Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #91 - Names

Episode Date: January 24, 2014

Mark chats with Matt Cavotta about the role of card names.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, well, it turns out that Matt Cavada has been having car problems and needed to take his car into the shop. So we all know what that means. Carpool with Matt Cavada! Okay, so I'm going to go pick up Matt, and what I've done is I've chosen a topic that I thought would be a good one for me and Matt to discuss. So last time I had Matt, I drove Matt to work, we talked about flavor text. But this time, we're going to talk about names. Now, for those who don't remember, Matt has actually worked at Wizards twice. The first time he worked at Wizards, he was on the creative team

in charge of names and flavor text. Now he does, he's in charge of the look and feel of magic packaging. Maybe one day I'll do a podcast and talk about that. But today, talk about his old job.

Now the interesting thing is, I, back in the day, was also very involved in names and flavor text. In fact, for both Unglued, Unhinged, and Odyssey, I was in charge of the flavor text, and the names and the flavor text. In fact, for both Unglued, Unhinged, and Odyssey, I was in charge

of the flavor text, and the names and the flavor text. So when we talk names today, both Matt and I have had some experience naming things. Also, one of the things that we'll talk about today is that in design sometimes I will make honest, attempted names. We'll talk about that when I pick them up. That part of doing design sometimes is trying to get the right name. There's a naming person, if that doesn't work out, to give it the right name. But we'll talk about that today. Anyway, I'm on the way to pick him up. He lives very nearby, so I will get him momentarily. But anyway, I always like having Matt in the car, and when I found out yesterday that he...

So one of the things you have to understand is what will happen is Matt will talk to me at work and say, Oh, I need a ride. Can I get a ride with you? And then I'm always like, Do you feel up for a podcast? And he's like, Sure. I think Matt enjoys the podcast. I've gotten really good feedback. People like when Matt is carpooling with me. Just get a little different, change things up.

Most of my podcast is me babbling on, but then you get me and Matt babbling on together, so a little different dynamic. Oh, I'm caught in traffic from school, because I'm leaving right... Normally what happens is, for those who care, is I get my kids off and ready to school, and then right after they go,

then I hop in the car and I go. But if I go right after, if I go too quickly, I get caught up in the school traffic, which is, uh, see, Matt, it turns out, lives across the street from the school. Um, but anyway, uh, we're almost there. By the time I get there, Matt should be ready and waiting. Um, anything else I can tell you to sort of set this up? Um, what can I tell you to set this up? I don't want to give away any good, juicy stuff that we're going to talk about. One of the things that I can bring up, I guess, is be aware that every year we make over 600 cards. And all those six, I mean, brand new cards. I'm not talking about repeats. 600 new cards. Now, all those cards, a few of

them are reprints, in the sense that, you know, they have a new treatment, but they're the same name. So, but I would say there's at least 600 names a year that we make, because we make over 600 cards. Let's assume a few of them are reprints. So we have like 600 names to do. So that's, as Matt

and I are talking about, Magic's 20 years old, you know, at 600 names a year times 20, that's 12,000 names so far. Magic has over 13,000 cards, but let's assume some of those are reprints. So 12,000 unique names. That's a lot. The English language, it's got lots of words in it, but not an infinite number. And we're going to talk today a lot about names as a resource. I think that's something that most people don't think about. But when people ask me about what are the true limitations,

like what are the resources that we have to be most careful about using up, names are one of them. And that a good, clean, crisp, cleaner name, there's a very finite number of those. And one of my big pet peeves is early in magic, we wasted some really, really good names, especially early, early magic. Like one of the ones that always burns me is there's a card in Legends called Teleport, and it's the worst, it's a horrible card, and I'm like, really? Teleport? We burned Teleport on that card? There are a bunch of ones like that.

