Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #359 - Top 10 Non-Design Jobs

Episode Date: August 19, 2016

Mark talks about his favorite non-design jobs he's held over the years.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Today I took my daughter to camp. She's a counselor. Okay, so today is a top ten day. I'm doing a top ten list. So these are my favorite top ten jobs I've done other than designing sets. So one of the things in my 20 plus years at Wizards is I've had a chance to do a lot of other things beyond just designing magic sets. So one of the things in my 20 plus years at Wizards is I've had a chance to do a lot of other things beyond just designing magic sets. So today I'm going to walk through my top 10 favorite other jobs I've done. And I'll talk a little bit about sort of how I did them and why I did them and why I enjoyed them. Okay, so coming in at number 10, judge. So a lot of people don't realize that

I actually, I was a level four judge for many years. So for those that might not know the system, there's five levels of judges, one through five. And in the early days, I was very active in the judge scene. I think I did a podcast on judging. And I was very involved in doing a lot of interviews and stuff early on. And the reason I was level four was I needed to do a lot of interviews of level threes. You needed to be one above to do the interviews. But anyway, I was very involved in the judge early on, especially. And the major place I did judging was at the Pro Tour. For the first eight years, I went to basically every Pro Tour, and I ran the feature match area. That was my...

So what had happened was, in the very first Pro Tour, I put up... I would put... I ad hoc made little signs to tell people what matches I thought were interesting matches. And then we formalized it at the second Pro Tour, the one in Los Angeles. It was called Rosewater's Picks, that was the name of it. And they made a little sign. And then each match, I would say, because at the time, spectators could walk along the halls.

And I would say where you could go. I'd say where I would go to watch the best matches. And then eventually for the third Pro Tour, we eventually called them feature matches. Got rid of the Rosewater Picks and called them feature matches. And then the players sat in the one area, and then the spectators, they couldn't go everywhere, but they could watch

the feature matches. That was the ones we thought people wanted to watch. And then, for my eight years, I was in charge of the feature match area. So on the Swiss days, I did feature matches. My other job comes later. And not only did I judge at Pro Tours, but I also judged some Grand Prixs. I was certified.

Occasionally, they would send me off to places. I went to Eugene once to run an event. I went to Vancouver once to run an event. I went to Vancouver once to run an event. They would send me around when they needed somebody that was a little higher up to run events that they couldn't find somebody. So, but anyway,

the thing about being a judge that was fun, that I really did enjoy, was that I like the sort of, there is, one of the things that's very nice is I like the sort of... There is... One of the things that's very nice is judging is a chance to sort of get involved in a completely different vector of magic play, which I enjoyed a lot.

I really... Like, it is neat to me that... In general, I like interacting with the public. And being a judge just lets you see magic from a very different vantage point. As I said on my podcast on judging, I really think judges, you know, the people who spend their time and energy to be judges really are dedicating a lot of their time, and the system can't work without the judges.

Most of them, and not all of them, but most of them are volunteers, and there's a lot of work to and the system can't work without the judges. Most of them, not all of them, but most of them are volunteers and there's a lot of work to do the judging. But it is very rewarding work. I get why people do it. I enjoyed being a judge. The reason I had become a judge

in the first place was when I lived down in Los Angeles before I moved to Wizards, I had advanced knowledge because I was making puzzles at the time and I wasn't allowed to play in any sanctioned event. So I startedards, I had advanced knowledge because I was making the puzzles at the time and I wasn't allowed to play in any sanctioned event. So I started

working, I started judging because I wasn't allowed to play. And I really enjoyed judging. And so that's kind of how I got into judging. And when I got to Wizards, Scaf Elias was in the middle of putting together a Pro Tour. So I asked if I could be the R&DA liaison to the Pro Tour. And so I helped Scaf

get the Pro Tour off the ground. And like I said, for the first eight years, I was very,DA liaison to the Pro Tour. And so I helped Scaf get the Pro Tour off the ground. And like I said, for the first eight years, I was very, very involved in the Pro Tour. Eventually what happened was when my twins were born, when my first daughter was born, I cut back my travel. When I got married, in fact, I cut back travel some. And then when my first daughter was born,

I cut back travel more. And then when my twins were born, I cut back all but the tiniest of travel. I only travel a couple times a year now. Before I was married, for example, I would travel 12, 13, 14, 15. I would, you know, I would travel a lot. And then when Laura and I got married, I pulled back a little bit. And then when we had my first kid, I pulled back even more.

