Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #401 - An Average Day

Episode Date: January 13, 2017

Mark talks about what an average day of his job is like.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today's topic. In my column, I do something every once in a while called a topical blend, where I take a magic topic and a non-magic topic, and I blend them together into an article. Anyway, I recently did a topical blend, which you guys have probably read by now, since I'm farther ahead on this than I am in my writing. And anyway, there was a lot of good topics, Gabe, so I decided that I might use some of the topics that I didn't use for podcasts. So one of the ones that I liked a lot was my average day. That was the topic. So for those that are longtime readers of my column,

So for those that are long time readers of my column, Making Magic, way, way, way back when in like, I don't know, 2003 or 4, I did an article called A Day in the Life, which was a choose your own adventure, kind of giving you a sense of what Magic R&D was like. Which, by the way, I recommend go looking at if you haven't ever seen it. It's kind of fun. But a lot of change. That was, you know, we're talking, let's say it was 2003. That was 13 years ago. So my daily life is a little bit different.

So I'm going to walk you through what an average day is for me. And to give you a sense of like, well, what do I do? Now, be aware, I'm going to talk about my average day. Different R&D people will do different things. So, you know, my day skews in a different direction than other people, but it'll give you a general sense of kind of what we do. So the point of today's podcast is to walk you through, like, I wake up until I get home from work. That is my... Okay, so I actually get up really early in the morning because my kids have to go to school really early in the morning.

So I get up on a daily at 5.30 a.m. on a normal day. That's why, by the way, you'll notice sometimes I post really early because I'm up really early. So what I do is I get up and I get my kids ready. Well, before I get my kids ready, when I first get up, I always do my head-to-head for the day. I talk about the previous days. I say, oh, here's how the voting went yesterday. I do the new topic for the day. And then usually when I'm getting ready, I make my comic for the day, my day in my life for the day. Then I get my kids up, my youngest two at least.

I get them up and I make them their lunches and make them their breakfast and get them all ready for school. And then my wife and I do a tag team thing where at some point I get her up, then I go back to bed and she gets the kids out the door. I get a nap for about an hour before I have to then go to work with my older daughter who I have to drop off at school, as you guys know, because I drop her off at school. And then usually while I'm, the second time I get up is when I start thinking about topics for drive to work. Usually while I'm, the second time I get up is when I start thinking about topics for Drive to Work.

And obviously on work, as I drive to work, I do my Drive to Work. So I do my podcast as I drive to work. Usually on Mondays and Tuesdays I do my podcast. I don't podcast on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Friday I work at home. If I did well. Sometimes I might do on Wednesday or Thursday if I'm doing a series. I like to do series back to back. So let's say I'm doing like a four part series. I might do that each day of a week, for example. Or sometimes on Monday or Tuesday, either I can't record or I

don't like my, you know, I recorded it, didn't like it and listened to it. Usually what will happen is I'll record in the morning on the way home. I listened to it. We'll get to that. Anyway, and if I don't like it, I'll re-record it. So I have the lowest tech podcast in the world. I push play. I talk into my phone.

I push stop. There is no editing. People always say, well, why don't you just edit that out? I go, well, there's no editing. If I dislike what I did, I redo it the next day. So low tech, very low tech podcast. But anyway, I dropped my daughter off and I get to work. Okay. So when I first get to work, usually the first thing I do in the morning is catch up on my mail, trying to figure out what happened. And, you know, there's a lot of, basically R&D

has a lot of what we do is, you know, by a group. There's very few things we do that just one individual doing them. Usually it's something that a group is working on. And so decisions are very, you know, mostly very group oriented. And not that there aren't, in the end, the way it always works is someone ultimately is responsible for the decision who makes it. But there's a lot of input usually into that person. So, for example, I'll get in and whatever the topics of the day, there's emails bouncing around

and I need to read the email from other people and reply to stuff that I have something to say. There'll be meetings during the day and sometimes, it depends on the topic. Some topics are going to lead toward a meeting. So the reason we're talking about them is so everybody understands the issues so we get together, we can have a meeting on them. Sometimes the topic itself is just being done through email. And occasionally what will happen is a lot of times I'll write back on email, but sometimes I need to go talk to somebody if there's larger issues or something that's a little bit more complicated than it's easy to write in an email. What I've learned is if I have to write a couple paragraphs, I can write an email, but I really, if I'm going to