Teleport. We burned Teleport on that card. There are a bunch of ones like that. But anyway, so today we will be discussing what it takes to make names, what exactly what names need, what are the qualifications for names, and then we'll probably share a few stories about just names we liked, you know, some of the cards we named and how we got the names. It'll be a name-a-palooza once I pick Matt up. So the fun part is I'm sitting here in traffic

trying to like make you know like I'm trying to entertain you while not giving away the very topic I want to discuss with Matt so

but luckily we're almost there and like I said I always have I enjoy having Matt A. I like Matt and I like carpooling with Matt B. I like having Matt

on the show because it is a change of pace. I had a bunch of people ask me, by the way, if I could have other guest stars. The problem is, I mean, I have, Ethan Fleischer was on once, but because I drive to work, I mean, Matt lives right near me,

so he actually carpools with me, but it is tricky to get other people to be in the car on my way to work. That's why there's not a lot of, not tons of guest show opportunities with other people. If they come up, I promise I will try to do them if they occur.

But thus far, Matt is the number one option. Okay, I'm pulling over here. Is Matt here? Let's see. I do not see Matt. Where is Matt?

Okay, we have to go... Ah, there he is. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Mr. Matt Cavanaugh. Hey, Matt. So until you get in the car, I have to do a monologue

where I set everything up. So I've been trying to explain who, like... You have two different jobs. One of these days, we you have to do an interview about your other job, but this is about your old job. Yes. One day we'll talk about product packaging in there. I'm not enthralling the names and flavor text. So today's topic is names. So we're talking about, we talked about flavor text last time. So before you got in the car, here's the thing I started with. I said that names are a very valuable resource.

If you looked at magic and said, what are the things we're going to run out of quickest? I don't think people would necessarily think of names as being one of those things, but it is. Well, good names. Simple names, yes. Yes. That's true. Blanks, blah, we can do it at the end of time. Well, I have found even in the job that I do now that card names and in some cases keywords and whatnot

even step on the toes of other work that we do. For example, we can't write a product tagline that uses the word storm that doesn't mean storm. Yeah. We can't use the word legend unless it means legend. Right. And those are both really good, powerful words that are evocative and in a lot of cases would help sell a concept. So what we could do is we could sit down with Dog and figure out the most keywords we need for packaging

and start making mechanics named after those things and completely make your job impossible. It's already pretty challenging given we have, what, 15,000? There's 13,000 plus magic cards.

I think there's about 12,000 unique names. That's the math I did before we got here. That plus all the keywords? Right, plus there's 100 keywords. It's not so. And the funny thing is, you want to pick really good words for names and keywords and everything.

Yep. And then you end up stealing from yourself those really good words. Yes. Catch-22. One of the things that keeps coming up that's kind of, I don't know, an ethical debate among R&D, which is, is there a point at which we reclaim words that just didn't really,

like, it's on a dumb card, no one ever plays, do we just go, what I brought up before you got in the car was Teleport, which is the card of the legends, no one probably ever played that card, it's a horrible, horrible card, and I'm like, really? Teleport? We lost Teleport for that?

Right. So. Yeah, it's true horrible card. I'm like, really? Teleport? We lost Teleport for that? Right. It's true. If we could go back to all the either one-word card names or singular concept card names

that are on non-repeatable cards and have those back. There's a point at which, and I was in a run for this, where we started realizing that names were important. About maybe four or five years in, we were like, okay, we've got to be very careful. We've got to mark when things are supposed to be repeatable or not.

Although the problem we had back then was we thought that things with keywords wouldn't be repeatable, so we sort of didn't put some clean words in things we wanted to do and other things, you know. But we've been better in something we're very, like, in the file right now, when you get handed a file to do naming, usually there's notes saying, we think this is repeatable. Right. Do we still use the word promotable?

