Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #40 - Wizards of the Coast

Episode Date: June 28, 2013

Mark Rosewater looks back and discusses the journey for Wizards of the Coast.

Okay, I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today, I'd like to use my podcast to do different things, but one of the things that I've had fun is using them as kind of a historical marker. To sort of talk about the history of magic and where it came from. to talk about the history of magic and where it came from. So today, I thought I'd talk about Wizards of the Coast, the company that brought you magic and continues to bring you magic. The history of wizards. It's something that those of us who work at Wizards, you know, know about because it's something that as a company, they sort of definitely want to make sure we know where we came from. But I don't know if this story has been shared all that publicly. I mean, it's on the internet, I guess, if you hunt it down.

So, where did it all begin? It began in Seattle in the late 80s. Well, the story begins in the late 80s. So, Peter Atkinson, who was a gamer, mostly, most importantly, he was a role-playing gamer. He loved role-playing. Loved, loved, loved it. And he, at the time, Peter worked for Boeing, I believe.

And he and his friends used to role-play all the time. And one day, Peter said, you know, maybe it'd be cool if we started a company to make role playing stuff. Now, understand at the time, and Peter was working full time at Boeing, so Wizards of the Coast got started, I think in April of 1990,

got incorporated, I guess. And back then, and the story is that Peter and four of his friends, now, I actually did some research to try to track down who exactly were, and what I found in doing the research was, it's kind of like, who's the fifth beetle? That there's a lot of different people

that you could count as being the five people that found a wizard. I'm sure there's a definitive answer, but I was not able to find it. I mean, obviously, Peter was one being the five people that found a wizard? I'm sure there's a definitive answer, but I was not able to find it. I mean, obviously, Peter was one of the five. To the best of my guess, I think Rich Kalis,

who was an art director who made Magic's first logo, was I think one of the five. Jay Hayes, Ken McLaughlin, and Steve Connard? That's my best guess for the five. Steve Connard would go on to lead the design of Legends.

And Jay and Rich and Steve were all, I worked with all of them. I never worked with Ken that I believe, or if I did, it was very early on. I might be missing something. There were other people very early on. John Jordan, in theory, could have been it. Yes, Ramir First, who was the art director, was there early on. I know, in theory, could have been it. Yes, Vermeer first,

who was the art director, was there early on. I know that Lisa Stevens was the very first employee. So there was a bunch of people. But when the company was first started, it was started in Peter's basement,

and it was kind of a company that everybody did on their spare time. Everyone was still working. It wasn't like Peter was still, his day job was working at Boeing. And so the early days, what in Wizards they call the basement days,

was literally run out of Peter's basement. And so early on, they were a role-playing company. Peter loved role-playing. So they were making, I think the third edition for a role-playing game called Talos Lanta, that I know very little about.

And a supplement that Peter had made that was meant for any role-playing game called the Primal Order. So there's a card later made in Magic called Primal Order. That was a toss to Peter's game. So anyway, they make this role-playing company. They make some stuff. And I think in the Primal Order, they make this role-playing company, they make some stuff, and I think in the primal order, they made mention of another company, like, oh, you know, when you play this game, for example, you can play with this game, and that other company got mad and sued them,

saying, feeling like they were, you know, they were implying that this was for their game when it wasn't, and they hadn't licensed it and stuff. And so, early on, Wizards of the Coast was being sued by, at the time, a much bigger company than them, because they were a teeny tiny company. But, around this time, things were looking pretty bleak. I know that

in 93, I believe, 92 or 93, Peter sent out a memo to all the employees, which wasn't many people at the time, and basically said, look guys, we have to scale back, I got to cut all salaries, you know, and all those people ended up getting paid in stock options, which later would go on to be an awesome deal, but at the time, you know, it looked sort of not so good. But things were looking bad. but things were looking bad.

Meanwhile, a young mathematician, so Richard Garfield and his friend Mike Davis, Mike Davis would go on to be the VP of R&D for a while, head of R&D for a while. In fact, Mike Davis hired me. So they came to Wizards. They were trying to make Richard's game RoboRally. Now, for those who have never played RoboRally, which I think is still for sale,

Wizards has made it, the premise of it is you have robots in a robot factory, and you're racing around, and you have to program whether the robot goes forward, or left, or right, or backs up, or turns around, or, you know, and you have to pre-program everything,

and there's all these obstacles in your way. There's conveyor belts and lasers and also, and other robots. And so the fun is, you have to sort of plan ahead what's going to happen, and then as you get damaged, you have less ability to sort of, moves get locked in, and, you know, so anyway, it's a fun game.