And then when I had the twins, I was like, okay, I can't go to all the pro tours. So I stopped going to the pro tours. But anyway, it was fun being a judge. I liked being a judge. I liked... A lot of people seem to think I don't know the rules, but I do. I mean, I'm not as well versed as the rules manager, but I

did study the rules. I did actually pass my level four on multiple occasions. I re-upped a couple times. I even was a scorekeeper at GP Seattle, one of the GP Seattle. And it also gives me, one of the things about my job that I believe is, the more I can understand how different people function, what different people are doing, the better I can do my job.

And so it's nice to be a judge. It's nice to sort of see tournaments. In fact, when I was judging, especially at the feature matches, it did a lot to keep me up to, like, I used to know, back in the day, I actually was a developer before I became a full-time designer. And one of the nice things about running the Pro Tour was I was just watching the best players play the decks, and I became much more well-versed in what the metagames were. You know, now I'm not as connected to that.

And so one of the things about judging is it kept me much more connected into the tournament scene. And also let me interact with the players a lot more. I spend a lot of time talking to people. I mean, one of the things is we make sets to be played with and so it's nice to talk to especially the top level players that really have good analytical skills of what's working and what's not

I would always talk to the pros about sort of do they like this or like that, how is this format how is this draft, how is this and I would talk to them about different formats and cards and what they liked and what they didn't like and anyway I found judging to be a very fulfilling, cool thing to do. You got to wear your little striped shirt.

And it was fun bonding with the other judges. And, you know, it was a neat experience. I really did enjoy being a judge. Okay, number nine, manager of the creative team. Okay, so what happened was, this is around Odyssey. Oh, no, not Odyssey, this is later. During Odyssey, I was put in charge of flavor text and names of flavor text, but that's actually a little different thing.

What I'm talking about now is, when I first got made head designer, so back in 2003, I was told that I wanted to be head designer. I also needed to manage the creative team. And I'm not 100% sure the thought process behind that. Maybe they needed a manager and somehow they knew I wanted to be a designer, so I'd willing to do it I don't know I'm not I'm not sure the thought process behind it um but what happened was I got made the I was I was the manager I was in charge of the creative team for about two years um I started we were the tail end of Kamigawa uh and I stayed there for all of Ravnica and I think most of Time Spiral. No, no, no. In fact, I think all of Time Spiral.

And I think we were just starting Lorwyn. I think sometime between Time Spiral and Lorwyn. I can't remember the exact point there. But I think Lorwyn was after I was gone. So it must have been during Time Spiral block. But anyway, I was there for a couple years. And when I say manager, I was a manager. I managed the team. I actually had

direct reports. It was a very interesting experience. And mind you, by the way, I was doing this while concurrently also head designer. What ended up happening was, so at the time I had the team

was only four people at the time. Not counting me managing it. There was Brady Domermuth, who sort of was, we called him the creative director. Brandon Bozzi did our names and flavor text. Matt Cavada. In fact, I hired Matt Cavada.

That was one of the things I did as manager of the team. Oh, in fact, Matt Cavada did names and flavor text. What did Brandon do? Brandon did maybe card concepting. And then Jeremy Cranford was our art director. And he had an intern named Jeremy Jarvis who was doing, I think, concepting and stuff. And so it was a five-member team. But anyway, so it was interesting.

There's been different times during my time at Wizards where I've managed teams. I've managed designers on numerous occasions. But this is the only time I ever managed non-designers. I was actually managing creative people who were doing work differently than what I did. As you will see later,

I interwove. I definitely have done some of the creative elements at different times. But this is the only time I ever was managing the people that did it. And I did the best I could.