Does that even exist anymore? It might. So promotable means that this is a card simple enough that it could go in a core set and usually those are the kind of cards that it's very easy for us to put in another expert expansion. And one of the things that's tricky

about names, I guess we can get into the nuts and bolts of making card names, is that the name of a card has a very, very important function, which is it's how everybody refers to it, right? It is the, you know, a card does a lot of things, but it all gets boiled down to one thing

as far as how everybody refers to it, and that's the name. And the name has a lot of, like, jobs, right? It has a lot of things it has to do. So... One of the more important things that it has to do is roll off the tongue nicely while playing. Yes. One of the

things we try to do, and we don't do this exclusively, but we try to have active spells be named as verb or verbable nouns. So when you're playing, you don't have to say, you know, I play my three mana such and such. You can say, I lightning bolt you,

or I do this or that to you. Right, so one of the tricks, usually instants and sorceries tend to be verbs. I mean, sometimes we get metaphorical, but usually they're verbs. Although one of the tricks we'll do sometimes, and lightning bolt's a perfect example, where lightning bolt happens to be a noun, but bolt is a verb. Yes. And so when I say I bolt you, it sounds right because the word bolt happens to also be a verb.

So when I say I bolt you, it sounds right because the word bolt happens to also be a verb. There's quite a bit of wordplay, at least in the English language, on magic cards. And I'm not totally well-versed in what happens to those once they get localized. Well, here's a real quickly, I know a little bit about this. So we, each language, and we're in 11 languages now, each language has a translator or a team of translators. And that their job is to take whatever the name is and then apply it to their local language. And each language has its own, you know, quirks they have to deal with. But one of the things that's funny is this came up a while ago. English is a very robust language. We have more words than some other languages.

In fact, English is one of the most robust languages. And so, the problem is, we will name cards something where we're having nuance to the name. In other languages, like, here's a classic example is, in some other languages, there are, like, maybe two or three words for a dead thing. You know, English has, like, 50 words for a dead thing. English has like 50 words for a dead thing. And they're like, you're killing us. Because we have ghoul and zombie and all these different subtle type things. And they're like, guys, we have two words.

Yeah. Yeah, I imagine that there's some wonky and uncomfortable card names in other languages. That's where the difference between localizing and translating comes into play. The person in that other country might have to attempt to hit the same sort of flavor note we've created, but with their own wordplay and customs or whatever. It comes out totally different. wordplay and customs or whatever comes out totally different.

It's funny. This ended up not happening, but when Unglue 2 was going to happen, the set that never came out, the Japanese market said that they wanted to print it. And so we were going to translate Unglue 2 into Japanese.

And so I had this, Ron Foster, who works at our office, by the time was the translator, the Japanese translator, I had this Ron Foster, who works at our office, by the time was the translator, the Japanese translator, I had this document that are his notes on my names for Unglued 2, which are hilarious. Hopeless. Because, like, just things

in which I was making a reference, because, like, we don't have that, you know. And one of my jokes was, there's a card in Unglued called The Cheese Stands Alone, and I was joking in Japan to be the Cheese Has No Honor. Okay, so we're going to name... Hold on, there's another couple of semi-ridiculous constraints when it comes to naming cards.

Okay. One of them is length. There have been times where we were forced to use different card names than we would have chosen otherwise. I have an example. Because of, I'm pretty sure I know which one you're going to give. Because the rules text and or the mana cost soaks up all of the available room for the words. Are you thinking of a artifact dragon? Oh, no, I'm not. That's a good one. You do that one and I'll do my one. You go first.

Well, as I understand it, the card Tek. Yeah, T-E-K. Unassuming little three-letter name for a big, crazy monster came into being because the rules text were so long. Correct. The longer name would have forced the smaller point size. Yes. Right. It was a card in which they had referred to the name a bunch of times.