The problem is that it's a game with lots of pieces, and you know, when Richard and Mike originally pitched it to Peter, Peter sort of said to them, look guys, I can't make that. That's, you know, they were a tiny company. But Peter did say to him, well, the one thing I know I can do is printing. I can print things. And Peter had the idea of, what Peter wanted was, he wanted something that he could put on cards because, or he wanted something portable, I guess.

I'm not sure whether Peter brought up the idea of cards or Richard, but I think Peter knew that he had access to, there's a local art school that he was using to do illustrations, and he said, oh, I have access to artists, and I can print. So basically, I think what he said to Richard is, he wanted a game that was portable and short, and the idea was it's a game you could play in between

role-playing games. But the key of it was it had to be portable, it had to be short, it had to be something you could print, just print, and they had access to artists, so art would be something you could print, just print, and they had access to artists, so art would be good. And with that, Richard said to him, oh, I think I have an idea, and Richard went off. So, eventually Richard came back with the idea for Magic.

So what happened was Richard had gone home, at the time Richard I think was at UPenn in Philadelphia, and he was, you know, he had a bunch of gamers there, friends, and they were sort of playtesting it, and so he came back, and we showed it to Peter, Peter loved it. Loved it. And he was like, we're going to make this, we're going to make this,

we're going to make this game. And Peter was very excited. Now, the interesting thing was, remember, they were being sued at the time by a company. And so, in order to protect magic, because you know, I mean, Peter, early on,

saw, really did see the potential of magic, and really went all in, believed in it. And so what happened was, they set up another company, which was Garfield Games. So, for those that have ever seen an alpha box, you'll know that it says Wizards of the Coast and Garfield Games. The reason it says Garfield Games was because they were being sued, they didn't want to lose the lawsuit and lose magic. So they incorporated a separate company that then licensed the rights to the game to Wizards.

And Richard was the head of that company, which would later go on to be really good by the way because by the time once the lawsuit was settled Wizards of the Coast purchased Magic from Garfield Games but by that time it had gotten big enough that Garfield Games was worth a lot and so

when, I guess we'll get to the story but when Hasbro ended up buying Wizards and all the stockholders got bought off, the largest shareholder ended up being Richard Garfield. The reason for that was the shell company in Garfield Game, that when they had a buy-off of the stock, Magic had done well enough that that had the most value in it. Anyway, a little side story.

Okay, so what happened was Magic exploded. Now, to Peter's credit, because Peter took the game and drove up and down the coast and played it at every game store he could. Because what Peter knew was this was an awesome game, but it was different. It was not something that you had seen before, and that he knew that in order to get people invested, he needed them to see it. Because Magic was the kind of game that once you held the cards in your hand, you were just entranced, and he knew he could sell it. And he knew he could sell it to the people invested, he needed them to see it. Because Magic was the kind of game that once you held the cards in your hand, you were just entranced and he knew he could sell it.

And he knew he could sell it to the store owners, because remember, the key was he needed the store owners interested to sell it. Now, the other thing to remember was, early Magic, when I say it was a runaway hit, it was, but it came out, it did not hit everywhere at once. In fact, most of Alpha, I don't have percentages, but most of it, my guess is like 80% of it, was on the West Coast. Because that's where Peter was. He lived in Washington.

He drove down the coast. And so the early magic, really the first buzz, happened in California. Now, at the same time, they went to Gen Con that summer. This is 93. So technically, I think Magic had been premiered at Origins, which was a few weeks before in July. And then in August of 93 was Gen Con. Now, like I said, Peter is a longtime role-playing fan,

and Gen Con was a great mecca for Peter. Now, Peter would go on, many years later, by the way, to buy and run Gen Con, but that's not really part of the story, but a little side note. And so they came there to show off Magic, and it was the smash it.

Like, every convention, kind of what happens is that some game is the hot talk of the convention. And the running motif of Magic in its early years is it was so popular that they couldn't keep up.

You know, and one of the stories essentially is, I've told this before, it's like what they printed for Alpha, they thought was a six-month supply and they sold out in weeks. And then what they printed for Beta, they thought was another six-month supply, and they sold out in weeks. And then they printed for beta. They thought it was another six-month supply, sold out in a single week.