I mean, one of the things that ended up catching up to me was head designer is a full-time job. and I did the best I could. I mean, one of the things that ended up catching up to me was head designer is a full-time job. Being in charge of all the designs of the sets is a full-time job, and so the fact that I was doing what was intensely a full-time job, and then in addition doing another full-time job just ended up being too much,

and I wasn't giving my people enough time. I think part of being a manager is really having time to be able to spend time with your employees and, you know, be able to help them. And I feel like I was doing the best I can, but I was just completely overworked. But it was fun.

It was fun running the creative team. And once again, I wasn't running the creative. I wasn't in charge of telling them what to do creatively. I was in charge of managing their time, of making sure that... I mean, I did give them feedback and stuff. I got feedback from the rest of the company about how people were feeling about different creative things, and I gave the feedback. But anyway, it's interesting.

It's the most managerial I ever felt because I definitely manage designers, but a lot of that was doing what I normally do now, which is teaching technical skill. You know, a lot of when I was managing designers was overseeing the technical skills. Now, what we've since done is we've divided it up that now there's a manager like Mark Gottlieb, the design manager that actually manages the designers as people that looks at their time. But I'm still in charge of technical skills. So I still sort of have a team, but I'm in charge of making sure they get better as designers,

not that I'm allocating what hours they're spending. I'm not doing general management. That's being done by Mark. But this was one time where I was managing people in which I was managing them. I wasn't doing technical guidance stuff. I was managing them. which I was managing them. I wasn't doing technical guidance stuff. I was managing them. And it was interesting. It was a neat experience.

And it really gave me a really good insight into the creative team. Because once you're trying to manage the people doing it, you have to understand the process really well to know, okay, what needs to get done and who has to do it. And so I learned a lot about the creative team, having to manage the creative team. In fact, it gave me a really good insight. So I feel that it was a good learning experience, and I think it taught me some skills that were valuable, and it also helped me understand contextually how the creative team works.

And it's also very funny in that, obviously I interact with Jeremy Jarvis a lot now, but, like, my first interaction with him, like, he didn't even directly report to me. He reported to Cranford, who reported to me. So he was, like, my two down from my direct report chain. Okay, job number eight, tour guide. So there's no official tours at Wizards of the Coast. You can't, if you actually show up at Wizards of the Coast and go, I'd like to take the tour, there's no official tours at Wizards of the Coast. You can't, if you actually show up at Wizards of the Coast and go, I'd like to take the tour, there's no tour.

But from time to time, there's a bunch of different reasons. Sometimes, you know, celebrities that play magic will show up. We've had bands and actors and different people show up. Sometimes it is like a make-a-wish or something, where someone who... Sometimes it is magic celebrities, not celebrities that play magic, but actual celebrities of magic. Or sometimes it's just somebody who knows somebody in the building comes and they want to have a tour. One of the things that I've become a very good tour guide, I've given a lot of tours at Wizards, that whenever we have a tour, usually they ask me if I can do the tour just because

I'm the highest profile. People know me. And so it's kind of fun to have me give the tour. And I've done it enough that I haven't done cold. I know the tour very well. And there's lots of fun tidbits. And one of the things about visiting the offices is

it's an office. I think a lot of people when they come to, ooh, I want, like it's Willy Wonka, you know, when we see the Oompa Loompas or something. It's an office, there's cubicles. I mean, there's bits and pieces that are fun and there's some things that are uniquely magic or wizards, but most of it is just kind of an office.

And so a lot of my job is to figure out where are the little cool tidbits of information that I can pull out to make the tour more fun. And anyway, it's also fun. It's like whenever someone shows up at Wizards, it's always like I get tagged. They go, okay, you want to do a tour? I go, I'd love to do a tour.

And real quickly on the Big Wish Kids. We don't get a lot of requests. We get one maybe once every other year. Sometimes once a year, but usually about once every other year. And our policy is we never, ever, ever, ever turn down Make-A-Wish. Every single request we've ever gotten, we've taken. We've never turned one down. I always make an effort to personally do them.

And we try really, really hard to make it the best awesome thing we can. Usually when people come for a tour, the way it works is I will show them around and then usually we'll get a bunch of magic people to play with them.