And so the only way they could print the rules text was if the name was super short. Yes. And so it has the name tech because a three-letter word was all that could fit to make the rules text work. Right. So here's an example where we changed the name, by the way, is in Mirage, there's a card called Spirit of the Night. Originally, it was Spirit of the Night Stalker,

and it just didn't fit. Right. And so we had to shorten it to Spirit of the Night from Spirit of the Night Stalker. There was a card in the first Ravnica that had to get a shortened name because the mana cost was so thick. It was

a Dimir card. I can't remember what it is. Some big crazy monster but it needed a short name just to fit. Something that also happens people are completely unaware of is sometimes the name and the mana cost will fight and so either we have to shorten the name and the the mana cost will fight yeah and so either we have to shorten the name or shorten the mana cost and the way you show the mana cost

is have less colored mana and more so you know that way you can get rid of a bubble or two right um and then there's fights between development creative of which is more important you know having it one less man you know one less colored mana or having this better name. Oh, speaking of Ravnica names, the original name for the dragon Niv-Mizzet was Niv-Mizzet Strix. Okay. It had like 46 letters, 12 syllables. That didn't pass the test on so many levels. It didn't fit. You couldn't refer to itself in the text box.

There wouldn't be enough room. And it's just unpronounceable and unspellable. It just failed in so many ways. I remember going through a whole bunch of iterations with other people in the editing and creative teams to come up with something that was easily grokkable that had anything to do with his name. So let's, you bring up a good point.

We can segue to this point, which is what do names have to do? I don't think people are even aware of a lot of the guidelines we have on names. So one is it needs to be pronounceable, which you would think, by the way, there was a card called Night Errant that was in the starter game that was 1W22. And we had focus group dash. Is that how you pronounce it? I don't pronounce it that way. But go ahead. Well, we had focus groups.

And what we do is we watch people who have never played before behind a glass, and then we watch them play. And we have no guidance. So time and time again, this name, like, they would stop and spend minutes on this name, trying to figure out how to pronounce it, instead of learning how to play the game. And, like, it's your absolute worst nightmare. Like, the last thing you want is people, like, instead of focusing on learning how to play it's like how is this pronounced and uh that's got to happen a lot then because night errant at least that's how i pronounce it

seems like it's on the easy end of the spectrum and i'm saying that that's my point is there are things in which um you think would be easy and then just... Like, I know on names, on proper names, one of the big problems is words that are pre-existing words that people know, there's a good chance they know how to pronounce them,

obviously. But when you're making up words, I mean, that's another big thing is we make up words, right? Yes. In fact, there's a lot of stories in which, some classic stories, where the artist didn't realize

we didn't make up the word. So my favorite is Rootwalla. So Rootwalla was originally Chuckwalla. And Chuckwalla is an actual kind of lizard. And so we gave it to an artist, and the artist didn't realize that it was a real type of lizard. He knew it was a lizard, but he thought we had made it up. So he just did what he thought was a fun fantasy lizard.

And then we changed the name because it wasn't actually a chuck wall anymore and became a root walla. But so right, when you make names, they have to be pronounceable. They have to be something that people usually know what it is. One of our rules, we call these 25 cent words, which is we allow a little bit of vocabulary, but we try to keep it out of common. Like, a classic example is, oh, it's true. I can go in the carpool lane.

I forgot that I'm in a carpool today. We're stuck in traffic, and Matt is pointing out that, like, everyone in the carpool is driving by us.

And I'm like, oh, yeah, carpool. So, for example, in Tempest, there's a car called Ledger Domain. So, Ledger Domain, if, yeah. So Ledger Domain, if you don't know,

is a very fancy word that means sleight of hand. You know, it means, it's magical. If you're literally in French, that's what it means. Yeah,

it might just mean that in French. And I remember the time we had this big debate about like, is it too big a word? Although I, I for one appreciate

that every once in a while peppering in some scripts spelling B words, because, frankly, I feel like magic is a game for thinkers, and that doesn't seem out of bounds to me. No, no. So I often get letters. In fact, I have a great story.

I'll tell you one story, because this is an awesome story. People write in to me to explain to me how magic helped them in some way. So one of my favorite stories. So a guy writes in, and he says that he and his mother loved playing Scrabble. And ever since he was a little kid, they played Scrabble. And he had never beaten his mother, because she was really, really good. And as he was getting older, he was getting better and better. So they're in this game in which they're really, really close. And he plays Taiga.