write much more than a couple paragraphs, I need to go talk to the person rather than trying to write it all down. The only exception is if it involves a lot of people sometimes, like, okay, there's no meeting coming. I'll spend some time writing my stuff. Um, the other thing I tend to do when I first get to work is I check in on social media. Uh, um, you know, normally one of my jobs obviously is doing, um, uh, you know, being spokesperson and interacting with the public and stuff. And so usually in the morning I just, I just some sites I check and just make sure there's no major, you know, thing going on in the magic world

that I need to be aware of. You know, every day usually there's some issue. The way social media tends to work is, you know, there are different issues from day to day and that you try to understand what the day's issue is or issue sometimes. Sometimes there's things that I want to get involved in. Sometimes there's things where it's important for me to know them, but it's not something I'm going to directly get involved in.

But anyway, I definitely get involved and try to know what that is. Okay, so the other thing that'll happen is, usually in the morning, is I check my schedule to figure out what my day is like. The way it works in R&D is some number of meetings are sort of locked in. Like there's certain meetings that we do every week at a certain time. That's a known quantity. And for any set that I'm working on, the team will have locked days that it meets. And the way it works is in order to, there's so many people doing so many different projects

what we had to do is we actually have a grid that we made so that every three months we revamp and each of the all the design teams

have allocated time to them often it's rooms allocated as well but not always sometimes you have to get your own room but the idea is essentially the projects I'm working on are all signed and then often rooms allocated as well, but not always. Sometimes you have to get your own room. But the idea is, essentially, the projects I'm working on are all signed, and then there's a master schedule going on.

And the reason the master schedule exists is, if every meeting was on its own to figure out where you could go or who could meet, you run into a lot of trouble. And so one of the things we started doing was figuring out what the most important sort of standing meetings, well, A, there's the meetings that always exist every week, like the Tuesday Magic Meeting, the Chiropractic Meeting, stuff like that. I'll get to those in a sec. But the idea was that we need to sort of make sure we are balancing our time so that we can fit everything in. What was happening is, before we sort of had a process system, people were just trying to catch meetings when they could,

and you just got into a lot of problems where the people who, you know, was like, okay, I need your schedule, we need to make meetings, and everybody would send your schedule in, and there was no time that all your team was free at the same time. And then you would have to, like, meetings where not all your team was there, and it wasn't ideal. And so R&D switched it around to have a more cohesive system.

One of the ways the system works, by the way, is figuring out what teams can coexist. Figuring out what teams are there, people that there's no overlap between the two teams, and then they can meet at the same time. So part of making the system work is figuring out what the teams are that have zero overlap

and then double booking times so that those teams can do that. And by sort of consolidating that, we clean things up and keep from sort of making the chaos that we used to have. So, depending on the day, usually I have, on any one day, anywhere from one to four standing meetings, meaning things that I normally do every week. So, I mean, there's a, and the idea is there's a bunch of different types of meetings that are out there. Some meetings are meetings by which they're information meetings where people get together. And a lot of what the meeting is about is making sure everyone's on the same page. The most famous of these is the Tuesday Magic Meeting where we get together with pretty much everybody who works on Magic. It's all of R&D and some people outside of R&D.

And a lot of what the Tuesday Magic Meeting is about is making sure everyone's aware of what's going on and what the projects are. And we bring in people from other sections that are working on Magic and make sure we're aware of what the marketing is and what digital is doing. We're always sort of keeping aware of the different things that are going on. And so that's what I would call an informative meeting, where mostly you're just learning things. We also have a bunch of meetings that are more what I'll call discussion meetings. Cardcrafting, worldcrafting.

And that is, so cardcrafting is a meeting where we get together all the designers and developers and a few other people that want to come from R&D. And we talk about very crunchy card stuff. We talk about like rules issues or templating issues or color pie issues or things that are really sort of crunchy that we want to get people that are day-to-day doing the technical stuff. We used to try to have those meetings in the Tuesday Magic meeting

and it just was too big an audience. And so Aaron started this meeting called Card Crafting so we could sort of delve into it. And a lot of the ideas in the Cardcrafting is, like, let's say, for example, there's a color pie issue that comes up. It's one of the things I'll be aware of. And we have the console colors now. And console colors will track things and figure out if things are sort of being off. And then if we notice something, we'll bring it to a larger meeting saying, oh, you know, either, okay, here's a problem.