In general, we try to get people where they might recognize who they are. People that are indie people and people where they might know their faces and stuff but then we'll come and we'll, whatever format makes sense every once in a blue moon if there is something coming up soon we can play a set that's not out yet

as long as it's really close to being out like a lot of times once the cards are known but the set's not out that's the ideal time where we can play with somebody so they have the first chance to play with it but there's no information to give away since the cards are public but anyway, being a tour guide is definitely fun

and it is, like I said it's neat sort of meeting different Magic fans and sort of getting a sense of I don't know like I said, I like interacting with our fans regardless of who they are. So it is fun getting a chance to do the tours and stuff. It's very up close and personal. The one thing that occasionally does happen is we do not give

tours, but the receptionist has my, can text me. And so sometimes the fans drop by. She'll see if I'm available. Sometimes in meetings and things. I'm not always available. But whenever I can, I will pop up and say hi and take pictures and greet fans and stuff. I try to do that wherever I can. Like I said, I had another podcast where I talked a little bit about being a magic celebrity.

And I take it very seriously. I really want to meet everybody that I can and give a positive experience. And really, as I talked about in my VidCon podcast, it means a lot to people. And I want to make sure that even if I can only pop up real quickly and just take a quick picture and say hi, I try to do that when I can. Okay, job number seven, moderator. So we do a bunch of different panels. The one that I do every year is at San Diego Comic-Con, although I've done ones at PAX.

I've done a few other ones. So one of the things that's fun is I like moderating. It's kind of fun. One of the neat things is having a bunch of different people and organizing. I do a lot of speeches in general. I did my GDC speech. Occasionally we'll do the occasional corporate speech every once in a while. And it is fun to sort of get out and do the speeches.

I enjoy that. And so I guess I'll say speech slash moderator. I like getting up in front of people and talking. Um, I like moderating panels. I think that's a lot of fun. Uh, it's neat putting together panels. Like I, I like putting together presentations, whether they're individual speeches or they're panels. And I really do enjoy, um, I like the presentation of it. I like the, I like making slides. Um, I'm kind of known for having a lot of slides. I tend to overdo it on the slides.

Um, I just like, when I'm doing stuff, I like to have lots and lots of images. So I tend to make a lot of slides when I do speeches and stuff. Um, but anyway, it's another thing where I like getting out in front of people. Uh, my background for those, I mean, for example, I've done a podcast on my stand-up, and I talked about I used to do improv, and I did a lot of acting, and it is fun. I enjoy performing. I don't get a chance to sort of get up in front of an audience all that often, so I do enjoy it, and it's good to use those muscles that I don't get to use all that often, so I enjoy it.

It's fun. I like getting out and speaking and moderating and running panels and being in panels. And so that is a lot of, that is a lot of fun for me. Okay. Number six. Uh, so I'm going to flavor text. So a combination of things.

A, there's a period of time where I was in charge of names and flavor text. Also, there was a period of time where I was a writer of names and flavor text. Uh, and I, I really enjoyed my time when I did names and flavor text. I enjoy names and flavor text. And I really enjoyed my time when I did names and flavor text. I enjoy names and flavor text. There is an art form to having the right name for a card or for having the proper flavor text. Flavor text is a lot like writing poetry. You have so little space that you have to learn conservation of message,

which is a valuable tool. Same reason I like Twitter. I kind of like things that force you to be very concise in how you give out information. And writing flavor text does that. I definitely, if you, for example, my, I, the Odyssey, Unglued and Unhinged, where I did the names and flavor text, the three sets I was in charge of them. And then I wrote flavor text for in the early days, so I think I wrote flavor text

for Mirage through I think I stopped doing flavor text around the time I stopped doing the Weatherlight Saga, so somewhere between Stronghold and Exodus. I think I wrote flavor text for Stronghold and I might not have written for Exodus. I think that's when I left. But anyway, and then

occasionally after that I wrote a few pieces in Ravnica and you know and when we did Unhinged I wrote a lot of Flavor Texts in Unhinged, obviously. But anyway, I enjoy doing names in Flavor Text. It is a lot of fun. It's one of those things that if I had more time I would try to do

more often. It really is enjoyable for me. It really is fun to do. Once again, I'm a word person. My background is writing. I really do enjoy caring about the nuance of individual words.

