do. It is, it is endlessly frustrating when I see people who, I mean, what exactly are you getting out of it? Why are you leaking the information?

You know? And the best of my knowledge is, it's fun to leak information. It's enjoyable. People react positively. It's a good experience. Okay. But that's because you're also,

what you are seeing is the people directly responding to you. You know? And what you're not seeing is the ramifications that does. You're not seeing the people who learn things that don't want to learn them. You're not seeing people, you know, and what you're not seeing is the ramifications that does. You're not seeing the people who learn things that don't want to learn them. You're not seeing people, you know, getting the Christmas list months early and then Christmas isn't as fun. Or even just a week later, it's not as fun, you know, that it is this idea. I mean, I feel like what's happening is you're giving the Christmas list to my kids, you

know, early November and the kids will get excited when they see the Christmas lift because they're learning things they don't know, but you are not enhancing their overall experience. You're not making Christmas better. You could show a trailer that has all the good stuff in it and shows all the secret things about the movie and show it way earlier because you somehow got your hands on it and you showed it to people earlier. They'll get excited.

People will get excited for it. Does it make the movie-going experience better for them? Are they happier? And that's my big issue is, is it happier? Do people overall, and not just you individual, yes, there are people that they love leaks

and they love the explorational leaks and there are people in which that experience is better for them. But is that the majority experience? And I argue pretty strongly it's not the majority experience. You know? Now, a lot of people, I believe, given that leaks happen, like, okay, well, if leaks happen, I'm going to get on board.

You know? I mean, the reality is when a leak happens, it's going to happen. It is very hard to avoid it. So I think a lot of people's attitude is, well, when things leak, okay, I'll make the best do of what I have. Okay, I'm going to enjoy it the best I can. If I get my Christmas list on November, I'm like, okay, I don't want Christmas to suck. I'm going to get as excited as I can. I'm going to find all the ways I can to get the excitement out of it that I can. But I think a lot of people, and I hear from them people, who are, like, one of the things when we do things like Shadows of the Innistrad,

like we just did last weekend, are people saying, I'm so excited that I didn't, like, the moment when I got to find out, when I got to see, you know, Avacyn and GP Detroit online, or in person if you're lucky, when I got to see that big reveal, that was exciting. That was heart pumping i was so you know the fact that i got to get that and feel that way and it wasn't ruined because someone goes hey look hey i got a pack look you know and that people often say to me like the reason people get why leaks are bad is when they experience something joyful that didn't

come from the leaks and just saying oh well that would have sucked if I had known that ahead of time. I'm so glad I didn't. You know? And, like, one of the things, for example, is when I was a kid, my sister, I have a sister named Elise, a couple times, not too often, but a couple times, she would figure out where my parents hid their presents. And she would come to me and say, I know where the presents are.

And my response was always, no, no, no, I don't want to know anything about the presents. I recognized that I wanted to have a fun, I mean, there's Hanukkah growing up, obviously, I'm Jewish. I wanted to have a fun Hanukkah. I wanted to have each night, each of the eight nights be exciting and I didn't want to notice getting ahead of time. I recognized that me peeking at those presents

would make my Hanukkah experience less and say, I don't want to do that. And it's hard that, you know what I'm saying? There's a lot of people I know when they have the chance to see their presence will see their presence. And what I'm saying is, as you get older, you start to realize that like, am I doing myself a service? Is that good for me? The fact that, you know, like, okay, I learned information, but was I happier? And I'm not saying that some people can't go, yes, I was happier. They will.

Is that the majority? I do not believe it is. I do not believe it's the majority. I believe that seeing a blurry picture, you know, hidden away in some thread is not the same thing as us showing you, you know, in the best graphics we can, in the best way we can, with the context we can, with information you need to understand, you know, possibly, you know, in an exciting way, you know, like those experiences just aren't the same. That somebody is sort of just showing you whatever comes to mind.

Like a leaker can't possibly present things as well as we're going to present them. They don't know the context of everything. They don't know what order they're doing things in. They don't know, you know, for example, they might not even know what the audience, how the audience will react. Like when we have something new, we spend time and energy trying to figure out what kind of reaction we're going to have. So one of the reasons I interact with you guys so much is, you know, for example, on

my blog, I'll ask questions all the time. Now, 90% of my questions, 95% of my questions are whatever. They're just, they came up, hey, it's interesting, let's talk about them. But every once in a while, I give a real question. I actually care about the answer to that. It's something we're really doing. And I do that so I can gauge sometimes what people will really think so that we can figure out ahead of time how people will respond

so we can fine-tune the reaction you get. We spend an enormous amount of time, There's a lot of time we spend in how best to excite you when we preview things. A scary amount of time. We really want to make sure we understand what we're doing and we excite you in the best way possible. And it's an ongoing thing. We've been doing it for 23 years.

We keep improving upon the process. But we are well more suited to do it than somebody that's never ever leaked something before and a lot of times it's not even like they choose what to leak it's like I have this information, I will give you this but anyway I know I know today I'm going to get a lot of people angry

because every time I talk about this I get people angry because there's people that are convinced that this is just awesome, This is just good for magic. And I, to the center of my soul, do not believe that to be true. And that comes from a lot of experience

and seeing what we can do and watching people react to things. And also, listening to people. When things get leaked, I get people writing to me complaining. I get people who are unhappy. I don't think the average person sees that because when you leak information, you're mostly seeing the people responding to that generally are the happy people, or at least the people that in the moment are excited. Like I said, you don't see them a week later, but you're not seeing that the people are actively upset. And like I said, there's no happiness meter. It's

hard for you to gauge like the two different worlds where they're happier. But I, I firmly believe that the world in which we can control the message and we can sort of be careful how we plan it, we can make a better experience and make a better, you know, we can get you, we can, we can do previews in a way that will be an overall, an overall better experience for you. And like I said, we want you to be happy. We want to generate excitement. We want to do it in the right way and at the right time and for the right things,

but we also want to get you excited. It's not like I'm trying to say, no, no, no, we don't want you to ever be happy. We want you to be happy. We want you to be happy for the right reasons and at the right time. know. We don't want you to ever be happy. We want you to be happy. We want you to be happy for the right reasons and at the right time. And, you know, we want you to be happy in a way that the set will enhance

it, not will take away from it. You know, we want, or I guess vice versa, we want the preview season to be something that correctly matches and goes along with the release itself. We want the preview to make you excitement correctly

for the actual set and to enhance the actual set when it comes out. But anyway, I'm at work. See, that's correct. We had some traffic today because of rain, so a little extra podcast. But let me just end this with saying, look, I firmly believe this.

I firmly believe that why I believe this is in the best interest of the players as a whole. That does mean that there are individuals that might not be happier in the leak world. But I believe it's a minority. In fact, I believe it's a pretty small minority. But anyway, I'm now in my parking space. So 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 to be making magic.

I'll see you guys next time.