You know, two different colors have been doing this thing and we need to figure out what color is supposed to be the primary color for doing it. And we'll sort of hammer that out. Like, okay, our recommendation is this and people go, no, no,

but development might go, oh, no, but we need this color here for this reason developmentally. Anyway, we hash stuff like that out. You know, sometimes it's about certain templating issues, fixing up templating issues. Sometimes it's about rules issues

of talking about how we're going to fiddle with the rules to fix something. And then a lot of times if there's rules issues, it's trying to understand the ramification of, okay, if we make this change, what happens?

And world crafting is just like card crafting except it's creative issues rather than being, um, more, you know, texty issues. Um, but anyway, I go to both those meetings and those are more meetings where there's a lot of discussion. It's, it's less learning things.

It's less listening to things. Although sometimes it's listening to that depending on what, like sometimes the topic is out of your realm. Like a lot of times when they're doing rule stuff, I want to understand the rules changes, but I don't have tons to add usually to it. And sometimes I do, but usually I don't. And so a lot of it there is listening with the people who are arguing and understand the different sides. But anyway, so there's some of those meetings that are more sort of discussion-type meetings.

Another meeting that happens is I'm also part of upper management in R&D. And so there's a couple of different like management type meetings where, you know, the upper echelon of R&D gets together to talk sort of, sometimes there's some of the meetings are more for strategy and some of the meetings are more for day-to-day sort of making, you know, process type things. So we have a couple of different meetings like that. We also have what we call one-on-ones. And what a one-on-one meeting is, is just people that you need to communicate with that

you have a, you know, a serious sort of, there's things you need to talk to that person about to sort of strategize or talk or whatever. The one-on-ones, I don't have a lot of one-on-ones. Usually you have a one-on-one with your boss. So Aaron and I will meet once a week. And you have one-on-ones with your direct reports if you are a boss to anybody. So back when I used to do managing, I don't manage anymore,

but I used to have one-on-ones with each of the persons I manage. So I could sort of figure out how their week is going and what's going on and are there issues that they need help with or whatever. The other person that I do a weekly one-on-one with is Mark Gottlieb, who he is the manager lead for the designer. So I oversee the work of the designers and he oversees the people. So he's the manager for the designers.

And so he and I work closer together because, you know, we're kind of as a team, we are making sure that the people have what they need and are able to learn. And a lot of my job is when I talk with him is talk about, you know, how, what team, what team, we're putting together teams, I'll give recommendations because Mark's the one that schedules the design teams and we talk about people and a lot of times I will talk with him how I think people are doing

from a technical standpoint and where there's room for improvement and I don't do the one-on-ones with the people he does because he's the manager. And so we share information. Now, I also have not weekly one-on-ones, but I'll have one-on-ones. Eric Lauer and I have one-on-ones a lot. He's the head developer.

So a lot of times we'll talk about issues that are, you know, design development issues in which things are happening. Sometimes, a lot of times when I hand off set, Eric is the one who's doing first passes on things. And so he and I will meet sometimes to talk about issues of handover or just talk through the vision stuff, design stuff, about what exactly I envision for what the design is trying to be up to so he can make sure that he's following what the vision of the design is.

I also sometimes will have one-on-ones with other people like Mark Globus who does a lot of managerial stuff. Ken Troop who also is sort of Gottlieb's boss. So I have a lot of, you know, I don't have a lot of weekly one-on-ones but I don't have a lot of weekly one-on-ones, but I have a lot of sort of floating one-on-ones that happen. So some of my meetings is meeting individually with people.

Now, another big part of meetings is design meetings. And so I'm usually running a design meeting. Sometimes I'm on a second meeting, a second design meeting, which I'm not running it, but I'm involved in it. One of the things that I try to do is, as the head designer, I'm trying to keep my, I'm trying to keep aware on what's going on with all the different designs. And then also I try to pay attention to downstream when it gets in development and make sure I'm aware of what's going on there. So the design meetings, the way design meetings work is we usually meet twice a week for design meetings, two two-hour meetings. So design meetings tend to meet four hours a week. And the way a design meeting tends to be set up is, in fact, one of the 16 topics that I, for my topical plan was design meetings.