I was pretty well known when I did flavor text how, because what happens is your stuff gets edited. And the editor would always try to make subtle changes to my flavor text and I would always be like, no, no, no, no, I very carefully picked the words I want, I meant that.

One of the famous ones is for the flavor text for Dwarven Miner which is fetch the pest ridder, Paka. We've got dwarves in the rutabagas and the editor at the time Darla really

thought that in was incorrect that it was beneath so she was trying to change it to neath the rutabagas and I was like no no no the comedy is like I gotta fly in my soup I just felt that the idea is it's kind of like a pest.

And when you talk about a pest, like they've gotten into the thing. Not that they're underneath the thing. They got into the thing. And so the idea is, you know, the whole joke here is that the dwarves, the person doing it felt like dwarves are acting as if they are pests that you need to get rid of. And dwarves, they're miners, so they go under the ground. And so, anyway. If a time comes where I can have another opportunity to do flavor text, it'd be fun.

The other thing is, I think flavor text these days is a little more serious. I was definitely in the camp of a little more Flavor Text that just is fun in a vacuum. That just, you read this Flavor Text and it's funny and you don't need to know much else to understand it. And we do a lot more, we're trying to do so much more storytelling that really a lot of our Flavor Text space is

telling environment and story. And so there's a little less kind of just random silly, which is kind of my expertise. So, but I will say this, I will make the following vow, which is when, not if, when we do the third onset, I will do, I will do names and flavor text for that. Cause I, I, I do love, I do love names and flavor text. And when there's opportunities i will always look for them okay that was number six number five video producer okay so um at the pro tour on the the first two

days we do a swiss and i would be i'd be a judge and i'd head judge the um feature match area but on the final day i would switch jobs um so in the very, very early days, I actually did commentary. In the first, I don't know, year, year and a half, I used to be the play-by-play guy. But it was pretty clear that I just wasn't that good at it. And I ended up shifting roles to being that of a producer, where I would manage the people and get the voice talent and get all the information and wrangle the players. And, you know, I would interact with the director to say, here's where we're going and here's the information and wrangle the players. And, you know, I

would interact with the director to say, here's where we're going and here's the match we're going to do. And I would do all the behind the scenes work to make it happen. And now be aware, this is in a day where we would film things and then we would use it on ESPN and we didn't do tons. I mean, eventually we would put some of it up online, but this was before streaming existed, before you would stream, before that was a thing.

So people weren't... We were filming it so that we could later show it and use it in different places. And one of the places is we definitely made some videos out of some of it. We had ESPN 2. We did some shows there, and we would show different matches. But anyway, I was in charge of coordinating all that.

I also had to coordinate the players. At the end of the Swiss, I would get the top eight. I would announce the top eight. I would then sit them down, and I would walk them through all the things they needed to know to do the finals under the cameras. and I would walk them through all the things they needed to know to do the finals under the cameras. I mean, we also, at the time, I had made playmatch so that certain things went in certain areas so you could follow along what was going on.

But anyway, it was definitely, I mean, it was fun. And I love to do trivia and stuff, so I would gather information and then I would feed information to the commentators. So I would love to find, like, a lot of interesting tidbits about magic history and stuff. But anyway, that was one of my jobs.

I did that for about eight years. That was a long time. Okay. And by the way, the other thing that was neat about that job, by the way, was my... I went to school for communications. I studied video production and video editing.

And like, there's a lot of things that I had done that, like if you had said to me when I came to Wizards, would I make use of my education for my schooling? Because I had a lot of communications education. And at first blush, I'm like, oh, I guess not. And then after the fact, looking back, and I'm like, oh my goodness, I used it all over the place. And here's me using my video production. I took classes in video production. Well, here was me putting it to good use. Okay, number four, the story coordinator. So during the Weatherlight Saga, Michael, Ryan, and I,

one day I'll do a podcast on this, we felt magic needed a story. We pitched it. We got it accepted. And for some period of time, I and Michael and I were running the story. We pitched it. We got it accepted. And for some period of time, I and Michael and I were running the story. We were the story people. So we did Weatherlight.

We did Tempest. We did Stronghold. And then during Exodus, they got wrested away from us. And we had mapped out three years with the story. I mean, one day I'll tell the story. But Michael and I had done a lot of planning. But anyway, it was...