And his mother challenges him. And he's like, no, mom, it's a word. And she's like, what is it? He goes, some kind of mountain forest. And they looked it up. Obviously, it was a word. And he won. Because Taiga was a word.

And he knew that because of magic. I saw, this was probably five or six years ago, on the ESPN replay of the Scripps Spelling Bee in the finals, the word autochthon that we used in Ravnica. Yeah. And I would have never,

never encountered that word otherwise. There's just no way. Yeah, I was watching, who makes, do you want to be a millionaire? Who wants to be a millionaire? And the quarter million dollar question was, what is the collective name for rhinos? I was like, score!

Yeah, so here's another interesting thing we can talk about, which is names tend to go through different, like there are different kind of names we'll do and we'll kind of rotate. Like during Mirage, an era that I was very involved in, we got into this doing collective names thing, like Crash of Rhinos, obviously. Except we had fun making ones up because all the real world animals, there's a collective name. By the way, do you know who made? Wait, is that when you guys got that book? Who's the...

Yeah. The Lipton. Lipton, yeah. It's called... Extaltation of LARP. Right, yes. Yes. So he wrote a book,

the guy who does the actor's studio. He's an actor. He wrote a book in which he just made up, basically, here are the collective names for animals. If you're into highbrow humor, it's really funny. It's a really good book.

Anyway, we used a bunch of those. Murder of Crows, I think, is from that. That's for real. Anyway, we had fun making up our own. I had a blast. I remember we did Cloud of Fairies. It was fun. It's fun making those up. I had a good time.

Did we ever end up doing the dwarf one? We argued forever about what a collective name of dwarf is supposed to be. A tankard? I don't know. So, okay. So, I realize I got off on time. So, names have to be pronounceable. People have to understand what they are.

They have to fit on the type line. Yes. They have to not be a repeat. Oh, yeah. And also they have to be reasonably different in pronunciation from other cards that are likely to be in play or in standard at the same time. You can give your click slither example. Right, so in one set, was it Legions? There was quick sliver and click slither,

which I tried to stop so badly. I just, I couldn't, at the time, I wasn't involved in names at the time. And they're like, ah, no problem. One's a goblin, one's a sliver. And then there was actually a pro tour in which Randy had said one, and then the person thought he meant a different one because it was limited. And all the confusion came up because they were confused which it was. So there have been times, and quite often if you're working on a set with 250 cards,

you can be so close to it you don't even realize what's happening. Yeah. And we would go through and we'd finalize all the names and then submit it to editing, and the editor would come back and say, you know you have four names that start with the word doom. Yeah. You're like, really, what?

are four names that start with the word doom yeah like really what um so we'd have to set about changing probably three of them to something else yeah also the editors will also catch i mean although this is this problem has happened in other languages in english so far we've never actually repeated a name and the editors often will catch it because that one of the passes they do is they go have we ever used this? And then sometimes there's some obscure card from way back when that like, oh, here's a funny example. I had a card in Unhinged, and the art was a guy was being erased

by a giant eraser. And so I was going to call it Erase. And then somebody pointed out to me that there was a card called Erase in Ursa's Legacy. So I changed the name to Erase. And then somebody pointed out to me that there was a card called Erase in Urza's Legacy, so I changed the name to Erase, not the one from Urza's Legacy. But I was doing unhinged, so I was allowed to... There's some creative solutions you don't have

available to you in most... More tools in the toolbox. So here's another thing. So I was in charge of names for Odyssey, and right before Odyssey, I sort of got put in charge of names right, what was the set right before Odyssey? It would have been the end of... Masks? No, no, no. Before Odyssey's invasion, so it would have been Plane Chase. It would have

been Apocalypse. So, I was, Apocalypse was about to go to films, and I needed to do a pass on it because the person who was charging names had just left the company and so I got sort of tasked with names and flavor text. And so one of the cards was a card called Spirit Links, L-Y-N-X. Except it didn't have the ability Spirit Link.