So actually probably I'll do that right now because I realize that as I'm driving, I have a lot of driver time left. So let me talk design meetings. Maybe that won't be its own podcast. So the way design meetings work is you have a design team. Traditionally in design, my teams tend to be five people. Usually it's myself. I have what we call a strong second, somebody that's taking care of the file, usually a core designer. Then I have someone from development. I have someone from the creative team. And then I have

a fifth person that's sort of a floating position. A lot of times I'd like to fill the fifth position with somebody who hasn't done magic design either ever or in a while. You know, people who have a different kind of vantage point. The idea on the design team is a strong second is someone who's really good at designing cards. Somebody who helps me maintain the file. It's a good way to sort of, you know, help teach new people. And I just need that person to just help me generate a lot of cards. Then I have a developer who helps me make sure the cards are balanced

and that what we're testing is something that can potentially be developed so that we're not going down a path that we can't make. The creative team person is there to make sure that we're following the flavor of what the world is and the story. And they're there to advise so we make sure that we're, what we're doing design-wise is matching what the world is and what the story is doing. Then the fifth slot is usually me, like I want to have different voices and different people there. So I like to mix up who the fifth person is just so I have, you know, different vantage

points. It's really valuable to take people who have never been on a design team or have been on a design team in a long time and sort of bring them back and let them sort of have an exposure and just hear from people who this is, the system's not so, you know, it's new to them and the vantage point often is very interesting and that we get a lot of different feedback. So the way design meetings work is there are a couple different types of design meetings. Some design meetings is once again me giving information to the team and me sort of walking them through decisions that have been made or factors from other sets. You know I'm always keeping in contact with

the other designers on the other designs and development leads on the stuff they're doing so that I'm aware of what's happening with sets. Because a lot of times if something changes, you know, design is the farthest ahead. So if something is happening on the set before the set I'm working on or the block before I'm working on, I need to understand that because, you know, I need to be synergistic with the stuff that comes before us, but also, you know, both play with it nicely, but not, you know, not get in the way of it or have it get in the way of me. And so sometimes the design meetings is us, you know, me sort of explaining what's going

on. Sometimes there are discussions. Sometimes it's sort of like us talking through what we think about a topic. A lot of meetings, I often will give homework, and we'll talk through something, sort of get to an idea of what I want. Like, a lot of my meetings is, a lot of design is what I call setting bullseyes,

which is like making the team aware of the goal of what I want, and it's not necessarily telling them how to solve the goal, but understand the problem we're trying to solve. And then I'll give homework out. And in some of the meetings, as we go over homework, we're looking at what people have done and saying, okay, does this work? Is this capturing what we want? Because when I give out homework, I'll get a lot of things,

but not all those things end up in the card file. So part of it is sort of walking through and talking, usually with the team and then with my strong second, who's overseeing the file, of making sure what we want goes in the file. So then, some meetings we actually do design in the meeting. One thing I like to do is I like to have some amount of design that we as a team are designing things. Often when I want to try something out, I will use the team meeting as a mean to structure

and make things. Usually the difference between homework and in-design meetings is homework is where I have a rough idea of what I want, but I want people to sort of go off on their own and individually come up with their own ideas. Usually in-meeting designs are where I know exactly what we want, and it's a matter of actually sort of making them happen. A very common thing, for example, is I know of a particular cycle we want, and there's some work of working out the cycle. But usually the homework assignments are more, I want people to sort of go off on their own

and do whatever they want to do, where the design in meetings is a little bit more, there's a real directionality. own and do whatever they want to do. Where the design in meetings is a little bit more, there's a real directionality. We know what we're trying to do, let's sort of just figure it out. The reason cycle design, a lot of it gets done in meetings is, a lot of cycle design is figuring out how to sort of balance everything so that every color gets something without stepping on each other's toes. And a lot of cycle design, there's a lot of nuance to it because you're trying to make sure that you maximize each color.

And so that's the kind of thing that works well in a team setting. Another thing we do in meetings is we'll do a lot of playtesting. I've talked about this before in that what you want to do is we're iterating. And so the idea is we are essentially coming up with ideas,

adding them to the file. When we get enough ideas, we playtest the file, get feedback, and then we start making changes. So some meetings is playtesting. Some meetings is feedback from playtesting. The idea on playtesting is the farther along you go, the faster the playtesting happens. In a very early design, playtesting might happen once every three or four weeks.