The only reason this is probably number four and not higher is it ended badly. I think if it had stayed... When we were actually in the act of doing it and doing the story and Michael and I were breaking up stories and figuring out who the characters were and what the arcs were, that was awesome.

I love telling stories, and I don't really have as much option as I used to to tell stories, and that was stretching muscles that I like to stretch. It was a lot of fun. Probably the thing that makes me saddest of everything in my entire time at Wizards is how the Weatherlight Saga,

my portion of it, how it ended. Because it went horribly awry, and bad things happened, and there's some alternate world somewhere portion of it, how it ended. Because it went horribly awry and bad things happened. There's some alternate world somewhere where Michael and I were allowed to tell the story we wanted to tell and it was a huge hit. And maybe we're still doing that. I don't know. Okay.

Number three. Movie consultant. Okay. I can't say too much about this one because a lot of this is still quiet. But Fox, we signed the rights with Fox a couple years ago, the option to make a magic movie. And we worked with a thing called Genre Films, which is our production company. Run by a guy named Simon Kinberg, who currently does the X-Men movies, did The Martian. Last year did Cinderella.

Anyway, he is a very very awesome guy and does a lot of stuff very successful we are working with him to try to make a magic film which I mean we're going to make a magic film but it's a long slow process anyway we

wanted to give a presentation to the people doing the movie to sort of walk them through hey here's what magic is. Here's what magic looks like. Here's what our worlds are. Here's what our characters are. And I felt very strongly that I wanted to make sure they understood the color wheel.

I felt like you can't capture magic if you don't understand the color wheel. And so I said, could I please go down? Let me pitch the color wheel. I so I said, could I please go down? Let me pitch the color wheel. I said, I think it's crucial. Like, I feel like if the people making our movie understand and embrace the color wheel, so much good things will happen from that. And they agreed. So anyway, four of us ended up going down and we did this pitch. And the four of us ended up becoming the movie team. We are the consultants in the movie. And the

reason, obviously, I picked, I'm in this interesting place in which my background is screenwriting, is writing. I actually, you know, worked in Hollywood for a while. More TV than film, to be fair. But, you know, it's a lot of overlapping script writing. And I know magic very well, and so of everybody at

Wizards, I have the most sort of some connection to Hollywood and screenwriting, and obviously I know magic well. I think the team is not all public, so I can't tell you the whole team. The one other person that is public is Doug Byer, is on the team

representing the creative, making sure the story is accurate. You know, the... Like I said, I can't get too much into the details, but what I can tell you is the four of us are involved in everything. You know, whenever we're trying to make a major decision, the studio, the production company will contact us. Like I said, we flew down there once.

They often come up here. We have conference calls. We've had a bunch of meetings. We've interviewed people. We've talked to people. When there's scripts to read, we'll read the scripts. We'll give notes on the script. But anyway, it is a lot of fun. It is a lot of fun. I mean, it's slow going and I wish we had more news to tell you faster because, but part of it is we want to not just make a movie. We

want to make an awesome movie. We want to make a really, really good magic movie. And so we're trying to do it right. And we're not trying to do it fast. We're trying to do it right. But I am involved and there are others involved and all four of us that are involved really, really are putting our all to make sure this is the best movie it can be.

And I'm really proud of the team. I think we have a very good team. One day they'll all be public and I can tell you them. Okay, number two. Editor-in-chief of the duelist. So what happened here was when I first got hired, the duelist actually was one of the people that wanted to hire me, but I ended up getting hired by R&D, but under the condition that I would be the liaison to the duelist. So I would work with the duelist. I would overread things. I'd make sure that technically they were being correct on stuff. And then our editor-in-chief,

a woman named Catherine Haynes, left. She ended up wanting to go out east, and we had no editor-in-chief. And the problem was, most of the editors were hired more for their skills as editors than for their knowledge of magic. And so none of them knew magic particularly well.

And the problem was a lot of running a magic magazine is understanding magic. Because a lot of what the editor-in-chief does is pick the stories and things. And so I kind of got drafted into being editor-in-chief. There was somebody who, Shauna, who did the layouts, really was one of the persons that sort of said, hey, I think Mark could do this. Because they were definitely looking for an editor-in-chief. And Shauna Roy said to me, I think you could do this. And I said, really? And she goes, yeah.