I mean, we now call it Life Link. But at the time, it was casually known as Spirit Link because it's based on the Spirit Link card from Legends and I was like we can't call our

card Spirit Links if it doesn't have Spirit Link you know and so now what happens is it was so late in the process

so wait that's a perfect example of what we were talking about at the very beginning which is how our own words

end up kicking us in the gut oh yes exactly so what happened was it was so late in the gut. Oh, yes, exactly. So what happened was, it was so late in the thing that the collector numbers had already been assigned to cards. And so what happened was, I had to change the name, but I had to stay within a tiny gap.

So like, I had from like SL to SP or something. And so Spirit Links became Spectral Links. Yes. And by the way, that happens all the time. You have to change names and you have to stay within the collector number. Yes. It's become almost a rite of passage for like trying to solve. Do you remember any for you that we had to solve a name?

I mean, it happened so many times that it didn't even stick out as like a thing. But a card might get changed late in development but that card slot was already like baked into the set um it might have changed from a creature to a sorcery and therefore couldn't be called something dude you know But it had to start with S. Yes. Oh, so here's another thing we have to be careful of is, and we talked about this a little earlier, but let me be more clear about it,

is you want to make sure that your name conveys to the person playing it, or especially the opponent, what kind of card it is. One of my example of, I think a set that might have been our greatest error in names and flavor text was Champions of Kamigawa. Yeah.

Because one of the things was they were trying so hard to sort of get this affectation of a Japanese flavor that they ended up making names that you had no idea what the cards were. They were so lyrical. They all sort of blended together. Right. It's kind of like that which stutters. You're like, is that a sorcery or is that a creature or is that an enchantment? Like, you have no idea. That was a land, by the way.

Oh, that land. The one I remember that my pet peeve was Council of the Soratami. Which, if you read the word, the word council as in a body of people and council as in advice are spelled differently. But the problem is names are said and so when I say I do something that you just hear it. And so

Counsel the Sword Tommy sounds like a bunch of guys from the, you know, a bunch of the Sword Tommy got together and I disliked the name because it just didn't sound like a sorcery.

Actually, it was an incidental sorcery but it was a card drawer. I think it was sorcery. Draw two cards? Okay. Which is divination, right? sorcery, but it was a card drawer. I think it was sorcery. Draw two cards? Okay. Which is divination, right? Yes. Which is divination, better name.

Yes. Although even divination, by the way, it's a noun. The thing that you learn, by the way, is that people, if they say something enough, it'll eventually just sound okay to them. But we do want to make sure that as much as possible, the names can help you in making it sound good. Oh, here's another thing to talk about. Sometimes, another thing to be careful about is sometimes names you are not careful sound wrong if you... Oh, good.

There's some examples that I don't even think we should mention here. Well, I mean, how about this? I will mention a name that went awry and not explain how it got used. I will leave that for my audience. But a classic example is Stroke of Genius. Okay. Where when you verb it, it just sounded wrong. They get way worse than that.

Yes. In fact, there have been some card names that have made it as far as when we reviewed the slideshow. Yeah. Oh, the slideshow? The slideshow. Yeah. That have been, again, you can get so close to your own work that you can lose perspective. And the writer lost perspective.

The person in charge of names and flavor text at the time lost perspective. And even the editors lost it because a card name came out that if you read the, if you look at the words, it meant one thing. But if you actually read the words, it meant a sort of violence against a particular subset of our culture. I'll just leave it at that. It was horrible. Right. But the problem is you're in the context just leave it at that. It was horrible. Right.

But the problem is you're in the context of what it actually means and sometimes it's hard to hear the other context. Yeah. When you look at it on a card, you see the word

above the word above the effect. And you get, you think, it's very common in writing you have this problem where you know what you mean so you always interpret

the meaning you meant and you just forget there's a completely different meaning um yeah i mean one of the things that's funny about names is that like i i remember when i was putting together um odyssey uh i had to name the five atons and so what we did was, all of them were some Latin root with Atog. And I knew that one of them had the best chance of being the really good one. So at the last minute, I changed it. And originally, Psychotog had one of the other names.