So what happened at Gen Con was they came and started selling stuff. It caught on. People were excited. And then, like, it was gone quickly. You know, and the people were all over Gen Con playing this game, you know. And so the ball started rolling. So Wizard of the Coast, which was this little tiny company,

just started exploding, okay? Now remember, I believe when Magic came out, or very short before Magic came out, the company was still in Peter's basement. And at that point, they had had a few employees. You know, they were up in Peter's basement, I don't know, 10 employees maybe.

And so what happened was eventually they had to go get, they got offices. Those were the offices that when I first, so what happened for me was, I've told this story, but the real short version is, I freelanced for Wizards early on. Originally, I was working for the Duelist, and then I started branching for other sections of the company. I worked for, like, seven different sections of the company, mostly doing writing. So here's what was going on early days of Wizards, is they were exploding.

Magic, just they couldn't print enough magic. It was just going like gangbusters. And so they had influx of cash that they'd never had before. And so they were expanding wildly. And the problem was they didn't know they needed employees. So early on, a lot of early wizards was just friends getting hired and friends of friends getting hired. And that early wizards were just like, they were like, you know, you'd almost walk in the door trying to say, you know, Hey, I'm here to visit my friend Joe. You want a job? Okay, you'd almost walk in the door trying to say, you know, hey, I'm here to visit my friend Joe.

You want a job? Okay, you know. And it just early on exploded. And what happened was that because of the explosion, a lot of people who came on who were early, you know, would rise up through the ranks. Like one of the stories I used to tell is there's a girl named Carol, Carol Monaghan, and she was, I think, the first receptionist, I think, in the basement days, I believe,

and Carol would go on to be head of sales. I mean, this took many years, but, you know, when she left the company, she was the head of sales, you know, and that, when she started, I don't think she'd ever worked sales before. But she was smart, she was with it, and there was so much going on and things were happening

that she climbed her way up to the point where she was the head of sales. Now, be aware at this point in Magic's early history, they couldn't print enough. So, I mean, sales in some ways was logistics because there's like so many people want stuff, how do we deal with it? print enough. So, I mean, sales was, in some ways, was logistics. Because it was like, so many people want stuff, how do we deal with it? And in the early days, imagine they couldn't give, they couldn't, everybody couldn't have as much as they wanted, because they couldn't make enough. And so a lot of early days was allocation, you know, and then people

would like try to game the system, right? Because let's say you really wanted 10 cases, you'd order 50 cases because you only got a fifth of your order, then you still got what you wanted. And there's all sorts of shenanigans. The early days were a little chaotic. You know, and like I said, a lot of people realize this,

but like it took a while to understand the printing process. You know, Arabian Nights had duplicates in it, as did Antiquities. Like you could get the same card twice. And they had to go back and press in Arabian Nights had duplicates in it, as did Antiquities. Like, you could get the same card twice. And they had to go back and press in Arabian Nights, so there's different versions of Arabian Nights cards. And Antiquities had duplicates. And Legends had the thing where, like,

there was Uncommons in the A group and Uncommons in the B group, so there were two sheets, I'm guessing. And that either your box got all the A Uncommons or all the B Uncommons. So, like, if you open up your box of Legends, you can only get half the Uncommons. The The other uncommons just weren't in the box. So there were a lot of growing

pains. So the game came out, so the company started in 90, the game came out in 93, and it was blowing the gangbusters. So I started freelancing for them in early 94. And I was working for the duelists and then I started doing a lot of writing.

And so one of the things that would happen is I would come up, they would bring me up to do some freelance projects because I mostly work at home, but sometimes, you know, I just needed to interact with some other people, so they would fly me up every once in a while, so I had a chance to visit Wizards. In fact, one of those visitations is when I faithfully said