And I said, but look, I'm still in R&D. I don't have full time to dedicate to this. And she's like, I don't think we need you full time. And so I became editor-in-chief. And so mostly what would happen was I would break down the articles and sort of figure out what we would do in each article so we had the content. And then I wasn't in charge.

The editors would, I would help sometimes pick who the writers were. But then they would do the process. Once I set things in motion, the editors would make it happen. I was a lot of sort of setting vision and sort of figuring out like what was the article about? What were the themes? Who should write the articles and what they should be about? But anyway, it was an interesting experience. Like I said, I have a lot of background in writing. And interestingly, before I came to Wizards, I was very involved in the duels. In fact, I wrote a lot of material. My one quote is, I think there's one issue of the Duelist

where I wrote I think something like 20% of the magazine like one fifth of the magazine I wrote might have been 20 or 25% I wrote a huge chunk of the magazine one time but I did a lot of articles and I wrote a lot of stuff and I really had strong opinions

about what the Duelist should be as a magazine so it was cool being editor-in-chief. I really enjoyed it. And it was a good sign that when I first got to Wizards that I had a lot of—because I never went home. I was at work 24-7 almost. I mean, I slept at home. We went out to eat from time to time.

But I spent a lot of time working, and so it's probably the only way I could pull that off is another time where I kind of had, not quite a full-time job, but a pretty substantial job whilst having another full-time job. Okay. My final job of my 10 is magic spokesperson.

It's funny because a lot of people think of this, I mean, it's not that it's not my job, obviously it's my job, I spend plenty of time doing it. But it's interesting in that it has nothing particularly to do with me being the head designer. I mean, there's some overlap. And obviously, I can use my role as a spokesperson to talk about design from a very key place. But note, I was doing this before I was head designer. So what happened was, for those who don't know sort of the story of me being spokesperson, is I was active on the Usen happened was, for those that don't know sort of the story of me being spokesperson,

is I was active on the Usenets. So for those that don't know their internet history, before sort of the internet, as you know, before the World Wide Web, you know, before there was a graphical interface, mostly it was text interfaces. And there was something called Usenet that was kind of like bulletin boards. And the early magic discussions, that's where it was. When Magic first came out, that was what existed as far as what the Internet was at the time. I mean, I guess there was some more advanced things that probably colleges had access to,

but the average person at home didn't. And I was very active on the Usenet. And so when I first started working at Wizards, I would pop in, and I kind of was this, it was unofficial. I was just like, hey, you know, it's me. And the people knew me because I had been on the Usenet, so I'm like, I'm working at Wizards now,

and I would answer questions, and I would sort of be a resource. I did, and Tom Wiley, who was the rules manager, Tom and I would do a lot of stuff on the Usenet, and so it just became something. And then meanwhile, I also was writing a lot in the Duelist. I was doing a lot of articles in the Duelist. So at one point, Catherine came to me and said,

she had the idea for a column, which would end up becoming Insider Trading, which was just the idea of a column that was sort of had a voice to it, but was sort of talking about things behind the scenes. But the vantage point was, of, had a voice to it, but was sort of talking about things behind the scenes. But the vantage point was, hey, you know me,

I've been writing for this magazine for a while, but I, hey, I finally got in the door at Wizards, but I'll be your spy behind the scenes. I'll be your inside man, and I'll give you the dirt, was kind of the flavor of the column. But it really, and then once I became the editor-in-chief, I started having a column called Mark My Words,

which in the front was like the editor's column, and little by little, I just became a more, I kind of just put myself out there, because I like social media, and so I just, I really much got on the front lines of things, just because I enjoyed it, and when Twitter came out, I got on Twitter and Tumblr, and you know, along the way, I just kept doing things and sort of, it just blossomed into the role. It started from something

I kind of just did and slowly kind of became something that, like I now, for example, I'm now officially a spokesperson. You know, there are people who are, who are sort of, are allowed to talk for wizards. And I'm one of those people. And, I mean, it turns out, I believe my spokesperson job is very good for my designer job. Because what it's allowed me to do is really talk with a lot of players.