But usually by the end of design, I like having playtests every week. So the idea is as you iterate and you start going faster and faster, both in that you're iterating faster and you're iterating. fafter, both in that you're iterating fafter and you're iterating. Usually what happens is the reason the early weeks, the early times are longer is you're making much more substantial changes. You know, when you're iterating early on in the process, I mean, you're sweeping out mechanics and large swap things. And eventually as things start to settle, you then start working on smaller and smaller issues. And so your iteration time becomes smaller because you're just doing fine-tuning. So some meetings, we do the playtesting. Some meetings

it's sort of about walking through the playtesting and getting feedback. A lot of what makes a file a good file is trying things, experimenting with them, figuring out what works, and then coming back and making constant changes on them. And the meetings in which you're sort of doing, a lot of the meetings is what I'll call feedback meetings, where you do something, you gather, and then you start fixing things and figuring out what is working and what's not working.

A lot of the feedback meetings also is sometimes pulling things out of the file. You know, sometimes we'll go through the file and we'll say, okay, this isn't working, this isn't working, this isn't working. Let's pull those things. Sometimes we replace them. It depends where we are.

Early on, we're not one for one on the card file. So usually we're a little bit over early on because we're just trying a lot of things. So as we pull things, we don't need to replace them but later on as things get more solidified you start tightening up what you're doing and then when you remove something you have to replace the thing you remove and one of the things about adding things is sometimes it goes beyond just the thing you're adding you have to look around like we try to make sure we have basic curves and things so you know if i remove a two, I either have to replace it with a two-drop

or replace it with something else and then change something that wasn't a two-drop into a two-drop. I have to be conscious of that as we make changes. There are also some design meetings that are sort of where I have guests in where I want the team aware of what somebody else is up to or I want somebody else up to get up to date with what we're doing

and so sometimes for example members of the creative team might come and start walking through like for example at some point there's creative work done where there's more world building and that sometimes we'll have a meeting, you know, we'll go look at what we call the wall if there's a world concept going on so we can sort of see what things are building. Usually that happens at the tail end of design, but it's valuable, you know, if we can see it. Okay, so beside design meetings, usually there are also other team meetings that are team projects.

Most of the stuff I do are design team meetings because I run design. But occasionally I am called either to be a guest in other meetings. Just as I call people to guest in my meetings, I occasionally guest in other people's meetings. Usually if I'm the guest, it's because people want a low down and what's going on in some design thing. It's very common, for example, early on in a development meeting for me to come in as the lead designer and walk through sort of what is going on or what I was trying to do, what the mechanics are and why I made the decisions I made so that people could understand

that. Okay, another thing that's going on is sometimes I get involved in other people's playtests. Obviously, I'm involved in my own playtest, but one of the things is I like to keep my finger on what's going on in other designs. Because once I hand off a design, I'm not actually involved in it.

But I like poking my head in and figuring what's going on. So one of the ways I do that is I will playtest in other people's playtests. Usually when you're in other people's playtests, what will happen is they'll give you, like in development for example, you'll get a slip of paper, you write down your name, and then as you build your deck

sometimes you have limited playtests, sometimes you have draft playtests. Sometimes it's sealed, sometimes it's draft, and sometimes it's sort of constructed. Usually constructed, you're given a deck. You're just playing with a deck that somebody else built. If I might... Oh, I didn't

mention that when I talked about our design meetings. Our design meetings, half of them are limited playtests in which we're playing with sealed, and half of them are constructed playtests where we're building decks trying to match certain themes. Usually in design, earlier you tend to do more limited play and as you get things more defined you tend to do more constructed play. The reason you constructed play is you want to take some of your themes and start building decks around them

and figure out whether you're missing things. Like oh this is a neat theme it's a fun deck but wow gaping hole you don't have whatever thing X. We need to add thing X. When I'm playing in somebody else's playtest, if it's a limited playtest, I'm filling out what I played with, usually what colors I, you know, how many cards I played of each color.

Because development is more worried about balance. In design, I'm more trying to figure out, like, what the fun things are and sort of fine-tune the overall skeleton. Once you get to development, they're very concerned of, okay, how many of this color did you play? How many of that color did you play? How many rares did you play?

How many uncomments did you play? How many comments did you play? You know, trying to get a sense of exactly what you're doing and how the environment is working. And then usually, if you playtest and somebody else does a playtest, there's a playtest comment field where people can comment on it in our wiki. So the idea is you can sort of get feedback on what you thought about the playtest, what you thought about mechanics or cards and such. Another thing that happens is sometimes you have to do what we call file passes. So we, Drake is our current database. And so what happens

is sometimes what you want to do is you want to go into a file and do what we call pass on it. And what that means is there's a place to put comments. So you go through and any issues that you see, you just want to raise. For me, usually if I'm doing a pass, the reason I would do a pass is it's on a set that already