And I go, oh, I like Psychotog. So I swapped them so that Psychotog would be on the one, which I'm happy because that ended up becoming this major major major card and like Psychotog's a much much better name than I forget what the other ones were but they weren't as good as Psychotog oh a Togatog is awesome what else can you call it an 8-dog that eats 8-togs so here's another thing that happens a lot by the way which is so the way it works is the person who's in charge of names and flavor text, that is their job. I mean, they can be overruled as if anybody can be overruled by, you know, their bosses and stuff. But pretty much your job is like you're the final say and this is what it is.

And people will not like certain names and they will come to you and they will be very, very vocal about how they hate this name. Yeah. And part of the job is sort of balancing, you know, what you think's right, you know. Oh, here's an example of the opposite of that. This was, it's either Guild Pact or Ravnica City of Guilt, where a random late development card comes in. It's just like a meaningless hole filler for a large

black creature. Yeah. And we had to just shotgun a name onto this thing just to kind of shuttle it through the process. Yeah. And then creative team member Brady Dom Domermuth, had a moment of what I consider to be lowbrow genius when he came up with Helldozer. Oh, that's funny. I was like, that is awesome. And I poked that thing in and finalized it immediately. And it was less than a couple hours later when the development guys on the other side of the wall

had seen what came to them, and they were like, that is so awesome. We are making this better than it was supposed to be originally. I wrote the flavor text for Helldozer. Yes, you did. That was me goofing off on...

Anyway, flavor text, that's a different topic. We did that last time. So other things on names, I'm trying to think of other fun naming stories. I know a lot of times what will happen is you will name something and

then art comes in and then the art just contradicts what the name was going to be here's a name phenomenon that happens

a lot one thing that many names have to be able to do is to be able to cycle the atog

is a perfect example and anything times five is going to be able to cycle. The ATOG is a perfect example. And anything times five is going to be difficult. You have to come up with some route or link between those five that is really flexible. And I've noticed that in almost every case, three of them are good, four of them are solid, and one yeah stinks and it makes you like

cringe and and and you know get twisted in frustration thinking there's got to be a way to finish out this cycle without sucking but yeah it's just nine times out of ten there's going to be a stinker in the group. So here's a story I came up with of how I had a name I really loved, and then the art came in. We use it later, obviously. But, okay, so this was an odyssey. I forget the card, but one of my writers had come up with the name Faceless Butcher. And I thought that was the most awesome name.

And then we get the art back, and he has a face! Like, no! And then we end up... So what happened was, next time, I saved it for... What came after? Torment. Torment. And the note in the art description is,

Faceless Butcher does not have a face! Just so we could get the name Faceless Butcher in. But it's funny. One of the things about the names is it serves so many masters. It has to fit, and it has to make sense sometimes in the rules text, and it has to sound right, and people have to be able to pronounce it, and they have to know what it means. So we had, in our last conversation about flavor text,

So we had in our last conversation about flavor text, we had talked about how in many ways flavor text was like a veneer, a in the process ended up looking not anything like what the mechanic relates to at all. Right. And all you have to help out is some crazy turn of phrase or nuanced group of words to pull those things together. And that happens a lot. Yeah, right. A lot of times, right, the component, like, sometimes you get the art in and you have the mechanic,

and the art and the mechanic aren't perfect fits. They're kind of like, and right, it's up to the name to save it all, to say. This card destroys enchantments, and the art is a woman asleep on a hill. What? What do you do with that? I'm pretty sure that's a real example too.

Yeah, there's one. Actually, in my Odyssey podcast, I talked about it where we had swapped all the art. Back in the day, we used to swap art around. We don't do that much anymore. Our art directions got way, way better. But back in the day,

we would have a lot of pieces and we would move them where they needed to go and then we would end up with some random effect and some random somewhat neutral looking card and then we had to somehow make it make sense. And... What was that card?