I'd be willing to move to Seattle and they were like, when can you start? So the early days of Wizards was very interesting. It was a young company with young people. It was very, Wizards definitely in the early days had this attitude of people, like, so for example, my wife, Laura, I met her at Wizards. So Laura's story was she had been working at a company that made like bricks and she wasn't really happy. It was boring. And so she started temping. And so she ended up temping for Wizards of the Coast. And she came the first day in her suit and she was used to a very corporate environment, and like she walks in, it's like, people wearing leather, and all in black, and

to her, it appeared like costumes, but it was just like people who really sort of, this was a role-playing crowd, and people that were definitely, you know, it was a very different mindset, and Laura was very taken aback. And it's funny, because at first she's like, I don't know if I want to work here, but, you know, after being there for a little bit, she's like, oh, I really like this, this is fun. She goes, I didn't know work

could be fun. And the early days, it was still like Nerf Wars, you know, after being there for a little bit, she's like, oh, I really like this. This is fun. She goes, I didn't know work could be fun. And the early days, it was still like Nerf wars. You know, like people would, like one of the stories I always tell is, at some point I'll do the courtship with my wife. But I remember when I first got there, I was visiting before I even worked there. And that late at night, you know, a lot of people had Nerf weapons. My wife actually had a Nerf bow and arrow I used to borrow before I even knew who she was. And I had Nerf fights at night, you know, a lot of people had Nerf weapons. My wife actually had a Nerf bow and arrow I used to borrow before I even knew who she was. And I had Nerf fights at night. But the company was young and wild.

And the joke about early Wizards is that they did two things awesomely. One was make magic. And the other was burn money. So one of the things about the early days is they, I mean, Peter was super generous. They would, you know, take everybody and get them on a bus and go for trips. You know, they would have parties. Like, you know, there used to be the Wizards anniversary party. There was a giant blowout and, you know, they'd rent out a train station or something.

And, you know, the early days were just extravagant. And, I mean, it was weird. It was very raw. It was very raw. It was very exciting. But there wasn't a lot of expertise, you know. Like I said, I'm an example of Carol where, I mean, she was smart and with it. But, I mean, she did not have any sales training. You know, that's not where she had come from.

And the company was full of a lot of people that were bright and eager and passionate, but that were not, you know, were not really people that were trained in that field. And so the company was definitely, you know, doing its best, but was definitely young and didn't know a lot of what it was doing. So I came in in 95. So Magic took off and came out in July of 93. So I started a little over two years later. I was freelancing for most of 94.

And eventually, I said, okay, I'd be willing to move to Seattle. And so when I got there, we were still in that first building. So Wizards has had four locations thus far. The first location was in Peter's basement. The second was in an office building in Renton, but not a couple blocks away from where we are now. And then when I got there, we were moving to our new offices, which were the offices we had been in for ten years.

And the funny thing was, when I first got there, we were moving any day, any day we were moving, which ended up being like six to eight weeks, I think. there, we were moving any day, any day we were moving, which ended up being like six to eight weeks, I think. But because we were moving any day, they decided not to give me a computer or a desk, for that matter. So I joked I was a desk nomad. So William Jockish and I, we started about the same time. Bill had a desk because Joel Mick, his friend, had saved him a desk. But Bill, William, and I all started the same month.

William and I didn't have desks. And so we were told, just when someone's not there, use their desk and log into your, you know, I could log into my stuff, but through someone else's computer. And so the first like six to eight weeks, I'm just like, you know, desk nomad, finding a place to do my work. like, you know, desk nomad, finding a place to do my work. And the, so I got there in October, the end of October of 95. And at the time, things were exploding. You know, there still was a role playing company, but they were obviously doing magic. And they were starting to branch out to try to do some other games. Now, at the time, they thought that they would, that the trading card game was going to be a do some other games. Now, at the time, they thought that the trading card game

was going to be a whole thing. In fact, on the back of the Magic card, you'd see Deckmaster. What that is, is they decided to brand Wizard of the Coast trading card games so that they wanted the Deckmaster brand. Magic was just first of the Deckmaster brand. Now, they would go on to make

Jihad, later called Vampire the Eternal Struggle, and they made Netrunner, and then, they would go on to make Jihad, later called Vampire The Eternal Struggle, and they made Netrunner, and then later they would also make Battletech. I think all those were considered Deck Mefter. But anyway, the trading card game, it proved

that Magic was working, but the other games didn't in the long run, didn't last. So anyway, I got there in October. In December, we get a meeting. Oh, we used to have all hands every week. What that meant is, there'd be a giant room, every single person in the company would come, and at that time, we were 100 and something.