left design and I'm poking my head in to make sure that the set is not deviating too far from where the design needs to be. Usually these days I've done a pretty good job or I or another member of my team have done a very good job of explaining what the role of the set is so the vision is very much baked in. But I still check. There are small, I mean,

there are different kinds of notes I give. The biggest note I give are more high-end, vision-y type notes. Like, oh, you're deviating from kind of where we're going

or something. I let people know of, oh, are you aware of thing X or thing Y? In handoff, I do a presentation and make sure everyone understands sort of what are the things

that matter about the set. But anyway, that... When I do a file pass, I'm checking for that. I'm also looking for smaller issues. I always look for color pie issues. The console colors exist now, so I'm not as vigilant as I once was

because there are other people that are looking at it. But I still point out color pie things when I see them. And sometimes I just give notes, just general designer notes like, hey, I think this card might be more fun if... But anyway, pass files is another important thing. Another thing that I do is I have a lot of involvement. There are meetings, there are a lot of one-of

meetings that happen that aren't standing meetings or aren't teams I'm working on. But like, for example, a very common thing I will do is we do advanced planning for previews. So I usually invite it to preview meetings. And one of my major role in preview meetings is figuring out what I personally am previewing. Like I write a column. So like, okay, what cards were on preview? What exactly am I going to say? What message am I on? And do I have cards to reinforce that? I got my social media.

So, you know, what's my social media preview? And I want to understand the preview plan. One of the things that I do as spokesperson is I'd be very aware of when you guys learn stuff. So, in fact, one of the meetings I have, which this is a standing meeting, is a meeting where we walk through what is being told when. That it's, we go through a calendar to say, okay, every week it's like, here are the things that are happening. Here are the things that people are going to learn. You know, and so that I can stay aware of when people learn things and what's going to happen. So I can be up on, oh, we're announcing this thing today.

And so I can gauge public reaction and, you know, make sure that I'm not saying things that aren't public yet and stuff like that. Another common thing that I can do is I will have standing meetings with brand. Not standing meetings. One of the meetings with brand. Sometimes standing meetings, one of meetings with brand. Sometimes there are particular issues that come up. You know, if I'm working on a set, there's often handoffs. And so sometimes I'm doing presentations to brand. That'll happen.

We also have what we call retrospectives, where we take something that we've worked on and then look back and figure out what went right and what went wrong to sort of get a, you know, a lot of what we want to do is, okay, we did this. Hey, what was right about this project? What was good? What do we want to capture and do again? What were the mistakes? What did we learn from the project? And so we do retrospectives to sort of learn from that. Those are usually, we usually do two retrospectives, one midway through a project and one at the end of a project. There also are individual things, like one that I've talked about before, that there's a team dedicated to doing the movie. That's not all the time, but every once in a while some new thing comes up.

You know, depending on what it is, we will, you know, if we need to read stuff, we will. And then we will always get together and have talks and sort of walk through what our issues are so that we can then talk to other people external to the building to share, you know, sort of shared wizard's take on things. I sometimes have meetings with PR. I do a lot of interviews and I do a lot of, so sometimes, sometimes they're taped interviews, you know, on the phone. Sometimes they're live interviews. Sometimes they're podcasts. Sometimes they're, uh, taped interviews, you know, on the phone. Sometimes they're live interviews.

Sometimes they're podcasts. Sometimes they're filmed. Um, sometimes there's media things that are involved that I'll get pulled in to do media things. Um, so there's different, um, there's different, uh, PR-ish type stuff that I'll get involved in. Sometimes, for example, I have meetings talking with our, you know, marketing PR people to just talk about, you know, part of my job is interacting with the public. So some of the time

I'm gathering information so I can understand sort of what things are going on. Sometimes I'm sharing information because people want to know what's going on. And I have a pretty good insight into the public because I interact with you guys so much. So I have different meetings in that regard. You know, there are other meetings that I have from time to time, you know, digital or creative meetings. Sometimes I also get involved in some of the early creative meetings as we're building worlds or as we're building story. As a person who's going to help oversee sort of the mechanical aspect of it I have to sort of sit in meetings sometimes

to sort of voice my opinion we also do advanced work sometimes we're working ahead of where we're at and whenever we do things where we're the next stage ahead I need to sit in to make sure that like I'm representing like that's a neat idea