Like I said, I've always read all my emails. But even now, I just, I try to be on as many different platforms as possible for social media. I want to talk to people. I want to see what people have to hear. I do my head-to-heads to get data on things, and I do my comics, and I answer questions,

and I do all sorts of stuff to sort of get a sense of what people like and what they want. Part of what makes me a good designer is I have a good sense of what the players want, because my job as the designer, head designer, is delivering the audience, making the audience happy. Well, knowing what they want makes my job a lot easier. And so being spokesperson has definitely allowed me to do that. A side effect of being spokesperson is I ended up getting the role of doing interviews.

is I ended up getting the role of doing interviews. It's funny because in college, in communication school, they actually, one of the things they do is they, I had to take a class on interviews. And one of the things that they talked about was, it was called interpersonal communications, I think. And the idea was that part of being, part of communications their premise was, it's not just about communicating with an audience at large,

it's understanding how to communicate with a single person. And so they really wanted to drum into us that the skills you need to talk to one person are not that dissimilar from the skills to talk to many people. In fact, the secret of being a good communicator is making mass communications

sound like personal communications. Meaning that when I talk, when I write, I want every person to feel as if I'm talking directly to them. That's an important part of being good at sort of larger communications. And so in order to do that, okay, we have to understand personal communications. I actually took some courses in this and part of that course, so I guess the course was in personal communications, but part of the course was in interviews. Because there's a skill to doing interviews. And so in school, I definitely learned how to do interviews. And so I'd kind of become the spokesperson.

And then they started just having me do interviews because, well, people, and a lot of times people would ask for me because they're like, I want to interview someone at Wizards. Well, I'll give you names I know. And it turns out I'm pretty good at interviews. Like I said, I have a lot of background interviews and I have improv training and I'm fast on my feet. And I'm, you know, I have a really good sense of the audience. And so, you know, I ended up becoming kind of the default go-to guy to do interviews.

So I do a lot of interviews now. And I consider that part of my role as spokesperson is, okay, I talk about magic and people want to come talk to us, I'll talk to them about it. But anyway, it's a fun job. It's an enjoyable job. I like being a spokesperson. It's like I've said in my celebrity podcast.

I have just the right amount of celebrity, which is every once in a while other people are excited to see me and I get to sign autographs and take pictures. But I can go to this store and no one's bugging me. It's not like I have fame to the point where I have no personal life. Okay, when I'm in magic places with magic people, I get recognized. Every once in a blue moon, I get recognized out in public, but infrequently.

And infrequently enough that it's still amusing when it happens. In fact, my kids get tickled. It doesn't happen a lot, but my kids think it's the funniest thing. But anyway, I'm pulling into Wizards. So that, my friends, is my top ten favorite jobs I've had at Wizards that wasn't magic design. So to recap, number ten was a judge. Number nine was manager of the creative team.

Number 8 was tour guide. Number 7 was moderator and speaker. Number 6 was flavor text writer and running flavor text. Number 5 was video producer at the Pro Tour. Number four was, what's number four? Number four was story coordinator. Number three was movie consultant. Number two was editor-in-chief of the Duelist.

And number one was magic spokesperson. So those are all awesome jobs. Let me end by saying this. One of my favorite things about my job is how many different things I get to do. People are like, you've been doing the same thing for 20 plus years. Aren't you bored?

And I'm like, A, no. Magic design is always changing. But B, I get to do a lot of other things. One of the things that's interesting is Wizards is very good at letting people take the skills that they have and apply it to magic. I had a lot of writing skills

and story skills and video production skills and a lot of skills that had nothing to do with designing magic cards, but I've been allowed to use those skills and apply them. And so,

that's one of the things that's been fun is I really am able to say, hey, how can I make magic better using all the skills available to me? And that's been something that I've really enjoyed and I continue to enjoy. So anyway,

I hope you guys enjoyed today's podcast. Something a little different, a little different top ten. But anyway, I'm now in my parking space, so we all know what that means. It means it's time. What is it? It means it's time to end my podcast. My drive to work is over. So anyway, instead of talking magic,

it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.