No, let's see, I was the, what was I? I think I was the, I think I was the 281st employee, is my guess. Anyway, I... But, I mean, people had come and gone. I think when I was there early on, there were about 150 to 200 people maybe there. Okay, so what happened was we would get every week,

Peter would gather everybody together, and literally it would be like Peter would gather everybody together, and literally, it would be like Peter would tell us what's going on. If someone was new, Peter would introduce a new person. It was a small enough company that we could gather together in one room and talk about stuff. But as the company got a little bigger, it got harder and harder to do that. But this was early enough that we still could get in one room. And so Peter got together and said, okay, guys, got some bad news.

It's pretty straightforward. We're making some changes, and we're going to have to let some people go. We're going to break up into groups, and your individual managers will explain what's going on. And so R&D got together, and what we discovered was Wizards had decided that the role playing

part of the company was just losing money and so they decided that they'd still make Magic obviously Magic was the cash cow and they still wanted to make other games and Wizards at this point, like I said, had branched out not just doing trading card games but I think at this point we'd made Robo Rally

we'd made a card game called The Great Del Moody so we were going to make games, we were a game company But I think at this point we had made RoboRally. We made a card game called The Great Del Moody. So we were going to make games. We were a game company. But that role-playing was just not proving profitable for us. And so they shut down. Now, understand, at the time, that was a good chunk of the people at the company. When I said there was like 150 people, they laid off maybe in one day 50 to 75 people.

And it was known at the time as Black Wednesday. You have to remember, this was a company where everything was hunky-dory all the time and things were great and there were trips. This is the first time the company had ever said, oh, look, there's a problem. We've got to address it. In some ways, it was the first kind of adult thing, if you think of the companies, you know, the young adult years, where they finally had to do something that was like, we didn't want to do this, but we need to do it.

And so that happened. So what happened then was, Wizards really started getting into the idea of we're a game company, we're going to make lots of different games and that we started then making more board games and things. Richard came up with a game called What Were You Thinking that we made.

Anyway, we made a bunch. A lot of the games were done by Richard. I mean, Filthy Rich was done around then. I mean, there's a long... You can go look on the Wizards.com. I'm sure there's a list of all our games. So what happened then was...

The next big thing, I think, to get my order correct, was... Okay, do I have this order correct? So, Peter loved role-playing games. Loved, loved, loved them. And he grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons. That was a game that he had loved.

And so at some point, Peter realized... Oh, actually, maybe I do have this backwards. Well, anyway, my chronology might be slightly... So what happened was Peter loved Dungeons & Dragons. And at some point he realized that... So TSR was the company that made Dungeon Dragons.

Gary Gygax way back when had started a company and what had happened was they'd fallen on hard times. There was a lot of... I don't want to speak of what happened, but they were in trouble.

The company was in trouble. The company was in trouble. TSR was in trouble. And Peter, flushed with magic money, said, oh my God, here's a wonderful opportunity. He's like, this is an amazing brand. Dungeon Dragons is an amazing brand. This is crazy. It shouldn't be on the verge of bankruptcy. And so Peter went, or Wizards of the Coast went, and bought TSR.

And that's how Dungeon Dragons became part of Wizard of the Coast, is Peter's passion for role-playing, and specifically for Dungeon Dragons. I mean, I remember when Peter told us about it, he was so, so excited. This was like a dream come true. I mean, for example, the best way to describe it is, I mean, imagine growing up and like, the thing that was

your passion growing up, that one day, you buy it. You know? Like, imagine a kid that grew up and like, has a favorite sports team,

and then one day, he buys the sports team. That is a, that's the equivalent of what happened with Peter and TSR and Dungeons & Dragons. Peter was in heaven.

He was excited. Um, and so, uh, we got back into role. And so we got back into role-playing, but we got back into role-playing with the top role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons. And around the same time, like I said, my chronology,

there was... Nintendo had made a video game, and because... When Magic came out, there was a period where trading card games were just the hot thing. Because what happens is you see successes and people copy successes. And so somebody had decided, so the new game from Nintendo was called Pokemon. And someone had decided that there should be a trading card game, that Pokemon would be a good trading card game.

And so they designed it. And then they came to us, to Wizards of the Coast, and asked if we would distribute the trading card game, or we would make and distribute it, because we had the knowledge of how to do trading cards. We had the knowledge of how to produce them.. We had knowledge of how to produce them. You know, we had a tournament system all set up so people could play them. And so Wizards of the Coast took on Pokemon.