and that's a neat world but oh is there a mechanical way to execute that world so I'm in meetings and like far far far out planning um what else the uh oh the other thing sometimes is um that sometimes there there's some fun stuff that i get to do um sometimes usually when we get product in to do all our testing for it, because when things first get printed, what they'll do is the first time they print something, they'll send us a few boxes so we can check it

to make sure that, you know, the collation's working and all the different things that need to be, we need to just, you know, they'll do their first print run or the first, I mean, I don't mean print run, but they'll do a test print run or the first, I mean, I don't mean print run, but they'll do a test print to make sure that things are working right. And they'll send it to us so that we can make sure that something's not astray. And often when we'll get new product

for that for the first time, we'll get together drafts or something. And sometimes we'll draft with it. And that, you know, one of the things we try to do is it is fun to actually play with real Magic cards. So much of our experience when we play Magic is with sticker cards and stuff. And so whenever we get a chance to sort of play with real product, we do, you know, there are pre-releases within the office. There are employee pre-releases. And so we do that, you know.

And there are all hands. All hands are meetings in which either, well, there are meetings, there are department meetings in which like all of R&D might get together. And then there's company-wide meetings that we call all hands, where everybody is getting together. Usually all hands are more about gathering information. And then even the department ones are more about usually, you know, Bill calls an R&D meeting. It's like, okay we have information discussed with all of R&D

sometimes there's some discussion, the smaller the group the more there can be discussion the bigger the group, like All Hands, where it's the whole company, there's less discussion, there's questions asked sometimes, but we'll definitely do stuff like that where we're having larger group meetings and things there are, also from time to time, I have things like sometimes we don't officially do tours, but sometimes we'll have people either people that are related to magic in some way, or sometimes we actually have celebrities pop in. I've been able, I often give tours as kind of one of the higher profile people.

People, you know, whenever we bring people in, they like to meet me. And so I often will go do meet and greets. And sometimes I'll do tours depending on who the people are. And so I often will... Oh, another thing that will happen sometimes is sometimes when people the receptionist will

text me sometimes when people are visiting in the lobby and if I'm able to sometimes I'll pop up and say hi I can't always do that just a heads up sometimes I'm in a meeting I don't leave my meetings but sometimes the receptionist will text me and say,

hey, hey, got some fans in the lobby. I'm like, oh, yeah, I got some free time. And I'll come up, say hi, take a few pictures, maybe sign an autograph. I try to do that when I can. The other thing is there is downtime. One of the important things is we try not to book all our time. And some of the time we spend is just what I call kibitzing time where sometimes

it's on topic. Sometimes we're hitting actual magic issues and discussing through magic issues. Sometimes they're not magic issues, but there's just some bonding type stuff. If people ever saw another day of productivity lost or R&D's arguing, whatever,

geeky arguments. We have some of those. The way the pit is set up is everything's really low, so it's very open. We do all our playtesting in the pit, or most of our playtesting in the pit. And we also can have impromptu discussions. So a lot of times what will happen is two people will be talking about something, and other people will pipe in. Eric and I, for example, sit right across from each other,

so he and I can have conversations. And quite often, you know, we'll have a conversation and someone will join in and go, oh, you know, yeah, yeah, we're working on that in this set and here's an idea or whatever. So part of my day also is trying to do, you know, having interesting meetings with people. Sometimes we'll go off in a meeting room. If Eric and I, for example, have sensitive stuff sometimes or just we have a longer discussion to have, we'll move it out of the pit and we'll go to a private room.

But there's a lot that goes on. You know, a lot of my day-to-day is in the pit between playtesting and just having conversations or talking to people. Another thing that happens in the pit is just trying to stay up to date. I have more meetings than most. I'm involved in a lot of the upper managerial meetings. I also have a lot of information that sometimes other people don't. Sometimes in the pit, I use my time explaining things.

You have people in the loop on stuff they might not be aware of. But I try really, really hard to stay in the loop of all the different things that are going on. There are so many different moving pieces. Uh, and like I said, part of it's being in meetings. Part of it is reading email. Part of it is just being in the pit and talking to people and people sharing information. Um, but a big part of my job is both being aware of what the public is up to and being aware of what the office itself is up to.

of what the office itself is up to. And so in an average day, like I said, I will have anywhere from, you know, a low day will be one or two meetings and a high day might be eight meetings. Sometimes we are double booked. The way it works is we have a meeting system, sort of Outlook from Microsoft. And so people can sort of track where you're at.