Someone with fire. Ceasing fire. Cease fire. Right. The card we had left was a foggish effect in white and a picture of these guys sitting around like a fire with all the smoke with faces in the thing. And I knew that the card was a card that wouldn't be played a lot and it was like a very neutral piece of art.

So I'm like, okay, I'll figure this out. And it came up with Ceasefire. That's good. Because it stopped the attack and there was fire. Sometimes, that's all you need, by the way, is the name has to make sense

with each. Like ceasefire made sense because there was a fire and ceasefire made sense because it stopped damage. But, hey, it connected both.

Good enough. You know, and everyone's happy. The translators hated you. I'm sure they did. There's no way to do that in their language. So,

well, that's the other thing. We solve the problems in English, and then some poor translator has to solve the problem in their own language. Yeah, it's rough. I do know that the... It's very, very hard. Translating Magic cards is very hard

because you're not just directly translating. You have to solve the problem for your local language. So I do know that it's... I've had a chance to talk with translators and it's interesting because the problems that they have, like when you do names and flavor text, here's a whole other issue,

which is problems with translation. And there's certain things that they have issues with. And one of it is certain languages just can't talk about certain things really well. And so they respect the fact that we are sometimes doing specialized words. But I know in other languages that they have to be a little more blunt sometimes. Like English is the perfect word for this concept.

And in other languages, like, yeah, we don't have that word. Right. So. But, oh, here's another problem. All German names increase the card line by what 20%

oh like German is just about 20% longer yeah and so um we have to be careful I mean sometimes

we squeeze it in but you always have to kind of be conscious of other languages especially German are longer right um

and then and the reverse the reverse thing in Japanese and Chinese they tend to be shorter because they're using characters rather than but anyway

it sounds like we're close to work any other things you think of that are like pitfalls of naming things that you would not have thought if you had not done it what sets did you name by the way I was going to ask you this earlier the first Ravnica block or the Time ravnica block first or the time spiral block

and cold snap it was that two-year period yeah whatever was in there and i did some uh some of the late late writing in whatever was the final set of the Kamigawa block. The Savior's Kamigawa. Yeah. But after that... Sure, you joined basically when I became head designer.

Yes. Right. After... You were my first hire when I got the job because when I became head designer, I also ran the creative team

for a while. And the one, the very first thing I did is I had to fill a position, which you did an awesome test to get filled a position you made a fine choice yes um but i had i had worked on names and flavor text as a as a writer right pretty much up until i came back to work here

three years ago yep and then we and then we sucked up all your time not a lot of time to do the writing these days no painting, no writing I know, beatings one thing that is pretty interesting regarding card names is that a project that I'm working on right now

that I can't really elaborate on for the folks but that requires me to find art that represents each of our major worlds and each of our major characters, like a suite of art for each of those

people and places. Enough to tell the tale, to summarize what that person or place is all about. I can go through and find all kinds of awesome pieces of art, but so many of them have to get kicked to the curb because without the context of words, what the hell is going on?

Yeah. It's like the context of the card allows the art to play, to be like either a visual evolution of a concept as opposed to being that very thing. Yes. And I now have a greater appreciation for what the names do. what the names do. There would be spells that summarize a wolf's predatory instinct or whatever,

but when you take away the name, it's a wolf. What do you do with that? You just have to toss it in the circular file, I guess. The thing that... I've said this multiple times.

The power of words. Words are so powerful and that, you know, the reason that, like, we will take on a single card, I mean, you could spend days and days and days trying to get the right name

for a card. I did. And that... That happens. Right. And the key of it is just, you know, like, the right word

and the right context will just mean so much and, like, if you're just off by a hair, it just isn word and the right context will just mean so much and like, if you're just off by a hair, it just isn't quite as right. Anyway, we are now here at work. I'm late for a meeting.

Okay, Matt's late for a meeting so I want to say thanks for joining us today guys and I gotta be going making magic. I'll talk to you next week.