And holy moly, Magic was a success in the sense that, you know, we couldn't keep up. We couldn't meet demand. Pokemon was a different... So Pokemon was what I would call a fad. Fad's incorrect because it's still being made. But it just hit the cultural zeitgeist. And while magic was an amazing thing and a real big thing among gaming people,

Pokemon just became this crazy thing among kids. Just this giant, giant thing. And it was a rollercoaster for wizards. We had had experience with success with Magic, but Pokemon was just on a scale that was just very different. Because almost every kid in America was playing Pokemon. And so it really was a giant boost to the company. And then what would happen is that the people who made it, you know, Nintendo, realized

it was such a big thing that they decided they were just going to make themselves rather than the Wizards. So Wizards was, we were there for the early, the early years of Pokemon, but then, uh, they started doing it themselves. So it's still made, but not by us anymore. Um, but that led to a few really crazy big years. And then during that time, during that same time, Peter had gotten the idea of... We had known early on that organized play was important.

One of the big things that... One of Wizards, I think, big contributions to the gaming world is really this idea that organized play is crucial to a game. And we had spent a lot of money and we had a pro tour and we had an entire system set up for sanctioning. And that really what we were saying is

we want to make sure you have places to play. And so Peter came up with this idea of well, what if we make the places to play? And the idea was what if we got into places to play? And the idea was, what if we got into the retail business? And that what if Wizards of the Coast sold games in retail? And so what we did was, we first tried it out in our building. And so we had the very first tournament center was in our building. In fact, it's funny. The way I met my wife was Laura was the person who was working nights in the tournament center.

And R&D would all go down there. They had a LAN set up, a computer set up. And I think they were playing World of Warcraft. Or not World of Warcraft. Sorry. Warcraft. And at some point, they started playing Starcraft. Anyway, I wasn't that interested.

And so instead of playing, I would end up talking to Laura, who was the receptionist. Anyway, time well spent. But that's probably for another podcast. Anyway, so we branched out into doing stores, and it coincided with us doing Pokemon, which was super hot. And so

early on, our stores were exploding, but part of it was, we were like the place to get Pokemon. And so, um, we made a whole bunch of different stores. We ended up buying a series of stores called Gamekeeper, which ironically was where I worked when I first discovered about Magic.

Because people kept coming in and asking me for it. Anyway, and so we got into the business, the retail business. It ended up, once Pokemon sort of went away, that it was artificially inflating it, so it ended up not being as good a value. But it did sort of help show us the importance of tournament play. But anyway, after that, or around that time, was when Hasbro showed up.

Hasbro showed up on the scene. Now, I think the intent all along had been that, you know, we were a game company, but, you know, Peter and Company had been looking for suitors to purchase, to purchase Wizards. And Hasbro seemed like a really good fit. Hasbro was a game company, you know. I mean, it was a toy company, but it had a very strong game component. In fact, I think if you sort of just named famous games, you know, the vast majority of them, you know,

You know, the vast majority of them, you know, Monopoly, the U.S. version of Scrabble, Clue, I mean, anything by Parker Brothers. I mean, you know, I mean, Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers and, you know, the vast majority of games when you think of, like, games, you know, Trivial Pursuit, all sorts of stuff were made by Hasbro. And it seemed like a really good fit. And so, Hasbro purchased Wizards, I think that was in 97, is my guess? It was either 97 or 98.

But anyway, we were purchased by Hasbro. Now, a lot of people always ask, how much has that impacted us? Not that much. I mean, it's helped us in that we have Hasbro, like, resources of Hasbro when we're trying to do certain things. But the thing is, Hasbro's audience and our audience are a bit different. We service what we call the core gamer, which means our audience are people who game is a hobby. They love gaming. Gaming is what they do. Gaming is

our priority for their, you know, their free time. And so our audience is super dedicated and they want games that are, you know, have a lot going on. You know, like Magic is a complicated game. You know, there's a lot of moving pieces. that have a lot going on. Magic is a complicated game. There's a lot of moving pieces. There's a lot to it. Well, for a hardcore gamer, that's fine. They embrace that. They love that.

But Hasbro is used to making, you know, a lot of Hasbro stuff is about mass market and advertising and selling to kids. It's a very different audience. So when they bought us, you know, they were expanding out and trying to do different kind of games. And we were something that was a little foreign to them. And so they've done a really good job of respecting that we are sort of our own company. And I mean, clearly we're part of Hasbro.