But when there's enough people in a meeting, sometimes they just book it the best time they can. And so often you'll be double booked on meetings, sometimes triple booked, where you're supposed to be in multiple meetings at once. Usually you got to sort of navigate and talk to the people and let them know. Whenever there's a conflict, you let people know there's a conflict and say, hey, I'm going to be missing the first hour of this meeting or whatever because I have this conflict. And sometimes what you do is you actually miss some of each meeting

so that you can be a part of one meeting, part of the other. Sometimes you just totally miss one meeting. But anyway, so there's a bunch of different meetings. There's sometimes playtests, some of those in the pit. Sometimes there is, I have to go off and talk to other people from other sections. That happens a lot. We are on the third floor. R&D is on the third floor.

Sometimes I have to go up to the fourth floor, which is where brand is and marketing and PR. And sometimes I've got to talk to legal and, you know, the different people on the fourth floor. Second floor is more digital and stuff. Everyone wants a blue moon when I go to the second floor, but not near as much as I go to the fourth floor. And anyway, normally at lunch is when I work out. I try to work out

three times a week. I often run on the treadmill and just try to get some exercise in. Sometimes, every once in a while, there's lunch meetings. Usually I try to have lunch be my own time.

I, I bring my, I usually bring my lunch in, um, cause I'm working out and eating lunch after I work out. Um, and then, uh, on the way home, uh, is when I listen to my podcast and try to figure out whether or not I like the day's podcast. Um, and if I like it, then I sign off on it. And if I don't, then I, I rerecord it. And the I like it, then I sign off on it. And if I don't, then I re-record it. And the next day, I'm doing it again. So like today, when I drive home, I'll listen to this podcast and go,

hmm, was I happy with this podcast? Did I do a good job? A lot of times what will happen, by the way, is the first time I do the podcast, I tend to be a little more off the cuff. And then as I do the podcast, sometimes what I realize is that I need a little better structuring. Some podcasts I'll structure ahead of time, but oftentimes if it's a topic I know well enough, I go, well, let's just see how it goes.

Like today, for example, is Monday. This is the first time I'm doing this podcast. I'll listen to it and figure out whether I like the structure I had for it. Or if I go, oh, it didn't quite work out, then sometimes I'll spend a little bit more time figuring out the structure. Sometimes the reason doing it once is really valuable is I can understand how I'm putting it together. Usually it's kind of a natural sense, but once I sort of do it once, I get a sense of, oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. This thing that came up late, late in the thing, maybe I want to do that earlier, you know, and that, I think sometimes,

usually when I'm doing a second or third pass on a podcast, I do a little bit more structure to figure out what I like and didn't like so that I can fine tune it a little bit better. And then I drive home. So I should point out when I say day of my life, my work day doesn't end when I get home because most of my social media is actually done not at work but done at home and so one of the things that will happen is I will find pockets of time when I get home a lot of times it's helping out with the kids or something where like you know there's

downtime when I help out the kids where I'm doing something and you know they're old enough now that I'm not you know I'm more sort of making sure they're getting it done that I'm not, I'm more sort of making sure they're getting it done, but I'm not doing it. And it makes it easier for me to sort of grab a little time here and there. Usually I'm often on my blog, I'm answering questions. I'm also sort of reading social media and checking up on things. I guess at work, I'm a little more at work,

I will keep track of social media at work, where at home I spend more of my time answering questions and things. I tend to do more of that in the evening. But anyway, and it varies quite a bit of sort of how much time I have to do that. Sometimes, some days I have lots of time, some days I don't have much time, which is why there's a high variance of like how many questions I answer and such. But anyway, so that is from me getting up in the morning to me going to bed at night. Um, my average day. Um, so hopefully, like I said, it's, I guess as much as my average day of all the many

things I will do. Um, you know, it is a, one of the things I enjoy about my job is that it's always constantly changing. Um, you know, that there's always constantly changing. There's always new things we're discussing. Imagine always trying different things. I'm always doing new designs on new teams. The one thing about the day in my life, an average day, is it doesn't really repeat itself

all that often. Even when I have the same standing meetings, the topics are so radically different that it just is a very different day. I can have a day with four standing meetings that are the same four standing meetings I had a week before, but it can be

a radically different day. But anyway, I'm now pulling up to Rachel's school, so that, my friends, is my average day. So I hope you guys enjoyed it, a little sense of

sort of what I do. I had a little traffic, so you got a little extra podcasting time for you. But anyway, I'm now here, so we know what that means. It means it's the end

of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you guys next time.