And so there's, you know, there's connections. And it's not like, you know, there's definite influence of being part by Hasbro, but it hasn't really changed the day-to-day, you know. They kind of let us do what we do, and that reason is they know that we're good at doing what we do. It's one of the reasons they bought us. And so what happened over the years was, from the early sort of wild years, is little by little we would start hiring people whose expertise was in whatever field they had, you know.

Like I say, I love Carol. Carol was awesome. Carol was actually very good at sales. But no matter what, at the end of the day, you know, she wasn't someone who had been trained in sales, you know. And that, I think that was one of the shifts is you sort of saw us moving away from people who were smart and passionate to people who, I mean, who were also smart and passionate, but had training in the field. And so I think over time, Wizards got a little bit more corporate. I don't mean that in a bad way.

I mean, you know, I think a company ages. I think if you look at, like, any company kind of the metaphor is, like like in the early years, the kid years, the teen years, we were wild. And at some point you settle down a little bit and you sort of, you figure out what you're doing, you know. And that Hasbro, we have had a number of, Peter was our very first president in Hasbro. The second president was... I seem to have attacked my memory. Well, it was a former boss of Peter's. Why am I blanking on his name? He brought him in because he was...

When Peter founded the company, he took over. Why am I blanking on his name? And then after him was a guy named Chuck, who was from Hasbro. And then after Chuck was a guy named Lorne, who was a later head of sales, who ended up running. And then after Lorne was Greg, is that right? Am I forgetting somebody? So Greg leads as a current CEO, who also came through Hasbro, who's awesome. Greg is really great. And Greg really focused the company. One of the things that I think Hasbro over the years,

not Hasbro, Wizard of the Coast over the years, has definitely branched out and tried different things, and that one of the things that we're doing right now is staying very focused on kind of where our strengths lie, and that it's very easy as a game company to go, oh, we can make this game and that game. But, you know, we've been trying to, really what we've been trying to do is say, here's the things we do well. Magic is one of them. We do magic well. Well, let's do magic the best we can do magic.

And a lot of, if you notice the last five years, we've expanded a lot of what we can do. You know, we have a lot more supplemental products. And we experiment with a lot more different things and we've gotten into doing more with presentation and experience design. We've really sort of doubled down on magic. And that was a lot of Greg's doing, which I think was awesome.

And that, hey, we do magic awesome. Let's put our energy in making magic the best it can be. So it's interesting, like I said, this October I will have been at, uh, Wizards of the Coast for 18 years and it is, it's funny. I mean, I remember the early days, you know, where, I mean, when I first got into the company, I was young. I never, I almost never went home.

Like I would come, I would work, then, you know, we would play games late night or we'd screw around whatever we do, most of it was at Wizards one of the things we used to do was we had a game where we would get hockey sticks and we'd get office chairs and a little ball and we had this giant room where the all hands would be

and we'd play office hockey and the idea was you had to stay in your chair which you would wheel around and you'd hit the ball and then we used to get yelled at by facilities hockey. The idea was you had to stay in your chair, which you would wheel around and you'd hit the ball. And then we used to get yelled at by facilities because he's like, can you keep them all off the ceiling? We keep damaging the tiles in the ceiling.

But I mean, the early days were just like much more a Wild West sort of feel. It was fun. I was glad I was here for it. But also it's kind of nice now that it's, you know, like I really enjoy that we sort of got a little better. The early days was wild in the sense that, you know, there's a lot of freedom, but also wild in the sense of we just did lots of weird things, you know,

and I like our focus now rather than sort of just often doing different things. What else can I say about Hasbro? Not Hasbro, about Wiz sort of just often doing different things. What else can I say about Hasbro? Not Hasbro, about Wizards of the Coast. So we moved buildings one more time across the street. We were in our last building for 10 years, and then a lease came up and we ended up moving across the street, so it didn't go far. We stayed in a rent, other than the Peter Baseman days, we've been in a rent in the whole time. That's where, it's a suburb of Seattle. And so we've never moved more than a couple blocks away. I mean, the first building is like three or four blocks away from our current building. And the, I'm trying to think of any other news of Hasbro.

What did I forget? I keep saying Hasbro when I mean Wizards of the Coast. I'm almost to work. I'm just trying to think of anything I'm forgetting about the history of Hasbro. There are a lot of people involved. Here's one of the things I find fascinating. So my entire time in the game industry, 18 years, entire time,

has been at Wizards of the Coast. And I can go to conventions. In fact, there was a convention once. For a while, Gen Con had a West Coast version. And the pre-release for Unhinge was held at, like, the West Coast Gen Con. And so I had a break. So I dressed up like a donkey and ran the tournament. So I had a break in between that so I was walking around

looking at booths and like every booth or every other booth I knew somebody because even though I've never left Wizards that Wizards had such an influx on the game industry that it's like you can't name a game company where I don't know somebody

because every game company has somebody that worked at Wizards. Some of them had a whole bunch of people that worked at Wizards. And so it's interesting. I feel like one of the things that says if you just stayed at Grand Central Station, you'd meet everybody you ever knew is one of the lines.

The idea that everybody in their life at some point goes to Grand Central Station. And I feel like almost every game employee at some point ends up at Wizards of the Coast, because it's amazing how many people I know, and I've only worked at one company. And it's been awesome, because the...

My time at Wizards of the Coast has been an interesting sort of... In some ways, I got a chance to see... I feel like I've been at multiple game companies, but all new game companies of one. The different periods of time were just such different things.

I had the opportunity to work for a company that did retail stores, and I worked for a company that had a game that was a fad among kids that was just a national phenomenon. And I had a chance to work at a company that had stores

where we made games and I had my hand in helping out with board games and I really have designed a lot of different kinds of games while all being at the same company. And the thing that I also love about Wizards of the Coast is, and this is one thing that Wizards has never lost, the thing that Laura said when she came in, you know, whatever,

18 and a half years ago, which was, hey, this is a fun place to work, you know, and that one of the reasons I think I've stuck around as long as I have, I mean, partly because I love magic, and I love what I do, so that's important. But another part is, Wizards of the Coast is a fun place to work. You know, I love the people, I love the spirit. I mean, it's just a company that, like, you know, tries to do good, and

really, really is a company for gamers. It's a company by gamers for gamers, I like to say. You know, that it is a bunch of people that, like, all love games and love what we do. You know, and I don't know how often. I mean, I'm guessing it's rare. But, you know, to work someplace where you work with a bunch of people that you all love the thing you're making.

That you, honest to God, love the thing you are making. I hope it's other places because it's such an awesome feeling. But it is neat. I love sitting in the pit and working with everybody in Magic. And everybody who works on Magic pretty much came to work on Magic because they loved Magic. That was their entry level to work on Magic. It started

with the love of the game. And that almost everybody now with a few rare exceptions like Bill were Magic player first. I was a Magic player before I was a Wizards employee, you know, and that I came to Wizards because I loved Magic and because I loved games.

And it is neat to be at a company which has the spirit and, you know, it's just someone who embraces having fun. And, like, I also enjoy that my job is fun, you know, that, I mean, our Nerf wars are as plentiful as they once were, but we still have game days. We still do Nerf stuff, Nerf wars every once in a while, you know, that we, I know that we'll take time to just go play games and see games

and that, you know, a big part of the philosophy of our company is, you know, know your audience, and, you know, we go out of our way to travel to stuff so we can meet people and talk to them firsthand, you know, and that the culture is, it's an awesome culture, it's a nice culture, and that I like the fact that I like the people I work with, I like the fact that, you know, we all have this common bond and common interest and common love of magic. And I think that shines through. I think one of the reasons magic is as good as it is

is because you have people so passionate working on it that really, really care about the game as an entity unto itself. You know, I've said this before, but I'm not sure I've said it in my podcast, but I owe magic a lot, a lot. You know, I mean, magic has got me my dream job, introduced me to my

wife, helped me build my dream house, gave me my family. I mean, magic has given me a lot. I've traveled the world, you know, I get to be a little flubbery and a big fish in a little pond. It's fun. And all that is because of magic. And so, I want to do right by the game.

And I want to do right by the company and I want to do right by the company like I said I enjoy Wizards of the Coast and it has been through a lot of changes and it's been interesting to watch those changes happen but it is cool I'm glad that I've been here

and I'm glad that I was able to do today, spending today running through the history of the company because I think Wizards of the Coast is a pretty awesome company. So anyway, I am now here at work at Wizards of the Coast. So now that I'm at Wizards of the Coast, I cannot talk about

Wizards of the Coast any longer. I must go work. So I hope you guys enjoyed my little, I don't know, jump through the history of Wizards of the Coast today. And I guess it's time to go make the magic.